This isn’t quite accurate about Heiser: he contends that we need to understand the text the way the original audience(s) would have. And he is correct in this because it is only when we understand the original intent will we be able to apply it to Christ. Any other approach requires believing that the Holy Spirit screwed up. It is the meaning that the writer the Spirit chose had in mind that points to Christ.
And if we don’t understand it the way “those who didn’t recognize him for who he was” did then we don’t know how Jesus understood it, because He adapted His message to fit with how they understood it. This is a bit tough since how second Temple Judaism understood even just the Torah was not the way the original audiences did (especially after the discontinuity we can see in Ezra and Nehemiah). The same applies to Paul; he understood the Old Testament the way second Temple Judaism did since that was the meaning he learned since childhood.
Not sure what you’re reading, but I find Biblehub gives only three options for what’s in the text:
“I am who I am”, or “I am what I am”, or “I will be what I will be”.
and “I AM”, or “I WILL BE”.
You’re looking at the lexical form, which is not what’s in the text.
BTW, there’s an important interpretive principle involved: no application of a text can contradict the original meaning of the text.
Maybe that’s what Heiser states as his contention, but in practice, he at least some of the time defers to his interpretation of the Old Testament writers. Consider his interpretation of John 10:34-36. That Jesus is referring to Psalm 82 in verse 34 is widely accepted. It’s the only thing we know of, as far as I know, to which he could have been referring (but we don’t know what we don’t know, and we can’t know that there isn’t something else that has been lost; I’m not claiming there is, just pointing out a fact). For Heiser, Psalm 82’s “You are Gods” refers to lesser Gods, not human beings. Thus, Jesus is referring to that also.
Yet, Jesus’ next statement defines those called Gods as those “to whom the word of God came.” This is precisely how Ezekiel prefaced a number of his visions: “…the word of the Lord came to me…” (Ez 3:16), “And the word of the Lord came to me…” (Ez 6:1) (Ez 7:1) (Ez 14:12), “Then the word of the Lord came to me…” (Ez 12:1) (Ez 13:1) and so on. If Jesus was referring to Psalm 82 AND meaning what Heiser interprets him as meaning, why did he define “you are gods” in this way?
Further, the Jews were accusing him of declaring Himself to be God. How would associating himself with the lesser Gods Heiser says Psalm 82 is referring to counter their argument or justify calling Himself God? If Heiser is correct, wouldn’t Jesus be saying nothing more or less than, “Yes, I am God” or, more accurately, “I am not THE God, but rather a lesser God?” How is this a defense against blasphemy, which Jesus was clearly intending it to be with verse 36?
Further still, he then stated what he considered to be the standard for evaluating him: “ 37If I am not doing the works of My Father, then do not believe Me. 38But if I am doing them, even though you do not believe Me, believe the works themselves, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in Me, and I am in the Father.”
This, in my mind, is pointing to “Ye must be perfect,” his use of trees and fruit metaphors (particularly in his warnings about false prophets) and Paul’s assertion that we will “in all things grow up into Christ Himself….”
IOW, Jesus is redefining here and in many places the very concepts of God and Man that have locked the Jews into a separation from God that, while making them confident of their theology render them incapable of recognizing God in human form and of either being “in the Father” or allowing the Father to be in them.
Scholarship is important, but no amount of scholarship, no matter how thorough or sophisticated it is, can make a bad tree into a good tree or enable one to spiritually mature, to become not of the world, but of the Spirit. Why? Because scholarship is OF THE WORLD. Scholarship is not how God will “put [His} laws in their minds and inscribe them on their hearts.” It is not how “everyone will know [Him]”
From what I have seen, you and Heiser and many others don’t get that. You think, as science thinks, that the aim is to get the theory right. But it isn’t. Life is not theory. I hope I am wrong about that, but I spent a good bit of time on Heiser’s FB forum and so many people were—as you seem to do here—ignoring the people they were talking to—having no interest in them as people on a journey of growth—and focused on “setting them straight” or even belittling those who interpret things more conventionally. I saw no acts of love there. Unfortunately, discussion groups like that one and this one can make one prone to be that way precisely because another’s words are the only thing one can see of them.
If scholarship were so essential to spiritual maturity, hardly anyone become spiritually mature. And this is how scholarship, and science, works: You research and contemplate, create a hypothesis, test it if possible and, when you’ve arrived at one you can’t disprove, you accept it provisionally. Except, in reality, the process doesn’t end there. The provisional hypothesis (formally a “theory” in science) fills a niche in the world. It gets repeated and implanted in people’s minds. It’s very difficult to go around saying something repeatedly, incorporating it into ones contemplations, hearing other people say it and expound on it, and it NOT become a part of ones basic assumptions. Because this is how the mind works, exactly like ecosystems work. If anything finds a niche in an ecosystem, and can replicate, it replicates, alters the ecosystem (because the ecosystem must achieve a form of balance so that it can continue and not fall apart) and becomes an integral part of it.
This, IMHO, is a major reason the writing of the Bible was necessary, and a “chosen people” was necessary. The former, so that God’s thoughts would be recorded and, therefore, immune to the altering of the human mind (which can occur rapidly and result in the complete flipping of the meanings of words, the values considered important and, thus, the actions considered good or bad). Thanks to the writing of the Bible, we can go to the source, not having to rely on what another human being tells us. But that depended on the latter: For the Bible to be preserved, there must be a strong culture with preserving the Bible as one of its highest values. The Jews functioned that way with the Law, and Christians have functioned that way with Gospel of Jesus. Without those cultures, the Bible would have been contaminated, its meaning completely transformed, long, long ago. And without those cultures, the Byzantine church would not have come into being and, thereby, restrained the ideas, values and actions that had taken root in the world with the rise of civilization for as long as it did.
