Tag: Scot McKnight
2 A Nice Shout from Scot McKnight at Jesus Creed
Scot, who was our Scholar in Residence, a few years ago gave a nice note of praise for my sermon on Hell at his Jesus Creed blog: click here to check it out.
0 What Did Jesus Teach About Hell?
Scot McKnight’s been blogging about Hell at Jesus Creed. Here’s his post on Jesus’ teaching on Hell.
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The traditional view of hell rests on four pillars: that the OT says nothing; that the Jewish view at the time of Jesus was one of eternal conscious punishment; that Jesus’ view was thoroughly Jewish; and that the NT authors follow Jesus. Edward Fudge, in Hell: A Final Word , subjects each of these to examination in a readable, accessible format. The first pillar is wobbly; the OT does speak about the “end” of the wicked and the idea is one of a “consuming” fire (not tormenting fire). The second? Wobblier. There were three views: a consuming fire, a purifying fire, and a tormenting fire. Third? Today we sketch Fudge’s short chps on what Jesus taught, and I shall sketch his sketch.
1. Gehenna, Jesus’ typical term, is a trope for the place of destruction/fire south of Jerusalem. It cannot be proven to have been the dump in the 1st Century.
2. What happens there? The wicked are destroyed, they perish there. Matt 10:28: “fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell/Gehenna.” The issue is if “destroy” means “destroy” or “preserve forever in a destroying state.” Fudge thinks traditionalists ruin the meanings of words on this one: destroy means destroy, not preserve forever. Had he meant preserve forever he could have said it that way. He then lists eleven uses of “destroy” in the NT and shows that each means “destroy”: why not in Matt 10:28? [Matt 8:25; 12:14; 16:25; 21:41; 22:7; 26:52; 27:20; John 11:50; Acts 5:37; 1 Cor 10:9-10;Jude 5, 11.]
3. Gnashing of teeth means anger, not pain. Cf. Acts 7:52-54.
4. Eternal punishment fits with other uses of “Eternal” as an adjective: salvation (Heb 5:6), redemption (9:1), judgment (6:2), punishment (Matt 25:46), destruction (2 Thess 1:9). Big conclusions: the term refers to something in the Age to Come, it is endless and it refers to the result of an action. An action leads to something being permanent: one is not redeemed forever, one is redeemed and then lives forever; one is not judged forever, one is judged and then has consequences forever. [I sense a technicality here that is not as tight as Fudge says it, but there’s a good observation here.] Eternal punishment refers to eternal capital punishment. The second death. 2 Thess 1:9 says it is “eternal destruction” so that eternal punishment is eternal destruction — and eternal fire refers to fire that destroys forever.
5. Rich man and Lazarus: it’s a parable; Fudge sees Jewish folklore at work here; it’s Hades not Gehenna; this parable says nothing about hell; it’s not literal; it aims to motivate Jesus’ contemporaries to care for the poor with the threat of irreversible consequences. [There are negations here that are not necessary, but in the main I agree with much of what Fudge says in this section.]
0 America and Its Guns
I’ve had James Atwood’s book, America and Its Guns: A Theological Expose, in queue for a few years, never getting around to it.
The Sandy Hook shooting and resultant debate has prompted me to read it. I can only image the sorts of response I’ll get for even posting anything about guns.Nonetheless, from a Christian perspective at least, guns are not just a legal, constitutional or political issue.
Any object designed to take human life is also inherently a theological issue too.
The line between patriotism and idolatry, Atwood warns, can be a fine one when it comes guns.
I’ve just started Atwood’s book. Here’s Scot McKnight‘s summary from a few years ago when the book came out:
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James Atwood admits he has been waiting for 36 years, but that wait (for all of us who have been waiting) is now over: Atwood himself wrote the book. What’s he been waiting for? After he buried one Herb Hunter who was killed by a reckless use of an easily-purchased handgun, he’s been waiting for someone to write a book that theologically reflects on guns in America.
30,000 gun deaths per year in the USA. 30,000. More than the population of the village in which we live. Wiped off the map every year. 30,000.
Where there are more guns, there are more gun deaths. Guns are designed to kill.
In 2008, 17 in Finland, 35 in Australia, 39 in England and Wales, 60 in Spain, 194 in Germany, 200 in Canada, and 9484 were killed by guns in the USA.
