Seedbed is now running a series of my 7-minute videos (OK, these first two are eight) on verses often taken out of context. The first two are up:
What Happens When the Church Reads the Bible Out of Context (Part I)
What Happens When the Church Reads the Bible Out of Context (Part II)
I might sound like a grumpy sourpuss in this post, but please feel free to balance it with my more upbeat ones.
Too often we believe things because they are things we simply want to believe. That does not make them wrong, but it does mean that we don’t know whether they’re right. Most people know better than to drink something labeled poison just because they want it to believe that it might be Diet Sprite. Here are some doctrines some people like to believe that merit further investigation. I note just a couple verses for consideration after each, though these could be multiplied.
That’s probably enough for now—I don’t want to get anyone in a bad mood. And I confess that some of the above, such as everyone getting healed in this life and everyone getting saved, I wish with all my heart to be true. But it’s better to know what’s really true so we can make some things better than to go into trouble blindly (Prov 22:3; 27:12). If a tornado’s coming, I’d rather believe it and take shelter than simply confess, “That tornado is not coming.” The odds usually favor it missing you, but the stakes are quite high if you’re wrong.
Of course, there are some things that seem too good to believe and yet are true—especially the good news that our creator died for us and guarantees us eternal life with him if we trust him. Before I met God, when I was an atheist but starting to question my certainty about that, I thought that the most wonderful thing in the world would be if there was an infinite being who was not only infinite but even cared about us (and especially me, messed up as I was). That seemed too much to hope for … until I met him and discovered that he does care about us. (Otherwise he wouldn’t have bothered to make us.) How true is the phrase, “amazing grace”!
We need to search Scripture with an open mind and heart. We need to read with the fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom, so that we find the message that God really has to communicate to us. That means hearing the message that God inspired, rather than just what we want to find.
For those who wanted to view the interview with Craig on biblical scholarship but did not want to provide your email address, here is a link to it on YouTube:
Pentecost (Acts 2:1) was a significant festival in the Jewish calendar, offering the first fruits of grain to the Lord (Lev. 23:16). Its significance in this narrative, however, may be especially that it was one of the major pilgrimage festivals, when Jewish people who lived all over the world came back to visit Jerusalem. This sets the stage for the experience of the Spirit that will drive the church in Acts across all cultural barriers.
The narrative opens with God’s people in unity (Acts 2:1). They have been praying together (1:14), and prayer often precedes the coming of the Spirit in Luke-Acts (Luke 3:21-22; 11:13; Acts 4:31; 8:15).
Suddenly, they experience signs of the Spirit. The first two signs touch key senses, hearing and sight. They evoke biblical theophanies, perhaps also as foretastes of the future age. First, they hear a wind, perhaps prefiguring the promised wind of God’s Spirit that would bring new life to God’s people in Ezekiel 37:9-14. Second, they witness the appearance of fire, which was often associated with future judgment (cf. Luke 3:9, 16-17).
The third sign, however—speaking in tongues—is the most important of the three. This is clear because it occurs again at two other outpourings of the Spirit in Acts, although no one present on those occasions recognizes the languages spoken (Acts 10:46; 19:6). On this first occasion, though, their experience is also important because some people do recognize the languages and it therefore forms the bridge to Peter’s sermon. The crowds hear this sound (2:6) and ask what this phenomenon means (2:12). Peter goes on to explain that this tongues-speaking means that the promised time of the Spirit has dawned (2:16-18).
Since tongues-speaking represents an example of the prophetic outpouring of the Spirit in “the last days” (2:17), we should no more suppose that tongues have ceased than that prophecy has ceased, and we should no more suppose that prophecy has ceased than that the last days have now been supplanted by days later than last days that are no longer “last”! If we take the Bible seriously, it makes no sense to deny that God who poured the Spirit out (2:17-18) has now poured the Spirit back, or that we no longer need the Spirit empowering us for evangelism (1:8) so long as the task of reaching the ends of the earth still remains to be fulfilled. Of course, when that task has been fulfilled, and our mission is complete, Jesus will return (Matt 24:14; Rom 11:25-27; 2 Pet 3:9-12). We will no longer need these gifts that provide windows on God because we will know him even as we are known (1 Cor 13:8-13).
What is speaking in tongues in Acts? It seems quite implausible that Paul would use related wording to describe a gift of the Spirit only by coincidence. Both Luke and Paul refer to the Spirit enabling worship in unlearned speech (Acts 2:11; 10:46; 1 Cor 14:2, 14-17). In 1 Cor 12:10; 14:2, 13, 18-19, however, only God understands the speech, unless someone present is divinely gifted with the understanding (the gift of interpretation). What matters for Paul is not the linguistic element, but that one’s heart communicates with God. Likewise, in Acts 10:46; 19:6, apparently no one present understands the language.
