FW: [TheoTalk] why he waked

[gdeme...@msn.com]

Dear Confessors,
 
I posted this on a more "liberal" UCC listserv.
 
I do so here with the same comments, implied questions below.
 
I know this issue has been visited many times, but I thought it would be instructive to hear Packer, if only to argue (or perhaps agree?) with him.
 
Best,
 
George Demetrion

---

From: gdeme...@msn.com
To: Gdeme...@msn.com
Subject: [TheoTalk] why he waked
Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2008 08:10:42 -0500

 
Hi all,
 
Perhaps J.I. Packer's explanation of why he left the Anglican Church after being  a stalwart member for almost 50 years may stimulate some reflection
http://www.banneroftruth.org/pages/articles/article_detail.php?344
 
What I'd be interested in particular is some reflection on the matter of Packer's reasoning.  Other commentsare, of course, desirable as well.
 
For a good overview of Packer, who in some ways is similar to CS Lewis, but with a great deal more theological acuity, go here http://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/bio/jipacker.html
 
Best,
 
George Demetrion

[Herb Davis]

Dear George,  Thanks for the statement by J.I. Packer.  I probably agree with most of what he writes and I would be interested to hear from those who disagree.  I think he sees the division rightly for the Anglican Church but in the UCC congregations I think, who are moved by the Holy Spirit to descent from Conference or General Synod have their own integrity and so at least I don't think I have to walk even when I am probably out of step with the General Synod.  I know General Synod officers have not respected by position but I understand the new relationship with Faithful and Welcoming congregations is better and maybe different.  At the end of the day I do believe Packer is right that this is an issue of Biblical authority.  I would be interested in hearing the responses from the liberal UCC site.  Peace, Herb

-----Original Message-----

[gdeme...@msn.com]

Thanks Herb,
 
I think Packer was pushed against the wall on the ecclesiological issue; namely the following:
 
"In June 2002, the synod of the Anglican Diocese of New Westminster authorized its bishop to produce a service for blessing same-sex unions, to be used in any parish of the diocese that requests."
 
No doubt, theological issues were also pressing, but unlike the local autonomy format of the UCC, apparently such an option is not available within Anglicanism.
 
In this lengthy piece NT Wright takes another view on the controversy within Anglicanism http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/relrpt/stories/s1243268.htm
 
There has been no response on Theotalk and I don't expect one given the many sounds of silence that pervade that list.
 
Of course, anyone on this list is free to subscribe to the theotalk discussion list http://www.ctucc.org/fido/FIDOinfo.html which is sponsored by the CT Conference of the UCC.
 
George Demetrion

---

[gdeme...@msn.com]

This book is now making the talk show rounds http://www.chopra.com/thirdjesus
 
Check out this link for more Amazon reviews than you could possibly read: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/product-description/0307338312/ref=dp_proddesc_0?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books
 
George Demetrion

[Ryan Dowell Baum]

On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 7:46 AM, Herb Davis <herb....@mindspring.com> wrote:
> I probably agree
> with most of what he writes and I would be interested to hear from those who
> disagree.

Hi Herb,

I am one of those who disagree. For the most part, I don't disagree
with Packer's characterization of the two sorts of people who support
the blessing of same-sex unions. I believe he's correct that there
are those who espouse "interpretations that, however possible, are
artificial and not natural, but that allow one to say, 'What Paul is
condemning is not my sort of same-sex union.'" I think it's really
difficult to say with any integrity that Paul would have been a fan of
same-sex marriage. I also think, however, that it's hard to say with
any integrity that Paul was much of a fan of sex at all. For him,
marriage was a tolerable solution for those who could not practice
enough self-control to be celibate. I think it's a bit hypocritical
for straight married people to look at their own non-procreative sex
as something blessed by God while condemning gay sex as an aberration.
While the virtues of companionship are often extolled by biblical
writers, sex qua sex never gets the same sort of attention, except
maybe in the Song of Songs, in which marriage is never mentioned. The
Scriptures, for the most part, seem to look upon heterosexual sex as
necessary for the task of procreation, but nowhere do we see the kind
of unqualified praise for straight married sex that contemporary
Christian culture affords it. If I consider non-procreative sex with
my wife to be a good and beautiful gift from God to be appreciated and
enjoyed (and I do), it is because my experience tells me so--not the
Bible.

As you've probably guessed, I would fall into Packer's second
category, those who believe that our experience can (and does, and
must) judge the Bible. There are not many of us who would consider
Joshua's tactics for occupying Canaan (killing every man, woman, child
and animal within a city) as morally acceptable, even though the Bible
says that God commanded the Israelites to do so. There are not many
of us who would consider it a moral solution to a problem to willingly
give up our daughters to be raped rather than allow strangers to
assault a houseguest, as Lot does in Sodom. While Jesus speaks
forcefully against divorce and remarriage, there aren't very many
Christians attempting to make it illegal in a religious or civil
sense. We all have to make distinctions about what parts of the Bible
are literally and legally binding and what parts are not. We have to.
The problem with Packer's objection to allowing experience to judge
Scripture is that it assumes that the Holy Spirit plays no part in our
experience. Packer suggests that we should allow the dead letter of
the Bible to do our moral reasoning for us, as if there were no living
Christ with whom we can be in relationship.

I believe that there is a more perfect revelation of God than even the
Bible, that his name is Jesus Christ, and that he is alive. It is the
living Spirit of Christ that tells me that committed, loving
relationships are blessed by God and are a blessing to those involved
in them. I don't need a book, however inspired or inspiring, to tell
me that.

Grace and peace to you,
Ryan

[gdeme...@msn.com]

"The problem with Packer's objection to allowing experience to judge
Scripture is that it assumes that the Holy Spirit plays no part in our
experience. Packer suggests that we should allow the dead letter of
the Bible to do our moral reasoning for us, as if there were no living
Christ with whom we can be in relationship."

 

Hi Ryan,
 
I don't think that is an accurate depiction of Packer's theology.  Clearly he has a very high view of Scripture, but only as revealed in and through the Holy Spirit as mediated through the living Christ.  In this respect his emphasis on heart piety is as indispensable, if not more so than his more fortmal work in theological systematics. On this, his book, A Passion for Holiness is indispensable http://www.amazon.com/Passion-Holiness-J-I-Packer/dp/1856840433.  This short piece on the inward witness of Scripture provides a good sensed of the relationship between Scripture and the Holy Spirit in his theology http://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/onsite/packer/05inwardwitness.html
 
Packer would have difficulty with any view of the Holy Spirit that contradicted the Scripture, read canonically through the prism od Christ revealed.  To be sure, Packer's theology is richly informed by a very deep-rooted Puritan sensibility, which no doubt, informs his views on sex.
 
George Demetrion

[Ryan Dowell Baum]

Thanks, George. That's helpful. I should remember not to send in
emails to this list without expecting my reading list to expand!

If Packer would have difficulty with the Holy Spirit contradicting
Scripture, how does he reconcile the allowance of remarriage after
divorce? He mentions it as an aside in the article, but I'd be really
interested in hearing the reasoning on how that squares with
Scripture. Perhaps he sees this not as the Spirit's work, but as that
of the Church, but I wonder why it's not as big a deal to him as gay
marriage, especially since the prohibition comes from the Lord
himself.

Grace and peace,
Ryan

--
Ryan Dowell Baum
135 E. University St.
Wooster, OH 44691
(510) 681-7498

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone
who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not
know God, for God is love. (1 John 4:7-8)

Whoever claims to live in Him must walk as He walked. (1 John 2:6)

[Ryan Dowell Baum]

Hi again George,

I just read the short piece on monergism.com that you linked in your
email. I'm kind of blown away--it seems as though Packer puts the
Bible on the same level as Jesus. I will say that what he says about
the Bible does not match my experience. I grew up in an atheist
family and, while I was in college, had a born again experience while
reading the Gospel of John in which I knew without a doubt that Jesus
Christ is God incarnate. I love the Bible for introducing me to Jesus
and the narrative of our salvation through him, but I never had a
similar experience testifying to its divinity. Would Packer say that
I must have both experiences--an experience of Jesus as divine and an
experience of the Bible as divine--in order to be a true Christian?

Grace and peace,
Ryan

[gdeme...@msn.com]

Ryan,

 

The only passage I found in the Packer piece on divorce is the following:

 

"Should I not try to help them to the practice of chastity, just as I try to help restless singles and divorcees to the practice of chastity? Do I not want to see them all in the kingdom of God?"

 

I don't see that as condoning or accepting divorce ; just dealing with some of the results of it.

 

On homosexuality, Packer references Robert Gagnon  http://www.robgagnon.net/.  Not that I would agree with Gagnon, nor am adamantly opposed to same-sex marriage, a topic I don't really get worked up about, though find it theologically instructive.  Whether that in itself is a form of insensitivity I would not reject out of hand.

 

In any event, on Packer, I think he views the issue as of a foundational nature with reference ultimately to Gen 2:22-25 in linking male and female to the creation itself or at least the role of human beings within it.  That new light may break in on this I don't deny, and in fact, I don't have a dog in this fight, but am pressing on it here, nonetheless, as a means of probing into its theological significance.

 

Best,

 

George Demetrion

> Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2008 20:58:07 -0500
> From: ryan.dow...@gmail.com
> To: Confessi...@googlegroups.com
> Subject: Re: Packer on the Spirit and Word

[Herb Davis]

Dear Ryan, Great to hear you strong voice again and thank you for your
witness. You have the right focus. The homosexual issue is about the
interpretation of scripture and you certainty know where you stand. Your
unbridled affirmation as one who knows that "our experience can (and does
and must judge the Bible" (I would agree with can and does but not must) and
your confession that "there is a more perfect revelation of God than even
the Bible, that his name is Jesus Christ, and that he is alive...I don't
need a book, however inspired or inspiring, to tell me that," is helpful.
At least it affirms that J. I Packer was not describing a straw man but a
powerful witness of our modern culture. On the other hand your note to
George describes the Bible as a powerful witness to Jesus Christ in your
life. So I wonder do you ever reflect on the Barman Confession "we are to
obey the One Word, Jesus Christ witnessed to in scripture."? At least in
the midst of a struggle with the dark side of modernity and the
enlightenment those folks believed they needed a book.

Two questions that we might ponder on this critical issue (you may have
questions for me)
1. Does the United Church of Christ belief and teach what you believe and
teach about scripture?
2. Why are you so confident in a cultural experience that is primarily
western European, upper middle class and located in the academy?

Glad you are here! Peace, Herb

[Gabriel Fackre]

Herb,

Well said. Barmen lives.

--Gabe

-----Original Message-----
From: Confessi...@googlegroups.com
[mailto:Confessi...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Herb Davis
Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2008 7:57 AM
To: Confessi...@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: [TheoTalk] why he waked

[Ryan Dowell Baum]

Hi Herb,

Thanks for your friendly response. You're right, I certainly don't
think Packer has set up a straw man--I think he's accurately described
the theological position of his opponents, though I obviously disagree
with much of his critique of it.

Your question about Barmen is a good one. In fact, one of the reasons
I love and appreciate Barmen so much is that it correctly (to my mind)
identifies "Jesus Christ witnessed to in Scripture" as the One Word of
God who demands obedience, and not the Scripture itself. I am
certainly not someone who believes that the Bible should be thrown out
or that it has no place in teaching us about the nature of God, the
nature of humanity, or the means of our salvation. It's primary
function in my life, though, is as the authoritative witness to the
One Word of God, Jesus Christ, who is alive in my life and with whom I
have a living relationship. The fact that Jesus is witnessed
to--powerfully--in Scripture does not suggest to me that Scripture is
therefore the only means of knowing Jesus. It may be useful to know
that before I joined the United Church of Christ I was a Quaker, and
it is through that tradition that I entered the worshiping Body of
Christ. Much of my theology--especially my epistemology--has been
shaped by that tradition.

I think the question of whether or not God is knowable apart from
Scripture is what Brunner and Barth had their big disagreement about,
no? Brunner argued that, although salvation from sin comes only
through Christ, human reason and conscience contain traces of the
knowledge of God. Reinhold Niebuhr came down on Brunner's side of the
argument, even though he realized that human reason is often placed at
the service of self-interest.