My view is that the Old Testament was written to the Jews of the time, as any good teacher would do, to challenge them with as much of the Truth as they could handle, but no more, and to restrain their self-destructive impulses (the sins in their heart). And Jesus came not to TELL us the Truth—because any good teacher knows that teaching is not telling—but to demonstrate it and cause those of us who are receptive, the Elect, to spiritually mature, not through understanding scripture in a scholarly sense (although studying God’s word is extremely important), but through guidance by the Holy Spirit, the things that happen in our lives, the things that are created in the world and, most of all, the relationship we develop with God because we accept as our life’s purpose following Jesus and seeking to do his commands.
But also, as a master teacher would do, the Old Testament is intended to continue to challenge us, those who came after those to whom it was directly written, on through the generations until it is time for the End to come, such that it’s meaning can come to be seen more and more deeply and fundamentally, which is why there can be apparent contradictions in it. At a certain point, ones understanding of it reveals that these are not contradictions at all.
Jesus—not just his words, but his actions as reported in the Bible and in people’s lives ever since his death and resurrection—is the source of the meaning of the Old Testament. When you understand that the stork bringing a baby is a story appealing to very young children and used to satisfy their curiosity until such time that they are prepared to know the truth, you don’t benefit from understanding how babies are made through that story. But until you understand the purpose of that story, if you are from a culture that has no such response to young children’s wondering where babies come from, that story is likely to just seem wrong. If you learn that story and why it is told to young children, then this gives you a valuable resource should you need to help a child who learned that story later learn the truth. You will be able to relate to them. So learning how the Jews understood the Old Testament at the time it was written has value in enabling us to help others, but it does not, IMHO, illuminate the Truth of God or what he has done and is doing in the world.
The Bible, IMV, is an element and force God inserted into his Creation at just the right time to yield the results God wants it to yield, some of which are those I described above. As an element and a force, it is not only words as we understand what words are. Isn’t that the point of John’s opening to his Gospel? When he calls Jesus the Word, is he really speaking of a word as we normally understand it? Is he saying Jesus is a sequence of letters that, assembled together in the correct order communicate a certain defined meaning? Importantly, I think he doesn’t say, “And God was the Word,” but rather, “And the Word was God.” I think this is pointing to something really fundamental about both the nature of words, the nature of God and the nature of what God is doing in the world through his Word, which is here both in the form of words as we usually understand them to be, in the form of Jesus himself, in the form of the stories about Jesus and his teachings and the testimonies of the Apostles and the many, many people who have come to know him over the past 2,000 years.
We cannot know God by regarding the words of the scripture the way we regard the words we use that can be collected in a dictionary, their definitions and grammatical features enunciated without ambiguity. We have to revisit them again and again, and not in parts, but as a whole, and not trying to intellectually analyze them (though this is a useful and necessary exercise), but rather letting go of our intellect and letting the Holy Spirit illuminate them.
Reality is not abstract, but words are. God is not abstract, but the word “God,” is.
And no one can be an authority on God or God’s words other than one who fully knows Him. Which is clearly not me or you or Dr. Heiser, because if any of us fully knew God, this would be revealed by our fruits, which would be like the fruits produced by Jesus.
37If I am not doing the works of My Father, then do not believe Me. 38But if I am doing them, even though you do not believe Me, believe the works themselves, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in Me, and I am in the Father.”
Right there in Psalm 82 the word of God came to the divine council.
I suspect He was trying to deter them by throwing out something disturbing and applying a principle.
I see the argument as being that Jesus changed the reason for the members of the divine council being called gods: in the Psalm, it’s because that’s what they are, they’re elohim. Jesus switches it out and makes them have the title of gods because the word of God came to them. By that definition, His audience then qualified as gods, so why would they be aiming to stone Him? The defense against blasphemy is that since they believed the word of God had come to them then they also qualified as gods under Jesus’ shifted definition.
Keeping in mind that the question was whether He is the Christ-- having neutralized their complaint, Jesus goes on to point to the works He has done as sufficient answer.
So He disturbs their categories by ending up with God, the divine council, and humans to whom the word of God came all qualifying as elohim, and then goes right back to naming Himself God’s Son while leaving them in enough confusion He could just walk away.
Sorry, but scholarship is neither of the world nor of heaven – it’s neutral. Though I would contend that it rests on Jesus as Logos and God as faithful, both of which tell us that the universe is an orderly and reasonable/logical place – and that includes the scriptures.
But the “Truth of God” cannot be illuminated without it. God didn’t have two plans and tore one up when He started a new one, He had one continuous plan, and you can’t understand the pre-Christ part without knowing what it says – and what it says is determined by the meaning intended by the original writer(s) and audience(s). If you’re not working with the original meaning, all you’re really doing is making stuff up.
The Greek reads, “And GOD is what the Word was being”. It gets watered down somewhat to “And the Word was God” to fit ordinary English better.
If we don’t do the first part we never visit them at all. And there is no whole without visiting the parts – the whole arises from the parts.
That’s an exercise that isn’t based on scripture. The promise of the Spirit doing any “illuminating” was not made to and does not pertain to individuals; it was made to the leadership of the church and by extension to their successors.
Indeed I would contend that it is precisely because individual Christians have been led to believe that this promise was for individuals that we have the chaos of tens of thousands of so-called “Protestant” denominations.
And yet the greatest authority on John’s Gospel I have ever encountered was an atheist – he understood it, he could expound on its meaning . . . he just didn’t believe it.
