Closed Loop Exegesis
All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; 2 Timothy 3:16 NASB
Scripture – By now you realize that even the choice of words in a translation carry paradigm imported meanings. For example, it seems abundantly obvious that Paul was not referring to his own words in his comment to Timothy. The word “Scripture” (graphe) can only have meant the accepted inspired authorized text of the believing community at the time that Paul wrote this, and that, of course, did not include any of the material we now possess in the apostolic writings (the “New Testament”) nor did it include some of the books of the Tanakh. Neither canon was closed at the time Paul wrote. Of course, while we recognize this historical fact, we nevertheless are quick to employ anachronistic logic when we want to defend the authority of the New Testament. Our understanding of “Scripture” simply isn’t what Paul understood, but who cares? We have the “authorized, canonized” Bible and it is Scripture for us. Paul really should have consulted Luther on this issue.
Technically we admit that Paul could not have included what we call the New Testament. But practically we assert its authority (granted by the Church councils), in fact, in most Christian circles this Church-authorized collection takes precedence over the “Scripture” that Paul had in mind. We replace Paul’s “Scripture” with our own—and then we employ Paul’s words to validate our choice.
This leads to a very odd theology. It’s what I call “epistemological mysticism.” With this logic, the argument goes something like this:
- Paul asserted the inspiration of all Scripture (equivocating on the word)
- Paul was a Christian
- Paul intended that whatever we read in the Christian New Testament is the final authority for our faith and practice
- Paul clearly said that the past “law” no longer applies to Christians (a la Galatians)
- The New Testament is really the Christian Bible (while the Old Testament is good for historical background and Messianic prophecies)
- Anyone who does not see this is true does not understand how Christianity advanced the beliefs of Judaism
- Anyone who continues to maintain the authority of the prior “law” does not have the leading of the Spirit.
Interestingly, if Paul is actually referring to what he understood as Scripture (namely, the Tanakh of the first century), then Paul is also deficient in the Spirit. There is ample evidence that Paul never abandoned his Jewish way of life, that he was fully Torah observant in spite of his Damascus Road experience and that he considered the Torah to be the final authority for understanding YHVH and His instructions for living. But if the above argument is true, then Paul himself is a heretic, or at least painfully confused. Perhaps we should all pray that Paul may see the light and embrace the newer testament as we have.
This argument is repeated over and over within the Christian paradigm. It is deeply flawed, historically, culturally and theologically. But that doesn’t make much difference to the defender because the trump card of the argument is a simple assertion of epistemological mysticism. I have the revelation of the Spirit on the matter. If you don’t agree with me, then you are outside the will of God. Such a claim allows no critical analysis whatsoever. It is fideism, pure and simple. And it is impenetrable.
Paradigms are incredibly resilient things. They are able to take all sorts of disconfirming evidence and convert it into supporting “facts.” Thomas Kuhn demonstrated that this happens all the time in science so why would we not expect the same in religion. I believe what I want to believe and I find the evidence that supports what I believe. If you disagree, you are either spiritually unaware or a sinner or both. Once I am convinced that your argument is either spiritually dysfunctional or the result of sin, I no longer need to listen. The dialogue is over. This explains why it is so damn difficult to try to get anyone to actually look at the history and culture of the Bible as a way of understanding the text. If God told me what it means, there is no need to look further. Closed loop.
The usual consequence of asserting that Paul is not a Christian and that Paul expected believers to embrace the Torah is spiritual leprosy. You become an outcast. Abandoned. Defiled. Those who actually understand that Paul is still thoroughly Jewish will have a very difficult time in the Christian world. Perhaps we who find critical assessment an absolute necessity to spiritual growth need to declare ourselves more vociferously. “Unclean! Unclean!—Oh, and by the way, I’m traveling with Paul.”
