Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

THE SATAN - by Michael Hardin - episode 17 - "Prolegomena to The Temptation of Jesus"

Editor's Note: Clarion is posting Michael Hardin's 20-episode series (excerpted from What the Facebook? vol. 1) on The Satan as a weekly release, each Thursday. CLICK HERE for the full pdf or kindle document.

(17) Prolegomena to The Temptation of Jesus

Before we begin our study of the Temptation of Jesus, let’s take care of a few housekeeping details. First, one’s view of Scripture is going to determine how one approaches, interprets and understands Scripture. As I have followed the comments on these musings about ‘the satan’ this has particularly come home time and again, particularly when it comes to asking about the ‘personhood of the satan.” Back in April when I was discussing the perspective of the inerrancy/infallibility tradition I pointed out that this defending the inspiration and authority of the Bible is the starting point for many Protestants. I also pointed out that this view is also a hermeneutic, that is, it does not simply establish the [so-called] nature of the text but functions, in a liminal way, to say what can or cannot be said about any given text. That is, it limits interpretive possibilities.

So, at the risk of being redundant let me again say that I do not accept the standard Protestant paradigm of the inspiration and authority of Scripture (I have worked all of this out in several essays on my website). I mention this because it seems to me that the perceived need to retain the notion of the satan as a person has two distinct warrants from some of my responders. On the one hand there are those who feel as though if the Bible speaks of satan as a person (which begs the question as to what constitutes personhood) then we too should accept that the devil is a personal being. On the other hand there are those who have experienced what they can only describe as real encounters with a force that ‘appears’ evil and manifests itself in rather strange or unusual ways.

In this series I am not interested in showing how the way we view scripture influences the way we read it; I have done that already. Nor do I wish to discredit those who have experienced ‘evil.’ I will say this though: we all interpret our experience, there is no such thing as ‘raw’ experience, it is all filtered through a lens. Our interpretations are bounded and informed by the particular grids we have learned throughout out lives. A person in tribal Africa will have a different interpretation of the demonic than a New York psychiatrist, yet both could be right. It all depends upon the frame of reference of the person.

Finally, let me say this: I am seeking to mine the biblical text for anthropological data, for what it tells us about the human condition. I have made the intellectual choice to no longer accept the metaphysical structuring of reality found from Plato to Hegel (and some points beyond). For me, the main problem of Christianity does not lay in theology first; it is primarily our anthropology that has created all of our conundrums. Because we have the problem wrong (the human condition), we have misread the solution (our view of God and God’s redemptive work). One of the merits of the work of Rene Girard has been to help us get our anthropology back on track with a theory of how we came to be in the situation we are in where we structure our relationships on sacred violence. By showing the connections between mediated desires, rivalry and scapegoating, Girard proffers a way out of the anthropological mess we have created and the problem of viewing ourselves as ‘free moral agents’, a term which plagues our discussions.

When we return to this topic we will take a look at Jesus’ temptations. I was recently asked if the temptation story in the Gospels is a hallucination or a fiction. I do not think it was either but I also think that the way this question is posed indicates that if one questions the notion of a personal devil then one must either take the story to be a fiction or a hallucination. That is not an optimal way of rendering the text. So as we turn to the Gospels to discuss these questions please remember that 1) our view of scripture limits the way we read the biblical texts and 2) that our understanding of what constitutes ‘personhood’ limits the way we will understand Jesus’ relation to the satan in the text.

Next episode: (18) Jesus’ Testing

THE SATAN - by Michael Hardin - episode 16 - "Demythologizing The satan"

Editor's Note: Clarion is posting Michael Hardin's 20-episode series (excerpted from What the Facebook? vol. 1) on The Satan as a weekly release, each Thursday. CLICK HERE for the full pdf or kindle document.

(16) Demythologizing the satan

I have noticed that the greatest difficulty people seem to be having with these posts on the satan concerns the depersonalization of the satan. For some reason people feel the need to hang onto a personal devil. If, as I have argued, that Genesis 3-4 belong together as a process describing the descent of humanity into the madness of sacrificial religion and if Paul is making this connection between Adam and Cain in Romans 7 the big question is, is there any other biblical text that makes this connection explicit? Yes there is. It comes from the Fourth Gospel where Jesus says “From the start he was a murderer, and he has never stood by the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he tells a lie, he is speaking in character; because he is a liar- indeed, the inventor of the lie!” (John 8:44 CJB). Even though the satan (or the serpent) does not make an appearance in Genesis 4, Jesus connects what occurs there with what has happened in Genesis 3.

