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Against All Odds

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Against All Odds

Category Archives: Difficult Questions

Infallibility of Scripture: the Current Status of the NT manuscript Data

25 Tuesday Nov 2014

Posted by Prime Theologian in Difficult Questions, Inerrancy, Infallibility, Textual Criticism

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Inerrancy, Infallibility, New Testament Manuscripts, Textual Criticism

I got a really elaborate question about the infallibility of Scripture from an old friend of mine. I am breaking her complex questions into a number of smaller posts so that each isn’t excessively long. The first follows here.

How many mistakes are there that we don’t know about?

This question is a bit confusing because, if we know there is a mistake, then we know it rather than not knowing it as the question above implies. There is no way for me to say how many mistakes there are that are unknown. Let me read into her question a bit more. I think she means to ask about how many variations are there among the NT manuscripts, which evidence is withheld from the Church. I personally am ambivalent about whether this evidence is knowingly withheld or just ignorantly not known. If we look hard enough at scholarship, we can find an answer. Presently, as of 2013, there are roughly 400,000 variations among the NT manuscripts. Most of these variations do not effect the meaning of the text except in small ways: of course, it should concern us if a variation changes the meaning at all, at least in how we think of accuracy in this scientific age. We might need to rethink how we think of accuracy, however, in light of the fact that God is Trinity. I cannot go into this now, but it is worth the time to ponder on how truth in Christianity is linked to the intrapersonal relationships among the Father, Son, and Spirit, who all together constitute the “Truth.” I know that there are at least two texts (one in Hebrews and one in Mark) in the NT whose meaning is changed considerably by a variation. Whether the variations among the manuscripts affect the meaning in only small ways or in large ways doesn’t change the fact that we have to face this difficulty. A fellow colleague of mine once said that it does us no good as the Church to put our head in the sand like an ostrich and pretend as though this difficulty and potential danger to our faith doesn’t exist. The variations are literary and historical facts; nothing can change that. If we decide to obfuscate (hide) or suppress these historical and literary truths as leaders of the Church or as a leader in a parachurch organization like an adventure youth camp or in universities and seminaries, we have serious character issues. Suppression of the truth is the work of the kingdom of Darkness, not the work of the kingdom of Light (God) who uncovers all attempts to hide truth. I will not offer a solution for the variations here; I will give a number of suggestions in my other posts that deal with this topic. I only wanted to lay out the current state of the NT manuscript data, so we, as the Church, are not ignorant of our own Scripture around which so much of our Faith revolves.

Dr. Scalise

Explaining how Jesus’ Desire to avoid the Cross isn’t Evil and how That relates to His human and divine Will

29 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by Prime Theologian in Biblical Interpretation, Christ, Christology, Difficult Questions

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Cross, Gethsemane, Jesus, Jesus' will, Let this cup pass, Wholly Divine Wholly Human

I got a follow up question about Jesus’ prayer at Gethsemane: in short, Peter rebuked Jesus for intending to go to the cross, but isn’t Jesus desiring the same thing in His prayer in which He asks God to “let this cup pass?”

That Jesus was both fully man and fully divine answers this question. In distinction to Peter, who said that Jesus’ intention to suffer and die at the hand of others should never happen even rebuking Jesus in the process (Mt. 16:22), Jesus’ prayer for having the cup passed from Him is conditional (if – then) on God’s will, not his own (Mt. 26:39). The Markan account is stronger, however, with Jesus asserting that all things are possible for God, then Jesus gives a command (or strong request) to remove the cup from Him. Nevertheless, even in the Markan account, Jesus’ command/request depends on God’s will agreeing with Jesus (Mk. 14:36; Lk. 22:42), not an elevation of Jesus’ will over the Father’s will. Peter, rebuking Jesus, (Mt. 16:22; Mk. 8:33) asserts that Jesus should not suffer and die; Jesus asks the Father, “if it is possible,” to have the cup pass from Him, “nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” Peter’s assertion smacks of arrogance, Jesus’ petition of humility and manifest submission, no matter which Gospel account (Matthew, Mark, Luke) we look to. Remember, as the early church debated and later resolved in the 6th ecumenical council, monothelitism (that Jesus only had one will) is a heresy. Jesus’ nature is one with the Father and Spirit, and so His divine will is one with Their will; but Jesus was fully human, which means He had a human will as well. Thus the orthodox position is duothelitism, that Jesus had two wills, a divine one and a human one. Once we apprehend this, we are able to see the mystery of both functions in Jesus’ prayer at Gethsemane although the human will is certainly dominate. Jesus doesn’t want pain; as a human, who of us can blame Him. In Christianity, martyrdom is not to be sought because God is the author of life, but rather it is to be accepted if it is God’s will in our lives (Mt. 22:32). Thus, we want to do God’s will whether in life or death (Phil. 1:20 – 21); we do not want to override God’s will by dictating to Him that I must be a martyr. Certainly, great honor is accredited to us if we suffer according to God’s will (1 Peter 3:17), but we get nothing but sin and reenforce our pride if we seek martyrdom for the honor itself: “Even if I give my bodied to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing” (1 Cor. 13:3) Whether we come or go, whether we live or die, whether we offend or console, the Christian’s declaration should be, “Let your will be done, on earth as in heaven.”

