The Ancient Synagogue

This book has drawn some very interesting conclusions so far. I was initially interested in this because I’ve most often heard it assumed that the synagogue was, first, a Scripture-prescribed facility and, second, that it was primarily a religious facility. This has never made sense to me based on the way the synagogue is explained in the gospels and Acts, so I’m trying to understand a little better, historically, what its purpose was.

1. This historian concludes that the synagogue replaced the “city-gate” due to “a shift in urban planning.” He goes on to say that, “it was imperative to create a framework to preserve and give expression to their communal identity in an alien environment.”
2. The synagogue was primarily a multi-purpose, communal facility (like a community center) both within Judea and without. “The first-century synagogue did not have a decidedly religious profile.”
3. Communal worship, on the Sabbath and during “holy days,” was part of its functions, but not the primary function.
4. Torah-reading and exposition seemed to be the primary form of corporate worship on the Sabbath in the synagogue, at times lasting all day.
5. Communal “prayer appears to have played little or no role in the typical Judean synagogue,” though it was somewhat more common in the Diaspora.

All of those are conclusions before the destruction of the Temple (the central institution in Jewish life) in 70 AD, which drastically affected the role of the synagogue permanently. I will post more conclusions on that soon.

One interesting thing is the only time that any kind of singing or hymns have been mentioned was in relation to Diaspora synagogues. These would have been much more familiar with pagan practices, which were focused on praying and singing rather than the reading and exposition of texts. Hmm…

I hate washing dishes

I worked at pizza joints for almost 10 years straight. I can remember some nights scrubbing pans, covered in grease and pizza sauce, until 3am. I don’t know that any of us who were given that task were very happy about it, but it was part of our job. It had to be done even if we hated it. So, to this day, I’ve tried to avoid washing dishes as much as possible. My personal preference would be to never wash dishes again. But, my personal preference tends to fall by the wayside when I consider who I really am.

Just like the Apostle Paul, I follow Jesus the Messiah, who had every “right” to withhold himself from humanity but chose not to. No, Jesus “made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:7-8). Paul uses the example of Christ to exhort this small community to “do all things without grumbling or questioning” (v.14). The result? “That you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world” (v.15). The implication is that if we are defined by “grumbling” selfishness, rather than sacrifice and service, then we won’t be “without blemish” and we won’t “shine as lights in the world.” Our witness – our mission – will be paralyzed.

When I consider this, it really doesn’t matter what my preferences are, ever. My job, my vocation, is to reflect the glory of Christ into a dark and broken world. If anyone needs my help, and I am capable of doing so, my instinct to resist must be put to death. This is how the Kingdom of God comes, on earth as it is in heaven, through us by the Spirit.

This also makes me think about the “role” I used to think I was supposed to live out within our marriage. I am the head, therefore that means I am in control. I make the decisions. Do what I say, I am the king. And on and on. But, that kind of domination, that kind of “lording over” is not what it looks like to follow Jesus. The first shall be last. We are called to serve each other (Matthew 20:25-28). That kind of manipulative, demonic thinking runs completely counter to Paul’s vision of husbands loving their wives as Christ loved the church – to die to self for her sake (Eph. 5:25-27).

So, left solely to my self, I still hate washing dishes. But, I love the Lord Jesus Christ, and I love my beautiful bride. If she asks for my help, by the empowering Spirit of God I will help.

Soli Deo Gloria.

Videos of Thad Cockrell

Campbell on Death & Resurrection

“Death in Christ is the only effective basis for righteous activity by humans because only participation in Christ’s execution terminates humanity’s sinful condition and reconstitutes it in a more effective ethical state, ultimately to resurrect it.” – Douglas Campbell

Resurrection & Justification

I’m trying to closely examine Michael Bird’s article “Incorporated Righteousness”. This paragraph seems to clarify some things that I’ve been trying to understand since I started studying Romans intently several months ago:

Without driving a wedge between Christ’s death and resurrection, the rhetoric of the verse (Rom. 4:25) suggests that Christ’s resurrection does something which his death does not. The death of Christ constitutes the divine verdict against sin, whereas the resurrection transforms that verdict into vindication. While Christ’s resurrection is the “first-fruits” of the general resurrection, similarly his justification through resurrection comprises the initial execution of the justifying verdict. Through faith, believers are incorporated or identified with the risen and justified Messiah, and they are justified by virtue of their participation in him.

