Writer of Fancy: The Playful Piety of Jane Austen

Solomon Among the Postmoderns

The Baptized Body

1 & 2 Kings
Brazos Theological Commentary

The Promise Of His Appearing: An Exposition Of Second Peter

A Great Mystery: Fourteen Wedding Sermons

Deep Comedy: Trinity, Tragedy, And Hope In Western Literature

Miniatures & Morals: The Christian Novels of Jane Austen

The Priesthood of the Plebs: A Theology of Baptism

A Son To Me: An Exposition of 1 & 2 Samuel

Against Christianity

From Silence to Song: The Davidic Liturgical Revolution

Ascent to Love: A Guide to Dante's Divine Comedy

Blessed Are the Hungry: Meditations on the Lord's Supper

A House For My Name: A Survey of the Old Testament

Heroes of the City of Man: A Christian Guide to Select Ancient Literature

Brightest Heaven of Invention: A Christian Guide To Six Shakespeare Plays

Wise Words: Family Stories That Bring the Proverbs to Life

The Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church

American Religion: American priestcraft

Was the American Revolution inspired by the Enlightenment?  Or was it an evangelical Presbyterian rebellion?

One way to get at that would be to examine the rhetoric concerning “priestcraft” in the American revolution. More than forty years ago, Carl Bridenbaugh pointed to the importance of debates about Anglicanism in the American revolution, and perhaps examining those debates could reveal how much the American revolutionaries were indebted to Enlightenment anti-clericalism.

One also notes the anti-priestly rhetoric and impulse that lies behind many of the most characteristically American religious forms, growing out of revivalism.

At the very least, American evangelicalism and European Enlightenment have a common animus toward priestcraft.

History: Early Bobos

Already in 1976, Daniel Bell noticed the cultural contradiction similar to what David Brooks has labeled the “Bobo” phenomenon: Americans aspire to be a “Puritan by day and a playboy by night.”

I suppose the main difference between Bell’s cultural contradiction is that the Bobo wants to be a playboy by day too, so long as he can do so without interfering with the bottom line.

Bible - NT - Matthew: Jesus on the sea

OK, let me try this again.  Land is Israel, sea is Gentiles.  A boat is a bit of land floating on the sea, and a boat with Jesus in it is a perfect picture of the little flock of disciples that constitutes Jesus’ first church.  It’s a bit of Israel floating unsteadily in the sea of nations.

From the boat, Jesus tells parables that reveal the mystery of the kingdom.  But His place and posture also reveal mysteries.  The boat is the mustard seed and the leaven, too tiny to be noticed but eventually transforming the sea into dry land by the wind of the Spirit (another Exodus).  At first, it’s just Jesus in the boat; He doesn’t even have any fishers of men with him.  Someday, there will be a boat as big as the sea, so there will be no more sea, and we can all walk across the sea without sinking.

Bible - NT - Matthew: Eucharistic meditation, Sunday After Ascension

Matthew 13:11: to you [it is given] to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven.

In the early church, one of the most common terms for the sacraments was “mystery.”  One (Theodore of Mopsuestia) wrote “Every mystery is a manifestation by signs and symbols of invisible and ineffable realities.”  “Happy mystery of our water, because the sins of our former blindness are washed away and we are freed for everlasting life!” began Tertullian’s treatise concerning baptism.

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Bible - NT - Matthew: Mysteries of the Kingdom

“To you it has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven,” Jesus tells His disciples (Matthew 13:11).  What mysteries?

A clue from the OT: The only place where the word “mystery” is used in the canonical books of the LXX is Daniel 2, where it is used 8x.  And Daniel 2 also talks about a “kingdom” set up by the “God of heaven.”  This combination of terms is found only here in the LXX.

Where does this get us?  Two steps, at least.

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Bible - NT: Root of David

Jesus is described twice in Revelation as the “root of David” (5:5; 22:16).  “Son of David” or “Seed of David” makes sense; Jesus comes from the Davidic line.  But Jesus is not only the fruit, but the root of the Davidic house.  He is the original Anointed One before who David stood, the Lord to whom Yahweh promised a seat at His right hand.

Bible - NT - Mark: Jesus and the Sea

In a 1984 JBL article, Elizabeth Struthers Malbon suggested that the boat in Mark’s gospel represents a “mediator” between sea and land, and pointed out that Jesus treats the sea as if it were land (walking on it, showing no concern for the unsteadiness of the waves, etc.).

If we link this to the OT symbolism of sea=Gentiles and land=Israel, we can see the indications of the Pauline theme that Jesus combines Jew and Gentile into one new man.  And, the fact that Jesus teaches from a boat shoved out in the sea perhaps gives us an image of the church - the church is a little ark, a little bit of Israel, tossed about on the sea of nations.  But there’s no danger, because the Lord of the church walks on the sea as dry land.