Dr. Scalise

Reconciling Jesus’ human Nature with His divine Nature during His Incarnation

28 Tuesday Oct 2014

Posted by Prime Theologian in Biblical Interpretation, Christ, Difficult Questions, Hypostatic Union, Incarnation, Jesus

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Biblical Intepretation, Christ, hypostatic union, Incarnation, Jesus

“if Jesus is God, why would Satan bother to tempt him; how can God be tempted with food and power?

Furthermore, why did Jesus not want to take the “cup that was given” aka the crucifixion?

Jesus also said his followers would do greater works than his. How is that possible?

Jesus said not to call him good for only God is good. But isn’t he God?”

I got this cluster of questions from a very old friend of mine, from adolescence and younger. This is certainly more than just one question to be sure, but all of them, except for the question about “greater works than these,” can be answered in one sentence. Although I intend to give this short answer, I’ll elaborate a bit on that one sentence for the sake of interest. I have given the philosophy of science’s definitions for an absurdity in distinction to a mystery in another post. By way of review, an absurdity is something that is logically impossible, contradictory, or unintelligible. A mystery is something that has a logical base and hence is intelligible, but its full understanding extends beyond human capacity. To explain the mystery in full would be to deny it the status of a mystery. Therefore, I will give a simple answer, but this is not to say that this answer does not entail mystery or that “I’ve got it all figured out.” I do not want to give that impression. A long treatise could be written on these questions without exhausting the mysteries. I, however, want to note that the answer I give has been covered many times over the ages, maybe the best short treatise on the God-man issue in Jesus was done by Pope Leo the Great in 449 c.e. in his Tome of Leo. It is worth the read: https://www.ewtn.com/faith/teachings/incac1.htm. The answer is that Jesus is both wholly God and wholly man — this is, in technical and historical theological lingo, the hypostatic union. We must be careful not to think that Jesus would just use his divine capacities whenever he willed (Phil. 2:6). The many prophecies, especially from Isaiah (11:1–5, 42:1–2, 48:16, 49:1–7, 59:20–21, & 61:1–3), show that this “servant,” Jesus, was to act in certain ways and was especially to be dependent upon the Holy Spirit’s leading like a human. This is not to say that Jesus never uses His divine capacities, but it is to say that he wouldn’t use them just as He wanted because such would be in violation of the very prophecies He came to fulfill. Hence, being human, Jesus could be tempted; it was the Spirit, who “drove” Jesus out to be tempted in the first place (Mark 1:12). The divine nature of Jesus cannot be tempted, but since the text presents the temptation as real, and Jesus handles it like a human would by quoting the truth of Scripture back at Satan, it is not an illicit inference to say that the Spirit led Jesus there to be tempted as a man, and, as such Jesus did not function at that time according to His divine nature, but according to His human nature. Remember, I am not saying that Jesus was not divine at that time; I am saying that the capacity to which Jesus functioned in his divine nature was determined by the Spirit, and Jesus followed. As an aside, if Jesus just used His divine capacity often or whenever He wanted He could not be an example to us since none of us have that capacity like Him to just use a divine nature. On a practical point, then, it is imperative to note that Jesus’ living mostly according to His human nature and being led by the Spirit sets the basis for understanding Him as an example that we should mimic: we too should live by the Spirit, relying on God to direct us in our human capacity. It is Jesus’ dual nature, wholly divine, wholly human, that answers all of the questions except for the one about “greater works.” What can be said of this? Although it is fashionable to think or speak of Jesus “raising Himself” to life, and Scripture certainly affirms this, it is perhaps more important to make plain that the Spirit was the Enlivener and God the Affirmer of the resurrection as Romans 1:4 makes plain: according to the Spirit God declared Jesus the Son of God in power . . . . Hence Jesus teaches His disciples that if they have the faith of a mustard seed they could say to the mountain, be picked up and planted in the sea, and the mountain would obey. It may be too obvious but “greater” can refer to either quality or quantity: “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father. Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son” (John 14:12 – 13). Two comments are needed on this text: 1) if greater means quantity (Greek term for “greater” is megas), then we can stop because this sufficiently answers our question, and 2) even if megas (“greater”) means quality or degree — although it is hard to imagine a miracle greater than eschatological resurrection life entering the middle of history — then it is not to be missed that the performance of the disciple owes to Jesus anyhow. The text makes this plain as day: “and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.” The greatness of the works of any disciple first depends on Jesus’ successful ministry and work of redemption; hence the vitality and capacity of the “greater works” owe to Jesus’ work, and they owe to Jesus’ blessing in the moment as well, as Jesus says above, “Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do.”

