Gentle Wisdom

My commenter Daron Medway has brought up the parable of the wheat and the weeds in Matthew 13 and how it relates to the issues concerning The Donatists, GAFCON, and the Todd Bentley critics. I refuse to use the traditional name “the wheat and the tares” for this parable because I have never heard the word “tares” used in any other context. Anyway, my preferred title “wheat and weeds” is not only alliterative but, by a happy chance of the modern English language, illustrates within itself one of the main points of the parable, that “wheat” and “weed” are indistinguishable except at the end, and even then only slightly distinct.

I was a bit reluctant to apply this parable to the situation in question because I am aware of a popular misunderstanding of the parable, going back I think to Augustine, in which the field is not the world, as Jesus clearly states in Matthew 13:38, but the visible church. The parable is not teaching, as Augustine misinterpreted it, that false believers should be allowed to remain alongside true ones in the church. At this point I think I am agreeing with Daron. The point is rather that Christians, the servants in the parable, should not be trying to judge the world around them now, but leaving it to God to sort out the mess at the end of time. This might be a lesson for the US government to stop interfering in other countries’ problems, but it is not one for the GAFCON leaders or the critics of Todd Bentley.

But there is a message for this situation from the parable of the wheat and the weeds. That message is that wheat and weeds, at least some kinds of weeds, look very much the same until wheat sprouts and forms ears (verse 26); it was only then that the servants could distinguish them. That is, the difference between the two could be discerned only when the fruit became visible. This is of course the same teaching as Jesus gave in the Sermon on the Mount:

No one can tell the difference from the outward appearance, for both sheep and wolves look like sheep. The only way to distinguish between the two groups is to wait for the fruit to appear.

This implies that it is still rather early to make definitive judgments about Todd Bentley. I think there has been good fruit, but there have also been reports of bad fruit. We will have to wait and see.

As for making judgments about errant Anglicans, there has been much more time to assess their fruit. I am not in a position to make personal judgments, but if I can trust what others say there has been plenty of bad fruit produced in certain areas and not much good. So we can be rather sure that there are false prophets around. What to do about them, when they are in positions of authority in the church, is another issue. Does the principle of the parable apply, to leave them be until God sorts things out at the end of time? I’m not sure.

I was startled this evening by a Bible passage quoted by ElShaddai Edwards, even though it is taken from my current favourite Bible translation:

I was startled by what this appears to be saying. The contrast is between “The people of this age” (more literally “the sons of this age” but intended to be gender generic) and “those who are considered worthy of taking part in the age to come and in the resurrection from the dead” (RSV “those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead”). This sounds at first like a contrast between worldly, sinful people and faithful Christians. After all in Luke 16:8 the same phrase in Greek, literally “the sons of this age”, seems to refer to dishonest people. So this passage would appear to be Jesus teaching that good Christians will not marry. Could that be what Jesus, or Luke, was really saying? Could this be the same teaching, but in stronger form, as Paul’s in 1 Corinthians 7:25-35?

The question cannot be resolved from the parallel passages as they omit this contrast and give much simpler readings:

But it seems to me that there is a clear but subtle indication that Jesus’ meaning is not what I have suggested. It can be found only in the original Greek, not in English translations. I have checked all the versions of these verses at Bible Gateway and not one of them makes this point clear. The Greek word rendered in TNIV as “considered worthy” is an aorist or past participle, indicating an event preceding what follows. So an accurate rendering of the first part of verse 35 would be “But those who have been considered worthy of taking part”, or more pedantically “But those who will have been considered worthy of taking part”. The Greek clearly means that first they have been considered worthy and only then they do not marry. And the phrase “considered worthy of taking part” cannot be divided up temporally; if they have been considered worthy of taking part, that means that they have already attained this and are taking part in it. Luke uses a similar phrase in Acts 5:41, with the same main Greek verb, which implies that the apostles had suffered disgrace, not that they might do in future.

So, despite the possible misunderstanding in almost any English translation, Jesus’ words as recorded for us in Greek seem unambiguous. The ones who do not marry are not Christians who are looking forward to “taking part in the age to come and in the resurrection from the dead”, but those who are already taking part in them, in other words those who have been raised from the dead. Thus Luke teaches the same as Matthew and Mark.

As for “The people of this age”, the ones who do marry, the implication is that this phrase refers to everyone alive in this world, Christian or not. That may have implications for the understanding of the enigmatic passage in which Luke 16:8 appears - although we then have to ask, who are “the people of the light” in this verse?

