Thoughts On…Baptism in the Holy Spirit

Should Christians expect an experience separate to conversion where one is baptised in the Holy Spirit?

This is a hot topic at the moment. An affirmative answer to this question was one of the key developments which led to the establishment of several new church movements across the 20th century, Newfrontiers being one of those. Now, however, this idea is being questioned. The debate isn’t about what the Spirit does or how we should relate to him but about how we should expect to first receive him.

Do Christians receive the Spirit at conversion (as would seem to be implied by Romans 8:9) or should we expect a second experience where the Spirit is received, perhaps through the laying on of hands (as appears to have happened with the Samaritans in Acts 8:14-17)? Another way to approach this question is to ask ‘Have all Christians received the Holy Spirit?’. Indeed Andrew Wilson has a helpful post over at the Theology Matters blog in which he outlines the three major viewpoints people take on this question.

As I’ve read some other people’s thoughts on the subject over the past week and have been thinking about it myself a few points have struck me as potentially important but, from the sample I’ve seen, as yet overlooked. As I put them in writing here I’m not seeking to give my take on the question (yet!) but purely to lay down a few points which may help that later enterprise.

 

Acts 1:6-8 an Interpretive Key?

Like all of the Biblical writings, Acts needs to be read as the literature is it. The beginning and ending of all literary works are always important for understanding the whole, perhaps particularly so in narrative. I wonder if Acts 1:6-8 may be part of Luke’s careful preparation of his readers for reading and understanding the rest of his narrative.

In Acts 1:6 the disciples ask Jesus when he will “restore the kingdom to Israel”, i.e. when is he going to get rid of the Romans, reinstate God’s rule and bring in the new age (‘the age to come’) promised to God’s people throughout the Old Testament. Jesus responds by telling them that it isn’t for them to know the ins and outs of the timings but then also immediately tells them that they will soon receive the Holy Spirit and act as his witnesses.

Despite what one occasionally reads this statement isn’t just Jesus randomly changing the subject or trying to change their focus. To announce the imminent arrival of the Holy Spirit to be received by God’s people is to announce that the age to come promised by God has now arrived in some way. The outpouring of the Holy Spirit to God’s people was one of the marks of the promised new age (as Peter argues, using a text from Joel 2 at Pentecost, Acts 2:14-21; see also Is. 44:1-4; Ezek. 36:26-27 et al). Indeed, it is likely that it was Jesus’ mention of the Spirit in 1:5 which prompted the disciples’ question since they hadn’t yet understood the now-not yet tension of the Kingdom in the church age. This reading is further supported by the fact that verse 8 starts with a definite ‘but’ (Gk. alla), i.e. It’s not your business to know all those details but what I can tell you is this much, the kingdom is here in some sense.

If this is so, then right from the outset of Luke’s account in Acts the presence of the Spirit is used as a marker of the breaking in of God’s new age. Where the Spirit is, there the age to come has arrived. If this is a fair reading of Luke I propose it may be a useful tool for understand Luke when he narrates the accounts of the Samaritans (Acts 8) and the Ephesian disciples (Acts 19). Could the significance of the presence or absence of the Spirit in each be about identifying and authenticating the true breaking in of the age to come? If so, it could be significant for our answer to the question posed above. The full out working of this will have to await another time.

 

 Minor Breaks and Major Breaks

Some within this debate are asserting that there is no NT warrant for seeing a two stage process of receiving the Spirit, as has often been claimed through a harmonisation of Romans 8:9, which seems to state that all Christians have the Holy Spirit or else they are not Christians, and cases such as those of the Samaritan believers and Ephesian disciples in Acts, where, it is argued, there is then a subsequent receiving of the Spirit separate from conversion (I add ‘it is argued’ because I, along with others, don’t believe the disciples in Ephesus [Acts 19] were yet believers in Christ, it seems rather they had only got as far as responding to John the Baptist [v.3]).

