“I have no problems admitting the extraordinary superiority of market capitalism; it is a remarkable engine of dynamism, fruitfulness, productivity, and so on. I question that not at all. But it is only a mechanism, and the problem comes in when people make it a source of meaning.”

However he sees the problems and those are telling,

“ Unless capitalism has an ethical boundary, it will always create two problems. One is the problem of insatiability, never knowing when to stop, always wanting just a little more. The other problem—you can see this very clearly in America today—is commodification. The good society draws a line between what is and what is not for sale, but, in modern America, almost everything is up for sale, including much that should not be. We need powerful faith with strong ethics and knowledge of what is legitimate to buy and sell—that’s the market at its best—but certain things are not for buying and not for selling, and we should know why.”

Read the whole thing

1. Tim Chester has a great post on hearing God speak
2. How to build an extended family and by that Mike Breen means church, sort of.
3. Do universalists have a point? Andrew Wilson thinks so.
4. Peter Ould on the significance of what Jesus didn’t say about homosexuality
5. Carl Trueman thinks about the importance of Eph 5:12
6. Jeremy explains the best way to offset your carbon emissions, which I found helpful.
7. I may have linked to this before, but where in the world should you go for innovation? Liechenstein anyone?

“Let me be clear once more: the editors of the Greek New Testaments killed Junia. They killed her by silencing her into non-existence. They murdered that innocent woman by erasing her from the footnotes.”

So the argument goes that for 60 years of so there was some sort of plot to get rid of Junias by giving her a man’s name (albeit a highly unusual one). So I thought I’d have a look at the commentaries that line my shelves to see what they said. Now I don’t actually have a vast set of commentaries on Romans, in fact due to the oddities by which I gained my books it’s a poorer showing than for many smaller books. But I found the results interesting so here they are discussing Romans 16:7:

The oldest commentary on Romans I have is from the venerable Matthew Henry.

“Concerning Andronicus and Junia, Rom_16:7. Some take them for a man and his wife, and the original will well enough bear it; and, considering the name of the latter, this is more probable than that they should be two men, as others think, and brethren.”

Adding,

“They were of note among the apostles, not so much perhaps because they were persons of estate and quality in the world as because they were eminent for knowledge, and gifts, and graces, which made them famous among the apostles…”

So Henry has Junia, sees them as a highly gifted husband and wife team.

Next, I’ve a commentary Charles Welch, Just, and the Justifier : an exposition of the Epistle to the Romans, considered doctrinally, dispensationally and practically, together with complete structural analysis. (London: Berean Publishing Trust, 2004 but written in 1948.)

He simply notes,

“Andronicus and Junia are said to be not only ‘kinsmen’ but also ‘of note among the apostles’. There is no difficulty about this phrase, if we remember that the apostles were not limited to the ‘twelve.’ Barnabas, Sylvanus and Timothy, Apollos and Epaphroditus all appear to have held this office, besides others who are not named (2 Cor 8:23).”

So we have Junia but no comment is made on Junia’s gender and happy to note their apostleship in the broader use of the term.

Then I have CK Barrett’s  Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans. (London: A. & C. Black, 1957) and this is interesting because Barrett has Junias and makes no comment on their gender. He says,

“Andronicus and Junias were, it appears, apostles, and senior in standing to Paul himself. In the NT the word [apostle] is sometimes used of the twelve disciples especially appointed by Jesus, but also in a wider sense, as here.”

Another famous British scholar CH Dodd has a longer discussion on the issue of the nature of their apostleship in The epistle of Paul to the Romans (Fontana, 1959) but with reference to whether it is Junia or Junias says,

“We may note that the second name might equally well be the feminine Junia. In that case, Andronicus and Junia would be husband and wife working together as missionaries, like Aquila and Prisca. Chrysostom, preaching on this passage, saw no difficulty in a woman-apostle; nor need we.”

In The gospel as it really is : Paul’s Epistle to the Romans simply explained. (Evangelical Press, 1979), Stuart Olyott says,

“Verse 7 mentions a certain Andronicus and Junia. Whether these were two men, or a man and a woman, we do not know. They were related to Paul, and had at some time been imprisoned with him for the sake of the gospel. They were well known to the apostles, and noted among them as outstanding believers.”

