Blog update: what on Earth has John been up to?

HELLO EVERYONE! It seems like a good moment to pause and give readers some insight into this blog and its author’s occupations, hopes.

As the blog description suggests at the top of every post, I have been on quite a theological journey. It has taken me from committed evangelical Trinitarian, via atheism, agnosticism, Biblical Unitarianism, and now back to a form of trinitarianism that I hope resembles something of the first century focus. This has also led me to a lot more tolerance for fourth century squabbles than I had before.

Quick Recap

Quite a big chunk of this journey can be accessed simply by looking back in this blog, as I started in the Autumn (Fall) of 2014 fairly fresh into that scary journey. Over the three years, posts have gotten longer, but I remain proud of my shortest post of all, comprising just nine characters!

In 2015 I wrote a paper to my Christian employer to express that I no longer felt I could sign off on parts of our Faith Statement that were described as crucial when they could be better expressed as interpretative. So I handed over this fairly unsophisticated but lengthy paper. And I wasn’t fired. And the Faith Statement changed. It was mind-blowing.

In 2016, the urgency of the question of the Trinity seem to simmer down with the surprisingly positive outcome of 2015 and I became increasingly curious about the Greek term Kyrios (Lord) used as a translation for the Hebrew name for God, “Yahweh”. I was particularly keen to see if there were differences in the way it was used in the Old Testament to translate Yahweh and how Kyrios was used with Jesus. 

However, for some reason, probably to do with my whole deconstruction-reconstruction faith process, and an overlap with the Septuagint Kyrios project, I fell deeply in love with the Psalms (e.g. here and here). I began to produce a proposed set of meditations based purely on selections from the Psalms ordered according to themes I found running through the Psalter, which I hope to produce in English, French and Arabic (I haven't shared any of this on the blog). There is hidden away inside of me, a real desire to make my theology useful to other people, and this may be one way, especially for people who struggle with their identity, with authenticity, wholeness and presence. For me, what the Psalms were able to help me with that year, was to fight back against what they call in French psychology, morcellement – like a sense of fractured identity, which we can also see nurtured in our society.

Later that year, however, the simmering Trinity continued to develop inside of me. I can remember two key aspects. One of the elders or our church was interested in seeing a copy of my manuscript (that I had already changed quite a bit since 2015), and the second was my developing friendship with Barney Aspray, a Cambridge PhD student who is passionate about a French philosopher, Paul Ricoeur (I first mentioned Barney on the blog in October 2015 - I'm surprised it was that early). In the end, I sent a copy of my much re-worked and honed and proofed chapter 1 of my manuscript to my elder, but I’m not sure if he ever read it.  And with Barney we shared a good number of exchanges about hermeneutics, mainly via email and occasional Skype, which were to have a significant impact on my journey.

Other things were happening in parallel. I had a growing interest in the book of Matthew (which I plan to blog out at some point under a title of Love, Hate & Late). I realised that this gospel contained some crucial components of an earlier trinitarianism that could be traced back to first century Jewish Christianity, especially when placed alongside other early non-canonical sources known as the Didache and the “gnostic” pseudepigraphal Gospel of Thomas. This is not at all the vision I had learned from my Unitarian influences, for the majority of whom the Trinity is a late fourth century fabrication and corruption of the truth in the Scriptures.

Yet I still knew that it was this Jewish Christianity that could assert that God and Jesus needed an “and” to separate them, and whose depiction of the Holy Spirit only very rarely hinted at a distinct person, certainly a country mile from the social Trinitarian sense (see my guest post on Dr Tuggy's blog here). So I was left with nowhere to park my theological vehicle. So I made a choice. To park my faith car faaaaaar away from the theological debates and disagreements.

Personally, I have made it a point to spiritually practice trinitarian devotion as part of my own faith journey, and I tend to avoid words like “Lord” unless I add the clarification of “the Lord Jesus”, and I even avoid “God” mostly. I follow a trinitarian liturgical devotional, Common Prayer: A Liturgy For Ordinary Radicals, which was an amazing gift from my friend Dean (available here on line though for free).

And so my work became increasingly historical and less theological. It became quite clear to me, that like the “Synoptic Problem”, there was also a Trinitarian problem. Nowhere in the Bible is there explicit talk of a tri-personal God. Yet that is what you get from the church before the close of the fourth century. How? Why? Via which intermediary stage(s)? Under the influence of which factors?Unitarians say it was just a late corruption, and those willing to wade in from the Trinitarian side like to say things like "it was always there but they hadn’t got the right linguistic tools to express it yet" – not really a “problem” per se for anyone. Neither of those explanations satisfied me. There definitely was a problem.

At some point, wow, only as recently as May 2017, I first blogged about a Triune Hub in a post entitled Jewish Roots of the Trinity. This is the model that I’m still working on to this day, which I have named the Triune Hub (it’s kinda unlucky, I think, that the extra H needed for “Hypothesis” doesn’t leave you with some cool acronym – oh yeah, the “THH”). Central to this hypothesis was to extend the vocabulary introduced by leading biblical scholars Larry Hurtado, Tom Wright and John Dominic Crossan of “mutation” to the trinity itself, which meant that all the later, less-Jewish stuff, despite its bravado ontological attire, was indeed interpretative of this earlier trinitarian mutation of the religious hub (I’d simply gotten lucky on that point in my 2015 paper).