Paul in Romans 7 has done the same thing by turning the conversation over to the problem of Adamic humanity. We saw that he does this without reference to the satan, especially the ‘personal devil’ of the Henochic myth. That is, both Paul and the writer of the Fourth Gospel anthropologize the satan; the satanic is a human phenomenon. We have been following this cue for the last several posts. To demythologize the devil is one of the most difficult things Christians must do for one big reason.

Most Christians have a view of the person as an autonomous individual. I have argued that Rene Girard’s notion of persons as ‘interdividual’ is an essential move from modernity to a postmodern understanding of humanity. This is not a recent shift in the human sciences but one that has been occurring for almost a hundred years in others disciplines like psychology, philosophy and literary theory. It has been confirmed by the hard science of neurophysiology. Thus, those who would see evil as coming from a ‘free moral agent’, as stemming from choice, fail to recognize the deeply embedded situation we humans are in when it comes to the problem of mediated desire (or object oriented desire).

Confirmation of this can be found in the Passion Narrative of Luke 23. Most of us would tend to think that Caiaphas, the religious authorities and Pilate ‘made the choice’ to execute Jesus. If there is any text in which deception and murder occurs it is here in the trial and execution of Jesus. Yet, Jesus says from the cross that “they don’t know what they are doing” (Lk. 23:32, admittedly a textual variant). Girard observes that this is the first literary allusion to the non-conscious. Jesus does not ascribe intent to his persecutors. Nor does he invoke their decision to execute him to the following of a Henochic devil. His saying underscores that “they” do not know what they are doing. He sees the deception and murder as stemming from “them” and them alone. Genesis 4 and all the other murders and victimizations found in the Jewish Bible are reenacted here center stage in the Passion story for all to see. Not once, in any Passion Narrative is the concept of a personal satan invoked (John 13:27 is altogether a different question and at any rate not part of the Passion narrative).

James explores this connection between desire, sin and death in his epistle: “No one who is tested should say, “God is tempting me!” This is because God is not tempted by any form of evil, nor does he tempt anyone. ¹⁴ Everyone is tempted by their own cravings; they are lured away and enticed by them. ¹⁵ Once those cravings conceive, they give birth to sin; and when sin grows up, it gives birth to death. (Jam 1:13-14 CEB) Notice here that James does not invoke a personal devil or some version of the Enoch myth. Rather evil arises purely from within the human.

Those who insist on a personal devil need to make several critical changes in their thinking: first in their anthropology, their definition of person, second, in the way they had previously related evil to conscious choice, third, to an understanding of evil grounded in mimetic desire and fourth to see the connection between the deception of evil and its flowering in violence, death and scapegoating. Until they do, they will not ever be able to explain evil; they will simply be stuck on the merry go round of theodicy, trying to justify a god who would make a devil in the first place.

Next episode: (17) Prolegomena to The Temptation of Jesus

One Percent - Wayne Northey

Since 1980, the economy has continued to grow impressively, but most of the benefits have migrated to the top. Bill Moyers asks why.

Monday 12 September 2016 17.50 BST

The article linked with excerpts below is incredibly compelling, in the direction of what is ultimately paramount in living our lives: love of neighbour. Bill Moyers comments on this ultimacy thus: When we claim this as the truth of our lives – when we live as if it’s so – we are threading ourselves into the long train of history and the fabric of civilization; we are becoming “we, the people”. One can add in Christian terms: one is living towards the Kingdom.

US Geological Survey records 5.3 seismic event at ground level near nuclear test site (h/t Wayne Northey)

Friday 9 September 2016

Martin Farrer and agencies

WN: The grand irony is ever there: the US and the Western  world accuse North Korea of "maniacal recklessness" (indeed, absolutely accurately), and we read in the article linked below that "the United States blacklisted Kim [Jong-un, leader of North Korea] on 6 July for human rights abuses.": a kind of ultimate instance of the pot calling the kettle black, and of course further instance of monstrous hypocrisy.