So clearly aware of the gender issue so references the issue but feels unable to make a call on it.

John Stott in his The message of Romans : God’s good news for the world. (Inter-Varsity Press, 1994) says,

“The other woman to be considered is mentioned in verse 7. In the Greek sentence the second name is Iounian, which could be the accusative of either Junias (masculine) or Junia (feminine). Commentators are agreed that the latter is much more likely to be correct, since the former name is unknown elsewhere. Perhaps then Andronicus and Junia were a married couple…it is probably better to…conclude that Andronicus and Junia were indeed outstanding missionaries.”

Another agreement then that it is Junia and likely a fine missionary husband and wife team.

“The name Junia is debated, but the feminine is most likely. She was probably the wife of Andronicus (like Priscilla and Aquila in v3)… It is hard to know what use of apostle is meant here. There are the 12 and a few others like Paul and Barnabas, but there is also the term apostolos for wandering missionaries….and that may be the meaning here. Still that would have been an office in the church, and Junia with her husband is an outstanding example of such a leader.”

“Andronicus and Junias. The second of these names might be either masculine (Junias, a shorter form of Junianus) or feminine (Junia, as in the AV). But, since there seems to be no certain occurrence of the form Junias, the feminine Junia is to be preferred. This couple (perhaps husband and wife) were Jewish by birth (Paul calls them his ‘kinsfolk’); they had shared one of Paul’s frequent imprisonments (cf. 2 Cor. 11:23), possibly in Ephesus. Moreover, they were ‘of note among the apostles’, which probably means that they were not merely well known to the apostles but were apostles themselves (in the wider, Pauline, sense of the word), and eminent ones at that. They had been Christians from a very early date, since before Paul’s own conversion. They may have been among the Hellenists of Acts 6:1 (their names suggest that they were Hellenists rather than ‘Hebrews’); their title to apostleship was probably based on their having seen the risen Christ (cf. 1 Cor. 15:7, ‘all the apostles’).”

Yet again no real question in his mind about the gender of Junia and again seeing this couple as an outstanding missionary pair, which would have given them the first century term ‘apostle.’

In  the Africa Bible commentary edited by Tokunboh Adeyemo (Zondervan, 2006), David M Kasali writes,

“Another couple, Andronicus and Junias are identified as Paul’s relatives who had been imprisoned with him for the gospel. They are apostles who became Christians before Paul. The term ‘apostle’ used for Andronicus and Junias does not mean that they were among the twelve apostles, but that they worked as messengers (as did others) or had been commissioned as missionaries.”

So we have Junias, but happy to see them as a couple and therefore Junias as female. They are apostles in the sense that they are missionaries. Anyone else spot a theme here?

I have another single volume commentary, the massive Eerdmans commentary on the Bible edited by James Dunn (Eerdmans, 2003). The Romans commentary is by John Reumann. Reumann goes with Junia and says,

“Especially significant are…the Jewish-Christian apostoloi, the husband and wife missionary couple, Andronicus and Junia, believers before Paul, likely appointed by the risen Christ. Until about 1300 Jounian in most manuscripts was taken as accusative singular of a woman’s name, then down through the RSV as a man’s name, Junias.”

So a vote for Junia but the same theme, a husband and wife team and missionary couple.

Last but never least is the irrepressible Tom Wright in his Paul for everyone : Romans (SPCK 2004) who is not one to sit on this particular fence:

“We note, not least, the importance of women in the list. Paul names them as fellow-workers, without any sense that they hold a secondary position to the men. One of them, Junia, is an apostle: the phrase ‘well known among the apostles’ doesn’t mean that the apostles know her and Andronicus (probably wife and husband) but that they are apostles, that is, they were among those who saw the risen Lord. She has the same status as all the other apostles, including Paul himself. Don’t be put off by some translations which call her ‘Junias,’ as if she were a man. There is no reason for this except the anxiety of some about recognizing that women could be apostles too.”

Well my supposed anxieties aside, Wright goes for Junia, a woman witness of the resurrection and with her husband Andronicus an apostle. And that’s my lot on the commentary front so lets sum up.