So while I felt like the nuts and bolts were ready for a book on the subject to tell this story, I began fresh research – firstly on Tom Wright’s use of “mutation” with respect to the Resurrection. That is a definite series to come, but it will not be in the same depth and scope as the current Hurtado series. Secondly then, in Larry Hurtado's Lord Jesus Christ, I really found some firm ground that I felt the Triune Hub could benefit from via deeper analysis, and so I wrote a first series of posts on Hurtado's introduction and first chapter, accessible here, which included the hugely-inspiring recommendation from Hurtado himself here. Interactions with blog readers increased around this time, and I am very grateful for them as they often seem to know a lot more than me! A third series will also be necessary on Crossan, although rather than on a whole book, it will focus on the key chapter he wrote about Jesus' understanding of the Kingdom of God shifted and prepared for the sending of the Holy Spirit - a monumental mutation from the interventionist God to the collaborative God.

Other Bits & Pieces

Following further encouragement from Barney, I did a few posts on the hermeneutic circle and Ricoeur – but I think I eventually got a bit out of my depth and besides felt like I had gotten what I needed for now from Ricoeur anyway (although my French is pretty good, I think maybe reading the French version alone was maybe not the best idea).

Most recently, there have been a small string of book publisher rejections, which were disappointing, but have led me to focus more on the blog for now.

Since I used to lead worship in my local church for about ten years, I have a keen sense of the spiritual and theological formation that takes place during the vulnerable and sacred space of worship. As a result, I have at various points attempted to appraise the good, bad and ugly doing the rounds out there (see here for examples, scroll down past the first two Hurtado posts).

Approximately 3% of my posts are in French (click here for the seven posts in French), which mainly reflects my desire to remain open to a French public, some of whom are my friends and have expressed their wish to understand what on Earth I am going on about. The reality, however, is that my hits tend to go down when I do this.

Recent Reading

• I recently read “The Day the Revolution Began”, by NT Wright, which I don't have specific plans to blog about, but I can definitely recommend.
• I have very recently made a start on Robert MacEwen's Matthean Posteriority, (yep, it gets the really cool “MPH” acronym). Since it is relevant to my model, I will probably need to do some posts on it later. Strangely, the cheapest way by far to get this was on Google Books, not Amazon.
• The Unseen Realm has left an indelible mark on my biblical worldview, written by Michael Heiser. For those who appreciate Old Testament theology in particular, I can really recommend not only this book, but also Heiser's The Naked Bible podcast. 
• During my Kyrios research phase, I read the accessible When God Spoke Greek by Timothy Michael Law, and part way through Invitation to the Septuagint, by Karen H. Jobes  & Moisés Silva
• Finally, as regular blog readers will know, I also recently read Dale Tuggy’s recent book, What is the Trinity? Following that, he and I began a blog exchange, which so far goes me, him, me. More than once he has assured me that he will get round to his next response, but he has a lot going on right now so I’m not hassling him for it.

On the more inspirational side I have recently read:

• Mike McHargue’s Finding God in the Waves, which is a great book (with whose journey I also sense some resonance),
• Rob Bell’s Here To Be Here, which helped me at one stage take some pro-active steps on my journey,
• The Subtle Art of Not Giving aF**K, by Mark Manson. Despite its offensive title, I'm glad I followed my Christian friend’s recommendation. However, for Christian readers, you might have to put your cultural filters up to really get the core message of this book which covers some important life topics. If that’s not for you, then there is a short Christian book that The Subtle Art kept on reminding me of by author Timothy Keller, The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness, which I think I read in 2012. By the way, a not well-known fact: in a former life, I enjoyed composing some alternative music, and you can enjoy this song which is on this same theme of breaking out of self-centredness, recorded back in 2002. It’s called Looking Straight Through the Eternal Mirror. Even lesser-known fact: it contains a recording of a whale! 
 If you like my alternative music style, then you might also appreciate a mini-album entitled Integrity, available freely here since 2010. 
• Naked Marriage: Uncovering Who You Are And Who You Can Be Together, by Corey Allen. Really good.
• The Pressure's Off: Breaking Free from Rules and Performance, by Larry Crabb. Basic but very necessary for me to hear afresh.

How's the blog doing?

So how am I doing in terms of blog visibility? Hmm, not great to be honest. When there is interaction with a more well-known scholar like a Hurtado or a Tuggy, I can just about break into triple figures. Mostly though, I’m typically around the 15-25 visits. In Blogdom, that’s like a virtual non-starter, especially after nearly three years of posting. So I’m curious – can you recommend this blog to anyone? Do you have any recommendations or advice to give me to increase its popularity and access? Is the style too academic? Too informal? I’m working on shorter sentences (my Mum’s repeated request, although even she isn’t a regular reader)…

What next?

Loads!

• I don’t know how far I will continue into my coverage of Hurtado’s Lord Jesus Christ. I feel like there is so much common ground with THH that I have plenty to say on the content of this great book, even if our paths are already set to diverge on certain points, like around his “Q” chapter, which maybe when I bring in MacEwen. It is just possible that if I do go “the full hog”, that I have another stab with the publishers, editing the posts as a response book to Lord Jesus Christ.