He goes on to quote Morna Hooker:

Paul spells out this idea there: just as the verdict pronounced on Adam is shared by those who are “in Adam,” so the verdict pronounced on Christ at the resurrection is shared by those who are “in him.” It is because Christ is acknowledged as righteous that those who are “in him” are also reckoned to be righteous-and will be reckoned to be such on the Last Day.

And, then summarizes:

Romans 4 does not assert that one is justified because of the imputed righteousness of Christ or that God reckons faith as covenantal conformity. Instead, God regards faith as the condition of justification (reckons faith as righteousness) and justifies believers (credits righteousness) because of their union with Christ (raised for our justification).

The justification debate

If you care about theology and want to be in the least bit current, at some point you are going to have to deal with the justification debate. Some have called this “the new perspective(s) on Paul.” There is a lot of debate within the various new perspectives regarding justification. Probably the most prominent figure in the whole debate is NT Wright, who is one of my personal favorite authors. I have a read quite a few very careful, solid critiques of Wright, and I have read a lot of critiques that seem to have come from either great misunderstanding or just plain ignorance. Please do yourself a favor and avoid the bad, simple-minded critiques that just want to prop up some form of Reformed theology. There are some great theologians out there who understand exactly what Wright (and others) are saying, and are willing to accept multiple points of agreement while poking holes in other arguments. Oh yeah, and if you haven’t read Wright’s new book on justification, that would help avoid a lot of misunderstanding or assumptions. Here are a few that I can recall reading recently that could be a great place to start:

When the Dust Finally Settles by Michael F. Bird

Justification, Ecclesiology and the New Perspective by Tim Chester

Q & A with Wright by Ben Witherington

Narrative of Scripture by Mark Seifrid

MP3 lectures by D.A. Carson

Incorporated Righteousness by Michael F. Bird

Israel and the Law in Romans 5-11 by Douglas Moo

Review of Justification by Craig Blomberg

Review of The Future of Justification by Don Garlington

New Perspective on Reformed Tradition by Daniel Kirk

Salvation in Paul’s Judaism by Michael F. Bird

Top 14 movies of the past year(-ish)

I’m sure I watch at least a few movies a week, and I love a lot of them, so this is very hard for me to narrow down. (I did not include a lot of the great documentaries I’ve seen):

Burn After Reading
The Dark Knight
Defiance
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Funny People
Ghost Town
Gran Torino
The Hangover
Let The Right One In
Phoebe In Wonderland
The Tale Of Despereaux
Up
Wall-E
Wolverine

Top 14 albums of the past year(-ish)

I couldn’t narrow this down to 10:

Alkaline Trio – Agony & Irony
Bayside – Shudder
Chris Isaak – Mr. Lucky
Denison Witmer – Carry The Weight
Jakob Dylan – Seeing Things
Jonezetta – Cruel To Be Young
Longwave – Secrets Are Sinister
Nada Surf – Lucky
The New Frontiers – Mending
Sherree Chamberlain – The Wasp In The Room
Sleeping At Last – Storyboards
Son Volt – American Central Dust
Thad Cockrell – To Be Loved
Youth Group – The Night Is Ours

Some thoughts from “Introducing Paul”

I found the right book at the right time. I’ve been reading Michael Bird’s blog recently, and I heard about his book “Introducing Paul” from Trevin Wax. It’s the right time because I’ve been trying to understand who Paul was (as much as possible) for several months now. This became very important for me as we were studying Philippians together as a church. I was constantly confronted with a Paul I had never met before in all my years growing up in the church. I became more familiar with Paul the pastor, Paul who desperately cared for the people God had put within his apostolic authority. And, to be honest, as I was studying the entire Pauline corpus during that time in Philippians, many times I was brought to tears trying to imagine what it was like for them.

So, I just wanted to post some important thoughts from the book that are very relevant to me, and I hope you are inspired to meet the same Paul that I have.

In the first chapter, he warns us that

to venerate Paul is to denigrate the Saviour whom he so passionately serves. Paul does not let himself become the centre of a personality cult.

To read and appreciate Paul, as a human being, not solely as an inspired writer of Scripture, is not to worship him, but to befriend him.

He goes on to affirm what I’ve continued to see as my own modernist tendencies to try to find the lowest common denominator theology, that

Paul, the great apostle, defies our caricatures of him; he deconstructs our neat little theological systems.

(I should point out here that Bird identifies himself as “Reformed”.)