[quote=“St.Roymond, post:99, topic:52653”]
Right there in Psalm 82 the word of God came to the divine council.[/quote]
Those words never appear in Psalm 82. There, God is present with and speaking directly to the members of the Divine Council. Where else in the Bible is someone speaking directly, face-to-face, to someone else described as “the words of [person/God speaking] came to [person spoken to]?”
I see why you would interpret as you do, because within the limits of human knowledge and understanding, you can’t imagine another option. But this is not clear. This is a good example of the weakness of a scholarly approach to understanding God and his Word fully and accurately. Scholarship—all theology—is human thought, but the Bible is the product of God’s thought. How can human thought be sufficient to knowing God’s thought?
That’s a good suspicion, IMHO, yet, if that’s the case, then can we regard what he actually says as indicating some universal truth?
You are actually agreeing with me. Jesus is challenging human concepts of both “God” and “human.” In so doing, isn’t he also challenging the very concept of the Divine Council?
The article is one of the best discussions of the two main interpretations of Psalm 82, Heiser’s and the alternative that he is challenging. A very good case is made for Heiser’s interpretation (which, from what I’ve read—and according to the author—has long been the interpretation of Jewish scholars). Yet, it raises a whole lot of questions for me. If you’re interested in pursuing that, I’ll start a new thread rather than go off on that tangent within this already very long one.
I can’t agree with that. A feature of the universe we live in is it’s tendency towards destruction. Everything in it, eventually, is destroyed. This is what science has observed and what Daniel and Jesus and Revelations prophesied. What you see will surely be true after the events of Revelation take place, but it isn’t true of the universe in which everything in the Bible took place prior to that.
As far as scriptures, I think you are expressing the assumption that is behind your faith in scholarship. I would argue that this assumption is a desire of the intellect, because they intellect can only work with things that are “orderly and reasonable/logical….” But intellect is a category we have imposed on our understanding of our minds. That concept points to a set of abilities our minds have, but if you get down to what our minds actually are and how they actually work, there is no such categorical distinction. Our minds are a part of our being (“mind” itself being a category invented by our intellects) and our being is a complete, integrated whole—even our separation of ourselves from God in our concepts is an invention of our intellect. If God is “over all, in all and through all,” and if Creation was spoken into being, doesn’t that indicate that Creation, all of reality, God’s thought? And if it’s God’s thought, then we are God’s thought. If that’s true, isn’t our separation from Him an false idea of ours? This is embedded in the serpent’s temptation of Eve: “ For God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” This is the first time the concept of them not being like God is introduced. Yes, it’s implied by the description of their Creation and existence prior to this, but the concept is not stated until the serpent says the above. And out of that comes disobeying God, their eyes being “opened,” seeing themselves as naked and so on.
And why is seeing themselves as naked the first consequence of their eyes being “opened?” Could it be because physical nakedness is, in a material sense, the greatest vulnerability a human being can have? And this is only a vulnerability if one perceive’s ones environment as a threat, which requires understanding one’s being as being separate from one’s environment.
Thus, IME, the most fundamental issue in this story is the idea of being separate from God.
Just making stuff up is definitely a risk, but I would argue that God works through everything, not only through the words of the Bible, and thus scholarship—which by its nature is focused on text—is inevitably limited in its ability to interpret the text of the Bible and, thus, no more immune from error in its understanding of the text than any other approach. Isn’t this actually why scholars began drawing upon archeology and non-Biblical texts and so on? I’ve not encountered any scholarship that begins with the premise that the only complete and accurate understanding of the text is God’s and this requires considering the whole of everything—even that which we have been told little about, which is the nature of God’s existence and any part of reality not contained by the material universe (aren’t these things what Heiser was trying to reveal?). How, though, can it be otherwise?
I guess you base that on the fact that he said it to the disciples…?
what about the tearing of the temple curtain upon (or right before) Jesus’ death? Isn’t this referring to the division within the temple between the inner sanctum—where priests spoke directly to God—and the outer sanctum?
There is no indication of a separate leadership body in the subsequent churches as presented in Acts and the letters of the Apostles. The closest to that is the idea of Elders. Peter says, presumably to the whole church, “… you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood….” (1 Peter 2:5)
In Revelations 1, speaking to the 7 churches, with no limitation to leadership of those churches indicated, the angel of the Lord says, “To Him who loves us and has released us from our sins by His blood, who has made us to be a kingdom, priests to His God and Father—to Him be the glory and power forever and ever!”
And in his declaration of the New Covenant in Jeremiah 31, God says “No longer will each man teach his neighbor or his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ because they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD.”
if each individual does not have access to the Holy Spirit, how can that be? Is everyone but the church leadership not going to know God until after the events of Revelation? I don’t find that convincing in the context of text, and my personal experience makes it impossible for me to believe.
Yet, that is YOUR estimation, a result of your limitations as a human being. Perhaps that says more about the flaws of human understanding—of scholarship—than it does about either John’s Gospel or the role of the Holy Spirit in the spiritual growth of individuals.
Perhaps people who truly understand scriptures, rather than engaging in theoretical study and debate about their meaning, become dedicated servants of God, doing God’s work in the world under or beyond the reach of the radar of scholars and doing it that way because Jesus and the Apostles (and many since then) demonstrated the fate likely in this world for one who reveals oneself to being totally reliant on and committed to God, a fate that served God’s purpose with those who met it, but maybe doesn’t always, his purpose for an individual in some cases requiring them to work off the radar.
I don’t, however, want to appear to be simply anti-scholarship or against scholars. I’m not. I think it and they are necessary and useful. I just think scholarship can only go so far, and that, because scholars tend to know way more than most people, it can lead them to believing their own conclusions are THE TRUTH.
