Latest Review of Biblical Literature

When I see this name, after reading even one sermon by him, I sit up and take note:

Joseph B. Soloveitchik; David Shatz, Joel B. Wolowelsky, and Reuven Ziegler, eds.
Abraham's Journey: Reflections on the Life of the Founding Patriarch
Reviewed by Dan W. Clanton Jr.

“Wherever they see contradictions, I see harmony. And wherever they see conflict between two views, I see uniformity”

the Rav

implicitly places himself among the masorah community of Jewish interpretation and education, a community in which “personalities communicate throughout the ages; minds that are thousands of years apart address themselves to each other; heartbeats merge into the historic sound”

Not that I clearly would not agree with some of his assertions:

He writes that the error of Christianity in this regard is that “Christianity thought in terms of an instantaneous, metaphysical, transcendental, supernatural redemption of man—not through destruction but somehow through sacrifice. Judaism does not believe in the spontaneous redemption of man”

Instantaneous? Hardly. But proleptic, anticipated both by the binding of Isaac and in the rite of circumcision of the firstborn male. Not to mention the importance of Abraham to the Gentiles (Romans, Hebrews).

Concerning Lot:

his main question is why the angels would have been so concerned with these women in 19:15. His answer is that these women were ancestors of the coming Messiah through their offspring, who would one day lead to Tamar, then Ruth, and then David. Based on this exegetical connection, the Rav does not condemn the actions of Lot’s daughters: “The plan per se was reprehensible, but their motivation was imaginative, noble, and heroic.”

Some conclusion! (David the Messiah?)

The book may be worthwhile reading. The review is mixed but worth the read.

A substantial comment

Scott Gray has left an essay length comment on this post on law and faith. He has a skill at spinning out a tale of judgment and how we might respond more creatively.

the good shepherd would respond to a judgement he’d made by first engaging in a relationship with the object of his judgement. and so should we.

The SnowBirds over Victoria

And here are a few still shots:

Measure of success

What are your criteria for knowing whether an experiment is successful or not. John Hobbins has weighed in with some $10 words on a post here at Exploring our Matrix. He uses the words 'success' and the phrase 'not going well'.

I wrote this question and quartet 15 years ago.

What do we value?

life over death but one death over all life
pleasure over pain but accepting pain to preserve life
joy over sorrow but sorrow showing the value of life
peace over war but at war with values that prefer death

Now - how do we measure it? Surely not by adjective, nor by prejudice... When is it that we will be satisfied?

Law and Faith

Well, one has to be foolhardy to take this subject on - don't you think?

This is a short essay on the 'therefore' of Romans 8:1. David has asked the usual difficult question. What if someone 'came out' to you...

If David weren't who he seems to be, I would not bother responding. Wait a minute! Is any of us who we seem to be? Why do we judge each other so - whether for good or not? Hear again that verse, Romans 8:1, with which we have ended for the moment a long conversation on the preposition 'in'.

1: There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

That there is no condemnation does not mean there is no work to do. But the work is done in a different context from the assumption that we know what is right before we start. The different context is in the 7 chapters that precede the 'therefore' of this verse.

Notice that I have not put law and grace in my title - but law and faith. Note the pattern of 'condemn' throughout the first 8 chapters - with only a brief reminder in the paranetic sections (12-15). [update: this pattern is dubious since I don't do much Greek - but I notice a serious concentration of judge (part of the same word condemn) in chapters 3 and 14.]

Romans 2:1 you condemn yourself
Romans 2:27 they will condemn you
Romans 3:7 why am I still being condemned
Romans 3:8 Their condemnation is just
Romans 5:16 judgment following one trespass brought condemnation
Romans 5:18 one human's trespass led to condemnation
Romans 8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation...
Romans 8:3 he condemned sin in the flesh
Romans 8:33 It is God who justifies; who is to condemn?
Romans 14:23 But the one who has doubts is condemned, if he eats, because one does not act from faith; for whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.