He continues:

[We should] be mature enough to let Paul be Paul and treat his letters as windows into his world rather than as deposits of theological dogma… Our search is not for a disembodied mind lurking beneath two-thousand-year-old texts.

He clarifies what I’ve come to understand was Paul’s own understanding of his religious background, his “former way of life” as a righteous Jew (from passages like Phil. 3):

It is human filth compared to Christ.

As opposed to some streams of thought which try to narrow Paul’s theology to a specific doctrinal point (like “justification”):

Jesus Christ is the centre of Paul’s theology… [But] if we wanted to pursue something more specific, we could legitimately suggest that the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ are the main coordinates of his thinking.

Related to the idea that what Paul wrote was circumstantial,

We should not suppose that after regaining his sight in Damascus, he suddenly has the entire theological package worked out in detail, as if God magically downloaded the entire Westminster Confession or Thirty-Nine Articles into his brain.

Ouch, which he summarizes:

Paul is no ivory-tower theologian and his theological reflection is done on the mission field and for the benefit of the churches.

Another foreign idea (to me) that I was confronted with in Philippians was that Paul

will boast of his converts on the Day of Christ Jesus, and on the Day of Judgment Paul’s converts will be his joy and crown. The lives they have lived will indicate whether or not Paul has laboured in vain, and the foundations he has used to build up converts will be tested by fire… The future will bring to light the success of his pastorate and the succour he has provided his converts.

I still haven’t been able to square these statements from Paul with the common idea that Jesus will stand in front of Himself at the Judgment Day in our place.

In the conclusion to chapter one, Bird makes a couple of claims which as far as I’m aware are not popular legacies at all but rather have been imposed upon the text by people (like me) who care about the first century context in which Paul was writing:

The chief legacy of Paul is his claim that Gentiles can be part of the Israel of God without becoming proselytes to Judaism. He also claims that there is another Lord, one who rivals Caesar and who will establish an everlasting kingdom that will overthrow all despots and self-divinized pretenders.

But, I thought Paul was just talking about how our individual sin offends God?

I know, the sarcasm probably isn’t necessary…but it’s fun.

The final point I want to draw from this first chapter is in pondering the question of why the apostles were persecuted:

Paul is not given thirty-nine lashes by his fellow Jews because he asks them to ‘try’ Jesus in the same way one might try a kebab. He is not executed for suggesting that Roman citizens may wish to invite Jesus into their hearts. No, Paul has the courage and conviction to proclaim that the one who is to come again, the Messiah, is Jesus, who has fulfilled Israel’s hopes by being cursed on a tree and raised from the dead. Jesus is the deliverer Israel has hoped for and desperately needed.

Paul dares to defy an empire by claiming that the seat of judgment is occupied by Jesus Christ and not by Caesar. The answer to the perils of human existence is not subjugation to and worship of Rome, but faith in Jesus the Christ.

To the poor and the oppressed and to those seeking to embody justice and peace and the commandments to love God and others, this is good news. But, it is not good news to the comfortable or the powerful. It is not good news to those who worship the gods of nation, violence and money (unless we repent).

I hate eating

If you’ve known me very long, you have probably heard me say this at least a few times. The root of my hatred, though, is because of health “problems”. I have a few so-called problems that I (or a few different doctors) have not been able to solve.

But, as a Christian, it’s very clear that food is a gift from our Creator. So, I have this conflict, where I feel like I should enjoy, love, the act of eating but I do not. So, for a few years I’ve been trying (mostly unsuccessfully) to recover a love for eating.

As a family, we’ve definitely changed a lot of our eating habits and tried to be more aware of what we are eating, where our food comes from, etc., but I wonder if we’ve taken it far enough.

So, for the next 30 days, I’m going to try something I have not tried up to this point. I’m going to use Michael Pollan’s “7 rules for eating” and try to apply them for a month.

I really believe that most if not all of my “problems” could be solved by reorienting myself (holistically) to take much better care of the body that God has entrusted to me. Maybe at the end of these 30 days, nothing will change and I will have to admit that I actually do have physical problems which are bigger than the food (or lack of real food) that I eat.

I also want to take some of Pollan’s advice, though, and make this about much more than just health. If I’m obsessed over what I can or cannot eat, then I won’t enjoy it. But, if food is meant to be enjoyed with others, then I can imagine a great future for food in my life.

P.S. Thank you Wendell Berry.