Archive for » September, 2008 «

Technological Theology

Tuesday, September 30th, 2008 | Author:

“And it shall be when your son asks you in time to come, saying “What is this?” then you shall say to him, ‘With a powerful hand the LORD brought us out of Egypt, from the house of slavery.’” Exodus 13:14

Say – Too often we are influenced by factors in the culture that are nearly invisible to us.  Unless we take the time to ask deep questions about the culture, we will simply slide along with the masses, never realizing how much of what we think and do is formed by the patterns of this world (to quote Paul).  None of us want this to happen, but most of us don’t really know how to see what’s happening.  We know something isn’t right.  That doesn’t take a genius.  All we have to do is observe the state of moral decay and the general chaos of the world.  But we don’t know how it got like this or what to do about it.  We don’t know where to turn for help.  It’s time to correct that.  It’s time to ask at least one deep question.

What happens to our understanding of God’s presence when we conform to the technology of the written word?  Does this seem like a strange question?  Writing is such a fundamental part of our understanding of the world that we don’t even think about this anymore.  But that wasn’t always the case.  Notice this commandment in Exodus.  Education about God is oral, not written.  How children learn about God is the direct result of the stories that parents tell about God.  The introduction of God in the lives of children comes with all the intonation, inflection, personal dynamics and loving tone of conversation between parents and children.  God’s character is communicated personally, not artificially in written words.  In fact, even more than spoken words are implied in this word ‘amar.  In Hebrew, this word for speaking also includes my thinking and my actions.  To tell someone about God involves what I say, what I think and what I do.  Did you notice that none of it is about what I write?

Ancient Hebrew has no punctuation.  You might wonder why.  The answer is this:  Hebrew was a spoken language.  When I speak, I don’t need punctuation marks.  I put all the punctuation into my voice.  It is a dynamic part of the message.  But when I stop speaking and start writing, all those essential parts of the speech have to be converted to symbols, and of course, the delivery of the message becomes subject to the interpretation of the reader.  In oral communication, the interpretation is incorporated into the message.  That’s why memorization was so important in ancient cultures.  Memorization guaranteed that the exact character of the message was transmitted from one person to the next.

Today there are more than fifty different translations of the Bible in English.  These written variations change the way we think about God.  They allow the reader to interpret the message rather than the speaker.  There is no continuity or consistency from speaker to listener because the written word replaces oral communication.  In the process, my understanding of God changes from personal and dynamic to doctrinal and static.  My appreciation of God’s actual words changes from memorized guidance to verse references.  The Bible becomes a source book rather than a love poem.  And my children learn about God through written stories in classroom settings rather than through my voice as they are held in my arms or while they watch my behavior.  Something happened without us even realizing it.  The result was catastrophic.

Topical Index:  Education

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The Name

Monday, September 29th, 2008 | Author:

But I in Your kindness do trust, my heart exults in Your rescue. Psalm 13:6 (Hebrew text translation by Robert Alter)

Rescue – If you read this verse in most English translations, you might see the word “salvation” here instead of “rescue.”  Don’t worry; the Hebrew word can be translated both ways.  What’s important, however, is the difference between our understanding of salvation and the Hebrew idea of salvation.  That difference is crucial, and it’s one of the reasons why Alter chose the word “rescue.”  Once we see the difference, it changes our outlook on the whole evangelical idea of being saved.  Oh, yes, and by the way, there is something else in this Hebrew word that is really cool.  You’ll see.