In one sense I agree. Apart from the awkward case of the Samaritans there is no clear warrant in Paul or Acts for a substantial gap between conversion and receiving of the Spirit or, most relevantly, of receiving the Spirit in some sense at conversion but then receiving more or differently later. In almost every narrative case we have which mentions both initial belief and the Spirit, people respond to Christ and receive the Spirit at the same time. However, I think something has been overlooked in the assertion that there is no warrant for a two stage receiving of the Spirit. In Acts we find some cases where it is explicitly stated that it was apparent to all that individuals who had believed in Christ had received the Spirit in that very moment, as they believed (e.g. Cornelius and co., Acts 10:44-48).

However, in other cases it is clear that there was a gap between belief and explicit receiving or coming upon of the Holy Spirit. Though this gap may have been very short and the narratives in a sense invite us to see conversion and baptism in the Spirit (and sometimes also in water) as one event, there is nevertheless a chronological break. We see this for example with the Ephesian believers, when they have actually been told about Christ and responded they are baptised in water. Paul must have been certain that they had believed by this point, they had been converted. We then read that he lays his hands on them and ‘the Holy Spirit came on them, and they began speaking in tongues and prophesying’ (Acts 19:6). Here is a clear case in the narrative of Acts where though the gap may have been a matter of minutes there clearly is a separation between belief and some sort of receiving of the Spirit (we can not say from the narrative whether they had any sort of Spirit encounter at conversion as is implied in Romans 8:9, the point is neither affirmed nor denied). The same may be the case for Saul in Acts 9:17 but it is hard to be certain.

It seems the fact that many of us have tended to experience significant temporal gaps between someone’s initial belief and their subsequent experience of the Spirit (at least in terms of Spiritual gifts) has blinded us to these much smaller gaps in Acts. Any answer to the question posed at the beginning of this post must reckon with this evidence too. There is evidence for a separation of some sort between belief and some element of receiving the Spirit. I think the fact the temporal gap was very short and that it required action from Paul is significant and points us in the direction of an answer to our question but again this must await a subsequent piece.

 

Conclusion

Here then I propose are two elements which must be considered when we are seeking to read the New Testament as a whole and find a consistent understanding about when and how one receives the Holy Spirit. For reading the material in Acts we must follow its own guides, Acts 1:6-8 may be one such key guide. We must also not let our experiences of significant temporal gaps make us miss the significance of much smaller gaps in the narratives of Acts.

Assessing the question itself in an anywhere near satisfactory way is a much bigger task and must await a later piece. Hopefully these thoughts will aid the conversation for now.

Thoughts On…’What Puts Young People Off Church?’

‘What puts young people off church?’ A common conversation in churches in the UK today and the title of a post over at the Evangelical Alliance yesterday. The article states that ‘Under-30s who attend church are in a tiny minority, making them an anomaly among their friends’. The article proceeds to give quotes from 8 under 30s (although one is 31?!) in answer to the question ‘what puts their peers off church and what the Church needs to do to attract their friends’.

As I read the quotes there was nothing new or all that surprising. Focusses include ‘a stronger voice on issues of social justice’, a better (i.e. later) time for church meetings, breaking out of the normal, boring meeting routine and the importance of believing in and supporting this generation. As I read them I found myself disagreeing with most, if not all, and convinced there are better ways to approach this matter. Since I’m an under-30 (or rather a just-over-20) I thought I’d put down my thoughts here.

Rethinking the Question

To start with I think we actually need to take a step back and think about the question. The introduction to the piece talks about church attendance and the question asked is about what puts people off church. Most of the answers seem to focus on the weekly main gathering of a church and so that is what I am talking about in this post. But within the question posed there are two elements. First, there is getting under-30s to start attending church in the first place and then there is keeping them there. I think the two are separate and that a confusion between the two could even be part of the reason the problem is there in the first place. Let’s take a look at both, in reverse order.

What Keeps People in Church?

A lot of the answers given in the article, and generally in Christian circles, are that we need to change some of the external trappings of our church meetings (what we do, when we do it, how up-to date it is etc.) or the focus of our self presentation (e.g. emphasising social justice or a fake ‘veneer of perfection’) to make them more appealing.

Now I’m all for keeping our meetings up-to date in terms of music, use of multimedia etc. because all these things can be used to glorify God. But I don’t think any of this stuff is why people stay in a church. If we consider the evidence of the Bible and early Christian history this argument fails completely.

