I recently received an email from Dave Ferrell - a Ph.D student who is researching the history and thought of Apostolic (or Oneness) Pentecostalism - with a couple of questions about my dissertation. Specifically, he asked that I clarify my use of the terms "Father-Son Christology" and economic modalism in my assessment of the Oneness Pentecostal theology of God. To this request, I wrote the following response.
----------------------------
I think that there are several versions of the Oneness Pentecostal theology of God - all of which center on the undivided and indivisible unity of God's being and all of which privilege the Hebrew/Old Testament presentation of God as the interpretive framework/foundation for dealing with all New Testament language regarding God's person and work. Perhaps different "versions" is too strong a term; for it implies that each position is clearly delineated from the others and is mutually exclusive. Nevertheless, I think it is possible to describe several different - perhaps competing - conceptualizations in Oneness Pentecostal thought about God. These are not just "variations on a theme." Rather they are distinguishable strategies for explaining how the creator God was also present in the life and death of Jesus and is still present today in the life of the Christian believer and the worship of the gathered Christian community.
I also think that some of the contemporary Oneness Pentecostal theological expressions parallel historic positions that were taken in the post-apostolic, pre-Nicene/Constantinople period. I say this with a little trepidation because the historic sources of some of these early Christian views - especially those that were later labeled heretical - are slim and are available to us only in the context of the polemic writings of their opponents.
Let me also say that I am restricting my comments to the truly theological thinking about God's being rather than more popular Oneness Pentecostal views. While it would be interesting to list some of the popular expressions of Oneness Pentecostal teaching - ranging from the unique to the truly bizarre - such an entertaining exercise would not further this discussion.
The first common version of Oneness Pentecostal thought about God is by far the simplest and in many ways the most profound: embracing the mystery of God in Christ. This view simply adheres to powerful scriptural proclamations - like "God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself" and "without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen by angels, preached among the Gentiles, believed on in the world, and received up in glory." - all without consciously recognizing any theological problem, contradiction, and/or difficulty with these passages. For those holding this view, Christological debate is a non-starter. This view bluntly affirms that the selfsame creator God was present in Christ and is equally present as the Holy Spirit in the church today - without any attempt - or even a felt need - to delve into the challenging questions rising from biblical language and its Christological interpretation, a concern that dominated Christian debate in the first centuries of church history.
This view does not acknowledge any problem with its overly simple Christological interpretation of biblical language or attempt to engage in any debate or defense of its position. I am tempted to say - without any concrete evidence to back up my statement - that this is probably the majority view among Oneness Pentecostals today.
The second common version of Oneness Pentecostal thought about God is what I have labeled the "Father-Son Christology." This view takes a Chalcedonian understanding of the two natures of Christ as the solution to the "Father-Son" language in the New Testament. This view originates in the New Issue dispute in the Assemblies of God (1914-1916) about baptismal formula that relegated the terms "Father" and "Son" to mere titles rather than names - titles that point beyond themselves to the true divine name, Jesus. (This logic seems to follow the progression of Frank Ewart's thinking in the fall and winter of 1913-1914.) "Father" comes to represent the divine side of the incarnation and "Son" the human. The total incarnate God - Jesus - was both Father (God) and Son (man) at the same time.
This view reconciles all New Testament Father-Son distinctions - especially in John's Gospel - by an appeal to the dual nature of Jesus. The solution is particularly helpful in dealing with scriptural passages that show inequality between Father and Son - especially in clear subordination passages like "The Father is greater than I" and those passages that speak of the limitation of the Son's knowledge in contrast with the Father's. Problem passages that seem to confer the power and privilege of deity on the Son are understood to refer to the entire incarnate Christ who is both God and man.
This view distinguishes Father and Son qualitatively - one is God and one is man - and also spatially. God is physically inside the man Jesus. Colossians 2:9 is a great proof text of the Father-Son Christology. "For in him (Jesus) dwells the fullness of the Godhead bodily."
The chief shortcomings of this view are twofold. First, while the term Father is used consistently of God, equivocation occurs regarding the term Son. Sometimes the Son refers to the human or physical side of Jesus; while at other times, it refers to the entire incarnation (the God-man). The shifting definition of the term Son allows Oneness Pentecostal exegetes to sidestep many problem passages that seem to distinguish Father from Son. Second, the underlying Chalcedonian conceptualization of Christ's dual nature - that underpins the Father-Son Christology - often devolves into a somewhat-Nestorian affirmation of two separate and distinct persons within the incarnate Christ - at least in practical terms. The prayers of Jesus - where the bodily side of Jesus prays to God inside him - is the best example of this sundering of the incarnation into two distinct beings bound together in only the loosest way. The "departure" of Christ's spirit (the Father) from the physical body of Christ (the Son) at the death of Jesus is another example of this strict "dichotomy of being" in the incarnate Christ.
The third and final common view of Oneness Pentecostal thought about God is economic modalism - the notion that there is no division of being or person in God, but rather there is only a progression of roles/manifestations - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - that God has played throughout salvation history. The selfsame God was - according to this Oneness Pentecostal understanding - Father in creation, Son in redemption, and Holy Spirit in salvation of believers. This view of the unfolding economy of God's actions, if seen consistently, must be progressive - the Father gives way to the Son and the Son, in turn, gives way to the Holy Spirit. (This may have been the historic position of Sabellius although all records of his teachings have been filtered by his opponents who may or may not have fairly and accurately understood or portrayed his views.)
With economic modalism, Jesus was not Father and Son at the same time - rather he was the one God who had been manifested as Father in creation and was now manifested as Son in first century Palestine. Likewise, to be consistent, the Son will one day "surrender" his role that God may be "all-in-all" - that is, the Son is only a temporary manifestation of God that began and will end in time. This temporary appearance of God in Jesus is especially troublesome to several of the most prominent Oneness Pentecostal defenders who reject any idea of progressive modalism. The Father-Son Christology is entirely incompatible with the progression of divine roles/manifestations in economic modalism.
Of these three commonly held views, I find the first to be the most compelling. (I am not being clever or facetious in saying this.) I am more persuaded by the appeal to the raw language of the New Testament proclamation that I am by the other reasoned arguments. The "Father-Son Christology" (rooted in Chalcedonian dual natures of Christ) and economic modalism both have something profoundly in common with the Niceo-Constantinople Trinitarianism that these views seek to deny. All of these arguments - Oneness and Trinitarian alike - recast Hebraic biblical language, symbols, and metaphors through the thorough-going Greek conceptual world of middle Platonism. Adolf von Harnack, the late 19th century church historian, labeled any such reformulations of biblical religion into Greek philosophical categories as the "Hellenization of the Christian church."
Friday, March 25, 2016
Tuesday, March 22, 2016
Who Moved the Stone?
Good
religion is never convenient. It calls
upon its adherents to sacrifice what is easy so that they may listen to a call
that is more real. So it was with the Jews’ religion. Of all the observances that were observed
with meticulous care throughout the year, none was more frequent than the
weekly Sabbath. Shabbath was sacred. The
Torah said so. The prophets said
so. The rabbis said so.
By the first century, Judaism had developed to the point
where all kinds of regulations attended Sabbath observance, but over them all
was the basic directive of the Ten Commandments: Six
days you shall labor and do all your work, but on the seventh day you shall not
do any work. Almost anything could be construed as work, and that rule
certainly included caring for the dead.
So, it was a long Saturday for the women who had stood near the cross of
Jesus late Friday afternoon. Sabbath began at sundown on Friday evening, and
after Joseph had secured permission from the authorities to bury Jesus’ corpse,
there was barely enough time to complete the simplest of details. The
traditional anointing that the women had wanted to perform had to be
postponed. By the time darkness had
fallen, they had left the garden tomb, pausing only to watch as the huge
rolling stone was fixed over the entrance.
Later, of course, it was sealed with a heavy Roman seal and placed under
guard.
It must have seemed strange to the soldiers at the tomb.
They had been called many times to guard prisoners, but this may have been the
first time they had ever been called to guard a dead man. Meanwhile, at home
the women prepared spices and perfumes. Their intentions were clear. When the
Sabbath ended, they would go back and complete what they had been forced to
postpone on Friday evening.
So,
it was a long Saturday. They
determined to return to the tomb in the gray of Sunday morning before full
daylight. The Sabbath ended at sundown on Saturday, but there was little they
could do in the dark. In the half-light of early Sunday morning, they would be
able to do what they could not have done on Friday night. One thought,
above all others, occupied their minds.