For the US, leader of the Western "free" world, is the only power (then or since) that in 1945 detonated not one, but two atomic bombs, on civilian populations with consequent deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocents who just happened to live in the targeted cities, targets with negligible military or infrastructure value to Japan's war effort against the US; and possibly done to experiment on real live victims (like the Nazis on the Jews in death camps), and to send a clear message to the Soviet Union of who is "boss", first shot of the Cold War. (And of course, and as ever, with rare exceptions: with no apology.)

The Iconocast: Fr. John Dear, S.J. (h/t Wayne Northey)

Jesus Radicals - Click here for the interview

In this interview, Jarrod and Mark interview Father John Dear. Dear is a Jesuit priest, peace activist, lecturer, and writer of twenty books on nonviolence.

He has been arrested many times in the course of his activist career. His longest period of incarceration lasted eight months, plus nine months of house arrest, following his participation in a Plowshares Movement disarmament action.

Father John Dear received the Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award in September 2009 for his solidarity and leadership in nonviolent resistance, vegetarian life style and Gospel living. He was chosen for the 2010 Pacem in Terris Peace and Freedom Award. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize by Desmond Tutu.

 

Review: Ron Dart's "North American High Tory Tradition" by Bradley Jersak

"Posterity may know we have not loosely through silence permitted to pass away as in a dream." RICHARD HOOKER, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie, 1593.

When living in a political climate where silence, and indeed a certain banal idiocy, threatens to nullify Hooker's sincerest hope, sometimes the stark voice of lament delivers a wake-up call and a nation's demise is deferred for another generation. So it was with the publication of George P. Grant's Lament for a Nation in Canada in 1965. Canada's unique vision was waning into vassal state status in the shadow of US imperial policy and liberal culture. Grant's jeremiad served as smelling salts and, against heavy odds, Canadians 'came to,' at least in part and for a time.

Through Ron Dart, Grant's Lament was my introduction to the High Tory tradition. Ron and I hiked the trails of the North Cascades over the course of years, through a series of parapatetic lessons on political philosophy and practical theology. The miles covered took us from Plato to Christ, Luther to Leacock, Hooker to Hegel to Heidegger ... and ultimately to my PhD dissertation on George Grant and Simone Weil. Mounting these peaks broadened my own horizons and offered me fresh mental, emotional and theological health. I'm indebted to Ron for that experience. In the end, we co-published a text entitled, "George P. Grant: Canada's Lone Wolf - Essays in Political Philosophy."  

Now, Ron Dart, though already profound and prolific in this field, has released his magnum opus on The North American High Tory Tradition (American Anglican Press, 2016). This weighty work of politics, philosophy, literature and theology surely cements Ron's place as the leading High Tory scholar in Canada, if not the world. He has a unique ability to see to the heart of the matter and to transcend the poverty of the left-right spectrum. His critique of American modern liberal thought would be devastating, but Dart nevertheless disappoints extremists (as did Grant before him) by nuancing nearly any debate beyond crass reactivism.

Perhaps Ron's greatest critical faculty is expressed when he compares various thinkers and movements. In this collection of essays, he contrasts Canadian toryism with American conservatism; Noam Chomsky with Robin Mathews; Ginsberg with Grant; Creighton with Forsey; Leacock with Eliot; and even Anglicanism with Orthodoxy. This sort of flint-on-stone approach produces sparks of insight that I've not seen elsewhere. I would regard Dart's work as a richer blend than, for example, Phillip Blond's popular Red Tory analysis on the UK front. This achievement is magnified by Dart's embodied stewardship of the George Grant legacy. It marks this particular work as the decisive text on The North American High Tory Tradition.

Bradley Jersak is the author of From the Cave to the Cross: George Grant and Simone Weil's Theology of the Cross, originally Jersak's PhD thesis completed under Ron Dart's co-supervision.    