When people became Christians in the first few centuries of the church it wasn’t because the Church offered them an exciting, enjoyable cultural experience each week. In fact to the surrounding culture it seemed pretty weird. We know from the writings of some people in the second century (such as Justin Martyr) that the early Christians were considered weird by their contemporaries and that included their regular meetings. In fact, because of misunderstandings about the Lord’s supper they were often accused of being cannibals. They were also called atheists by some of their contemporaries because in the eyes of those outside they were rejecting the worship of the gods (which in fact they had, apart from the worship of the living God). The early Christians were the weirdos of their day. Their meetings weren’t culturally relevant and exciting so as to keep people attending. In fact, as we see as early as the book of Acts (e.g. Acts 5:17-21; 7:54-8:1; 14:19-23 et al.),  and letters like 1 Peter (2:19-25; 3:14-18; 4:12-16), to be a Christian often led to persecution and suffering. Just as Jesus had promised them, following him would be costly. It would mean facing trials and persecutions (Mark 10:30) and taking up their own crosses to follow him (Mark 8:34). Clearly being culturally relevant and appealing wasn’t the reason the church grew so quickly in the early centuries. So why did the Church go from a few scared followers of a crucified Jew in Jerusalem to a movement covering the known world in the space of a few centuries? Why did so many people commit to this weird, culturally confused group, even leaving families and facing persecution for it?

It was because people came to believe something (Acts 2:41; 5:41 et al). They came to see that Jesus really was the Christ. He really was God’s anointed one sent to re-establish God’s rule over the earth through his death and resurrection and usher in the start of something new that would culminate in a perfect recreation of all that had gone wrong in God’s world and they had experienced this transforming power through the Holy Spirit coming to dwell within them. The only reason you would have become and stayed a Christian in the early centuries of the churches history was because you had seen and experienced something amazing. Some truth which changed eternity and was worth becoming the cultural weirdo for.

What does this mean for us today? It means that as great as it is so have churches which are using the latest multimedia and enjoying contemporary music etc. none of this stuff will keep people in the church and if it does, it will be a very unsecure hold.  When trials come, as they will for all Christians, the cool music and fast paced video notices won’t convince people that God is worth enduring difficulties. The Gospel, however, will. What the church needs to keep people (under-30s and over-30s) attending is to make disciples who really know and believe that Jesus is Lord and all that that means for them now and for eternity. They need to be places were believers are ever growing in their understanding of God’s truth and their experience of life in the Spirit. Churches need to teach the Bible and bring people into a genuine life in the Spirit. We need to teach the Bible well (and part of that will be being culturally relevant and engaging) but ultimately it is not because our sermons are fun that people will stay in the church, it is because they have truly seen the truth of who God is and what he has done in Christ (Of course this really all applies in the first instance to continuing to follow Jesus. Attending church is just a (necessary!) part of this).

I know lots of under-30s who are in the church and lots who were once in the church but now aren’t. Those that stay, that persevere, are always those who have truly understood the Gospel and learned to live in the Spirit and know that however rubbish and boring our churches might be, we need to be there. Age isn’t the big factor, understanding and experience are. This is why those young people who stay in church tend to come from Christian homes, because that context has helped their growth in understanding and experience of God’s truth and Spirit. This means there is an important challenge here for the church to make sure that young people who don’t come from Christian backgrounds are given as good a chance as those that do.

Why does someone who hates going to the dentist still go? Because they know the ultimately they need to, it will do them good. Why do people stay in jobs that they can’t stand for years? It’s because they know they need to work to be able to support themselves and their families. If someone is in a job because they absolutely love it but then they get a new boss who changes everything and they suddenly dread each morning and they resign with no second thought about what they are going to do next it could have terrible consequences. If they’ve got no earnings they could be left without somewhere to live and even food to eat. We know it would be right to stay because work is so important. We need to help people see the same about the church and following Jesus.

What Gets People Into Church?

If a true understanding of the Gospel is what will keep people in a church, what will get them there? Surely that’s when being modern, exciting and attractive is important?

Maybe. Maybe if we are up-to date and interesting more young people will come to our meetings. Maybe by being in our meetings they’ll hear the Gospel and God will reveal himself to them and they’ll become Christians. But is that really what our main, weekly church gatherings are about and is that really how we should be trying to build the church?