It was the huge rolling stone that blocked the entrance. Whether or not the women even knew
about the guards at the tomb, we don’t know, since the guards were more-or-less
an afterthought. But they knew
about the huge rolling stone. They
had watched as it had been rolled into place. Could the three of them move it? They weren’t sure. The
sun was just breaking over the Mt. of Olives as they entered the garden. They asked each other as they went,
“Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?” When they arrived, they discovered to
their amazement that the stone was already rolled away. Upon entering the tomb, they discovered to their further
amazement that the body of Jesus was not there. While there, they were confronted by a young man who said, “Don’t
be alarmed. You are looking for Jesus
the Nazarene, who was crucified. He’s
not here! See the place where they laid
him.” Trembling, bewildered and
afraid, the women fled from the garden and ran to tell the others.
The problem
of the rolling stone is one of those small intersections between faith and
history that is often overlooked but that give the account the ring of truth. All four gospels speak of this great stone. Stones
large enough to cover the entrance to a tomb would weigh several hundred
pounds. The problem of moving one of them is obvious. Yet, the stone had been
moved! Who had done this?
Skeptics,
as we all know, have had a field day with the resurrection narratives. All sorts of suggestions have been offered as
alternatives to the biblical account. Perhaps Joseph of Arimathea secretly
removed the body to another place. But
why would he? The tomb had been
sealed and protected by a Roman guard. In any case, the garden tomb had been
selected by Joseph in the first place.
Why would he want to change the burial site? Maybe the authorities moved
the body, some suggest. But again, the
question looms. Why should they? Pilate had no reason to do so, since, after
all, he ordered the guards to protect the tomb. In any case, Roman prefects
were not known to be fearful of dead men! And as for the Jewish authorities,
the last thing they would want to do would be to move the corpse. This
crucified man was the one who said he would rise again, and the worst possible
course of action would be to remove their very proof that he was still dead!
Then, there is the “passover plot” theory that crops up every few years or so. Here, Jesus did not really die. His disciples drugged him, or he drugged
himself, and later he would revive in the cool atmosphere of the tomb and stage
a resurrection. The really surprising thing is that anyone with a knowledge of
Roman crucifixion would ever buy such a thin argument. Romans were not known
for bungling their crucifixions. The executioners were consummate professionals
in the most grisly sort of way! Then there is the suggestion that in the
darkness the women went to the wrong tomb.
This version sounds suspiciously like a subtle form of the chauvinism
that Jesus rejected—the three women were so stupid they couldn’t be trusted to
find the same place twice in a familiar city.
So, who moved the stone? No one had
even the slightest reason to move it!
Not Pilate, not Caiaphas, not the disciples, nor anyone else. It is
Matthew, of course, who tells us that an angel of the Lord came down from
heaven, and going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. He is the young man that the women mistook
for the gardener. Regardless, even for someone who doesn’t believe in angels,
the remarkable fact that the stone was rolled away is a single feature of the
story that is never debated. Sometime between the hour that Joseph and the
women left on late Friday evening and sunrise on Sunday morning, this great
blocking stone had been moved!
I do
not think it has been sufficiently realized how this simple circumstance—this
one indisputable fact, unimportant as it may seem at first sight—contributes to
the veracity of the story. The sealing of the stone had been a Roman action, prompted
by the high priest but ordered by Pilate on Saturday. The women knew nothing of
it, since it had occurred after the burial and on the Sabbath itself, when the
women and the other disciples were sequestered in their homes. Had they known
of the guard, they might never had gone to the garden tomb on Sunday at all. But
they didn’t know—and their only concern was about the great rolling stone and
how they might move it! But before they arrived, that stone had been moved! The
Roman guards were no longer there. They had fled into the streets of Jerusalem
early on Sunday morning to report to the high priests that something was amiss
at the tomb of the Nazarene! Indeed, it was this feature of the story that
years ago drove the English reporter, Frank Morison, to reexamine the gospels’
Easter story in such meticulous detail. And Morison, who began with the
assumption that the accounts rested on very insecure foundations, found that in
the end he had landed on an unexpected shore—a firm and unshakeable conviction that
Jesus had truly risen from the dead.
Now,
I don’t for a moment expect that faith in the resurrection of Jesus rests only
on a single issue, the issue of who moved the stone. Nor do I suppose that those who do not
already accept Jesus’ resurrection necessarily will be persuaded to do so in
view of this small point. At the same time, this is one small window of
credibility in the witness of three women who came to the garden tomb early on
Sunday morning. While their witness may not have carried much weight in the
patriarchal culture of their own times, it has carried considerable weight in
the judgment of Christians ever since! And it is surely in keeping with Jesus’
revolutionary evaluation of women that he would choose them to be the first
witnesses of the gospel. And so, I say as Christians have expressed it since
the very beginning: Christ is risen! He
is risen, indeed!
Sunday, March 6, 2016
Worship in Oneness Pentecostalism, Part 3
Oneness
Pentecostal worship reaches it goal in the after service, when in the context
of community prayer and ecstasy, a "divine epiphany" occurs which
leads to individual conversion and congregational renewal. The excitement of
charged preaching creates an ambience for the altar appeal. A blending of
emotional background music and a rising "wall" of congregational
prayer enhances the moment of expectation and exerts enormous pressure on the unconverted
to respond. The calling of the uncommitted and the congregation to the altar by
the pastor signifies—in an outward and visible way—the inward readiness to
accept the grace of God. The altar symbolizes the dwelling place of God, the
place in which he is expected to move in decisive ways in the lives of
individuals. The altar appeal moves the congregation from hearing the
proclamation of God's word of salvation into direct participation in this
saving action.
All
the elements of classical Pentecostal worship converge in the altar call to maintain
pressure on the unsaved. Enthusiastic appeals by the pastor, moving musical
accompaniment, and even physical demonstrations add to this tension. Such
"overflows" of the Spirit's activities heighten the pressure on the
unconverted and provide a release for building tensions in the congregation. Arthur
Paris points out that this prolonged moment of tension is especially effective
in persuading those who have "withdrawn their assent but not their
conviction of the efficacy of the church" and "its claim to
truth." Therefore, "prior conviction," the pressure generated by
the atmosphere of enthusiasm, and the sense of guilt elicited by the sermon
compel the uncommitted into response.22 Such pressures create a
willingness to step out—despite
the potentially embarrassing admission of sinfulness—and act upon the promises
of salvation. This physical movement toward the altar is the initial step in the
conversion process.
After
the altar appeal is concluded, the congregation gathers around those responding
for a time of personal ministry. Congregation members and ministers "assist"
the seeker through prayer, encouragement, and counseling. Fervent, loud
corporate prayer, various positioning of the seeker, the clapping of hands, and
the before-mentioned spiritual "overflows" maintain the atmosphere of
expectancy at the altar. This scene often reaches its peak of intensity when
ministers gather and lay their hands on the seeker in a special prayer. This
action usually results in the first appearance of glossolalia in the seeker and
an "overflow" of rejoicing in the congregation.
Unlike
other Pentecostals who understand conversion as simple faith commitment,
Oneness Pentecostals demand the full Acts 2:38 "plan of salvation"—repentance,
water baptism administered to adults by immersion in the name of Jesus, and
Spirit baptism evidenced by tongue- speaking—for conversion. Naturally, the
altar service is expanded among Oneness congregations to include all of these
activities. The after service, therefore, reduces the building tension of the
service to an individual level and the congregation focuses on "praying
through" the seeker. Although the act of repentance is emphasized in Oneness
preaching and appeals, it plays only a small role in the altar service. Perhaps
the act of responding to the altar call has come to replace the lengthy periods
of repentance evident in early Oneness years. Seekers are almost immediately
considered candidates for Spirit baptism when they respond to this appeal. In
turn, the congregation directs its full attention and support to the respondent.
Many seekers, however, do not immediately receive Spirit baptism. Some actually
respond to altar appeals for years before finally personally experiencing a spiritual
"overflow" manifest in glossolalia and physical demonstrations. In
light of these cases, the notion of "tarrying" for Spirit baptism has
been popularized.
Baptismal
services, embodying another "essential" in the Oneness
"plan" of salvation, often occur during or following altar services. Counselors
admonish the seeker—whether he has manifested the spiritual
"overflow" and speaking with tongues or not—to be baptized for the "remission
of sins," thus completing and validating his experience of repentance. Baptismal
tanks are kept full and warmed for spontaneous baptisms. The seeker, having admitted
his guilt publicly and submitted himself to the pressures of the
congregational "overflow" in the altar service, will seldom reject
the admonition to baptism.