To start reflecting on your two questions:

1. I think it's very difficult to say what exactly the United Church
of Christ teaches or believes on any given theological subject, as our
Congregationalism allows for quite a bit of breadth and diversity in
theology. I am being trained at Pacific School of Religion, which is
a United Church of Christ seminary, and I think I'm theologically more
conservative than much of that community--at PSR, affirming the
doctrine of Trinity, believing in the divinity of Christ, and being
comfortable with describing his relation to me as "Lord" makes me
pretty conservative. I'm not sure you'd find many people at all at
PSR--professors or seminarians--who feel comfortable calling the Bible
the Word of God. Actually, I remember on my first day of Introduction
to Old Testament, the professor held a Bible in the air and said
emphatically, "This is not the Word of God." I'm not sure that the
UCC as a whole believes and teaches what I believe and teach about
Scripture, but I think my position is common among its members and
ministers.

2. I'm not sure which cultural experience you're inquiring about. Do
you mean the cultural experience of Western Christianity as a whole?
Or do you mean my personal experience, as a Western European,
upper-middle class, academician, of being born-again in Jesus Christ?
If you mean the former, I'm not sure I would say I am super-confident
in Western Christianity as such. As Bonhoeffer said, "as an
impossible way from the human to God, the Christian religion stands
with other religions...it remains human, all too human...the gift of
Christ is not the Christian religion, but the grace and love of God
which culminate in the cross." If you mean my personal experience,
I'd like to make the slight correction that I am not really Western
European as historically understood--I'm half Jewish and half
Italian-- and I don't think I'd call myself upper middle class--I'm
probably on the lower end of the middle-middle class (the
in-debt-up-to-our-eyeballs class). I am, however, culturally very
much a middle-class White American, and I think perhaps you're
implying the question, "How can you place so much confidence in your
experience when your experience is nowhere near universal?" I think
my response would be, "I can do no other." I don't believe it's
morally responsible to allow a book to do my moral reasoning for me,
to tell me what's good and bad and right and wrong. I think God gave
me the capacity to reason and the capacity to have a personal
relationship with Jesus so that I can be morally responsive (and
accountable) to the living Spirit of God in my life. Though I
recognize that admitting human experience as a valid source of truth
can be dangerous due to its subjectivity, I don't think slamming down
the Bible and saying, "your experience is no good, just do what this
book tells you" is an adequate solution to the problem. Niebuhr said
of religion that it is dangerous but necessary. I think I'd say the
same thing about admitting the truth of human experience.

Grace and peace to you,
Ryan

[gdeme...@msn.com]

Hello Ryan, Herb and many others.
 
No doubt Packer relied heavily on Scriptures and holds to a very high view.  No doubt, too, in Packer's interpretation a static orthodoxy that is not attuned the promptings of the Spirit is worse than useless.  What he does say is that encapsulated in ther Bible is the most profound repository of God's revelation to humankind in which the red thread of the Holy Spirit is what connects the original writers and readers of any era.  Packer's pre-eminent challenge is to aspire toward the revelatory truths embeddecd in the Scripture as experienced from writer to reader notwithstanding the flawed instrumentality of human reason and experienced flawed even more by the indubitable reality of sin.  This leaves room even in Packer for much new light to break forth and his pietism ultimately overrides his rationalism when push comes to shove, though he would be very dubious about any new light that in some substantial way congtradicted Scripture in its canonical fulness revealed in the fullest sense in Christ crucified and resurrected.  Donald Bloesch is similarly skeptical even as he is much more attuned to the neo-orthodox impetus especially of barth and R. Niebuhr.
 
The following comparison may be of some value.
 
Best,
 
George Demetrion
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
 

Bloesch and Packer in Quest of Common Ground

 

Our shift in focus from what might be viewed, and with considerable qualification, as the rational evangelicalism of J.I. Packer to the “fideistic revelationism” (Grenz, 1999) of Donald Bloesch represents a theological sea change in the American evangelical imagination even as Packer and Bloesch are much closer on core essentials that a careful reading of their work and an examination of their historical influence might disclose. As Bloesch (1994) notes, Packer, too, “seeks to distance himself from an evangelical ‘self-reliant rationalism’ that minimizes or downplays the role of the Holy Spirit in biblical interpretation.”  A difference is that Bloesch “would probably be more open to historical-critical study as an aid in biblical exegesis” (p. 335), although, as indicated in the pervious chapter, Packer is not averse, but is more wary than Bloesh of the intrusion of liberal and neo-orthodox scholarship invariably diluting the disclosive word of God revealed both in and through the Scriptures.  Bloesch is also cautious in his qualified, yet highly empathetic appropriation of Barth, particularly in wanting to avoid any sense of “actualism,” that the Bible is a primary source of revelation that comes to life only when internalized within the existential experience of the believer.  This is a criticism that Bloesch’s heavy emphasis on the mediating role of the Holy Spirit does not totally escape.  By way of contrast, Packer seeks to respond to the obscurantist charge through a fuller development of evangelical scholarship on its own terms with a deep reach into the Puritan theological vision.  Bloesch is more attuned to the apologetic challenges of drawing in with some equivocation the many fruits of neo-orthodoxy and is also more inclined to discuss outright liberal biblical exegesis and theology for the evangelical purposes that he has identified, though in his critique of this latter strand Bloesch is as stinging as Packer.

 

Given this far from unimportant difference, both theologians construct a theology of Scripture based on a dynamic interaction between the Word and the Spirit even as Packer gravitates more freely toward the inscripturated Word.   Still, for Packer as well as Bloesch, the centrality of the Holy Spirit as a primary source of illumination without which the text itself can only exist as a dead letter remains a core thesis.  In response, moreover, to the trajectory of 20^th century Protestant theology, both privilege the Word in the Bible-culture relationship.  Bloesch, however, builds, at least in part, on the neo-orthodox vision of Karl Barth while Packer draws on the Princeton theology of Charles Hodge, Benjamin Warfield, and J. Greshem Machem in support of his nuanced concept of biblical inerrancy which both Packer and Bloesch, describe as trustworthiness.  As Bloesch (1994) puts it, “we must never say that the Bible teaches theological or historical error, but we need to recognize that not everything in the Bible may be in exact correspondence with historical and scientific fact as we know it today” (pp. 36-37).  These differences, Bloesch’s partial Barthian move and Packer’s qualified support of a rationalistic interpretation of the Bible, represent an important shift in theological consciousness even as both theologians have sought to confront modernity with what they take as the unequivocal biblical truth, in which they both acknowledge that we can only know in part.

 

Given the fundamentalist-modernist divide in contemporary U.S. Protestantism there is much more reception for Bloesch than Packer in mainline circles even as Packer has sought to exorcize the fundamentalist demon through a highly articulate evangelical theology.  This makes their similarities even more striking, particularly in the consideration of their overarching themes and mediating roles in bringing into greater concord substantial sectors of evangelical discourse.  In the very process of seeking broad ecumenical influence within their respective evangelical spheres both invariably engender criticism from the theological left and right.  In bringing out something of his distinctive contribution there will be aspects in this chapter discussing Bloesch’s work, highlighting, even if only implicitly so, more of the differences between these two important theologians, particularly Bloesch’s more extensive encounter with neo-orthodoxy and Protestant liberalism.  It is, nonetheless, worthwhile to keep in mind the profound similarities within the differences underlying their divergent but complementary efforts of working out the relationship between the Word and the Spirit within the broad stream of issues facing 20^th century Protestant theology. 

 

At the core, is their mutually mediating efforts in constructing a Reformed-centered catholic evangelical theology, a vision by definition that, while beckoning, is one in which the reach perpetually extends beyond the grasp.  It is toward such an effort that this project aspires through an irenic reading of the five theologians and biblical scholars discussed in this book.  In the process I attempt to probe into critical divergences as part of the effort itself of teasing out areas for potential breakthroughs toward a mediating ecumenical evangelical theology of Scripture, while staying attuned to persisting tensions and conflict.  The quest for broad evangelical ecumenism in which “scripture reorients the world” rather than “absorbs the world” (Husinger, 2003, p. ix) can obtain at best as a regulative ideal.  Nonetheless, it is an enduring hope that fresh light on seemingly intractable problems can be shed, in and through the very process of exploring some of the underlying issues confronting 20^th century American Protestant theology and biblical exegesis and exposition.
 

[Willis Elliott]

George:

You say:

The only passage I found in the Packer piece on divorce is the following:

"Should I not try to help them to the practice of chastity, just as I try to help restless singles and divorcees to the practice of chastity? Do I not want to see them all in the kingdom of God?"

 

I don't see that as condoning or accepting divorce ; just dealing with some of the results of it.

 

 

The Packer quote doesn't "deal with some of the result of" divorce.  It doesn't distinguish within the category of the-unchaste(-excluded-from-"the-kingdom-of-God"): no kingdom of God for any unchaste (fornicators, adulterers, remarrieds).

 

Besides, the Bible's no-divorce commandment falls outside Packer's canon-within-the-canon, viz. Paul.  Says Packer (in a link you gave us): "My primary authority is a Bible writer named Paul.  For many decades now, I have asked myself at every turn of my theological road: Would Paul be with me in this?  What would he say if he were in my shoes?  I have never dared to offer a view of anything that I did not have good reason think he would endorse."

 

I know the breed.  When I was a Protestant fundamentalist (late '35- '36), Paul was my canon-within-the-canon, against the modernists' Jesus as the canon-within-the-canon.  What a liberation, to let the whole canon be your Bible (& let the Bible [diversity in unity] be the Bible - a liberation I trace to Origen's decision to let Jn. be Jn. though he couldn't merge it with the Synoptics).

 

In his sharp distinction between the objectivist-canonical & the subjectivist-experiential & utter rejection of the latter, Parker is a scripturalist (if not a bibliolater).  And a super-Paulinist (super: even Paul says that he sometimes speaks without a word from the Lord).

 

Grace and peace--

Willis

[gdeme...@msn.com]

Hi Willis,
 
When I read Packer broadly I don't see sduch reductionism.  Also, somewhere that I can't point to he talks about the centrality of the four gospels, apparently even more than Paul, though he does love Romans.  I just get the impression that he has found such an incredibly rich resource in Scripture he's just going to hold off for all its worth.  Also, fundamentalists have a hard time with him.  Here's a passage in A Passion for Holiness that gets at the broader intent of Packer's theology, which I find in all of the major books I read.  He is, to be sure, doctrinally rigorous, but not rigid.  Unlike Carl henry, moreover, I would not characterize packer as a propositionalist.
 
Here's the passage:
 
"We have seen, finally, that personal holiness is personal wholeness--the ongoing reintegration of our disintegrated and disordered personhood as we pursue our goal of single-minded Jesus-likeness; the increasing mastery of our life that comes as we learn to give it back to God and away to others; the deepening joy of finding worthwhilness even in the most tedious and mundane tasks when tackled for the glory of God and the good of other people; and the peace that pours from the discovery that, galling as our failure in itself is, we can handle our failures--we can afford to fail, as some daringly put it--because we all along live precisely by being forgiven , and we are not required at any stage to live any other way." (p.  A Passion for Holiness, p. 93)
 
In short, his pietism is a stronger strain than the logic of his theological rigor, and even in theology he has been much more influenced by the 17th century Puritans as well as Edwards than by the late 19th and early 20th century Princetonian theologians.  His popular books, especially Knowing God, have been very influential and he has worked hard to mediate the various batttles for the Bible that have been notorious in some evangelical and fundamentalist circles.
 
His 1958 book, Fundamentalism and the Word of God is a well crafted text as an early statement of his critique of both the fundamentalism and the liberalism of the era: http://www.amazon.com/review/product/0802811477/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?%5Fencoding=UTF8&showViewpoints=1
 
In short, I think there's much to affirm in Packer notwithstanding calls for admonition on some pivotal points.
 
George Demetrion

---

[Willis Elliott]

George:

1

True that his pietism (as I'd put it) softens his literalism.

2

As for whole-canon, why would he claim, as his "primary authority," one particular biblical author (& that not Jesus!).  Paul would be appalled at being given such elevation.

3

As I said, the quote in your link categorically excludes the remarried from the kingdom of God.  Was that, too, an incautious overstatement - perhaps even unintentional?

4

What work of his would you suggest to someone who'd never read him?  I (who've read his less than you have) would make it "A Passion for Holiness."  Partly because of my formation in a holiness college of the old (pre-Pentecostal) holiness movement.

 

Grace and peace--

Willis

 

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[fc...@comcast.net]

"What work of his would you suggest to someone who'd never read him? (J. I. Packer)  I (who've read his less than you have) would make it "A Passion for Holiness."  Partly because of my formation in a holiness college of the old (pre-Pentecostal) holiness movement."  WIllis

 

I would reccommend CONCISE THEOLOGY:  A Guide to Historic Christian Beliefs. (Tyndale House,Wheaton, 1993) These were going to be notes for a Study Bible but they morphed into a 262 page book that one can read like a theological dictionary. In a sense it is a short Systematic Theology written in the form of a theolgocical dictionary. First of all it is the mature Packer having been written in 1993. Second, it is Packer on the whole of theology and not merely on one specific topic. Thirdly, it can be a great bathroom book since one can read only one section and put it down and return and read another without losing his train of thought. Fourth, you only have to read two pages (43 & 44) to get his view of holiness!!!!