The primary meaning of the Hebrew word translated “rescue” or “salvation” is deliverance from distress or danger.  We’ve said it before, but it’s worth saying again.  This word is not about escape from threatening circumstances.  It’s about the provision of reinforcements in the middle of the threatening circumstances.  So, from a Hebrew point of view, salvation isn’t about heaven.  The evangelical emphasis on “Where will you go when you die?” doesn’t recognize this fundamental fact.  As far as the Bible is concerned, without a relationship with God, I am already dead.  Where I go when my body expires makes no difference to my present dead condition.  From a Hebrew perspective, the question is not about what happens after the grave.  The question is about what kind of life I have right now.  The Biblical promise is that I can be alive now by entering into fellowship with the Father.  I can discover what it means to be alive when He provides reinforcements now so that I can fulfill His will on the earth (just as Jesus taught us to pray, by the way).  Heaven is the by-product of this relationship, not the goal.  If I want to experience being alive, I will enter into this relationship and discover that I am regenerated right now and forevermore.

So, when we read this word in the Old Testament, and on the lips of Jesus, we need to disconnect from the penchant of the evangelical idea of getting to heaven.  We need to think in terms of actually living with God in the midst of our trials and tribulations, not escaping from the mess of life.  We are called to redeemed response, not jumping ship.  The reason that the Psalmist rejoices in God’s rescue is because it happens in the middle of all the junk of life.  That’s deliverance.

Now let’s look at the cool part of this word.  The Hebrew word here is yeshua.  Yes, that’s right, it is the same Hebrew word that is the name of the Messiah, Yeshua.  When the men and women of the Old Testament rejoiced in God’s rescue, they were rejoicing in the Messiah Yeshua.  In other words, the Father had been sending the Son to rescue human beings for thousands of years before He arrived in bodily form.  And if you read Hebrew, you would have seen it instantly.  Pretty cool!

Topical Index:  Salvation

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God’s Résumé

Sunday, September 28th, 2008 | Author:

But I in Your kindness do trust, my heart exults in Your rescue. Psalm 13:6 (Hebrew text translation by Robert Alter)

Kindness – What does your résumé say about you?  My guess is that it contains a lot of the things that you have done.  It’s a summary of your accomplishments, but it doesn’t say much at all about your character.  In fact, some men with stellar résumés are morally corrupt and continually disobedient.  The reason we believe a résumé shows the real quality of a person is that, in our Greek-based world, we think the value of a person is determined by their production, not by how well they carry the image of God.  God’s résumé is very different.  It doesn’t list any of His accomplishments (and there are quite a few).  Instead, it lists only His character attributes.  This word, hesed, is right at the top of the list.

Hesed is one of those Hebrew words that has a dozen meanings.  Fortunately, all the meanings are related.  Hesed is translated kindness, mercy, goodness, faithfulness, love and loving-kindness.  The classic example of the use of hesed is found in Psalm 136 where it appears twenty-six times.  The important thing about hesed is that it is the basis of all of God’s actions.  So, rather than list all the things that God has done, this word simply provides the reason for all those decisions.  Anything that flows from hesed expresses the nature of God.

If you read the entire thirteenth psalm, you will discover that it begins with a deeply distressed lament about feelings of abandonment.  The Psalmist cries out, “How long will you forget me?”  As he works his way through these horrifying emotions, a change begins to emerge.  Just telling God how terrible life seems to be allows the Psalmist to get a glimpse of God’s true character, and as soon as God’s character comes into view, God’s résumé arrives.  Suddenly the Psalmist understands that every action taken by God rests firmly on His hesed.  What that means completely overshadows any distressed emotion because it proclaims that unwavering faithfulness of God no matter how we might feel at the moment.  That’s why the Psalmist can say that he trusts in God’s hesed.  When life is punctuated by perils, you and I can count on God’s résumé.

Of course, all this discussion of life summaries (résumés) raises an interesting question for each of us.  What about our résumés?  Are they Greek or Hebrew?  Do they focus attention on our accomplishments or on our character?  Are we what we do or are we who we copy?  You might want to reconsider what that paper says about you.  And if you are in the position to hire someone, you might want to rethink what you really need to know about the candidate.  If character attributes are the substance of God’s résumé, shouldn’t they be the substance of ours as well?