Topical Index: epistemology, Scripture, paradigm, 2 Timothy 3:16
You are not alone. Years ago, as a young “Christian “, I would read in Psalms things like “the law of The Lord is perfect”, but the church taught we are not “under the law” and I wondered why the God I was told never changes would throw out something that was perfect. When I asked questions I was told the law was just for the Jewish people. That made me wonder why God would have two different standards. I sometimes ask people which of the “laws” they would do away with and found none of us even knew what “the law” was. I decided to start looking into the 613 laws/commandments to see why they were so hard to keep and live by. To date I have found some that were not applicable , but none that are hard or objectional. I have often been told I ask too many questions and read too much… I am thankful for the introduction to Today’s Word, thank you Skip and community.
Debra, I could not agree with you more. Being raised a Catholic we never had ANY real Bible study as such, that was for the smart people only I guess (the clergy), we peasants just sat there every Sunday and did as we were told. Pass the collection plate please, thank you very much. Class dismissed. Consequently no one questioned anything (no real opportunity to do so either). I was lucky enough to meet Skip about three years ago on neutral territory so to speak when I was early in my quest to “find the truth” about anything and thank God I did meet him and this community. It has changed our lives completely.
Please Do
~ [You] study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about Me.. ~ (John 5.38)
We could go either way here.. either “long” or “short,” – but the bottom line for all who just can’t wait is this: The Bible, (yes, “ALL” of it- from stem to stern testifies of One. One who IS, One who was, and One who is yet to come. The Bible, the Word of God, is our Him Book, for ALL of it, is One Book. No, the Old(er) Testament has not been done away with, but rather fulfilled by the Messiah, for He (and He only!) was the onliest(?) One, ever—to have lived a “perfect” (read sinless) life. And as for the rest of us? – Sinners – all.
As Paul (formerly known as Saul) would testify- “ALL” have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. The Law of the LORD is perfect (yes- it is the “gold standard”), but we humans are not. Houston, we (do) have a problem —“sinners r’ us!” There is not one among us, (save One) who may honestly say, “which of you convinces me of sin?”
Is a quick review in order? Adam? – sinned. Moses? – sinned. David? — sinned. Need we go on? Peter? – Paul? Paul would write these words: “o wretched man that I am!!” – and? – “Who shall deliver me?” Yes, Paul.. – “Who?” A Deliverer? — A Savior? Paul knew he was in need of deliverance/salvation and he knew it. His confession and mine are the same- “I” am a sinner and stand in need of a Savior, One, (and One only) is able and willing to deliver me.
And Paul (formerly known as Saul) testifies again to us through the written word: (is anyone listening?) This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief! (1 Timothy 1.15)
Why? – tell me why.. (or what if you recall) was the angelic announcement to the shepherds keeping watch over their flocks by night?
“For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a SAVIOR – who is Christ the LORD.”
May I inquire? Who is our Savior? Our Redeemer? Our Deliverer? It is (clearly) Christ the LORD.
And?
~ Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under Heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved ~
My personal belief is that paradigms only come down when a person is looking for a new paradigm. Then their is an aspect that I think people will only believe up to the level of obedience/convenience they have. Example: If someone is a blue crab fisherman they have less of an incentive to see Torah being still relevant because of Lev 11 then lets say a salmon fisherman. One would most likely have to look for a new profession if they were convicted. Maybe an extreme example but you find it with weird hang ups that people have.
What I see is most people are just Biblically illiterate (I can put myself in that group as well – but I’m learning). Most people are quite familiar with the N.T that are Christians and I think is also the reason why they fall out of faith. The N.T is not too different then any other religion as far as “love your neighbor as yourself”. There was a book that I read that actually compares the words of Jesus (Yeshua) to the words of Buddha. Almost verbatim quotes. So close where you could wonder if it’s the same guy.
It’s not until you read the OT where it starts to make sense that our God is different, and there are certain things that He wants done so we are separated. The hang ups for most Christians are at the points of separation because of the obvious – you’re different now.