Eight of the commentaries opt for Junia while only two have Junias and even then one of them still thinks that Junias is a woman while the other makes no comment. All but one of those who opt for Junia are clear that Junia was a woman and only one sits on the fence. So it strikes me that whatever McKnight and Holmes point was, the spread of commentaries that I have here don’t bear out any kind of conspiracy theory. Matthew Henry is an ancient and popular set and the others are from the last 70 years.

What is the consensus? Andronicus and Junia were an outstanding missionary couple who no doubt planted churches. Arguably they were apostles both because they witnessed the risen Christ and because they were sent. As a complementarian pastor I have absolutely zero problem with this. If anyone was ever to write a history of church planting in Sweden in the 21st century, I hope they’d write about Phil and Emma Whittall and not just me – we’re in this together, it is a joint venture all the way and yet our roles are different. For more on how this works out read this.

“Having grown weary and impatient, I want to snap and say, “It won’t work, not in the long run. Marriage is hard enough when you have two believers who are completely in harmony spiritually. Just spare yourself the heartache and get over it.” Yet such harshness is neither in line with the gentleness of Christ, nor convincing.”

For a while now I’ve averaged about one book every ten days, yet here we are three weeks into January and I’ve only just finished my first book of 2012. The reason for that is that Max Hasting’s monumental volume on the second world war, All Hell Let Loose, is 748 pages long so it’s like reading three books!

The volume of literature on the last great war is immense, the bibliography to this book is enormous and so it’s hard to say where this single volume work ranks. I also haven’t read many other books so have little to compare it with, but I’m not sure I need to read another.

This book manages something remarkable, it conveys the great sweep of the war, the many differing timelines and events and yet manages to convey what the war was like. This is because the perspective is not that of a Churchill or a Roosevelt, for they are minor characters but having drawn from a myriad of letters, diaries and reports shares what war was like for those most affected by it, mothers, soldiers, sons.

The second world war really was global and immense, the numbers are staggering and hard to comprehend and this book both shattered illusions and educated. I learnt of the 15 million Chinese who died and the Bengal famine which saw nearly two million Indians starve, I learnt that the British army rarely if ever crowned itself in glory and learned how the great powers utterly shafted, screwed and ignored the nation of Poland from first to last.

That more Russians soldiers were shot by the Russians than British soldiers were sot by the Germans, that more Russians (civilians and soldiers) died at the battle of Leninggrad than the Americans and British armies combined for the whole war. The numbers are staggering, nearly 60 million people killed in just six years.

No nation covers itself in glory during war, combatants and neutrals alike. Switzerland, Ireland and Sweden can hardly be proud of their neutrality. France has much to be ashamed of, and there were enough incidents for to prevent Britain and America from too much hubris. America became a great power as a result of this war, the only nation to emerge vastly richer and more powerful while all it’s rivals lay exhausted and in ruins.

Of the three great powers, Britain stood up to the war when all others didn’t. France defeated, America abstained and Russia was an ally to Hitler. Britain really did stand very much alone but too weak to win the war on its own. America paid for the victory. It’s vast industrial might provided for all and proved far too much for anyone else to emerge victorious. Russian on the other hand clearly died for the war. 25 million Russians died, starved, shot, raped and ruined. No country was as willing to sacrifice it’s millions more than Stalin and had they not, Hitler would have taken a lot longer to defeat.

Yet all these facts stand alongside countless story of death, rape, mutilation, despair. The sufferings of the Yugoslavs, Poles, Italians, Chinese, Burmese, Malays and of course the Jews throughout mainland Europe and ordinary people everywhere was horrific and shocking and it is these stories that make this book such a masterpiece.

This is quite a phenomenal book and I’m sure, no matter what I read, it will rank near the top of my reading list come December 2012. That’s a slightly depressing to think I may have already read the best book of the year but at the same time, what a book!