Topical Index:  Human Being

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Jacob’s Ladder

Saturday, September 27th, 2008 | Author:

And He said to him, “Amen, amen, I say to you, from now on you will see the heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” John 1:51

On – Jesus knew Jacob.  He also knew that the preposition “on” in Hebrew can mean “because of.”  That’s something we must know if we are going to understand what Jesus tells Nathaniel.  When we translate only the Greek text, we don’t see what Jesus really says.  But once we realize what Jesus is saying in Hebrew, everything makes sense.  Suddenly Jacob’s ladder isn’t about Jacob anymore.

Jacob’s ladder is a well-known story.  But there are elements of the story that we don’t normally see.  The first of these is the idea that the ladder stretches from heaven to earth.  This isn’t Man’s attempt to reach up to God.  That would be like the tower of Babel.  This is God’s extension of a bridge from heaven to earth.  And who goes up and down on this bridge?  God’s angels, carrying out His purposes.  Only those who originate in heaven can travel up and down this ladder.  Why are they able to do this?  Because first they are citizens of God’s heavenly kingdom.

Jesus uses this understanding when He tells His followers that no one can ascend to heaven who has not first descended from heaven.  There is no way for men to reach up to God.  God must reach down to men.  And the paradigm example of the One Who descends to the realm of men is the Son of Man, a true citizen of heaven, who comes to those who are unable to ascend without His help.

How will Nathaniel see angels ascending and descending because of the Son of Man?  He will see the invisible angels in the works that the Son of Man commands them to do.  In other words, Jesus tells Nathaniel that if he sticks around, he is going to see God’s angels carry out assignments that will reveal the intrusion of the divine in the normal course of life.  He will see miracles.  He will see signs.  Then he will know who commands the army of angels – Yeshua, the Messiah.

Jesus’ commentary on the story of Jacob’s remarkable vision teaches us something that even Jacob did not understand.  Jacob’s ladder is not about angels coming down from heaven to bless Jacob.  The ladder is an ancient picture of the way that God will rescue mankind – through the One Who descends.  The ladder is about the Messiah, not Jacob.  Jesus’ commentary confirms this.  This is one more example of the need to see the New Testament as an authorized commentary on the Old Testament.  One without the other just isn’t clear to us.

What are the implications of Jesus’ commentary?  They are fairly severe.  Only one has descended to rescue those who cannot ascend.  In other words, there is no other pathway back to heaven.  There is only one means of salvation, and it must come through the One Who has descended.  Without Him, you are just building a tower of Babel.  Long before the Messiah arrived, God was giving glimpses of His plan.  Jacob’s dream was just one of the Messianic images in the stories of the Torah.  God shows us that there is one way, and only one way.  God’s Son must come down to rescue us or we are lost.  You can thank God for Jacob’s ladder.  It’s your ladder too.

Topical Index:  Salvation

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Hide and Seek

Friday, September 26th, 2008 | Author:

“Surely YHWH was in this place, and I did not know it.” Genesis 28:16

This – Jacob learned something very important on the night that he used a rock for a pillow.  He discovered that Yahweh was in the place he least expected to find Him.  Jacob was on the run.  Fleeing from his brother Esau, he wandered in the desert.  In his fear and discouragement, he must have felt abandoned by everyone.  But Jacob didn’t see the truth.  Yahweh was right in the middle of his despair.   When Jacob was ready to give up, he had his first (but not his last) encounter with God.  What happened changed Jacob’s life.

The Hebrew here is a bit more specific than we might imagine.  The word for “this” is zeh, but in our text, the word is ha-zeh.  Literally, “the this.”  This place is not just any place designated by the pronoun “this.”  This place is the this place, a very specific place discovered supposedly by “accident.”  Of course, we know that the sovereign God brought Jacob to this exact spot.  There was no accident involved at all.  In Jacob’s fear and turmoil, he ends up right where God wants him – in the this place.