;-)

Chris Anderson

 

 

[gdeme...@msn.com]

Hi Willis,
 
I don't have an answer to your #'s 2&3
 
In addition to A Passion for Holiness which I came to late, I recommend the following:
 

Packer, J.I. (1993a). Knowing God. Downer Grove, IL:  Intervarsity Press.  Original publication 1973.

Packer, J.I. (1996).  Truth and power:  The place of Scripture in the Christian life.  Wheaton, IL:  Harold Shaw Publishers.

Packer, J.I. (1958).  Fundamentalism and the Word of God.  Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Company.

Packer, J.I. (1990).  A quest for godliness: The Puritan vision of the Christian life. Wheaton, IL:  Crossway Books.

McGrath, A. (1999) (E.D.) The J.I. Packer collection. Downer Grove, IL:  Intervarsity Press.

 
I wrote the first draft of my chapter on Packer drawing primarily on the first three texts.  I drew on all five for the second draft, which opened up for me the centrality of the English Puritan tradition in his faith forum, which is not so evident from the first three texts alone.  Thus, while he was influenced by Hodge, Warfield and Machem the emphasis they placed on inerrancy in the emerging fundamentalist vision is significantly attenuated in his work.
 
Best,
 
George

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[rjeasleasland]

All: I am reading Fackre's "The Promise of Reinhold Niebuhr" for those on my level, you will find it very interesting and a great review of the political/economic/Christian history of our countries moves within. As usual Fackre is able to draw from the wealth of his own acedemic and creative viewpoints. I can see how some of Obama's thinking could have been influenced by Neibuhr in his formation at Harvard. I think it is going to be very hard to reduce Obama to a few categories however. Coming from the inside of a minority and achieving this astonishing feat so young makes the prospect of simple analysis almost impossible. The Newsweek articles shows someone of great independence of thought, a steely will, along with a secure and mature sence of self. Those who are uncomfortable with anything but their "mythological" capitalism are no doubt shaking in their boots and with good reason. The release of good will from diffused places is wonderful and inspiring, even Sarah Palin could not contain here excitement about the this long overdue reversal of fortunes, and the partial fulfillment of the America of our dreams and visions. We all hope with Gabe that this is the power of the future Story reaching into the present. One thing that may get shattered are the old categories of "conservative and liberal" and perhaps it is a time for the Church and her teachers to venture into deeper understandings of economic systems as they effect culture from the bottom up like Obama obviously does. Great time to do creative dialogue on this. Another winter blast is flying across the prairie from the northwest, everybody has their head down and their butt agaist the wind!  Blessings, is the talk of Obama over? I thought we were just getting started, where are you, "worldly" theologians?   Roger

[Willis Elliott]

Chris (& George):

 

Thanks for the reference.

 

I intend to say more on Packer later, but here I want to note his word-for-word literalism as the general editor of the ESV (English Standard Version).  E.g., Heb.11.1: "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."

 

Contrast this with the (also-evangelical) NLT (New Living Translation), which is thought-for-thought (and which all my students got as covered by their tuition in my just concluded course): "Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see."

 

Grace and peace--

Willis

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Subject: Re: Packer on the Spirit and Word: Let the WHOLE canon be your canon!

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[Herb Davis]

Dear Ryan, What an exciting and forthright response to my post. I like
your style. Your response had my head spinning. I don't know if you want
to continue this discussion but I have a couple of comments. I am not sure
they will be helpful to you, they maybe just helpful to me.

1. You are right the Bible is not the Word of God. Few in this meeting
would confess such. You seem to be fighting some sort of straw man on this
issue. It has never been the doctrine of the Catholic or Reformation
tradition. We would also agree that most people in the history of the
Church have come to know Jesus without the Bible. Many cannot read and for
many the Bible was not accessible. They came to know Jesus Christ through
hymns, liturgy, sacraments through the Holy Spirit. In the Reformed
tradition the Bible has been a creditable, faithful and true witness, which
gave power and authority to many simple faithful people. Now I know what
you believe the Bible is not, but I am not sure I know what the Bible is in
your tradition or community? Is it a faithful and true witness? You seem
to have all the moves that would cause people to be suspicious and distrust
the Bible.

2. In your comment that it is hard to know what the UCC believes I would
suggest this is charastic of main line protestant churches. A review in the
recent Christian century 11/18,p36 concerning the weakness of mainline
public witness we read, "...membership in a mainline Protestant church is as
distinctive a marker of one's identity in this society as wearing pants is -
which is to say, it is no marker at all. If there is no distinct profile of
believer, then, as Gertrude Stein once said of Oakland, there's no there
there. Church leaders can expound on the great blessing that diversity is
to the churches, and that's true (though often overstated), but it's beside
the point. Diversity would be great if the people in a congregation had
something in common apart from a loose habit of showing up on Sunday
mornings for some song and bad coffee." On the other hand there are clear
statement and documents that state who we are. Our founding documents, our
UCC website all have clear confessional statement of who we are, what we
believe. Recently Confessing Christ helped draft a General Synod resolution
that affirmed Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.

3. You comments on cultural seems to say that one must either trust ones
experience or we beaten into submission by the Bible. I would suggest some
other possibilities. I believe you cannot get outside one's cultural
experience as you defined it, but miracles do happen. You seem to be one of
them, reading John's Gospel and getting to know Christ as the Incarnation of
God, truly God, light of light. My suggest is that we affirm our cultural
location but admit that it limits us as well as gives insights to the
present condition. I would suggest we moderate our cultural location by
trusting a little the creeds, confession, catechism, hymns, liturgies,
prayers of the people of God for 3000 years. I would suggest that those
doctrines that maybe the most embarrassing such as election, revelation,
resurrection of the body, atonement, the fall, Jesus coming on the clouds be
given more attention in order to relativize our experience rather than the
scripture and the tradition. I assume in our culture both scripture and
tradition are already relativized. For me that would include your born
again experience.

Finally what is your doctrine of the Holy Spirit in relation to scripture,
tradition and experience?

Peace, herb

[Ryan Dowell Baum]

Hi Herb,

Wow!  Really good questions.  I'd love to continue this conversation--I'm finding that the serious (and joyful) theologians on this list are really pushing me to be more specific, accurate and articulate in my theologizing, and I think being pushed in this way is a healthy and educational exercise for an aspiring serious and joyful theologian like me!

1.  Your suggestion that I'm fighting a straw man in my insistence that the Bible is not the Word of God is something of a relief to me!  I was unaware that neither the Catholic nor Reformation tradition teaches this.  I thought the Quaker doctrine of the primacy of the authority of the Holy Spirit (rather than the Bible) was a pretty unique teaching within the Christian tradition.  It seems that a very common way to finish the Scripture lesson (Old or New Testament), at least in the liturgy of the Presbyterian Church (of which my wife is a member), is, "The Word of the Lord."  Why would this be a regular part of the liturgy if the Church doesn't regard the Bible as the Word of God? 

Especially on the issue of ordination and marriage of gay Christians, the primary argument against it seems to be that it is contrary to the Word of God (e.g. the Bible).  The fact that Paul has written against homoerotic behavior in a few places in the epistles seems to me to be the only possible argument one could make against a loving, committed lifelong homosexual partnership, as there is no evidence of any other kind that it does anyone any harm--and loads of evidence that love, commitment and companionship do people a world of good.

Your comment that I have all the moves that would make someone suspicious of the Bible is also perceptive, and I think it has a lot to do with the context in which you have found me.  The people in the communities in which I work--liberal, (often) wanna-be radical, neo-Marxist Bay Area atheists, agnostics, and New Agers--need no additional reasons to be suspicious of the Bible, and in these communities I am often very vocal in my insistence on the importance of the Biblical witness to help teach us who we are as Church, as the peculiar people of God who have committed to follow Jesus.  The Bible is our story, it gives us context for our lives as a community of faith and as participants in God's redemption of his creation.  It introduces us to the truly radical life, teaching, death and resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who models for us a vision of the new humanity into which God wants to form us through the Holy Spirit, and reconciles us to that God, with whom we have been estranged due to sin.  In my daily work in Oakland, I don't need to convince anyone that the Bible isn't the Word of God--it's a good day when I can convince someone that it's worth their time to pick it up.  But convincing them of this is much harder when other Christians are telling them that the Bible (as Word of God) is what makes it sinful and unacceptable for them (or their beloved friends and family) to enter into the same loving and committed lifelong companionships that are blessed and exalted among their straight neighbors.  Proposition 8 makes a hideous evangelism tool.

2.  I agree with you.  The fact that the United Church of Christ does claim confessions and "historic testimonies of faith" was one of the reasons I moved here from the liberal Quaker tradition--I needed a worshiping community where it was more than just okay if I wanted to worship Jesus rather than merely enjoy the silence and commune with a vague, unitarian, divine force.  But in practice, the fact that we in the UCC are all taught that these are "testimonies, not tests of faith," means that there is nothing to say that the average person in the pews actually believes them--and in many liberal UCC congregations (including mine), my strong suspision is that many don't.  This is part of the reason why my senior pastor has asked me to teach a couple of theology classes in our adult ed curriculum when I return home from Ohio--because in the UCC, membership in a local church alone does not necessarily ensure that one confesses adherence to any solid, coherent theology.

3.  Again, I agree with pretty much all of that.  I only have a problem when, in the name of allowing Scripture to relativize our experience, self-righteous straight people condemn relationships that are obviously holy and Spirit-filled to all those who are familiar with them.

Lastly, what is my doctrine of the Holy Spirit in relation to Scripture, tradition and experience?  I believe s/he is the Spirit that animated the life and death of our Lord Jesus Christ, who raised him from the dead, and who forms us into the "colonies of Heaven" (to use Hauerwas and Willimon's phrase) that are outposts here and now of the Reign of God to be consummated in the future.  Through the Church, s/he continues the work that Christ has begun, acting as our companion on the path who guides us and encourages us on the journey toward salvation.  S/he comforts us during times of distress and watches over us during Dark Nights of the Soul when we cannot feel God's presence.  S/he convicts us in our sin and confronts us with new possibilities for agapic living.  As such, s/he illuminates Scripture, tradition and experience in order to use all of it toward the ultimate purpose of the redemption of God's good creation.

Grace and peace to you,
Ryan

[gdeme...@msn.com]

Hi all,
 
Apologies for the length of this section, but perhaps this overview on Packer's analysis of the biblical authority may add some contributing thoughts to the ongoing discussion.
 
Best,
 
George Demetrion
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
 

The Bible as the Decisive Word of God

 

It is to apologetics within the realm of Christendom to which we now turn, saving for the next section Packer’s theology of God.  Packer (1996) maintains that there are three and only three alternatives in the mediation of God’s revelation to humankind available within Christianity: 

 

1.      The church as authority.

2.      The individual as authority.

3.      The Bible as authority (italics in original) (pp. 30, 31)

 

Packer is not suggesting “that these three never coincide or that two of them have no authority at all” (p. 16).  His point is not sola scriptura, but the placing of Scripture in the magisterial role in the determination of where ultimate authority lies.  In practice there is often a great deal of blending among these three sources.  Still the fundamental issue remains the matter of ultimate allegiance in which the ideal of blending itself within the context of Protestant religious thought is a presupposition based on some facet of individual interpretation or some communal standard as the ultimate arbiter of revealed truth and the invariable relativism both of these evoke.  The issue of authority on less than full knowledge is inescapable, for not to decide is itself to decide, based on certain presuppositions whether or not consciously articulated.  At the same time, on Packer’s (1958) view, whether the selection of ultimate authority resides in the church, the self, or the Bible, either or both of the other two could easily be and most typically are incorporated within the scheme of hierarchy that grounds the underlying source. 

 

The determination of ultimate signification, therefore, requires subtle discernment and is open to diverse interpretation, a matter that is as unavoidable as it is crucial to directly grapple with, without which, irresolvable confusion and more ambiguity than perhaps may be necessary can only reign.  The result can only be, on Packer’s reading and mine that progress toward theological clarity in the very midst of grappling with the unfathomable mystery of God remains stymied.  While false closure has its own problems that Packer seeks to assiduously avoid, perpetual  openness is fraught with its own consequences that are far from positive for the church and for countless individuals (lay and clergy) seeking some reasonable resolution in stabilizing a vital religious identity that brings together sound doctrine and personal understanding.

