Category Archives: Biblical Studies
the anti-beatitudes
All Christians must, at some point, do serious business with the Sermon on the Mount.
It is the penultimate discourse of Jesus, his magnum opus within the Gospels. If there was a handbook on Christian living, the Sermon on the Mount would probably be it.
One topic major topic present in the Sermon on the Mount is that of peace and nonviolence. This is, unfortunately, one of the aspects of the Sermon that Christians often ignore. Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. called the Sermon on the Mount the greatest manifesto of nonviolence ever written, yet so many Christians feel free to support war and violence.
When you open Matthew 5 to experience Jesus’ stunning sermon you are first greeted with the Beatitudes. These eight statements are a blueprint for the values of the kingdom of God as preached by Jesus (cf. Matt 4:17). These values are taught by Jesus over-against the dominating values of his day; violence, greed, pride etc.
Things have not changed in our time. The values of our culture are antithetical to the Beatitudes taught by Jesus. This is perhaps nowhere more obvious that in our penchant for war and violence. Read the rest of this entry
q&r: luke 19 and the parable of the minas
A Facebook message I received today read simply:
Luke 19 – parable of the 10 Minas. Please explain?
Straightforward. I like that.
The Parable of the Ten Minas is a well-known parable whose popular interpretation has God as the nobleman and Christians as the servants. In this reading faithful servants are those who are productive. We all have different levels of resources, and this is taken into account by God. Ultimately though the faithful are rewarded and the unproductive are punished.*
The problem with this reading is that it portrays God as a cold, cruel, greedy elitist. It assumes that the nobleman in the parable, who is a wealthy character, should be equated with God. As I have said previously this is a mistake; Luke consistently portrays the rich in less than flattering ways throughout his Gospel:
- … he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty. (1:53)
- … woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. (6:24)
- … the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich towards God. (12:21)
It would be strange if Luke suddenly equated God with a rich man.
If the nobleman is not God, and the story is not about productivity, what exactly is going on in this parable? Read the rest of this entry
a magnificat christmas: mary & jesus’ birth
As Christmas approaches it would be odd if I did not have at least one post about it on this blog.
Since there are literally thousands of theological articles on the web about Christmas 2011, and since I have basically nothing original to say, I will keep mine short.
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What do we say about Christmas? What does it mean for us?
It seems common for Christians to chide society for the reduction of Christmas to a consumeristic holiday, though the irony of simultaneously engaging in said consumerism seems lost on them.
The problem is that merely insisting on the presence of Christ in Christmas is not an articulate expression of the meaning of Christmas.
Some go further, emphasising the birth of Jesus with a view to him eventually dying for our sins – Christmas is really about Easter. This might be caricaturing things a little, but for some the birth of Jesus, and indeed his subsequent life, holds little to no meaning apart from the atonement.
Are these adequate ways of articulating the importance and power of Christmas? Read the rest of this entry
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“god bless you!”: what is blessing?
When something becomes customary in a culture, such as the recitation of the phrase “(God) bless you!” following a sneeze, it often happens that the meaning of that custom is lost in habit.
So what does it mean to be “blessed” in a biblical sense?
Some people understand it to mean something like good fortune.
Others see blessing as referring to material wealth, as in some strands of contemporary Christianity.
Some Christians think blessing refers to God’s favour, and this can be understood in a great number of ways (including material wealth as above).
For others blessing is almost a physical thing to be passed on (as with some understandings of the story of Isaac, Jacob and Esau).
I have constantly wondered what blessing is. Read the rest of this entry
sodom and gomorrah: punished for homosexuality?
Saturday just gone was an important day in Australia for LGBTQI* people.
The Australian Labor Party (the current government) voted on its policy position regarding same-sex marriage at its National Conference; it voted to change its platform in support of changing the Marriage act to include same-sex couples.
In addition was a rally held in the Sydney CBD, with somewhere between five to ten thousand participants, calling for marriage equality in Australia.
In response to these events many Christians I know on Facebook posted comments critical of the push for the recognition of same-sex marriage.
Some, on both sides of the argument, were reasoned and thoughtful, recognising that there are in fact different viewpoints on the matter. They merely sought to offer an opinion in a respectful way.
Others were not so gracious.
But what struck me most was the amount of Christians posting quotations from the Bible, completely out of context and, by my judgement, absent of any form of exegetical investigation.