We could learn a thing or two from Jacob.  Realizing the enormous implications of the this place in Jacob’s life might just rescue us from having to sleep with our heads on rocks.  Unfortunately, the obvious lessons here are often forgotten in those moments of panic and stress.  So, let’s reflect on them now so that they may be readily available to us when the next crisis comes along.

First, we see that God knows exactly where we are.  Too often we let our emotional condition convince us that God has somehow overlooked our circumstances.  May it never be!  When trials come, and they most certainly will, the first thing to remember is this:  even if we are lost, God isn’t!  His heavenly GPS has an exact fix on our location.

Secondly, we learn that how we get where we are, even if it comes through our own mistaken manipulations, is exactly where God needs us to be.  No matter how much we wander, we always arrive at the this place.  How is that possible?  It’s simple.  The this place is where God meets us, and since He knows precisely where we are, He guarantees that our location will become the this place.  No matter how you get there, God prepares His welcome for you when you arrive.

Finally, we learn that our ignorance of God’s presence is inexcusable.  God is never absent.  Whenever we start thinking and acting as though we are alone, we need to remember Jacob’s declaration, “YHWH was in this place, and I didn’t know it.”  As soon as we start feeling abandoned, we need to carefully look around for His presence.  God has a habit of showing up when we aren’t paying attention.  In fact, He seems to enjoy these surprises.  Just as it delights us to discover that God has been waiting for us, it delights Him to see our grateful relief.

Someday soon you will find yourself on Jacob’s road.  You’ll feel lost, abandoned and hopeless.  But because of Jacob, you don’t have to lie down on the ground.  You know that this is the place of His presence, this is the this place for you.  Expect it.  Watch for it.  And listen to what He says when you discover you are there.

Topical Index:  Lost

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Test of Stewardship

Thursday, September 25th, 2008 | Author:

“And I say to you, make friends for yourselves by means of the Mammon of unrighteousness; that when it fails, they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.” Luke 16:9

By Means Of – What Jesus says is so confusing that we often skip this verse.  We think that engagement in the ways of wealth in this world are directly opposed to Jesus’ call for self-denial and simplicity.  We can’t understand why He would tell us to make friends through something that stands opposed to God’s ways.  Of course, we are almost right.  Jesus does call us to self-denial.  So what in the world is He saying here?

Part of the problem lies in the translation.  Until certain discoveries among the Dead Sea scrolls, the Greek in this verse was translated as you see it here, with the phrase “by means of.”  But now we know that this should be translated “from.”  Jesus is pointing to a test of stewardship; a test that is demonstrated from our handling of possessions (that’s what Mammon means here).  In other words (reading verses 11-12), if you don’t demonstrate God’s principles in the way you manage unrighteous possessions, why would you expect God to place righteous possessions under your control?  The test of stewardship is not found in the way that you handle spiritual matters.  It is found in the way that you handle worldly possessions.  Unfaithful management of the worldly possessions that God puts in your hands only demonstrates that you cannot be trusted with the management of His greater responsibilities.  So, make friends from unrighteous possessions.  Treat them according to God’s principles.  Then you show yourself ready for something greater.

In this verse Jesus deals a fatal blow to two popular misapplications of spiritual principles.  First, He destroys the idea that God is interested in filling our lives with material goodness.  Prosperity is not the solution to our problems.  In fact, in this passage Jesus comments that those with great prosperity are in real mortal danger.  Possessions are deceptive.  The purpose behind possessions is the test of stewardship, not a plan of accumulation.  The prosperity gospel is bankrupt.

Secondly, Jesus demolishes the idea that Christians are not to engage in worldly possessions.  This is the flip-side of the prosperity gospel; the idea that ownership in the unrighteous world is sinful.  Once again we see that the point is not rejection of possessions but rather godly management of possessions.  It’s still the same test.  Possessions are not evil (neither is money, by the way).  They are merely the means by which we demonstrate our faithfulness to God’s glory.  Making friends from possessions means converting their potential animosity toward God into congenial service for God.  We are the ones who determine the ultimate use of power and money, and our faithfulness is measured by how we do that.

