Science and Scripture 1: Relationships between Science and Faith

In the fall, I teach a course for Houghton that I designed while I was there, called Science and Scripture. The course was originally taught 15 years ago or so by Carl Schultz, a legendary Houghton professor who passed away three years ago. My impression is that the man was a genius, the kind of professor that once gave Houghton its reputation as the Wheaton or Harvard of the Wesleyan Church. 

I've had as a long term goal to traditionally publish a book to go along with the course, although a popular self-published version might actually be more helpful to the church. But a pop version couldn't be used for the class, or at least I couldn't require students to buy it. In any case, in anticipation of teaching the course this fall, I thought I would dedicate my writing time on Tuesday mornings this summer to such a book or -- at the very least -- to creating some reading material for the course. This would replace Ian Barbour's book, When Science Meets Religion.

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Four Views
Over the years, Christians have exhibited several different attitudes toward science. Galileo in the 1600s came into significant conflict with the Roman Catholic Church over whether the sun went around the earth or vice versa. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, we saw strongly negative reactions among some Christians toward the theory of evolution -- convictions which continue unto this day. 

Yet there are also many Christians who see no contradiction whatsoever between their faith and mainstream science. Still others believe in both but aren't quite sure how to fit the two together. They may worship on Sunday and work as a scientist the rest of the week without a good sense of how to reconcile their two identities together.

Various models for the possible relationships between science and faith have been suggested. John F. Haught once suggested four: 1) conflict, 2) contrast, 3) contact, and 4) confirmation. [1] Those who see conflict are those like the atheist Richard Dawkins who sees no possible compatibility between science and Christian faith. [2] Meanwhile, Francis Collins would be an example of someone who sees no contradiction at all between mainstream science and his faith -- "confirmation." [3]

The "contrast" position sees science and faith as complementary or, as Ian Barbour has put it, "independent." [4] From this perspective, science and faith are just doing different things. Stephen Jay Gould says they are "non-overlapping magisteria." [5] By this he means that they are distinct and separate frameworks that each work in their own domains.

Haught's third category, "contact," is a little harder to describe. In some ways, it seems to combine elements from the other three. It would say that, at some points, science and faith are independent of each other (contrast). Nevertheless, they come into contact in various ways. For example, the study of the universe (cosmology) takes us back to the earliest moments of the universe, but it reaches a boundary. It does not ask why the universe exists. That is a question for philosophy and religion.

In that sense, science and faith "hand off" the conversation to one another. Religion says, "in the beginning God" and then hands off the conversation to science to speak of cosmic expansion from a singularity. [6] Coming at it from the opposite side, science gets us back to the moment of creation and then lets religion and philosophy continue the discussion of first causes and such.

If we apply these four categories to Scripture, we have four broad options for how a particular passage of the Bible might relate to mainstream science. It might seem to conflict. It might seem to integrate or overlap well. Scripture might simply relate to something completely different from science. Or they might be distinct but in continuity with each other. Let's call these four options conflict, agreement, independence, and continuity.

[textbox: Science and Scripture
Contrast -- when science and Scripture seem to conflict with each other
Agreement -- when science and Scripture seem to overlap in agreement
Independence -- when science and Scripture are addressing distinctly different questions
Continuity -- when science and Scripture connect with each other on a topic while addressing different aspects of it]

Perception vs. Reality
A key factor in such discussions is the difference between our perceptions of how science and faith relate and how they might actually relate. For example, I may think that Scripture is in conflict with science when I am misinterpreting Scripture. Similarly, the young earth creationist Ken Ham believes that his faith is in complete harmony with true science, but he is in strong conflict with mainstream science. [7]

Here we run into a serious philosophical problem: how do we know what the right interpretation of Scripture is and how do we know what the real science is? In philosophy, we call these problems of epistemology, where epistemology is the branch of philosophy that asks how I can know that I know what I think I know. Related is the branch of philosophy known as metaphysics, which asks what the ultimate nature of reality is.

Throughout this book, we will largely adopt a perspective known as critical realism. Critical realism assumes that the world is real and that we can indeed know truths about it. However, our views are susceptible to significant skew because we are finite and do not have all the data. Similarly, we are hindered by faulty reasoning and the fact that we are "stuck in our heads," unable to fully overcome our biases and unexamined assumptions. From a theological perspective, you might say that our minds are "fallen" and subject to Sin.

We must accept, then, that our sense of whether science and faith are in conflict to a large extent is a matter of our perception -- as is any sense that they are in agreement. We may similarly think they are independent when in fact they should be in continuity or agreement. As we mentioned above, young earth creationists generally think that their perspective is integrated with science, but others would see them as quintessential examples of science and faith in conflict.

Throughout our conversation, we will try to navigate this tension between our perceptions of Scripture and the current understanding of science. Is Genesis 1-3 in conflict with the prevailing scientific theory of evolution? Many would assume it is on the basis of their understanding of Genesis 1-3. Yet we should keep in mind that there is more than one interpretation of Genesis 1-3. Some interpretations of Genesis 1-3 are either in continuity with the theory of evolution or independent of it.

Similarly, science is not static. Thomas Kuhn's celebrated work on paradigm shifts in science reminds us that the prevailing models of the moment may not be those of tomorrow. [8] Newtonian physics as a paradigm was unquestioned coming into the twentieth century before Einstein and the quantum revolution completely reframed it. In the year 1400, everyone assumed that the sun went around the earth. We are not making light of evolution as a theory to say that it is ever-revisable for this is the very nature of science.

The question of science and faith is thus an ongoing conversation. They are distinct domains that frequently come into contact in various ways. At first, they may seem to conflict where once they seemed in agreement. Often, they are simply doing different things. Sometimes, one takes over where the other one left off.

However, we will assume that "all truth is God's truth," meaning that no truth ultimately is in conflict with God. [9] If we perceive science and faith to be in conflict, then our understanding of one, the other, or both needs modification. We will assume that God's thought does not contradict itself and that true faith and true science are thus in harmony with each other.

These are all assumptions. While they may seem reasonable enough, they probably bear some justification. Accordingly, the next section goes into a little more detail on our three key philosophical assumptions: 1) God and the world are "real," 2) our perception of God and the world is finite and skewed, and 3) properly understood, truth in all domains cohere with each other. If these claims seem acceptable to you, you are welcome to skip to the final two sections of the chapter.

Note that the intended audience of this book consists of theists, individuals who believe God exists objectively apart from humanity and that God remains involved with the world. Certainly we will engage non-theist perspectives -- hopefully fairly and as objectively as possible. Nevertheless, the point of view assumed at the outset is a faith seeking understanding (fides quaerens intellectum).

Critical Realism and the Coherence of Truth

The Nature of Faith

The Nature of Science

[1] Cf. John F. Haught, Science and Religion: From Conflict to Conversation (Paulist, 1995).

[2] For example, Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (Mariner, 2008). 

[3] Francis S. Collins, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (Free, 2007).

[4] Ian G. Barbour, When Science Meets Religion: Enemies, Strangers, or Partners? (HarperOne, 2000), 17-22.

[5] Stephen Jay Gould, Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life (Ballantine, 2002).

[6] Barbour calls this category, "dialog" in Science Meets Religion, 23-27.

[7]  Cf. the well-known website answersingenesis.com.  

[8] Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 4th ed. (University of Chicago, 2012).

[9] This expression comes from Arthur F. Holmes' 1977 book of the same name with InterVarsity Press. 

Through the Bible -- Mark 4:1-34

Previous chapters of Mark at bottom.
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1. In the Gospel of Mark up to this point, Jesus has healed. He has cast out demons. He has called disciples. We know that he has preached about the kingdom of God. But it is not really until Mark 4 that we get our first real excerpt of his teaching.

In Mark 4:33-34, we are told that Jesus routinely taught in parables -- or riddles, you might say. You may have heard at some point that parables were stories that made Jesus' point clearer. There was once a book on preaching titled, Learning to Preach Like Jesus whose premise was that the point of your preaching can be clearer if you use stories. [1]

But that is not the sense we get from Mark 4. After Jesus gives this "parable of the sower," he indicates that the purpose of the parables was to filter out those who "have ears to hear" (4:9) from those who do not. They were riddles of a sort. Jesus anticipates that, to those outside the kingdom, his riddles will be heard but not understood (4:12). Although they will see Jesus, they will not perceive him to be who he is.

Ironically, the disciples do not understand the meaning of the Parable of the Sower, whose point is that only those with ears to hear will understand. Jesus remarks, "Don't you understand this parable? How then will you understand any of my parables?" (4:13). They apparently do not have ears to hear.

Here is a second major theme of the Gospel of Mark. One theme is the "messianic secret," which refers to Jesus' consistent practice of veiling his true identity as Messiah. A second theme is the dullness of the disciples, their difficulty in understanding the nature of Jesus' mission and his core message. I have sometimes summarized this theme as "the disciples don't get it."

Yet the disciples are in a different category than the outsiders. Jesus will unveil the meaning of the parables for them. "To you has been given the secrets of the kingdom of God" (4:11).

Mark 4:34 says that Jesus didn't open his mouth without a parable -- an obvious hyperbole. But it is clear that parables were Jesus' main mode of teaching. When we then read the Gospel of John, we are immediately struck by the fact that there is not a single parable of Mark's type in it. It alerts us that the Gospel of John is not so much a literal, historical presentation of Jesus as a symbolic, theological one.

2. Jesus delivers the Parable of the Sower by the Sea of Galilee (4:1). The sea remains a centering feature of these chapters. Again, because the crowd is so large, Jesus teaches from a boat slightly off shore.

In the Parable of the Sower, seed is scattered everywhere. Jesus pictures four different types of soil in particular. There is the path. There is rocky "soil." There is soil where thorns are also present. Finally, there is good soil.

These four types of soil are a kind of allegory for how the word of God plays out among those who receive it. [2] For some people, the word of the good news goes in one ear and out the other. They are like spiritual Teflon -- nothing sticks. They might not have even heard you. They have no interest in the things of God or at least the true things of God. They are like seed spread on a path that the birds immediately eat. Satan snatches the word right out of their ears.

There is another kind of soil that is rocky. Because the seed cannot get any deep root, it springs up immediately but just as quickly withers in the sun. These are the shallow Christians, the "fair-weather" Christians. When the faith gets hard, when it demands something of you that makes you uncomfortable or requires you to sacrifice something, you're out of here.

These are also those who like Christian faith when it fits their culture. This can take place on either side. There is the sugar daddy Jesus who gives you everything you want and doesn't require any changes to your life. But there is also the political, militant Jesus who doesn't require you to change your tribal thinking or desire to squash those who are different. These are the cultural Christians who say they find Christianity attractive even though they don't believe in God, but what they find attractive is a skewed version of Christianity without Jesus.

The third soil has thorns alongside the wheat. It eventually chokes out the faith. This can be the cares of the world -- how can I feed my family. But it can also be the abundance of the world -- Mark singles our riches as well (4:19), The world takes over in this person's heart. Perhaps they go through the motions of faith but their heart is no longer in it.

Finally, there is good soil. It takes root. It goes deep. It doesn't wither with correction or persecution. It keeps looking to Jesus even though the cares of the world might try to crowd him out. It reproduces and bears fruit manyfold. 

3. We get to hear these interpretations because the disciples do not understand what Jesus is saying without Jesus' interpretation. But Jesus is willing to give it to those who seek it. I have heard individuals use this parable as an argument for predestination -- you are predestined to be a certain kind of soil. 

However, note that the disciples get to understand. They are not good soil initially, but they take the first step. They ask for Jesus to explain. And so there can be movement from bird food to good soil. Lord, help us to see what we do not see.