The entire Oneness service—its elements and order—gears
itself toward initiating the unconverted. The action of God in the life of the
individual always occurs in the context of the worshipping community. This
stands as the distinct feature of Oneness Pentecostal worship. All experiences—repentance,
water baptism, and Spirit baptism—gain meaning from the acts of public worship.
The occurrence of these basic experiences in the uninitiated and the renewal of
these experiences in the believer dominate the acts of worship and serve as
sure tokens of God's action in the worshipping community. Such "crisis conversions"
occur within the context of and as a result of corporate worship rather than
subtle persuasion or theological instruction. Although Pentecostal writers affirm
the possibility of isolated conversions, this contradicts denominational
practices. Entering into normal Pentecostal life occurs within and is
maintained within the arena of community worship.23
Conversions
occur when the elements of worship are focused in such a way that the seeker is
motivated to commitment. These elements highlight the need and availability of
salvation. Oneness preaching largely consists of instructing the uncommitted of
their present state and the salvation provided by Christ. The sermon motivates
the seeker to bold decision, a public admission of sin and the need for
salvation, and tangible acts of faith in responding to the altar call,
repenting, and submitting to water baptism. The music during the altar call
likewise enhances the appeal by presenting the basic doctrines of salvation,
promising the desired effects of conversion, influencing the seeker toward
decision and determination, providing an avenue of emotional release,
emphasizing the expectancy of the congregation, and offering a background for
exhortation, encouragement, and prayer. Altar hymns always focus on the
"real presence" of Christ at the altar with terms like "here
right now," "passing by," and "watching and waiting."24
At
the altar, the seeker is invited to salvation, placed in the middle of
believers, and bombarded by prayers, songs, and tangible manifestations of the spiritual
"overflow." These elements occur simultaneously, resulting in a
fevered pitch of ecstasy and the experience of the immediate encounter with
Christ—not just part of God or an abstract notion of deity according to Oneness teaching, but the
quantitative fullness of God's person—and his saving power. Together, the
congregation and seeker share this explosive over powering of the "divine
epiphany." After this initiation experience, the seeker enjoys full
fellowship in the congregational family, passing from the individual life of sin
to the corporate experience of salvation.
The
Oneness Pentecostal worship service shares the basic elements and order of
general Pentecostal worship, but the zeal to restore the Azusa purity which spawned
the Oneness movement pushed these elements of worship to their extreme
expressions. This is not to say that Oneness Pentecostal worship has yet to be institutionalized.
On the contrary, Oneness churches have followed much the same pattern of
denominational maturation as other Pentecostal bodies. But the forms of worship
standardized in Oneness churches tend to reflect the more primitive, more
demonstrative Pentecostal worship of the earliest revivals, whereas the other
major Pentecostal expressions institutionalized the worship of second generation
Pentecostalism. While lacking the true spontaneity of the early revivals,
Oneness worship does welcome the more extreme physical demonstrations which accompany
such spontaneity. This is clear in the after service due to the expansion of
the "simple faith" rite of initiation to the complex three-step
"plan" of Acts 2:38. Oneness worship captures the form, but not the
continued revivalist zeal, of Azusa.
--------------------------------------------
22Paris, Black Pentecostalism, p. 67.
23Ranaghan, "Rites
of Initiation," pp. 292-93, 374, 402.
Worship in Oneness Pentecostalism, Part 2
But
Oneness worship itself, after its first decade, also fell into the pattern of
formalizing Pentecostal worship, although the doctrinal distinctives of the movement
left a peculiarly Oneness mark on these routinized worship forms. Contemporary
Oneness worship follows the normal pattern of Pentecostal life. The Oneness
believer structures his life—most specifically, his social and religious life—around
the regular worship services of his congregation. The believer dedicates a
substantial portion of time during the week to regular and special services: active
members of the congregation attend all regular services, whereas the less
committed develop their own pattern of attendance. Oneness congregations
usually offer five basic weekly activities: Sunday school, Sunday morning worship
service, Sunday evening evangelistic service, a midweek Bible training session,
and a midweek prayer meeting. (In many cases, Oneness churches combine the Bible
study and prayer meeting into a single midweek service usually held on
Wednesday night.)11
Like
all Pentecostal worship, Oneness services provide an opportunity for the
believer to personally and actively participate in the church's life through
corporate music, prayer, testimony, and affirmation of the preached Word. The
supernatural is viewed as latent in every service, ready to interrupt the
normal order with a "divine invasion." There exists a "constant
intersection" between the natural and supernatural in the Pentecostal
service along with a "constant susceptibility" of the natural being swallowed
up by the supernatural.12 For the Pentecostal, especially the
Oneness believer, the divine is more than just an object of worship, it is also
the subject of action within community worship.
To
be sure, the non-Pentecostal feels that the divine acts and speaks in a special
way through the preached Word of the ordained minister, and perhaps even in a
general way in the hearing, confession, prayer, and sung praise of the congregation.
The Pentecostal, however, feels that the divine speaks throughout the entire
service in a special way through—at different times, in different manners, and
by different persons—the entire congregation. The result is the Pentecostal
congregation's feeling that heaven is open not only in the preacher's proclamation
but in the assembly's participation.13
Oneness
Pentecostal worship is corporate in its performance and results. All elements
of Oneness worship as well as the formalized order of worship within which these
elements appear are ultimately community expressions. Community participation
in these elements and this order evokes the moment of "divine
epiphany"—the explosive "real presence" of Christ within the
congregation which converts the uninitiated and renews the believer. Pentecostal
services offer several elements absent from other evangelical expressions:
concert prayers and songs, spontaneous testimonies, demonstrative acts of
worship14 (including hand- clapping, shouting, and dancing), public
exercise of spiritual gifts, and the extended "after service."
Oneness
Pentecostals engage in public prayer and hymn singing with pronounced
enthusiasm. Both prayer and singing are community experiences which create an atmosphere
for later evangelistic appeals. During the prayer service, each congregation member
prays aloud, vocalizing requests and praises. Such concert prayers often border
on ecstasy, evoking extended periods of spontaneous worship. Such extended
prayer services, although potential at any point in the service, usually occur
only during the after service following the altar appeal when the congregation
unites in prayer for the salvation of the unconverted. Similarly, Oneness
Pentecostal song services elicit the full participation of the congregation. Loud,
animated music, usually provided by an amateur church orchestra, accompanies a
variety of hymns and choruses. These songs tend to be repetitive and the choruses
are sung numerous times. More often than not, the lyrics of these songs focus
on the joy of conversion, a comparison of present salvation with past
sinfulness, and the efficacy of the presence of Christ to save—thus, arousing
the congregation to worship and expectancy of a manifestation of God's saving
action. Occasionally, songs concerning specific doctrinal distinctives or the
superiority of the Oneness claim are sung. While these songs are in the
minority, their frequent use is significant. Like prayer, Oneness singing often
borders on ecstasy and may be accompanied by clapping, raised hands, and even
more demonstrative physical actions such as shouting, dancing, or running. A
skilled song-leader will allow the congregation to spontaneously respond for a
while or to a certain limit and then carefully reassert his leadership role.15
Pentecostal
worship also encourages personal testimonies—public sharing of individual
experiences as praises to God and for the edification of the entire congregation.
Although sometimes spontaneously interrupting the given order of worship,
testimonies are usually limited to a designated portion of the service. These voluntary
expressions of praise often center upon personal spiritual dilemmas, answered
prayers, healings, or conversion. Testimonies tend to follow a three-step pattern:
an initial word of praise to God, a recounting of various blessings for which
the speaker is thankful (most often cast in a "before/after" mold
emphasizing the troubles of sinfulness and the blessings of salvation), and a
fairly standardized conclusion (usually requesting continued prayers from the
congregation).16 Oneness testimonies also reveal perceptions of
opposition and hostility from the secular world and historic Christendom. Against
this "hostility," these speakers often vindicate the Oneness message
as "the truth" or "full truth" in contrast to the limited,
insufficient understanding of the "false" Christian groups. As a
whole, the testimony service provides a stage for public confession and catharsis
in which the most personal problems are shared. This results, more often than
not, in real, observable encouragement from the congregation and points to the availability
of similar saving action for the unconverted.