This question is trying to do too much at once. What gets people into Church is being Christians who know the value of gathering as the body of Christ. Therefore, what gets people into church is becoming Christians. Responding to the Gospel is the key bit. The very fact the EA’s article focusses on church attendance is unhelpful. I don’t care if my whole class at university come to my church every week if all it is is a enjoyable, cultural experience. That won’t change their lives and it won’t change their deaths.

So how do we help people become Christians? Is the answer to make our meeting really exciting and engaging and simple and constantly invite our friends in the hope that among all this really cool stuff they’ll hear and respond to the Gospel? If so, then our meetings are going to be very hard to get right if we’re also seeking to meet with God and help believers come to an ever increasing understanding of their salvation and God’s good news for the creation, as well as catering for unbelievers.

Again turning to the Bible and the early Church is helpful. If the early Christians seemed so weird to their contemporaries then it is very unlikely that many people became Christians by being invited to a ‘church meeting’. What we see in Acts is that the believers went out from the church gatherings to the people and in their daily lives witnessed to what they had come to know as true about Jesus to those they met there. The church didn’t bring non-believers into their group, they went out to the non-believers. How did this work? Through public proclamation (e.g. Acts 3:12-26), demonstrations of God’s kingdom and love in healings and exorcisms (e.g. Acts 3:1-10; 2 Cor. 12:12), the powerful witness of those who suffered gladly for their Lord (e.g. Acts 7:54-8:8), through family and friend links (e.g. 2 Tim. 1:5), through a commitment to prayer (e.g. Acts 4:23-31), through a clear telling of God’s decisive intervention in history (e.g. Acts 13:13-42).

Maybe we need to stop focussing on making church meetings relevant and modern and go out and be the church in the world, being witnesses to the Gospel of God (Luke 24:48; Acts 1:8). This is much easier, it makes much more sense. Many of us could do this without significant change to our daily routines. We can do this without having to first convince people to come somewhere with us. And perhaps most importantly WE can do this. I wonder if sometimes inviting a friend to church is delegating to other people (the preacher, the worship leader etc.) something we should be doing and would actually be a much easier way of doing so.

Our focus here is on the main weekly gathering of a church, a practice which started very early in the Church’s history. My points don’t mean that things like Alpha and deliberately evangelistic events and talks should be abandoned. What they do suggest though, is that these shouldn’t be the focus of our main weekly gatherings. They are separate and different.

When people become Christians we can then explain to them the importance of church and when they are being built into disciples who truly understand the Gospel of God and the vital place of the church within that, they’ll stay, regardless of music, or technology or time of day. This doesn’t mean we should ban unbelievers from our meetings (Paul clearly knew they would sometimes attend (1 Cor. 14:23-25), though he doesn’t seem particularly ‘seeker sensitive’ about it!) but simply that God’s plan probably isn’t for us to build them around the needs of unbelievers or to delegate the job of witnessing about Jesus to them.

Getting the Pattern Right

I wonder if the confusion of these two things has caused the problem we face today. Perhaps our panic about a missing generation in our churches has caused us to seek to make our church meetings relevant and accessible, at the expense of being focussed on the right people and containing the right content, and so we’ve made it less likely that people will stay. And by neglecting the importance of going out from our church meetings and being witnesses about Jesus, we have a missing generation which makes us change our meetings. The problem becomes circular!

The Biblical pattern makes much more sense. Believers go out into the world as witnesses about Jesus, bringing converts into the church who are made into disciples and are also sent out as witnesses.

So, if I was only allowed a paragraph like the guys in the EA article, what would I say?

‘The Church needs to go out into the world as witnesses to the fact that God has become king and will one day restore everything that is broken in this creation and is inviting us to become a part of that new thing. Then we need to bring people into our churches and continually help them grow in their understanding of the Gospel and their experience of the Spirit as they themselves are also sent out as witnesses. The answer isn’t to be contemporary but to return to Biblical patterns of church and mission’.

You can find the original article ‘What puts young people off church?’ on the EA website here.