So it is rather obvious that Jesus is behind all the works, whether His or ours.

Dr. Scalise

Why Matthew Vines’ Video on “God and the Gay Christian” is Applaudable but ultimately Unconvincing

27 Monday Oct 2014

Posted by Prime Theologian in Biblical Interpretation, Christ and Culture, Christian Ministry, Difficult Questions, Gay marriage, Homosexuality, Homosexuals

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Cultural Issues, Defining goodness, Defining Love, gay Christian, Gay Marriage, God and the Gay Christian, Homosexuality, Homosexuals

Matthew Vines’ video aims to persuade a revisitation to the biblical texts that deal with homosexuality. This, to my mind, is laudable precisely because it points us back to the biblical text itself. There are other ways Vines could argue to make his point; indeed, many postmodern theologians and interpreters of the Bible are content to make the community they represent the authoritative touchstone for judging the biblical text itself. They ask what ways the current situation today acts as a check on the Bible to bring its undesirable aspects into view and, then, to extract them so that what is left is God’s unpolluted message. Probably the best known example of this comes from the feminist theologians, who claim that the Bible upholds patriarchalism, and, by extension, male hegemony. These feminist theologians have offered a helpful renewal of interest on how the Bible presents women. I am persuaded by a number of their points, particularly on the interpretation of the woman at the well (John 4), who is often treated as little more than a immoral confuse woman, who Jesus enlightens and fixes. A close look at this text shows that such an interpretation likely owes more to male bias than to the logic of the text: Jn. 4:12 shows the woman is following Jesus’ discussion, discerning how powerful Jesus’ claim is about living water by comparing Him with Jacob, the namesake of Israel. Verse 15 shows the woman’s acceptance of Jesus’ claim and her openness to receiving it after only a few difficult to understand statements by Jesus. Then, she goes on to tell Jesus that He is a Prophet (v. 19), and a number of sophisticated religious issues in her culture (v. 20). After Jesus unpacks what she has stated, she gives a basic but correct statement about theology, that is, that the Messiah is coming to reveal all things (v. 25). All this to say that the woman at the well is a far more complex character than simply a immoral confused woman. Certainly, she was living immorally, but she is religiously and culturally astute, as seen from her comments. Now, why do I spend time on this point. I do so because some of these “alternative interpretative communities” offer valuable insight, so we ought to carefully consider their points before we “throw the baby out with the bathwater.” Vines’ work with the biblical text in an attempt to reconcile the homosexual lifestyle with God’s word shows genuine humility. It would be much easier for him to just dismiss those parts of the Bible as outright wrong, judged so by the contemporary situation. Ultimately, though, his discussion is unconvincing. There are a number of ways to show how it is unpersuasive, but I want to offer a novel way of putting an old point, indeed it is the point Jesus Himself makes when dealing with a question about male-female relationship and what the husbands were doing to their wives (Matt. 19:1 – 9). Vines’ presentation — and let me offer the segment from 2:55 – 3:05 as an example — shifts the focus from the “what of love” to the “manner of love.” The three words he uses, “faithfulness, commitment, love,” from what I can tell, all focus on the manner in which we are to related.  Few, I suppose, would object to this definition of a “good manner of relating.” This, however, is only part of the issue because it has long been known, especially since St. Augustine’s point in Enchiridion, that goodness and love have both ontological aspects and modal aspects (Augustine comments on Gen. 1:31). Ontological refers to the “nature of things” and modal refers to the “manner of things.” Vines’ focus on the “manner of good relating” is praiseworthy, but goodness and love cannot be reduced to just the manner, dismissing the “nature of things.” The Genesis text Jesus cites, Gen. 2:24, is richly focused on the “nature of things” as is Genesis 1:31: Jesus states, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?” Love, as I’ve pinned to my twitter account, is always as much about form (manner) as about content (what). What God made was male and female; what man and woman became was one flesh. God’s declaration that all was “very good” in Gen. 1:31, including what God has fashioned in Adam and Eve, is an overarching statement that is as much ontological (nature of things) as modal (manner of things). Arguing that homosexual relations are good based on the manner of relating misses the issue of what. Vines’ idea of a good or loving relationship is on the mark, but the manner of relating argument cannot answer the what of relation issue. Both what a relationship is and how it is to transpire cannot be reduced into one or the other without a severe diminution of what it means to be human in relationships. It is, to my mind, somewhat shocking that Vines doesn’t consider the creation account as relevant to the question he was seeking to answer. For a good debate on the matter, see 