Pentecostal
services often progress through a series of moments of ecstatic worship and
subsequent "cooling down" as the pastor or devotional leader
reasserts control. These ecstatic moments, which normally build to the
crescendo of the "divine epiphany" in the after service, produce
demonstrative physical manifestations in the congregation such as dancing,
shouting, exuberant singing, falling into trances, and prostration. Such
manifestations, whether contrived, conditioned, or truly spontaneous, are
uniformly interpreted as human response to the "real presence" of God
in the worship. This overwhelmed state in which normal inhibitions and behavior
patterns are suspended often borders on chaos if not carefully managed by a
leader skilled in directing such corporate displays of emotion. Interestingly,
the desire to prolong the intensity of this ecstasy is evident in the Pentecostal
description of heaven as a place of uninterrupted worship, unending ecstasy in
the presence of God. The degree of participation in these times of ecstatic worship
directly measures the individual's position within the community. Degrees of
surrender, hesitancy, and unease emerge within the congregation during these
extremes of worship. Such ecstatic worship "heats up" congregational pressure
on the unconverted to respond to God's available presence and salvation. Not
surprisingly, the more extreme physical manifestations occur during the after
service.
From
the earliest revivals, Pentecostal worship has encouraged free, regular
exercise of spiritual gifts in the congregation. These gifts—delineated in I
Corinthians 12-14 as direct, specific acts of the living Lord by the power of
the Holy Spirit in the church body—operate as spiritual tokens or signs which
arrest the attention of the unbeliever and vindicate Pentecostal worship as the
arena of divine action. This is especially true of the more visible and striking
gifts: healing, tongues and interpretation, and prophecy. Through these
spiritual operations, an atmosphere of the miraculous arises which invests the
message and worship with an aura of divine presence and authority.17
The
public use of the gifts has undergone a clear evolution in the movement's
maturing years. These gifts, rather than a formal sermon, provided the most
direct "word" from God during the earliest revivals. Although the sermon
came to usurp this role in the early denominational years, ample room for such
manifestations remained within the growing framework of the service. Over time, the order of the service has become so fixed that operation of the gifts is
normally restricted to times of corporate prayer and singing and during the demonstrative
worship of the after service. This is especially true in "performance- oriented"
churches in which a spontaneous interjection of spiritual gifts disrupts,
rather than accents, the program of worship.18
Classical Pentecostals
understand glossolalia, tongue- speaking, as an inspiration of the Spirit
empowering the believer to supernaturally speak in a language he does not know.
Viewed as the tangible evidence of Spirit baptism, glossolalia occupies the
central place in Pentecostal thought and corporate worship. Pentecostals
explain tongue-speaking—in the language of dispensational premillennialism—as
God's unique gift for the church age. (All other spiritual manifestations, including
the other gifts listed in I Corinthians 12, were already experienced in Old
Testament times.) When this notion is wedded to the Pentecostal scenario of end
time restoration of primitive Christianity, tongues are celebrated as God's
special gift for the latter-day church. Rejection of glossolalia is, therefore,
rejection of the express will of God in the present world.19
Tongue-speaking
plays three distinct roles in Pentecostal worship and life. Although in each
case the tongues experience takes the same form, the purpose and results
differ. First, tongue-speaking is seen as an evidence of Spirit baptism, the
divine confirmation of the initial infilling of the believer. Second, tongues
are used in private prayer for personal edification. Tongues as a "prayer
language" involves a transcendent level of communion between the human and
divine and results in the enrichment of the individual believer. Third, speaking
in tongues, along with the complementary gift of interpretation of tongues,
provides a prophetic message for the congregation, a message from God which
edifies the believers and convicts the unbelievers. These messages usually
involve a proclamation about the church's future, a promise of God concerning
the church's present, or an admonition concerning sin or improper behavior
within the community.20 In each case, tongue-speaking functions as
the key spiritual gift through which God speaks to his people and they respond
to his presence. Glossolalia validates, not only the believer's initial Spirit
baptism, but also the on-going authority of spiritual worship.
The
gift of prophecy parallels the third function of glossolalia. Whereas the
"message" of tongues is expounded to the congregation through the
gift of interpretation, prophecy provides a more direct communication from God.
When prompted by the Spirit, the prophet speaks in sentences and phrases in the
vernacular—often in biblically sounding language—which communicate a divine exhortation
usually cast in eschatological overtones. In present forms of Pentecostal
worship, such utterances serve to support, rather than supplant, the formal
sermon. Through the gifts of utterance—tongues, interpretation, and prophecy—the
proclaimed message of God's readiness to save is confirmed in the worshipping
community.21
--------------------------------------------
11Compare this weekly
schedule with the typical schedule of black Pentecostal churches discussed in
Paris, Black Pentecostalism, pp.
49-53.
12Bruner, Theology of the Holy Spirit, pp. 132-
36.
13Ibid., p. 137.
14See Ranaghan, "Rites
of Initiation," p. 250 for a similar evaluation of the distinctives of
Pentecostal worship.
15See Bruner, Theology of the Holy Spirit, pp. 133-34;
Masserano, "A Study of the Worship Forms," p. 72; Paris, Black Pentecostalism, pp. 71-79; and
Rooth, "Social Structure," pp. 83-85.
16Paris, Black Pentecostalism, pp. 58-61. See also
Bruner, Theology of the Holy Spirit,
p. 135 and Rooth, "Social Structure," pp. 85-86.
17Bruner, Theology of the Holy Spirit, pp. 139-40 and
Masserano, "A Study of the Worship Forms," p. 73.
18Ranaghan, "Rites
of Initiation," pp. 251-54.
19Bruner, Theology of the Holy Spirit, p. 143.
20Bruner, Theology of the Holy Spirit, pp. 142-48 and
Ranaghan, "Rites of Initiation," pp. 255-56.
Worship in Oneness Pentecostalism, Part 1
[In
the next several posts, I will share a chapter from my dissertation, The People of the Name: Oneness Pentecostalism in the
United States (Florida State
University, 1985). Each subsequent post
will deal with the defining reality of Oneness Pentecostalism: corporate, participatory worship. Several of the examples used in these posts reflect American
evangelicalism in the 1980s when the dissertation was written.]
To
truly hear the voice of Oneness Pentecostalism, one should not turn to official
documents or even the written page, for this voice is heard most clearly in the
acts of ritual worship—especially the corporate practices of song, testimony,
and sermon—upon which these believers center their lives. Oneness life is
worship. The regular worship service offers the overwhelming, almost singular
expression of Oneness community life. The emergence and subsequent development
of Oneness Pentecostalism (as well as classical Pentecostalism in general) resulted most
directly from a novel, distinctive emphasis and interpretation of corporate,
participatory worship. Although these Pentecostals are distinguished from other
Christian groups by differences in theology and culture, at the most
foundational level this separation arose in the Pentecostal redefinition of the
shape and content of ritual worship.1
Peter
L. Berger, in his The Sacred Canopy, recognizes
the crucial role of ritual worship in the development and maintenance of a
religious system. He states,
Men forget. They must, therefore, be reminded
over and over again. Religious ritual has been a crucial instrument of this
process of "reminding." Again and again it "makes present" to
those who participate in it the fundamental reality-definitions and their
appropriate legitimation. The farther back one goes historically, the more does
one find religious ideation embedded in ritual activity—to use more modern terms,
theology embedded in worship.2
For
Berger, religious men are actors (participants) before they ever become
theoreticians. Therefore, through the sacred acts and words of ritual worship,
believers are again "made present" with the deeds and even the person
of the divine. This experience and these activities provide the ground for
subsequent religious thought and the rise of a cogent religious worldview.3
In
the weekly worship service, Oneness Pentecostals engage in and act out all the
essential aspects of their religious life. The worship service, the central arena
and primary function of the Oneness church, defines the characteristics of the
religious community for both participants and observers. In the repetitive
religious rituals, Oneness life expresses its faith most tangibly. To be
Oneness Pentecostal is to fully participate in the public acts of worship and
to ultimately confront the overwhelming power of God's presence in the context
of this corporate action. This worship service—its elements and order—enables
the congregation to directly encounter the person and presence of God. This
"divine epiphany" is the goal of every ingredient of Oneness worship
and the crowning, defining moment of the congregation's life.4
The
forms and expressions of classical Pentecostal worship have undergone a significant
evolution during the history of the movement. The spontaneous, pew-oriented
worship of the Azusa revivals gave way to more formalized, structured worship
forms early in the drive toward denominational and theological stability. Oneness
Pentecostalism attempted to reverse this trend by recapturing the spontaneity
and intensity of the early worship forms. In this attempt, the Oneness
Pentecostals actually radicalized the ritual worship of Azusa when applying
their new understanding of God's person to the moment of "divine epiphany"
in worship and redefining the roles of water baptism (administered in Christ's
name) and Spirit baptism as rites of initiation.