1. Denis Alexander gives a brief answer to the following question:  ’if we last shared a common ancestor with the chimps about 5-6 million years ago, and humans have been gradually emerging through a series of hominid intermediates ever since, then why did Jesus die?’
2. Jake Belder, a north American, shows his appreciation for the British Queen’s Christmas Day speech
3. I thought Tim Challies on exchanging the natural for unnatural was interesting, although again showing differences between American and European culture
4. I’ve always described myself as a bibliophile, but by comparison with this man I’m still learning my alphabet.
5. Christmas is a touch time for parents wanting to teach simplicity and contentment to their kids, so I agree with this author who says, “an infant who cannot recognize its own thumb has no need for presents. Unless you count an empty box or a wooden spoon as a present”
6. The city of Medellin in Colombia has used outdoor escalators to reduce crime. Wonderful!
7. This is very true for how I use this on Facebook

This got me thinking, is there a space for micro-finance for mission and church planting? This is how I imagine it working. Let’s use an example of a family church planting in, say randomly, Sweden. They need £20k per year to live on for 3 years while starting a new church. You give to the church planting version of Kiva and then when the new church is up and running, over a few years the money is repaid recycling the funding back into the world of church planting.

Because this works mostly in the developed world where incomes and giving are high, these could attract a premium of say 10% or something that is then channelled off to cover repayments made to churches being planted in low income developing countries where church income may never get high enough to repay a loan.

Now the sum I presented isn’t micro but neither is it astronomical, and it’s a way in which mission agencies and churches which may be struggling to raise finance the traditional ways can find fresh and new partners to support mission work throughout the world.

Of course the obvious weakness is that it requires investment into rich countries in order to invest into poorer nations. Anyway it was a passing thought and the only way to get it improved is for brighter minds than mine to give it some thought! So over to you.

“On the opposite end of the spectrum, the 10 least religious countries studied include several with the world’s highest living standards, including Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Hong Kong, and Japan. (Several other countries on this list are former Soviet republics, places where the state suppressed religious expression for decades.)”

Which just demonstrates the scale of the task ahead of us as well as the size of the opportunity!

This is an invitation to take part in the 2012 Lent Consumer Detox.

The Detox is attached and available here. It includes:

• Creative and challenging small group activities, with Bible discussion suggestions
• Inspiration from a daily Lent blog and online talks
• Or read through Consumer Detox by Mark Powley (Zondervan 2010)

Would you be willing to help others know about this?

If yes, please forward this email to any churches near you, or to any small group leaders you know. Help us spread the word about the Detox, and join us on the journey this Lent if you can.

“Consumer Detox tackles one of the most important challenges facing Christian discipleship in the west today. If the church took this agenda seriously, it could make a big difference.”

Dr Graham Tomlin, Dean of St Mellitus College, author of The Provocative Church

We hope you can join in. It’s the journey through the wilderness that makes freedom possible. Or, if you like, ‘less stuff more life’.

1. There’s a new year resolution type feel to these links. First up is Tim Challies links on how to keep your resolutions
2. Maybe you’ve set some big goals for this year; Michael Hyatt has some advice on how to achieve your goals
3. Then Tom Basson reminds you to keep it simple
4. Of course this year you will probably spend most of your time working. Wouldn’t it be great if your church thought as much about your work as theirs?
5. You also might like to think about how your home fits into the big picture, how your ordinary life can become more missional. Doug Paul shares his experiences.
6. And to remind you that discipleship is, well, pretty important; Mike Breen shares the thoughts of worship leader David Walker.
7. Finally and should civilisation end and you need to start fresh, how many machines do you need for your very own DIY sustainable but industrial world? Apparently only 50.

To get a feel for the terrain I suggest reading this article from the BBC that describes the legal disputes on behalf of those who see themselves as transgendered. In this case it is two men who live as women but who have not had any corrective surgery. Biologically and by any measure of human society they would be considered male. However their argument is that biology, ones anatomical sex, not only does not define ‘gender’ but is irrelevant to gender.

“It is the contents of a person’s mind and soul, they say, which determine sex – not what is inside their pants.”

Well, that would solve the church debate if that view held sway. The debate about how much of our ideas about gender are social constructs is reasonable and, also for Christians, theological. What does the Bible say about men and women, how are they the same and how are they different? What application should we make, if any, from our conclusions? These questions surround the exegetical battles. But as Matt Hosier says there has been a significant change in our language,

“The replacement of a strong, clear, word with a more slippery one can also be seen in the use of “gender” in preference to “sex.” Sex is definitive: I am a man; she is a woman. Gender is much more flexible.”