I have been reading the work of C.H. Dodd on Greek and Hebrew words. I won't cite his chapter and verse, because scholarly authority is not what I am looking for here. I am looking for that authority that I have reflected on before. Do we hear the voice of the Shepherd in our understanding of law? Torah, teaching in Hebrew is a much richer word than the Greek for law implies. The Greek for law, I understand is much richer than the notion of legal and can include custom in its view. Whether these are true statements or not, Paul has set up the fear of law in the first 7 chapters of Romans, because that's how we meet law, teaching, and custom as children and as adults anxious to be acceptable to others. Not because that sort of fear is a wholesome response to reality. Then in chapter 8, Paul uses law in a completely different sense:

2: For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death.

No one in Christ should consider themselves alive on their own terms. All of us and each of us has died to the flesh - if we are in Christ. This includes homosexual and heterosexual alike. I doubt we have done this well. But if it is done, there will be less doubt about God's ability to deal with our whole selves, whoever we are. And for anyone, the fact of the matter (to read and hear the Shepherd's voice) is that it is done (John 19:30). Whether we did it well or not or even not at all, he did it well and completely, and we are 'in him'.

3: For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as a sin offering, he condemned sin in the flesh,

It is finished. And we are invited into its completion and the new creation that is at the place where we meet God, where we know God's presence to us in the Spirit, that is, in the Holy Place where Jesus died. We are all invited and encouraged to enter. There are no conditions. In that place, do you think God does not know how to deal with sex? This is after all the Bridegroom we are talking about.

4: in order that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

The just requirement of the law is fulfilled in us who belong to Christ, who have put on Christ, who are in Christ. Do we judge who belongs or who has put on Christ by their dishonesty? Do we not accept those who tell us the truth about themselves? In David's words - who 'come out of the closet'.

5: For those according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.

We do judge within limits. What hurts or destroys others is not of the Spirit. We don't do things that way. Not by might nor by power. But we do not judge by what we do not know. Suspend your judgment in case you are judging in the flesh rather than in the Spirit. Suspend your judgment by the power of the cross for you. Say, I cannot judge, for I have died - I cannot do anything. Then you will begin to know because the Spirit who raised our Lord Jesus from the dead will inform you. And he will similarly inform the one who has 'come out'. And that - as Jesus said in the case of the youngster who threw himself in the fire - is a matter for prayer, not for the judgment of condemnation.

6: To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.

This verse applies to all in Christ. To set the mind on the condemning view of the law is death. There is no condemnation - that means those of us who think we know better do not condemn and do not judge, and those of use who are weak are not condemned or judged by those who think they are strong.

7: For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God's law, indeed it cannot; 8: and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

Does it come as a surprise that these verses must also apply to the one who judges? It is not the righteous who need salvation. If we already knew the answers then why did Christ die?

So what am I to do for the one who says to me - "I believe what God has done for me in Christ. I am in Christ. I stake my claim. I have been truthful with you. I have revealed the depths of my heart and I am going to live my life according to what I know of myself in Christ."

If I have heard these words - can I still condemn this person? (I admit I have added to David's statement, but those who are not in Christ are not who I am considering here.)

If I want to please God, then I will listen to this verse and I will not condemn this person. I will in the words that follow 'put to death the deeds' of my own body so that I too can live. I will crucify my desire to tell this person that they can't possibly be right and think the way they do.

What have I done to the law? Have I denied the reality of God's condemnation of sin? Not at all! I have established God's teaching in a way I could not imagine outside the work of the Spirit in me. How do I know it is God's Spirit working in me? Because I have done this through the death of Jesus. I have crucified more than this imaginary example. Once I see the work to be done in Christ more clearly, then in my joy, I will know that my earlier understandings were incorrect and incomplete and I can trust that my friend and brother or sister who came out to me will similarly find completeness in him.

So David, do I judge you for your judgment against me or against your friend? No. But I invite you to take the harder path and to restrain your condemnation in case God has more in mind than you think.