No one will argue that sleeping with your dad, your mom, your sister, your dog, burning your children, taking part in a fertility cult are things that we should do. It’s Sabbath, dietary, niddah (sexual laws), circumcision etc that are the hang ups.
At the end if you don’t want to be separated, you can rationalize anything, “If you are so right then why for hundreds of years have we been doing it this way”. You can’t force someone to feel uncomfortable, you can’t force someone to have a fear of God, you can’t force someone to realize that God isn’t your ‘homeboy’ or your ‘buddy’ but a sovereign king that while yes is compassionate also will judge accordingly to His laws.
The reason I found this paradigm is because I was searching, I needed to believe in, “the truth” or nothing at all. I figured let me find out if this, “God” stuff is real, otherwise I’ll make it really simple for myself – I’m not going to take part of it and I’ll just do what feels right and really not have any guilt.
I love your posts, Skip, because they are open and authentic and always make me think. They challenge me to look at things and even when I’m uncomfortable or unsure or it strikes me as difficult or I do not see exactly how it all fits together – I appreciate that you help me in this way. Thank you. I’m not able to say I have it all figured out, I’m just trusting on the journey.
WHAT’S OLD IS NEW (RENEWED) AGAIN
Now, where were we, before we got so rudely interrupted?
Oh, the Garden.
Back to the Garden. How do we get ourselves back there? Back to the future, in fact, for the Redeemed from the broken Covenant get grafted back in to the Renewed Covenant; written on their hearts, no less. And then they get to live again in the Earth made New in the Garden. Begin again. Same instructions for living (we are going to NOT do that dying thing again!) What are those instructions? What are they for?
New instructions? No; new way to carry out the re-newed original instructions.
What about those cleansing laws in Leviticus? Do we really need to know this stuff? Hasn’t science ‘proven’ them obsolete, and doesn’t that back up the Cross that rendered them so? What exactly did those cleansing laws exist to teach us? All that ritual stuff; who needs empty rituals anyway? Weren’t they something to do with impurity caused by sinning against that now obsolete Old Covenant that no one could keep anyway? Don’t we know by now that there is no connection between sin and diseases and disasters because of the cross and the confirmation of science?
Wait. That was so yesterday. Today, science is looking at many things that the more honest scientists are freely admitting lies outside their paradigms. Science, in fact, is finding itself up against a hard edge of a new paradigm, where the edges are no longer clear. But what does the Bible say about those edges? Maybe this deserves another look.
Science now knows that disease is profoundly influenced, if not even created, by the mental and spiritual state (sin or righteousness) of the patient. Wait. Leviticus taught that first. Now what do we do? Perhaps it may be time to re-read.
Paradigms are simply belief systems. We don’t question them because we have been taught to BELIEVE that we shouldn’t. That’s the problem in a nutshell. The Bible teaches no such thing. Over and over we are instructed to examine, search diligently, guess-and-check, ask, taste, even try-and-fail, until we know (have experienced) for ourselves. G-d apparently isn’t scared. So why should we be?
False core beliefs serve to paralyze us. We have been given a Standard to work against. That should serve to take the fear back out. Just see if something lines up and adjust accordingly. Except, of course, if you happen to believe that that Standard no longer applies. Ooops. What started out looking like freedom FROM something, in the end, just serves to hamstring and to paralyze.
There is a famous story from years ago in one of our large cities about some bleeding hearts who apparently were suffering from the common human ailment of being unable to distinguish between cause and effect. They protested the high fence around the play area for one of the inner city schools. Their argument against it was that if the children grew up surrounded by high fences, they would feel ‘unsafe’, and so, conceivably, grow up to repeat the cycle. Well, over protests, they got the fence down, and what happened? The children stopped playing, and instead just huddled in the middle of the playground. Eventually, someone got the bright idea of asking them what the problem was. They said they were afraid of the people outside the fence: the drug dealers, pimps, kidnappers and thieves. In fact, the only time in their world when they felt safe was when they got to play inside the fence.