Roger Mugs writes a good post about the importance of blessing the Lord, based on Psalm 102:1-2. He concludes:

But what does it mean to bless the Lord? Clearly not what “bless” meant to the author of Hebrews 7:7. This was a real problem in the project I worked on, for translation of the Bible into a language without a long tradition of Christian terminology. There is a word meaning “pronounce a blessing”, but we could not use that of a lesser blessing a greater. There is one meaning “give abundantly to”, but that did not fit either. We could just say “praise”, like some modern English translations, but we wanted to avoid too much repetition and anyway this word does not fit everywhere.

Eventually we used in most places a word which is usually translated “applaud”, not necessarily in the sense of clapping hands, but would also include shouts like “Bravo!” But even that doesn’t really work in the case of blessing God for a meal.

And things became even more complicated in the case of blessing the bread, fish and wine at the feedings of the 5,000 and 4,000 and at the Last Supper. In these places the gospel writers made a careful distinction between two Greek words, one usually translated “give thanks” and the other “bless”. Now “give thanks” is clearly directed at God. In the context “bless” is probably to be understood in the same sense. Thus in Matthew 14:19 “he looked up to heaven, and blessed, and broke and gave the loaves” (RSV) the implied object of “blessed” is probably God rather than the loaves, especially because Jewish prayers of thanksgiving for meals always start something like “Blessed are you, Lord our God …” (I note that in Mark 8:7 and Luke 9:16 a literal translation is “he blessed them”, i.e. the fish or loaves are the grammatical object, but this too can be understood as “he blessed God for them”; similarly also in 1 Corinthians 10:16.) So there is no concept here of blessing being associated with a material object. (Indeed Deuteronomy 28:4,5,8 are just about the only cases in the Bible of this kind of association, and caused a different translation problem.) In fact in our translation we could not use the regular “bless” or “applaud” words and had to render “he said the prayer of thanks”. I note that TNIV simply uses “give thanks” for both the Greek words, used almost synonymously.

By the way, we used a quite different word in cases like Matthew 5:3-11 and Psalm 1:1, representing different Greek and Hebrew words.

The lesson I take from this is that we need to unpack the meaning of a word like “bless”, which is quite different in different contexts, even if the same Hebrew and Greek words are used. We have to do this and then restate the concept in appropriate words if we want to communicate such things to people whose regular language is as far from Christian jargon as the East is from the West - which means plenty of people in the West as well as the majority in the East.

Yes, Roger is right, we need to bless God, applaud him, give him thanks for all the great things he has done for us. And as Jews as well as many Christians have understood, one of the best times to do this than before a meal.

Henry Neufeld asked the question, in this post at Threads from Henry’s Web, whether there is some kind of impartation, analogous to what Todd Bentley offers, in ordination to the priesthood or pastorate. The following is adapted and expanded from a comment I made on that post.

First I want to look at some biblical material which links impartation and what might be considered the biblical prototype of ordination.

We do have at least one mass impartation meeting in the Bible, in Acts 8:15-17, where Peter and John placed their hands on large numbers of people in Samaria and they each received the Holy Spirit. In verse 18 we read specifically that “the Spirit was given at the laying on of the apostles’ hands†(TNIV). These people were already baptised believers but had not experienced the Holy Spirit in their own lives. This sounds all very like Lakeland to me, although I am sure many of the people receiving an impartation from Todd Bentley have been filled with the Spirit before and are seeking a refilling (cf Acts 4:31, Ephesians 5:18) or greater power.

Within church tradition (at least Anglican and I think Roman Catholic) this event in Samaria is seen as the prototype of confirmation, rather than of ordination - a blessing imparted by the apostles and so now to be imparted only by bishops, but offered to all believers and not just those chosen for office in the church; also it is not transferable in that those confirmed do not acquire the power to confirm others. In fact not even Philip who evangelised Samaria seems to have the power to impart this blessing; he had been commissioned by the apostles with the laying on of hands (Acts 6:6) but for a different role as a prototype deacon, in what is understood in the tradition as the first ordination to the diaconate - not to the episcopate, so he could not confirm people. Note, however, that Philip had received the power to perform signs and wonders (Acts 8:6-7), something which is in principle available to all Spirit-filled believers, not just ordained clergy.

Now it is interesting to see what Simon the sorcerer made of this, in Acts 8:18-19. Presumably he received along with all the others the impartation which was not transferable, analogous to confirmation. But he wanted more, and made the serious mistake of offering money for it. What he wanted was the transferred power to impart the Holy Spirit to others, or in the terms of church tradition he wanted to be ordained or consecrated to the episcopate so that he could confirm others. Peter and John, as apostles, could presumably have performed this impartation, but for very good reasons refused to do so. So, whereas the non-transferable impartation was offered to freely to all who believed, the transferable impartation was carefully guarded.