But I think it’s very important to always remain open to the possibility of there being more to it than one currently knows and understands. And I believe the Holy Spirit and what God does in ones life is essential improving ones knowledge and understanding.
Anyway, I appreciate your knowledge and commitment to engaging with people here. Whether or not one or both of us are getting something wrong, I believe the engagement is beneficial.
How are words spoken by God to the divine council not the word of God?
Jesus says that’s what’s happening in Psalm 82 when He refers to the divine council as those to whom the word of God came.
The Bible is human thought – God doesn’t dictate or take over people;s minds, that;s what demons do.
Did you not read where I said He was applying a principle?
Huh? He’s making use of the concept of the divine council, not challenging it. He could also be asserting that He is a member of the divine council.
That doesn’t negate the universe being orderly and reasonable/logical.
Are you aware that perhaps the biggest reason Revelation got included in the canon was that Christians back then read it and recognized it was talking about what they were living through? The “events of Revelation” have been happening since Jesus ascended.
My only assumption is that words mean what the original writer intended and the original audience understood, and treating them any other way is just reading into them what you want them to say – and that this is disrespectful to the writer and his audience; in the case of the scriptures it is also disrespectful to the Holy Spirit Who picked the writers.
Sounds like Gnosticism.
Given that the scriptures are what tell is we are separated, how can it be a false idea?
Studying the text in its context is “no more immune from error in its understanding of the text than any other approach”? If that’s true, then there’s no use in reading scripture at all, just make up what you want. That would be true of not just any translation but of the original languages as well since being able to read the original languages is a matter of scholarship.
Odd, that’s exactly where most of my grad school professors in classes dealing with scripture began – and it’s exactly why they (and Heiser) did scholarship, because the meaning of the text begins with what the original writer whom the Holy Spirit chose meant with the words he selected. You can’t get to what God means by the text if you don’t start with the text He inspired.
??? This has absolutely nothing to do with understanding the scriptures.
Sure there is. It’s clearest in Paul’s discussion of ordination in his letters to Timothy.
Don’t mix subjects – there’s a difference between knowing God and interpreting scripture.
Actually it was the judgment of the entire New Testament faculty.
I think you are proceeding on some assumptions I do not share.
That understanding scripture depends on understanding how the readers at the time of its writing understood it.
That the latter understanding can be known.
That scholarly investigation of the text is the only way that latter understanding can be known and, thus, scholarly investigation is the only means by which scripture can be understood.
That words have fixed meanings the way a variables in a particular instance (where the values have been set) of a particular equation have fixed values.
That conclusions are either objective or subjective.
That only objective conclusions are reliable.
That the processes of science/scholarship are the only means for arriving at objective conclusions.
The processes of science/scholarship are intellectual processes, utilizing and working with the tools of the intellect.
Thus, all objective knowledge is intellectual knowledge.
Thus, only intellectual knowledge is reliable.
These are all assumptions that became common and foundational with the European Enlightenment, their origins in Classic Greece (but, more basically, in the nature of the interaction between consciousness and material reality).
Jesus, however, appears to me to have known things directly, with all of his being. He knew the demons he drove out of those they’d possessed directly. He knew directly when his power level had changed and what had caused it to change. He knew the woman at the well directly, even though they’d never met in any way that the woman had known about. And so on. There was no intermediary, such as intellectual processes, between that on which he focused his awareness and his KNOWING what he perceived and what it meant.
A scholarly approach to the text can not work with this idea, because it is at the core not an idea. I have just expressed/described in intellectual terms something that cannot be known in those terms. It can only be experienced.
When Jesus said of God, “as you, Father, are in me, and I am in you…” (John 17:20), he is referring to their direct connection. They are separate identities, such that they can regard one another—that is, each be the object of the other’s observation—but whatever one feels or thinks or perceives, the other feels or thinks or perceives as we do our own feelings, thoughts and perceptions.
I am speculating, of course, but how can this not be true?
The thing is, understanding things through direct perception is very different than understanding things through intellectual knowledge. It has to be experienced.
We all do it, but for most of us only on a gross (as opposed to fine) level. I mean, our material form is made of electrical impulses taking place at several different levels (all the way down to particles in an atom), which are made of even finer stuff. But few of us can perceive even our own organs unless there’s a problem producing some unusual sensation.
But God must perceive all of this, mustn’t he? He must perceive more deeply and completely than any human, than any other spiritual being even, musn’t he?
Jesus prayed “…that they may be one as We are one—I in them and You in Me…”
Doesn’t this have to mean that Jesus knows us directly the way God knows him directly and that this connection goes both ways—that we know Jesus and God directly, as we know our own feelings, thoughts and perceptions. And that it’s only different, because God can keep things from Jesus (Matthew 24:36) and us, and Jesus can keep things from us. We cannot keep things from Jesus or God and Jesus cannot keep things from God.
And this is the structure of relationships presented in many stories of the Bible.
God is directly perceived by certain people who unusual in their faith in God and submission to his will, but God limits what can be perceived. This is not always the case, but it’s the case for the most significant figures.
Thus, my basic assumption is that direct revelation from God is the only way scripture can be completely and fully understood. Scholarship, like the Law, helps prepare us for revelation, but as the Law cannot produce spiritual maturity, scholarship cannot produce complete and full understanding of Scripture.