4. Mark has probably taken some loose sayings of Jesus and put them here alongside the Parable of the Seeds. We should not find this a problem as it wasn't a problem in Mark's day. Many have a strange expectation that we almost need to be looking at a videotape of Jesus. But Mark's concern was likely to include as much of Jesus' teaching as he could practically fit in an orderly way rather than to give us a blow-by-blow of the order in which things happened. Matthew 13 will expand these parables even further.

Mark gives us three additional parables alongside the Parable of the Sower, a fitting place to put them. First is the parable of the lamp and the bushel basket. You don't put a lamp under a basket because the purpose of the lamp is to give light. And the things you try to hide will eventually come to light (4:22). If the sequence of thought seems a little unclear, it could be because Mark is collecting a few of Jesus' different sayings into one place.

What I mean is that Jesus' sayings likely circulated only by word of mouth for decades. That doesn't mean that they got all messed up like the telephone game -- that's a bad representation of the process. In the telephone game, you whisper something around the room and then see how messed up the message is by the time it gets to the last person. The person who whispered the original message says what it was in comparison to how it gets mangled going around the room.

But in the first century, the message was not whispered, it was preached publicly. Like the end of the telephone game, the first disciples were still "in the room" for decades to correct any inaccuracies in the message. Further, recent studies have shown that the core of oral tradition is usually quite persistent, although the details often vary on the edges. [3] This is exactly what we find in the Gospel traditions.

So it seems likely that Mark has placed some individual oral sayings of Jesus here and there as seemed appropriate. When the train of thought is unclear, that could be a sign of a collection of sayings (e.g., Mark 9:49-50). Of course, it could simply be our (or my) problem of not realizing how the train of thought actually goes. In the end, each statement is true one way or another.

5. One of those sayings preserved here in Mark 4 is that God gives more to the one who has, and takes away from the person who doesn't have (4:25). The measure you give is the measure you get (4:24). If you give more, you get more. These are riddles which, unfortunately, have been twisted in unhelpful directions.

For example, some might take these to say that you will automatically prosper materially the more you give to others. Others have taken these saying as a kind of divine blessing on the rich and curse upon the poor. The poor should have everything taken away, and the rich are those whom God likes. These are self-indulgent interpretations (me, me, me) rather than interpretations with the spirit of Jesus.

The key is not to think of what one "has" in terms of possessions but in terms of faith. When one has faith, more will be given. Also, 4:24 speaks of giving as the key to "getting more," but the more one gets is not money or possessions but divine favor.

6. The parables of the growing seed and the mustard seed are similar in meaning. You can't always see growth in the short term. It seems to happen when you're not even looking. Then suddenly it is there blossoming. The mustard tree is one of the biggest bushes known in Israel, yet it starts out so small to begin with. 

Such is the kingdom of God. You do not always perceive how God is growing it. Yet, suddenly, it is time for the harvest or suddenly, it has grown so much that the birds nest in its shade. No doubt at times the growth of the kingdom did not seem great at first. As we can infer from what Paul says in Romans 9-11, Israel did not seem to embrace Jesus as its Messiah. 

But God's kingdom was growing nonetheless, even if it was not always apparent. The time for harvest would come before you knew it. Then Christ would reign and all would be right.

[1] Ralph Lewis and Greg Lewis, Learning to Preach Like Jesus (Crossway, 1989).

[2] In the late eighteen hundreds, the German scholar Adolf Jülicher suggested that Jesus wouldn't have used allegory (Die Gleichnisreden Jesu). He argued that any allegories in the Gospels were later additions by the church and that Jesus' original parables would have only had a single point.

I think he meant well, but my reaction has always been, "Who says?" Silly German categorizers with anti-Catholic biases. If Jesus wants to use an allegory, he can use an allegory. You and your silly rules.

[3] The work of Kenneth Bailey has been very helpful here, although there are perhaps some extremes to his work (e.g., his chiastic interpretation of 1 Corinthians). For an excellent yet measured presentation of these basic insights, see James D. G. Dunn, A New Perspective on Jesus: What the Quest for the Historical Jesus Missed (Baker Academic, 2005).

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Mark 1:1-13
Mark 1:14-15 
Mark 1:16-45
Mark 2
Mark 3

Mark 11:1-11 (Palm Sunday)
Mark 11:12-25 (Temple Monday)
Mark 11:26-12:44 (Debate Tuesday)
Mark 13 (Temple Prediction)
Mark 14:1-52 (Last Supper)
Mark 14:53-15:47 (Good Friday)
Mark 16 (The Resurrection)

7.1 How we "know" what we think we know

Selections of earlier material will eventually appear at the bottom.
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1. In the first six chapters, we have tried to pull back the veil on some of our potentially false pretenses to knowledge. Quite often, we start off with a "unitary" way of thinking about a subject or way of behaving. We just think that way and we aren't necessarily very aware of why. We behave a certain way more or less without reflection. It's just the way we do it. These are unexamined assumptions.

It isn't practical to question everything all the time. We grow up trained to work on cultural autopilot. We don't think about whether to put our socks on before our shoes. We just do it. If we are hungry in the western world, we don't likely catch a lizard to fry up.

We just know you can kill a spider but not a dog. We just know that Christians vote for Republicans because of abortion or that Christians vote for Democrats because of people in need. We just know that things are getting worse and worse before Jesus returns or that we need to work to make the world a better place. We just know that all people need to be treated with respect or that some types of people should be treated with suscpicion.

Then we are exposed to the "other side." Someone points out that we crossed the street because a black person was coming toward us on the sidewalk. Someone makes a Democrat sound virtuous. We get defensive or go on the attack. We go into "binary," us-them mode. "That's not why I crossed the street!" "That's not really how Democrats are!" 

In the second half of the book, we'll go back through the areas we have introduced and discuss them from a more "spectrum" approach. We'll ask about the main options that philosophers of the ages have suggested as answers to ultimate questions. That process begins with this chapter as we begin to talk more objectively about how "knowing" actually works from a "meta" perspective.

If you wish, consider what follows a heuristic device. For some, it will come across as very modern in a postmodern age. However, I would maintain that such a conversation remains more useful than some postmodern sharing of perspectives that mainly improves our relationship with each other. Modernism is like looking under the hood of a car that isn't running properly. If it helps the car run more smoothly, it's more useful than two people sharing their perspectives on the car without its performance improving.

2. René Descartes (1596-1650) is often considered a turning point in epistemology, which is the study of knowledge. Epistemology asks how we know that we know what we think we know. How does "truth" work?

The claim has often been made that, prior to Descartes, there was clearly discussion of what is true and discussion of the sources of truth. But there was largely an unexamined assumption about our human reliability as knowers. If our senses were considered a source of truth, it was assumed that our senses were more or less reliable. More often our human reason was assumed to be a reliable source of truth.

As a sidenote, it is sometimes claimed that Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), a very important Christian thinker from the "Middle" Ages, did not believe that our human reason was fallen. It seems to me that this is a somewhat unfair accusation in that the very question assumes a post-Cartesian perspective ("Cartesian" refers to Descartes' way of thinking). That is to say, before Descartes everyone more or less assumed as an unexamined assumption that human thinking worked. It just wasn't an issue yet. So even if Aquinas more or less assumed that human reason worked, he largely did so as the common assumption of his day. Further, he did believe that the mind could be clouded by sin.

From a Christian standpoint, there was also the unexamined assumption that we somehow automatically know what the Bible means. Luther and Calvin were largely unreflective in the 1500s about themselves as interpreters. People debated the meaning of the Bible, but they did not see the role their own assumptions and paradigms played in the process of interpretation. Most Christians today remain unaware of the role their paradigms play in their interpretations -- as we will explore in more depth later in this chapter.

Prior to the Protestant Reformation, the same unexamined assumptions applied to church dogma. There was no discussion of the historical and cultural forces at work on on the participants in the Council of Nicaea or the ebbs and flows of ideological trendlines in church history. If you were Roman Catholic, you assumed that the received dogmas were correct. If you were Orthodox, you assumed the received Orthodox perspectives were correct. Debates were really proxies for intergroup relations.

3. The time of Descartes was a time of unprecedented epistemological uncertainty. Protestantism had dethroned the church as the authoritative source of truth. Instead, Luther had called Christians back to the Bible, as John Wycliffe and John Huss had tried. If it was not found in Scripture, it must not be required of belief or practice.

However, as a text, the Bible is susceptible to a myriad of possible interpretations and integrations. From the moment Luther and Zwingli were unable to reconcile their biblical understandings of communion in 1529, the course of Protestantism was revealed to be one of endless multiplication of interpretation. Martin Marty once estimated that there were over 20,000 individual Protestant groups. All of these have their own interpretations of the Bible.

By the time of Descartes, there were now Lutherans, Reformed, Anglicans, Anabaptists, and more. Who decides what the Bible means? The answer was largely local and "tribal."

It seems to me that it is no coincidence that rationalism (the mind as the source of truth) and empiricism (our senses as the source of truth) rose to prominence as epistemologies in the 1600s. They had been around in ancient times. Plato was largley a rationalist. Aristotle had elements of both rationalism and empiricism. But Plato and Aristotle still largely took a "what you think is what you get" or "what you see is what you get" approach. That is to say, they largely assumed the reliability of whichever path of truth they chose.

Descartes questioned almost everything. [1] Are my senses reliable? Are my assumptions about truth reliable? He doubted everything he could doubt until he thought he couldn't doubt any more. "I think; therefore, I am" was his conclusion (cogito ergo sum). What he couldn't doubt is that he was doubting.

Even here, I would say he had unexamined assumptions. Chiefly, he assumed that "I" is something that exists. He more or less assumed that he was a unitary entity that existed. I would modify his saying to something like "I think; therefore, something exists." I think therefore existence (cogito ergo esse). In the venacular, you might say, "I think, therefore, stuff." What that "stuff" is goes beyond what we can know for certain.

Descartes fought his way back from that ultimate doubt, sneaking in assumptions of reason into the process. "If this is true, then that has to be true." He assumed the operations of reason. His road was paved with rationalist assumptions. If you could conceive of something clearly and distinctly, it was true. This seems to me potentially a horribly unreliable criterion.

4. At about the same time, Francis Bacon was developing the scientific method (1561-1626). [2] Later in the 1600s, John Locke (1632-1704) would lay a more philosophical groundwork for empiricism as a path to knowledge. The path to truth is through our senses. "Seeing is believing." Building on a tradition that ran from Aristotle through Aquinas, Locke would agree with them that there was nothing in our mind that wasn't first in our senses. [3]

For Locke, we are born with a blank slate, a "tabula rasa." [4] ...

[1] See Descartes' work, Discourse on Method.

[2] See Bacon's work, Novum Organum.

[3] Aristotle qualified this -- "except the mind itself." In this way, his language anticipated what we will explore later in the chapter.

[4] See Locke's work, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.

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Previously,
1.1 Unexamined Assumptions
1.2 "Unitary" Thinking
2.1 Binary Thinking in Ethics
2.2 Contextualization in Missions
2.3 Beyond Relativism and Absolutes

Through the Bible -- Mark 3

Sunday summaries of Mark continue for Through the Bible. Previously:

Mark 1:1-13
Mark 1:14-15 
Mark 1:16-45
Mark 2

Mark 11:1-11 (Palm Sunday)
Mark 11:12-25 (Temple Monday)
Mark 11:26-12:44 (Debate Tuesday)
Mark 13 (Temple Prediction)
Mark 14:1-52 (Last Supper)
Mark 14:53-15:47 (Good Friday)
Mark 16 (The Resurrection)

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1. At the end of Mark 2, Jesus got into his first conflict over the Sabbath. There, it was because his disciples were picking grain to eat as they walked through a field. In the story, the Pharisees consider this harvesting -- working on the Sabbath and thus breaking the commandment. Jesus quotes Scripture to show that the Sabbath commandment is not an absolute. There are exceptions, and he is one of them.