Worship
during the early Pentecostal revivals was almost entirely congregation-centered
and, accordingly, resembled the worship of a large house meeting rather than that
of a fully structured denomination. This worship largely consisted of
spontaneous eruptions of spiritual gifts—those miraculous manifestations of the
Holy Spirit discussed in Paul's Corinthian correspondence, especially the gift
of tongues, interpretation of tongues, and prophecy—and various demonstrative,
emotional responses to Spirit baptism. At Azusa, the elements of worship had
not yet been placed in a fixed order; services were considered most spiritual
when the order emerged spontaneously. Corporate praise and thanksgiving,
expressed most often in concert prayers, singing, and testimonies, outweighed
the importance of preaching in these services. With some exceptions, early
Pentecostals considered preaching merely another element in worship. This
secondary role allotted to preaching was rooted in a reaction against
"clergy dominated" worship, a revolt against the notion of "one man"
ministry.5 Even when preaching occurred, the Pentecostal
"minister" remained open to the "redirection" of the sermon
by the Holy Spirit's leading in the congregation. The congregation as the
central locus of God's action undermined the sermon's priority and the
minister's authority. In all aspects, the spontaneous movement of the Holy
Spirit within the congregation served as the central aspect of early
Pentecostal worship.6
During
the latter years of classical Pentecostalism's first decade, the forms of Pentecostal
worship and congregational structure emerged as the movement organized itself
along the normal lines of American denominations. Church buildings were built
and furnished with pews and pulpits—the first token of a substantial
clergy/laity division in the movement. Public worship became relegated to
certain days and times, while the content and performance of the various ritual
forms of worship became fixed. This crystallizing of worship forms correlated
directly with the rise of ministerial authority, administrative structure, and
denominational organization.7
With
the appearance of independent regional and national Pentecostal bodies, the
early Pentecostal spontaneity that often usurped the leadership of services gave
way to an emerging service order which proceeded from prayer, congregational singing,
and special music presentations to the sermon and altar call. Spiritual gifts
and free demonstrative response to the Spirit's prompting became relegated to
given times within the service (especially during the song service and the
"after service" following the altar call). Although spontaneous disruptions
continued to occur, these came to be the exceptions rather than the rule.
With
the recognition of early Pentecostal excesses and the need for instruction,
preaching gained prominence in the new denominations. Preaching came to equal
and eventually replace the gifts as the means of divine communication. The
message of God's saving action, once expounded in the gifts and spontaneous
testimonies, came to be proclaimed in the preached Word. Rather than just a time of
instruction, the sermon acted as a vehicle for expressing and creating the
immediacy of the "real presence" of Christ and the overwhelming
moment of God's saving action within the community. The new prominence of preaching
did not displace the expression of spiritual gifts, but led to a
reinterpretation of their role in community worship as an extension and
confirmation of the sermon rather than as a substitute for it.8
Along
with this reassessment of the elements of ritual worship, the classical Pentecostals
witnessed a clear evolution in the order of the service—a structuring of the elements
of worship which provided content and direction within the service. These
believers came to see God acting in the entire service, not just in the moments
of "divine interruption." The order of the service as well as the elements
of worship became the arena of the Spirit's acting. Although this shift
paralleled the assimilation of second and third generation Pentecostals into
the mainstream of post-World War II middle class America, it did not spell the
end of spiritual manifestations. While such ordering necessarily hindered the
spontaneity of songs, testimonies, and the gifts, it also provided for their
orderly operation within a structured, and therefore highly efficient,
evangelistic appeal.
In
more recent years, many classical Pentecostal churches, including Oneness churches, have
moved toward more "performance-oriented" worship. With the advent and
prevailing influence of mass media, these Pentecostals have developed a high
degree of professionalism in song and sermon. This has often led to a passive
congregation with these performances replacing corporate worship as the public
expression of God's action and presence.9 (This is nowhere more
clear than in contemporary charismatic television broadcasting such as Pat
Robertson's 700 Club and Jim Bakker's PTL Club.) Nevertheless, as a whole, Pentecostal
worship remains the most highly participatory form of congregational worship. The
immediate access to the Spirit by all believers continues to undermine any notion
of clergy-dominated worship. Pentecostalism—in both its historic and
contemporary forms—offers a distinctive interpretation of the priesthood of the
believer when asserting that the entire assembled group ministers to God and
each other in the acts of community worship.
Almost
every contemporary Pentecostal worship service—except for those on the radical
fringe of the movement—follows a similar order of worship:
I.
Devotional Service
Welcome or Prayer of Invocation
Congregational Singing
(Usually several
lively evangelical "hymns" and a series of repetitive choruses)
Prayer Service
Requests
for Prayer
Congregational
Prayer
(Requests and confessions verbalized by the
entire body simultaneously which often results in moments of ecstatic demonstration)
Announcements
Tithes and Offerings
Special Music
Soloist or group of singers
Choir selection(s)
II.
Ministry of the Word
Pastoral Prayer
(Invoking the Holy
Spirit to save and heal)
Sermon
Altar Call
III.
Altar Service (Here referred to as the
"after service")
Community prayer for those responding to the
altar appeal
Testimonies of those converted or healed
Gestures of greeting and fellowship among
believers
IV.
Closing
Further announcements
Benediction
Despite
this obvious ordering of worship with its restriction on the free operation of
the gifts, Pentecostals maintain that the Holy Spirit continues to operate spontaneously
throughout the service. In fact, the order of the service itself has taken on
an initiatory function of its own as early Pentecostal worship forms succumbed
to the more traditional evangelistic service structure of revivalism.10
But
such clear definition and institutionalization of ritual worship forms often
resulted in a loss of the original worship's appeal and forcefulness. The suppression
of full spontaneity in testimonies, songs, demonstrative acts, and spiritual
gifts often left these rituals as limited, rather hollow expressions of their former
power. It was this weakening of the impact of the various elements of
Pentecostal worship and the "cooling off" of revival fervor which
elicited Oneness restorationism. The Oneness Pentecostals called for a
continually renewing revival, a forever fresh encounter with Christ in enthusiastic
Spirit-led worship. This call sought to reverse the pattern of declining
revivalism which came to emphasize formal worship, education, and increasingly centralized
administration as the early fervor faded.
--------------------------------------------
1Kevin Mathers
Ranaghan, "Rites of Initiation in Representative Pentecostal Churches in
the United States, 1901-1972" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Notre
Dame, 1974), p. 280.
2Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a
Sociological Theory of Religion (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Company,
1969), p. 40.
3Ibid., pp. 40-45.
4This term is
introduced in Arthur E. Paris, Black
Pentecostalism: Southern Religion to an Urban World (Amherst: University of
Massachusetts Press, 1982).
5Frederick Dale
Bruner, A Theology of the Holy Spirit:
The Pentecostal Experience and the New Testament Witness (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1970), p. 135.
6Ranaghan, "Rites
of Initiation," pp. 224-25.
7Ibid., pp. 226,
282-83.
8Ibid., p. 283.
9Ibid., pp. 283-85.
10See Frank C.
Masserano, "A Study of the Worship Forms of the Assemblies of God
Denomination" (Th.M. thesis, Princeton Theological Seminary, 1966), pp.
71-74; Paris, Black Pentecostalism,
pp. 54-71; and Richard Arlen Rooth, "Social Structure in a Pentecostal
Church" (M.A. thesis, University of Minnesota, 1967), pp. 82-90.
Friday, March 4, 2016
The Languages of Jesus and Paul
Earlier
this week, a good friend, Rabbi Loren Jacobs of the Christian-Jewish synagogue
Shema Israel, asked me about the language(s) of Jesus. He noted that in the
various English versions of the New Testament, some used the word “Aramaic” and
some the word “Hebrew”. A case in point is the difference between the NASB and
the NIV, the former using the word “Hebrew” and the latter the word “Aramaic”.
Rabbi Jacobs was under the impression that Hebrew rather than Aramaic was the lingua
franca of 1st century Jews, and indeed, in the texts of the New
Testament, the word that is always used is (hebrais = Hebrew). He
specifically asked about John 19:17 where the word Golgotha is said to be in
Hebrew (NASB) or Aramaic (NIV). Highly reputable linguistic sources (such as
BADG) indicate that this word should be understood as Aramaic. So what was it,
Hebrew or Aramaic?
The
answer to this question about Jesus’ spoken language is somewhat vexing,
though we may be getting a better handle on it now than a few decades ago.