The only way to know God is directly. This is why, I think, Paul could say, ‘For the whole law can be summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”’
Through this, our resistance to Jesus in us loses its energy and we come ever more able to perceive Jesus in us and God in Him, and also in others. We can start to see that everyone we perceive has Jesus in them and God in them, whether or not they know, accept and commit themselves to Him. And when we do, we can really know what Jesus meant in Matthew 25, “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.“ And we can see that this doesn’t just apply to current believers, but everyone, because every believer was once an unbeliever. The way we regard any other person is the way we regard Jesus.
And we can start to see that God is in everything, because what we perceive as matter is God’s thought.
And all of the above is in Scripture.
Consider that Jesus spoke to “them” in parables so that: “Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand.” (Matthew 13:13)
Is this only how God spoke to “them” while on Earth in the form of Jesus? Or is it how he has spoken to “them” with the entire Bible?
Yet, for those who truly followed Jesus, “…the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given….” (Matthew 13:11)
That knowledge cannot be taken through scholarship. It can only be given to whom God desires it to be.
And scholarship cannot prevent misinterpretations, false ideas, theological divides, and so on. Human beings are limited and because each is limited in a unique way, there will always be disagreements over scriptural interpretation and those whose faith is in their scholarship—who believe they’re interpretation cannot be mistaken or that someone else’s cannot be correct or that someone’s must be correct and that CORRECT interpretation is what matters most—will cause people to separate according to which side of the disagreement they prefer.
I think this is the source of the many separations the church has undergone.
And they will, thus, fail in the one commandment for which all of the Law, all of the Bible, all of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, all of the past 2,000 years of Jesus directed events have occurred to make at least some of us capable of remaining true to: Love your neighbor as yourself.
That is the whole Law. It is not, in and of itself, complicated. The complications are results of our ignorance and sin.
And though Jesus is our Lord, he is also our neighbor.
At the end of John, Jesus did the most neighborly things possible when he appeared to the disciples on the beach. The Lord of all Creation helped them with their fishing and then invited them to share the meal he had cooked.
There was no formality between them. John even leaned against him.
But we often struggle to see this simplicity. And we often cling to something that feels solid, and deep scholarship carries with it the risk of feeling solid and, thus, tempting us to cling to it.
But the only solid thing is the Love of God, which our love of our neighbor, as well, because there is no love besides the Love of God.
May you know that Love, may it be in you and you in it, deeply and forever.
Known perfectly? No. But that doesn’t mean we can’t work towards it.
Of course this is true – again, it’s how language works.
Again this is true. Without scholarly investigation we don’t even know what the words themselves mean, let alone what message the Holy Spirit intended – and the latter is only found in what the writing(s) meant to the writer(s) and the original audience(s) because that’s who the writings are/were to. We are, in reading ancient literature, reading someone else’s mail.
If words don’t have fixed meanings in a given text, then the text is worthless because anyone can make it mean what they want. That’s not how literature works, it’s how devious lawyers work. The Holy Spirit didn’t inspire a mess of muddled meanings that people can pick from, He inspired a specific message with a specific meaning for the people to whom the message was given.
This is another item that is obviously true. Subjective “conclusions” aren’t conclusions at all, they’re eisegesis, reading into the text what you want to find.
This is just a tautology – objective conclusions is what scholarship is for, and without it you have at best guesswork.
Another tautology.
The only other option is intuition, which has more chance to be wrong than to be right. Intuition can be part of it, but what is intuited has to be validated by objective research.
Yet another tautology.
What baffles me is that if the text at hand is an ancient Sumerian text there is no dispute that all of the above are true, but when it comes to scripture people want to throw these out. They’re the principles I learned in seventeenth and eighteenth century English literature courses as well as in fourth century Latin plus in principles of translation courses, and for that matter in ancient Greek readings such as Xenophon, Plato, Aesop, and Aristophanes. Closer to home, they’re principles found in Origen and other ancient scholars who dealt with the scriptures.
Anything other than objective analysis demotes the text to something less than human literature – and while the scriptures are more than just human literature, they are never less than that. Scripture is incarnational, which means it is always fully human, and as human literature it must be approached with the very same tools that are applied to any other human literature.
Ultimately? When dealing with literature, yes, because anything else is not based on the text. Intuition may play a part, but intuition is not reliable in determining the meanings of words.
Unless one of us is Jesus, this is irrelevant.
In terms of words, to say there were no intellectual processes is to say there is no brain activity involved.
Of course it can, because that will show up in the text.
So? That has nothing to do with understanding literature.
And you just demonstrated the truth of what you’ve been calling “assumptions” – you just engaged in intellectual activity to convey an idea. If those “assumptions” were not true then I could subjectively decide that what you wrote actually supports Gnosticism.
[This was my biggest objection to the historical-critical method; it was a way of getting a text to say almost anything; for example I had a professor who maintained that the book of Joshua was an ancient travel guide to a whole batch of piles of stones in Israel – and he wasn’t joking. Except for the basic analysis, it was a primarily subjective enterprise.]
But now you’re using intellectual processes – and you have to unless you want to claim to be able to not just read minds but to project your thoughts into other people’s brains.
Of course. But we aren’t God, we’re human, and the process of conveying meaning from one human to another uses words, and words are inherently an intellectual exercise. Poetry could be considered an exception but it isn’t really, and when literature in an ancient language using an ancient literary form and resting in an ancient worldview then understanding that poetry is an intellectual exercise.
Thus comes chaos with thousands of sects, cults, and heresies.
The whole point of scripture being written is that words have meanings, and those meanings are found in the intent of the writer and how his audience understood them. That isn’t an optional activity, it’s the foundational starting point. Again, while scripture is more than ancient literature it is never less than that.