Yeshua remarked that we needed to become like those little kids to enter the Kingdom. Perhaps they know something that we should remember….
I agree with everything you have said and I understand you do not call Paul or yourself a “Christian” because of the corrupt baggage that has been attached to the term over the last two millennia. But I don’t like to concede and give up what I think is a perfectly good term and that was not used negatively during Paul’s day.
By the same token, you say, “that Paul is still thoroughly Jewish “ As you know, Paul was a Benjamite, a Roman citizen, born in modern Turkey, educated in Judea, a Pharisee and one who called himself a Hebrew of Hebrews. If we call him a Jew don’t we also attach two thousand years of Talmudic baggage to him? I think the same argument applies but will you give up calling Paul a Jew?
The term Christ and Christians means “anointed”. Ironically, it is easy to argue that the ancient Israelites could be called Christians. In the Tanakh YHVH referred to them as His anointed. See for example, 1Chron 16:22, Ps 8:28, Ps 20:6, Ps 89:38, Ps 105:15, Hab 3:13 (and several more places where it is easy to assume the word “anointed” is referring to Yeshua but the context more readily fits it to the whole nation of Israel.)
I believe Yeshua, the ancient Israelites and ourselves are all anointed and thus Christian.
Just a few comments.
1. The term “Christian” actually doesn’t occur in the text at all, and therefore could not have been used even in Paul’s day (See Daniel Gruber on this point).
2. That Paul was thoroughly Jewish goes without saying since he himself uses that designation in his defense before Felix. The addition of Talmudic baggage might color the word for us today, but it didn’t prevent Paul from claiming affiliation in his time.
3. That the root of the term “Christ” means “smeared with oil” does not mean it is the same an “anointed.” The Greek idea is different from the Hebrew idea. Israelites could not be called “anointed ones” and therefore would not fit the Greek idea of Christoi
If you can, get a copy of Grubers’s book on all this. I think it would help a lot.
Dear Skip,
Thank you for your reply. Not being a reader of either Hebrew or Greek I can only go by the best translations that I have. But I certainly will defer to your or someone else’s translation if it can be shown to be be more accurate.
I have found 7 books by Daniel Gruber. Do you remember which one is the one that pertains to this subject? They are, “That Man” His Story, The Messianic Writings, Copernicus & The Jews, Rabbi Akiba’s Messiah, Torah & the New Covenant, The Children of Abraham, and, The Church and the Jews – The Biblical Relationship.
I’m curious. If you don’t like the term Christian, what word or phrase do you use, or, don’t you have a simple term?
Thank you
Copernicus and the Jews
Hello Everyone, Skip’s Word of the day email’s has really been uplifting and thought provoking, this is definitely one that many of us struggle with. Most churches that proclaim they are teaching scripture, are doing what Skip is writing for us to consider to be fideism, I didn’t know what this word meant so I had to google it’s definition which once I read what this word meant along with the concept of “epistemological mysticism” it explained some of what I have been challenged with for most of my Christian life. Many powerful speakers spoke things into my life, especially the concept of healing. We are going on 4 year’s of dealing with losing our daughter. She was born with special needs, those special needs didn’t come into our perception until she began not to meet certain goal’s that a child who doesn’t have special needs would meet. Example sitting up on her own, making eye contact etc..
Once I began to realize that our daughter was not going to be a normal walking and speaking daughter, I done what most believing Christians would do. Pray for healing. We had leaders to speak to us that God is going to heal her, we just had to keep the faith. Over time my wife and I finally came to except that our daughter was not going to walk nor be that daughter that we most definitely wanted her to be. Now I’m not writing this in a sad way, We had the privilege of raising her for many year’s and she has caused me to see life in a different way. I now consider her our Angel sent, in the function of the word Angel. Her life spoke to me, her life caused me to ask forbidding questions. Her life caused me to think on forbidding thoughts. I’m not proclaiming that I understand every reason that God allowed her to be born into our life, but she did cause me to stop looking for many of the powerful speakers of today to tell me who God is and what God is like. This is something that I must experience as I seek for him and I walk with him.