 

In placing the Bible in this determinative position Packer is not making the case for absolute truth given that “[a]ll doctrines terminate in mystery.” In this he bows to the reality that now “‘we know in part’ and only in part” even as later, as faith has it, we shall see face-to-face.  In terms of any type of knowledge about ourselves or about the world we only have partial information, but especially so about knowledge of God.  In this respect, “incompleteness is the essence of theological knowledge,” which “of itself” is not “a valid criticism of what we say” (p. 76).  What it does mean is that the grounds for any position articulated have to be as firmly based and comprehensively worked out as humanly possible, which includes comparison with and critical analysis to other perspectives.  The quest for absolute surety comes very close to an innate human drive and will not be denied in any event even if one takes an absolutist stance on the presupposition of relativism.  Decision making cannot but take place within the inevitable given of human incompleteness, a point of agreement that Packer shares with the tenor of Protestant liberalism. Where he differs is in his embrace of the Bible as the revealed will of God, an argument he fleshes out with much specificity and subtlety based on core suppositions of evangelical theology. 

 

The key assumption on placing the church as the ultimate arbiter as reflected in Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy is the notion that the Bible itself is a product of the church without which there would have been no New Testament canon.  As put in one representative (Catholic) statement:

 

Rejecting the Protestant view that the Bible is self-sufficient and complete, the Neo-Scholastics generally hold that revelation is contained in two sources, namely the Bible and the apostolic tradition—both of which are to be esteemed, in the phrase of the Council of Trent, “with the same sense of devotion and reverence.”  Tradition is held to supplement and clarify the truths contained in the Bible….The magisterium, drawing on tradition as well as on Scripture, can dogmatically define truths that are not given, or a least not clearly given, in Scripture (Dulles, 1992. p. 45).

 

Packer (1996) holds to a high view of the church which he defines as “the pilgrim people of God on earth,” a “historically continuous society” (p. 74).   He notes the apostolic lineage extending back to Abraham’s seed, but not apostolic succession as defined by the Catholic Church.  Packer argues that the basis for the Christian canon was developed much earlier than the final settlement at the Council of Nicea of 325 in which the four gospels, along with the letters of Paul and a few other major texts that became incorporated into the New Testament were held on par with the Old Testament, the first Christian Scripture, by the end of the first century.  The key gospel statement to which Packer (p. 70) refers in linking Scripture to the words of Christ is:

 

Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets.  I did not come to destroy but to fulfill.  For assuredly I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one title will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled (Mt 5:17-18).

 

Christ’s fidelity to the Old Testament scripture is amplified throughout the gospels, to which Packer (1958) liberally alludes (pp. 51-62).  To conclude Packer’s argument on this point, “Christ’s claim to be divine is either true or false” (p 59) based on his interpretation of the Old Testament, which, on Packer’s reading was also true or false.  This I would amend by saying the New Testament’s claim that Christ is divine and has fulfilled the Old Testament scripture accordingly, is true or not, based on the claim that it was and is God working through Christ and not the work of the historical personage alone.  In trinitarian terms, the Son of God became embodied in Jesus of Nazareth in which the fullness of this recognition during his earthly mission, even as self perception is at least an open question.  Of more than passing, however is that Wright (1996) makes a masterful case for the assumption that Jesus did quite likely view himself as the Jewish Messiah.  In either case, the four gospels, the letters of Paul and according to Packer (1958), 1 Peter, 1 John, and Acts, from where the core kerygma springs, were accepted early on as having apostolic authority or sanction and were read synonymously with Old Testament Scripture as the decisive Word of God for the first century church (p. 66). 

 

It was, according to Packer, their apostolic integrity, whether or not written by the apostles, and his key point, the internal illumination of the Holy Spirit rather than the embrace of the church per se which gave these texts canonical-like status well before the New Testament canon was completed.  The core teachings of these books, in turn, on “sin, law, judgment, faith, works, grace, justification, sanctification, election, the plan of salvation, the work of Christ, the work of the Spirit, the Christian hope, and the nature of the life of the Church” (p. 106) and much else became the basis for the legitimization of the other books that followed.  Canonization, then, was a process spanning several centuries based on “recognition” of the original kerygma as depicted in the Pauline letters, the gospels and Acts and confirmed by the Holy Spirit.  On this interpretation Packer privileges the Bible over the church as the decisive source of authority of the Christian revelation.

 

In this respect, with all the caveats of limited knowledge acknowledged, Packer’s hermeneutic is based on the core presupposition, in contrast to the “subjectivism” of liberal theology, that “[w]hat Scripture says God says; and what God says in Scripture is to be the rule of faith and life in His Church” (p. 73).  Interpreted rightly, that is as a unified canon grounded in “the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mk 1:1), the New Testament and the Old Testament read through its prism “is complete in itself,” in which “to supplement it with extraneous ideas,” whether from the church or the culture, “is not to enrich it but to pervert it” (p 72).

 

Packer’s (1996) second option, which is more of our concern here, is based on the assumption that the Bible, however divinely inspired, is essentially a human document through which one’s understanding of God can be mediated through the testimony of the writers’ witness.  What is determinative is the shaping of the text by history, religious tradition, critical and common sense and the contemporary milieu which provide crucial resources in “help[ing] us to make up our own minds” about what can and cannot be accepted in the Bible.  This library collection of texts written over 2500 years is far from “infallible,” on this reading and “include[s] both chaff and wheat” which the discerning reader must sift.  Reason, imagination, and conscience are the ultimate arbiters of authority.  “Our task is to sort out what seems lastingly valid [in the Bible] and express that in contemporary terms” (p. 31). 

 

A related strand of theological liberalism grounded in the romantic reflections of Frederick Schleiermacher, identifies emotion, as the basis from which intelligence springs, and as therefore a primary source of religious authority.  Summarized by historian Gary Dorrien (1997), “[a]s the preconceptual organ that underlies and make possible all thought and experience, feeling brings the self into apprehension of the world as a whole; feeling is the immediate presence of ‘undivided being’ that unites the self to his or her world” (p. 13).  It is, therefore, the integration of experience into perceptual wholes that lies at the foundation of human knowledge in application to religion or anything else.  The influence of this perception on the two centuries of liberal theology and religious culture following Schleiermacher’s grounding observations has been nothing short of immense.  As summarized by Packer (1958):

 

If the essential biblical message is to mean anything to modern man, it must be divorced from its obsolete trappings, re-formulated in light of modern knowledge and re-stated in terms drawn from the thought-world of today.  Reason and conscience must judge Scripture and tradition picking out the wheat from the chaff and re-fashioning the whole to bring it in line with the accepted philosophy of the time….According to subjectivism, therefore, the proper ground for believing a thing is not that the Bible or tradition contains it, but that reason and conscience commend it; from which it seems to follow that faith is essentially a matter of being loyal to such religious convictions as one has (pp. 50-51).

 

On this perspective, religion is defined as “ultimate concern” in which the Bible may or may not be a useful resource upon which to draw.  The self, then becomes the source of its own deification in which both the Bible and the church are potential resources in the work of developing a more integrated self.  However, there is, in principle, no ultimate source beyond the self through which to assess the legitimacy of the self.  In practice the result may be more subtle in which matters of ultimate authority are not so clearly articulated even as they are, on Packer’s reading and mine, inescapable, notwithstanding the unfathomable gap between human knowledge and the ideal of absolute truth, which remains forever beyond our capacity to attain.  Packer’s (1996) point, therefore, is well taken. The placement of ultimate authority on consciousness instead of the Bible, by definition deconstructs any notion of “Scripture as the Revealed Word of God, true and trustworthy because of its divine source,” which is “able to give us the basic certainties in life and death that we need” (p. 128).  This evangelical counter-narrative to the subjectivism of liberalism, as Packer has it, represents the scandalous truth which modern scholarship (religious and secular) has sought to deconstruct, even as a great deal of the mystery of God’s reality remains well beyond the ken of human comprehension. 

 

On Packer’s (1958) interpretation, “the infallible rule of scripture is the scripture itself” (p. 106),  Such faith in the Bible’s revelatory potential, in turn, requires much mediation and patient study if it is to become a vital living faith in the experience of the individual believer.  Nothing automatic can be assumed as the text does not open up to the reader without the efficacy of the Holy Spirit.  Nonetheless, in contrast to Karl Barth, on Packer’s (1990) reading, the Word of God is embedded in the Bible as well as mediated through it.  Still, nothing automatic can be presumed.  Honest and diligent  inquirers “should approach their study of  Scripture knowing that they know but little, longing to know more and looking to God himself to open to them his own word” (p. 99), a position which accords well with a Barthian sensibility.

 

Difference of interpretation within the framework of valid hermeneutics is a crucial aspect of critical Bible study (Packer, 1996, pp. 127-156).  Yet without such certitude based on the internal coherence of the Bible as the revealed Word of God in which “the full and true sense of any scripture…must be searched and known by other places that speak more clearly” (p. 106), Scripture will only tend to become ever less the basis upon which faith is established.  In such a religious culture, all too pervasive in contemporary mainline settings, individual or community consciousness can only come to play a pervasive and even determinate role as the basis upon which the wheat and chaff of the Bible is sifted.  In its varying ways this sensibility that Packer critiques is pervasive in Bultmann’s existential theology, Tillich’s notion of a boundary identity, and certain strands of contemporary feminist theology. 

 

Regardless as to position embraced, there is no escaping the issue of ultimate authority and the consequences that follow any path chosen.  At stake in Christianity is the viability of its own distinctive claims and core beliefs, which, without a firm and comprehensive grounding in the Bible is subject in principle, if not necessarily in fact, to any interpretation appealing to individual consciousness or various community perceptions.  The path of 20^th century liberal theology, according to Packer, in which the culture is the privileged authority in setting the frame for the interpretation of the Bible, provides sufficient evidence onto itself as to the consequences of identifying the individual or interpretive communities as the underlying source of theological legitimization.  Packer accepts the inevitable, and in many respects, desirable influence of these factors without which there would be no subjective source of internalization or any rooting, historical and contemporaneous, within the broad precepts of the body of Christ, or for that matter, culture.  What he rejects is the radical subjectivism of the claim that in the final analysis humanity is the measure of all things, even in terms of the biblical revelation of which, admittedly, we can only know in part in which error is inescapable.  It is the very viability of this “in part,” which, on Packer’s interpretation and mine is in danger of serious erosion without a very high view of Scripture upon which to ground one’s sense of truth.

 

Packer (1993b) identification of the Bible as the ultimate source of authority is based in the most fundamental sense on the grounds that Christianity is a revealed religion and that revelation is most fully encapsulated in the Bible.  This revelation comes from “the inward voice of the Holy Spirit” (p. 13) which illuminates the words of the Bible without which personal experience of God cannot be perceived.  The Holy Spirit is not only the indispensable guide for the receptions of its truths. It is the vehicle that God used to convey his thoughts to the writers of the various books without denying one iota their humanity and autonomy.  This personal perception is not only the basis for the timeless truths expounded in the Bible which, however time bound  they were in their human expression, are “self-interpreting” (Packer, 1996, p. 32) within the hermeneutical framework of the Bible as the unified, and for human beings, sufficient Word of God.  This authoritative center is an essential basis for a vitally grounded belief, which, without some illumination by the Holy Spirit belief itself becomes suspect or at the least extremely wooden.  In the most fundamental sense there is no getting beyond the circularity of these assumptions even as the possibility of exposition is potentially infinite-like in its richness and depth, the exploration of which is the continuing work of the called church and all individuals who seek to take the Bible with radical seriousness.

 

Thus, on Packer’s (1958) view the full flourishing of the immense riches latent within the Bible require a reception of its revelatory meaning and application via the Holy Spirit through grace.  This in turn both stimulates and is stimulated by the activation of faith through, as humanly possible, the ultimate and continuous commitment of one’s time and resources to live out of the calling through which God addresses each individual.  For Packer, the Bible is the primary source in illuminating the character of God and also in laying out the required human responses.  In addition it provides many sources of help and direction that a close and regular prayerful and expectant reading of the text provides.  Thus, on Packer’s reading, faith illuminated by grace, is based ultimately on persuasion that it is the Lord our God who speaks in and through this text in a uniquely disclosive manner.  More fully, the Bible is

 

…a record and explanation of divine revelation which is both complete (sufficient) and comprehensible (perspicacious); that is to say, it contains all that the Church needs to know in this world for guidance in the way of salvation and service, and it contains the principles for its own interpretation within itself. Furthermore, the Holy Spirit, who caused it to be written, has been given to the Church to cause believers to recognize it for the Word that it is, and to enable them to interpret it rightly and understand its meaning…Christians must therefore seek to be helped and taught by the Spirit when they study the Scripture, and must regard all their understanding of it, no less than the book itself, a the gift of God (p. 47).