Disclaimer: I should note two things. (1) I recognise that the quotes don’t necessarily represent the views of EA and are just the fruit of their research, material for which we should be thankful for, even if it shows us the problem is at a somewhat deeper level than we might have imagined. (2) I am far from living out this pattern of the Christian life myself but am becoming increasingly convinced that this is the Biblical pattern. If that’s true, the importance for under-30s like myself to go out from the Church as witnesses about Jesus is huge as we are those who have the best chance of reaching this missing generation. Thankfully the Holy Spirit is with us to empower that but that would be another post…

Review…’Is God anti-gay?’ – Sam Allberry

I got hold of this book after it was receiving good reviews on Twitter and after seeing a great interview with the author here (and at just £3.19 it seemed like a good deal!).

I read the book over one evening, probably only taking about an hour in total but the length of Sam’s work shouldn’t be seen as a reflection of its worth. If anything, I think it is actually one of the great strengths of what I thought was a fantastic book. In just 83 pages of well written, accessible text Sam covers a range of important issues with great clarity. Hopefully its length and accessibility will mean it becomes a great resource for the church.

There were several things I thought made the book particularly good:

• ‘Is God anti-gay?’ covers a wide range of related questions without being long or boring. The first two chapters lay down the key Biblical teaching, first about sexuality and relationships in general and then about homosexuality specifically. Chapter 3 addresses questions for Christians with SSA (same-sex attraction), offering simple, practical advice and wisdom rooted in a Biblical understanding of our identity in Christ and our place in God’s story. The fourth chapter on ‘Homosexuality and the Church’ offers some helpful thoughts on how the church should respond to those with SSA, whether they be acting on their attractions or not and whether they are members of our church families or visitors. The final chapter ‘Homosexuality and the World’ engages with questions about how we can best love our gay friends and show them something of the gospel. Also throughout the book, Sam deals with several key questions (such as ‘But Jesus never mentions homosexuality so how can it be wrong?’ and ‘What should I do if a Christian comes out to me?’) in separate sections at the end of the chapters.
• Sam’s understanding and use of scripture is excellent. His handling of the specific texts on homosexuality is one of the best I have read at the level of the general reader. He covers all the key exegetical points while keeping it clear, quite an impressive feat. More than that though, his understanding and application of the overarching Biblical story is fantastic. This is not a book which just focusses on proving that the Bible condemns homosexual activity but clearly presents how those with SSA fit into God’s big story as those (like us all) living in the tension of the now and not-yet kingdom and into a Biblical understanding of singleness.
• Much of the power of Sam’s writing is that it comes from personal experience. He is able to communicate from his own experience of SSA and so writes with amazing sensitivity to the questions and the key matters of how we as the Church can reach and support those with SSA. Sam’s openness is a great aid to his message, we need more men and women like him in our churches! (You can read an interesting interview with Sam and two other church leaders who all struggle with SSA and are open with their churches about this issue here).

Perhaps my favourite element of the book, however, was the way that throughout Sam is clear that for all of us there is a cost of discipleship and that whatever that may mean for each of us, the key truth is that what God offers us is infinitely better. It’s along this line that Sam gives a powerful answer to the book’s overall question in his last paragraph, but I’ll let you read it yourself to see exactly what he says!

‘Is God anti-gay?’ is currently cheapest from TheGoodBook Company.

Thoughts On…Counter-Cultural Singleness

“a vow of celibacy..a single and lonely life..sexual frustration..it is not a natural state for a human to be in” – This is a tweet I read this morning. Whose words do you think they are? Do you think this is a Christian viewpoint or a secular view?

When I followed the link on the tweet it turned out to be the words of a barrister in a trial about sex abuse from this news article. I don’t know if the barrister is a Christian or not or what he was basing his view on but it got me thinking. Is this a viewpoint Christians should share? Here’s what he said in full:

[A]s a Catholic priest, [he] has taken a vow of celibacy, condemning himself to a single and lonely life filled with perhaps an underlying sexual frustration because, let’s face it, it is not a natural state for a human to be in.

Is he right? Is a vow of celibacy a sentence of loneliness and sexual frustration? And is it ‘not a natural state for a human to be in’?