• I haven't painted for decades. But I have inspiration to do a reconfiguration of the reunion described in Jesus parable of the Prodigal Son. I want to capture the moment of reconciliation, but not just with the prodigal and his Father, but also with the Elder Son, who is neither jealous nor resentful, but shares in his Father's joy.
• I would like to test-run the Psalms meditation proposal with some friends, blog readers, maybe my local church if the leadership accepted.
• “Love, Hate & Late Matthew”
• I have begun writing a brief commentary on the Old Testament book of Joel, which has relevance for my overall work on the Trinity. Rather than piecemeal it into this blog, when it is ready, I plan to provide a link on the blog to my space on https://www.academia.edu/ where folks can access it and download it if they would like.
• I may pick up the book project at some point and look at self-publishing if I receive fresh inspiration.
• I would like to approach Pastor Sean Finnegan to see if he’d be interested in interviewing me on his podcast, Restitutio to tell this story, which I think may be interesting to his show listeners. That may also lead at some point to an invitation from Dale onto the trinities podcast, only time will tell. My problem with Sean is that I simply don’t know how to contact him (can anyone help?)
   Anyway, if either work out, then it could be helpful to promote this blog.
• I would love to do a simplified animation of how I see Christianity got its Trinity and put it up on Youtube. That’d be a big job for me and a steep learning curve technologically.
• I want to re-visit each New Testament book to see how well the THH fares there. I know that systematic theology is always an approximation. We’re always working with “best-fit” models, and so I shouldn’t have been surprised when I recently re-read 1 John, that neither Triune God nor Triune Hub hypotheses seem to thrive there. A more thorough NT survey is definitely required (in my rejected book proposal, this section was going to be entitled “Taking the Triune Hub For A Test-drive”;).
• I also need to survey all references to John the Baptist, who for me is a key player in the rise of early trinitarianism.
• I have come to realise that I am more excited about tracing first century developments than second-fourth century stuff, but I guess at some point I’ll also have to dredge through the ancient sources (to which I have good access) and try to trace the formalisation of the TH within the institutionalising church toward the Triune God. What I do look forward to in that project, is to see that it is frequently when the triune hub principle is upset that the church feels the need to respond, correct and clarify as one “unsuccessful mutation” is stamped out after another (even Galatians, in my view, could be an early example of that).
• If there’s a worship song someone would like my opinion about, I’m always happy to have a listen to it and a good think about the lyrics.
• If there's a dodgy Christian apologetic argument out there, then I'll happily continue to try blowing it respectfully to pieces!

Thanks very much for stopping by, your presence and participation is shaping my journey and I hope you also continue to travel through your own storms with anchors and harbors of refuge that will see you through when you need it most. Remember, friends are worth far more than the greatest of "insights".

Talking to my Mum

Me and my beautiful Mum (on a separate occasion)

Over a couple of glasses of wine yesterday I had a fantastic opportunity I think we should all consider: explaining our theological passions in ways that make sense to folk who don't focus so much of their energy on theological matters. I am really not good at switching gears in this way, finding good images and illustrations - I really wish I was. But my Mum's interest galvanised me, and I had a go at explaining the Triune Hub hypothesis that I have been working on. She asked me a fantastic, albeit somewhat deflating question, what difference does that Triune Hub view really make?

That is the key question. What difference does our theology really make to believers' lives? What underpins our passion?

As I went to bed last night I felt a fresh passion to make the Trinity meaningful, central and important for regular Christians. The earliest Christians had a mutated religious hub that now included God, the risen and exalted Christ and the individuated eschatological-era-inaugurating-and-people-of-God-empowering Holy Spirit held in new natural balance. Three centuries of debate and an institutionalising church meant a stable structure that would keep these three in balance was needed and produced the Triune God. But ever since the first century, the church has had a reconfigured core of Three. A saddening realisation dawned on me as I had explained to my Mum how intertwined religious belief in Yahweh for Jews was with their social lives, eating, their calendars, relationships and society, and how that continued in its new threefold form in Christianity: modern "privatised" Christianity, whatever its religious hub, be it unitarian, trinitarian or whatever, is simply a lot smaller by virtue of its privatisation. In fact, an increasing number of westerners don't even feel a need for a relationship with a transcendental or divine being - they just get on with life and human relationships.

As I have developed my trinitarian views, I can honestly say that my Christian faith has at last stabilised considerably, and I integrate my belief in Father, Son and Spirit personally into my prayer life daily. I've felt a deep sense of responsibility that if this approach is to be adopted and used to contribute a return to more trinitarian church and faith in individual believers' lives, then I have to model it. I can't just write about it (as much as I enjoy doing that).

I recently shared a link to an important article by Fred Santers (my post here, the article here) whose title continues to challenge me: We Actually Don’t Need a Trinitarian Revival. What I think he is driving at though is not so much that we don't need to be articulating our religious, spiritual, and worldviews around the Father, Son and Spirit in a fresh or renewed way or with greater vigour. He's saying we don't need to do it in some radically redefined way. I believe what this article and my chat with my Mum, combined with my own walk of faith, have helped me realise is that there are some psychological obstacles in believers' paths preventing us from allowing the radical first-century shake-up in which our Christian faith originated to be accessible in a non-specialised context.