Review: Ron Dart's "North American High Tory Tradition" by Robert Williams

The North American High Tory Tradition (2016) – A Review by Robert Williams

Ron Dart’s latest book, The North American High Tory Tradition, was published at the end of August this year by American Anglican Press (New York). The book brings together 25 of Dart’s best and most insightful essays on the High Tory Tradition – a subject he is intimately familiar with, having been immersed in it his whole life at personal, academic, political and religious levels. Indeed, when it comes to discussing the High Tory tradition, there is probably nobody better suited to the task than Professor Dart. Since the publication, in 1999, of his The Red Tory Tradition: Ancient Roots, New Routes, nobody has done more than Dart to unearth, unpack and unravel the many nuanced complexities of the High Tory tradition in Canada. He further developed his thesis on High Toryism with the publication of The Canadian High Tory Tradition: Raids on the Unspeakable (2004) and Keepers of the Flame: Canadian Red Toryism (2012). Each of these earlier volumes was a significant and much needed addition and corrective to our current read and understand of political, philosophical, cultural and theological history. In that regard, each successive text helped to further clarify the meaning and importance of High Toryism within our contemporary ethos and allowed Robin Mathews, one of Canada’s finest and most important political poets, to unequivocally state that Ron Dart “has become the most important writer about Red Toryism in Canada.” His latest book, as I’ve said, continues this familiar but important theme in Professor Dart’s work by bringing together, in one handsome volume, some of his best essays on the subject.

An Orthodox-Catholic Eschatology: The Hopeful Inclusivism of Von Balthasar and Kallistos Ware - Bradley Jersak

A More Christlike God - Sparks workshop - Brad Jersak & Roger Mitchell

"A More Christ-like God" - Brad Jersak's Workshop at SPARKS

Brad Jersak is an author and teacher based in Abbotsford, BC. He is on faculty at Westminster Theological Centre (Cheltenham, UK), and is also the editor in chief of CWR (Christianity Without the Religion) Magazine. 

Brad’s most recent book, "A More Christlike God: A More Beautiful Gospel," seeks to detoxify our images of God to present the Incarnation of Christ as our clearest vision of the nature of God as love.

“SPARKS” 2016 was a weekend of conversation and discovery at Ashburnham Place to explore the following theme: “How to remain present, faith-filled, and resilient in the challenge and change of today”.

This video was produced by Michael Lafleur and The INFUSION NETWORK on behalf of SPARKS and it’s organizers © 2016.

Weil's Reflections on the Cross - Marie Meaney

“The crucifixion is the conclusion, the accomplishment of a human destiny. How could a being whose essence it is to love God and who finds himself situated in space and time have any other vocation than the cross?” - Simone Weil

At the European Court of Human Rights two British women are trying to establish their right to wear crosses in public. We have been used to hearing about battles in courts throughout the world concerning the public display of crucifixes (or the Ten Commandments), as well as the wearing of religious symbols in general. The fact that these two women have found their religious freedom curtailed in their work-places in the U.K. (one as a nurse and the other as an employee of British Airways), that they were either suspended or fired and that they lost in court is shocking enough; what is new is that ministers of the British Government are contesting their right in the Strasbourg case and are taking an explicitly anti-Christian stance. According to an article by the Daily Telegraph , the argument goes that since there is no requirement by the Christian faith to wear a cross, employers can ban the cross from the work-place and fire employees who wear it nonetheless.

CLICK HERE to continue

Article Outline:

Intro

1. The Cross as Leverage against Force – the Archimedian Point

2. Setting the Balance Right – the Significance of Suffering

3. Only the Cross can Illuminate Affliction

4. The Only Answer to Suffering is Love

5. Transforming Evil into Suffering

6. The Cross as Scandal

Marie Meaney received her doctorate and an M. Phil. in Modern Languages from the University of Oxford. She is the author of Simone Weil’s Apologetic Use of Literature: Her Christological Interpretations of Classic Greek Texts (Oxford University Press, 2007). Her booklet Embracing the Cross of Infertility (HLI) has also appeared in Spanish, German, Hungarian and Croatian. Before the birth of her daughter, she was a teaching fellow at Villanova University.

Review of Ron Dart's "North American High Tory Tradition" - by Henk Smidstra

Ron Dart has written a timely, informative and perhaps for many, a provocative book. Canadian political pundits currently seem to have trouble discerning Tory characteristics; I have heard both Kelly Leitch and Brian Mulroney labeled as “Red Tory” recently. Dart in his book clearly sets out the historic credentials of the historic Tory. The present federal Conservative party in Canada is largely Blue Tory, nary a Red Tory in its midst. Mulroney is declared a Blue Tory, a conservative aping the dominant republican ideology of the USA. The book is informative describing in depth the history and the content of the true Canadian Tory mind, a tradition which seems to have become an endangered species in politics. It is timely in helping Canadian politician and voter alike to possibly find an alternative tradition of political philosophy to that which is dominant today.