That’s an error that has arisen repeatedly. Indeed if – as has often been the case – it involves an erroneous understanding of Jesus it can rise to the level of heresy. The only humans with “Jesus in them” are Christians, according to Jesus Himself along with Paul.
No more than does my puppy Knox or the cows in the pasture down the road, or even than the tree by the library whose branches I can see whipping in the wind.
But since we are reading other people’s mail, it cannot be reached without scholarship.
Prevent, no – but reduce immensely, yes. In a course on Christian cults, every last one of them had chosen subjective feelings about a text over objective study, and in a course on the multitude of denominations there was almost always an abandonment of scholarship at some point (John Calvin is a good example of this; he intuited that if not all will be saved then logically those who aren’t must be predestined to condemnation/perdition, and he locked down his position on that conclusion and stopped addressing the scriptures through scholarship).
This is something more pertinent to a different thread, but the Westminster Confession makes a valuable point:
Nevertheless we acknowledge the inward illumination of the Spirit of God to be necessary for the saving understanding of such things as are revealed in the Word
It doesn’t say that those without any inward illumination can’t understand the scriptures, it only says that theirs will not be a saving understanding.
I suppose I ought to post this over in that other thread.
You’re interpreting me as presenting a either-or situation in which one either examines the text in a scholarly fashion or rejects that altogether, even though I’ve repeatedly said that scholarship matters.
That way of a text imparting understanding, though, cannot be the only way or mythologies could never have functioned as they have in all cultures. Sure, before they were written down, ancient mythologies were not literally texts, but the same applies, because they were transmitted via language.
Many words in many contexts do not have singular meanings, but rather layers of meanings. When they concern fundamental aspects of living a life as a human being, those layers can be concealed from a person until that person has had the requisite experience. Yet, they can aid or lead a person to have that experience. That is how mythologies functioned in ancient societies. They arose out of (likely so, at least) a community over time and became a central basis for the community’s culture in which was embedded what the community needed to know to sustain itself in their environment, functioning to impart to successive generations this knowledge, which included intellectual understanding, but was not entirely intellectual understanding. And this process sustained ancient cultures for generation after generation. Why was it so successful? I would argue that is because living in the world without being at odds with it is a whole being endeavor, not merely an intellectual one. Ancient cultures that didn’t change for hundreds or even thousands of years were a part of their environment much as all other things are part of their environment. Some have seen the pre-Fall Garden of Eden as a mythological representation of that stage in human history. (Of course, human history is not that simple, but it is clear that hunter-gathering preceded agriculture which preceded civilizations. It’s just not that simple because there were a variety of societies in a variety of places at a variety of times that followed their own path from hunter-gathering to agriculture).
I believe the Bible functions mythologically and understanding it is a whole being endeavor, not merely an intellectual one.
When the rest of our being is confused about ourselves, the nature of life and/or the nature of reality, our intellect can be valuable to us. But if we believe our intellectual knowledge is Truth, we have deceived ourselves. It is, at best, a pointer to Truth. If we already have that Truth, we do not need to engage in intellectual inquiry, because we will simply see in the text the Truth (or untruth) that we already know. And intellectual inquiry is no more required to acquire such Truth than it was for Mozart to acquire the ability to and understanding of music.
I would argue that belief in intellectual knowledge as Truth, and the desires and aversions generated by that belief in the context of others who believe differently, is the reason for the many splits within Christians.
Abandoning scholarship can produce wrong ideas.
Biases, regardless of scholarship, can produce wrong ideas.
Unrecognized, errant assumptions can produce wrong ideas.
But none of those, in and of themselves, causes people to disassociate with other people. Such disassociation is the result of practical concerns and/or strong emotions. Where theology is concerned, those are produced by belief in ideas, not by ideas in and of themselves.
The Law is a long, often difficult presentation of rules, events and ideas, yet all of that points to one simple thing, as Paul said, which I’ve said in our discussion, but will say again: The whole of the law can be summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Galatians 5:14).
Isn’t that what God wants of us? Isn’t that why Jesus came and was sacrificed? Isn’t that why he said to love your enemy and to not seek treasures in the world? That if you put God first, all the practical things will be added to you?
The intellect can understand the definitions of those words, but that understanding will not make you want or be able to follow that one command. And neither will parsing the text of the Bible or memorizing it or reciting it again and again. Those are things we need to do when we do not and/or are unable to follow that command. They help prepare us to follow that command.
For how do we know what it means to love?
Jesus and the Bible lead us to the answer to that question, but if there is no greater love than to lay down ones life for a friend, how can we know that love, or know if we have so great a love for our friend, unless we are faced with the choice to do that or not?
But so long as we look at the text as if it were a series of math problems—as if language only functioned to transmit intellectual meaning—it is unlikely to help us in that way. Rather, it will mislead us, because WE will BELIEVE our own understanding of it. And that will become our idol.
Your responses to my comments (and to others) suggests to me that this is YOU. That’s why I have continued to engage in this discussion.
But I could certainly be wrong. I hope I am. If I am, perhaps I’ll never know, but my impression of you is of no consequence and does not diminish my love for you, for I consider you my brother.
But if I’m not, I hope you’ll reflect on what I’ve said and consider the possibility that you are operating on a flawed assumption about the Bible.
False understanding comes from our own imagination. If one has a direct revelation from God, it will be TRUE, won’t it? The problem is that one cannot impart this truth to anyone else in its entirety and no one can confirm if it is true or if it is simply someone’s imagination at work.
Yet, this is true of ANY deep idea. Consider quantum theory. There are a whole host of prerequisites for even understanding it. Many of those who could at the time it was proposed did not accept it on the basis of their own understanding (including Einstein).