Well I think this is often the view of the world. Think of the main indicators of culture. Most TV programmes and and films are about the search for a partner. Marriage may not always be seen as significant but sex and having someone to share life with certainly are. You’ll struggle to find a TV show or film which portrays happy singles, satisfied in their single state (I’m sure there are exceptions but they’re by far a minority). The same is true in music. The lyrics of the top artists are almost always about relationships and sex.  Or think about the popularity of dating websites. Even advertising often revolves around sex and relationships. We live in a world where to not be in a relationship is weird. It’s seen as shameful and often probably as ‘not a natural state for a human to be in’.

Why is this? I think a lot of people would blame the sexual revolution of the 60s onwards. Once the significance of sex was diminished and it became more acceptable to talk about sex and to have sex outside of marriage people have become obsessed with the need to have sex. In part I think this has shaped secular views about singleness and relationships. But I think the main cause is the collapse of family and community. As the idea of close relationships with wider family and communities (whether they be faith based, social or geographical) has disappeared, people are desperately looking for love and somewhere to belong. That’s why the nuclear family and particularly relationships between two people have become so central. It’s all symptomatic of a wider shift in culture.

Where does the church fit into this? Well it’s impossible to speak for the whole church but I would suggest there has been a similar shift. Perhaps as a response to the break down of traditional family life, the idea of marriage and the nuclear family has been elevated in the church. This is probably also a response to shifts in attitudes to sex. Sex is everywhere and since we believe God has created it to be preserved for marriage, marriage becomes more important. The sooner you get married, the sooner you can be released from the frustrations of being celibate in a sex obsessed world (There’s some biblical precedent for this in 1 Cor. 7:3 etc but as we will see the same chapter has more to say on the matter) . In the church culture it’s seem as  ‘such a shame’ when someone is still single in their 30s and beyond and the assumption is that all single people are looking that one perfect person God has chosen for them. Save for the focus on marriage, the church largely shares the same attitude as the world on this. Singleness would equal loneliness and sexual frustration and is not natural for humans.

What about the Bible? What would God say in this situation? Without question God loves marriage and sex within in. It was part of his perfect creation (Gen. 2) and has always been significant for his people. However, in the New Testament we find some statements which stand in stark contrast to much of what we hear in the church today.  In 1 Cor. 7 Paul says that he would actually prefer all to be single as he is and he says that both singleness and marriage are (equal) gifts from God (1 Cor. 7:6-7). He sees singleness as an opportunity to serve God (1 Cor. 7:32-35). Paul clearly believes that ‘in Christ’ singles can live happy, satisfied lives. It’s far from unnatural. The same can be seen in the life of Jesus. He stayed single – he was fully human. Again, it’s hard to say that singleness is an unnatural state. (For a brilliant study of the place of singleness in God’s plan check out ‘Redeeming Singleness‘ by Barry Danylak).

What’s gone wrong in the church then? We’ve failed to see how counter-cultural the message of the Gospel is on the topic of sex and relationships. The gospel says that Christ is sufficient for a satisfied life, single or not. The gospel calls for the creation of a community in which singles are not condemned to a life of loneliness (This is a huge issue for the modern church. In following the world’s focus on nuclear families we have lost the biblical vision on the church as a family. This is an area that we each need to look at in our own lives and teach clearly to those we lead). The power of the gospel to satisfy all our needs and free us from the power of sin (Rom. 6) mean singles aren’t destined to a life of sexual frustration. And it is perfectly clear from Scripture that living life as a single is not unnatural. What’s unnatural in Biblical terms is living life without God is. Rather than seeing how counter-cultural the message of the Gospel is we have been sucked into the secular view of relationships. The result of this is that singles are left living lives of loneliness. Biblical singleness can only function properly in the context of Biblical church.

Changing attitudes in the church has to start with the truth and has to start with individuals. We need to choose not to go along with the unsaid assumption that marriage is the end goal for all people and is the mission of all singles. To do such is unloving to those who feel God is calling them to a life of singleness, its unhelpful to them as they seek to live out their lives as God is leading them and is a fundamental misunderstanding of the gospel. It’s time for us all to rethink…

 

Thoughts On…Diversity Within Unity

The Bible is God’s word. All 66 books with their various human authors ultimately come from God.  Because of this we – rightly – use one book to help us understand another. However, I wonder if sometimes we take this too far. There is undoubtedly a high level of unity between the books of the Bible but I think sometimes we miss something if we don’t allow for some diversity.

