As I was cruising through Facebook today I noticed that John Armstrong, an author and theologian whose blog I regularly read, had a comment that directed people to an article in Christianity Today titled, “How the Early Church Read the Bible,” by David Neff, an editor and regular contributor to the magazine.

The gist of the article is that the Early Church was more attuned to the way the Bible tells its own story, which includes a greater sensitivity to the symbolic dimension of human nature, a dimension that is critical to encounter God. Affirming this idea the article quotes a former professor of mine, Robert Webber, who said, “When the cognitive aspect of the person dominates the symbolic side, a vital part of humanity is neglected and the human spirit is squelched.”

What this article did not address that may have strengthened it’s point, is that the historical-grammatical method of reading the Scriptures has come under the postmodern critique that says no one really deals with bare facts when it comes to understanding the Scriptures in their original historical contexts. The idea of this critique is that our ability to identify facts is supported by an intellectual framework that is laden with presuppositions about how the world is, and which therefore deeply influences the decisions we make about what we will admit as facts, and how we interpret those facts once we have them.

The upshot of all this is that the debate regarding the historical veracity of the Bible still rages on among biblical scholars of various persuasions. In the mean time, I thank God for both orthodox scholars like N.T. Wright who critically engage the naysayers through historical methodologies, and who also bring fresh insight to our understanding Scripture, as well as this call for a recovery of the symbolic modes of interpretation prevalent in the Early Church. Perhaps together such approaches to Scripture will inject much needed vitality to the modern-postmodern Church.

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How the Early Church Read the Bible

Ancient Future Faith

Jesus Christ

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The Apostle Paul

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Augustine of Hippo

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(Martin Luther)

John Calvin

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In my early adulthood, when I embraced The Faith as my own, one of the first musicians I encountered and appreciated was Michael Card. I did not know it at the time, but his music, and particularly his lyrics, deeply influenced my theological sensibilities. Michael possesses a strong talent for paradoxical reflection, a talent I was later to find very sympathetic with the sensibilities of many of the Early Church Fathers.

Recently, as I was updating my IPod, a process that prompts me to redisover songs that I all too often neglect, I listened to a couple of Michael’s more recent albums, which further prompted me to think of other albums of his that I owned but somehow lost along the way. Among the many songs a standout was titled “God’s Own Fool.” As I look back on the formative influences of my early Christian journey, I would not hesitate to credit Mr. Card with giving me a strong sense of God’s irony, the paradoxical nature of Christianity, the limits of human reason, and an over all sense of wonder regarding the God that is revealed in Jesus Christ.

With all this said, I give you the lyrics to “God’s Own Fool”

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Seems I’ve imagined Him all of my life
As the wisest of all of mankind
But if God’s Holy wisdom is foolish to men
He must have seemed out of His mind
Even His family said He was mad
And the priest said a demon’s to blame
But, God in the form of this angry young man
Could not have seemed perfectly sane

Chorus
We in our foolishness thought we were wise
He played the fool and He opened our eyes
We in our weakness believed we were strong
He became helpless to show we were wrong
So we follow God’s own Fool
For only the foolish can tell
Believe the unbelievable, come be a fool as well

So come lose your life for a carpenter’s son
For a madman who died for a dream
And You’ll have the faith His first followers had
And you’ll feel the weight of the beam
So surrender the hunger to say you must know
Find the courage to say I believe
For the power of paradox opens your eyes
And blinds those who say they can see

Chorus
So we follow God’s own Fool
For only the foolish can tell
Believe the unbelievable, come be a fool as well

It’s the first day of the new year, 2010, and I am watching HGTV’s “Dream Home Giveaway” and at the back of my mind I am thinking of Arthur C. Clark’s novel 2010: Odyssey Two, which I have not read, but I remember the movie version where at the end Jupiter becomes a star, a new Sun in our solar system, named Lucifer, which is a cool name, even if I can’t purge it of the negative connotations it has in the Christian Tradition. I mean, literally the name means “light bearer,” but in the Christian faith it is said that Lucifer fell, lost his light, and became The Evil One, Satan, who still presents himself as an angel of light to deceive the whole world with his pseudo glory.

Perhaps glory and pseudo-glory will be my theme for the new year. Amidst the temptation to make new year’s resolutions, so that I can have a better life and be a better me, I will instead pray for God to show me all the ways I buy into false glory, so that I can pursue the only real glory that comes through faith and following him who made himself nothing to give everything to others.