Very few modern Christian worship songs integrate the Trinity (and when they do, they sometimes try and do something weird, like squash it into Jesus). It is hardly ever preached as a subject (which may be fine), but still, with a disproportionately low reference rate to Father, Son and Holy Spirit, despite New Testament strong insistence to the contrary, the discrepancy remains flagrant. Although I am now far more sympathetic and understanding of fourth-century "Triune-God Advocacy" than I used to be, I still bear this grudge: that some of the complex notions introduced in order to keep the Father, Son and Holy Spirit co-essential and co-central to the faith in the great ecumenical councils may have contributed to making believers, including leaders, wary about a more natural integration of trinitarian thinking into their prayer lives, their worship and their social engagement.

So that's why I think the Triune Hub matters. Thanks Mum!

Theology in worship continued: 14. “It Is Well”, Bethel (featuring Kristene DiMarco)

Today's next song from worshipleader.com's list ranks 14th. It's another top quality live audio performance, but how does the trinity fare? Are the other two - Father and Spirit - necessary? Is there another centre of focus outside of the Father, Son and Spirit? I think so. Let's listen, read, then comment.

Grand earth has quaked before
Moved by the sound of His voice
Seas that are shaken and stirred
Can be calmed and broken for my regard

Chorus
And through it all, through it all
My eyes are on You
And through it all, through it all
It is well

And through it all, through it all
My eyes are on You
And it is well with me

Verse 2
Far be it from me to not believe
Even when my eyes can't see

And this mountain that's in front of me
Will be thrown into the midst of the sea

Chorus
Through it all, through it all
My eyes are on You
Through it all, through it all
It is well

Bridge x3
So let go my soul and trust in Him
The waves and wind still know His name

It is well with my soul
It is well with my soul
It is well with my soul
It is well with my soul

It is well it is well with my soul x3
ahhhhhhh (softly)

Through it all, through it all
My eyes are on You Lord
Through it all, through it all
It is well with me.

We still have quite a long way to go in the worshipleader top-hits, but I think we can already start to see a trend emerging here with the most successful and engaging worship songs: there is a highly prominent "me" and a highly prominent "you" (sometimes a "him", here the transition to third person is fairly clearly indicated through the transition to the bridge). It is about a salvation through the most perfect relationship imaginable between two persons: ME and ... presumably, Jesus. So nothing much to commend here or to criticise. On this blog we love it when Jesus is lifted high, we cannot worship sufficiently enough or with enough sincerity! But the concern is about a hidden Father or silent Spirit, about whom the Scriptures are highly vocal and excited. Musically lovely. Biblically, very little to say as it is not a focus for this song.

Theology in worship continued: Unstoppable Love, by Jesus Culture (featuring Kim Walker-Smith)

Today's next song from worshipleader.com's list ranks 16th. It's a top quality live audio performance, but how does the Father fare? Is He necessary? Let's listen, read, then comment.

Try to stop Your love, and You would wage a war
Try to take the very thing, You gave Your life for
And You would come running, tear down every wall
All the while shouting, "My love you're worth it all!"

God, You pursue me, with power and glory
Unstoppable love that never ends
You're unrelenting, with passion and mercy
Unstoppable love that never ends

You broke into the silence, and sang a song of hope
A melody resounding, in the deep of my soul
You have come running, You tore down every wall
All the while shouting, "My love you're worth it all!"
....
No sin, no shame, no past, no pain
Can separate me from Your love
No height, no depth, no fear, no death
Can separate me from Your love

The bridge (which I have placed in bold) I think offers us the clearest Scriptural foundation and inspiration for this song, which I take to be Romans 8:

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36 As it is written:

“For your sake we face death all day long;
    we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. [verses 35-39]

I won't bore the blog reader by delving into Paul's distinctives betwen "God" (ho Theos) and "Jesus", although suffice it to say that logic of Christ's love in verse 35 being God's love in verse 39 does not hold to imply that songwriters should just happily sing away about "Jesus" as synonymous with "God" with no mention of the Father. It is not inferable from Paul generally (he is the main New Testament proponent of "God and Jesus" constructions, of which the total count of such constructions nears 50), and it is not inferable even from this passage alone (= the love of Jesus that is in Jesus). Do Christians think it is not possible to appropriate God's love in them also? Such is the beauty of love!

So we have another bad apple here, although possibly not quite as clearly misleading as the first song I reviewed by TCCCollective. We are almost a third of the way through worshipleader.com's list here, as I am only going to do every other song on their top 20 chart, and we have yet to hear a single reference to the Father being worshipped or even identified as God, even though He is the One who most clearly is identified by the Bible as so. How can worshipleader.com justify their criterion for faithfulness to Scripture? So far, it is not at all obvious!

Theology in worship continued: Love Comes Down, by Michael Farren

Today's song from worshipleader.com's list does not fare nearly so badly on charges of inconsistency or theological confusion. Again, quite a tune with some originality. Let's listen, then comment.