Atwood, who owns a gun and is a deer hunter, was asked about five years ago to speak to the Presbyterian Peacemaking Forum about guns and gospel values and idolatry, and that book is called America and Its Guns: A Theological Exposé. Atwood is more than a concerned pastor; Atwood has been involved with The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence for 36 years. He’s read all the materials; knows the evidence; has been active in the discussion and social struggle; and he has given us a gift.
What we need is a balance between the right to bear arms and the right to live in safety.
For change to occur, Atwood observes, requires “the leadership of an educated, spiritually aware, and committed community” (xvi). The Gun Empire, he claims, has a stranglehold on America. He sees gun violence as the elephant in the room no one wants to look at or talk about. He thinks the stranglehold is about the “principalities and powers” and are nourished by death.
It is not God’s will that 82 to 84 people die every day as a result of gun violence.
The nonsense of the Gun Empire is that guns don’t kill people and that the answer to gun violence is more guns.
Atwood thinks his previous strategies — through the federal government and legal process to create better laws — didn’t work because he was too naive about the NRA’s use of funds to guide legislators. He thinks now that the way forward in gun violence and the way forward against the Gun Empire is to motivate and mobilize the church, the community of faith, to act on its faith.
Here is how he says it:
On the moral high ground, with confidence in the rightness of our cause, with indisputable facts at our disposal, and with strong biblical and spiritual resources, people of faith will be able to convince those in Congress and in statehouses to vote for fair and balanced laws that they know in their hearts is the right thing to do.
You can read more about the book at the Jesus Creed blog.
2 Mirash in the Moment: Why Did Jesus Come When He Did?
As promised, this week I’m going to try to answer the questions that didn’t get pulled in this weekend’s bingo sermon questions, Midrash in the Moment.
Here’s Jeff’s question: Why did Jesus come when he did? As opposed to some other point in history?
That’s a million dollar question. That’s also impossible to answer. I even asked Scot McKnight for a hint and he couldn’t do much better than I’ve got below.
At least from a God’s-eye perspective. Scripture says God sent Jesus ‘in the fullness of time’ which suggests there was something auspicious about when Jesus came.
We can’t really know why from God’s perspective.
What we can do is answer from a human perspective, from scripture’s point of view.
At least as far as the scripture writers’ understood it, God sends Jesus when he does because the oppression and idolatry of Rome had gotten to a point that necessitated or provoked the incarnation.
God heard his people’s cries, in other words.
That’s why Matthew tells his Gospel in a way that makes explicit that Caesar is a new Pharaoh and Rome is the New Egypt.
And Matthew’s Gospel begins with a ‘genesis’ just like the Hebrew story begins. That’s Matthew tells you that Herod kills all the new born sons just like Pharaoh did. That’s why Matthew has Jesus’ life beginning in Egypt just like Moses’ did.
How does Luke begin his Gospel? ‘In the days of ____________________’
All the language in Luke’s Christmas story, that we don’t even think about, is loaded with double-meanings meant to show how Christ is God’s alternative to Caesar.
In the ancient world, Caesar’s rise to the throne was referred to as the Advent of a Golden Age.
He was worshipped as a god.
And the proclamation that was made about Caesar throughout the Empire: ‘Caesar Augustus, son of god, our savior, has brought peace to those on whom he favors.’
What do the angels say to the shepherds when Christ is born? Yep, same thing but this time they’re referring to a baby in diapers and not a Caesar in, well, diapers.
From the Gospels’ perspective, then, Jesus is born to deliver Israel from Rome just as Moses did from Egypt. It’s how Jesus delivers that is unexpected.
1 The Day After Tomorrow: America Still Exists, Life as We Know It Remains Life as We Know It, and the Kingdom Has Yet Come…
…Jesus is Still Lord and He’s Neither Red Nor Blue.
And the same will be true at the swearing in.
And the same would be true had the results of the election gone the other way.
Christians who find themselves this morning either euphoric or despondent…shouldn’t be either one.
Scot McKnight does a good job at his Jesus Creed blog of framing how Christians distinguish politics from the Kingdom, and how, for Christians, the word ‘election’ refers to being chosen by God to serve as a witness to others; it doesn’t refer to the means by which we demonize others.