Dr. Scalise

Why do biblical Persons contradict biblical Qualifications: Deborah in Judges 4 in Light of 1 Tim. 3 & Titus 1

24 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by Prime Theologian in Apologetics, Biblical Interpretation, Christ and Culture, Church Leadership, Difficult Questions, Difficult Texts

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1 Tim. 3, Biblical Contradictions, Deborah in Judges, Female Leadership, God's Economy, Qualifications for Pastors, Titus

Introduction

Why are there specific qualifications for Elders and Deacons (1 Tim. 3, Titus 1) yet most of the men and women God used to lead His People OT and in the early church didn’t meet many of these standards? My first mentor asked the question above, and I confess, it is a doozy. I think that the contradiction may be nigh near impossible to deal with if we approach it through an inductive approach. We cannot simply find all the verses in the Bible that speak to the matter, and then tally up what the result is. If we did this, we would see that the “man after God’s own heart,” King David, had multiple wives and even concubines, but the qualifications listed in 1 Tim. and Titus clearly state that leaders of the people of God should have only one wife. I want to eliminate a few options right at the front for dealing with the text. I do not want to revise the biblical text by picking and chooses some verses while eliminating others or debate the dating of books: we can call this the revisionist option. Like Kevin Vanhoozer and Bernard Childs, I think we ought to work with a full canon of Scripture rather than thinking our methods can lead us to the “truth behind the text,” as though the truth isn’t in the text of the Bible. I think that the old dispensational explanation that God works differently during different ages hits on an important truth, but I do not want to package it the way a dispensationalist would. It is too simple to considerably explain the complexity of the biblical text. Let’s look at what 1 Tim 3:2–4 states: “Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive . . . .” I don’t think we can just say, “Well, the church is a different organization at a different time than the theocracy of Israel and so they have different rules for different communities and times.” In what follows, I want to use Judges 4 (Deborah:female leadership) as a test case that contradicts 1 Tim. 3 and Titus 1 (male leadership) so as to illustrate one way to handle this. I am going to avoid what I call the “dominating other biblical texts into silence approach” often used that is undergirded with the logic that the last word on the matter is what stands for us today (1 Tim. and Titus are both near the end of the Bible). After this — and this is the main body of the discussion — I offer some philosophical answers to the problem along with observations about the entirety of the Bible. I believe I could answer the question with only this last section, but I want to give lots to think about in order to push both our understanding of the Bible and how to apply it today.