It is not entirely clear how, if by any human means, the power to impart the Holy Spirit was passed outside the immediate circle of the apostles. We can surmise that when the apostles sent Barnabas to Antioch (Acts 11:22) he was given this power of transferable impartation; or, in traditional terms, he was consecrated bishop. When later (Acts 13:2-3) he and Saul/Paul were commissioned with laying on of hands for their missionary journeys, it may be that Saul was also given this power; certainly by the time he gets to Ephesus (Acts 19:6) Paul is able to pray for people to be filled with the Holy Spirit. However, Paul insists that he received his apostleship direct from the risen Christ, and not from the original apostles (Galatians 1:1). Paul seems to have passed his commissioning on to Timothy in some kind of ceremony of impartation (2 Timothy 1:6), and he and Titus (Titus 1:5) seem to have had the right to appoint elders and “bishops”.

This is, I suppose, the biblical basis for the (Roman and Anglo-) Catholic concept of the apostolic succession, that true bishops and priests must be ordained through an unbroken succession of laying on of hands from the apostles. Most Protestant Christians do not consider this necessary, and indeed do not have bishops. The ordination Henry Neufeld referred to was into the United Methodist Church which does have bishops, but they are not in the proper apostolic succession because the first American Methodist bishops were ordained by John Wesley, who was a priest, not a bishop. Interestingly, some charismatic and Pentecostal denominations, such as the one which consecrated Bishop Michael Reid, do consider it important to have bishops in a genuine apostolic succession.

Now while I would be surprised if Todd Bentley actually considers the apostolic succession to be important, his concept of transferable impartation seems to be in the same tradition. He believes in and practises laying hands, or cloths, on people so that they receive for themselves not only filling with the Holy Spirit but also the power to pass this impartation on to others.

Now an interesting corollary of the traditional apostolic succession teaching is that if one rogue bishop chose to ordain or consecrate everyone at mass meetings and taught them to do the same, a situation could quite quickly come about in which millions of believers worldwide became bishops and would have to be recognised as such by the Catholic churches. One might however argue that this rogue bishop would be doing the right thing, in fulfilment of Moses’ prayer in Numbers 11:29 and Joel’s prophecy quoted in Acts 2:17-21, which foresee a universal outpouring of the Holy Spirit not restricted by the limited number of apostles who could mediate it.

What Todd seems to be doing is what the rogue bishop might do. Now I don’t mean to suggest that Todd actually stands in any literal apostolic succession, although that is possible. But he seems to be offering a transferable impartation to all, and teaching all to pass it on to others. On the traditional understanding he is consecrating all and sundry as bishops. In this way the impartation will soon make its way to every Christian worldwide who is willing to receive it.

Of course this begs the question of whether the impartation, what is passed on by laying on of hands, is in any way real in the spiritual realm. On that issue all I can say is that this kind of impartation does seem to have been significant to the apostles - also that thousands of people including myself have experienced something real if subjective when given the Todd Bentley impartation either directly or indirectly.

One lesson we can learn from all this is that there are no neat rules or formulae for how this kind of impartation works. God is not bound the apostolic succession but can do a new thing. As he raised up Paul independently of the established apostles, so he can also raise up new leaders even from stones (compare Luke 3:8), people like John Wesley, who was never a bishop, and apparently Todd Bentley. And given the weakness and apostasy of so many bishops in what remains of the original apostolic succession, at least the Anglican branch of it, it would hardly be surprising if God raised up a new source of transferable impartation which he chooses to use to pour out his Spirit on a needy world.

It is not often these days that I find a Bible story which I don’t remember reading before, and even less often that I find one which is clearly linked to a well known parable of Jesus. But I have just discovered, as if for the first time, 2 Chronicles 28:5-15, thanks to a post about this from Michael Barber. In this passage the people of Samaria, in response to a message from the prophet Oded, released some captive Jews (that is, Judeans), provided for them, put some of them on donkeys, and escorted them to a place of safety in Jericho. The parallels with the parable of the Good Samaritan are very obvious when you look for them.

Oded’s prophetic message is that the people of Samaria (actually at that time the northern kingdom Israelites, not the mixed people who later became known as Samaritans) should not oppress people from other nations. But the message which Jesus brings out of his parable is surely similar to the one which the Chronicler wanted to bring out by including this incident, that God is working even in other nations and that they should not be despised as entirely evil.

So, even though Michael is a Roman Catholic and gives clear reasons why I am not, his blog is great!