Immediately following at the beginning of Mark 3, we have another Sabbath story involving Pharisees (3:1-6). [1] In ths case, there is a man who is not whole physically. Jesus senses that some who are more legalistic are watching to see if he will "break the Law" by healing on the Sabbath. Of course, this is not breaking the Law. This is breaking their interpretation of the Law, which was wrong. [2]

Jesus sets their priorities straight. Life is more important than a rule for its own sake. It angers him, their out-of-focus view of things. God's laws are for our benefit, not mere tests of obedience. They need to grow up in their sense of God's priorities. God makes exceptions. He heals the man, and we see for the first time the beginnings of plots to kill him. 

This is one of only three times that the Herodians are mentioned in the New Testament. We have to make an educated guess about who they were. Quite possibly, they were a group that wanted to see a Herod as ruler of Israel again, as opposed to a Roman governor like Pontius Pilate.

2. Word gets out that people get healed when Jesus is around. Those possessed with evil spirits are liberated. The result is that Jesus is mobbed. Here he gets a little offshore in a boat to preach to the crowds so he doesn't get mobbed (3:7-12). We see him withdrawing for the first time.

We see the second instance of Mark's "messianic secret" theme. When Jesus engages evil spirits, he commands them not to tell others that he is the Son of God (3:11-12). They must obey. It is not Jesus' time yet. Peter is the first human to confess it in Mark 8:29. But the first human to get that this means he will die for humanity is the centurion at the cross in 15:39.

3. In 3:13-19, we have the chosing of the 12 core disciples. This number seems to echo the twelve tribes of Israel. The implication seems to be that Jesus mission involves the restoration of Israel. This is certainly how the disciples themselves seem to have understood it (Acts 1:6).

The lists in the Gospels differ a little from each other, leading tradition to line up various ones from the different accounts. The list here in Mark 3 is Simon (Peter), his brother Andrew, and the brothers James and John the sons of Zebedee. These are the core disciples in Mark. Then there was Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas. There is James the son of Alphaeus, sometimes called "James the Less." Then the list finishes out with Thaddaeus, Simon the Zealot, and Judas Iscariot.

Mark adds some details. We are reminded that Peter or "Rock" was a name that Jesus gave Simon. It wasn't his given name. In Aramaic, the actual name Jesus gave him was Cephas. We are told that Jesus called James and John the "sons of thunder" (3:17). We can see that thunder in the book of Revelation! Thaddaeus might be Judas son of James in Luke 6:16. 

It is interesting that the second Simon is called "Simon the Zealot." The Zealots were not an organized group until around the time of the Jewish War in AD66-70. Mark would have known this group. It seems natural therefore to think that Simon may have participated in the war. Otherwise, he surely would have avoided the term as Matthew does.

4. In the final part of the chapter, the opposition to Jesus increases (3:20-35). Interestingly, his family tries to talk some sense into him (3:21). His mother and brothers arrive and try to get him to come out of a house where he has been so mobbed that they can't even eat (3:20, 31). 

Jesus distances himself from his family. They don't see the big picture. Perhaps there is also some envy. You think of his brothers who were born legitimately and so could do what siblings do, needling Jesus for being born before their parents were fully married. Later, his brother James still seems a little too preoccupied with purity laws in the face of the mission (Gal. 2:12).

Jesus astoundingly (especially for that day) puts the will of God above his family. "Those who do the will of my Father are my brothers and sisters" (Mark 3:35). The church is a new family that is more real than one's biological family. Note that even Mary does not seem to fully understand what is going on. Joseph, quite possibly, is already out of the picture.

5. "Headquarters" is getting involved. Teachers of the Law have heard about Jesus and have come "down" from Jerusalem. "Down" in this context relates to the fact that Jerusalem is elevated but also reminds us that our sense of north as up is part of our worldview. They are there to exert their power and control over things religious. Jesus is a charismatic fly in their ointment. He hasn't gone through the proper ordination process that might involve their approval. Who does he think he is? He needs to be brought under control or at least knocked down to size.

Not going to happen. They accuse him of using the power of Satan (Beelzebul) to cast out demons. Jesus looks at them like they're crazy. Don't put any of these guys in charge of a battle because they'll have their own side attacking their own side. Satan doesn't fight himself!

Organizationally, there is great insight here, as we would expect. If an organization is full of infighting and backstabbing, without trust between its members, it's not going to do so well. "A house divided against itself cannot stand," Jesus said (3:25). These are words Lincoln would quote during the Civil War as he tried to keep the country together as a union.

6. It is in this context that Jesus articulates what is called the "unpardonable sin." The unpardonable sin is attributing to Satan what is actually the work of the Holy Spirit. It is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. It is a warning to us today not to attribute to Satan works that could actually be the work of God. I have sometimes thought of those who might suggest tongues-speaking is of the Devil. I would be very careful.

Some of those with a overly sensitive conscience have wondered if they might have committed such a sin. I remember hearing a story of a man who was faithful to the church, tithed faithfully, and was in all respects one of the most eager helpers. But when asked if he would join the board, he said he couldn't because he had once committed the unpardonable sin.

No one should worry about the unpardonable sin. If it is true that the Holy Spirit draws us to him, then anyone who truly comes to God in repentance has not committed this sin. After all, it is the Spirit that makes that repentance possible. Any prodigal can return if his or her repentance is genuine.

In this case, these teachers of the law are way past that point. They have a form of godliness but without the power. They once had a choice but now their heart is hardened of their own doing. They have the official position but no position in God's kingdom. So often those who hold official positions of power on earth are nothing from a heavenly perspective.

[1] Remember that the chapter divisions were added later. Mark has clustered these two stories together side by side likely because of their common engagement of the Sabbath. Mark did.not likely arrange all of the stories in chronological order. In these early chapters, we see some thematic grouping and also a sense of increasingly conflict.

[2] We should not think that these individuals represented all Pharisees either. It is hard to see the famous Hillel having any problem with Jesus healing a man on the Sabbath.

从神而生之人的伟大特权 （约翰·卫斯理讲道19）

“凡从神生的就不犯罪。”（约翰一书 3:9）

一、称义与重生的区别

1. 人们常常以为“从神而生”与“称义”是同一回事，认为“重生”与“称义”只是表达同一个概念的不同方式。确实，凡称义的也是从神生的，凡从神生的也必定是称义的，并且这两样恩典常常在信徒生命中是同时发生的：在同一时刻，他的罪被涂抹，他也因神而重生。

2. 尽管如此，称义和重生虽然在时间上不可分割，却在本质上有着显著的不同。称义只是关系上的改变，重生却是实质性的更新。称义是神为我们成就的事，使我们与神和好，从敌人成为儿女。而重生则是神在我们里面的工作，使我们由罪人转变为圣徒。称义除去罪的定罪，重生则除去罪的权势。因此，虽然这两者在时间上同时发生，但性质上却迥然不同。

3. 没有区分这两者，导致许多人在解释“凡从神生的就不犯罪”这个伟大特权时思想混乱。

4. 为了清楚理解这一点，我们需要：

• 首先，思考“凡从神生的”这句话的正确含义；
• 其次，探究“他就不犯罪”在什么意义上成立。

I. “凡从神生的”是什么意思

1. “从神生的”这一说法，并不单指受洗或任何外在的改变，而是指一种极其重大的内在变化，是圣灵在灵魂里所做的更新工作。一个人从神生了之后，他的生活方式与以往截然不同，仿佛进入了另一个世界。

2. 这个说法的含义其实很容易理解。因为属灵的重生与自然出生有诸多相似之处，所以理解自然出生的过程，有助于我们理解属灵重生的意义。

3. 一个未出生的婴儿虽然靠空气维持生命，但几乎没有感知能力。他几乎听不见，看不见，生活在黑暗之中。他也许有些微弱的生命迹象，但灵魂的感官尚未开启。

4. 他对这个世界一无所知，不是因为世界离他远，而是因为他的感官尚未打开，且有一道厚厚的帷幕将他与世界隔绝。

5. 然而，一旦婴儿出生，他的感知就大大改变。他开始呼吸空气，身体各个感官也随之觉醒。他的眼睛看见光，耳朵听见声音，开始与这个世界建立联系，获得新的知识与经验。

6. 属灵重生也是如此。一个人尚未重生时，虽然“生活、动作、存留都在乎神”，但他对神毫无知觉。神的呼唤他听不见，神的事对他没有影响。他可能有一些属灵生命的萌芽，但没有属灵的感官，无法感知属灵之事。

7. 他与看不见的属灵世界几乎没有交集。不是因为这世界远离他，而是因为他没有属灵的感官，也因为一道厚重的帷幕隔绝了他。

8. 但当他从神而生，重生之后，他的全人就对神变得敏锐。他能够经历神的同在，并且能在爱与祷告中不断回应神的爱。这种属灵的呼吸持续不断，使他的属灵生命日益增长，各种属灵感官也逐渐觉醒。

9. 他的“心眼”打开了，看见了那看不见者。他清楚知道神赦免了他的罪，并且因基督的面得见神的荣耀。他活在神的光中。

10. 他的耳朵也打开了，能听见神的声音。他遵行神的呼召，与看不见的属灵世界有清晰的联系，经历属灵的平安、喜乐与爱。他“住在神里面”，而神也“住在他里面”。

II. “他就不犯罪”是什么意思

1. 明白了“从神生的”的含义后，我们继续探讨“他就不犯罪”的意义。

一个真正从神生的人，持续接受圣灵的恩典，并在信、望、爱与祷告中不断回应神。只要他这样行，他就不会犯罪。“那存在他里面的种子”（就是信心与爱）保守他，使他不能犯罪。

2. 这里所说的“罪”，是指明显的、外在的、故意的违背神已知律法的行为。而“凡从神生的”，在持续信靠与爱神的状态中，不仅不会，而且不能这样犯罪。

3. 然而，一个疑难问题随之而来。许多显然是从神生的人，确实曾犯过明显的外在之罪，这如何与约翰的断言相符呢？

4. 大卫就是一个例子。他明明是属神的、爱神的、敬虔祷告的神的儿女，但他却犯了奸淫与谋杀的罪。

5. 新约中也有例子。巴拿巴曾被圣灵呼召与保罗同工，但后来因争论而离开了事工。

6. 彼得在安提阿也犯了罪。他因惧怕犹太人而与外邦人分离，行为不合福音的真理。

7. 这些事例表明，从神生的人若不保守自己，就可能犯罪。只有在他“保守自己”的时候，恶者才无法触摸他。

8. 大卫的例子可以进一步说明。他虽然爱神，却在疏忽、失去对神的专注时被诱惑。他没有回应圣灵的警告，心中罪恶的欲望逐渐生根，最终导致了外在的罪行。

9. 这显示出人如何从恩典一步步滑向罪恶。从爱神到接受诱惑、爱冷淡、信心软弱、拒绝圣灵、欲望滋生，最终陷入外在的罪。

10. 彼得的例子也是如此。他曾凭信心活在神面前，却因怕人而屈服于试探，失去了信心与爱心，最终犯下明显的罪。

因此，“凡从神生的就不犯罪”这话是真实的，只要他保守自己。但若不如此，他就可能犯各样的罪。

III. 结论与教训

1. 首先，我们学到，外在的罪总是发生在失去信心之后。在犯外在之罪前，必先经历了某种程度上的内在犯罪与信心衰退。

2. 其次，属神之人的生命是持续不断与神互动的生命。神不断向他施恩，而他则不断以爱、赞美与祷告回应神。

3. 再次，我们看到，若没有这不断的回应，属灵生命就无法持续。若人拒绝回应神的爱与光，圣灵最终将离开他，他将陷入黑暗。

4. 最后，正如使徒所说，“不要自高，反要惧怕。”让我们时刻警醒，警惕罪比死亡或地狱更可怕。即使今天我们站立得住，也要小心，不可自满。让我们不断地祷告，常常信靠与爱神，这样我们就必永不犯罪。