A test of such revealed truth IS scripture, but that’s not full proof, because WE can misunderstand scripture. If someone’s revelation seems to contradict scripture, then that is a cause for caution, but it depends on the nature of the contradiction.
As with Jesus test for identifying a false profit (“You will know them by their fruits”), the veracity of revealed truth can only be determined over time. But that’s the case with any supposed truth. Such as quantum theory. The fact that it’s been put to use reliably for almost a century now is the most reliable affirmation of its veracity.
You’re demonstrating a problem with assuming words have fixed meanings.
What does it actually mean for Jesus to be IN us?
But sticking with your approach, I have a few issues with your conclusion.
Paul said that God is “in all.” Was he limiting “all” to those who followed Jesus? If not, then in what way is God “in all?” Even if so, in what way is God “in” those who follow Jesus?
Jesus’ request that we be in Him as He is in God has that crucial word, “as.” This is a word that likens one thing to another. IOW, he is requesting that we be in Him in the same way that He is in God. What way is that? Is it the ONLY way? If God is “in all,” is it not possible that God is in even those who do not believe in him, but that, since they do not believe in him, they do not KNOW him? That what Jesus is meaning is that we KNOW God to the extent that God wants us to know Him—in the way that God meant when he proclaimed the new covenant in Jeremiah 31.
Jesus said, ““If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you.” Have you ever known anyone to do anything like this? Yet, Jesus said the ability is in us if we have faith—and suggested that faith can be greater or lesser and, in using the mustard seed as his reference, that that ability does not even require the greatest possible faith. Of course, it wouldn’t be us doing it, it would be God. But then, that is the case with Jesus. He did not multiply the loaves or walk on water or calm the storm Himself, but rather, God did it. Isn’t he saying, in his assertion about faith, that we can do the same?
Doesn’t all of that suggest that there is actually no barrier between us and God except our lack of faith?
How can we know what Jesus meant by “in Me” without understanding fully what we are in and of ourselves and in relation to God?
If we have the capacity to do miraculous things—things that defy all rational understanding of the world—how can we possibly understand what we are on a purely rational level?
And that’s without even considering what Paul said in Ephesians 4:13 & 15. What does he mean by “we will in all things grow up into Christ Himself, who is the head?” When you consider that with Jesus’ assertion about faith above, doesn’t it suggest that we are actually no more limited than Jesus himself?
If that’s true, why do we appear to be? Wouldn’t the reason have to be inadequate faith and adequate love of our neighbor?
You might object that “neighbor” means only fellow believers, but then why are we to love our enemies?
Your post has very bad theology, failing to recognize the distinction between the Father and the Son. Paul said, “… One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in all.”
That is different than what he says about “Christ in you”.
That’s an interpretation; others are possible. Also, it’s “a grain of mustard”, an idiom for “as small as there is”.
This is an interesting passage because what Jesus states is an impossibility: you might transplant a mulberry into a river delta, but not into a sea. Additionally, the species was rarely transplanted because cuttings planted the right depth in the soil and then watered grow easily. The imagery at the end of the statement is also rich: “it should obey you” yields the picture of the tree climbing out of where it was and traveling to the new place.
Between believers and God, yes – it says nothing of anyone else.
It’s also safe to make the observation that a person of faith having an entire mountain relocated in sudden manner at their command is also an impossibility. So the passage is probably a hyperbolic expression of praise that God can and does do seemingly impossible things - which God indeed does. But that is not the same as saying God does any or all impossible things that we can possibly imagine being done. So it leaves us room for literary enthusiasm of expression without needing to reduce all such praise into flat literal claims. “My daddy can do anything” is no less earnest (and even in its own way true) from the lips of an adoring child just because some adult can dryly point out that it isn’t technically true.
According to science, sure. But according to science almost everything in the Bible is an impossibility.
I don’t believe in science. I believe in Jesus. The Old Testament is functional, so there are things in it that are not universally true. Jesus reveals this in a number of ways. Jesus, however, said how things actually are to the extent that he addressed that issue.
So I will believe Jesus was telling the truth here.
When you start with the assumption that Jesus is measuring stick for all things, the Bible becomes a very different thing than when you start with the assumption that scripture is just text, doing nothing but imparting knowledge through fixed definitions like math formula.
I encourage you to set that assumption aside and assume, instead, that everything Jesus said and did was real and true, and that reality on the whole, as the Bible indicates, is far more than the material world accessible to science.
…by which you probably mean anything considered miraculous. And if so - yes, of course. If it looked possible, then it wouldn’t have been called a miracle. Technically science doesn’t say miracles never happen. It just says - here is how stuff ordinarily seems to proceed. Science tries to align itself with observable, physical reality. Hopefully you don’t dismiss reality. God’s works are just as true to and about God as God’s word is. At least that’s what a lot of us around here believe. If one appears to contradict the other, then we tend to see the problem in the understanding of the beholder rather than in God’s works and revelation. If mountains don’t move like that and never have, then either we say nobody has ever tried (not likely) or nobody who has tried had even a mustard seed worth of faith. Ever. Or else perhaps there is further understanding of his teaching yet to be attained. Because God’s kingdom, at least as Jesus seems to have taught and prayed for is very much about this reality, on earth as it is in Heaven.
I believe reality exists on many levels. On the level we can all perceive, of all the tools we have reason and the scientific method do the best job of discerning what it consist of and how it works. In the material world, they are very powerful tools, as the past 200+ years of scientific driven discoveries and innovations attest.
Yet, they are clearly limited. There are a number of reasons for that, which I won’t attempt to go into here. IMV, however, using them to evaluate Biblical claims—though it may be useful—rises to the level of faith in them when one concludes on their basis that the Bible is wrong.