Something that I found fascinating was the repeated quotation of verses pertaining to Sodom and Gomorrah. Read the rest of this entry
sickness and healing (part 2): death as healing?
Note: I recommend you read Part 1 of this series to understand the context of these questions.
My last post was inspired, by a sermon I heard (and a number of subsequent conversations), to ask whether sickness could be caused by sin.
In this post I want to address another related question that I mentioned last time, namely whether dying and “going to be with Jesus” is a form of healing.
In the course of the sermon discussions described in the last post it was suggested by one participant that when a sick person does not receive healing and dies as a result of their sickness then this could be seen as a form of healing since the person goes to heaven to be with Jesus.
Someone then asked whether being cured by medicine could be seen “healing” in a biblical sense.
In response I asked my group a question – “Are we saying that miraculous healing is “healing”, and so is being cured by medicine, and also dying? If yes, does that mean that everything is healing? Even not being healed is healing. What isn’t healing?”
Personally I don’t think dying is a form of healing at all. To suggest so is, to me, a misunderstanding of the biblical view of healing and death. Allow me to explain. Read the rest of this entry
sickness and healing (part 1): “sin causes sickness”?
Yesterday I went to the Sunday gathering of a church affiliated with my old church, of which I was a member up until a few months ago.
I had a great time. It’s a reasonably small group (40-50 adults), and with lots of old friends present good times were had all ’round.
The preaching topic for the day was healing. My friend Barry was sharing with us, and noted that in his experience this topic, more than any other, caused division in the church (even more than tongues). I’m not sure if it’s the most divisive issue, but I take Barry’s point about its divisive potential.
In the course of the morning Barry got us to break up into groups to discuss the issue of healing – What is it? Does it still happen today? What about when people don’t get healed, etc. etc.
I wasn’t planning on writing about healing on this blog, but following the group discussions and the subsequent public reflection a number of people asked me to write a post on it.
It turns out one post has become two. I could never hope to comprehensively outline healing in two posts of course, though I will speak into two concerns that were raised throughout the morning that people discussed with me; the first was a claim made that sickness and disease has to do with sin (this post), and secondly that if people are not healed and they die they are in fact healed because “they go to be with Jesus” (next post).
“Sickness and disease is related to sin”? Read the rest of this entry
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an interpretation of the shrewd manager in luke 16
The Parable of the Shrewd Manager (Luke 16:1-13) is, in the words of Leon Morris, “… one of the most difficult of all the parables to interpret.”*
Most people with whom I have discussed this parable have little to no idea as to what it might mean. Indeed the idea that a dishonest person is commended is troubling at the very least.
The most common solution I have heard is that Jesus is saying we should be wise with our resources and opportunities just like the shrewd manager, to the point of using them dishonestly if necessary in order to get a good outcome.
Is this a fair interpretation?
I don’t think so.
bible infallibility & the act of reading
Someone on my Facebook News Feed wrote the other day something along the lines that God used fallible people to write his infallible Word (the Bible) and so people should stop thinking they are smarter than God (I assume by questioning this apparent fact).
I don’t mean to disrespect this person (if they are reading this, hello!) …
… but I do wish to ask questions about this way of thinking.
To me the idea of an infallible Bible is riddled with problems. This is not because I doubt the power of God in any way, but rather because I doubt the ability of humans to write anything that is infallible, even under divine inspiration.
(Yes that’s right, I am differentiating infallibility and inspiration – they are not the same thing.)
Some may argue that God can overcome the shortcomings of humans to achieve his will, including the composition of the biblical text. This is however a problematic claim – does God override the will of the person to do so? Why use a person at all?
We could explore this for ages, so I’ll move on to my main question Read the rest of this entry
rethinking bible “heroes”: how wise was solomon?
In my last post I looked at the character of Joseph in Genesis and suggested that perhaps he became a far more sinister character than is often thought.
I also suggested that the way we perceive some Bible characters could have more to do with our taste for imperial theology than with thoughtful reflection.
In this post I will turn my attention to Solomon.
Solomon
Most Seasoned Bible readers are aware that Solomon did not, as is often said, “finish well.” He married a lot of foreign wives for the sake of international diplomacy and compromised himself with their gods.
Despite this ending it is often thought that Solomon ‘started well.’ But how true is this? By comparing aspects of Exodus and Genesis with Solomon’s story in Kings we might be surprised by what we find. Read the rest of this entry