Here’s what he says:
Somewhere overnight or this morning the eschatology of American Christians may become clear. If a Republican wins and the Christian becomes delirious or confident that the Golden Days are about to arrive, that Christian has an eschatology of politics. Or, alternatively, if a Democrat wins and the Christian becomes delirious or confident that the Golden Days are about to arrive, that Christian too has an eschatology of politics. Or, we could turn each around, if a more Democrat oriented Christian becomes depressed and hopeless because a Repub wins, or if a Republican oriented Christian becomes depressed or hopeless because a Dem wins, those Christians are caught in an empire-shaped eschatology of politics.
I can’t imagine 1st Century Roman Christians caught up in some kind of hope whether it would be Nero or Britannicus who would succeed Claudius.
Where is our hope? To be sure, I hope our country solves its international conflicts and I hope we resolve poverty and dissolve our educational problems and racism. And I hope we can create a better economy. But where does my hope turn when I think of war or poverty or education or racism? Does it focus on my political party? Does it gain its energy from thinking that if we get the right candidate elected our problems will be dissolved? If so, I submit that our eschatology has become empire-shaped, Constantinian, and political. And it doesn’t matter to me if it is a right-wing evangelical wringing her fingers in hope that a Republican wins, or a left-wing progressive wringing her fingers in hope that a Democrat wins. Each has a misguided eschatology.
Now before I take another step, it must be emphasized that I participate in the election; and I think it makes a difference which candidate wins; and I think from my own limited perspective one candidate is better than the other.
But before I take the next step I’ll say this: if our candidates lose won’t make one bit of a difference for our obligation to follow Jesus today. Not one bit.
Participation in our election dare not be seen as the lever that turns the eschatological designs God has for this world. Where is our hope? November 6 may tell us.
What I hope it reveals is that:
Our hope is in God. The great South African missiologist, David Bosch, in his bookTransforming Mission impressed upon many of us that the church’s mission is not in fact the church’s mission but God’s mission. Our calling is to participate in the missio Dei, the mission of God in this world. So, at election time we can use the season to re-align our mission with the mission of God. Therein lies our hope.
Our hope is in the gospel of God. God’s mission is gospel-shaped. Some today want to reduce gospel to personal salvation while others want to convert into public politics and secularize the kingdom of God. The gospel is about Jesus the King and the gospel is about kingdom citizens living under the king regardless of who is in “power.” Therein lies our hope.
Our hope is in the gospel of God that creates God’s people. God’s gospel-shaped mission creates a new people of God. In fact, the temptation of good Protestants to skip fromGenesis 3 (the Fall) to Romans 3 (salvation) must be resisted consciously. The gospel creates kingdom citizens who indwell the church and live that vision.
Here’s the rest of Scot’s post.
0 I Drink Beer; Therefore God Exists
United Methodists are technically a tee-totaling tradition. It’s our heritage, and in some ways I think it’s a missional hurdle. You can blame prohibition largely on the United Methodist Women- just ask Ken Burns- and you can blame Mr Welch of juice fame (a Methodist) for why we have to imbibe that terrible syrup during the Passover of Our Lord.
Of course, racism and slavery are also a part of at least one half of our heritage so preserving the past isn’t necessarily all pearls.
Which is to say, I home brewed beer as a student in seminary before it was trendy or hip to home brew (or home brew as a seminary student). It made me feel monkish.And, no, I didn’t tell the ordination committee about that hobby. All in all, my yield tasted pretty good, excepting one flavor that was called ‘Englishman’s Nut Ale’ which tasted like, well, an Englishman’s nuts. Ten pounds later, however, I turned in the towel for other hobbies.
Jeff Cook, via Scot McKnight’s Jesus Creed blog, has a great post, merging cerveza and the ontological argument for the existence of the/an Almighty.
- Beers that exist are greater than beers that do not exist, and as such existence is a great-making property.
- If God exists, God is the greatest conceivable being.
- Let’s assume the greatest conceivable being does not exist.
- If (3) than there is something greater than the greatest conceivable being.
- (4) is a contradiction, so (3) is false.
God exists and we know this because of great beers.
Contrary to Kant, every philosopher I know believes that beers that exist are greater than beers that do not exist. It would be offensive to humanity, the Rolling Stones, and your grandmother to deny Premise 1.
Here’s the complete post.
0 “The Gospel According to Obama”
Disclaimer: This is not a ‘political’ post, sorry to disappoint.
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One of the articles making its way around the blogosphere is John Blake’s recent post, The Gospel According to Obama, on CNN’s Belief Blog.
When I was a student in college, I unintentionally attended a black church one Sunday morning. Still new to the faith, I wasn’t sophisticated in deciphering church names, denominational markers etc.