Vanhoozer’s Linguistic-Canonical Approach to the Bible

Kevin Vanhoozer’s development in Evangelical Futures, which is his own summarization of The Drama of Doctrine, offers what he terms the “canonical-linguistic approach.” I want to explain it before I use it for this issue because it is a thematic approach to the Bible, tracing certain ideas across its pages to observe where the text “points” or “directs.” The Bible acts as a kind of mentor, and we are its apprentices. It is not enough to just know what the Bible says; we need to observe the method by which the Bible addresses an issue in its various contexts. As we bring all of these observations together, we have a collection of both what the Bible says and how the Bible handles certain issues in specific contexts. The crux of Vanhoozer’s approach is that the whole canon, that is, the whole Bible, must be consulted so that we can become an “apprentice” to its wisdom, not merely parrots of verses (Evangelical Futures, 80 – 82). While it remains that using the canonical-linguistic approach requires knowing all or many of the verses dealing with a difficult biblical question about living the Christian life, about theology, or other practical day-to-day issues, it seeks to form a summarization of this content for the purpose of living rightly. We need to know what the Bible says, how it goes about saying it, and how to bring not just the “what” to bear, but the “how” as well, in our situations. In short, the Bible’s wisdom on a matter must be performed by us. Some may assume this suspect, but it is only following what we think the Apostle Matthew did in his Gospel when he said that Jesus will “be called a Nazarene.” St. Matthew introduces this as spoken by the Prophets, as though it is coming from the OT, but no text like this exists in the OT. Many scholars think that St. Matthew is summarizing the OT teaching, so that what St. Matthews says is the collective wisdom and teaching on this coming Messiah although no Prophet specifically states what Matthew says.

Judges 4 in the Light of 1 Tim. 3 & Titus 1

We all know the story of Deborah, the woman Judge and Prophetess who led Israel to victory over Sisera and Jabin (Judges 4). Barak, in my opinion, is not to be credited with the victory because he risked being disobedient to God by refusing to obey Him by going to battle unless Deborah would go with Him (4:6, 8). A Judge, it is to be remembered, was a civil and legal leader of the nation of Israel, so Deborah acts as a kind of “governor” over the diverse tribes of Israel. Further, as a Prophetess in the role of Judge, she no doubt had powerful influence over the spiritual climate of Israel, greater than many of the mega church pastors’ influence combined today. It is not a misnomer, then, to call her both a spiritual and civl leader. I’ve heard a number of persons claim that the narrative about Deborah teaches the principle that God will use a woman rather than a man when strong men cannot be found to lead. I am not sure how such an understanding is possible because the text makes no bones about Deborah’s status as a Prophetess and Judge: “Then the people of Israel cried out to the Lord for help, for he had 900 chariots of iron and he oppressed the people of Israel cruelly for twenty years.  Now Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lappidoth, was judging Israel at that time. She used to sit under the palm of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim, and the people of Israel came up to her for judgment. She sent and summoned Barak the son of Abinoam . . . .” (Esv). The text is not about God “raising a woman up” because Barak wouldn’t rise to the occasion or any other “strong men” for that matter. Rather, the text, in typical Hebrew narrative just presents Deborah as the Judge and Prophetess — the “Now Deborah . . .” is introduced with the Hebrew term for continuing a narrative, waw ו. There is no indication either from the Hebrew text or the English that Deborah’s role is unusual or that she is appointed because of some dire situation. Instead, what we find is a woman in power who deals decisively with the problem: “She sent and summoned Barak . . . .” Barak is not cast as the leader in this text. Deborah is clearly the one with the authority to summon him and, with her spiritual authority, she delivers the word of the Lord to Barak for how to handle this oppressive situation: “Has not the Lord, the God of Israel, commanded you, ‘Go, gather your men at Mount Tabor, taking 10,000 from the people of Naphtali and the people of Zebulun. 7 And I will draw out Sisera, the general of Jabin’s army, to meet you by the river Kishon with his chariots and his troops, and I will give him into your hand’?”” Deborah orchestrates both Barak’s involvement and how to go about the battle. Barak promptly refuses to listen unless Deborah comes along: “Barak said to her, “If you will go with me, I will go, but if you will not go with me, I will not go.”” There is no indication from this text that Deborah is at odds with God; indeed, Deborah was so intimate with God that she knew what God had told Barak. Now, what are we to do with this glaring contradiction to 1 Tim. and Titus. At this point, I could launch into a long, although no doubt profitable, discussion of cultural norms and cultural change. I will say a bit on this shortly in the final section, but let’s apply Vanhoozer’s linguistic-canonical approach to the present tension between Judges 4 and 1 Tim. 3/Titus 1. If we inductively tallied up the texts, we would be left with a major contradiction: God says only men are to lead in 1 Tim. 3 and Titus 1, but God shows that a woman can lead both as a spiritual and civic leader in Judges 4. If we looked at the rest of Judges, we would observe that the rest of the leaders/Judges were men. From this we would conclude that woman leadership is not contrary to God either in principle or in fact. Woman leadership, however, looking at the “method” or “models of leadership” offered in Judges, suggests that it is irregular. Judges 4 does not teach that woman can only lead when strong men are lacking; this is not what the text conveys. From this point, we need to look all across the Bible, at all models of leadership, to see what else we can conclude about leadership: I don’t have space to do this: it would be a book. We would surely find many “men only” models: kings of Israel, Priests of Israel, Jesus’ inner 12 disciples, some church leaders. Although I’ve listed Jesus’ inner 12, it is not to be missed that women were also part of Jesus’ discipleship group that traveled around with him (Mt. 27:55, Mk 15:41, Lk. 23:49, esp. Lk. 24:22, Acts 1:14). Also, in Romans, St. Paul mentions two women in his farewell remarks in chapter 16: Phoebe (v. 1) the deaconess and Junias the apostle (v. 7). There are other women we could mention as well. This suffices to “point-out” in a linguistic canonical approach that the canon of Scripture, in its fulness, is not opposed to woman leadership in principle or in fact. What I want to avoid at this point is opting for a universalizing or totalitarian use of one Scripture or set of Scriptures to silence the others. Cast in the light of the linguistic-canonical approach, 1 Tim. 3 and Titus 1 are eminently consistent with the majority of male-model-leadership found across the pages of Scripture. If I had more time, I would want to look at the cultural situations of the locations where Timothy and Titus were Pastors. The linguistic-canonical approach will not allow us to leave it at that because we are interested in the entirety of the biblical witness and how that “directs” us to live-out that wisdom, not in silencing the rest of the biblical witness or reinterpreting it in the image or model of 1 Tim. and Titus. Some will find this “iffy.” I would point out that there are many texts with women in prominent roles just above, and more could be added to that. I find silencing many texts in Scripture’s teaching on a matter more “iffy” than finding a way to let it all stand. Male-leadership, therefore, is the general guideline for church leadership, but woman leadership is not excluded in principle (de jure) or in fact (de facto). In 1 Tim and Titus there may have been cultural issues that had created women in that town who were domineering — more than one commentator has claimed this in Timothy’s situation. I hope all of this has gone to show that looking across the whole canon of the Bible leads to the conclusion that certain imperatives in a text or two cannot dominant the rest of the biblical witness into silence in cases where they disagree, even if it is the “last word” God spoke on a matter. The entire biblical text must direct our thinking and consequent living on a matter. Thus, 1 Tim. and Titus no doubt apply directly to those churches, but St. Paul, the same author of 1 Tim. and Titus, can also call Phoebe a deaconess of the Church of Cenchreae, and Romans is dated not long before 1 Tim. and Titus.