There are two dangers:  that accumulating possessions becomes our purpose or that the denial of possessions becomes our mantra.  Both are wrong.  Both fail the test.  We are supposed to be in the world, but we are not supposed to be of the world.  So, take what you have.  Make something from it.  But never sacrifice loyalty to the Father in the process.  How you manage what you have been given reveals your trust in the Father.  Make it count!

Topical Index:  Possessions

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The Reversal of Reason

Wednesday, September 24th, 2008 | Author:

“And thus the last shall be first, and the first last.” Matthew 20:16

Last/ First – “Jesus’ concept of the righteousness of God, therefore, is incommensurable with reason.  Man cannot measure it, but he can grasp it.”  So said David Flusser in The Sage from Galilee.  Read his comment carefully.  How you understand what Flusser says will determine whether or not you are truly living in the Kingdom.  What does this mean to us?

First, the Kingdom of God (or of Heaven) has already arrived.  You aren’t waiting for it after you die.  You are either in it now or you are outside.  It is not an arrival destination on the other side of the grave.  It’s a present phenomenon simply waiting for fulfillment.

Second, you are in the Kingdom when you act according to Kingdom values.  When you serve under the reign and rule of the King, you are His citizen.  You don’t have to wait to be initiated into the party.  You don’t have to “join” the club.  You don’t need a membership or have to pay dues.  All you have to do is what the King does.  The evidence of citizenship is not a verbal declaration.  It is loyalty in action (remember the parable of the two sons?).

Third, in the Kingdom, all normal commonsense ethical values are obliterated.  There is nothing normal about the first being last, about full wages for partial work, about forgiveness of massive debt, about denial of natural inclinations or about sacrificing for enemies.  Those actions are insane!  No normal person would do such things.  It doesn’t serve your best interests or the best interests of ordinary civil obedience.  But in God’s Kingdom, the righteous die for the unrighteous, the ones who deserve justice accept injustice, the ones who need mercy give it instead, the beggars become models for true wealth and the ones who give up their peace demonstrate God’s peacemaking.  Kingdom “ethics” are not just another set of ethical principles.  In this Kingdom, ethical behavior goes beyond good and evil.  It is not subject to anything reasonable at all, including our evaluation of what is good and what isn’t good.  God’s ways are not our ways, and in the Kingdom we come face to face with that astounding reality.

So, take a hard look at your life.  Do you operate according to good commonsense?  Are your principles of moral behavior based on “reasonable” expectations?  Do you believe that things should be in their proper order?  If you do, you might want to reconsider.  Where your reason dictates proper action, you may find that God’s view seems entirely unreasonable.  After all, why should anyone pray for an enemy?  Where you act according to proper and acceptable means, you may want to listen a bit more to the voice of Jesus.  His idea of accumulation and success sounds a lot more like self-sacrifice than like retirement income and financial security.  Where you are content to let bygones be bygones, Jesus seems to think that your forgiveness depends on something much more substantial.

If you find yourself in the first position of benefit from your decisions, you may want to read this parable again.  God’s way is last, not even next to last.  How you get there really is up to you.

Topical Index:  First

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Those Who Have Ears

Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008 | Author:

“Truly I say to you that the tax collectors and the harlots will get into the kingdom of God before you.” Matthew 21:31

Tax Collectors/ Harlots – It’s quite likely that you are not first in line for the Kingdom.  Not unless you qualify as a tax collector or a prostitute.  These days we don’t really listen to what Jesus says.  We hear the words, but they don’t register.  We are too proper, too socially correct, too good for the really good news.  Since sin is not a frequent part of our vocabulary, and hypocrite rarely crosses our lips, we stand in the same position as those who knew all the right religious doctrines but didn’t have a clue about the real Kingdom.  We might make it in, but we won’t be at the head of the line.