The content of Dart’s book addresses the need for a sound grounding of political though for responsible action that does justice for the common good. Ideas have consequences, it is asserted, and contemplation and discernment are necessary. Current political practices desperately must find a grounding to rely on deeper and higher source than simply nice photo ops, pragmatic election promises, and nasty rhetoric and attack ads which result in in division and public apathy. In a chapter entitled, George Grant and Gad Horowitz: the Red Tory Dialogue, Dart summarizes the dialogue which revealed points of convergence between Red Toryism and socialism. It is a middle way between capitalism and socialism that keeps its eye primarily on the commonweal of the nation. Dart notes that clarity is necessary when we speak of party labels and designations. He concludes, that with a lack of clarity, misunderstanding and false expectations are raised,”…this is the last thing that is needed if we ever hope to educate Canadians about what it means to be an active citizen in the public place.”

Scars on His Hands - Brian Doerksen

THE SATAN - by Michael Hardin - episode 15 - "Sin and the Serpent"

Editor's Note: Clarion is posting Michael Hardin's 20-episode series (excerpted from What the Facebook? vol. 1) on The Satan as a weekly release, each Thursday. CLICK HERE for the full pdf or kindle document.

(15) Romans 7: Sin and the Serpent

Of the 63 times Paul uses the noun ‘sin’ (hamartia), 58 times it is in the singular. For Paul sin was not so much the acts we commit as a principle within us. When Paul comes to reflect on the origin of sin, he does it by reflecting on the inter-relationship between law (or the commandment) and sin.

In Romans 7:7-13, Paul argues that while the concept of the commandment was not evil as such, nevertheless, it participates in evil. Is the law itself sin? “No way” Paul says. (7:7) but immediately goes on to indict the commandment or law inasmuch as without the law there is no knowledge of sin. What follows in 7:8-13 is a reflection on the Genesis 2-3 text. Ben Witherington III (The Problem of Evangelical Theology) translates it this way (his additions are in brackets):

“But the serpent [sin], seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, worked in me all kinds of evil desires- for apart from Torah, sin is dead. I [Adam] was once alive outside the framework of Torah. But when the commandment really encountered me, sin sprang to life, ¹⁰ and I died. The commandment that was intended to bring me life was found to be bringing me death! ¹¹ For the serpent [sin], seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me; and through the commandment, sin killed me. (CJB)”

Notice as you read this section (7:7-13) that what you have is Paul observing that had it not been for the commandment sin would not exist. Paul had said as much in Romans 5:13, “where there is no law, there is no sin.” Sin only exists in the presence of law.

If Romans 7:7-13 is a reflection on sin in the Genesis 2-3 story, Romans 7:14-20 may be a reflection on the further story of Cain in Genesis 4. In Genesis 3 sin is not mentioned. This is important. Sin is first mentioned with regard to Cain in Genesis 4 where sin “is a croucher at the door.” Does this mean that Paul is wrong to connect sin with Adam. No. It does mean that what happens in Adam and continues on in Cain are inter-connected. In other words, the violation of the prohibition leads inevitably to violence. Or another way to put this is that Genesis 2-4 are to be read, not as isolated stories but as a process of ‘how did we get here?’ What Paul is reflecting on is the problem of mediated desire.

“Genesis 3 and 4 recount the beginnings of the descent of humanity into a world dominated by sin, violence and idolatry. Rather than trace the fall of Adam to the breaking of a covenant (which is not mentioned in the text) or to pride (which is not mentioned in the text), or to sex, which occurs after the problem in the garden, we can see the ‘fall’ as the human descent into violence, sacrifice and culture.

What then might the serpent represent? The serpent perfectly represents the mechanism of object-mediated desire. One can see the very psychology of human desire being played out in these few short verses. Remember monkey see, monkey think he do? Here it is, at the beginning of the whole story. It is all about imitated desire and its consequences. Not to mince words, but the devil is an anthropological category not a theological one. The devil is about us humans, our violence, our projection, our victimizing, our idolatry. It is not about some supra temporal being, that God created. No, we humans created the satan, the moment the male imitated in paradise. The satan dwells within us, creates our communities, rules our ideologies. It is the most terrifying ‘thing’ that exists because of its ability to keep us enthralled as a species for so long. The satanic has a highly developed sense of deception and a powerful voice that creates great fear. The satanic requires sacrifice. Human sacrifice” (from my book The Jesus Driven Life).