Two things have made me consider this recently. The first is some study I’ve been doing on the New Perspective on Paul. The New Perspective works from the thesis that 1^st century Judaism wasn’t a legalistic religion of works-righteousness as has often been supposed. If this is the case, Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith rather than works can’t be a polemic against legalism. The New Perspective (or more accurately ‘perspectives’) suggest that what Paul is actually opposing is some sort of ethnocentrism which excluded Gentiles from the people of God by insisting on adherence to the law, i.e. becoming Jewish. This all fits into a covenantal understanding of Paul – it’s claimed that far from being about a moral standing, Paul’s language of justification and righteousness is about being a member of the covenant. Likewise, God’s righteousness is about covenant, his covenant faithfulness.

In many ways this is an appealing reading of Paul. One of the great mysteries about Paul in the traditional post-Reformation reading is the absence of covenant. It can feel as if as you move from the Old Testament and Gospels into Paul’s letters there is a sudden shift from covenant and kingdom to sin and forgiveness (this is something of a false dichotomy obviously but the emphasis definitely shifts). Yet I think the New Perspective is full of weaknesses, with its focus on covenant being one of the most significant (there is a surprising scarcity of references to covenant in Paul and he certainly never links justification/righteousness and covenant.  In addition, the work on 1^st century Judaism which began the project has been rightly challenged). Therefore, though appealing for the sake of unity in the Bible the New Perspective should be largely rejected.

The other thing which has made me think this recently is much more simple – the much less controversial observation that the wisdom literature of the Old Testament also shows very little interest in covenant and that when we construe an Old Testament theology based around covenants a substantial portion of the Old Testament is actually somewhat relegated.

Perhaps then, God has chosen to include diversity within the unity of the Bible. I don’t think any of this diversity constitutes contradiction but it certainly includes different focuses and concerns. Perhaps what God wanted to communicate to us in his word was so vast and so much bigger than us, he has chosen to include within the 66 books of the Bible this diversity.

If this is right it should make a big difference to the way we approach reading the Bible. It doesn’t mean we should stop using one book of the Bible to interpret another but it does mean if we are making all our theology, whatever book it comes from, look exactly the same something may have gone wrong. Interestingly this is one area where academic Biblical studies is perhaps a few steps ahead of the evangelical church. Because one can’t assume divine authorship bringing unity to the Bible in academic study (to make another careless generalisation) each author is considered separately and their own voices allowed to come through. I don’t think we need to go so far as to completely separate the writings of each Biblical author but I’m convinced we’ll understand more if we do.

Perhaps the place where this is sadly most overlook in evangelical churches is in the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke). Each evangelist is a fantastic and individual theologian. They write their accounts of Jesus’ life in order to bring out their theological interpretation of it. And I think in many churches preaching from the Synoptics is often treated more as if the three form one big gospel, a great gospel mash-up. If God wanted us to have one gospel he could easily have sorted that. The fact he didn’t should alert us to recognise the diversity in their unity.

 

For more on the individual theologies of the Gospels see my recent paper on Redaction Criticism in the Gospel of Luke.

Stimulating overviews to the different portrayals of the Gospel story given by each of the evangelists can be found in Luke Timothy Johnson’s The Writings of the New Testament.  A much briefer introduction is F.F. Bruce’s The Message of the New Testament.

Luke’s Gospel and Redaction Criticism

Below is a link to a paper about the distinctive characteristics of Luke’s Gospel as revealed by redaction criticism.

Redaction criticism is a method of approaching the Biblical text which gained significant popularity in the last century, from the end of the Second World War onwards. It grew out of a context of source criticism and form criticism which both sought to separate different parts of the text (according to their different sources in the first case and their forms in the latter) but in contrast to its predecessors tried to understand the texts as literary wholes.