We are especially looking for clarity around who "You", for worship of the Father, or even a clear Trinitarian picture. Here are the words:

I brought You all my foolish crowns
With trembling hands I laid them down
Expecting wrath to be poured out
But You placed mercy on my brow

Still my best is nothing less
Than filthy rags and emptiness
One drop of blood raised me from death
And You see me through Your righteousness

Oh how sweet amazing grace
Wraps me in a warm embrace
Oh my heart rejoice
I was lost, now found
All my praise goes up as Your love comes down

Now daily I walk safe, secure 
Even through trouble You endure 
I’m not afraid for I am sure
That You are mine and I am Yours

What a great day that will be
When I stand there at my Savior’s feet
Singing thank you for all eternity
All my praise goes up as Your love comes down

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost but now am found
All my praise goes up as Your love comes down

It's a good song, blending modern sounds and themes with older songs like Amazing Grace so will resonate on various levels. It also does not call Jesus the Father or have a shifting picture of who "you" is. "You" might seem at first a little ambiguous however, as neither Father, nor Lord, nor God are mentioned at any point. But on closer inspection, I think we can say that "you" is addressed to the Father, at least by the author's intention, as "my Savior's feet" would more naturally imply Jesus' feet, than the Father's, even though both are referred to as "Savior" in the New Testament.

Whatever your theological persuasion, you are unlikely to believe that the Father literally has feet, since Trinitarian theology holds that of the three persons of the Trinity, only the Son was incarnate. This reminder should also posit some limits on how literal we can be tempted to take all the apocalyptic imagery applied by John in the last book of the Bible, Revelation. If the Father is not corporeal, then the corporal imagery given to John has to be a mediation of incorporeal realities.

All in all, I am theologically quite impressed with this song, although, as we already mentioned, some of its success can be attributed to it avoiding some key terminology.

Theology in worship example

In the previous post I prepared the way for an example of how times of worship are filled with theological statements, through which surrendered minds and hearts are effectively taught (and teach) theology about the Christian God in ways that are sometimes neither clear nor consistent with what the Scriptures say. I have chosen this song - not because it was theologically the worst recent worship song I could find, but because it was the FIRST song I looked at for this purpose from Christian worship website, worshipleader.com, who state that they selected these songs based on "Our criteria are biblical faithfulness, singability, and congregational use." The title of the song is “My God Is Stronger”, from the album The Fading Veil, by TCCCollective and is written by Josh Bayne and Paul Reeves.

So without any more build-up, here are the lyrics (which come with a punchy tune), along with the video if you want to hear it:

When I'm drowning my hope still stands,
For my God walked upon the water.
When I'm calling You hear my cry,    and run to help me like a father
Storms rise quickly, but You are with me.

So bring on the wind, bring on the waves, my God is stronger.
Bring on the flood, open the gates, my God is stronger.
Trouble will come, I won't be afraid.
My God is stronger.  My God is stronger.

When I'm empty, You'll fill my cup.
For You made wine out of the water.
Never failing, unending love, You came and saved Your sons and daughters.

Storms rise quickly, but You are with me.
So bring on the wind, bring on the waves, my God is stronger.
Bring on the flood, open the gates, my God is stronger.
Trouble will come, I won't be afraid.

My God is stronger.  My God is stronger.

And it's over, 'cause He's overcome!
Now it's over, cause He's overcome.
and    greater is He that's in me.
Greater is He that's in me
Greater is He that's in me.
And I won't be afraid.

Greater is He that's in me!

Bart Ehrman, renowned biblical scholar-sceptic, often states how useless it is to state that an extant manuscript is 97% faithful to its textual ancestor, "the original", in the verses it provides. He asks: What exactly are we measuring here? Letters? Words? What if the missing or added word in a manuscript was the word "not"? What if we switched two nouns around? These percentages would still seem pretty impressive, but the fundamental meaning would be crucially altered. This song is a great example of such a problem. You could say, John, surely you can agree with 97% of this? In this case, Ehrman's thinking is spot on. That is a meaningless thing to ask me, because they assume that you can piecemeal theology.

There are two key lines in this song that do not seem to meet worshipleader.com's criteria of biblical faithfulness.

Firstly: "my God walked upon the water". 

Starting from the source, that is the gospel stories of Jesus walking on water. Obviously something floating on water that shouldn't implies an action of God in this story (see 2 Kings 6:1-6!). Furthermore, the disciples were indeed amazed at Jesus, the authority and power he received from God his (and their) Father was not just incredible but fearsome.

But the Biblical language seems to clearly imply that Christ's authority was received from Him who is properly called "God".

John 17:2, For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him.

Eph 1:22 And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church

Matt 28:18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Luke 1:32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David

John 5:27 And he has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man. 

To say more than that, that Jesus simply is God walking on the water is to refer firstly to fourth and fifth century creeds, and only secondly to what the Scriptures actually say. It runs the risk of making the One Jesus calls "my God", "my Father" and "your Father", obscure or optional, since they are basically identical.

The next quote exacerbates this problem significantly:

You came and saved Your sons and daughters.

Jesus is not our Father.
This blog is not usually a place for capitalisation, but apparently it really needs underlining in the evangelical worship song-writing world:

J E S U S   I S   N O T   O U R   F A T H E R

Jesus is our co-heir and brother. If you believe the Bible more than evangelical songs, then you are on my side on this one:

Romans 8:17 Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.

Romans 8:29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.

Mark 3:35 Whoever does God's will is my brother and sister and mother (! In counter-reference to Mary)

Evangelical worship tends to be profoundly untrinitarian, and to its own detriment. It could legitimately be confused with a form of unitarianism that is surely far worse than the Biblical unitarianism strand. Typically, it is not at all clear who is being referred to when the word "God" or "Lord" is being used, and (amazingly) as this song has shown, even "Father". I apologise for using a strong word, but the situation is a total mess.