Since the first day of Christmas I have wanted to write a Christmas reflection, and here it is day four and nothing. I finally decided that my heart and mind are pulling in a different direction, and that I should write out of that which I am currently preoccupied. Fortunately, the pull of my heart and mind is related to the story of Christmas.

I have been reading through N.T. Wright’s book, Justification, which was written in part as a response to John Piper’s book, The Future of Justification: a Response to N.T. Wright. And so, Wright’s book is a response to a response, which expresses the controversial nature of Wright’s concept of justification. Perhaps the depth of this controversy can be seen in the metaphor that Wright uses to begin his book, a metaphor that equates his understanding of justification with a kind of intellectual Copernican revolution.

Essentially, Wright is saying that the doctrine of justification does not arise out of the question “How can a sinner stand before a righteous and holy God?” but rather out of the question “How will God be faithful to his covenant with Abraham, by which all the nations of the world will be blessed.” The point for Wright is that justification is not about the existential crises of the individual, but rather about God’s actions to restore the entire cosmos and all of humanity to their original integrity and beauty.

In constructing his understanding of justification one of the key issues Wright addresses is a mischaracterization of Judaism as a religion based upon works righteousness. Wright asserts that much of the historical documents of Paul’s era make it clear that the Jews understood themselves to be God’s people on the basis of grace, a grace most particularly seen in the covenant established with their forefather Abraham. Within this covenant, the Law was commonly understood to be a means of maintaining faithful membership, as well as a means by which Israel was distinguished and separated from the rest of the gentile nations.  Thus the Law was not held to be the means by which a faithful Jew sought to make his or herself righteous before God.

Another critical issue Wright addresses is the idea of exile as it was understood during Paul’s time. According to Wright many Jews believed they were in a state of partial exile, insofar as they had returned to their homeland, but they continued to be under foreign domination. Along with this, it was commonly believed that a complete end to their exile would not happen until the Messiah came to usher in God’s Kingdom by which God’s people would be delivered from and vindicated before all the nations. It is from this idea of vindication, particularly with its eschatological connotations, that Wright develops his understanding of justification.

Paul, according to Wright, had come to see that what Israel had expected for herself at the end of the age: vindication, had happened in the person of Jesus the Messiah, and that this vindication was particularly seen in Jesus’ resurrection. For Paul, the resurrection of Jesus signified the coming of the end, the coming of the Kingdom in which the restoration of creation and the justification of God’s people is now available in the person and ministry of Jesus Christ. The implication of Jesus’ resurrection also necessitated for Paul the need to redraw the lines of covenant membership. Instead of this line being drawn along the ethnic markers of Judaism, it was now to be drawn along the lines of all those who confess that Jesus is the Messiah of Israel. And so, justification, according to Paul, according to Wright, is about inclusion in God’s covenant with Abraham, a covenant that was established prior to the giving of the Law, and a covenant that Abraham entered into by faith, and who thereby became the father of all who believe.

Please take note that my presentation of the essentials of Wright’s book does not due justice to the cogency with which he develops and supports his understanding of the doctrine of justification. Moreover, I have not touched upon the ways his book has been a blessing to me, and the ways I find myself resisting him on some points. In short, this book merits much more than I have given it in this post, and for this reason I plan on returning to it in future posts. For now, however, in light of the Christmas season, I will just say the following.

One result of reading this book is that I have never, in my life, ever felt so connected to the history of Israel. I now see myself as one who has, to use Paul’s term, been grafted into the story of God’s passionate love for his people Israel. I feel much more connected to the lives of the patriarchs and prophets, and the significance of proclaiming that Israel’s God is God indeed. Most importantly it has become very meaningful for me to proclaim that Jesus is the Messiah, the living embodiment of God’s righteousness, the living embodiment of God’s faithfulness to his covenant with our father Abraham, through whom all the nations of the world will be blessed.

In thinking about God’s covenant with Abraham as the context for understanding the significance of the birth of Mary’s baby, I am reminded of the words of an old man named Simeon. When Mary and Joseph took Jesus to the temple, in accordance with the custom of the Law, Simeon, prompted by the Holy Spirit, took the baby into his arms and praised God by saying:

Sovereign Lord, as you have promised,
you now dismiss your servant in peace.
For my eyes have seen your salvation,
which you have prepared in the sight of all people,
a light for revelation to the Gentiles
and for glory to your people Israel.

One day I will be so fluent that I will be able to rap in Spanish like these guys.

Regarding the remaining clips and the whole community college experience, that’s pretty much how it was for me when I went to Solano Community College.