 

Any other reading, according to Packer (1996) is a misreading and a denial of what the Bible was and is meant to convey.  “We are to bow to…[its] authority at every point, confessing that here we have both truth and wisdom.”  This… way of true discipleship” (p. 193) is based on a circular argument.  The proof is less the logic of its apologetic, which may not ultimately convince even as it seeks to demonstrate the reasonableness of faith, than the power of its claims and its “harmonistic” integration (Packer, 1958, p. 109) as attested in the final analysis by the Holy Spirit as conveyed from believer to believer.  In short the truth of Packer’s third option is based ultimately on nothing less than self-disclosive revelation that to accept or reject has consequences of the profoundest sort even as, on Packer’s account, exegetical and expositional problems persist in biblical interpretation and application since full disclosure remains perpetually beyond the human capacity to grasp.  As Packer (cited in McGrath, 1999) summarizes his biblical hermeneutics:

 

Will any model do to give knowledge of the living God?  Historically, Christians have not thought so.  Their characteristic theological method, whether practiced clumsily or skillfully, consistently or inconsistently, has been to take biblical models as their God-given staring point, to base their belief-system on what biblical writers use these models to say, and to let these models operate as ‘controls’, both suggesting and delimiting what further, secondary models may be developed in order to explicate these which are primary.  As models in physics are hypotheses formed under the suggestive control of empirical evidence to correlate and predict phenomenon, so Christian theological models are explanatory constructs formed to help us know, understand and deal with God, the ultimate reality.  From this standpoint, the whole study of Christian theology, biblical, historical and systematic, is the exploring of a three-tier hierarchy of models: first, the ‘control’ models given in Scripture…; next, dogmatic models which the Church crystallized out to defend and define the faith,” first and foremost, the Trinity; “finally, interpretive models lying between Scripture and defined dogma with particular theologians and theological schools developed for stating faith to contemporaries (p. 105).

 

The critical factor is not only the starting point, but the layering order of Scripture,  axiomatic doctrines, and only then historically grounded interpretation in service as much to apologetics as to dogmatic exfoliation.  To confuse this order is to confuse a great deal and to misconstrue the nature of biblical interpretation.

 

It is this evangelical challenge to 20^th century Protestant liberalism in the quest to re-capture the intellectual and pietistic vitality of the biblical revelation that Packer posits as “true Christianity.”  On his account the hermeneutics that he lays out represents the surest approximation to it that he believes a rigorous and up-to-date Reformed-based evangelical scholarship linked to a corresponding pietism grounded on its own founding premises, forever subject to enhanced light, can provide.  It is this that Packer argues as do I, that is needed as a counter-balance to the cultural captivity of so much of mainline Protestantism by the persuasive powers of secular modernity/postmodernity which has set the terms of academic based critical biblical research for well over 100 years.  In short, there is much to be gained by a careful analysis of Packer’s theology of Scripture even if one takes issue with critical aspects of his interpretation.

 

[fc...@comcast.net]

Ryan,

 

I recommend that one read Questioins # 56, # 57, & # 58 in the 1999 Study Catechism (Presbyterian) put together by George Hunsinger. It is cleary Barthian in what it confesses.

 

# 56 says Christ is the Living Word of God.

# 57 says the Holy Scripture is "also God's Word."

# 58 says that the preaching of God's word is also God's word....

 

See also 5.004 of the Second Helvetic Confessions where it is stated "The Preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God." Even if you disagree with these theological points Hunsinger put them together quite succinctly & The Second Helvetic Confession is a wonder to study...I merely have no time to type them out for you now.

 

BTW ....great conversation....

 

Chris Anderson

 

 

--
"A confessor is one who is not ashamed to do something quite useless in a world of serious purposes." Karl Barth (CD III.4 p. 78)

 

-------------- Original message --------------
From: "Ryan Dowell Baum" <ryan.dow...@gmail.com>
Hi Herb,

Wow!  Really good questions.  I'd love to continue this conversation--I'm finding that the serious (and joyful) theologians on this list are really pushing me to be more specific, accurate and articulate in my theologizing, and I think being pushed in this way is a healthy and educational exercise for an aspiring serious and joyful theologian like me!

1.  Your suggestion that I'm fighting a straw man in my insistence that the Bible is not the Word of God is something of a relief to me!  I was unaware that neither the Catholic nor Reformation tradition teaches this.  I thought the Quaker doctrine of the primacy of the authority of the Holy Spirit (rather than the Bible) was a pretty unique teaching within the Christian tradition.  It seems that a very common way to finish the Scripture lesson (Old or New Testament), at least in the liturgy of the Presbyterian Church (of which my wife is a member), is, "The Word of the Lord."  Why would this be a regular part of the liturgy if the Church doesn't regard the Bible as the Word of God? 

Especially on the issue of ordination and marriage of gay Christians, the primary argument against it seems to be that it is contrary to the Word of God (e.g. the Bible).  The fact that Paul has written against homoerotic behavior in a few places in the epistles seems to me to be the only possible argument one could make against a loving, committed lifelong homosexual partnership, as there is no evidence of any other kind that it does anyone any harm--and loads of evidence that love, commitment and companionship do people a world of good.

Your comment that I have all the moves that would make someone suspicious of the Bible is also perceptive, and I t hink it has a lot to do with the context in which you have found me.  The people in the communities in which I work--liberal, (often) wanna-be radical, neo-Marxist Bay Area atheists, agnostics, and New Agers--need no additional reasons to be suspicious of the Bible, and in these communities I am often very vocal in my insistence on the importance of the Biblical witness to help teach us who we are as Church, as the peculiar people of God who have committed to follow Jesus.  The Bible is our story, it gives us context for our lives as a community of faith and as participants in God's redemption of his creation.  It introduces us to the truly radical life, teaching, death and resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who models for us a vision of the new humanity into which God wants to form us through the Holy Spirit, and reconciles us to that God, with whom we have been estranged due to sin.  In my daily work in Oakland, I don't need to convince anyone t hat the Bible isn't the Word of God--it's a good day when I can convince someone that it's worth their time to pick it up.  But convincing them of this is much harder when other Christians are telling them that the Bible (as Word of God) is what makes it sinful and unacceptable for them (or their beloved friends and family) to enter into the same loving and committed lifelong companionships that are blessed and exalted among their straight neighbors.  Proposition 8 makes a hideous evangelism tool.

2.  I agree with you.  The fact that the United Church of Christ does claim confessions and "historic testimonies of faith" was one of the reasons I moved here from the liberal Quaker tradition--I needed a worshiping community where it was more than just okay if I wanted to worship Jesus rather than merely enjoy the silence and commune with a vague, unitarian, divine force.  But in practice, the fact that we in the UCC are all taught that these are "testimo nies, not tests of faith," means that there is nothing to say that the average person in the pews actually believes them--and in many liberal UCC congregations (including mine), my strong suspision is that many don't.  This is part of the reason why my senior pastor has asked me to teach a couple of theology classes in our adult ed curriculum when I return home from Ohio--because in the UCC, membership in a local church alone does not necessarily ensure that one confesses adherence to any solid, coherent theology.

3.  Again, I agree with pretty much all of that.  I only have a problem when, in the name of allowing Scripture to relativize our experience, self-righteous straight people condemn relationships that are obviously holy and Spirit-filled to all those who are familiar with them.

Lastly, what is my doctrine of the Holy Spirit in relation to Scripture, tradition and experience?  I believe s/he is the Spirit that animated the life and death of our Lord Jesus Christ, who raised him from the dead, and who forms us into the "colonies of Heaven" (to use Hauerwas and Willimon's phrase) that are outposts here and now of the Reign of God to be consummated in the future.  Through the Church, s/he continues the work that Christ has begun, acting as our companion on the path who guides us and encourages us on the journey toward salvation.  S/he comforts us during times of distress and watches over us during Dark Nights of the Soul when we cannot feel God's presence.  S/he convicts us in our sin and confronts us with new possibilities for agapic living.  As such, s/he illuminates Scripture, tradition and experience in order to use all of it toward the ultimate purpose of the redemption of God's good creation.

Grace and peace to you,
Ryan

On Sat, Nov 15, 2008 at 10:55 PM, Herb Davis <herb....@mindspring.com> wrote:

Dear Ryan,  What an exciting and forthright response to my post.  I like
your style.  Your response had my head spinning.  I don't know if you want
to continue this discussion but I have a couple of comments.  I am not sure
they will be helpful to you, they maybe just helpful to me.

1.  You are right the Bible is not the Word of God.  Few in this meeting
would confess such.  You seem to be fighting some sort of straw man on this
issue.  It has never been the doctrine of the Catholic or Reformation
tradition.  We would also agree that most people in the history of the
Church have come to know Jesus without the Bible.  Many cannot read and for
many the Bible was not accessible.  They came to know Jesus Christ through

hymns, liturgy, sacraments through the Holy Spiri t.  In the Reformed

tradition the Bible has been a creditable, faithful and true witness, which
gave power and authority to many simple faithful people.  Now I know what
you believe the Bible is not, but I am not sure I know what the Bible is in
your tradition or community?  Is it a faithful and true witness?  You seem
to have all the moves that would cause people to be suspicious and distrust
the Bible.

2.  In your comment that it is hard to know what the UCC believes I would
suggest this is charastic of main line protestant churches.  A review in the
recent Christian century 11/18,p36 concerning the weakness of mainline
public witness we read, "...membership in a mainline Protestant church is as
distinctive a marker of one's identity in this society as wearing pants is -
which is to say, it is no marker at all.  If there is no distinct profile of

believer, then, as Gertrude Stein once said of Oakland, t here's no there

there.  Church leaders can expound on the great blessing that diversity is
to the churches, and that's true (though often overstated), but it's beside
the point.  Diversity would be great if the people in a congregation had
something in common apart from a loose habit of showing up on Sunday
mornings for some song and bad coffee."  On the other hand there are clear
statement and documents that state who we are. Our founding documents, our
UCC website all have clear confessional statement of who we are, what we
believe.  Recently Confessing Christ helped draft a General Synod resolution
that affirmed Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.

3.   You comments on cultural seems to say that one must either trust ones
experience or we beaten into submission by the Bible.  I would suggest some
other possibilities.  I believe you cannot get outside one's cultural

experience as you defined it, but miracle s do happen.  You seem to be one of

them, reading John's Gospel and getting to know Christ as the Incarnation of
God, truly God, light of light.  My suggest is that we affirm our cultural
location but admit that it limits us as well as gives insights to the
present condition.  I would suggest we moderate our cultural location by
trusting a little the creeds, confession, catechism, hymns, liturgies,
prayers of the people of God for 3000 years.  I would suggest that those
doctrines that maybe the most embarrassing such as election, revelation,
resurrection of the body, atonement, the fall, Jesus coming on the clouds be
given more attention in order to relativize our experience rather than the
scripture and the tradition.  I assume in our culture both scripture and
tradition are already relativized.  For me that would include your born
again experience.

Finally what is your doctrine of the Holy Spirit in relation to scripture,
tradition and experience?

 

Peace, herb

[Ryan Dowell Baum]

Hey Chris,

Thanks for that.  I'll definitely take a look at those texts.  Interesting that the preaching of God's Word is also God's Word...I'm sure that he's not thereby saying that the sermon is inerrant.  If that's the case, I could certainly affirm that God's Word is mediated to us through the Bible and through the sermon, without having to say that either is inerrant.

Grace and peace,
Ryan

[Richard Floyd]

Chris,

You beat me to the punch in addressing Ryan's questions about the Word of God.

A prayer before the sermon I often used reflects the Barth three-fold meaning of the Word:

O God,

through the written word,

and through the spoken word,

may we behold the living Word,

even your  son, our Savior, Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Rick

Richard L. Floyd

rfl...@berkshire.rr.com

[Gail Miller]

Rick - thanks for this great prayer!
I like to have a short list of prayers before the sermon so I don't use the same one all the time.

Gail Miller

Groton, Mass.