If we plan on understanding the nature of evil, we must recognize that Paul nowhere turns to the kind of account we find in the apocalyptic Enoch myth of a fallen angel outside of us who tempts us. Rather, for Paul, like the proto-rabbis of his time, sin is an anthropological principle. It has to do with the way we humans have learned to deal with the problem of intra-species violence. It is the origin of the process of using scapegoats, of deflecting our violence onto a victim. It is thus, the origin of religion, and religious zeal. All of this comes together in Paul’s thinking about the origins of evil: sin, death (real death, real killing), zeal, law, the satanic. They are all ways of describing a phenomenon that we much prefer to not see in ourselves. Tomorrow we shall explore this further with regard to the evil yetzer (desire) and then begin our journey as to how Jesus overcame all of this.

Next episode: (16) Demythologizing the satan

Day Seminar: Touching into Bede Griffiths' Wisdom - with Ron Dart

“Divine Liturgy and the Spiritual Roots of Red Toryism” - Ron Dart

THE SATAN - by Michael Hardin - episode 14 - "Preparation for Reading Romans 7"

Editor's Note: Clarion will be posting Michael Hardin's 20-episode series (excerpted from What the Facebook? vol. 1) on The Satan as a weekly release, each Thursday. CLICK HERE for the full pdf or kindle document.

(14) Preparatory Knowledge for Reading Romans 7

“It appears clear from a close reading of Romans 5 that neither Augustine, nor Luther, nor Calvin understood the trajectory of Paul’s argument properly” (Ben Witherington III, The Problem of Evangelical Theology). I couldn’t agree more. There is a major problem in Evangelical theology. We might think it is the doctrine of the two-faced God, but it is deeper than that. It has to do with the way Evangelical theology understands the human being. If Girard is correct that desire does not arise from within us but externally, that is, we imitate one another’s desires non-consciously, this means that western concepts of the human being as an autonomous individual or a free moral agent are tanked! If, as modern science has been able to demonstrate we are all connected (or to use Girard’s term, we are interdividual), then the gospel is not about the redemption of each of us independently of one another but about all of us together. This is the burden of Paul’s message.

As long as we continue to define the human in Platonic or Augustinian terms we will find ourselves mired in endless debates that are dualistic: free-will vs. predestination, soul vs. body, time vs. eternity, divine vs. human, etc. All of the great debates in western theology, many of which simply leave us cold today, are argued from false premises. We are much better off questioning those premises and seeking to understand Paul on his own terms.

Romans 7, for most of western Christian history has been read as an autobiographical text about Paul’s post conversion struggle. It isn’t. It is the human story prior to our being liberated in Jesus. It is a retelling of the old Adamic story. There is a shift in “voice” between Romans 7:6 and 7:7. This was an ancient rhetorical technique known as prosopopoia. Witherington describes

“This rhetorical technique [which] involves the assumption of a role, and sometimes the role would be marked off from its surrounding discourse by a change in tone or inflection or accent or form of delivery…signaling a change in voice. Unfortunately for us, we did not get to hear Paul’s discourse delivered in its original oral setting, as was Paul’s intent.”

Thus it is that when we read Paul’s letters where he is “role playing” we don’t pick up on the signals and read everything as though it was all Paul! A contemporary novelist writing in the first person does the same thing. This is also why Paul sent someone to read his letters out loud, they would know where to make the change of voice or inflection! The same phenomenon occurs in Romans 1:18-32 which is Paul role playing the false teacher he is combating throughout Romans. Douglas Campbell has used this to good effect in his book The Deliverance of God. Romans 1:18-32 is the false gospel being combated, not Paul’s view. Try that one on for size! Paul also role plays the false teacher in Romans 2-4 and 9-11.

For a long time, Christian exegetes read everything in I Corinthians as having come from Paul. Now we know that at certain places Paul is quoting from the letter the Corinthians wrote to him. We also do this when we want to accurately reproduce something someone wrote before we respond to them. These ancient ways of communicating are not lost to us. We have the manuals of the ancient rhetoricians to guide us and help us understand just how it is that when Paul’s letters were read in the house churches, the lector (reader) would orally change the tone of voice. For too long Paul has been viewed as double minded, saying first this, then that. When he is read this way his letters are really mumbo-jumbo and we can spend centuries arguing back and forth and throwing “well, what about this verse?” questions at one another. But when we realize that Paul is using a device where he role plays then we can distinguish his own thoughts, beliefs and voice from those opponents he is arguing against. Some may say, well I have the Holy Spirit, and I don’t need all this modern scholarship. Great. Let the Holy Spirit help you figure out where Paul’s voice begins and ends. You may just find that the Holy Spirit is of little help here (for that is not the work of the Spirit, if it had been we wouldn’t have misread Paul for almost 2,000 years). No, we need modern scholarship to help us place the New Testament documents including the letters of Paul, back into their cultural milieu. Then we can allow the Holy Spirit to guide us as we hear the authentic gospel of Paul.