(I see I am not alone in responding to David. I may be alone in basing my response on Paul!)

Faith and Consistency

If the original stuff of the universe had been of a completely balanced consistency, well stirred rather than lumpy, then as the theory goes, there would have been no stars, no galaxies, and of course no us. We are made of the carbon that supernovae give off. No clumpiness, no stars, no stars, no supernovae, no supernovae, no carbon, no carbon, no us.

I am writing this post in response to a concern over consistency in translation. You can read the gloves-on-lowdown here. It is quite a complex post and the comments cover both agreement and disagreement. I think my fundamental disagreement is that explanation is not desirable. A translation should not be a circumlocution. Too bad if I don't get it first time. I will just have to ask the Ether. Maybe it's not asleep.

Consistency is a slippery term. Too often it really means reductionism of some sort. In system design, consistency is often touted as the end all for user interface. This is simply untrue. Even in the world of systems, differences are critical and often lead to creative ideas. Consistency of style and treatment evolves into things we thought were the same but in the end turn out to have been different.

There are a host of consistency issues in Bible translation. For example, the Hebrew word nephesh, translated 'soul' in many versions, doesn't always mean 'soul' and almost always cannot be identified with what soul has come to mean in Greek thought. In my thinking, the Hebrew nephesh means the whole of one's life: what one is, was, did, and suffered, joyed, and walked from end to end - all dimensions included. It's me, it's me, it's me O Lord, standin' in the need of prayer... It is inseparable from the body. In the Greek dualistic world, the soul is immortal and the body mortal. The two can separate and supposedly do at death. In Hebrew thought - at least in Ecclesiastes, it is the breath and the flesh that separate - and he says 'who knows if we are different from the beasts'? I have avoided the word 'soul' entirely because it has come to mean something that it isn't.

So when I come to translate nephesh in the psalms, I usually choose a word like being, or life, or even self. Subjectively, I prefer 'life'. But I can't use life in a psalm where the Hebrew for life also occurs. (E.g. Psalm 146) So across psalms I am inconsistent, but necessarily so within the bounds of the approach to translation that I have chosen.

The issue on the Better Bibles Blog is the translation of the phrase 'in Christ'. Is the question 'what does x mean in English' the right question for a translator? No, it isn't. In the case of this fundamental reality - or unreality if you prefer, the question is - why did Paul (and John) use the preposition in this way? What is normally a preposition of location is used as a preposition of incorporation.

The question is never - what does this mean. Even understanding is to be avoided if this means answering the wrong question. The question in reading and translating is 'what is going on here that the author chose this form of words'. And how do I respond to the perplexity. When you bring up children, you give them puzzles and games to play. The difficulty of the puzzles is graded and you chose what is at the right level for their development. But you never explain the puzzle or the child loses interest. You end up being a know-it-all and the child looks elsewhere for the possibility of growth.

So when translating, recognize and keep the puzzles. Do not even attempt to explain them in the translation.

I do not say there are no 'answers' for your ultimates, only that I would not want you or me to stop too soon. The gifts of God in Christ are too good for such a solution. So forget consistency and go for the lumps - that's where the flavour of the redemptive created order resides. When your mouth is filled, you will find his fruit sweet to your taste. The joy is in his knowledge of you. Your knowledge of him will change and grow.

Grow your servant
and I will live and keep your word
Give sight to my eyes
I will see wonders in your teaching
Guest I am on the earth
do not hide from me your commandments
Ground down is my being
for longing at all times for your judgments
Giving rebuke, you have cursed the presumptuous
erring from your commandments
Get from me ignominy and contempt
for I have observed your testimonies
Great princes sat and spoke against me
your servant will meditate on your statutes
Grand are your testimonies and my delight
they are my human counsels

Praying for enemies

Here is how you pray for enemies (Psalm 143)

and in your loving kindness put an end to my enemies

The 'loving kindness' is what one might call Extreme Covenant Love. I think it has been done.