重生的标记（约翰·卫斯理讲道18）

重生的标记

约翰·卫斯理
讲道第十八篇
（1872年版，托马斯·杰克逊编辑）

“凡从圣灵生的，都是如此。”（约翰福音 3:8）

一、重生的第一个标记，也是其他所有标记的基础，就是信心。

第二个属圣经的标记是盼望。

第三个属圣经的标记，也是最重要的，就是爱。

什么是重生？

每一个“从圣灵而生”的人，也就是重生的人，都是从神而生。那么，重生到底意味着什么？什么是从神而生，或从圣灵而生？成为神的儿子或神的儿女，或者拥有“儿子的灵”，意味着什么？我们知道，这些特权通常是通过神的怜悯，在洗礼中赐下的（因此主耶稣在上一节称其为“水和圣灵的洗”）。但我们希望进一步了解这些特权的内涵：究竟什么是重生？

或许没有必要对它做出严格的定义，因为圣经也没有。但这个问题对每一个人都极为重要，因为“若有人不重生，他就不能见神的国。”因此，我打算用最简单的方式，正如圣经所描述的，陈述重生的标记。

一、信心

第一个标记，也是所有其他标记的基础，是信心。正如保罗所说：“你们因信基督耶稣，都是神的儿子。”（加拉太书 3:26）约翰也说：“凡接待他的，就是信他名的人，他就赐他们权柄作神的儿女；这等人不是从血气生的，不是从情欲生的，也不是从人意生的，乃是从神生的。”（约翰福音 1:12-13）又在书信中说：“凡信耶稣是基督的，都是从神生的。”（约翰一书 5:1）

但这里所说的信心，并非只是头脑的同意或理论上的认知。这不仅是认同“耶稣是基督”这一命题，或赞同《使徒信经》与《旧新约圣经》所有教义。魔鬼也相信这些，却依然与神为敌。因此，这里所讲的不是死的信心，而是活的、真实的基督徒信心。这信心是神放在我们心里的，是确实的倚靠，是对神的信赖，相信借着基督的功劳，我们的罪已得赦免，与神和好。

这种信心意味着，人首先要弃绝自己，完全依靠基督，而非倚靠自己的行为或义。他承认自己是罪人，无可夸口，彻底需要救主。这种对罪的深刻认识（尽管常被误称为绝望），加上对基督救恩的切望，是活信心的前提。真正的信心是信靠那位为我们舍命、完成律法义务的救主。

这种信心的即时和持续的果效，就是胜过罪的能力——胜过一切外在的恶行，也胜过内心的不洁。这就是保罗在罗马书第六章中所说的：“这样，我们既然在罪上死了，怎能仍在罪中活着呢？”（罗马书 6章）我们与基督同钉十字架，使罪的身体灭绝。信心的人对罪是死的，对神却是活的。“罪必不能作你们的主。”（罗马书 6:14）

约翰也同样强调：“凡从神生的，就不犯罪；因为神的道存在他心里，他也不能犯罪，因为他是从神生的。”（约翰一书 3:9）一些人试图解释为“不习惯性犯罪”，但经文中并没有“习惯性”的字样。圣经明说“他不犯罪”。若有人添加自己的解释，实在是危险之举。

约翰在第五章继续说：“我们知道凡从神生的，必不犯罪；从神生的必保守自己，恶者也就无法害他。”（约翰一书 5:18）

这种信心的另一个果效就是平安。“我们既因信称义，就借着我们的主耶稣基督得与神相和。”（罗马书 5:1）耶稣在离世前曾说：“我留下平安给你们，我将我的平安赐给你们。”（约翰福音 14:27）这种出人意外的平安，是任何环境、任何痛苦都无法夺去的。它使神的儿女无论在顺境还是逆境中都能喜乐知足。

二、盼望

第二个标记是盼望。彼得说：“愿颂赞归与我们主耶稣基督的父神，他曾照自己的大怜悯，借耶稣基督从死里复活，重生了我们，叫我们有活泼的盼望。”（彼得前书 1:3）

这盼望不同于死的盼望。活泼的盼望出于神，必带来圣洁的生活。正如经上说：“凡有这指望的，就洁净自己，像基督洁净一样。”（彼得前书 1:3）

这盼望包括良心的见证，即我们在“单纯和虔诚”中行事；还包括圣灵的见证，向我们的心灵见证我们是神的儿女。若是儿女，便是神的后嗣，与基督同作后嗣。（罗马书 8:16-17）

神的灵与我们的心灵同作见证：“我们是神的儿女。”这是主耶稣所应许的安慰，是痛苦转为喜乐的根源。即使在试炼中，活泼的盼望也带来说不出的喜乐。

三、爱

第三个标记，也是最重要的标记，是爱——“神的爱借着所赐给我们的圣灵浇灌在我们心里。”（罗马书 5:5）

圣灵在我们里面呼叫“阿爸，父！”（加拉太书 4:6）我们因爱神，常常呼求祂，依靠祂，喜乐于祂。祂是我们心中的喜乐和满足。

“凡爱那生他的，也必爱从他生的。”（约翰一书 5:1）爱神的人必爱主耶稣基督，也爱众弟兄姐妹。正如经上说：“我们因为主舍命，知道何为爱，我们也当为弟兄舍命。”（约翰一书 3:16）这爱甚至包括我们的仇敌。

真正的爱必结出顺服的果子。约翰说：“我们遵守神的命令，这就是爱他。”（约翰一书 5:3）爱神不仅仅是外在的行为，更是内在的情感。爱必使我们在行为上顺从神，活出圣洁与良善。

四、结语

我已经清楚陈述了圣经中重生的标记。重生之人是凭信心不犯罪，享有神赐出人意外的平安；是靠盼望充满喜乐和荣耀；是靠爱心顺服神，爱人如己。

你们中间有谁是从神生的？你们自己知道。不要靠洗礼的记号自满。问问自己：“我现在是神的儿女吗？圣灵住在我里面吗？”若没有，单靠过去的洗礼并不能证明你是重生的。

不要说“我受过洗礼，所以我现在是神的儿女”。许多受过洗礼的人仍然活在罪中，是魔鬼的儿女。因此，你必须重生。

如果你没有这些属神儿女的标记——无论你受没受洗——你就必须得着，否则你必灭亡。你唯一的盼望，就是重新得着“作神儿女的权柄”，得着圣灵的内住与更新。

阿们，主耶稣！ 愿每一位愿意寻求你的人都重新领受那“儿子的灵”，呼叫“阿爸，父！” 让他们凭信心成为神的儿女，得着你宝血的救赎与赦罪。让他们如今被重新生为有活泼盼望的人，如你一样洁净。愿圣灵充满他们，使他们完全，圣洁敬畏神！

Through the Bible -- Mark 13 (Prophecy about Temple)

I was unable to do a summary of Mark 13 during Passion Week, so here is a Sunday post to fill in that gap:

Psalm Sunday
Temple Monday
Debate Tuesday
Maundy Thursday
Good Friday
_________________________

1. Mark 13 -- along with its parallels in Matthew 24 and Luke 21 -- often features prominently in end times prophecy teaching. For example, my grandfather believed that the re-establishment of Israel as a nation in 1948 started the last generation before the rapture. There was actually a book written titled, Eighty-Eight Reasons Why the Lord Will Return in 1988. Mark 13 featured in that list.

One of the key reasons is Mark 13's mention of the budding of the fig tree (13:28-31). When you see it bud, you know the summer is near. Then Jesus says that "this generation will not pass" until all these things come to pass (13:30). We've already seen from Mark 11 that the fig tree that withers there likely symbolized the Israel of that day. So couldn't the budding of the fig tree be the re-establishment of Israel?

What happens within that generation? We have just heard in 13:26. The Son of Humanity will come on the clouds of heaven. Is this not the second coming, the return of Christ?

This is an ingenious interpretation. It gets around one of the key riddles of the passage. In the flow of the chapter, Mark 13:30 seems to say that that generation -- his generation, the disciples' generation -- would not pass before the Son of Humanity came on the clouds. The "generation after Israel's rebirth" argument helps alleviate the puzzle, at least until such time as the 1948 generation might all die off.

2. Is it the right interpretation of the passage? It doesn't seem to be what the passage meant originally. But one of the lessons we learn as we watch the New Testament interpet the Old Testament is that fulfillment can happen in more-than-literal ways. Sometimes I call such interpretations "spiritual" interpretations. Or you might call them "figural" interpretations. These are interpretations that weren't clearly in the minds of the Old Testament authors, but they are meanings that the New Testament authors saw in the words of the biblical texts. 

I grew up with this way of interpreting the text without even knowing it. The Spirit could make a passage come alive and speak to you directly. For example, there is a family story about how someone in my family thought God was telling us to move to Florida when the words "thou hast given me a south land" jumped out to her while reading Judges 1:15 in the King James Version. We were trying to decide if it was God's will to move to Florida at the time, and several passages jumped out at various family members. And move to Florida we did.

However, the Israel/fig tree/last generation interpretation of Mark 13 does not seem to be what the text meant originally. "This generation" does seem to refer to Jesus' generation. There is no clear connection between the fig tree illustration here and in Mark 11. And, most importantly, the context of the chapter points to a much different time in history.

God can fulfill the passage however he desires on a more-than-literal level. But Mark 13 originally was not primarily about the end times. It was primarily about the destruction of Jerusalem in AD70. 

3. Let's go back to the beginning of the chapter, Mark 13:1-4. At the end of Mark 12, they are at the temple. Jesus has pointed out that the poor widow has given more proportionally than the wealthy have. As they are leaving the temple, One of his disciples admires the stones of that temple.

That's when Jesus begins the train of thought of the chapter. He tells them that none of those beautiful stones will be left standing on each other. This destruction of that temple happened in AD70. The set up for the chapter is Peter, Andrew, James, and John asking him privately when the destruction of that temple is going to happen (13:4). They want to know what the signs of its impending destruction will be.

This all already happened. Jesus' predictions about the temple all came true. That temple no longer stands -- no stone of it is on top of any other. [1] 

The context is crystal clear. The introduction to the chapter is not about the end times as we think of them. The chapter sets us up to expect the chapter to be about the events surrounding the destruction of the temple by the Romans in AD70.

4. Many will come claiming to be the Messiah, the anointed ones to overthrow the Romans and establish the kingdom of Israel. No doubt claims were made around AD70. They all failed.

Wars, rumors of wars, earthquakes, famines (13:7-8) -- I am amazed when people point to wars in the Middle East as signs of the end times. Have they no sense of history whatsoever? There are always wars, earthquakes, and famines going on and have been throughout history. Mark 13 refers to the Jewish War from AD66-72, culminating in the temple's destruction.

"They will deliver you up to councils" (13:9). Who is the "you" here? Who is Jesus talking to? The passage tells us. He is talking to Peter, Andrew, James, and John. He's not talking to Ken Schenck. It is amazing how narcissistically we sometimes read the Bible, making ourselves the "you" of its passages. It's not wrong to do that. It's just not what the text actually meant originally.