Bible - OT - Proverbs: Proverbs 21

PROVERBS 21:20
The verse could be translated, more woodenly, as “Stores desired and oil in the habitation of the wise; but the foolish Adam swallows it.”  The verse contrasts the conduct of the wise and of the foolish, and the basic contrast is between the wise man who has things stored in his house and the fool who does not. 

“Stores” can refer to anything that has been gathered up and saved, and especially refers to stores of gold, silver, and other precious things, especially in a king’s palace or the temple.  Yahweh has His own “stores” (rain in Deuteronomy 28:12; perhaps vengeance in Deuteronomy 32:24).  The wise man has good things in his house, saved and stored away.  The combination of “stores” and “oil” might point to an analogy between the house of the wise man and the house of Yahweh, which has a “treasury” and is also an anointed, consecrated place.  The wise man’s house is full of good things, precious things, desirable things, and is also a house of lights.  Oil is often a sign of joy, fullness, fatness, and the wise man’s house is fat and healthy.  The fact that the wise man has stored things away means that he has something to give, to pass on as inheritance.

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History: Priestcraft

Well, a bit of looking pays off.  One Justin Champion has written a study of priestcraft in early Enlightenment England, The Pillars of Priestcraft Shaken (Cambridge 1992), which is available in its entirety online at: http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/catalogue/viewcat.php?id=OTHE00029.

Chapter 5 begins with a paragraph that links the attacks on priestcraft with the development of “natural religion (which in turn links up with Peter Harrison’s book on the concept of “religion” in the English Enlightenment, also published by Cambridge).  Champion writes:

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History: Priestcraft

Writing of Spinoza, Jonathan Israel (Radical Enlightenment) notes that Spinoza outlines “the concept of priestcraft as a system of organized imposture and deception, rooted in credulousness and superstitution, which loomed so large in the subsequent history of the Enlightenment and was to receive massive amplification in the books on ancient oracles and priestcraft published by Blount, Van Dale, and Fontenelle in the 1680s.”

Perhaps it’s out there, but if not, someone needs to do a thorough study of this.  It would involve showing the continuities and discontinuities between the Reformation polemic against Catholic priesthood and the Enlightenment.  It would also be touching the foundations of the erection of modern culture.

For where there is a change in priesthood, there is also a change in law.

History: New atheism

Not of the Hitchens-Dawkins-Harris variety, but of the seventeenth century variety.  The four figures most often attacked for formulating a thoroughgoing atheistic perspective were Spinoza (for his biblical work as well as his metaphysics), Hobbes, La Peyrere (author of Pre-Adamites), and Lodewijk Meyer (author of Philosophia Scripturae Interpres).

At a conference held in Rostock, Germany, in 1702, traditional Aristotelian anti-Cartesians treated four principle claims against the new atheists: the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch; the Scriptures do not approve ignorant opinions of common people; philosophy is not the interpreter of Scripture; and the literal meaning of the Bible is valid.

Bible: Inspiration and Incarnation

I’ve finally had a chance to take a closer look at Peter Enns’s controversial Inspiration and Incarnation and wanted to jot down a few comments. (I’ve known Pete since my seminary days, but I’ll call him “Enns” here to maintain a measure of scholarly decorum).

The book has a number of useful themes and emphases. He states a central point at the beginning: “The problems many of us feel regarding the Bible may have less to do with the Bible itself and more to do with our own preconceptions.” Throughout the book, Enns insists that we should work out our doctrine of Scripture by looking at Scripture itself, not by seeing how well it measures up to some prior conception of what a “holy” or “perfect” or “divine” book should look like. Enns also wants to learn hermeneutics from the New Testament writers, rather than complaining that they don’t conform to proper (which is to say, our) methods. His discussion of “God changing His mind” is good, and his notion that Scripture should be read “christotelically” is helpful. His incarnational model is sound as far as it goes, and much of what he tries to capture with that analogy has long been emphasized by the best evangelical scholars.

But this leads to a more critical comment. Enns, I think, has created a rhetorical problem for himself.

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History: Machen, Narrative Theologian

From Christianity and Liberalism: “The narration of facts is history; the narration of the facts with the meaning of the facts is doctrine.”

“Although the ideals of the Cynic and Stoic preachers were high, these preachers never succeeded transforming society. The strange thing about Christianity was that it adopted an entirely different method. It transformed the lives of men not by appealing to the human will, but by telling a story; not by exhortation, but by the narration of an event.”

History: Machen the ecumenist

In Christianity and Liberalism, Machen acknowledged that “There are many who believe that the Bible is right at the central point, in its account of the redeeming work of Christ, and yet believe that it contains many errors.” Machen disagreed, but Machen did not believe that such views excluded them from fellowship: “Such men are not really liberals, but Christians; because they have accepted as true the message upon which Christianity depends. A great gulf separates them from those who reject the supernatural act of God with which Christianity stands or falls.”