Acts 2 seems to reflect a special situation for this first outpouring of the Spirit, in which God inspires the worship in languages that will be recognized by the many foreign Jewish hearers on this occasion. There have been subsequent occasions of languages being recognized by someone present (see e.g., Del Tarr, The Foolishness of God: A Linguist Looks at the Mystery of Tongues [Springfield, Mo.: Access, 2010]; Jordan Daniel May, Global Witnesses to Pentecost: The Testimony of “Other Tongues” [Cleveland, Tenn.: CPT Press, 2013]). That is not, however, the normal purpose of tongues in the Bible or subsequently.
Yet Luke has a special reason to highlight this special occurrence of recognized tongues in Acts 2. Luke’s “thesis statement” for Acts is Acts 1:8: the Spirit empowers witnesses for Jesus to the ends of the earth. (The witnesses are in the first case “the eleven and those who were with them” in Luke 24:33, but they become a model for the continuing mission of the church, since the spread of the good news must continue to the ends of the earth, far beyond the conclusion of Acts 28.)
In another major programmatic statement for Acts, the Spirit inspires all believers to speak prophetically for God (2:17-18), a last-days gift (2:17) that continues for subsequent generations (2:38-39). Although this wide potential for prophetic speech continues in Acts in the narrower sense (11:27; 13:1; 19:6; 21:9-10; cf. 1 Cor 14:5, 31), all believers, including those who think that other gifts have ceased, at the very least must surely depend on the Spirit in our witness for Christ.
But where does tongues (2:4) fit on the spectrum of witness (1:8) and prophecy (2:17-18)? How do tongues fulfill Joel’s promise of God’s people being able to prophesy (2:17-18)? Like witness and prophecy in the narrower sense, worship in tongues is speech for God and moved by the Spirit of God. Nor is it simply a random example of this sort of speech; Luke’s narrative highlights in Acts 2 a particular dimension about tongues-speaking that is distinctive: it portends the mission to the ends of the earth (1:8).
What greater sign of the purpose of Spirit-empowerment, stated in 1:8, could God offer on the day of Pentecost than for God to empower his people to worship in other people’s languages? That is, God signifies right from the start that the Spirit empowers us for our mission to the ends of the earth. The Book of Acts then provides further examples of God continuing to empower new and unexpected groups of believers, who thereby become colaborers in the mission (8:14-17; 9:17; 10:44-48; 13:52; 19:6).
Various groups of Christians today debate how many Christians should speak in tongues, but all of us can appreciate what tongues on the first Pentecost most of all means for us: God has empowered his church to reach all peoples. Until that mission is complete, let us continue to call on him for his power to use us. This is a prayer that he is sure to answer (Luke 11:13).
Video interview, with a table of contents for the topics
https://zondervanacademic.com/blog/craig-keener-on-reading-writing-and-biblical-scholarship/
17 minutes on Revelation’s epistolary introduction, focusing on who God is.
In the U.S., the label “evangelical” has been taking a beating, and some Christians who are theologically evangelical don’t feel comfortable identifying with it anymore. But it’s a good label historically–it just means “gospel” follower–and it’s still used by tens of millions of Christians around the world who have nothing to do with the ways the term has been used in the U.S.
Yet I sympathize with those who are uncomfortable with the label and once almost left evangelicalism myself, many years ago. This article talk about my experience:
https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2018/january-web-only/why-i-almost-left-evangelicalism.html
Kenneth Bailey contended for a model of oral tradition behind the Gospels based on Middle Eastern practices of passing on tradition. James D. G. Dunn, N. T. Wright and others developed his basic model. Theodore Weeden, however, severely critiqued the model, noting some significant problems in Bailey’s data. Some scholars, such as Eric Eve at Oxford, have taken a nuanced view, acknowledging some of Bailey’s weaknesses but showing from other scholarly work that Bailey’s proposal resembles what studies of oral history also suggest.
In this new article in Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism, I respond to Weeden’s critique of Bailey. Although some of his observations are correct, Bailey’s model still has a great deal to offer, and Eve (and Dunn, Wright and others) have been right to point this out. (I should note: although most of my posts on this site are at a more popular level, this one is more academic.)
http://jgrchj.net/volume13/?page=volume13
(Note for those later finding this post in my archives: after the print version of the journal comes out, perhaps in late summer or fall of 2018, their web version will come down.)