Philosophical Answers and Observations on the Whole Bible

Why does God deal with specific situations sometimes differently? It seems because situations always differ, and sometimes call for more specific direction than in other places. For instance, why was it enough that Abraham just “trust” God and keep the few commands God gave to him whereas the Israelites at Sinai were delivered 613 commands? Was did Noah only get a few commands? God’s commands can also be inconsistent across the whole of Scripture because God sometimes condescends to meet humanity where they are (as Jesus taught, Mt. 19:8), while other times His commands are utterly high (Deut. 6:1 – 10) and consistent with His nature. Moreover, after the fall, God is interested in refashioning man into useful vessels for God’s purposes (Jer. 18:5 – 11) according to man’s cooperation with God; echoing John Hick, God is interested in “soul-making.” Thus, some commands come sooner or later in God’s economy of guiding man back towards Christ and, through Him and in the Spirit, to heaven. This thought follows the narrative flow of Genesis 6 – 12:1 – 3 because man falls (Gen. 3), and they are heavily influenced into evil so much so that God kills all but Noah and his family. From this point, God’s task of reclaiming humanity from the Devil is ongoing, particularly and powerfully advanced in Gen. 12:1 – 3 with the call and promise to Abraham (see NT Wright’s Climax of the Covenant). God’s role in developing both the biblical narrative and Israel as a people is transformative across the pages of history. God doesn’t only deliver a rote set of laws to be woodenly followed but never advanced as Deuteronomy makes clear: Deut. 17:8 – 11. This text already assumes the the Laws God gave would not be enough to handle every situation, but gives the leaders power to direct them. Moreover, Deut. 29:1 already makes mention of the coming new “covenant,” the one “besides the covenant God man with them at Horeb.” This leads into my final point, that God’s revelation across time is a “spiral” leading to a telos, or certain end and goal. It is not a cycle. God’s directives can show greater or lesser consistency with earlier or later commands because Scripture is ever unpacking and elaborating, not just restating what has already been said. As a spiral, we expect God to set up certain administrative policies for how He governs His people that we will see again and again, but that also advance (this is actually what typology, what the Catholics call allegory, is all about). In 1 Tim. 3 and Titus 1, we are on part of the spiral that coincides with God’s former preference for male leadership, but this does not demand that we universalize it so that just that part of the spiral becomes the whole spiral. In fact, Scripture would caution us against such a “silencing” of other parts of the biblical text. Dr. Scalise

