The Church seems really to be struggling for relevance in many parts of the west and church numbers are in decline. She senses afresh the need to act in a living expression of God’s love for a broken world, to reach out and not suck in. But some of her language is stuck in the 14th century, creating distance between her and the peoples she is trying to embrace…
In my paper Trinitarian Interpretations, I address some aspects of the God/Jesus distinctions provided by the New Testament authors, although I'd love to look into them more. On Bart Ehrman's blog, someone posted about 24 distinctions that he had found with their references. This was my response:
I was able to find around this number just for the strand: "God raised Jesus" anthem we find in the NT. But don't waste time on Jesus distinctions with "the Father", Trinitarians have a quick and "easy" response to that, unless of course you want to wrestle with the "Father/God" interchangeability. For the interchangeability, I think the strongest evidence can also be found in John. "The Father sent me". "God sent me", etc. Trinitarians can only claim a one-way relationship between Jesus and God. Jesus is [OF the divine eternal] God [essence]. The confusion arises out of the removal of these square brackets, because if you don't have them, it is not obvious why the opposite cannot be true, i.e. that Jesus and God are not synonymous. That confusion is not present when you read John. For John, Jesus' notion of God is that he is Father, and that this Father, that he has in some sense "discovered", is also God, ho Theos. For John, there IS interchangeability.
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.
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 1:22And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church Matt 28:18Then 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.
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.
Yesterday I posted about what I anticipated to be the key creationist (6-day creation) arguments. (Today's post is my hundredth published post, hurrah.)
Watching this debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham made me realise that I was pretty close when it came to Ham's six-day view. I actually would really encourage you to check out this video, it highlights some of the incompatibilities well, along with some of the difficulties for folk like me who don't really agree with either position.
Before we get stuck into these four creationist arguments, I want to briefly point the finger back at Ken Ham (in a loving way of course!) when it comes to the high-jacking of various terms. He claims that "science" and "evolution" are high-jacked. That might be true, but every movement enjoys a bit of high-jacking, and creationism is just as bad. When people talk about "creationist views", they are not, as you might think, talking about views whereby God created the universe. The term has been well and truly high-jacked to mean a literal six-day creation according to the first of the two accounts provided by Genesis (the six-day version is a totally different source to the Genesis 2 account, where Yahweh suddenly is the key name). So because of the sad state of affairs in the world of "creationism", we must yield to the more commonly understood (high-jacked) definition and be careful what we mean by "creation", even if for millions like me, it simply means, God did it.
The first argument of there being no observable way of looking back is a pretty solid one. We have to work in the present and make assumptions about the past being like how we see it today. I think that is pretty solid, but it has some limitations. The one I considered and indeed featured in this debate, is that we know the speed of light. If it can be shown that certain observable galaxies are sufficiently far enough away that the light we perceive on Earth has taken longer than 6000 (or 7500) years to get here, then "creationists" seem to be in trouble. Another limitation that we must face as believers if we are to have a credible face in the world today is reasonableness. If I were to tell you that there is a prancing pink pony prancing along the rings of Saturn, what would you say to me? You're a nut case. However, what if I said back to you: show me the evidence it is false, have you photographed, simultaneously, every single square metre of Saturn's rings to show me that there is no prancing pony? Regarding the past, the ridiculous notion of the pony could be said of the past: we prancing-pony worshippers believe according to our sacred book that the reason we have all the different beautiful colours in Saturn's rings is that our beloved Pony pranced throughout them all at the dawn of time before entering the next dimension. Now you definitely cannot disprove that. Granted.
Secondly, I anticipated an issue with biblical interpretation, that as Christians we need to trust the one person, God, who was present to observe it all. This argument is not aimed so much at atheists as at Christians who do claim that the Bible is authoritative but not literal in some aspects of the stories. That argument was indeed put fourth by Ham, although it sounds like he adopts a 10-commandments-style, God writing the thing through human hands approach. Actually, if Nye had known more about theology, he could have picked up on this by illustration of the second, Yahweh-focussed creation account to illustrate the existence and use of multiple human sources to compile this joint-account. The only places where we have God literally writing, off the top of my head, are:
- 10 commandments (twice)
- "the writing on the wall" (Daniel 5)
- God through Jesus in the textually-disputed passage of John 8, with the woman caught in adultery.
Of course He gets quoted speaking a lot, always in the language of men, especially in the prophets and the book of Job. But there is no quoting going on in the key Genesis 1 passage.
Well this argument seems to hinge on the genre of Genesis 1. Ham conceded of course that there were multiple genres, and sometimes context meant we can interpret certain biblical prescriptions as only necessary for a certain time and place. However, as for Genesis, this remains a strictly historical account for him, hence his insistence that we treat it as such (although both debaters seemed oblivious to the textual issues). The problem he states for all the Christians who accept that scientific research points to a massively older world, is that they still have to come up with some kind of explanation as to why sin and suffering entered the world if the garden of Eden was more myth than reality. The question then needs proper treatment, but we must just leave it hanging for now: can God speak through myth?