[fc...@comcast.net]

Ryan,

 

Hunsinger wrote the catechism for the Presbyterian Church and inerrancy is not an issue with them as a whole. (Many of the Presbyterians who have made it an issue have jumped ship.)  On the other hand I went to Gordon-Conwell where it was such an issue that the three NT professors eventually left. (Gordon Fee, Ramsey Michaels & the late David Scholer who died only recently) Yet even the very conservative theologian Roger Nicole would pine that the word "inerrancy" is a terrible word since it is a double negative that is suppossed to express something very postive about the inspiration of the scriptures. Of course we need not go into the fact that only the "original autographs" are inerrant and no one has those copies! My point is (and I do have a point) there are so many and sundry variations on biblical views of inspiration but that Barth, Forsyth, Hungsinger and Bullinger all help me to trust the written word through the Spirit testifying to the Living Word.

 

Chris Anderson

 

--
"A confessor is one who is not ashamed to do something quite useless in a world of serious purposes." Karl Barth (CD III.4 p. 78)

 

-------------- Original message --------------
From: "Ryan Dowell Baum" <ryan.dow...@gmail.com>

Hey Chris,

Thanks for that.  I'll definitely take a look at those texts.  Interesting that the preaching of God's Word is also God's Word...I'm sure that he's not thereby saying that the sermon is inerrant.  If that's the case, I could certainly affirm that God's Word is mediated to us through the Bible and through the sermon, without having to say that either is inerrant.

Grace and peace,
Ryan

On Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 6:55 PM, fc...@comcast.net <fc...@comcast.net> wrote:

Ryan,

 

I recommend that one read Questioins # 56, # 57, & # 58 in the 1999 Study Catechism (Presbyterian) put together by George Hunsinger. It is cleary Barthian in what it confesses.

 

# 56 says Christ is the Living Word of God.

# 57 says the Holy Scripture is "also God's Word."

# 58 says that the preaching of God's word is also God's word....

 

See also 5.004 of the Second Helvetic Confessions where it is stated "The Preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God." Even if you disagree with these theological points Hunsinger put them together quite succinctly & The Second Helvetic Confession is a wonder to study...I merely have no time to type them out for you now.

 

BTW ....great conversation....

 

Chris Anderson

 

 

--
"A confessor is one who is not ashamed to do something quite useless in a world of serious purposes." Karl Barth (CD III.4 p. 78)

 

-------------- Original message --------------
From: "Ryan Dowell Baum" <ryan.dow...@gmail.com>
Hi Herb,

Wow!  Really good questions.  I'd love to continue this conversation--I'm finding that the serious (and joyful) theologians on this list are really pushing me to be more specific, accurate and articulate in my theologizing, and I think being pushed in this way is a healthy and educational exercise for an aspiring serious and joyful theologian like me!

1.  Your suggestion that I'm fighting a straw man in my insistence that the Bible is not the Word of God is something of a relief to me!  I was unaware that neither the Catholic nor Reformation tradition teaches this.  I thought the Quaker doctrine of the primacy of the authority of the Holy Spirit (rather than the Bible) was a pretty unique teaching within the Christian tradition.  It seems that a very common way to finish the Scripture lesson (Old or New Testament), at least in the liturgy of the Presbyterian Church (of which my wife is a member), is, "The Word of the Lord."  Why would this be a regular part of the liturgy if the Church doesn't regard the Bible as the Word of God? 

Especially on the issue of ordination and marriage of gay Christians, the primary argument against it seems to be that it is contrary to the Word of God (e.g. the Bible).  The fact that Paul has written against homoerotic behavior in a few places in the epistles seems to me to be the only possible argument one could make against a loving, committed lifelong homosexual partnership, as there is no evidence of any other kind that it does anyone any harm--and loads of evidence that love, commitment and companionship do people a world of good.

Your comment that I have all the moves that would make someone suspicious of the Bible is also perceptive, and I t h ink it has a lot to do with the context in which you have found me.  The people in the communities in which I work--liberal, (often) wanna-be radical, neo-Marxist Bay Area atheists, agnostics, and New Agers--need no additional reasons to be suspicious of the Bible, and in these communities I am often very vocal in my insistence on the importance of the Biblical witness to help teach us who we are as Church, as the peculiar people of God who have committed to follow Jesus.  The Bible is our story, it gives us context for our lives as a community of faith and as participants in God's redemption of his creation.  It introduces us to the truly radical life, teaching, death and resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who models for us a vision of the new humanity into which God wants to form us through the Holy Spirit, and reconciles us to that God, with whom we have been estranged due to sin.  In my daily work in Oakland, I don't need to convince anyone t hat the Bible isn't the Word of God--it's a good day when I can convince someone that it's worth their time to pick it up.  But convincing them of this is much harder when other Christians are telling them that the Bible (as Word of God) is what makes it sinful and unacceptable for them (or their beloved friends and family) to enter into the same loving and committed lifelong companionships that are blessed and exalted among their straight neighbors.  Proposition 8 makes a hideous evangelism tool.

experience as you defined it, bu t miracle s do happen.  You seem to be one of

them, reading John's Gospel and getting to know Christ as the Incarnation of
God, truly God, light of light.  My suggest is that we affirm our cultural
location but admit that it limits us as well as gives insights to the
present condition.  I would suggest we moderate our cultural location by
trusting a little the creeds, confession, catechism, hymns, liturgies,
prayers of the people of God for 3000 years.  I would suggest that those
doctrines that maybe the most embarrassing such as election, revelation,
resurrection of the body, atonement, the fall, Jesus coming on the clouds be
given more attention in order to relativize our experience rather than the
scripture and the tradition.  I assume in our culture both scripture and
tradition are already relativized.  For me that would include your born
again experience.

Finally what is your doctrine of the Holy Spirit in relation to scripture,

trad ition and experience?

 

Peace, herb

--

Ryan Dowell Baum
135 E. University St.
Wooster, OH 44691
(510) 681-7498

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. (1 John 4:7-8)

Whoever claims to live in Him must walk as He walked. (1 John 2:6)

[Herb Davis]

Dear Ryan and others,  Thanks for the good conversation.  I will be away for a week and can't continue at present.  It looks like there is a lot of help out there.  Be back in a week.  Peace, Herb

-----Original Message-----
From: Confessi...@googlegroups.com [mailto:Confessi...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Ryan Dowell Baum
Sent: Sunday, November 16, 2008 2:10 PM
To: Confessi...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [TheoTalk] why he waked

[Willis Elliott]

Ryan:

 

You are a refreshing witness to the gospel & theology!

Thank you for your participation in our Open Forum.

 

One criticism:

 

For the Spirit, "s/he" doesn't compute.

1

"Spirit" is transliterated from Latin "spiritus," which is masculine.

2

The primary language in the formation of early Christian theology was Greek, in which "spirit" is neuter (viz., "pneuma").

3

Radfems tried to sneak the feminine into the Trinity via the word for "spirit" in the language of another religion, viz. Judaism.  Hebrew sees wind/breath/spirit ("ruach") as feminine.

4

In the NT, only the Spirit is represented as male in function: the Father & the Son are only masculine.  In the Virgin Birth stories, the Spirit corresponds in Gn.6.2 to "the sons of God" who inseminated human females.

5

In Judaism & Christianity (i.e., in the biblical religions), humanity is a single-Parent family: no Goddess.  But ever since the emergence of our one-Parent two religions, the Goddess has persisted in sneaking in (in the Temple, in the form of an Asherah statue).  She was at it in the gender of "ruach," & she's at it in the Green Revolution & the Wicca revival.  Keeping her out is essential to the health & even survival of the biblical religions.  /  And keeping her out is hard work: the God-Goddess heaven-couple is the natural Feuerbachian projection from earth to heaven.

6

A counterintuitive fact: Women have been better treated under God religions than under God-&-Goddess religions or Goddess religions.  (An exception: Ancient Egypt.)

 

Grace and peace--

Willis Elliott

----- Original Message -----

From: Ryan Dowell Baum

To: Confessi...@googlegroups.com

Sent: Sunday, November 16, 2008 1:09 PM

Subject: Re: [TheoTalk] why he waked

---

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Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com

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[Ryan Dowell Baum]

Hi Willis,

I am glad that you find my witness refreshing!  All praise is due to the Most High!  And no need to thank me for participating; I have a feeling my participation has been much more educational for me than for my interlocuters!

What gender the word for spirit happens to be in any particular human language doesn't seem to me to be much more than semantics.  But if we're arguing semantics, I think that the Aramaic word, rucha, is feminine, which means that when our Lord himself said things like "Receive the Holy Spirit," or "Baptize them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit," the word he used was probably feminine. 

What seems to me to be more important, though, is that as God (as spirit) is without genitalia, and since God created male and female in God's own image, I believe it can be said accurately (or as accurately as anything about God can be said) that God is the source of all gender.  If we say that God is "he" and absolutely not "she," then we are saying that men are made in the image of God in a way that women are not.

I would agree that it is essential to the health of Christianity that foreign gods and goddesses of all kinds are kept out of its theological systems.  But I don't think referring to the God of Israel or to the Persons of the Trinity as "she" is equivalent to worshiping Asherah.

Lastly, I don't think the concern of feminists here is necessarily the way women are treated by the men who run their lives in any given society.  Their concern, rather, is whether or not their full humanity--that is, that in them which is uniquely, among all the other animals, created in the image of God--is affirmed by their faith tradition.

Grace and peace,
Ryan

[Wanda Lester]

Dear Richard,Chris, et al,

 

Would you say then that the written word and the spoken word are icons through which by the power of the Spirit, we encounter the living Word?

Wanda Lester

 

PS.......love the prayer Richard...thanks!!!!

[rjeasleasland]

[Willis Elliott]

George:

 

I've often remarked on the authority-priority of the biblical narratives (the only justification for teaching the biblical languages in seminaries).  I like your image: "the layering order of Scripture, axiomatic doctrines, and only then historically grounded interpretation...."

 

And I've often complained of the polluting eisegetic leakage of the middle layer up into the top layer.  Let the stories be themselves, & let the Spirit use them as they are!

 

Grace and peace--

Willis

 

Grace and peace--

Willis

---

No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com

[Willis Elliott]

Ryan:

1

Yes, Aramaic as well as Hebrew for "wind/breath/spirit" is feminine.  Jesus, whose mother-speech was Aramaic, could read Hebrew.  In both languages, natural phenomena are variously gendered (as they are, e.g., in German).  The physical base of "spirit" in earth-wind & mouth-wind (i.e., breath).  It's an embarrassing-gross eisegetic stretch to move from that to the feminizing of "spirit/Spirit" in the biblical narratives.

2

You say, "If we say that God is 'he' and absolutely not 'she,' then we are saying that men are made in the image of God in a way that women are not."  You seem unaware that whether women are made in God's image is, in the Bible, a disputed question (depending on the reading of the Hebrew in Gn.1.27).  I say yes, Paul (in 1Cor.11.7) says no.  Is this your only disagreement with Paul?

3

As the Source of all, God was of course (as you say) "the source of all gender."

4

And also of course, "God (as spirit) is without genitalia."  Since the incarnation is the exception, please remove your "()."  With "()," the statement could be by a Jew or a Muslim.

5

I'm puzzled by your assertion that to refer to deity as "she" is not goddess-worship.  Its the regular usage of the Goddes-worshiping commenters on my "On Faith" columns.  "She" in reference to "the God of Israel or the Persons of the Trinity" is an eisegetic leakage of goddess-language into Scripture-theology-preaching-teaching.  To the laity in general, it's a shocking introduction of sex into the biblical God, the Christian God, "he" (who is more and other not only than "she" but also than your "s/he").

6

I must say more about the lexical monstrosity, "s/he."  How do you pronounce it?

If without glottal stop, it's "she," deity as feminine: with glottal stop (i.e., "s [stop] he"), it's deity as bisexual.

7

I pray that you'll become free to use - without equivocation - the Bible's (all-masculine) pronouns for God.

[gdeme...@msn.com]

Thanks Willis,
 
At his comprehensive best there is a great deal in Packer to draw from, which can be easily missed among those looking to Bath and Niebuhr. It is unfortunate that Packer has remained largely suspicious of the neo-orthodox contribution, even as he does give Barth more credit that many of those within the American evangelical tradition do. In this respect he credits Barth's practice of biblical exegesis and exposition as better than his theory as revelation as manifested only through the word (actualism) than also in te word as laid out in the previous post.
 
To be sure, in the project that I have been working on Packer is the most conservative of the five, all of whom together viewed as complementary.  Yet in terms of stimulating my own feeble piety--seldom as strong as I wish it to be in my better moments (the Pauline I in Christ), I have found Packer to be extremely influential.
 