This short analysis really confirms for me why I can no longer hope to engage with this milieu from within, except perhaps to speak out via platforms like this. From time to time, I ask myself: am I just taking this all too far? The fact that this was the first song I examined from an evangelical site that was confident of biblical faithfulness of its "top 20", really reassures me that I am in line with the direction I sense God has sent me.

Theology in charismatic worship

The faithandscripture blog has been a personal journey that dips into theological research, personal reflection and cultural observations about why I believe what I believe. For instance, some of the important details like what I believe about the creation of the universe have been way too fuzzy to either satisfy myself or anyone smart enough to ask me the right questions. Theologically, and especially in my paper Trinitarian Interpretations, I have explored why it should no longer be crucial to take on creedal lenses for a believer who places ultimate authority on the Scriptures themselves. Where I have been less adventurous is my previous area of service to the local church, which is worship.

Worship is not a creature you can dissect and put under a microscope. It is a beautiful moment when the faith community lay down their distractions and ownership of their own lives and lift up God and His Son in prayer and song. It is a time when, as believers, we see the Spirit of God also directing this time.

One thing, however, is very important to note. It is filled with WORDS. Theological statements fill the room and people's minds for significant periods of time, while these minds are hopefully in a more surrendered and less analytical state. It can be a vulnerable time when people can be more exposed and less critical of what might be true and what might be more speculative. This should be a time when good biblical teaching finds expression, purpose and outworking in the congregation.

But that is sadly not the case. Part of this responsibility lies with the teaching team in local elderships. But they too are at a disadvantage, for they must struggle against a culture of worship theology that could be described as lacking on many fronts, the most significant being clarity over who "you" or "God" refers to. Please refer to my four-part "No such thing as a tradition-free church" to get a bit more context, starting here, then here, then here and finally here.

So in the next post we will take a look at a worship song featuring in WorshipLeader.com's top 20 songs of 2014. This group state that "Our criteria are biblical faithfulness, singability, and congregational use". Brace yourselves. 

There is garbage out there .... but how much?

There are two points of this post:
1. There is Christian junk out there, seriously stinky.
2. We are okay with scrutinising the Bible, but not the lenses.

Sadly, I just discovered this, which is sad, but I would say almost certainly symptomatic of other unconfessed elaborations. This is definitely not shining like stars among the warped and crooked as children of God, this is simply being warped and crooked generation. (Phil 2:15)". So the boy who came back from Heaven", did not go anywhere. He made it all up, and admits it, the dying, heaven, meeting Jesus, the Devil, being raised back to life... It casts doubt, of course, on other similar stories (which may of course be true). One thing is definite, they sell loads of copies, because people are desperate for the details of what happens next.

But there is also a quote from the teenager, now 16, who has made the confession. It is very simple and reminds me of my own quest. Never thought I would quote a sixteen year-old on here, but there we go!

"I said I went to heaven because I thought it would get me attention. When I made the claims that I did, I had never read the Bible. People have profited from lies, and continue to. They should read the Bible, which is enough. The Bible is the only source of truth. Anything written by man cannot be infallible."

"The Bible ... is enough... the only source of truth". Sounds like this young guy found God, who could be redeeming for himself something here.

There are so many Christians out there who basically, although sometimes extremely loosely, hold to a Nicene form of trinitarianism (and one key feature of this blog journey has been to discover that there are multiple forms of trinitarianism - in fact I myself am finding myself adopting a non-Nicene form of it, more on that soon). My hypothesis - and this is based in part on my own experience, but also observation of others - is that the Nicene cornerstone of the Christian faith (is it the cornerstone?) is preached, but it goes pretty much unscrutinised. THE BIBLE gets more scrutiny than Nicea, it is respectfully exegeted by believers, seeking to both determine true and original meaning while simultaneously careful to ensure the interpretation does not stray from other parts of Scripture. But not Nicea. That is because Nicea - and a whole procession of creeds, canons and councils to follow, that have to follow to try to clean up the mess made - are lenses through which we read scripture. We do not read the lenses.

We look at the Bible, we look through the creeds. Since the Bible reveals who God is, I am arguing that the lenses are seriously worth checking out if we are serious about knowing the guy[s] we are looking at. My grandmother at the end of her life lost nearly all of her sight. However, as it turns out, a certain tint of yellow lens helped her see contrasts better. She needed a lens, it was not like she could see without it. But the lens makes everything yellowish, and that is key information also. She knew that she couldn't argue that the tree really is yellow because she knew about her lens, its usefulness and its limits.

The creeds hold unbelievable and unidentified influence over us Christians today. Rant over - for now!

John 8:58, Dale Tuggy takes on my questions on John 8 (iii)

Dale Tuggy has examined on his Trinities podcast the question of pre-existence, before looking at various scholars' responses to John 8:58, especially that of Thomas Belsham in episode 63. This prompted me to ask a question about when the current interpretation came about, and this "got me started on a quest", says Tuggy. He thus commits his 66th episode to probing the implied connections we often hear surrounding readings of John 8:58 from the pulpit and in popular Christian literature. This also follows on from two other posts on my blog, part 1 and part 2. Here is part 3, sorry it is a bit long and notey. There will also be a small extra post on the John 8:59, which was mentioned at the end of the podcast, and I feel less related to my original question, but still worth a separate mention.