We do not need to be anti-intellectual. Nor do we need to be unspiritual. By using both our reason and the Spirit together we may just find ourselves hearing the Bible in its rich fullness, fresh and new, over and over again. We may just find ourselves reveling in the revelation of truly awesome good news! This is the radical turn that is happening in Christianity today. Come join the parade!

Next episode: (15) Romans 7: Sin and the Serpent

THE SATAN - by Michael Hardin - episode 13 - "When the Law Becomes The satan"

Editor's Note: Clarion will be posting Michael Hardin's 20-episode series (excerpted from What the Facebook? vol. 1) on The Satan as a weekly release, each Thursday. CLICK HERE for the full pdf or kindle document.

(13) When the Law Becomes The satan

The apostle Paul had a problem before he became Paul, while he was still known as Saul: he was zealous, extremely zealous. Laying out his street creds in Philippians 3:4-6 he says that when it came to zeal he was a top-notch, A-One lover of Torah. He went so far that in his thinking he had to “persecute the church.” He loved Torah and that love led him to take as his model Phineas, the proto-typical zealot whose story is told in Numbers 25. God (El) had told Moses to “impale all the chiefs of the people in the sun before El, in order that the fierce anger of the Lord may turn away from Israel” (25:4). One poor bloke brought his lovely Midianite wife into their tent and whilst having a quickie before dinner, suddenly found Phineas busting through the camel skin, spear in hand. He proceeded to ruin their sex life by driving a spear through them both.

Now El (God) was so pleased with this that he turned away his fierce wrath from Israel due to Phineas’ “manifesting such zeal among Israel on my behalf” (25:10). It didn’t end there though. God granted Phineas his own personal “covenant of peace” and “a perpetual priesthood” (25:12-13). So if God is angry at the people because of their sin how do you get God to bless you? You go kill anyone you think is offending God (sounds like some Fundamentalist American Christians today, doesn’t it). The story doesn’t end there for Phineas made it into Israel’s rock and roll songbook and you can just hear his tale kareoked “Then Phineas stood up and interceded/and the plague was stopped/and that has been reckoned to him as righteousness/from generation to generation forever” (Psalm 106:30-31). At the time of the Maccabean revolution in 167 B.C.E., as the elder Matthias Maccabee lay dying he extolled the greatest heroes of Israel’s faith citing Abraham who was “found faithful when tested and it was reckoned to him as righteousness”, then he extols Joseph, and then Phineas who “because he was deeply zealous, received the covenant of everlasting priesthood” (I Macc. 2:51-54).

Does any of this language sound familiar? It should. The entire letter to the Galatians is built around the problem of what happens when Torah is interpreted through the lens of zeal. When Paul refers to Abraham in Galatians 3:6 should we think of Phineas as the contrast? Yes! Immediately Paul goes on to cite Deuteronomy 27:26, “Cursed is everyone who does not observe and obey all things written in the book of the Law.” If God curses you, then you are fair game here below for others to do with you as they please and that usually means getting rid of you. If you are perceived as a law-breaker, and if by your violating Torah you bring God’s wrath down upon the nation, it is essential to get rid of you, for you are sin, and must be purged. A zealous interpretation of Torah brings death and destruction in its wake. This is the second problem Paul has with the law (the first being that it fuels sinful tendencies as we saw in the previous post).

For the zealot, the law is an accusatory instrument. It is used satanically in order to justify violence against the perceived violator, the sinner, the heretic, the law-breaker. This is why Paul could say he was the most zealous person he knew. What he is saying in other words in his confession in Philippians 3 is that he was the most satanic person he knew, the one who, like the Attorney General in the Prologue to Job, went about looking for those evil law-breakers, and he found them in the early Jesus movement followers. How far did Paul go, he consented to the lynching of Stephen. That was a righteous act as far as he was concerned. This satanic accusatory perspective blinded Saul/Paul and it still blinds people today, including sadly, Christians.