Questing for Answers about God’s uncreated and eternal Nature

21 Tuesday Oct 2014

Posted by Prime Theologian in Apologetics, Creating, Difficult Questions, Philosophical Explanations for God

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Contingency, Cosmological Argument, Creation, god, Necessary Being, Space-Time

Recently, I was asked: “How was God always there? From a human perspective, all we understand is that everything has a beginning and an end?”

This is a challenging question because of the limitations of our thinking. Right up front, then, I want to clarify between an absurdity and a mystery. An absurdity is something that is logically impossible like a round square. A mystery is an idea that goes beyond humans’ ability to think about it. A mystery is not without a logical basis; indeed it is logical at its base, but its full meaning “extends” beyond the human mind’s ability. When I say “mystery,” I am saying two things: first, a mystery is understandable as far as the human mind can go, and, second, a mystery’s full meaning cannot be adequately explained without loosing the mystery we were trying to understand in the first place.

Before I move into the bulk of the question, humans who have a “human perspective” see from the position of contingency, that is, we are limited, changeable, and ultimately not our own explanation of ourselves. Thus, we must be careful not to attribute to God what creatures are since we know that we have came from somewhere else and need someone else to give us meaning beyond death. God, as we will see, is not contingent.

There are a number of ways to answer the question, but I will offer one that fits with modern science. Cosmologists, (e.g., Borde, Guth, Vilenkin, Sean Carroll) are much agreed that the universe had a beginning point, what they call “a first moment in time.”  A well known principle in philosophy is that from nothing, nothing comes. I mean “nothing” here in the sense of absolute negation, no space, no time, no particles, and thus no quantum mechanics. So now we have two things to deal with: the fact that the universe “began” and the fact that the universe did not create itself. This requires a hypothesis to explain the universe’s existence. There are only two eternal things the human mind can have clear knowledge about: abstract ideas like numbers or an eternal mind — not linked to a material brain though. Abstract ideas can’t create anything, however, leaving us with only the eternal mind thesis, which we call “God.” I say this to show that the universe is on the one hand not an explanation of itself, but God on the other hand is.

Traditionally, theologians have described that God is a necessary Being. This means that it is impossible to conceive a world without God. The current status of science largely upholds the notion that God is a necessary Being because the universe cannot create itself. For any universe to begin necessarily requires a being to start it: God. This necessary Being, God, would have to have existence in Himself, not taken from elsewhere otherwise He would no longer be a necessary Being. Theologians summarize all of this into an attribute they call Aseity (self-sufficient, necessary). It is to be recalled that cosmologists affirm that both time and space began at the first moment of time. Thus, God, “prior to” His fashioning of time cannot be thought about in terms of time. God’s Aseity excludes the possibility that He could have a beginning and an end. At this point, we have arrived at the edge of the mystery. We have given a logical basis to the mystery, however. Further, the mystery is partly understandable to the human mind, but not completely understandable. We know what it means to exist, because we do. We know in part what it means to be sufficient, yet not utterly self-sufficient like God. We know when something is necessary, and we can imagine, through abstract reasoning, an interval of endless duration by extending our experience of passing through limited durations. All of this points to the fact that the human mind is capable of attending to the mystery of God, “getting” some of it while never depriving it of it mysterious “beyondness.” Theologians have a saying for this, “God always conceals Himself in every revealing”; mind you, this is logical and not a nonsensical paradox.

All of this long discussion to say, God’s attribute of Aseity eliminates the possibility that He could have not been, or was created, or had a starting point. Once someone thinks God could have at one point not have been, they have now thought of another god other than the traditional Deity of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. It is likewise important to see that postulating an eternal set of causes is endless, and thus impossible by reductio ad absurbum (by reduction to the absurd). I am putting up a great discussion and debate of this very point between renowned biologist Richard Dawkins and Mathematician and Philosopher John Lennox. The specific question is asked at 45:17 and 52:18.

Dr. Scalise

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