Thirdly, I predicted that there are prominent scientific researchers who, although a minority, remain convinced that the Biblical dating method is consistent with the evidence we can gather. Well here I am afraid we can smell a big rat, and again Nye should have smelled it out. There is absolutely no connection between one's intelligence and how much people are affected by their past and beliefs. Take any high-level debate. Take any political debate, scientific debate, theological debate. In general these people are highly-educated, very smart individuals with radically opposed viewpoints, definitions and analysis of the relevant data. That is the first point. Secondly: WHERE ARE THE ATHEIST SIX-DAY CREATION SCIENTISTS? If that is where the evidence could be stacking up, then there should at least be some. Nye missed out on asking a key question: Which of these scientists you reference, Dr Ham, are not Christians? What fundamentalism sadly seems to fail to recognise in this debate is that scientific advance toward knowledge of the universe is not motivated by disproving the biblical perspectives. Much of the religious unbelieving scientific community is simply neutral toward faith unless antagonised.
Fourthly, "creationists" may think they can counter claims that they are theologically-motivated because their opponents (maybe atheistic evolutionists) could also be shown to be motivated by personal convictions, not necessarily arising from the data. My response to this point is a repeat of the previous: it is a mistake to assume that the unbelieving faith community are on some kind of charge to disprove the existence of God. You can really feel the weight of some of that assumption when you listen to Ham arguing.
I think it is clear we can have good grounds for being unconvinced and unconvicted by the literal six-day view.
Let's look back a bit, as everyone does from time to time.
Last night I went through the latest archaeological findings reported on the news in South Africa (see a BBC summary here and the formal research written up here) regarding another finding of skeletons of very human-like creatures in South Africa in 2013.
I don't know about you, but as a Christian believer growing up in an increasingly science-affected culture and world-view, I guess I have become increasingly agnostic about questions of the age of the universe. Apparently time machines are and will remain impossible, so how on Earth will we ever be able to know about this issue for sure? Why do Christians get so wound up about this anyway?
Well, I suppose it is (once again) because of the insecurity created by asserting (in a believer's words), that God could assert anything powerful in a non-literal way. Creationists have a hard time with that, not because they are limited or less intelligent or bigoted, but because they want to hold to the literal truth of the Bible. And they have some interesting ammunition (and they need it).
Firstly, as already noted, we cannot scientifically observe an ancient Earth/universe. No time machines.
Secondly, if as a believer you go down a not-everything-in-the-Bible-is-literal track, then how on EARTH (excuse the pun) can you make a judgement call on what is and what is not literal? Pure liberalism would assert, of course, that it all may be non-literal.
Thirdly, there are prominent scientific researchers who, although a minority, remain convinced that the Biblical dating method is consistent with the evidence we can gather.
Fourthly, they may think they can counter claims that they are theologically-motivated because their opponents (maybe atheistic evolutionists) could also be shown to be motivated by personal convictions, not necessarily arising from the data.
They may have other good arguments too, but these are the ones in my mind at the moment.
Before we get into those, let me just share something quite awkward I never knew about for biblical dating of the universe, and it brings us back once again to that world of textual criticism that so many would prefer simply did not exist. But it does and it affects what Christians could believe to be foundational, even the 100% literal guys. UNDERLYING THE LITERAL TRUTH INTERPRETATION IS THE ASSUMPTION OF ONE, SOLID ORIGINAL BIBLICAL TEXT THAT WE HAVE ACCESS TO TODAY. Sorry, was I shouting? Here I go again:
The Masoretic (Hebrew) texts and the Septuagint (Greek) provide very different figures, if trying to add up the years literally via the genealogies (the literal "days" of creation in Genesis not really adding anything extra to this total). If you are a creationist, then you need to be able to say that you take ONE of these texts as authoritative, but which one? If you go with the Septuagint, then you have a universe dating back 7500 years; if you go with the Masoretic version, then it's 6000 years.
That is 1500 years of existence that may or may not have been. For a creationist, that is a huge expanse of time, but I have never heard it mentioned.
I say "they" in referring to creationist because I am not in the "they" camp. I am not a creationist; I do not believe in a 6-day creation, either at around 5500 BC ago or 4000 BC.
Part of the reason for this is that I believe that it is impossible for any Christian to truly treat the texts as some kind of mono-genre factual-knowledge book, as this textual problem should be making obvious. If it is a book of facts then why can't we know for sure if the Septuagint was an inaccurate translation of Hebrew source texts of those genealogies and that the Masoretic text was the accurate copy? Copyists and translators made mistakes and changes: accept it or shove it under the carpet.
So creationists are not "playing it safe" with the Bible. The opposite is true. By hiding textual realities and important exegetical concerns like genre, they can contribute to devaluing the credibility of the book they think they defend.
Anthony Buzzard does not always inspire me, but here I found his article on "Echad" very clear about what we should and should not consider reasonable teaching about this word.
Trinitarians in examining the hebrew word for "one", will tend to infuse it with plural connotations based on usages in the Old Testament where it modifies a compound noun, approaches the task in a way that is misleading, in the same way that it can in presenting a one-sided view of the debates around "Elohim" (i.e. simply ignoring the pertinence of key Elohim passages like Psalm 82). The key and simple point that Buzzard powerfully demonstrates is that the word "echad" itself remains stable, whether referring to compound nouns (such as bagpipes) or simple nouns (such as bag or pipe).
Trinitarians really need to be more careful in arguing their case and transparent about their limitations.
Unitarians need to be careful about championing falsehood of Trinitarian claims based on single refutations such as this.