So while your reasoning makes sense, to dismiss Jesus’ claim on its basis would be to put faith in it over faith in Jesus. That I won’t do.
But I have two other reasons for believing that Jesus was absolutely telling the truth. One is the extensive amount of time I put into learning about Buddhist thought and practicing meditation. This revealed a whole other dimension to reality, and a deep flaw with Western science and reason rooted in the nature of the mind. Buddha developed his ideas about the nature of the mind through observation and contemplation. Essentially, his effort was a scientific one. And anyone can observe and experience what he claimed if they are willing to devote the time and effort to the practices he recommended. I did enough (before I came to Jesus) of that to lose the faith in science and reason that I had had before that. One of the consequences for me was that—after psychiatry and medicines had failed—I freed myself from the chronic depression I had been struggling with for 25 years.
If you are interested in learning about this, a good introduction for a rational person is, I think, “The Monk and the Philosopher” linked below. If you want to dive into a more full look at religions of India, the best thing I know of is “Autobiography of a Yogi” by Paramahensa Yogananda, which you may have heard of. Besides being about his life, it contains much about religion in India, the understanding of reality of Indian spiritual masters and their view of Jesus and the Bible. Both Yognanda and his guru also wrote books more directly about Jesus (the one most focused on Jesus being “The Yoga of Jesus”). There is also much to be found at the Mind and Life Institute, which is dedicated to the scientific inquiry of Buddist ideas about the mind and reality (mostly the mind, last time I checked up on what was going on there).
My other reason for believing Jesus was telling the truth is a direct revelation. This and other experiences have made me look at the visions of prophets in the Bible, particularly Ezekial’s, differently (thought I wouldn’t say conclusively) than I otherwise would have.
In short, I had a vision of history that made me realize that many things have developed in history rather in the manner of a tree, beginning with a seed and growing into a vast structure, each existing both in and of itself and also as part of the overall structure of reality, which in this analogy is like a forest. As in a forest, these different “trees” have both maintained its own integrity and also interacted with others. And each “tree” is much more than that which we commonly assume it to be, because reality is much more than we commonly assume it to be.
For God, all of reality—in all of its dimensions—are like one forest of which he can see both in all of its details and overall and, thus, what appears as contradictions (or impossibilities) to us are simply the result of our inability to see all as God does.
And this includes scripture. Analyzing scripture (including looking outside of it to understand how people of the time would have understood it) as theologians have done is very useful and necessary to God’s plan, but it is also an imposition on scripture of our limitations. That endeavor combined with our impositions of our limitations on reality through the application of science and reason (which are also useful and necessary to God’s plan) has both furthered God’s plan to reconcile us with Him AND led us to divide ourselves and disrupt the natural order that science has done so much to reveal.
We cannot see as God sees, but we can glimpse how he sees. For reality is full of small structures reflecting its overall structure that we can see much as God sees All. A good one is a self-contained ecosystem. For such a system consists of various cyclical process that have both independence from the system and dependence upon it; that, in fact, together form and maintain it. This is what Darwin so astutely clued us into. An ecosystem is, in essence, a structure of niches to which the various things of which it is made are adapted. There are, however, literally no universal rules defining what a niche can be. And also, that structure is not limited to the realm of biology (as Dawkins saw). It is the same with thoughts and ideas. And as the Ancient (and current) mystics of India saw, it is also the fundamental nature of the mind. The mind is like an ecosystem.
So for me, until I can see how any one thing (whether it be a life form, inanimate matter, concept, behavior, whatever) fits within the structure of all things, I cannot fully know that thing. And to see that, I’d have to see All as God sees it, which I can’t.
Thus, I cannot regard anything as fixed or certain (except within a limited context), but must regard every idea, every interpretation as provisional.
Except for one: The Triune God. And there are only two definitive ways to know the Triune God, which are through Jesus in the Gospels and through personal revelation from God.
But these are not concepts. I cannot know them conceptually, even though conceptualization can help facilitate that knowing.
So to the possibility you stated—“there is further understanding of his teaching yet to be attained”— I would say, yes, there is.
But if you believe your own understanding, you block yourself from attaining higher understanding. Bias is very powerful and can be very subtle, as our material forms can be, being that science has revealed them to consist not only of atoms, but of quantum particles (which, incidentally, according to writing from the 11th-12th century, Buddha was able to observe, calling them Kalapas —there’s a wikipedia article about it, but I learned about it from a Buddhist teacher).
I will answer this with a single text and it was a statement from the angel of the Lord to Joseph…as this explains the entire reason Christ came and died on the cross:
Matthew 1:21She will give birth to a Son, and you are to give Him the name Jesus,d because He will save His people from their sins.”
If one wishes to do some further study on that bible doctrine, then id suggest one start studying the Old Testament Sanctuary Service. The Sanctuary explains the entire plan of salvation and it is fulfilled in Christs atoning death on the cross for the wages of sin (Romans 6:23). We also find that the book of Revelation goes on to describe exactly how it is that the scapegoat Azazeel will be punished for his deception of humanity and this closes off something that started with the first temptation in Genesis Chapter 3
1Now the serpenta was more crafty than any beast of the field that the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden?’ ”
I argue that one cannot have salvation without having had a fall in the first place…so Revelation is the end of the narrative that began in Genesis 1. This world started off sinless, and it will end the way it began…sinless!
Revelation 22 3No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be within the city, and His servants will worship Him. 4They will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads.5There will be no more night in the city, and they will have no need for the light of a lamp or of the sun. For the Lord God will shine on them, and they will reign forever and ever.