We desperately need to hear what Jesus says, not what we want Jesus to say.  His remark follows a parable; a parable that clearly demonstrates the difference between a son who says he will be obedient but isn’t, and a son who refuses to obey but ultimately does.   The acceptable son is the one who does what the father wishes, even though he initially refused.  He gets in first.  Why?  Because he changed his mind and his actions.  He didn’t just say the words.  His words meant nothing.  In the long run, what he actually did determined his destiny.

So why do tax collectors and harlots precede the religious?  They are the sons and daughters who refuse to obey but later repent and change.  The despised of society and the dregs of humanity (those who sell their loyalties and those who sell their bodies) refuse God’s call.  But when they see the light, their repentance results in demonstrable changes in behavior.  They acknowledge forgiveness in the way that they act.

Not so the religiously correct.  They believe doctrines, not devotion.  Their actions do not follow their words.  Since they are not sick, they have no need of a doctor.  For them, no healing is needed.  Rejecting the despised and the dregs, they fail to see their own disloyalty and compromise.  They change places with the tax collectors and the prostitutes without even knowing it.  Convinced that they are already sons and daughters, they sell their birthrights for ego enhancements.

Now, do you think we actually hear these words?  What does it mean to say that the one who at first refused eventually did what the father asked?  I suspect that it means that the rebellious son fulfilled the father’s requirements.  He obeyed the commands.  He stopped pretending that it didn’t matter (since he was a son anyway).  He took on the character of the father in his deeds.  For us, that means doing what Jesus did.  That means loving our enemies, praying for those who seek to harm us, spending time (and money) with the poor, the abused and the rejected, opposing religion without heart, living radically simply lives, displaying costly benevolence.  It means Matthew 5 and 6, Luke 4 and John 17.  It means realizing that we were disloyal and despicable – and coming to the doctor for help.  So, look around you.  Who’s in line ahead of you?  Why?

Topical Index:  Hearing

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The Unforgiven

Monday, September 22nd, 2008 | Author:

For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. Matthew 6:14-15

Neither – How easily we gloss over and diminish the harsh reality of Jesus’ teaching!  You won’t hear much about this condition of forgiveness these days.  We simply can’t imagine that God would withhold His forgiveness.  Our view of God is the plastic Santa, ready to accommodate any indiscretion.  But this is not the view of our Messiah.  There is more than one unforgiveable sin.  In fact, there are as many unforgiveable sins as there are injuries, slanders and insults against us that we will not forgive.  It’s very hard to hear but the words are about as plain as they can be.  If you refuse forgiveness toward another, do not expect God to forgive you no matter how many times you walk the aisle or raise your hand or say a sinner’s prayer.  Forgiveness comes with conditions.

The first thing we need to clear up is the meaning of forgiveness.  The Greek verb is aphiemi.  It does not mean to ignore, to pretend it never happened or to just go on in life acting as if it doesn’t matter.  It literally means “to send off, to release, to hurl, to pardon.”  The offense is real.  The debt is due.  The damage has been done.  Forgiveness means confronting the truth of the injury and absorbing the cost (emotional, physical or otherwise) in order to clean the record and settle the bill.  The goal of forgiveness is to leave in peace.  Jesus clearly understood this because a large number of His parables concerning the ethics of the Kingdom are about debts due and payments made.  So, it simply isn’t adequate to think that if we just let it go we have accomplished forgiveness.  Not talking about it doesn’t resolve the matter.

The second thing we need to notice is that forgiveness is not a one-time event.  Luther said that the life of a believer was one of constant repentance.  Yes, there is a point where we turn the corner and experience the overwhelming grace of God in transforming renewal, but that does not take care of the category of forgiveness.  Frankly, each of us needs God’s forgiveness every day, and if we believe what Jesus says, our stubborn refusal to provide the same grace to another is cause for serious spiritual decline.