Brian Fulthorp has brought my attention back to Tyler Williams’ post The Mysterious Appearance of “Satan†in English Translations of the Book of Job, also discussed by Chris Heard.

Now Tyler’s main point is quite correct. Formally, in Job chapters 1 and 2 there is no proper name “Satan”, but only several occurrences of a common noun with the definite article, ha-satan meaning “the adversary”. (In Hebrew, as in English but not Greek, proper nouns never take the definite article.) In the Hebrew Bible only in 1 Chronicles 21:1 does the proper noun satan, the name “Satan”, appear.

But who is “the adversary” referred to in Job, and similarly in Zechariah 3:1-2, if he is not in fact the one we know of as Satan or the Devil? In the context he must be a spiritual or angelic being with close access to God. There is good reason to identify him with the named Satan of 1 Chronicles 21:1. In Jewish writings later than the Hebrew Bible, for example Wisdom of Solomon 2:24, and then in the New Testament and other Christian works, this figure becomes identified with the tempter in the Garden of Eden and with the prince of demons. In Greek the word is usually translated as a proper noun diabolos “adversary” (or “devil”, but that is a secondary meaning of the word), and sometimes transliterated as a name, Satanas, but there is no question that in the New Testament these two words refer to the same being.It seems clear to me what has happened with the Hebrew word here: a common or generic noun has become identified primarily with an individual and so has gradually become a proper name. The same happened with Adam, who is at first ha-adam “the human being” and only gradually becomes adam as a proper name without the article. Also much the same happens with elohim “God”: sometimes we read ha-elohim “the god” as a common noun, and rather more often just elohim “God” as a proper name. But of course in Genesis 2-3 the person referred to as “the human being” is the same person as “Adam”, and throughout the Hebrew Bible the being referred to as “the god” is almost always the one true “God”. So similarly we should probably understand “the adversary”, in suitable contexts, and “Satan” as slightly different ways of referring to the same spiritual being.

Yes, Tyler is correct to note that

That is true in our understanding not just of Satan, but also of God. This does not imply that the being referred to in the Hebrew Bible as “the god” and as “God” is not the same being as God in the New Testament. See what Jeremy Pierce has written on this issue, in the different context of showing that the God of the Muslims is also the same as the Jewish and Christian God. By exactly the same argument we cannot infer that the being referred to in the Hebrew Bible as “the adversary” and (once) as “Satan” is not the same person as Satan in the New Testament.

There is simply a logical error, a non sequitur, in these words of Tyler:

Indeed the word is “the satan” or “the adversary”, but that by no means proves or even suggests that the adversary in question is not Satan. In fact, adapting Jeremy’s argument, to the extent that the concept of Satan in the New Testament is clearly a theological development from Job’s concept of the adversary, they should be identified as most probably the same being.

Yes, it might be better to put “the adversary” rather than “Satan” in translations of Job. But this is not because, to quote Tyler with his emphasis,

Rather, it is good translation practice to render a common noun as a common noun, not as a name. But I would expect to see a footnote something like:

Andrew has written an important post on the methodology of exegeting atonement doctrine, i.e. how to understand what the Bible has to say about the atonement. He explains what is wrong with the way many others study the biblical teaching on the atonement. The principles he gives here apply to the biblical teaching on any other doctrinal issue.

Andrew also outlines how, through years of study, he came to his own view of the atonement. But he doesn’t actually describe that view; he simply says:

I hope he will try to make sense of these complications in clear writing in the near future.

In the light of his own lengthy studies he writes:

Ouch! Read Andrew’s post for some justification for this statement.

UPDATE 26th July: Andrew has followed this up with a post The same cup, which shows clearly how flawed is the argument, used in “Pierced for Our Transgressions” and elsewhere, that Jesus’ use of the word “cup” for his sufferings implies that God was wrathful towards him.

This is the somewhat arcane question which has been raised on the b-trans e-mail list, and is also related to my post on Hebrews 2:14 at Better Bibles Blog and to Lingamish’s response to that post.

The discussion started when I objected to a proposed rendering “mortal humanity” in Hebrews 2:14, to replace or refer back to the literal “flesh and blood”. My issue was that “flesh and blood” refers to humanity in general, not just to mortal humanity but also to the resurrection bodies which Jesus has and which we will have. But I was surprised that my suggestion proved so controversial. Here I hope to show that Jesus’ resurrection body has blood, and that this is important for our salvation.

(Read on …)

The Holy Spirit is pictured in the Bible as descending like a dove, in the accounts of Jesus’ baptism (Matthew 3:16; Mark 1:10; Luke 3:22; John 1:32).