What I found really insightful was the picture Tuggy sketched of the "Logos theologians" (2nd-3rd centuries, pre-Nicea) and the way he interacts with the next question of listener, "Sarah", when she quotes an interesting passage in Justin Martyr's writings (First Apology), recounting the Son of God speaking on God's behalf, as both "an angel and an apostle": an angel of God spake to Moses. the son of God, who is called both angel and apostle. After this, Irenaeus focuses in on the question of Jesus' pre-existence, and does use John 8:58 to emphasise this point.

Reminder: Dr Dustin Smith showed how it was ancient Jewish custom to talk about future events in the past tense that are determined in the mind and heart of God. We are also reminded that we all know this and apply this rule almost unconsciously to the Old Testament prophecies, e.g. He WAS PIERCED for our transgressions.

The logos theory came first. It was quite controversial. "Of course, this is not what the gospel of John is saying at all, there is no direct interaction between Jesus and Abraham recorded there", says Tuggy.
God now (in the 2nd and 3rd centuries) is seen to interact with creation through a go-between, none other than the Logos in John 1, a "pre-human" Jesus. Philo of Alexandria had a very transcendent view of God, and had clear platonic views. In the Scriptures that describe "god" being seen, these sightings had to be Jesus, as no-one can see God and live. So the Logos theologians were responsible for developing a theology first of indirect interaction of the transcendent God through his pre-existent son. (me: Remember how important Proverbs 8 was as a proof-text for the pro-Nicene movement, but which includes in v21: The LORD possessed/fathered/created me [wisdom] at the beginning of his work(s) - some of the Logos theologians seem to take this to mean Jesus was created first, but still a very long time ago).

So Irenaeus, Origen, and others begin to refer to this verse as support for the pre-existence of Christ. But the interesting point is what they are attempting to draw from this verse. Is it the twofold argument of both Jesus pre-existing and Jesus simply is Yahweh, doing "I AM" wordplay? (remember, we are not assuming that John himself intended any of this, although I suspect Bart Ehrman might disagree - since he claims very different christologies between the gospel writers)

1. I am God myself.
2. I have a timeless existence, a divine attribute, implying that I am god myself
3. I am implying that I have existed a long time, since before Abraham.

Novation is another early theologian, from the mid 200s, and he examined the idea of immortality for men, deification of man from Christ (not even "via"). When he refers to John 8:58 he is definitely affirming that Christ pre-existed, but he implies more than that, providing early arguments for Christ's two natures.
In fact, quite a lot of what he says sounds a bit like he is Trinitarian, but when you get to the end of Novatian's work, you realise that still, the one true God is the Father. For him, however, Jesus was
i) foreknown and
ii) divine and
iii) has two natures.

I gather from Dale that Novation was writing in Latin, and Latin apparently does not have or did not have the word "the", hence the ambiguity around "deus" (God/divine).

(Here I think Dale makes a bit of a mistake, though, or at least I am not at all sure he can so casually state comprehensible use of the definite article in Koine Greek. I hope one day to blog on this serious textual problem!)

Surprising omissions for such a "clear" text: The Arian controversy makes no reference to John 8:58, nor does Augustin On the Trinity, or the City of God, nor does Hansen's Search for the Christian doctrine of God, the best history resource of the Nicene controversy.

Finally finds a text from a 7th century forgery claiming to be written by Matthew, but that is a bit of a half-funny aside that Dale includes.

John Calvin's commentary, based on Chrisostoms Homily 55 (AD 355 - 4??). Like Novation, it attempts to prove that Jesus is divine and has eternal existence, two natures.

Augustin, bishop of Hippo: Before Abraham, I am - not "was". "Was" and "will be" he knows not. "From eternity begotten". "This his name he told to Moses, You shall say to them he that IS has sent me to you." Augustin is a clear Trinitarian, on the heels of Nicea.

Dale's conclusion: So clearly by the early 400s, when Augustin is making his comments about John and 1st John, from that time on it's part of catholic tradition to see Jesus not merely alluding to the statement of God to Moses, but really asserting that he has eternal existence and thereby asserting that he is fully divine. Is this a discovery?

For Dale this is a classic case of Eisegesis, reading into it what you want to find there rather than drawing out what is actually there, expounding what the author actually meant.

The last part of this podcast I felt strayed back to more contemporary analysis that would with retrospect be better placed, perhaps, in the Belcham episode 63, but it is relevant to our interpretations of John 8:59. Let's look at that quickly in the next post.

Quick Christianity jabs

I am so grateful and glad that Daniel Wallace is alive, kicking and writing.

In his latest post on his blog, published yesterday here, Wallace easily deals with the hasty attack on Christianity by Kurt Eichenwald, who, writing for Newsweek, exaggerates the so-called unreliability of the New Testament transmission methods, even overstating Bart Ehrman's case. Just to give you an example of some of the unsubstantiated things Eichenwald says, and Wallace should have mentioned this I think, and this of the 381 Council of Constantinople: "a new agreement was reached—Jesus wasn’t two, he was now three—Father, Son and Holy Ghost." Oh really?!

One of Wallace's key points, however, is to state that we are not talking of a near-perpetual linear series of translations of translations, one of Eichenwald's points. All serious translations of today are working off manuscripts, some of which "go as far back as" the 2nd century.

I am currently reading through Wallace's book at the moment on Revisiting the Corruption of the New Tesetament: Manuscript, Patristic and Apocryphal Evidence. 