The basic idea behind redaction criticism is that by asking how a writer has edited (or ‘redacted’, hence the name) their sources we can begin to see their own theological viewpoint. If author X uses author Y as a source but makes a significant change to the material they take from Y (e.g. reordering, adding or omitting material, changing words or phrases etc.) we can gain an insight into what they thought by seeing how they developed their source material. Importantly, and often overlooked, redaction criticism must also ask what an author has taken from their sources without editing, as their acceptance of this material is just as important in showing what they believe. A failure to consider what hasn’t been edited will give a skewed picture of the writer’s theology as we will only see what they thought differently from their source material. If this point is taken into consideration redaction criticism has a lot of scope for providing profitable insights. One of the great fruits of the development of redaction criticism is that the writers of the Synoptic Gospels are now recognised as sophisticated theologians in their own right. An understanding of the overall theology of a gospel writer can then greatly aid exegesis of individual sections of the gospel.

Though redaction criticism has been applied to several types of Biblical material, it is most useful in the study of the Synoptic Gospels (i.e. Matthew, Mark and Luke). This is for the simple fact that we have three writings which clearly have literary links. Use of redaction criticism relies on an answer to the Synoptic Problem (i.e. what is the literary relationship between the Synoptics? Who has used whom as a source?). The most common answer to this question (commonly known as the Two-Source Hypothesis) is that Mark was written first and that Matthew and Luke used Mark and another common source (often called ‘Q’, from the German for ‘sayings’ as the source contains mainly the sayings of Jesus) and that both Matthew and Luke had their own unique source(s) (‘M’ for Matthew and ‘L’ for Luke, this is known as their ‘special material’). If this solution to the Synoptic Problem is accepted (as it is by the majority of scholars) redaction criticism can be very profitable applied to Matthew and Luke in particular, by comparing their editing of Mark when they have used him as a source.

The paper below is an attempt to apply redaction criticism to the Gospel of Luke in order to find its most significant theological messages. As noted above, an appreciation of this ‘bigger picture’ can help a more close reading of the Gospel.

Redaction Criticism and Luke’s Gospel – A. Bunt

 

For an good introduction to redaction criticism with an account of its development and an extended worked example see:

• Perrin, N., What is Redaction Criticism (London: SPCK, 1970).

A Gospel Synopsis (which places the text of all the gospels in parallel) is a very helpful tool for redaction criticism, allowing one to more easily observe examples of redaction. A good English language version is:

• Throckmorton, B.H., Gospel Parallels: A Comparison of the Synoptic Gospels (NRSV) 5th edn (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1992)
  

For an excellent overview of redaction criticism along with the other forms of Biblical criticism mentioned above (form and source) see:

• Bock, D.L., Studying the Historical Jesus: A Guide to Sources and Methods (Leicester: Apollos, 2002).

Further introduction to the overall theological message of Luke can be found in:

• Green, J.B.,  The Theology of the Gospel of Luke, New Testament Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995)
• Marshall, I.H., Luke: Historian and Theologian (Exeter: Paternoster, 1970)

 

 

The Second Century Apologists – Why Did They Write?

I will soon by making several of my longer, more academic pieces of writing available as a page on this blog but though I would take the time to post some of them individually first with a little more introduction and explanation.

The first of these is a paper on Church History entitled ‘What factors led the Apologists to expound and defend their Christian faith and how is this evident in what they write?’

The Apologists were a group of writers in the Early Church (c.100-300AD) who sought to defend Christianity against intellectual attacks and argue for its truthfulness. The early Apologists weren’t quite like modern apologists. The concern of these early writers was to show how the new Christian faith could fit into the intellectual, and especially philosophical, context of the period. Modern apologetics is largely focussed on answering direct philosophical objections to the Christian faith. Often this sort of objection wasn’t a problem in the ancient world (arguments against the existence of God aren’t very common in a culture where most people believe in many gods and the vital need of keeping them happy!), however, there were some similar issues they did have to address (so, for example, since most people believed in multiple gods one of the questions the Apologists had to tackle was why monotheism was more philosophically sensible).

The Apologists are some of the easier of the Early Church writings to read and provide interesting insight into the thought and practice of the Early Church. The place to start if you’re interested in reading some for yourself is definitely Justin Martyr, the best starting point being his First and Second Apologies which you can get for free here. They’re easy to ready, pretty short and by far the most interesting of the Apologists.

Motivation of the Early Church Apologists – A. Bunt