But there is nowhere in the Bible where human believers are pictured as flying like doves. Well, there is Psalm 55:6, but this is an unfulfilled wish rather than a God-given picture. Humans are likened to doves in a few other places in the Old Testament, especially in the Song of Songs, and in Matthew 10:16, but the point of comparison is never flight - except possibly in Hosea 11:11. That is to say, it is nowhere suggested in the Bible that humans will or should fly like doves.

But what we do find several times in the Bible is a promise that believers will fly or soar like eagles. See for example Exodus 19:4 (the Exodus compared with the flight of an eagle); Deuteronomy 32:11 (Israel as a young eagle being taught to fly); Isaiah 40:31 (”those who hope in the LORD … will soar on wings like eagles”); and Revelation 12:13 (the woman, symbolising Israel or the church, is given the wings of an eagle).

(Read on …)

This is the last part of my 1988 essay What did Paul really say about sex and marriage? 1 Corinthians 7:1-16, consisting of the conclusions and the bibliography, also a link to the Appendix.

6. CONCLUSIONS

The Christians were not unique in the first century Hellenistic world in rejecting the conventional way of life in favour of a commitment embracing every aspect of their life to a higher cause. Another such grouping was the Cynics: Epictetus gives an ironical portrayal of the life-style of these wandering philosophers, who saw themselves as “kings†(III.xxii, pp. 130-169). The Cynics did not reject marriage, but the Stoic philosopher points out the difficulties in marriage and family life for those living in such a way (p. 155). The Christians in Corinth, who also saw themselves as “kings†(4:8), surely thought similarly when they first began to reject marriage; and thus far Paul was prepared to go along with them, for the argument of 7:25-35 accords with that of Epictetus.

The Corinthian Christians, however, were taking the point further by also rejecting sexual relations within marriage, and not on pragmatic grounds (for Paul does not consider birth control as a reason for abstinence) but because of an emerging idea that all sexual relations were unclean or unholy. This idea was foreign to the Hellenistic world, although already known at Qumran, but it could well have arisen afresh among the Corinthians; if sex outside marriage was wrong, and marriage was discouraged, then must not all sexual activity be less than fully holy? The Corinthians did not ask Paul this question; they answered it for themselves and many adopted the ascetic view. As a result some were depriving or divorcing their partners without agreement; and the frustrated partners, attracted by the opposite view held by some at Corinth that Christians could do what they liked with their bodies (countered by Paul in 6:12-20), were going to the prostitutes.

This was the situation which Paul confronted in 7:1-16. It was a situation he could certainly not tolerate; nor could he lay the blame entirely on the immoral partners. His Jewish upbringing had taught him that sexual relations within marriage were good, even obligatory; and nothing in the Christian gospel had led him to reject that – indeed, he affirmed it as a general rule for the married (7:3). Yet he could find something to commend in the Corinthian view, by taking καλόν in the sense of a good option rather than the only or highest good: firstly, temporary abstinence for prayer, by agreement, can be a good thing (7:5); and secondly, for some to whom God has given the ability singleness is right (7:7). On these points Paul departs from his Jewish background, adopting Hellenistic pragmatism. This he urges also on the Corinthians: for some, the need to satisfy the sexual urge is so strong that if the outlet within marriage is denied they will not resist the temptation of other outlets; and therefore partners are not in general to deprive each other. These instructions were given because of cases of sexual immorality and are therefore not unconditionally binding, but the recent scandals among American television evangelists illustrate that no Christian group today, any more than the first century Corinthians, can consider itself immune from immorality and so able to ignore this teaching.

It has been most unfortunate for the history of the church that this passage has been so badly misinterpreted, so that the Corinthians’ views have been attributed to Paul and given his apostolic authority. One influence has been on Christian practice: through the centuries celibacy has been promoted in the church on a basis of apostolic authority which can now be seen to be quite spurious; and today such ideas lie behind the Roman Catholic prohibition of birth control which continues to lead to the birth of millions of children wanted neither by their parents nor by society. [At this point a faculty member has written a marginal note, with which I agree: "The connection would need a more careful argument than is offered here, but is probably correct".] Another influence has been on Christian theology; Augustine taught on this basis that all sexual intercourse was tainted with sin, from which he developed his doctrine of original sin, which underlies his theology of infant baptism and of grace and election – two of the most controversial issues amongst evangelicals today. This serves to show the great danger of exegesis and application of a passage without a proper linguistic understanding of its content or its context.

APPENDIX

Semantic display of 1 Corinthians 7:1-16

according to a method modified from Beekman and Callow

[The Appendix cannot be displayed here for technical reasons. It can be viewed as a PDF file here.]

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND ABBREVIATIONS