First, there is plenty of evidence that biblical Hebrew was not
"dead" if for no other reason than that the Hebrew Scriptures were
still retained and in use in their original tongue. Most of the Dead Sea
Scrolls were in Hebrew, and these texts from the Judean desert included
not only Scripture, but also sectarian documents of the community. It would be
one thing for the Qumran community to have Scriptures in Hebrew, but where
their own sectarian documents, such as, the Manual of Discipline, etc., are in
Hebrew, obviously it suggests that Hebrew is not
"dead". There also is plenty of evidence that both Aramaic and
Greek were widely used, even in Jewish communities, the former in Syria
Palestina (the Roman name for Syria, Galilee and Judea), where the Jewish
community produced Aramaic translations of the Hebrew
Scriptures (more-or-less along the lines of paraphrases) and the
latter among the Diaspora (which presumably used the Greek Septuagint and
perhaps Hebrew scrolls as well). That Aramaic was a common
vernacular is attested by these Targums (why else translate the Hebrew Scriptures
into Aramaic except that it was widely used). Much earlier, when Ezra came back
from Babylon several centuries before and publicly read the Torah, many of the
newly arrived returnees no longer could easily understand the Hebrew
Scriptures, since Aramaic was the lingua franca of the larger
Mesopotamia world, a language they had now adopted. They needed assistance with
either translation or interpretation or both (Neh. 8:7-8). As is well-known,
portions of Daniel and Ezra-Nehemiah are also in Aramaic.
When
one then addresses the spoken language of Jesus, it is entirely possible that
Jesus was conversant in all three languages, Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek (Latin
is much less likely). However, the direct quotations of Jesus'
words outside Greek, mostly in Mark's Gospel, appear to be in Aramaic,
which is why many scholars have concluded that Jesus primarily spoke Aramaic. Whether
Jesus' vernacular was Hebrew or Aramaic (or both) is not entirely clear, as is
the question of whether or not he ever taught in Greek, or the wider
question of whether the current vernacular of the Jewish community was Hebrew
or Aramaic (with Greek as a second language for business purposes). The answer
to the one question bears upon the answer to the other. If the wider
language of the Jewish community was Aramaic, then it seems most reasonable that Jesus
would have addressed them in that language. If the wider language of the Jewish
community was Hebrew, then Jesus would have addressed them in Hebrew. Most
scholars have concluded that Aramaic was the conversational language of the
Galilean and Judean Jewish community, and therefore, that Jesus’ primarily
language was Aramaic. He may have used Hebrew on occasion, but most likely
those who would understand Hebrew were not the common people to whom he
regularly taught, but the rabbis, scribes and priests.
Related
to this issue is the fact that there is a difference between
language and script. In America, for instance, our language is English but our
script is Latin. We can use the term "English" to refer to both, even
though they are not the same thing. (The script of most European languages is
also Latin, the language differences notwithstanding, which is to say that
whether one is working in English, French or German, the working alphabet
is the same.) The same thing was true of Hebrew and Aramaic. Both languages used
the same script, even though the two languages were distinct (albeit there were
quite a number of common words between them). Hence, when the New Testament
uses the word Hebrais ("Hebrew"), which it certainly does in
describing various circumstances, it still is possible that this is a loose
usage that could be applied to Aramaic, since Aramaic used the same 22 alphabetic letters
as did Hebrew. That Jesus used Aramaic at least sometimes seem clear enough
from Mark's Gospel. Also, certain Aramaic words retained their usage in the
later non-Jewish church, even among Greek-speakers, since almost
certainly they were the original words of Jesus (words like "Abba"
and "Maranatha".) Could Jesus also have spoken Hebrew? Certainly. However,
if one is to conclude that Hebrew, not Aramaic, was the lingua franca of the
Jewish community in Galilee, I think the burden of proof is on them, for one
must also then explain why the Jews even translated their Scriptures into
Aramaic in the Targums and why what snippets of original language we have
from Jesus are in Aramaic. It also is possible that Jesus spoke Greek.
Certainly he was reared in the proximity of a Greek-speaking city, since
Sepphoris was only 4 miles from Nazareth, and Joseph, being a laborer (either
mason or carpenter), would in all likelihood have found some work there. When
Jesus read from the scroll of Isaiah in the synagogue of Nazareth, the passage
he read was Isaiah 61:1-2, and at least as quoted in Luke’s Gospel, it seems
not to have been an Aramaic Targum. Actually, the citation seems to be from the
Greek Septuagint, probably because Luke’s non-Jewish audience would have been more
familiar with this version. Still, it is unlikely that the synagogue in
Nazareth used a Septuagint and much more likely that Jesus was reading from a
Hebrew text.
When
it comes to Paul, he seems fluent in both Hebrew and Greek. He quotes both from
the Hebrew Bible and the Septuagint in his letters, though he uses the
Septuagint more frequently, possibly because, as with Luke, his audience was
largely Greek-speaking. Having spent a significant amount of time in Jerusalem
studying under Gamaliel, I would suppose that Paul was fluent in Aramaic
as well, though his speech at his arrest in the temple is described as being in
"Hebrew" in Acts 21:40. What is not clear is whether Luke is using
the term "Hebrew" in the sense of script or in the sense of
language. Most modern English versions opt for Aramaic as the language Paul
used on this occasion.
One
more facet of this issue concerns the terms Helleniston and Hebraious
in Acts 6:1. The distinction here seems primarily to be one of culture and
language, but both within the Jewish community. Most scholars argue that
while the one term applies to Diaspora Jews living in Jerusalem who had adopted
a Hellenistic culture and probably spoke Greek, and the other refers
to Jews native to Palestine who did not use Greek as their lingua
franca. How strong a case can be made of "Hebrew" over
"Aramaic" in this instance is unclear, since the primary linguistic
distinction may be between scripts (Greek uses an entirely different script
than either Hebrew or Aramaic, while Hebrew and Aramaic use the same script).
Now,
to Rabbi Jacob’s specific question about John 19:17: was it "Hebrew"
or "Aramaic"? There is no doubt that the Greek text of this verse
uses the word "Hebrew"; however, what is not clear is whether this is
a description of script or language. In John 19:20, just a couple verses later,
the inscription over the cross was written in three distinct lines, and it
specifies Hebrew, Greek and Latin, which are three different languages, to be
sure, but three different scripts as well. In John 19:20, I'm inclined to
think that the three designations of Hebrew, Greek and Latin refer to scripts,
but this is certainly not an opinion I'd die for.
Thursday, March 3, 2016
Conversion in the Roman Empire
In the first century Roman empire, "gods bumped up against each other with some frequency even as humans did" observed Paula Fredriksen in her essay "What Parting of the Ways?" As Rome expanded across the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern worlds, so did its plurality of gods and religious expressions. In imperial Rome, subjugated peoples were not expected to abandon their ethnic gods. Quite to the contrary, the very nature of empire (the subjection of diverse peoples over large areas) meant the inclusion of many peoples and their gods (or perhaps better, many gods and their peoples) under a single Imperial government.
The Roman empire was a world of religious pluralism with many divergent religious views and practices existing side-by-side and expressing the cultures of subjugated nations. This was not a system of religious tolerance - for tolerance assumes a single established, state-sponsored religion that nevertheless extends a degree of religious autonomy to dissenting religious groups. Rather than suppressing or tolerating the native religions of conquered peoples, the Roman imperial government positively accommodated these varieties of faith - as long as these religions met two fundamental criteria: antiquity and ethnicity.
Fredriksen, in a delightful turn of phrase, points out that ancient religion "ran in the blood" - that is, it was tied to particular peoples who lived in particular places. Native religious commitment was the "natural" and expected commitment of every member in a given society and culture.
The Roman government recognized the legitimacy of "foreign" religions by their antiquity and ethnicity. Ancient religions - those that had endured the test of time - were treated with respect and accommodation; whereas new religious expressions were deemed innovative, suspect, and potentially dangerous. Legitimate religions also expressed the "ethnicity", the culture, of native peoples. Religion bound people to a common culture, legitimating institutions and social structures and providing means of social control within the group. Such religions provided the backbone of social order. A religion that demonstrated antiquity and ethnicity - like the faith of second temple Judaism - enjoyed recognition and accommodation by the Roman government.
The connection of religion to national and social identity was particularly threatened by the destabilizing effects of religious conversion. Embracing a new religious idea or practice into one's a larger religious worldview and commitment was not a problem. But making an exclusive commitment to a new and different worldview meant abandoning one's native ethnic religion - a traitorous act against nature, an act that could only be disruptive to the social order.
These observations lead us to describe two types of conversion found in the New Testament writings: one which was largely ignored by Rome and the other which threaten the Roman order.
The first kind of conversion occurred within the Jewish faith when an individual abandon a specific interpretation of the Torah to embrace a rival Torah interpretation. The earliest Jewish Christian conversions were of this type. Christians abandoned the Torah interpretation of Hillel, Shammai, or Gamaliel in favor of the new Torah interpretation of Jesus. The conversion of Saul of Tarsus/Paul seems to be exactly this type of conversion from one Jewish school of interpretation to another.