Quite clearly, the "you" of the passage is Peter, Andrew, James, and John. In a secondary sense, the "you" of the passage is the audience of Mark's Gospel. We are not reading the passage in context when we see ourselves as the "you." And what if every Christian for the last 2000 years read themselves as the "you" of the passage? Was the passage fulfilled in the year 1200 too? Maybe. But not literally, not for what Mark 13 actually meant when it was written.

Mark 13:9-13 was originally about the persecution that the early church experienced in the years leading up to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD70. Did Peter, Andrew, James, and John appear before councils like the Sanhedrin? Absolutely they did.

5. Now we get to a key verse in the passage. "When you see the abomination of desolation standing where it must" (13:14). Hal Lindsey and Tim LaHaye in recent times saw this verse in terms of an end times Antichrist setting himself up in a rebuilt temple as God (cf. 2 Thess. 2:4). This is part of the ingenious stitching together of verses that was started by John Darby in the 1800s. Brilliant connective work. And far be it from me to tell God how to spiritually fulfill the biblical text.

But the original, first meaning of Mark 13:14 is overwhelmingly clear. The passage is about the destruction of the temple. The desolation of the temple by the Romans is what Mark has in view. Luke 21 makes the desolation of Jerusalem explicit. In its paraphrase of Mark 13:14, it reads, "When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, know that its desolation is near." Luke takes Mark's ambiguous wording and paraphrases it to make its meaning clear. [2]

Mark 13:14 was thus a prediction that the temple Jesus was looking at would be destroyed. There is no place in the Old or New Testament that literally predicts the rebuilding of a temple again. I'm not saying it couldn't happen. I'm simply saying it is not predicted. [3] All the Old Testament prophecies about a rebuilt temple were fulfilled in 516BC with the rebuilding of the second temple.

Most importantly, the inspired book of Hebrews tells us that there is no further need for an earthly temple. Christ has entered the true temple in heaven (Heb. 8:2). With one sacrifice, Christ has ended the need for sacrifice (Heb. 10:14). Christ's atoning sacrifice has ended the sacrificial system of the old covenant (10:9). There is no need for a temple in the end times (Rev. 21:22).

In short, no rebuilt temple today could ever house the glory of God. Hebrews is definitive. Jesus is the only temple we need, and if the temple were ever rebuilt, it would likely become a stumblingblock to the very elect, a easy idol in waiting for Satan to use to distract God's people from the glory of Christ. God's glory will never return to any earthly temple again. Jesus is the glory of God in this regard, end of story.

6. There is an interesting aside in Mark 13:14 -- "let the reader understand." Because of what a reader is today, we are prone to think it's talking about us understanding as we read. But a "reader" in the first century was the person who read a text aloud to an audience, remembering that many if not most early Christians were illiterate.

Some take the verse to relate to the fact that the phrase "abomination of desolations" is an allusion to Daniel 11:31. Matthew 24:15 makes this allusion explicit. Accordingly, some take the expression "let the reader understand" to mean that the person reading should understand that this event is the fulfillment of Daniel.

It was the fulfillment of Daniel in a spiritual sense. The original fulfillment of Daniel 11 took place in 167BC when the Syrians defiled the temple. This is a testament to the multiple meanings that Scripture can have (it's "polyvalence"). Daniel 11:31 had already been fulfilled once by the time of Jesus.

And it was fulfilled again in AD70, as we have seen. We will see if God chooses to go beyond the text's meaning and fulfill it again in the manner of Hal Lindsay and Tim LaHaye.

I and many others think that the statement "let the reader understand" was a reading cue to the person reading Mark to a church in the first century. Highlight this verse, the cue says, because it's important and its soon. Why? Because the verse goes on to tell Peter, Andrew, James, and John to flee Judea when these things are happening (Mark 13:15). Head for the mountains.

And there is a tradition that the Jerusalem church did flee the city before it was destroyed by the Romans in AD70.

The statement "let the reader understand" is sometimes taken as a clue as to when the Gospel of Mark was written. It is often dated to the time just before or just after the temple was destroyed. For various reasons, I suspect the Gospel was started before the temple was destroyed but that it reached its current form not long afterward.

7. The end of the chapter does seem to blur into the return of Christ. You could argue that some biblical prophecy does that. As the prophet looks to the future, similar "eschatological" events blur together. Mark has more than one statement that might have led his first century audience to think that Jesus would return within their lifetime. Mark 13:30 is one of them -- this generation will not pass until all these things happen. Mark 9:1 is another -- some standing here will not die until the kingdom of God has come with power.

N. T. Wright has ingeniously suggested that the coming of the Son of Humanity was a reference either to the departure of Jesus from Israel or to him coming in judgment on Jerusalem. This interpretation would alleviate the tension of the passage in relation to its fulfillment in that generation. [4]

He rightly points out that the language of the sun darkening and moon turning to blood could be similar to the kind of language we used when we talk about "earth-shattering" events. For example, Acts 2:20 seems to relate this language from Joel 2 to the Day of Pentecost. It could refer to something momentous rather than something like solar and lunar eclipses, still less a transformation of the moon into hemoglobin.

8. However, perhaps a reference to Jesus' second coming remains the best interpretation of the final portion of the chapter. Mark blurs from predictions of the destruction of Jerusalem to the final return of Christ. The end of the chapter tells Peter, Andrew, James, and John to be watchful as these events unfold (13:32-36). No one knew exactly when Jerusalem would be destroyed. 

And today, no one knows when Jesus will return. "No one knows the day or the hour" (13:32). It is amazing that people still try to set dates. I am also amazed when people say that the signs of the times are clear that Jesus will come back soon. Certainly we must live in readiness and expectation. But people have been saying "the signs are clear" for hundreds of years. 

My grandfather saw signs in the 1940s of the Lord's imminent return. We were on the edge of our seats in the 1970s with Hal Lindsey. I would hardly let my mother out of my sight at a store for fear she would be taken and I would be left behind. We were expecting again in 1988. We were primed for the "any day" of Tim LaHaye in the early 2000s. 

Yes, we must live in constant expectation, full stop. But we also note that every prediction -- and "it's so clear it's happening soon" -- has failed. 100% failure rate.

Watch and stay awake. Yes! Keep your candle lit. But it will happen "when you least expect it" (Matt. 24:44).

[1] The wailing wall in Jerusalem -- which you can still visit today -- was not a wall of the temple but a retaining wall holding the earth of the temple mount in place.

[2] The overwhelming majority of Bible scholars have concluded that Luke used Mark as one of its primary sources.

[3] 2 Thessalonians 2:14 comes closest because it talks about a man of lawlessness setting himself up in the temple as God. However, the temple was still standing when Paul was alive. The passage does not predict a rebuilt temple. Further, there is debate over what the temple referred to here is. Ezekiel 40-45 is highly symbolic but primarily looked to the re-establishment of the temple after the Babylonian captivity. As we will mention, Hebrews prohibits any future literal fulfillment still to come.

[4] In Daniel 7, the Son of Humanity comes to the Ancient of Days, a movement that at least initially is up rather than down.

2.3 Beyond Relativism and Absolutism

1.1 Unexamined Assumptions
1.2 "Unitary" Thinking
2.1 Binary Thinking in Ethics
2.2 Contextualization in Missions
_____________________________
12. As seemingly obvious as the idea of contextualization is, it is messy. Let's say that some ethical norm that is important to you is dismissed or downplayed by someone or somewhere else under the name of "that was just cultural on your part." For example, what if a Christian from some part of the world were to say, "Why don't you American Christians greet each other with a holy kiss? 1 Thessalonians 5:26 clearly says to do so."

Maybe the American Christian responds, "That was a cultural practice of the Mediterranean world. Can't I just give you a handshake?" This isn't an issue of debate for us currently, so it is an answer we can easily accept. 

But what if it's an issue of greater significance? The German Christian says, "Your absolute prohibition on drinking is cultural. Can't I just drink in moderation and not get drunk?" What if someone says, "They didn't understand homosexuality in biblical times. What's wrong is visiting a temple prostitute or having sex with boys or forcing yourself on another person"?

You can begin to see the alarm that arose among some when the concept of contextualization came to the fore in the 1970s. "You just don't want to obey God. You're making excuses." And no doubt the concept of differing context has great potential to undermine moral principles. The fallen human mind has exquisite skills at rationalization, which is where you make excuses for inappropriate action. Rationalization is "reasoning away" your guilt or wrong behavior. We're very good at it.

In fact, humans are quite good at arguing that evil is good and good is evil (Isa. 5:20). The high priest "rents his clothes," rips them in a symbolic gesture, when Jesus acknowledges that he is the Son of God (Mark 14:23). "What further need of witnesses do we have?" It doesn't occur to him that Jesus actually might be the Son of God. He is making the good out to be evil.

13. So there is some legitimate concern about someone using the concept of culture to try to "wiggle out" of obedience to God's will. One might also suggest that the situation is different. Someone might say, "Normally it would be wrong to lie, but in this situation it is appropriate." There is a legitimate concern that the person is making excuses for sinful behavior.

About a decade ago, my church expanded its sense of legitimate reasons for divorce to include spousal abuse. It not only included physical abuse but emotional abuse. The idea is that a spouse can be unfaithful in ways that go well beyond sleeping with someone else. In my opinion, this is a good example of an ethical standard that is fully in keeping with the principles of Scripture without it being explicitly ennumerated in the Bible.

The problem is verifying it. "What if someone says they have been abused when they haven't?" I know of a case where a minister divorced his wife in the name of spousal abuse, but there were many who didn't believe him. There was actually an investigation to see if he could keep his ministerial credentials. Legislation was proposed to try to prevent abuse of the abuse clause.

Here we get to a fundamental issue -- if you make exceptions and allowances, someone is going to get away with cheating the allowance. I have heard of middle school teachers and substitutes who simply don't allow their students to use the restroom during class periods. "If you give an inch, they'll take a mile." If you say, "Lying is allowed under certain circumstances," then some people will take advantage of the allowance. If you say, "The prohibition on drinking is cultural," then some Christians are going to take advantage of it. Loopholes can open the door for bad behavior.

When I was an academic Dean, I realized that many policies come into existence because of people who "abuse the system." I remember a couple of faculty members who tried to drive a truck through the fact that there weren't explicit rules against practices that the rest of us followed as a matter of common sense. It was a little funny to me. They were really good at policy-making -- not themselves, but inspiring the rest of us to make policies so they couldn't abuse some aspect of the system.

14. However, in the end, I have a few responses to the fear of people abusing the concept of contextualization. The first is the old saying that "abuse is no excuse." The fact that someone might take advantage of the concept is a different issue than whether the concept is true or not. This is a form of the "fallacy of diversion." It confuses the application of a truth with the truth itself.

As we will see, it is simply the case that moral principles can play out differently in different situations and different contexts. I have a friend who thought he was having a major medical emergency. He had his wife drive him quickly to the hospital in the middle of the night. Later on, telling his young daughter about the incident, she was alarmed to find that her mother had driven through red lights on the way to the hospital. 

In the binary ethical thinking of childhood, a red light is a red light. You don't run it ever. No exceptions. It's an absolute. It wouldn't matter if you were having a baby or dying of a heart attack. A rule's a rule.

Take the question of abortion. It is sometimes argued that, if we prohibit abortion, women will die in unsavory places trying to get one illegally. But this is a bad argument against prohibiting abortion. The objection to the prohibition relates to the application of a moral principle rather than the validity of the principle itself. Possible implications are a motivation to make sure we are right about the core ethic rather than an argument in relation to the ethic itself.