I had no idea the church I stepped into was going to be a black church. I had no idea until that Sunday that the way the faith was expressed and understood in churches like that was so very different from what I knew. And I had no idea until that Sunday to what extent my own Christianity had been conditioned by my white, middle-class, suburban life.
That Sunday in college, and worship services and relationships that followed into seminary, lead me to think Blake’s article, while not crap, is wrong.
Blake takes up the now familiar, tired storyline about how many white, evangelical Christians do not view the President as a Christian, when Christianity is in fact the religion espoused by the President. Blake steers clear of the now familiar, tired statistics which describe the disturbing number of Americans who believe the President is a Muslim or a crypto-Muslim (why that would necessarily disqualify him for office is another, seldom asked question).
Instead Blake takes the ‘the President is Other’ storyline in a different direction. Blake, marshaling the inconclusive- and not a little opportunistic- opinions of Diana Butler Bass and Jim Wallis, argues that the reason white evangelicals don’t understand the President as a Christian is because they don’t understand his Christianity.
True so far, I think.
Blake, Bass and Wallis argue that evangelicals don’t understand the President’s Christianity because his is a ‘Social Justice’ Christianity, which focuses on the biblical mandate to care and advocate for the poor.
This is where they go wrong, I believe.
There’s no doubt the President’s political perspective overlaps with the Social Justice tradition on many tangible points; however, Blake, Bass and Wallis conveniently- but also mind-blowingly (and ultimately, offensively)- gloss over the fact that the Social Justice movement was from its inception and remains, in its muted strength, a movement of white, affluent Christians while the President- newsflash- is black.
In so thorough a piece, Blake somehow leaves out the fact that the Black Church in America has its own very particular, historically rooted understanding of the Christian story and its this-worldly implications for the poor.
The gaping hole Blake leaves in his article where the Black Church should be leaves one to wonder if he- or Bass and Wallis- actually know any African American Christians. That’s hyperbole. I’m sure they do. Still, for white liberal Christians, like Wallis and Bass, to leave out the distinctive witness of the Black Church and see in a black President’s faith only their own reflection is its own kind of racism.
White evangelicals don’t misunderstand the President because he’s a Social Justice Christian; they misunderstand him because he’s a black Christian.
Or maybe, I think the logic holds (and applies equally to Wallis and Bass), they misunderstand him because he’s black.
Which, more so than any political point, may reveal out a more serious omission. To paraphrase Paul, we can’t all be a part of the Body of Christ and live like we have no use for the other.
This is how Scot McKnight pushes back on Blake’s article:
“I find it exasperating that once again the commentators and locators of Obama’s faith are lilly-white Americans: Jim Wallis and Diana Butler Bass. Both of whom, intelligent as they are, want to locate Obama’s faith in the social justice tradition….But there’s a major issue. White elites are the ones who articulated the Social Gospel, most famously Walter Rauschenbusch but not limited to him. That Social Gospel was fixed deeply in the psyche and ministries of much of the mainline denominations so much that one can say culture and church meshed to where difference is not always detectable. Mainline faith in the USA is the religion of the privileged. The Social Gospel is a kind of white social justice Christianity.
African American “social gospel” types are not simply the Social Gospel type. Why did we not have an interview with someone like Brian Blount, a clear, forceful African American liberation theologian? Or James Cone? It is my view that “Social Gospel” does not do justice to President Obama’s faith.
A theology done from the oppressed and for the oppressed is not the same as a theology done from the position of power and privilege. President Obama’s faith is an African American liberation kind of social gospel. There’s a difference and it is worth the nuance.
Here’s the link to the rest of Scot’s post.
0 Isaiah: The Naked Prophet?
Our August sermon series, ‘Stories They Never Taught You in Sunday School,’ begins this coming weekend.
First up is Isaiah 20.
Not only did I not learn this in Sunday School- I never actually went to SS- I’d forgotten about it until Scot McKnight reminded me of it.
In it, God commands Isaiah to walk naked, with his buttocks exposed, and barefoot among the Jews for three years as a warning not make the same mistake Ashdod made in trusting the Egyptians for protection against the invading Assyrians. Right…
Here’s a video I found of the passage. Gosh, you really can find anything on YouTube.
Also this weekend Jason G will be doing an Isaiah 20-inspired rendition of the Old Blue Eyes’ classic ‘My Way’ entitled, that’s right, ‘Ya-weh.’