Of Roman Catholicism, he wrote: “Far more serious still is the division between the Church of Rome and evangelical Protestantism in all its forms. Yet how great is the common heritage which unites the Roman Catholic Church, with its maintenance of the authority of Holy Scripture and with its acceptance of the great early creeds, to devout Protestants today! We would not indeed obscure the difference which divides us from Rome. The gulf is indeed profound. But profound as it is, it seems almost trifling compared to the abyss which stands between us and many ministers of our own Church. The Church of Rome may represent a perversion of the Christian religion; but naturalistic liberalism is not Christianity at all.”

History: A cheer for Thomas Reid

Thomas Reid’s “commonsense realism” gets beat up a lot, especially in contemporary evangelicalism.  But in their history of the Bible in modern culture, Harrisville and Sundberg point (with some unnecessarily pejorative language) to some of the accomplishments of Reid’s philosophy in American church life and theology:

“For three generations, commonsense realism helped to negotiate the thorny paradox of teaching divine election and human depravity while at the same time affirming American optimism in the great experiment of a new nation founded on Enlightenment ideals.  It did so by aiding theology in teaching that the common man, listening to the preaching of the church, is capable by the use of reason of assessing the full scope of his moral predicament as a lost creature under the judgment of God who has nowhere to turn but to the love of Christ.  Commonsense realism thus helped to accommodate Augustinian faith  to the peculiarities of the American mission field, thereby making the heritage of the Reformation accessible to a broad public.  Doctrinal rigorists might argue the differences between ‘consistent’ Calvinism and ‘Arminian’ tendencies in the rhetoric of conversion, but such conflicts pale in comparison to the pervasive consensus of American evangelicalism that minimized denominational differences, preached the sovereignty of God, shared in the exuberance of the revivalist tradition, and held to the conviction that America was a chosen nation.”

Reconciling Augustine with the American frontier in a way that promotes inter-denominational consensus - that is no mean achievement.

Theology: Theology by Einstein

“God is slick, but he ain’t mean.”  Albert Einstein, 1946.

Solid biblical theology, that.

History: Living with uncertainty

An infallible Scripture needs an infallible interpreter. So Catholics have argued, at least since the Reformation.

Luther, of course, disagreed: “They must admit that there are many among us, godly Christians, who have the truth faith, spirit, understanding, word and mind of Christ, and why then should one reject their word and understanding and follow the pope who has neither faith nor spirit? . . . Since we are all priests and all have one faith, one gospel and one sacrament, why then should we not have the authority to test and determine what is right or not right in the faith?”

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History: Saving the flesh

Melanchthon wrote, “The views of Erasmus might have caused greater tumults if Luther had not arisen to arrest them. . . all of this tragedy about the Lord’s Supper started from him.” Melanchthon had in mind Erasmus’s Neo-platonic disparagement of matter, which infected Zwingli and filtered into Anabaptist theology.

Roland Bainton summarizes Luther’s response: “The foci for Luther were God, man and the world, not spirit and flesh.  These were never separated.  God himself is in flesh.  The incarnation literally means being in flesh.  God is present in all physical reality, and Christ as God is ubiquitous and does not need to be made present in the elements of the Lord’s Supper by any miracle.  The minister serves not to put Christ into the bread but only to disclose his presence.  Spirit and flesh are not separated in man.  Both of them together constitute in him a whole, and this is why the physical may be employed as a means of communication with the divine.  Music, images, and the elements of the sacraments all have their place.  Especially, the Word of God does not dispense with the external, nor communicate itself directly, but only through the Scriptures and the sacraments.”

The Reformation saved the flesh.

Bible - OT - Zechariah: Tyre’s sacrifice

Zechariah predicts that Tyre will be dispossessed and her wealth cast into the sea (v. 4), and then the city will be “consumed with fire.”  The verb is the common verb for “eating,” and the picture of an “eating fire” sends the mind back to the sacrificial system, where the bread of Yahweh was consumed on the altar.  Tyre’s destruction has a sacrificial character, like the destruction of the cities of Canaan in Joshua’s conquest.

Bible - OT - Zechariah: Wisdom of Tyre

Zechariah 9:1-4 focuses on the conquest of Tyre, the “wise” city, shrewd at least in amassing wealth (v. 3).  But the celebratory description contains a subversive pun.  The Hebrew for Tyre is tsor (”rock”), and Zechariah says that Tyre has built herself a fortress, a word built on the same Hebrew root (matsor).  But the word for “fortress” is more commonly used to mean “siege” (Deut 28:53; 2 Kings 24:10; Ezekiel 4:2-3).  In her “wisdom,” Tyre thinks she’s building a fortress, but is actually preparing a siege that will destroy her.

The pun continues in verse 12, an exhortation to return to the stronghold (bitstsaron), apparently a reference to Jerusalem, the city to which prisoners return.  Jerusalem is the true fortress/stronghold, the true “stone” (eben, 12:3), the true city of wisdom.

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