Fresno is a grid, a veritable checkerboard of a city. Except for the downtown area, all the streets either run east-west, or north-south, and they are long, stretching beyond the city proper, and out into the countryside, and the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. This post is about one such street in Fresno, my street: Butler Avenue.

Consider this post a photojourney in which I begin near the downtown area and head east toward the mountains, stopping every half-mile or mile to take a picture. The entire trip will span approximately 20 miles.

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All cement, brick, and asphalt, with barely a tree or plant in sight

A neighborhood emerges

Fresno's ubiquitous row of palm trees

A little further on

The neighborhood by the university at which I work

Now we're near the IRS

Lined with Olive trees

Getting near my house

This is not my beautiful house

Behind the bushes on the right is a golf course

Looking East from the front of my house

This is my house

The neighborhoods are coming to an end

A vineyard and orchard emerges

Butler is terminated by some farmer's field

And Butler starts again on the other side

And, it stops again

A vineyard and a farmer's home

Getting closer to those foothills

A little further on

Ladies and gentlemen, the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas

View My Saved Places in a larger map
This map covers an area slightly larger than the territory I drove for this photo-excursion. The blue flag identifies my house.

I thank you Lord for your sovereign faithfulness to your covenant with  our father, Abraham through which you you sent your son to judge the world, and secure our redemption, so that all things and everyone may be restored to communion with you.

I am obsessed with judgment day, particularly as it is understood within the Christian Tradition, however, my obsession leads me to imagine multiple variations on a theme, of which I thought I would share one with you in this post. So here it goes.

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It is the end of the age, and I am standing, along with all of humanity from all time and all places, in an incredibly long, single-file line, a line a thousand times longer than all the lines for Star Wars in 1977. This line leads to the throne room where I know I will stand before God, all by myself, to receive the judgment that will determine my eternal fate.

As the line slowly moves forward, I review my life trying to anticipate what God’s response will be. As it turns out, in the afterlife the passage of time is meaningless, which is to say that though the line was very long, it wasn’t long before I was hailed to stand before God. When I get there, however, I am surprised to find a panel of three judges, one whom is Jesus, and the other two are apostles, one on his left and the other on his right. As I prepare to step forward, I am told to sing, which seems odd, but then I am further told that the quality of my voice will be an exact expression of the moral and spiritual quality of my life on Earth. At this moment I am thinking of those sad and self-deluded contestants on American Idol who stand before Randy, Paula, and Simon thinking they got talent, but who are about to be rudely awakened.

God have mercy!

You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.
-Galatians 3:26-27

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I have repeatedly been impressed by the idea of being clothed in Christ. Most recently I was watching an episode of “White Collar,” a new show on the USA network, in which a very intelligent and good-looking criminal mastermind, who is on probation, acts as a consultant for the FBI to help solve high-end crimes. In a scene from this episode, the consultant, Neal Cafferty, is at a party deftly mingling with models, New York fashionistas and socialites, and everyone is rich, beautiful, powerful, or all three. Of course, this show is fiction, but I think it accurately reflects a part of our society that is presented as a standard for the good life. But, even if you don’t buy into this picture, the world offers a variety of options to clothe ourselves.

Whether it be money, intelligence, beauty, talent, or a variety power, these things are used to cover what I’ll refer to as primal poverty, the poverty we are born into as fallen creatures in a fallen world. Essentially, primal poverty is the fact that we are born empty of God’s Spirit, the Spirit whose presence was to be an intimate and integral part of being human. It is this poverty that explains the blight of the human condition.

Being creatures made in God’s image, this poverty should function like a “splinter in our mind” telling us all is not well with ourselves and the world, and yet the world is structured to keep us from acknowledging it. Instead, the world offers the ways mentioned above as a means to mask our nakedness and medicate our existential dis-ease. The world offers a kind of clothing, but one that can never get at the core problem.

The tragedy of all this is that God desires to freely clothe all of us with the only covering that gets at the tap root of our existence. I have not done any biblical exegesis on Paul’s concept of clothing, but my guess is that when he talks about clothing ourselves in Christ, he is not talking about putting on something that is external and merely covers what is unsightly. Rather clothing has to do with a deep relationship, where the one who is clothed is given every means and resource to develop and flourish. To be clothed in Christ is to be covered and deeply permeated with his Spirit soaked life, a life that brings genuine beauty, true riches, and eternal power.

The hard thing about being clothed in Christ, however, is that through the world’s eyes it will look like the emperor’s new clothes, because it requires us to strip ourselves of worldly coverings in order to wear it.