As long as it was understood as just another variety of Judaism, Christianity enjoyed the Roman accommodation of this ancient and ethnic faith. Even the "God fearers" - those Gentiles drawn to the Jewish synagogue with its ethical monotheism - were not seen as a direct threat to the Romans. For the God fearers appeared only to "add" Jewish thought and practice to their own native beliefs, not submitting to the ultimate identity marker of circumcision which signified a complete conversion to Judaism - a radical change that abandoned native religious practices in favor of an exclusive commitment to the foreign faith.
But the Roman accommodation of the early Christians began to break down with the success of the Gentile mission. While the earliest Christian inroads in the major Roman cities of Syria, Asia Minor, and Greece were all tied to Diaspora Jewish synagogues, the eventual "parting of the ways" of the Gentile Christian converts from non-Christian Jewish synagogues and the growing number of thriving Christian "house" churches alerted the Roman officials to a different kind of conversion among the Gentile Christians. These converts were abandoning their native pagan religions - including refusing to participate in the civic devotion to the patron gods of the cities which was understood to guarantee the welfare of these municipalities. The Gentile Christian converts would not offer public sacrifices to the gods, nor participate in the temple ceremonies and public spectacles/parades for the gods, nor even eat meat from the marketplace that had been sacrificed to pagan deities.
The rejection of these identity markers of the pagan religions demonstrated that these Gentiles were "true converts," making an exclusive commitment to a foreign religion other than their native faiths. Over time, as Christianity and Judaism parted ways, it became clear that Gentile Christian conversion was not the embrace of legitimate ancient Judaism with its particular identity markers (circumcision, Sabbath observation, and dietary restriction), but rather - to Roman thinking - the introduction of a new religion - an innovation that was not to be confused with or accommodated to like ancient Judaism.
More and more, at the end of the first century and throughout the second and third centuries CE, the "parting of the ways" of Jews and Gentile Christians resulted in rising hostility by the Romans toward the Gentile Christian converts who were seen as traitors to their legitimate native religions and ultimately subversives to the Roman political and social order.
The Roman empire was a world of religious pluralism with many divergent religious views and practices existing side-by-side and expressing the cultures of subjugated nations. This was not a system of religious tolerance - for tolerance assumes a single established, state-sponsored religion that nevertheless extends a degree of religious autonomy to dissenting religious groups. Rather than suppressing or tolerating the native religions of conquered peoples, the Roman imperial government positively accommodated these varieties of faith - as long as these religions met two fundamental criteria: antiquity and ethnicity.
Fredriksen, in a delightful turn of phrase, points out that ancient religion "ran in the blood" - that is, it was tied to particular peoples who lived in particular places. Native religious commitment was the "natural" and expected commitment of every member in a given society and culture.
The Roman government recognized the legitimacy of "foreign" religions by their antiquity and ethnicity. Ancient religions - those that had endured the test of time - were treated with respect and accommodation; whereas new religious expressions were deemed innovative, suspect, and potentially dangerous. Legitimate religions also expressed the "ethnicity", the culture, of native peoples. Religion bound people to a common culture, legitimating institutions and social structures and providing means of social control within the group. Such religions provided the backbone of social order. A religion that demonstrated antiquity and ethnicity - like the faith of second temple Judaism - enjoyed recognition and accommodation by the Roman government.
The connection of religion to national and social identity was particularly threatened by the destabilizing effects of religious conversion. Embracing a new religious idea or practice into one's a larger religious worldview and commitment was not a problem. But making an exclusive commitment to a new and different worldview meant abandoning one's native ethnic religion - a traitorous act against nature, an act that could only be disruptive to the social order.
These observations lead us to describe two types of conversion found in the New Testament writings: one which was largely ignored by Rome and the other which threaten the Roman order.
The first kind of conversion occurred within the Jewish faith when an individual abandon a specific interpretation of the Torah to embrace a rival Torah interpretation. The earliest Jewish Christian conversions were of this type. Christians abandoned the Torah interpretation of Hillel, Shammai, or Gamaliel in favor of the new Torah interpretation of Jesus. The conversion of Saul of Tarsus/Paul seems to be exactly this type of conversion from one Jewish school of interpretation to another.
As long as it was understood as just another variety of Judaism, Christianity enjoyed the Roman accommodation of this ancient and ethnic faith. Even the "God fearers" - those Gentiles drawn to the Jewish synagogue with its ethical monotheism - were not seen as a direct threat to the Romans. For the God fearers appeared only to "add" Jewish thought and practice to their own native beliefs, not submitting to the ultimate identity marker of circumcision which signified a complete conversion to Judaism - a radical change that abandoned native religious practices in favor of an exclusive commitment to the foreign faith.
But the Roman accommodation of the early Christians began to break down with the success of the Gentile mission. While the earliest Christian inroads in the major Roman cities of Syria, Asia Minor, and Greece were all tied to Diaspora Jewish synagogues, the eventual "parting of the ways" of the Gentile Christian converts from non-Christian Jewish synagogues and the growing number of thriving Christian "house" churches alerted the Roman officials to a different kind of conversion among the Gentile Christians. These converts were abandoning their native pagan religions - including refusing to participate in the civic devotion to the patron gods of the cities which was understood to guarantee the welfare of these municipalities. The Gentile Christian converts would not offer public sacrifices to the gods, nor participate in the temple ceremonies and public spectacles/parades for the gods, nor even eat meat from the marketplace that had been sacrificed to pagan deities.
The rejection of these identity markers of the pagan religions demonstrated that these Gentiles were "true converts," making an exclusive commitment to a foreign religion other than their native faiths. Over time, as Christianity and Judaism parted ways, it became clear that Gentile Christian conversion was not the embrace of legitimate ancient Judaism with its particular identity markers (circumcision, Sabbath observation, and dietary restriction), but rather - to Roman thinking - the introduction of a new religion - an innovation that was not to be confused with or accommodated to like ancient Judaism.
More and more, at the end of the first century and throughout the second and third centuries CE, the "parting of the ways" of Jews and Gentile Christians resulted in rising hostility by the Romans toward the Gentile Christian converts who were seen as traitors to their legitimate native religions and ultimately subversives to the Roman political and social order.
Wednesday, March 2, 2016
The Order of Paul's Letters in the NT
I have always wondered why the canonical Gospels were organized in the traditional Matthew-Mark-Luke-John order in the New Testament. It seems logical to me that John should come last since it is so different from the synoptics (which should be "seen together") and probably was the last of the Gospels written. I have read that Matthew received the "pride of place" due to its wide use in church government and liturgy. But these two insights do not explain the overall order of the Gospels.
The order is not alphabetical by author's name. Neither does the order appear to be chronological. Most contemporary scholars see Mark as the first written Gospel with Matthew and Luke using Mark when they constructed their later Gospels. There are alternative theories - none of which I find convincing - that put Matthew first. But none - to my knowledge - argue for a Matthew-Mark-Luke-John chronological order.
So to this day, I am not sure why the Gospels appear in the Matthew-Mark-Luke-John order.
Now to make matters worse, I have realized that I have exactly the same lack of understanding about the order of Paul's letters in the New Testament. II Peter implies that Paul's letters may have been collected long before the closing of the NT canon. So it is altogether possible that the order of the letters were determined prior to their inclusion in any of the early "canon" lists.
Paul's letters were not ordered chronologically. Romans - which appears first in the NT - was certainly not the first Pauline letter written. In fact, Romans appears to come late in Paul's story as he plans a missionary trek to Spain that will necessarily lead him first to Rome.
There does appear to be some topical groupings in Paul's letters. Certainly, the pastoral letters - I and II Timothy and Titus - fit together nicely in tone and content. The "prison" letters to the Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians seem to be written later in Paul's life, each reflecting a sense of imprisonment and a maturity in Paul's theological thinking. But topical grouping breaks down with the other letters.
Why is Romans first on the list of Paul's letters? Many would argue that Romans is the most important of Paul's letters, his most comprehensive presentation of the gospel, almost a "systematic theology" of Paul's thinking. But if the doctrinal preeminence of Romans pushed it to the top of the list, certainly the other doctrinal letters - Galatians and Philippians - should appear early on the list as well, but they do not.
This week, I accidentally bumped into a convincing answer to my questions while reading a commentary on the Thessalonian letters. In a passing comment - a little throwaway sentence - that makes everything clear about the ordering of Paul's letters, I found the answer. This insight was so obvious, so apparent, that I could not believe I had not seen it before.