15. A second response is of course that God knows. No one is truly getting away with anything. God knows when we try to make evil good and good evil. In fact, God knows what is really going on inside our hearts even when we don't. We can hide our true motivations from ourselves. But God knows.

I suspect that some of the push back on these concepts is ultimately about control. We want to be able to police those who might abuse allowances. When my wife was in elementary school, a teacher expressed frustration to her father that she was always out of her seat. My father-in-law asked the teacher, "Why don't you tell her to sit down?" His response was full of pathos: "Because she always has a good reason!" Apparently, she had mad skills at coming up with reasonable excuses for undesired behavior.

I once worked with a professor who had elaborate systems to catch students at cheating. It's not that I didn't have my own techniques too, but he seemed to enjoy the quest to catch the cheater maybe a little too much. At some point, we have to remember that God is in control. It's not our job to catch every person whose motives aren't pure. In the end, God is the judge of our intentions (1 Cor. 4:3; Rom. 12:19; Heb. 4:12-13).

16. It is no surprise that as awareness of context became clearer and clearer in the missions circles of the 1970s, opposition to the concept of contextualization rose as well. In the first chapter, I talked about the predictable opposition to difference that arises when a new idea or practice is introduced that shakes or threatens to undermine the status quo. When we have unexamined assumptions about ideas or practices that are important to us, we can react very negatively toward the introduction of other thinking or approaches.

There are rhetorical machines that go to work to maintain the status quo. I've suggested that binary thinking is a predictable response -- the new idea or practice is evil or stupid. Rhetorical machines produce fine-sounding arguments why the new idea or practice is wrong. Some of these arguments can be quite clever. I often use the word ingenious for an incredibly intelligent work-around what seems more or less straightforward.

I had a oneness Pentecostal student once. Oneness Pentecostals don't believe in the Trinity. They are "modalists" who think that God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all the same, one person in different modes during different periods of history. 

This student was incredibly bright. At some point, we got into a discussion of Matthew 28:19, where Jesus tells his followers to baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The most obvious reading of this verse, it seems to me, is that three distinct persons are mentioned here.

His response was ingenious. "Notice that the word name is singular. Even though there are three titles given here, they all relate to the one person who ultimately only has one name." Ingenious!

He didn't come up with that argument, of course. It was an argument created by the "machine" of his church to explain away what I would call "naughty verses" for them -- verses that seem to go against their theology. Every theological system has them. Some verses just fit more easily into our theological systems than others. More on paradigms in a later chapter.

17. Other arguments against a new concept are not quite as clever. You might call them "above average" arguments. They sound intelligent enough that, if they are arguing for a position you like, they provide an excuse to keep the ideas and practices you started out with. They work inside the bubble. Social media and legacy media are constantly giving us talking points that allow us to keep the positions we want to keep.

Of course binary thinking doesn't stop with letting me maintain a belief or practice. Rhetorical machines typically go on the offensive. They provide me with smart sounding reasons not only for why I am correct but why the other side is either stupid or evil. This is especially the case with political rhetoric.

In push-back to moves toward contextualization, an above average rhetorical machine went into action. It used the concepts of absolutes and relativism to try to undermine what it called "situational ethics" and "ethical relativism." These concepts became tools in the arsenal of idealological resistance. If you are claiming that Christians in some other place don't have to follow certain norms, we can shut you down by labeling you a relativist. If you are claiming that it's ok to steal if you're hungry, we can shut you down by calling that "situational ethics."

However, upon the simplest of examinations, this rhetoric doesn't actually do what it wants to do. Fundamentally, it tries to put all ethics into two boxes -- people who believe in right and wrong and those who don't. Absolutists are those who believe in right and wrong. Relativists are those who don't. It is an either/or, binary option. In the end, it is the fallacy of false alternative.

For example, an absolute by definition has no exceptions. Now consider the biblical instruction to submit to those in authority over you (Rom. 13:1; Heb. 13:17). Is that an absolute without exceptions? 

Apparently not. Peter tells the Sanhedrin that they will not submit to its authority. "You tell us whether it is right to obey God or you" (Acts 4:19). That is to say, the principle of submitting to authority is a universal principle with exceptions. By definition, this is not an absolute. But it is not relativism either. It is another option on the ethical spectrum -- universal norm with exceptions.

18. Biblically, we find absolutes. But we also find universal norms with exceptions, and we also find instances of relativism. I would argue that the default scope of moral instruction in the Bible is universal with exceptions. Don't work on the Sabbath, but if your ox is in the ditch, make an exception (Matt. 12:11; Luke 14:5).

In this case, Paul goes beyond the Sabbath as a universal norm to more or less consider the Sabbath legislation as a matter of whether you are a Jew or a Gentile. He tells the Gentile Colossians not to let anyone judge them on whether they keep the Jewish Sabbath (Col. 2:16). Paul's teaching on the Jewish particulars of the Law approaches a kind of cultural relativism. I suspect he taught that it's fine for Jews to continue to abstain from pork, but Gentiles are not obligated to keep the food laws (so also Mark 7:19).

Indeed, you could argue that Paul makes Sabbath-keeping a matter of individual conviction in Romans 14:5 -- one person believes they must keep the Sabbath; another doesn't. Let that sink it. Paul makes Sabbath-keeping a matter of individual conscience and conviction. That goes beyond cultural relativism to individual relativism!

19. In short, the absolute-relativism rhetoric in the end doesn't do what it tries to do. Yes, the command to love God and neighbor is absolute -- no exceptions (Matt. 22:36-40). But other biblical commands seem to imply that there can be exceptions. There is the old question of someone hiding Jews during Nazi occupation during World War II. Do you lie when they ask if you are hiding Jews? The story of Rahab in Joshua 2 seems to imply as much. [8]

Upon considering this scenario, I had a student who said, "I guess it's ok to sin under some circumstances." But that is NOT what this argument is saying. We are saying that the right thing to do in some circumstances is to make an exception and that the wrong thing to do in some circumstands is to keep a rule. This student had the frameowork of absolutism so deeply carved on her mind that she couldn't see that it could actually twist morality in some extreme cases. [9]

But if there are potential exceptions, then the rhetoric falls apart. A concept or action cannot be dismissed simply by labeling. Now we have to do the hard work of ethical thinking. We have to identify moral principles that are in tension with each other and figure out which one takes precedence in this context or situation. But if we have to argue that out, then the rhetoric doesn't work as a quick answer to all our ethical questions.

If there are ethical norms that are universal but have exceptions, then I cannot use language of absolutes to shut down conversation. I have to do the hard work of ethical thinking. In the end, what a lot of people mean when they say "there are absolutes" is that "there is definite right and wrong." The problem is that relativists believe this too. They just think it depends on the culture, person, or situation. The rhetoric falls apart.

20. I grew up believing in convictions. Romans 14 is all about them. God may require something of me that he doesn't require of you. The Nazirites of the Old Testament were not allowed to drink or cut their hair. But everyone else could. This is an example of relativism.

There are individuals who were an alcoholic before they became a Christian. I have a friend who, while recognizing that the Bible fully allows the consumption of alcohol, would never drink himself because of his background. Abstinence for him is a personal conviction. This, again, is an example of ethical relativism, and it is biblically sanctioned.

Once again, we see that the "above average" machine of argumentation doesn't accomplish what it set out to do. Rhetoric of absolutes and relativism was meant to shut down any sense that ethics involves contextualization or the consideration of individuals or situation. But Scripture itself shuts the argument down.

Rather than morality being a binary of black and white, it involves a spectrum of possible decisions. There are moral absolutes. We've mentioned loving God and loving neighbor. All other ethical imperatives flow from these two. "Thou shalt not murder." This is an absolute because it does not include war or capital punishment or self-defense. If we worded it, "Thou shalt not kill," it would not be an absolute.

However, most ethical norms, it would seem, are on the level of universal principle with potential exceptions. There is a place in Scripture also for culturally relative norms -- wrong for one culture, allowed for another. And there is a place in Scripture for individual convictions, which are instances of personal relativism.

As you can see, morality is not a binary in this respect. It is a spectrum. We mentioned at the beginning of the chapter that moral nihilism is the approach to ethics that doesn't believe in any right or wrong. Relativism does believe in definite rights and wrongs. It is definitely wrong for my friend to drink, even though he would allow it might not be wrong for others. So it isn't even accurate to say that relativists don't believe in right and wrong.

Former President Biden is apparently a relativist when it comes to the subject of abortion. He believes it is wrong, but he wouldn't say it is wrong for others. The argument against him should not be, "That's relativist." The argument should be, "This is not an issue on which relativism is appropriate."

In the end, the absolutism/relativism argument fails to do what it sets out to do. On various issues, the Bible can be seen to take positions across the spectrum of moral scope. We therefore have to determine what the appropriate moral scope is for each action. We cannot simply dismiss an action by categorizing it. We have to do the hard work of moral reasoning.

We will return to ethics in chapter 8. Our purpose in this chapter has been to start us on the journey. The first step is to realize that we have moral assumptions we didn't know we had. The second step was for us to realize that binary thinking, while a natural response to new ideas, does not ultimately seem to work. There is a spectrum of moral scope. We will try to set a firmer philosophical basis for Christian ethics in chapter 8.

[8] Around 1800, Immanuel Kant coined the phrase "categorical imperative" in ethics. His philosophy was that, if something was wrong, it was always wrong without exceptions -- it was categorically wrong. He tried and tried to reformulate it so that it would make sense, but his difficulty ultimately belies the fact that he was just wrong. 

His particular German culture was absolutist, but he couldn't pull off the argument. He finally said his categorical imperative amounted to the Golden Rule. But an exceptionless moral absolutism inevitably would violate the Golden Rule by applying an absolute standard to situations calling for exception or mercy. It inevitably leads to immoral action under extreme circumstances.

[9] I might add that while I am making my thinking fairly explicit in this series, I function more as a facilitator in teaching. In this case, I did not argue against the student's position, but I wanted her to understand accurately the nature of the argument.

2.2 Contextualization in Missions

In theory, Thursday is my philosophy writing day (I have a schedule that life often doesn't allow). Here is what I have written so far on "Pilgrim's (Philosophical) Progress":

1.1 Unexamined Assumptions
1.2 "Unitary" Thinking
2.1 Binary Thinking in Ethics
_____________________________
8. I suspect that some missionaries in the early 1900s were largely unreflective in their understanding of culture. Again, there is the person who is curious about differences. This person presumably makes for a good missionary because they are interested in other people as people and are willing to hear how other people think and operate in the world in a non-condescending and non-judgmental way. We're not talking about compromising on principles or the gospel. We're talking about the forms that Christian faith takes at a particular time and place.

As we have already said, a large number of people are wired to see difference automatically as something that needs to be corrected. "I'm right. You're wrong. And I need to fix you." I have little doubt but that a sizeable number of early missionaries entered other cultures unable to distinguish their Christian faith from their American Christian culture. (As we will see, this dynamic likely applies also to the way many American Christians approach politics.)

Let's say two people go on a missions trip to visit a field where there is already a strong Christian community. One person comes away thinking, "God is really using the church there to lead people to Christ and do good in their context." Another person has only seen how "crazy" they are there. Fun stories of difference seem more about how ignorant and inferior they are in the other place.

The first person is more reflective. The second person may not have taken anything of value away from the trip except that it has confirmed to them how ignorant people in other places are. The ironic fact is, however, that it is much more likely that the second person is ignorant of themselves, and the trip has only hardened them in their ignorance. It has confirmed to them their superiority.

These days, there is often mandatory preparation before mission trips of these sorts. There is absolutely training before you can go to a field for any extended period of time. We've learned over the years. 