Some question that I do have, when did the letters begin to be circulated amongst the believers? As I study I still don’t have a clear understanding of this. How were the Apocrypha Books viewed, like the book of Enoch during the times of the apostles?
Dear Keith,
My heart is hurting for you and your wife. Losing a child leaves a hole that does not fill, I know. I don’t think there are ‘good reasons’ for a child to die! It is a tragedy of the first order and evil is precisely the thing that makes no sense at all to me. I, too, got knocked off the front porch rocker and most of what mainstream christianity has to offer now makes no sense to me, either. I think Skip is a rare gem and I love this community! And you, too. Keep the faith, brother, and I will think of your beautiful broken heart often, and pray for you.
Love, Laurita
Thanks Laurita, for your kind words, and especially for your prayers.
Keith
Hello Dan, in response to the question “will you give up calling Paul a Jew?”, no I still consider Paul a Jew, due to all Jew’s even to day doesn’t consider the Talmud. Like Nehemia Gordon of today.
If the world views you different
because of your worldview,
then you need to live differently than the world do.
The worldview that once made a difference
is not the view seen from the pulpit or the pew.
It is the Pauline view,
seen by the few, lived by you,
The “not new” view-that will, once again, make a difference.
I really loved this comment- I may need to use the first part as one of my life quotes!
The beauty of being set apart as true seekers of God’s gift to us His living Word
We are all apart of the ongoing story, just as Paul was.
We all have to continue to wrestle with the same questions and concerns of Paul’s day.
Luckily he has done some of the work for us, and we can refer back to his letters to help guide us in our times as believers and lovers of the LORD our King, Father, Perfect Judge.
“But prove yourselves DOERS of the Word, and not merely hearers who DELUDE themselves” –James 1:22
Also Dad/Skip, feel free to correct my translations of that scripture too.
Sadly we all must embrace the day in age we are in, being more familiar with the Roman world’s way of understanding God and a lot less of the Jewish way.
I am on a path like Paul, trying to find the harmony I believe Jesus calls us to (by fixing our eyes on Him).
Hi Rachel, good to hear from you on a string that includes both me and Dan. We enjoyed meeting you in Israel and I just happened to come across the pictures of Skip on your aircraft carrier some time ago. As you can see Dan and I are on quite different wave lengths in our Pauline/Messianic understanding but as one Rabbi was reputed to say, heavily accented, “you right, you abzoloootly 100% right. Now I show you where you wrong.” So we still disagree and that’s ok. I too love everything smiling Michael Stanley contributes. If I remember correctly he too is ex-military (EMS type) and has a way to bandage people (and their opinions) as he does with this post that you enjoy.
We are all your path. May your life be blessed more than it already has.
Skip, is all of Christian doctrine and theology corrupted?
Of course not. But if the foundation is based on a rejection of the Jewish way of life, a way that both Yeshua and Paul embraced, then don’t you think that foundation will affect the way the rest is built? Is there still one God? Does He still love His creation? Does He still desire repentance and restoration? All YES, of course, but now what do you do with all the Christian theology that affects how we think about these things?
My answer is I read Skip Moen and others to unlearn the paradigms I didn’t even know I had. I am questioning if any of the doctrines that are distinctive to Christianity as opposed to ones shared with Judaism are uncorrupted.
Did you ever think that this rejection from the church is a blessing? One is cast out of a place of divine wrath and judgement, just as the Jewish diaspora population is being cast out of the nations prior to judgement in full upon them.
Truth-seekers have to find a way to break out of that loop. Following the Spirit is the only way out. It may appear to be arrogance and/or disrespect to others, but knocking down some of the mainstream idols is a necessary part of finding Truth. Stepping out of that controlled world of interpretation is liberating.