Paul's letters are organized by their length - their physical size. Beginning with Romans - Paul's longest letter - and ending with Philemon - Paul's shortest (one chapter) letter - Paul's letters decrease in size as they are ordered in the NT.
Sometimes you can't find a deep theological explanation of things because none exists. Sometimes a simple, obvious explanation is best.
The order is not alphabetical by author's name. Neither does the order appear to be chronological. Most contemporary scholars see Mark as the first written Gospel with Matthew and Luke using Mark when they constructed their later Gospels. There are alternative theories - none of which I find convincing - that put Matthew first. But none - to my knowledge - argue for a Matthew-Mark-Luke-John chronological order.
So to this day, I am not sure why the Gospels appear in the Matthew-Mark-Luke-John order.
Now to make matters worse, I have realized that I have exactly the same lack of understanding about the order of Paul's letters in the New Testament. II Peter implies that Paul's letters may have been collected long before the closing of the NT canon. So it is altogether possible that the order of the letters were determined prior to their inclusion in any of the early "canon" lists.
Paul's letters were not ordered chronologically. Romans - which appears first in the NT - was certainly not the first Pauline letter written. In fact, Romans appears to come late in Paul's story as he plans a missionary trek to Spain that will necessarily lead him first to Rome.
There does appear to be some topical groupings in Paul's letters. Certainly, the pastoral letters - I and II Timothy and Titus - fit together nicely in tone and content. The "prison" letters to the Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians seem to be written later in Paul's life, each reflecting a sense of imprisonment and a maturity in Paul's theological thinking. But topical grouping breaks down with the other letters.
Why is Romans first on the list of Paul's letters? Many would argue that Romans is the most important of Paul's letters, his most comprehensive presentation of the gospel, almost a "systematic theology" of Paul's thinking. But if the doctrinal preeminence of Romans pushed it to the top of the list, certainly the other doctrinal letters - Galatians and Philippians - should appear early on the list as well, but they do not.
This week, I accidentally bumped into a convincing answer to my questions while reading a commentary on the Thessalonian letters. In a passing comment - a little throwaway sentence - that makes everything clear about the ordering of Paul's letters, I found the answer. This insight was so obvious, so apparent, that I could not believe I had not seen it before.
Paul's letters are organized by their length - their physical size. Beginning with Romans - Paul's longest letter - and ending with Philemon - Paul's shortest (one chapter) letter - Paul's letters decrease in size as they are ordered in the NT.
Sometimes you can't find a deep theological explanation of things because none exists. Sometimes a simple, obvious explanation is best.
Tuesday, March 1, 2016
Ambiguity and Literal Translation
"Therefore from now on we recognize no one according to the flesh; even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him in this way no longer." (II Corinthians 5:16 NASB)
"From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way." (II Corinthians 5:16 NRSV)
As a young man, I struggled with the great New Testament scholar Rudolf Bultmann's negative assessment of early Christian memories of the details of the life of the historical Jesus. Bultmann argued that only the resurrected Christ - a cosmic being beyond human description - concerned the early Christians. The biographical details of the life of a particular Palestinian Jew from the backwaters of the Galilee were of no enduring interest to the primitive Christian community. For Bultmann, Paul clearly states this principle in II Corinthians 5:16 where he affirms that he (and, by implication, other Christians) no longer concerned themselves with knowledge of Jesus' life "according to the flesh."
But this reading of II Corinthians 5:16 betrays the ambiguity that often accompanies overly literal translation. Compare the literal translation of this passage in the New American Standard Bible (NASB) and the "dynamic equivalence" translation of the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV). The more literal translation leaves ambiguity in the meaning of the Greek propositional phrase "kata sarka" ("according to the flesh").
The literal NASB translation seems to read this propositional phrase adjectivally referring to the noun "Christ". The result (similar to Bultmann's view) is that Paul no longer concerns himself with the details of the "fleshly" biography of Jesus of Nazareth.
The dynamic NRSV translation sees the phrase "kata sarka" adverbially, modifying the verb "know". Thus, Paul states that "from now on" - that is, since the radical transformation to new life that he has experienced in Christ - he can no longer know Christ in the old (mistaken) way he did before. Christians know Christ through "transformed" eyes, no longer from the "human point of view" they had previously known.
Regarding "kata sarka", the esteemed Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (TDNT) interprets this phrase in the context of II Corinthians 5:16 as knowing "qualities which are only on the surface" and having "regard only to what is seen and what counts to men." For the TDNT, the phrase "according to the flesh" is used as an adverb and modifies the verb "know', denoting "a knowledge of Christ which judges by human standards" - a knowledge which Paul explicitly states he can no longer maintain.
[It is interesting to note that even Bultmann (in his Theology of the New Testament) acknowledges that "kata sarka" is best understood as an adverb in II Corinthians 5:16. But he nevertheless held to his position that this grammatical reality makes no difference - "means nothing" in his own words - in light of Paul's obvious lack of interest in the life of the historical Jesus. Many contemporary scholars would strongly disagree with both Bultmann's interpretation of II Corinthians 5:16 and his view that early Christians showed no interest in the memory of the historical Jesus.]
In conclusion, while it may seem that the most literal translation of a biblical text is the one that is most faithful to its true meaning, this is often not the case. "Words have usage, not meaning," my old Greek professor, Roger Greene, reminds us.
The goal of biblical translation is to communicate words (and the ideas behind them) across barriers of language, culture, and time and, in turn, to allow these words (and ideas) to speak to our situation today. This is not always an easy task. A well-meaning commitment to the most literal translation of a text possible may sound the most faithful to the original text when in fact such literalism can cloud rather than clarify the text's meaning.
"From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way." (II Corinthians 5:16 NRSV)
As a young man, I struggled with the great New Testament scholar Rudolf Bultmann's negative assessment of early Christian memories of the details of the life of the historical Jesus. Bultmann argued that only the resurrected Christ - a cosmic being beyond human description - concerned the early Christians. The biographical details of the life of a particular Palestinian Jew from the backwaters of the Galilee were of no enduring interest to the primitive Christian community. For Bultmann, Paul clearly states this principle in II Corinthians 5:16 where he affirms that he (and, by implication, other Christians) no longer concerned themselves with knowledge of Jesus' life "according to the flesh."
But this reading of II Corinthians 5:16 betrays the ambiguity that often accompanies overly literal translation. Compare the literal translation of this passage in the New American Standard Bible (NASB) and the "dynamic equivalence" translation of the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV). The more literal translation leaves ambiguity in the meaning of the Greek propositional phrase "kata sarka" ("according to the flesh").
The literal NASB translation seems to read this propositional phrase adjectivally referring to the noun "Christ". The result (similar to Bultmann's view) is that Paul no longer concerns himself with the details of the "fleshly" biography of Jesus of Nazareth.
The dynamic NRSV translation sees the phrase "kata sarka" adverbially, modifying the verb "know". Thus, Paul states that "from now on" - that is, since the radical transformation to new life that he has experienced in Christ - he can no longer know Christ in the old (mistaken) way he did before. Christians know Christ through "transformed" eyes, no longer from the "human point of view" they had previously known.
Regarding "kata sarka", the esteemed Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (TDNT) interprets this phrase in the context of II Corinthians 5:16 as knowing "qualities which are only on the surface" and having "regard only to what is seen and what counts to men." For the TDNT, the phrase "according to the flesh" is used as an adverb and modifies the verb "know', denoting "a knowledge of Christ which judges by human standards" - a knowledge which Paul explicitly states he can no longer maintain.
[It is interesting to note that even Bultmann (in his Theology of the New Testament) acknowledges that "kata sarka" is best understood as an adverb in II Corinthians 5:16. But he nevertheless held to his position that this grammatical reality makes no difference - "means nothing" in his own words - in light of Paul's obvious lack of interest in the life of the historical Jesus. Many contemporary scholars would strongly disagree with both Bultmann's interpretation of II Corinthians 5:16 and his view that early Christians showed no interest in the memory of the historical Jesus.]
In conclusion, while it may seem that the most literal translation of a biblical text is the one that is most faithful to its true meaning, this is often not the case. "Words have usage, not meaning," my old Greek professor, Roger Greene, reminds us.
The goal of biblical translation is to communicate words (and the ideas behind them) across barriers of language, culture, and time and, in turn, to allow these words (and ideas) to speak to our situation today. This is not always an easy task. A well-meaning commitment to the most literal translation of a text possible may sound the most faithful to the original text when in fact such literalism can cloud rather than clarify the text's meaning.