But there was a day when visitors were not always particularly helpful to those on the field. The visitor might come with a savior complex, expecting to be provided with American-level standards of comfort and provision, creating a lot of extra work for the missionary or hosts, distracting from their work. Rather than helping, the mission team had to interrupt their work to take care of individuals who were largely oblivious to their own assumptions and needs.

I heard a story in recent years of an important person who went to engage a work in another country. Rather than stay onsite in the facilities of those with whom he was working, he insisted on staying in a location more comfortable for him at some significant remove from the site. Although I think we have gotten much better, I fear this sort of mindset and unwillingness to live as those whom we are allegedly serving was all too common in an earlier day. I believe nationals in other countries would readily confirm this impression, especially in earlier days.

When I was in Africa for a few months in the 90s, I heard stories of missionaries who engaged little with the people they were serving. Everything about them said, "I am superior to you, and you are blessed to have me here to help you." Certainly not all missionaries were that way. As I have said, I think we have become a lot more reflective about these dynamics in the last fifty years. 

Hopefully, we have moved well beyond being "unitary" and "binary" thinkers in our missions work. A unitary thinker doesn't even know they have hidden assumptions. I suspect many of the early missionaries fell in this category. Meanwhile, a binary thinker devalues or demonizes other ways of thinking and other practices. 

Later in the book, we will try to move toward greater self-awareness and a sense that there is often a spectrum of potential perspectives rather than just two options. Hopefully, we can move toward what we might call "incarnational" thinking, which is contextualized thinking. The word incarnation of course alludes to the fact that Jesus came to earth and took on our flesh (John 1:14). He did not share the gospel as a superior angel standing on the outside. He became one of us. He lived among us. He was one of us.

9. The 1970s saw an increasing emphasis on "contextualization" in missions. Contextualization is when you distinguish between the core of the Christian gospel and the form the gospel takes in a particular context. As you would expect, there was significant opposition to the concept. For example, the 1974 Lausanne Conference affirmed contextualization as an important missionary principle amid strong debate.

When we cannot tell the difference between our culture and the gospel, contextualization can feel like moral compromise. We think someone is "taking away" from Scripture when what they are really trying to do is translate it for another context. If women in my Christian culture wear their hair up in buns, then I end up instructing the women in other places to wear their hair up in buns.

In the mid-1900s, my church had a work among Native Americans in South Dakota, an "Indian school." I have no doubt but that the school did much good. However, I also suspect that there was a good deal of confusion about what was the missionary's culture and what was the core gospel. The native American students inevitably ended up looking like the missionaries in how they dressed, buns and all.

In the 1990s, my church decided that these native American believers should decide for themselves what the forms of Christian faith looked like in their context. Unaware of ourselves, we as outsiders were likely to mix our customs with the gospel, unable to tell the difference. The church concluded that the native American leaders were in a much better position to apply or "contextualize" the gospel in their culture.

Imagine the alarm when the native Americans incorporated some native dances into their district conference. Dancing was prohibited in the American Christian culture of the missionaries. From an outsider perspective, some said, "Dancing was part of Indian religion. You are being 'syncretistic' when you dance -- especially in your Christian worship." [5] 

The native American Christians responded. "You didn't understand. Everything was a part of our religion. You didn't understand because, in your culture, religion is compartmentalized. It is one area among many areas of your life. Dancing was not intrinsically part of our former religion any more than anything else. It is a part of our culture that you assumed was distinctively religious."

In the last two decades, Christianity has become more concentrated in the southern hemisphere. [6] The countries of the rest of the world have started to send missionaries to us. The United Methodist Church was not able to change its understanding of marriage largely because of the voice of its members from the global south. The American church largely has not woken up to realize that the shape of future Christianity is less and less in our hands. It is only the fact that we have more money that is maintaining more influence at present. 

One day we may wake up and find that the "inferior" Christians of the rest of the world have become the Christian leaders of the world. The binary thinkers among us will inevitably see them as corrupting the gospel, of mixing their culture with absolute truth. And it is inevitable that they will mix their culture with the gospel. What we should realize is that we have also been doing this all along.

10. This chapter is about moving beyond unitary and binary thinking in ethics. In chapter 8, we will return to this subject and explore more deeply the spectrum of approaches to ethics. I will argue that what is distinctively Christian are the core values and the priorities of ethics. But most ethical approaches have a place somewhere in the constellation of our decisions.

This is what I sometimes call "spectrum" thinking. We move beyond thinking there are only two approaches -- and especially beyond not even knowing we have an approach. We become more fully aware of our assumptions.

The idea that context affects how we apply ethical principles seems beyond question to me. There are those who would say that the idea of "abstracted principles" is Western. So be it. It works as a way of analyzing ethics. We can use the paradigm as a heuristic method without insisting it is the only right one. The end result in how we live and think broadly is the goal.

In chapter 8, we will explore more deeply the fact that the Bible itself gives us incarnated ethics. It is unreflective to read the Bible as words that are in a bubble. Every word of the Bible made sense to its authors and audiences in their worlds. That means these words were incarnated in culture too. It's a game changer of a paradigm shift. We will investigate this concept further soon enough.

For the moment, we are taking the first step toward ethical self-awareness. Is it possible that some of my approach to right and wrong is influenced by the culture around me? I'm not just referring to secular culture but to the Christian culture around me.

11. One issue my own church has debated now for several decades is that of drinking in moderation. In the 1800s and 1900s, there was a denial that the Bible even allowed for drinking fermented alcohol. Jesus was thought to turn the water into grape juice or the wine was thought to be so diluted that it was for all intents and purposes non-alcoholic. Meanwhile, all people who drink were villified. Many still hold these positions.

However, there has been a move toward reflectivity. I would say that, in my church today, most would acknowledge that Jesus drank fermented alcohol (Luke 7:33-34). The very fact that Nazirites were singled out for not drinking alcohol suggests that the vast majority of Israelites did drink.

Accordingly, the debate has largely shifted away from a biblical argument to a contextualization one. In our context, is our best Christian witness one in which we abstain from alcohol or one in which we drink? Having lived in England and Germany for several years, at some point I came to the realization that this is largely a matter of a certain American Christian culture. European Christians drink all the time without getting drunk or hindering their witness. 

But unreflectiveness abounds on every side in this debate. There are still those who seem largely unaware of the assumptions and practices of biblical times. Alarmed by the "moral decline" of the church, they can only see the forces arguing to allow moderate drinking as forces of moral compromise. A number of counter-arguments are given that are only convincing to the already convinced, as we might predict.

Then there is the ethical unreflectiveness of the "other side." They unreflectively assume that if something was allowed in biblical times, then it must be allowed in our times. Indeed, this was a core unreflective assumption of the Protestant Reformation. One of the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England reads in part, "Whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man."

Many Protestants take this sentiment to mean that if the Bible doesn't specifically forbid it, we can't forbid it. But this approach is oblivous to the principle of contextualization. "Doing what they did isn't doing what they did if the meaning is different today," I have pointed out. [7] The Bible was written to cultures at particular times and places. It is enculturated thinking and practices as well, incarnated principles, if you would.

Accordingly, the following principle is also true. We may not be able to do some of the things they were able to do in biblical times because the meaning is different today. It is possible that not drinking is more appropriate for Christians in some cultures even though it is allowed in Scripture. As it turns out, there are individuals on "both sides" of this issue that have unexamined assumptions they have absorbed from their culture. 

Those who see that drinking was allowed in Scripture often do not realize that the Bible was contextual and inevitably must be recontextualized in our times and places. There is no way around it. If we deny it, we will inevitably misapply Scripture.

[5] Syncretism is when you mix elements of other religions into your religion.

[6] Cf. Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity. 3rd ed. (Oxford University, 2011).

[7] Kenneth Schenck, Jesus Is Lord: An Introduction to the New Testament, 2nd ed. (Slingshot, 2008).

Though the Bible -- Mark 16 (Easter)

Happy Easter! I have done a more detailed verse-by-verse analysis of the resurrection stories in the Gospels in Explanatory Notes on Jesus' Resurrection.

Psalm Sunday
Temple Monday
Debate Tuesday
Maundy Thursday
Good Friday

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1. The burial of Jesus is not the end of the story! In many ways, it is just the beginning.

We get the impression from the other Gospels that Jesus was buried somewhat hurriedly. Joseph of Arimathea secures the body. The women take note of where his body was put so that they can come back after the Sabbath and perform proper burial rites. What can be done is done before the Sabbath begins at sundown.

Accordingly, the women come early on Sunday morning to the tomb with spices to anoint Jesus' body. Present are Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome (16:1), the same three women mentioned in 15:40. In that world, they are overlooked and often unseen. The others are hiding, but they are still thinking about Jesus.

Who will roll the stone away? It is apparently a large stone in front of the tomb. They are not expecting there to be any other people around. It is barely sunrise. But to their surprise, the stone in front of the tomb is already rolled away.

As we have seen throughout Mark, his presentation is very to the point. The women go into the tomb. It is apparently big enough at least for four people, for when they go inside, there is a young man in white sitting there on the right. Although Mark does not tell us, Matthew tells us this was an angel.

2. "He is risen!" That is the message that the angel gives them. "Don't be amazed."

But the women are fearful. Mark 16:8 ends the Gospel as it has survived with the women telling no one out of fear. More on the ending of Mark in a moment. It is curious that Mark says the women tell no one out of fear. In Matthew, which almost all think used Mark as its main source, the women immediately tell the disciples, as also in Luke and John. 

Some have suggested that the women's reaction in Mark 16:8 fits with Mark's repeated sense of the disciples' misunderstanding. They repeatedly do not understand what is really going on. They don't understand the nature of Jesus' mission. They don't understand that he has to die. Here, they don't see that this is exactly what Jesus had been saying would happen.

Others have suggested that this ending is meant to urge us to tell about Jesus' resurrection. The women don't tell. Are you going to remain silent too? Go and tell that Jesus is risen!

3. Some have misread Mark as not teaching resurrection. But the angel clearly tells them that Jesus is risen. Just because Mark does not narrate any resurrection appearances doesn't mean he doesn't believe they happened. He clearly alludes to resurrection appearances in Galilee.

In Matthew and Mark, we only hear about resurrection appearances in Galilee. The fact that Peter is singled out probably alludes that the key resurrection appearance in Galilee was to him. The only candidate we have among the various appearances mentioned in the Gospels is John 21, along the Sea of Galilee. Luke syncopates the Galilee appearances out of his narrative, although he hints of the appearance to Peter in Luke 24:34.

These curiosities are a reminder that the picture is likely much clearer to us -- with four Gospels -- than it was to them as they lived through it. We wonder how anyone could question. But Jesus' appearances likely left room for both faith and doubt. As it is with us, there was enough evidence for faith if we have the heart for it. And there was enough room for doubt if someone had the heart for it.

4. The ending of Mark was quite a debate point when versions other than the King James began to come out. The earliest Greek manuscripts of Mark do not have 16:9-20. There is early evidence for it in the quotations of the Fathers, but these come to us by way of later manuscripts too. We can have fun debates about the external evidence for the ending. 

The internal evidence is definitive. Mark 16:9 starts the resurrection story all over again, as if 16:1-8 didn't exist. It is in a different style, giving a pop-pop-pop summary rather than a narrative unfolding like the rest of Mark. In short, it is an obvious tack-onto a version of Mark that seemed to end abruptly. It caps a tooth using an early summary of Jesus' resurrection appearances, a summary that draws from the endings of the other Gospels. The summary may indeed be as old as the second century. There is another shorter ending among the manuscripts that did the same thing.