Finally, there is the word oude, a combination of “not” (ou) and “even” (de).  Obviously, it’s pretty strong.  If you don’t show behavior that resolves and releases the things that go wrong with others (the meaning of “trespasses”), then you have a serious issue with God.  You put God on the defensive because your actions insult His generosity.  In fact, God is more likely to come to the aid of the sinner who offended you than to your aid.  Why?  Because a truly broken and humble heart does not slander the character of God’s grace by refusing to forgive.  God has used enemies in the past to bring about repentance.  There is no reason whatsoever that He would not do so again.

Jesus’ words are chilling.  We would rather not hear them.  We would just as soon pretend that things have been swept under the rug and can be forgotten.  But that is hypocrisy.  Claiming God’s grace without reflecting the same is unforgiveable.  Now what will we do?

Topical Index:  Forgiveness

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Rethinking Heresy

Sunday, September 21st, 2008 | Author:

For there must be factions among you in order that those who are approved may become evident among you. 1 Corinthians 11:19

Factions – You better sit down for this one.  Something happened in the early centuries of the history of the church that altered the way we read what Paul says here.  The vocabulary didn’t change but the meaning and the emphasis did.  The church interpreted this verse from the perspective of a commitment to Greek metaphysics.  In the process, it changed the way we think about all spiritual discussion.  The result has been catastrophic.

The Greek word here is hairesis.  It’s easy to see the word “heresy” in this root, but in classical Greek this term did not mean anything heretical.  Hairesis simply meant “choice.”  In fact, it is used to convey the idea of a freewill offering in the LXX.  Nothing about opposition to the truth is found in the ancient etymology of this word.  But things changed.  When Rabbinic Judaism embraced Greek Hellenism, there was a major shift in the concept of truth.  The Greeks built their idea of truth on mathematics.  In such a system, there can be only one right answer.  Every other alternative is false.  From the Greek perspective, since only one answer can be correct, everything else must, as a matter of logic, be wrong and anyone who advocated alternatives to the one single truth was a heretic.  As Rabbinic Judaism adopted the Greek point of view, the world of necessary tension and dialogue in Hebrew thought was replaced by final answers.  Schools of “correct” interpretation took hold.  The traditional dialogue of spiritual debate faded away.  When the Church, under the enormous influence of the Greek philosophy of the early fathers, vigorously adopted this point of view, the result was dogma, the declaration of a final answer to life’s important questions; an answer which tolerated no opposing views.  Many of the ancient creeds and theological positions of Christianity came from this dogmatic, Greek-based metaphysics.  In fact, it is the same concept of truth that we embrace today.

But what if Paul isn’t saying anything about heresy?  What if Paul is using the word in its LXX and classical form?  Suddenly our penchant for Greek-based exclusion doesn’t seem so biblical.

Paul uses Greek in Hebrew ways.  Paul writes to believers who were quite familiar with Hebrew Scripture.  It seems entirely likely that what Paul has in mind here is not about heresy but rather about the necessity of opposition as part of the testing process of spiritual formation.  In other words, Paul isn’t telling us to burn heretics at the stake (something the Church was quite willing to do under the Greek metaphysical assumption).  Paul is telling us that there must be choices in our spiritual walk in order for us to discover what is approved.  God manifests Himself in the necessary dialogue of interpretative discussion.  Where the dialogue of real alternatives is prohibited or suppressed, we are unable to see the manifestation of what is approved.  We need contrarians if we are going to be pushed along the path of spiritual growth.

For centuries the Church has rejected real choice by calling it heresy.  In the process, it used force to demand compliance and prevented believers from exploring the challenges of true spiritual development.  We are all products of this drastic elimination of open dialogue.  The real problem now is how much of what we accept as “truth” is the result of suppression of debate.  Paul was right.  Where there is no alternative choice, human logic prevents God’s manifestation.

Topical Index:  Truth

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