20 minutes; Jesus as the ultimate revelation; not adding to Scripture
Citing a report from ChurchClarity.org, NEWSWEEK proclaims that (anti-LGBT), “None of America’s 100 largest churches are LGBT-affirming and almost all of them are led by white men,” noting that, according to the site, “93 percent of the churches are led by a white pastor,” with only 7 percent “led by a person of color.”
Technically NEWSWEEK does not endorse Church Clarity’s claims, but its failure to report contrary perspectives or significant qualifications renders NEWSWEEK at least partly liable journalistically for promoting the information. Yet there are at least two problems with this way of framing the statistics, the second of which I find more conspicuous than the first.
What counts as “anti-LGBT”?
What does the article mean by “anti-LGBT”? Are these churches that campaign for the arrest of those who practice LGBT behavior? (I doubt that any churches on the list would fit that definition.) Churches that campaign against the legality of gay marriage? I am guessing that this would be a minority of these churches. Churches that teach their members not to practice same-sex intercourse? This would undoubtedly be a majority of those churches that ever comment on it publicly, though I know from experience that some large churches rarely comment on the subject. (Some churches may be megachurches partly because they dodge some publicly divisive issues when possible.)
ChurchClarity.org notes that, “0% of Outreach’s 100 Largest churches have affirming LGBTQ+ policies.” The NEWSWEEK article clarifies this figure as meaning that all the churches are “anti-LGBT.” Although more than half the churches’ websites did not publicly and clearly specify their “LGBTQ policies,” they are included as “all anti-LGBT,” because they were not explicitly supportive on their websites of marrying or ordaining LGBTQ persons.
Why imply a connection to racism?
ChurchClarity.org includes statistics regarding the color of the senior pastor, but it is the title of the NEWSWEEK article that trumpets together the churches being “anti-LGBT” and led by white men. The article does not state a connection between being “anti-LGBT” and being racially insensitive, but if no such connection is implied, it seems a red herring to combine them as issues in the title.
Now, far be it from me to suggest that racism is not a common problem among white people in the U.S. My wife and kids are black. I am ordained in an African-American denomination; for most of my many years in Philadelphia, I was an associate minister at Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church, an African-American megachurch there that already had some 13,000 members. I have been around enough to know very well that racism is common in the U.S.
But the statistics cited about the racial profiles of the pastors are simply misleading.
The list of the largest 100 churches used is based on figures in Outreach Magazine. But this list explicitly and transparently refers to “participating churches.” Enon, my church mentioned above, is not in any count of the 100 largest churches. But the list also excludes another church with which I am familiar: West Angeles Church of God in Christ, with roughly 25,000 members (and 13,000 in attendance), which could put it in the top 40.
I therefore looked for a more complete list. This one (though from 2015) is from the Hartford Institute for Religion Research. Using this more complete list, I count at least 21 of the 100 largest churches in the U.S. having African-American pastors, and at least three having Latino pastors. (A number of the other urban congregations are at least partly multicultural.) In other words, not 7 percent, but roughly one-quarter, of the largest churches in the U.S. have pastors who are not white Anglos.
Perhaps the article focuses on the different list because it is complaining only about evangelical pastors (NEWSWEEK notes that the site addresses “over 1.1. million evangelicals in America”). But if so, the complaint encounters another problem (cf. evangelical meaning). Some surveys count evangelicals in terms of white evangelical subculture, in which, not surprisingly, the vast majority (even more than 93 percent) of “white evangelicals” are white. If, by contrast, one counts “evangelical” in terms of its theological distinctives, one is back to the vast majority of churches, including most of the 21 with African-American pastors, being evangelical. After all, lots of churches become megachurches because they believe in evangelism (surprise of all surprises).
The U.S., including much of its church, is full of racial insensitivity, but I find it ironic that a NEWSWEEK article would imply such an association in its title. For much of the 1990s I was a faithful NEWSWEEK subscriber. I still respect a number of the authors who wrote for Newsweek at that time (e.g., Fareed Zakaria, Sharon Begley, Jon Meacham and others). The reason I eventually let my subscription lapse was the incongruity of Newsweek’s coverage of the personal lives of Hollywood celebrities while generally neglecting events such as the Congolese civil war. That war finally merited half a page after an estimated two million persons had died—something that would have earned front-page status globally had even 1 percent that many people died in Europe or North America. (NEWSWEEK was not alone among U.S.-based publications by any means. My news preference now is the BBC.)
Perhaps these observations can remind us what professors normally tell their students anyway: always read critically.