Paul’s beef is not with the Torah as a set of guidelines, but as a means of exclusivity, of marginalization, of torture, and of death. This is why Paul can tell the Corinthians that the Torah was a “ministry of condemnation” (2 Cor. 3:9) or that “the letter kills” (3:6), and not just metaphorically or spiritually but literally. Every Christian justification for war, violence, subjugation, or torture comes from this misreading of Torah. What was meant as life is, because of our misguided interpretation, death itself.

The zealous interpretation of the law, an interpretive model which dominated most of the groups in Paul’s time (and which Peter and James would follow), is, and always has been, the problem. There is one text that connects these two: the Law as an accusatory instrument and the satan and it is found in Colossians 2:13-15: “And you, who were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, having canceled the bond which stood against us with its legal demands; this he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the principalities and powers and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in him.” Never does Paul (or any New Testament writer) say that God put our sins on Jesus or that our sins were nailed to the cross. No! It is the accusatory instrument which is nailed to Jesus’ cross; it is the “principality and power” which is unmasked and disarmed so that it may never have power over us. It is this way that Jesus overcomes sin and the devil in his crucifixion. Jesus’ death was a supreme act of zealous behavior on the part of the Jewish “authorities” and an act of cowardice by the Roman ones. This is what gets exposed in the death of the innocent wandering preacher from Galilee.

Next Episode: (14) Preparatory Knowledge for Reading Romans 7

The Semiotics of the Sower and Seed - Andrew Chua

In this article, I will argue that Jesus’ parables should be seen in the tradition of Wisdom literature and that all Wisdom literature share a common epistemological framework that provides the key to their interpretation. For the sake of clarity, I will make use of semiology to identify the structural components of parables as well as their relationship to the Wisdom framework. I will demonstrate that Jesus’ words in Matthew 13:10-17 affirm this Wisdom paradigm and the Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13:3-9,18-23) expands on it. I will draw out the Christological ramification of this approach, explore its impact on parabolic studies and conclude with some thoughts on extending this framework to other aspects of Jesus’ life and ministry.

figure 1

Semiotics can be defined as ‘The study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation’.[1] What is of interest in this paper are the three component branches of semiotics, their relationship with each other [2] (see figure 1) and their application to parables. There is a direct relationship between meaning (semantics) and the signs (syntactics) in which meaning is encoded. There is also a direct relationship between the signs (syntactics) and their interpretation (pragmatics). However the relationship between the interpretation and meaning is indirect and can only be inferred through the signs or symbol. Consequently, the syntactic component can be deemed ambiguous in the sense that the sign or symbol may mean different things to the encoder and the decoder.[3]

CLICK HERE to download the full paper - 'Semiotics of Sower' by A Chua

Andrew Chua is Managing Director, Lives that Prosper

 

 

 

[1] Oxford Dictionaries, http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/semiotics (n.d.)

[2] Daniel Chandler, “Semiotics for Beginners,” http://visual-memory.co.uk/daniel/Documents/S4B/ (1994-2016)

[3] Daniel Chandler, “Semiotics for Beginners,” http://visual-memory.co.uk/daniel/Documents/S4B/ (1994-2016)

Apophasis and Loving Our Enemies: The Practical and Theological Implications of Unknowing — Andrew P. Klager

 

Or listen to Dr. Klager's lecture on SoundCloud here.

 

 

The Gotthard Tunnel Ceremony Reveals the Aesthetic of Statism - David Gornoski

A friend recently sent me a video to the Gotthard Tunnel opening ceremony in Switzerland that took place on June 1, 2016. The world's largest tunnel, it took 17 years to complete and promises a new era of state managed European and global connectedness. As such, European heads of state such as France's Hollande, and Germany's Merkel as well as cronies of capital and finance were on hand to take the virgin tunnel voyage and celebrate its completion.

An innocuous ribbon cutting ceremony for an impressive engineering feat. Maybe this story could be a light change of pace. Imagine my face, then, when I discovered that the 9 million dollar opening ceremony was filled with paganistic rituals of pre-Christian Old Europe. Rapturously applauded by standing global bureaucrats and prime ministers, the ghastly production was an unintended self-parody on statist culture.

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