My intention, by the way, for anyone who is interested and for my own reference, is to publish chapter summaries. Each subject is distinct and actually written by a different scholar, with the whole lot edited by (and the first chapter written by) Daniel B. Wallace. In this book, one of the key challenges of Ehrman's interpretations is that he does not acknowledge his own biases, in particular the criteria of orthodox corruption. While that is not entirely true, from what I can see, we have another clear case here that works in the opposite direction. So when we see "as far back as the second century" from Wallace, Ehrman would maintain that the second century is still a fair old way off from the first and very fragmentary in what we do have, and even these are probably at least copies of copies of a copy (or of copies). He also would remind us that from the evidence we hold, in manuscript copying errors intensify the further you go back and that we simply "cannot know" what the originals said. 

While I agree with Wallace that Ehrman overstates his case, it is easier for me to see now when presumptions are "smuggled onto the table" (Stephen Holmes' expression), and here "as far back as" implies that this is an incredibly long way back. Challenged, the Wallace crew would be quick to compare to other ancient Greek texts that are much less well attested in terms of manuscript evidence. Ehrman is not in the business of comparing, however, and has no more faith in the copies of manuscripts that we have of Homer, for example, as representative of what was originally penned to parchment. 

But the key issue I think here in Wallace's otherwise solid defence against this weak attack by Eichenwald, is an often-forgotten translation stage. It seems to have been too obvious to mention by everyone, but it is not insignificant: the quotations in the gospels are already translations. We should be aware of that and reminded of that in these sorts of conversations. So in that sense, perhaps unwittingly, Eichenwald had a point he did not realise he was scoring!

Balanced theology: "EVERY THEOLOGY HAS A DEGREE OF PASSIONATE EXTREMISM"

How does passionate over-emphasis work out in theology among the people of God? Whilst researching Moltmann a bit, I came across this article by Trevin Wax at the "Gospel Coalition", which I found interesting, check it out. Note this comment left at the bottom of Wax's article by a reader, identified as James Houghton, which at my time of writing has still not yet been responded to by Wax:

People often call for balance what I find interesting is that Jesus never did.

There are two issues here: Wax's unfortunate lack of clarity on his underlying point and definition of "balance", and unclear assumptions from Houghton's short comment, which I shall also respond to.

I really enjoyed Wax's article on my first read-through. However, I now realise that there is a subtle and perhaps unhelpful shift of emphasis away from what I understand in Stott's work on balance in the life of the Christian toward theological balance, which I think is actually a different point entirely. In turn, this unfortunately makes it less clear which of these two elements of "balance" James Houghton thinks is out of sync with the testimony of Jesus, or if indeed it was simply the mention of the word "balance" that connected with some personal bee in his bonnet.

Let us talk briefly about Jesus' "balance". He could certainly be very extreme: outrageous comments and stories against the religious leaders of his time, turning the tables, the dead can bury their own dead, "you" are my family if you do God's will, willing to die for sins while none of those sins were his, pretty much the whole of the Sermon on the Mount, the list just goes on and on. But was Jesus really saying that the dead should bury the dead? Was he even saying that the spiritually dead should bury the dead? Or was Jesus greatly saddened by death? Did he first weep at Lazarus' death before powerfully raising him (textually rhetorical!)? Could we not say that Jesus was drawing on ideals similar to our modern notion of balance when he said:

Give back to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's (Mark 12:17) 

A couple of other Jesus and balance examples that come to mind: As NT Wright also points out, the house where the paralytic was lowered through the roof is quite plausibly Jesus' house. He was settled. Jesus also "balanced" his time between time with his heavenly father, his disciples and the crowds. And so on.

I also have in mind a relevant comment from Bart Ehrman, which I am certain everyone can agree on. He says that we are to remember that literally billions of events occur in every human being's life, including of course, Jesus (see here for article). He mentions this to help students ask good questions of the text, and identify the different kinds of questions that we can and should ask. But the point is that the vast majority of actions and sayings that took place in Jesus' life are unknown to us, we have just a tiny fraction in four rich flavours. As a Christian theologian, I hope and believe that the fraction we have is the most significant, but it does not exclude from my mind the possibility that, in addition to some of the examples noted above, Jesus could very easily have thought and even explicitly taught that there is balance to be had in Christian life (Stott) and in theology (Wax), but that the gospel writers did not remember it or chose to exclude it. This is an indisputable possibility, despite Houghton's objection.

As to my own conclusion, on this issue of balance in Christian discipleship, I have to respond that Stott's model seems very appealing, I agree with it and can identify with it. With regards to the church's theological balance through some degree of passionate extremes, which is a different point entirely, I think Wax (following Motlmann as he makes very clear) makes a very interesting point. It brings us back to the "unity in diversity" values we often hear, although Wax is clearly going further: if the church benefits through these sometimes extreme views, then we could even point to longer-term stability through some theological boat-rocking!

I do, however, want to throw a diplomatic line to Wax, and suggest, after all, an overarching idea that does gather in his discipleship balance point at the start of his article, and does also I think faithfully reflect the position of Jesus:

There is a rather paradoxical balance: a balance between balance and passionate extremes, or over-emphases. (The clue was in Wax's title: a DEGREE). This post is already too long, but it would be wonderful to explore more fully what this kind of balance could look like for me.