But back to the transgendered, no matter what one thinks of the people involved, it is clear that governments are already legislating in their favour. Australia in this case is leading the way and others will surely follow suit. It seems that armed only with a vague notion of ‘rights’, western governments are, within the space of about 50 years, completely redrawing the legal basis of society. It is unlikely that anything Christians do will change this other than to lose bruising battle after bruising battle.

Not often discussed is that as a result of the so-called gender wars, when women rightly claimed many of the privileges that had been previously been restricted to men, is that there were a few side-effects. A foundational idea was removed or at least fundamentally revised. There is no male and female. Then there was the related but different issue of sexuality; that the gender of ones sexual partners is also irrelevant. There is no male or female. Medical science soon allowed this philosophy to become a reality so that regardless what your anatomy at birth showed, medical science said this need only be a temporary, and not as before, a permanent reality.

The transgendered and the homosexual base their arguments in the same unprovable basis, ‘I was born this way.’ The gay man or woman (who may be very happy with their biological gender) says ‘this is the hand nature dealt me, whatever evolution says, I am attracted only to same-sex’. Biology is rendered an irrelevance, it’s not about the plumbing.

The transgendered take a similar line but push it further, the plumbing is not only irrelevant but wrong. Who they really are is something else. Ironically, they argue it is the soul that matters.

At the core of the issue is the question, who are we? There is, so far, no gay gene and no definitive difference (although the focus is now on the brain and not the genes) between the make-up of gay and straight. No physical differences, nothing to explain why it would seem that sexual attraction is ‘nature’ and not nurture. Yet there it is, something inside that says, ‘this is who I am.’ For the transgendered, the painful question of who I am leads to much pain and confusion as they construct an image of who they are at complete odds to their physical sex. But we are now living in a world that has given its residents the freedom and permission to build and rebuild their identity and sex is no longer an insurmountable obstacle.

For the Christian, the reality is both more simple and more complex. Biological gender is not an irrelevance but neither is it everything. We are not merely a body and neither are we simply a soul. There is a soul and it matters but so do our bodies and what we do with them. So when the Bible says, ‘there is no male or female’ this is not what it meant. Instead we celebrate the reality of male and female together but to stop here at this point in finding our identity and say, ‘I am man’ or ‘I am woman’ is to stop short. What the Bible says is that I am made in His image, and for us that means body and soul. In any building of our identity, it starts first with the Creator and then the creation; the Redeemer and then the redeemed.

Thoughts?

1. Simple living is about retreat, and withdrawing from the world
2. Simple living is about self denial
3. Simple living is about rural pastoralism
4. Simple living sentimentalises poverty
5. Simple living is opposed to progress and technology
6. Simple living is hypocritical
7. Simple living is anti-capitalist and anti-wealth
8. Simple living is only for westerners
9. Simple living is a passing fad
10. Simple living is environmentally futile

You should read the whole thing.

1. The debt crisis looks set to be news for the entire coming year. This infographic illustrates some of the problem
2. My friend Jeremy lists his books of 2011. If you want to know what to read about climate change, steady state economy, sustainability etc….this list is a good primer.
3. Tim Challies has reviewed two books on marriage. One I won’t bother with by Mark Driscoll and one I’m certain to buy by Tim and Kathy Keller, here’s a quote from the Keller’s book
4. The Bible remains a bestseller and demonstrated it once again in secular Norway of all places.
5. We need but can’t afford booming sales in the shops. Quite the paradox as Jeremy points out.

10.  Bill Walker.

9. Peter Kirk

8. Mike Print

7. Charles Crosland

6. Dave Matthias

5. Mark Heath

4. Matt Hosier

3. Dave Bish

2. Breathe

1. Newfrontiers Bloggers

My most popular ten links were

10. Steve Holmes on congregational church government

9. Tim Keller’s article on the importance of hell

8. The pay in megachurch infographic

7. This early review of Love Wins

6. John Piper’s article, how willingly do people go to hell?

5. My friends at Barnabas Community Church

4. The wonderful Breathe Network

3. Justin Taylor’s interview with David Platt

2. A talk from 2010 TOAM, but I can’t get the link to work!

1. My old church, Hope Church