There's thus nothing wrong with the content of Mark 16:9-20. I suspect it's all true. It just wasn't part of the original Gospel of Mark. Given how ancient and orthodox it is, I don't have a problem with pastors using it (for example, I have seen pastors quote it's version of the Great Commission). However, I suspect many do so without realizing it.

Did Mark really end at 16:8? Like the ancient church, 16:8 does seem like an odd way to end the Gospel. I personally lean toward a sense that the original ending was lost or removed very early on. I've heard some suggest that the ending of Matthew points toward how Mark orignally ended. 

Whatever the case, God has let it come to us as it is and there is nothing wrong with it. It does leave us with the question of what we will do. Will we be silent in fear or will we tell others that Jesus is risen. There is space for doubt. But there is space for faith too! What will you do?

2.1 Binary Thinking in Ethics

I have been formulating my personal philosophy as a journey. The first chapter was on "Unexamined Assumptions." Here is that chapter in 2 Parts: part 1 and part 2. Chapter 2 continues the journey into ethics. 
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1. Philosophy is about ultimate things and the answers to ultimate questions. It stands alongside all other fields of inquiry and asks, "What is the scientist really doing?" "What is the historian really doing?" Or the artist or the psychologist. 

Or the minister and priest. This latter "meta" inquiry is of course very sensitive. [1] Should anyone be allowed to ask questions about God? Or does asking questions about God put us in a seat of authority we shouldn't have as mere humans?

The Bible allows questions. We hear them in the prophets. "How long, oh Lord?" (Hab. 1:2). The psalmists ask this question repeatedly. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Jesus cries out from the cross, quoting Psalm 22:1. "Why do the nations rage?" (Ps. 2:1

You can ask questions with different attitudes, though. You can ask questions truly seeking answers. You can ask questions in pursuit of faith. And you can ask questions in pursuit of doubt. You can ask questions about God as if you are in the driver's seat. And you can ask questions about God because you just don't know. 

I have already advocated the long-standing Christian approach known as "faith seeking understanding" (fides quaerens intellectam). We start with the faith we have and go from there. We do so as genuine seekers because we don't want to get it wrong.

The fact that we inevitably start off with assumptions that are wrong is no offense to God. It is in large part a consequence of the Fall. Seeking the truth is thus ideally a quest for God -- the real God rather than the one of our potentially false assumptions. God believes what is truly true. Our inevitable starting point is to have some beliefs that are not true. Thus, rightly done, philosophy is a quest for the thoughts of God amid the inevitable thoughts of man.

Not everyone of course is equally suited for this task. Some of us are gifted in the area of abstract thought. Others may be more easily led astray in the world of thought. I accept that it may be appropriate for some not to question but to trust those they respect. I would only urge that it be done with humility, as the quest must also be done.

Yet our quest will ultimately lead to humility for those who love the quest, love ideas, and are gifted at such "meta-thinking." If the quest ends in arrogance, we have not done it right. There are many of us who have not done it right.

2. I want to start our quest to move beyond binary thinking with ethics. I'm sure you have heard the word. Let's start with a working definition. Ethics is about what is right and wrong. As we will see, even that definition is unreflective, but it helps us get the ball rolling. It helps us start the journey.

Like all ultimate matters, the question of ethics is sensitive. Our sense of right and wrong is deeply ingrained on our psyche. It's something we generally don't question -- or at least there is a lot of pressure not to question our sense of right and wrong. By the time we reach adulthood, we likely have a host of "mores" or "customs" built in.

There is a machine of control in place to keep us in line, especially if we grow up in a particular religion. In many cultures, the instrument is honor and shame. Deep values are implanted in the heart of a child's mind so that they want to seek honor and avoid shame. In Western culture, we try to instill a desire to avoid guilt. We want that angel on their shoulder (Freud's superego) so that they will resist the devil on the other one (Freud's id).

In evangelical circles, we have Sunday Schools to instill these core values. We want to imprint our way of life into our children at a young age. "Train up a child in the way they should go" (Prov. 22:6). With good intentions, we are trying to "indoctrinate" them. And, I don't think it's crazy to say that the Bible often serves as a tool of control to keep us in line.

The ironic thing, of course, is that the Bible often raises questions about our cultural ethics. My seventh and eighth grade Sunday School class has been working through Joshua, Judges, and 1 Samuel. The young people ask many difficult ethical questions every week. Why was Jael considered good when she drives a tent peg through a man's head? Was Rahab right to lie? Did Jephthah really sacrifice his daughter?

3. I remember when I realized that the Bible doesn't outright condemn polygamy. Don't get me wrong. I think it is headed in that direction, and I fully affirm monogamous marriage as God's ideal. But this is one area where I had this moment of realization about my own unexamined assumptions about what the Bible means.

Jacob of course has two wives and two concubines. Not a word of condemnation is given. David was a man after God's own heart and yet had many wives. A key moment in my quest to know the Bible was when I realized that Deuteronomy 21:15-17 assumes that a man might have more than one wife. The passage says nothing about the man needing to get his life in order and only have one wife. It assumes that polygamy was a normal practice in Israel.

What about Genesis 2:24 -- a man becomes one flesh with his wife? I had always assumed this was one man and one woman. But a man becomes one flesh with every woman he has sex with (1 Cor. 6:16). He becomes one flesh with a prostitute, for example. (By the way, this is not the same as marriage. Paul would never say that such a man had to marry the prostitute.)

In short, a polygamous man in the Old Testament became one flesh with each of his wives. Imagine my surprise when it occurred to me that Boaz might already have had a wife or two when he married Ruth. Nothing in the story precludes that possibility. It may actually be more likely than not.

Mind blown! I had an unexamined assumption about what the text was saying -- an assumption that I think is right in terms of how we should live and what God's ideal is for us. But I didn't know what I didn't know. I didn't see that I had hidden assumptions. My thinking was "unitary," using a term I coined in the first chapter.

4. What I'm getting at is that the Bible often isn't as entirely the source of what we say is right and wrong as we think. That doesn't mean our values are wrong. It may just mean that we are unreflective about the full basis for those values and where they come from.

When I taught New Testament, I had the students write a final paper in which they took a position on a contemporary issue based on the teaching of the New Testament. But I always warned them. It's best to pick an issue that the New Testament directly addresses. I made this warning because I often would get papers on abortion with lots of statistics and moral sentiments but not a single verse from the Bible.

It seems clear to me that our position on abortion is broadly based on the ethical principle that it is wrong to kill, but there is almost nothing in the Bible itself that directly addresses the topic. Almost every Scripture I have heard quoted involves unexamined assumptions that aren't clearly in the texts coupled with logical fallacies. 

In other words, there is a significant amount of theological glue involved in this position of the highest importance to us. If you set out the logic of our position, there are premises that come from outside the text. That doesn't make our position wrong, but it does show that our position is actually as much or more theology and philosophy as Bible.

We are on a journey of unexamined assumptions because we want to know what God thinks. A key realization on that quest is that some of what we say is the Bible is actually our assumptions rather than the Bible itself. The Bible can become merely symbolic. It can become a white board of culture and a power tool to keep our group under control. It can become a bannerhead, a placard. But if we look inside, sometimes we may not hear what we want to hear if we truly listen.

5. There is a delightful story in the Histories of the Greek historian Herodotus, who wrote in the 400s BC. [2] In the story, king Darius asks two groups of individuals what their practices were in relation to their parents when they die. The Greeks respond that they burn their bodies on a funeral pyre (Star Wars style).

The other group, the Callatians, were horrified. They thought such practices were abhorrent. "What then do you do?" Darius asks. "Why we eat our dead parents of course."

At this point, Herodotus draws a conclusion. "Custom is king over all." In other words, he draws a relativist conclusion and what we now call "cultural relativism." In this view, right and wrong entirely depends on where you grew up. 

Indeed, I was initially puzzled by the fact that the Greek word ethos and the Latin word mos -- from which we get the words ethics and morals -- initially meant "customs" or "habits." This made no sense to me initially because "everyone knows" that morality is about absolutes. It's about what is universally right and wrong everywhere in all times and places.

More on absolutes in a moment. Certainly most people in most cultures do not consider their values to be "cultural." They think they're just plain right. 

In Western culture, Herodotus is sometimes called the "father of history" because he went beyond simply repeating his people's traditions or assuming the Greeks were always in the right. He pursued source material and tried to be more even-handed in his treatment of the evidence. He was not a historian in the modern sense, but he is often seen as a benchmark. 

Indeed, the fact that he didn't privilege the Greeks led Plutarch to call him the "father of lies." Plutarch used his intellect to reinforce Greek cultural assumptions and values. In his own way, Herodotus began to use his intellect to ask the question of what is actually true -- which goes beyond the Greeks. The real truth is what God thinks, and God is bigger than any human tribe.

6. By the end of our journey, I hope to end with a justification of definite rights and wrongs. But because we start off with unexamined assumptions -- blind spots -- we can live with a little disequilbration for a moment. Inevitably, our views on right and wrong do have a lot to do with where we are born. And even as Christians, the morals we see in the biblical texts are deeply influenced by our culture.

In philosophy, I often shared a list of fascinating differences between different cultures. I've mentioned the polygamy of many cultures and the fact that the Callatians ate their dead parents. Obviously, there have been cannabalistic cultures that eat their enemies as well. [3] In certain Inuit cultures, the elderly might self-sacrifice (or be left behind to starve) because of the scarcity of resources... without it being considered wrong.

The ancient Spartans encouraged their young people to learn how to steal as a valuable skill. Some Greeks valued quasi-sexual relationships between male mentors and the young men they mentored. In ancient Egypt, a man's family (including pets) were often buried alive with the dead husband. 

Even into modern times, the practice of suttee in India burned the live widow of a dead husband on the same funeral pyre as him. Female circumcision continues in Africa to this day. In Japan up until recent times, the honorable thing for a woman to do even if she were merely accused of infidelity was to commit suicide. [4]

7. If we start off without even knowing that other cultures have different values (unitary thinking), we are typically repulsed when we encounter these practices of other cultures -- just as they are repulsed by our practices. The Callatians are repulsed by the Greeks, and the Greeks are repulsed by the Callatians. As I mentioned, we will try soon enough to ground ethics on something broader than culture.

But our initial reaction is often binary thinking. My culture's right. Yours is wrong. We bring in the Bible often without reading it. "The Bible tells me so." A whole mechanism of rhetoric developed in evangelical circles in the mid-twentieth century to combat relativism.

The other extreme is moral nihilism, a complete rejection of right and wrong to begin with. As we will see, this is actually something different from relativism. Relativism actually does believe in right and wrong -- it just believes it's relative. 

Moral nihilism rejects the existence of right and wrong altogether. Think Nietzsche. Think Diogenes, the ancient founder of the Cynics. He pooped and had sex in public to argue that the rules against such things were just made up by society. We will dive into such territory later in the book. For now, we are looking at the movement from unitary to binary thinking.

[1] The word meta in Greek means "after." In this context, we might say it means "alongside of." A "meta" discipline stands alongside that discipline and asks what it is doing, what its assumptions are. Philosophy itself has internal "meta" disciplines. It has "meta" physics and epistemology, which are the meta-disciplines to the meta-disciplines.

We can never escape this loop. Ultimately, all thinking rests on fundamental assumptions that cannot be escaped.

[2] This story is found in Herodotus, Histories 3.38.

[3] The Callatians weren't cannibals, by the way. I wonder if they thought this practice actually preserved their parents' heritage within them.

[4] You can see how much energy human cultures exert trying to control women. This speaks to their great potential power in society. Societies develop rules to control it. Part of the cultural dynamics in America in the moment is to try to put the genie of the empowered woman back into the bottle.