Best,
 
George

---

From: elli...@charter.net
To: Confessi...@googlegroups.com

[Ryan Dowell Baum]

Hi Willis:

Yes, I agree--what gender a word happens to be in any human language has little to do with accurate description of the nature of God.  This is precisely the point I was trying to make in my email.  I don't think the fact that the word Jesus used for spirit was feminine means anything important--the fact that the Latin word spiritus is masculine seems to me to be equally irrelevant.

I suppose I agree with you and not with Paul that women are made as much in the image of God as men are.  No, this is not my only disagreement with Paul, though I would say my disagreements with him are far outnumbered and overwhelmed by my agreement with him about the saving and gracious love of God in Jesus Christ.  Why do you ask?

Your point is well taken that my parentheses should be removed as the Incarnation is an exception to God not having genitalia.  Consider them removed.

The reason I do not consider using the pronoun "she" to refer to the God of Israel or the Persons of the Trinity to be goddess-worship is that I do not believe in gods and goddesses, but in the One Almighty and Omnipresent Creator who is the Source and End of all being.  It may be true that the goddess-worshipers who comment on your "On Faith" column use the same pronoun I do--this does not mean that we worship the same God.  Those who worship Zeus or Baal would use the pronoun "he"--the same pronoun you use--to refer to their god; it doesn't logically follow that the god they worship is the same God that you do.  The belief in gods and goddesses with definite gender is the remnant of polytheistic and henotheistic societies that affirmed the existence of multiple deities.  Christians are not henotheists--we don't say, "Out of all of the existing gods and goddesses, we believe it is only ethical to worship one particular male god, Yahweh."  We say, "There is only one God, Creator, Sustainer and Redeemer of all that is."  It seems to me that if we affirm the existence of only one Deity, then the pronoun we use to refer to that Deity is of secondary importance.

I suppose I don't know how one would pronounce "s/he."  Perhaps "he or she" or "he and she," though neither of those options completely works because the former suggests exclusivity (of gender) and the latter suggests plurality (of beings).  The reason I used that particular "lexical monstrosity" was that I wanted to express that I experience the Holy Spirit as transcending gender--I believe that the Spirit is more and other not only than "she" but than "he" as well.  I don't understand how using "she" to refer to God "inserts sex into the biblical God" more than "he" does--both words are very specifically gendered.  It seems that it is inaccurate to describe God as exclusively male- or female-gendered; God is more and other than both.  In the future, though, I will avoid using words in my emails that I am unsure how to pronounce.

I sincerely appreciate your prayers.  I'd like to assure you that I am completely comfortable using the Bible's masculine pronouns for God--when I am reading the Bible.  But though I share one faith, one Lord, and one baptism with the New Testament authors, I don't think it's necessary that I share one particular theology with them (especially since they themselves were of somewhat differing theological viewpoints), and feel free to express my relationship with God in ways that they may not have.  If you are going to pray for me (and again, I welcome and appreciate your prayers), I would ask that you pray for something of more urgent importance than the pronoun I use to refer to God--perhaps that the fibroids biopsied from my mother's ovaries yesterday are not cancerous...

Grace and peace to you,
Ryan

[Willis Elliott]

Ryan:

 

I numbered your paragraphs so you'll know what I'm referencing.

1

If pronoun-gender is un"important," why did you - by your "s/he" - bring it up?

2

In response to my asking what else you disagree with Paul about, you well said what he is about.  Now you asked why I asked.  My answer is in this section's first sentence.

4

Again, I agree with you on "the one...Source and End of all being."  But you are reporting how you speak, not on how such speaking is heard.  It may be that you are in no community where the full Christian language (including the pronouns for God) is spoken.  Our Craigville MA summer neighbor, president of your present school, did not speak it: it is not spoken in liberal theological schools.  /   But pastoring is something else.  The fact that you don't think gods/goddesses when you use "she" for the divine doesn't mean others won't.  Further, in most churches almost all congregants think gender when they hear "she" but not when they hear "he."  Yes, some are so radfeminized as to be irritated or even outraged at hearing "he," but only a small percentage of them are regular churchgoers.  /  There's no future for God-pronoun revisionism (such as your pronominal shift from Bible-reading to preaching/teaching/conversing): it will die out in world Christianity, inevitably yielding to the Bible-based full Christian language.  /  Your naivete here troubles me: "if we affirm the existence of only one Deity, then the pronoun we use to refer to that one Deity is of secondary importance."

Biblical monotheism is no longer that firmly established in America.  And the wiccan leaders I hear from agree with me, against you: I want no "she" messing with my deity, & they want no "he" messing with theirs.

5

Yes, I, too, "experience the Holy Spirit as transcending gender."  All four of our religion's foundational languages (Heb./Aram./Gk./Lat.) have "wind" & "breath" as the physical-metaphoric base for the spiritual-metaphysical "spirit."  Jn.3.8 displays both the vehicle (wind) & the tenor (Spirit) of the metaphor.  The empirical bridge is that we can see neither, but experience both, wind & spirit (ditto for "breath").  (Cp. Christina Rossetti's "Who has seen the wind?")  Do you, then, agree with me that the gender of "spirit"-nouns in our religion's foundational languages should not be adduced in God-talk argumentation?

 

Grace and peace--

Willis Elliott

----- Original Message -----

From: Ryan Dowell Baum

To: Confessi...@googlegroups.com

Sent: Thursday, November 20, 2008 12:00 PM

Subject: Re: The gender of "the Spirit" (he, not s/he)

Hi Willis:
1

Yes, I agree--what gender a word happens to be in any human language has little to do with accurate description of the nature of God.  This is precisely the point I was trying to make in my email.  I don't think the fact that the word Jesus used for spirit was feminine means anything important--the fact that the Latin word spiritus is masculine seems to me to be equally irrelevant.

2

I suppose I agree with you and not with Paul that women are made as much in the image of God as men are.  No, this is not my only disagreement with Paul, though I would say my disagreements with him are far outnumbered and overwhelmed by my agreement with him about the saving and gracious love of God in Jesus Christ.  Why do you ask?

3

Your point is well taken that my parentheses should be removed as the Incarnation is an exception to God not having genitalia.  Consider them removed.

4

The reason I do not consider using the pronoun "she" to refer to the God of Israel or the Persons of the Trinity to be goddess-worship is that I do not believe in gods and goddesses, but in the One Almighty and Omnipresent Creator who is the Source and End of all being.  It may be true that the goddess-worshipers who comment on your "On Faith" column use the same pronoun I do--this does not mean that we worship the same God.  Those who worship Zeus or Baal would use the pronoun "he"--the same pronoun you use--to refer to their god; it doesn't logically follow that the god they worship is the same God that you do.  The belief in gods and goddesses with definite gender is the remnant of polytheistic and henotheistic societies that affirmed the existence of multiple deities.  Christians are not henotheists--we don't say, "Out of all of the existing gods and goddesses, we believe it is only ethical to worship one particular male god, Yahweh."  We say, "There is only one God, Creator, Sustainer and Redeemer of all that is."  It seems to me that if we affirm the existence of only one Deity, then the pronoun we use to refer to that Deity is of secondary importance. 

5

I suppose I don't know how one would pronounce "s/he."  Perhaps "he or she" or "he and she," though neither of those options completely works because the former suggests exclusivity (of gender) and the latter suggests plurality (of beings).  The reason I used that particular "lexical monstrosity" was that I wanted to express that I experience the Holy Spirit as transcending gender--I believe that the Spirit is more and other not only than "she" but than "he" as well.  I don't understand how using "she" to refer to God "inserts sex into the biblical God" more than "he" does--both words are very specifically gendered.  It seems that it is inaccurate to describe God as exclusively male- or female-gendered; God is more and other than both.  In the future, though, I will avoid using words in my emails that I am unsure how to pronounce.

6

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[rjeasleasland]

[rjeasleasland]

Ryan: Willis is correct as I have served several UCC congregations the last 20+ years and people on the pews hear "he" as a univeral not strictly as male. Willis is also correct that most of those who insist otherwise don't hang around long. Hope you see by now that Willis has knowledge beyond what you may find even in your Seminary.  Get his book and listen to him, you won't regret it when you get out on the front lines for the battle for the Trinity and the Biblical God. Your zeal and articulation show all you need is some fine tuning of the type Willis, Gabe and Herb dish out on this media. If you do not have a good solid Biblical and systematic theology when you graduate your congregations will suffer.  Keep at it there is a huge need for pastors who care enough to get the language that goes with the theological concepts right. Besides it is good brain exercise and food. Beware if you plan to win an argument with Willis, he will spin you on your head and love you in the Lord Jesus Christ at the same time. To have a teacher like him at no charge, what a deal!!!!-------- Peace from the prairie where the sky is bigger than the ocean and just as blue-------Roger

[Ryan Dowell Baum]

Hi Willis:

1 (& 5).  I don't believe that pronoun gender is unimportant.  I believe a) that the gender of any language's word for spirit is unimportant and b) that the gender of the pronoun we use to refer to God is of secondary importance to the affirmation that God is One.  What I mean by that is that I don't think pronoun gender is important enough that it should cause discomfort when monotheists use the word "she" to refer to God.

4.  I think you're right when you say that this is a question of the language and vocabularies of particular communities (and individuals within communities), and I believe you when you say that the word "he" does not make people in your community and communities like yours think of gender, whereas the word "she" does make you think of gender.  This is not so in my communities (my seminary and my local church).  In my communities and in other communities like mine (for whatever reason--perhaps it is because we have indeed been "radfeminized"), the word "he" does signify gender, and it signifies to women a gender that is not theirs.  If a woman cannot hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ because I am using exclusively male-gendered words to speak of God, then I am happy to use female-gendered words to speak of God, because the God I worship is as feminine as he is masculine, being more than and other than both.  I'm not willing to write off the women (and men) who hear "he" as an exclusively masculine word so quickly as people who won't stick around church for long and are destined to live their lives completely outside it.  I think the world of liberal, wanna-be radical young urbanites (like me) is a huge untapped mission field for the Church, as Jesus Christ is way more radical than Karl Marx or even Michael Moore!

If, as you say, "there's no future for God-pronoun revisionism" and "it will die out in world Christianity" then this conversation is moot.  If on the other hand, there will always be women like my friends and sisters in Christ who do hear the pronoun "he" as referring exclusively to the male gender, then I think it's appropriate to use both masculine and feminine pronouns and metaphors (he and she, Father and Mother) as a gesture of solidarity with those equally human, equally made-in-the-image-of-God beings who have forever lived within societies and institutions where the masculine has always been the linguistic, social and religious norm.  I don't think it makes Christians (particularly male Christians) look very good when women tell us that using exclusively masculine wording to speak of God sends them the message that they are less human and less made-in-the-image-of-God and we say, "Too bad.  Get used to it.  That's the way the Bible is and that's the way we will always be--the masculine will forever be dominant."

If I find myself serving a community and congregation that is near-universally offended and uncomfortable with using feminine language to describe God, I will happily refer to God exclusively in the masculine.  But I think it's perfectly appropriate to speak the language of the community one finds oneself in when conveying the Gospel or doing theology.  (To demonstrate that I am sincere, I will in my participation in the Confessing Christ cyber-community from now on, be happy to use masculine language to refer to God.)

To speak a moment to Roger: I sincerely appreciate both your and Willis' advice and theological engagement with me.  I believe that you speak honestly and truthfully from your experiences of ministry and service to the Lord Jesus Christ, and I am truly grateful for the opportunity to interface with you both, as I believe you are wise and faithful pastors and theologians (if I didn't think these things, I wouldn't have stuck around this listserv as long as I did).  My only concern is that you universalize your experience as the Christian experience.  I work at the margins and expanding edges of the Church, where people experience life and faith differently than you do.  You are correct that I may not always work here--I may at some point in my ministry find myself in much more traditional settings where people share similar experiences, assumptions and worldviews to those you hold.  But for now, I'd like to convey to you that the Spirit is doing exciting and wonderful things at the margins of the Church with people (like me) who never dreamed that they would give their lives to Jesus Christ.  There may be a more effective and mutually enriching way to engage with us than to criticize the gender of our pronouns.

Grace and peace,
Ryan

[Wanda Lester]

Dear Ryan,

I will admit that the issue of inclusive language frustrates me. As a woman, I understand the desire to be included and affirmed but I find the use of feminist language for God as, if not more, exclusive as the use of masculine language. 

I'm not sure the problem we are encountering is fundamentally one of language, but more one of theology and education. If we encourage/permit our congregations to define God by gender, we limit their perception/experience of God.

Scripture has given us a language for God but I would not say that we have been given a gender....that we have given ourselves. That the language we have been given is inadequate I would heartily agree and yet, to date, I haven't heard any better. So I use the traditional language while teaching/preaching that God transcends any and all language or words we may use...and that in the end, God will be God however we define "him" and that for us is indeed a good thing.

Peace,

Wanda

[Ryan Dowell Baum]

Hi Wanda,

Thanks so much for your thoughts.  I agree with you that this issue is one of the more frustrating ones that we contemporary Christians must deal with--if only because of the frustrating inadequacy of human language to express the mystery and glory of God!  I also agree that there are some feminists who want to use "she" language as exclusively as others use "he" language; this I find problematic, and I tell them so.  I think, though, that while some agree with you that though the Bible gives us language (however inadequate) but not gender, others feel that using only "he" language does indeed define the gender of God--as male.  I agree with you that we need to dissuade our congregations from defining God in terms of gender.  Perhaps in some congregations, this means sticking to traditional masculine language and not making inclusive language an issue where it isn't one, and in other congregations this means using both masculine and feminine language to convey the recognition that both maleness and femaleness are both inadequate and incomplete ways of talking about God.

"...in the end, God will be God however we define 'him' and that for us is indeed a good thing."  Amen and amen!!!

Grace and peace,
Ryan

[Willis Elliott]

Dear Wanda:

1

As a linguist (knowing the limits as well as the powers of words), I'm eager to agree with your statement that God "transcends any and all language or words we may use."

2

In both Testaments, God warns us (1) to take seriously what he says to us & (2) not imagine that we have a handle on our side of the divine mind: the cuckoo come out, says something, withdraws, & the door closes with no handle on our side of the door.  (This image comes to mind because when a child, the first thing I saw each morning, upon opening my bedroom door, was the cuckoo clock on the wall across from the stairwell.)  /  Another image I've often use is tangency: all a road can know of a  wheel is its "touching"-point (the literal meaning of the Latinate "tangency").  We know God only when & where he touches (contacts) us - supremely, in & through our Lord Jesus Christ.

3

As for "(2)," in both Testaments we're admonished to theognostic (God-knowing)humility: our thoughts are not his thoughts.  It's sometimes said that Lincoln was our nation's presidency's best theologian; at least for this theological virtue, he is the most memorable.

4

Of course anything can be overdone.  Excessive confidence in what one knows of God (as when Bush said he asks his heaven-Father rather than his earth-father) is a disgrace to the faith: excessive humility amounts to an agnostic denial of the faith.

5

Forty-odd years ago I gave a National Council of Churches lecture on freedom in/with/from the Bible.  IN: knowing it.  WITH: using it in & beyond Christian community.  FROM: in minor particulars, disagreeing with it; & thinking outside its box.  Substitute "the full Christian language" for "the Bible."  Christians should be free to think & pray "Christian" (i.e., in our full Christian language).  Free with it, to use it in & beyond Christian community.  Free from it, to think/speak in other contextual modes.  (As I said in chapel yesterday, & as appears in my current "On Faith" column, James Madison could & did use the Christian language in his presidential Thanksgiving Day Proclamation, but - appropriately -  he'd not done so in the U.S.Constitution & the Federalist Papers.)

6

At the height of radfem insanity, we clergy were not free to use the full Christian language in Christian community!  Occasionally I was shouted down, sometimes walked out on.  And a niece of mine (now long a pastor) was told, her first week in seminary, that she was free to attend classes, but would get no credit in any course in which she used the Bible's pronouns for God in hand-ins.

It was lexical terrorism, & thousands of clergy were intimidated into self-censoring the "sexist" pronouns.  The secular press was laughing at liberal Protestantism & suggesting that the controversy be resolved by excluding both gender-referencings of God: God is henceforth to be only "it."  In liberal Protestant presses, free speech was out & a God-language censorship-code was self-imposed.  /  We are gradually recovering from the radfem language-insanity, as America is also from racism.  As early as '39, I was in an anti-racist sit-down strike in the Great Southland; by the time radfen broke out ( in the mid-'60s), I was tough enough to stand up to it.

7

I've often heard Gabe say (as he's often written) that weakening your witness-wording in public is an implicit stricture against the other religions: true pluralism means not that none give offense by witnessing freely, but that everyone  - by witnessing freely - give implict invitation to all others to do the same.  That was my practice at U.Hawaii in session-opening prayers closing with "I pray in Jesus' name."  From the start I made it clear that I was inviting every student, of whatever religion or none, to participate inwardly in a manner appropriate to their commitment.  I never heard, directly or indirectly, any objection to my practice.

 

Grace and peace--

Willis Elliott

----- Original Message -----

From: Wanda Lester

To: Confessi...@googlegroups.com

Version: 8.0.175 / Virus Database: 270.9.9/1803 - Release Date: 11/21/2008 9:37 AM

[Wanda Lester]

Dear Willis,

 

Thank you for the thoughtful response.  I experienced a bit the radfem myself in seminary, although not to the extent of your niece. We were very strongly encouraged to use only "inclusive" language but oddly enough the "inclusive" did not include the traditional/Biblical language.

 Isn't it strange that often when we try hardest to be inclusive we end up being quite exclusive?

Hmmmm...

[Willis Elliott]

Ryan:

 

I'm responding to the below portion of your 11.21.08 post.

1

Speaking your congregation's language is the passive half of pastoral communication.  The active half is teaching your people to speak "the Christian language," which includes the Bible's all-masculine titles for deity: "God" (not goddess), "Father" (not mother), "Lord" (not lady), "King" (not queen), "Creator" (not creatrix), "Redeemer" (not redemptrix), etc.  Surely you don't teach that feminine pronouns can be used conjointly with masculine nouns?  /  The Bible is the primary text for learning to speak the Christian language.  /  In family worship this evening, I read Ps.73, which has "God remains the strength of my heart; he is mine forever."  In training Christians to converse on that verse, would you ever say "she" or even "he or she" or "she or he"?  If your marginals are offended by masculine pronouns for the biblical deity, are they not even more offended by all of the Bible's personal titles for deity?  And if so, have you no obligation to help them overcome their revulsion at how the Bible speaks of God in both nouns & pronouns?  Or are you yourself so revulsed by it as to be undermotivated to teach the Bible to your people?  (I speak ahead: I know you are not yet a pastor.)

2

I've no doubt that, as you say, "the Spirit is doing exciting and wonderful things at the margins...."  Jesus says that when he comes, the Spirit will speak as Jesus spoke.  No wiggle-room there for feminine nouns-or-pronouns for deity.

3

I mustn't close without letting up a bit on my lexical rigorism.  A Christian leader who deals with a range of cultures & cultural levels must be multilingual, (as it were) hitching the horse to the cart, the speech to the audience.  I don't write my Newsweek/WashingtonPost online columns in precisely the language I use in church & chapel (which is not the language spoken/written at PSR, your seminary; or in your congregation).  But I am suggesting that you pull toward the Christian language in your life of prayer, study, witness, ministry.

4

Finally, you close with "the gender of...pronouns."  Even more serious is the gender of nouns, viz. all the Bible's personal titles for deity.

 

Grace and peace--

Willis Elliott

From: Ryan Dowell Baum

To: Confessi...@googlegroups.com

Sent: Friday, November 21, 2008 9:17 AM

Subject: Re: The gender of "the Spirit" (he, not s/he)

Hi Willis:
...If I find myself serving a community and congregation that is near-universally offended and uncomfortable with using feminine language to describe God, I will happily refer to God exclusively in the masculine.  But I think it's perfectly appropriate to speak the language of the community one finds oneself in when conveying the Gospel or doing theology.  (To demonstrate that I am sincere, I will in my participation in the Confessing Christ cyber-community from now on, be happy to use masculine language to refer to God.)

[Ryan Dowell Baum]

Hi Willis:

Thanks you again for your thoughts, questions and challenges--I appreciate your willingness to continue the conversation.

You wrote:

"If your marginals are offended by masculine pronouns for the biblical deity, are they not even more offended by all of the Bible's personal titles for deity?  And if so, have you no obligation to help them overcome their revulsion at how the Bible speaks of God in both nouns & pronouns?"

This is a really good question.  My answer is yes, many of our people do come to church with what my senior pastor calls "allergies" to biblical language and many of its personal titles for Deity.  And yes, we (those of us in spiritual leadership roles in the congregation) do consider it our obligation to help people overcome these allergies.  As I said in one of my previous posts vis-a-vis the authority of Scripture, helping our congregants to trust, rely upon, and love the Bible, to see it as our book and our story, is one of the major struggles of the leadership of First Congregational Church of Oakland--I think helping people get over their allergies to Biblical language is an important piece of that struggle.

That said, even the Bible contains some feminine imagery for God.  The Bible says God conceived and gave birth to the people Israel (Num. 11:12, Deut. 32:18), that God will comfort them as a mother comforts her child (Isa. 66:13), and Jesus compares himself to a mother hen who wants to gather her chicks under her wings (Matt. 23:37, Lk. 13:34).  True, the vast majority of Biblical images and metaphors for God are masculine, but clearly the Biblical witness is that God encompasses traditionally masculine and feminine roles in the life of God's people.  If the biblical prophets and New Testament authors sometimes experienced these feminine aspects of God's Personhood, surely it is appropriate for our congregants to give expression to similar experiences in their own lives.

You wrote: "Or are you yourself so revulsed by it as to be undermotivated to teach the Bible to your people?"

I want to be clear: I have no revulsion to Biblical masculine images and metaphors for God (except perhaps to that of God as commander of genocide in the Book of Joshua).  I love the Bible and the overall picture it paints of who the God we worship is.  (I think I freaked out the Northern California-Nevada Conference Committee on Ministry Section A a bit when I spoke to them at an in-care renewal meeting of how much I love calling Jesus my Lord because it not only reminds me that Caesar is not lord, but it reminds me that I am not lord!)  But it seems to me that the origin of this conversation is not in my revulsion to certain words or images for God, but in yours.  I would like to encourage those under my spiritual care and guidance to give voice to their experience of our awesome and ineffable God however they experience him--in traditional words that are echoed in the Holy Scriptures, and in less traditional words that are nonetheless true to their religious experience.  Is this not in keeping with your own principle of freedom from Scripture that you articulated in your email to Wanda?

Grace and peace to you,

Ryan

[Willis Elliott]

 Ryan says:

.... I would like to encourage those under my spiritual care and guidance to give voice to their experience of our awesome and ineffable God however they experience him--in traditional words that are echoed in the Holy Scriptures, and in less traditional words that are nonetheless true to their religious experience.  Is this not in keeping with your own principle of freedom from Scripture that you articulated in your email to Wanda?

Ryan:

1

We earn the right to speak our way by honest listening to how others speak.  My private voice teacher respectfully listened to my squawking, then helped me to sing her way in the sense of maximizing my potential (as she had done hers, to sing in the Chicago Opera).  My untrained voice was "true to my experience": I signed up with her because I wasn't satisfied with my voice in light of my call to preach/teach/witness the gospel of God's beauty.  To be well trained spiritually & intellectually, but not vocally, is like having a great hi-fi with tinny speakers.  (All who are in training for Christian ministry through speech should take private voice-training to sing & speak.)  /  You are not being a spiritual guide if you are satisfied with words that are only "true to their religious experience."  A spiritual guide will, among other things, model speech "true" to the religion.

2

My principle of "freedom from Scripture" applies only to those who have become free IN Scripture (by thorough knowledge of it) & WITH Scripture (by extensive use of it in ministry to others).  True artists are free to express themselves only after mastering their craft's skills - a truth spoken in the East as "Kill the Buddha."  Again, you can be "free from" only after having been "in bondage to."  /  Of course people can disagree with the Bible even without knowing what it says!  Obviously, that is not "freedom from" it in my use of the phrase.

3

In our livingroom is a painting of a woman playing with her braided hair, looking up at the Trinity playing with their braided hair: three women.  The artist, John Locke, was an orthodox Christian whom I mentored through his B.D.  When he came to me at NYTSeminary to study the Bible, I asked him to read through it & record all the visuals that came to him: "God has given you eyes & hands; use them on the Bible."  After two years, he returned with a log of thousands of visuals.  (4 credits)  "Now, said I, "reduce the log to 30 paintings."  Two more years, 4 more credits.  (Our livingroom has also the first [on Gn.l.1-2, before God said "Let there be light"]; I've told you something of the 30th, on Rev.21-22.)  (After graduating from seminary, he started a Methodist church in his home, while continuing as prof. of art, Bard College).

4

I thank you for continuing the conversation.