theGreenHouse

George Elmer Nichol

2012-02-03T23:47:00.001-05:00

George Elmer Nichol, younger son of the venerable George Nichol, was born at Anderson October 4, 1861 and after finishing his education in the local public schools entered his father's hardware store at the age of seventeen. As a clerk he learned every detail and routine of the business and later with his brother Thomas assumed the responsibilities of managing that large and old established house (Nichol Hardware Co. / Nichol, Makepeace, Co.). He was personally identified wth its management until 1912 being secretary and treasurer while his brother was president of the company and he still holds those offices. In 1912 Mr Nichol took the post of vice president of the Citizens Bank of Anderson and his time was largely occupied with the executive duties of that position for several years and he still remains in the office of vice president. However, since January 1915 his chief post of responsibility has been as president of the Farmers Trust Company. He was one of the local citizens who promoted this company in January 1912. He is thus actively identified with three leading business and financial institutions of his native city.

In 1888, Mr. Nichol married Catherine Malone, daughter of WK and Eleanor Duffey Malone of Hamilton, Ohio. Mr. and Mrs. Nichol have two children George W. born in 1895 and Robert E. born in 1900. Mr. Nichol is affiliated with Fellowship Lodge, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, with the Royal Arch Chapter, with the Knights of Pythias, served as exalted ruler of the Anderson Lodge of Elks in 1895, is a member of the First Presbyterian Church, and in politics is a republican without aspirations for any of the honors or emoluments of politics.

The Book of Micah

2012-01-30T11:31:00.002-05:00

The Prophet Micah

Date and Location:

Contemporary of Isaiah, 8^th and 7^th century B.C.E. (in the range of 742-687 B.C.E.), critique Jerusalem/Judah and Samaria (the first “prophetic book in the Twelve to focus its criticism on these” (McConville, Exploring the Old Testament, 195), hometown is Moresheth (a fortified city on the western border of Judah, “about six miles northeast of Lachish in the Shephelah and twenty miles southwest of Jerusalem” (Matthews, Social World of the Hebrew Prophets, 99), Micah represents an isolated people in the north bearing the brunt of the neighboring Assyrian attackers, Shalmaneser III invaded Samaria and the northern kingdom in 724 B.C.E., and in 701 B.C.E. the people of Jerusalem were “bottled up under siege by Sennacherib’s army…the rest of Judah’s population was subjected to rape, execution, and enslavement as the Assyrian troops once again foraged the countryside for food and supplies” (Matthews, Social World, 99), these circumstances shed light on why Micah is so intensely critical of the Israelite capital of Samaria and of Judah’s capital at Jerusalem.

Critical Interpretation:

Because certain passages (Micah 7:11-20 for example) presuppose the exile, it is commonly thought that these are additions to the words of Micah. “Commentators find that Micah is difficult to break down into satisfactory sub-sections” (McConville, Exploring, 197). McConville asserts an outline (1: 1 – 2: 13; 3: 1 – 5: 15; 6: 1 – 7: 20) which consists of a judgment passage followed by an assurance of salvation.

Theological Themes:

Covenant Tradition/ Micah’s message “emphasizes the terms of the Mosaic covenant and condemns the monarchy and the priesthood” (Matthews, Social World, 99).

Prophetic Ethics/ Micah’s assertion is that “Right behavior depends on knowing God, and showing his own concerns in the life of the community. Micah’s preaching of justice is as vivid as any other prophet (Micah 3: 1-3). One point may be highlighted, however. For Micah knows the close link between the thought of sin and the sin itself (2: 1-2)” (McConville, Exploring, 202).

Location in the Cannon:

“Micah stands sixth in the Book of the Twelve in the MT form, but third in LXX (after Hosea and Amos). It is, perhaps surprisingly, the first of the Twelve to turn the spotlight of prophetic criticism directly on Judah and Jerusalem. Micah’s realization that even the Jerusalem temple was not immune to punishment (3: 12) is the primary canonical example of this, as shown by the citation of this prophecy in Jeremiah 26: 18” (McConville, Exploring, 204).

The Ten Commandments Revisited

2012-01-20T07:37:00.000-05:00

Exegesis of Exodus 20:1-17

-By Joshua Stafford

Introductory Comments

The following paper is charged with the examination of Exod. 20:1-17. This text, labeled the Decalogue (or “ten words”), is most commonly known as the Ten Commandments. It will be shown that the Decalogue is both uniquely Israelite and a common ancient moral compass for societal structure. The Decalogue is generally understood to contain two primary sections or “tablets” as tradition holds. The first is primarily concerned with one’s relationship with God, or YHWH (“Words” 1-4); and the second is concerned more generally with the behavior implicit in a healthy social arrangement (“Words” 5-10). It will be illustrated that the Decalogue shares commonalities with constitutional law, but is more adequately understood as covenantal or personal law. The Decalogue’s primary location at the front of the formal law codes of the later chapters of Exodus and the book of Deuteronomy is central to its understanding as foundational and formative to distinctly Jewish and Christian traditions.

A Recreation of Tablet 1

Exodus 20:1-17 (NRSV)[1]

⁽¹⁾Then God spoke all these words: ⁽²⁾I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; ⁽³⁾you shall have no other gods before me. ⁽⁴⁾You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. ⁽⁵⁾You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, ⁽⁶⁾but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments. ⁽⁷⁾You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name. ⁽⁸⁾Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy. ⁽⁹⁾Six days you shall labor and do all your work. ⁽¹⁰⁾But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. ⁽¹¹⁾For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it. ⁽¹²⁾Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. ⁽¹³⁾You shall not murder. ⁽¹⁴⁾You shall not commit adultery. ⁽¹⁵⁾You shall not steal. ⁽¹⁶⁾You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. ⁽¹⁷⁾You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

Literary, Historical, & Theological Context

The literary setting for the Decalogue in Exodus, and in its parallel passage in Deuteronomy 5, is the wilderness period during which God and Israel were making a covenant. After the climactic events in Exodus 14-15, where God exhibits great power at the Reed Sea, Moses and the people gather to meet God at the foot of Mt. Sinai.

The immediate context for chapter 20 is set in 19:16ff. with the beginning of the theophany. On this day of cosmic eruption the “words” (v.1) of the Decalogue find their setting. The presence of the LORD saturated Mount Sinai. The people viewing the smoking mountain and hearing the sound of the trumpet stood at the foot of the mountain trembling. After Moses returned to the people and reiterated to them the consequences of approaching too close to God’s majesty, God spoke the words which form the unit of material to be considered in this study (Exod. 20:1-17).

The Decalogue stands at the beginning of all the legal material and as such occupies primary place in the divine instruction that comes through the law or laws of Scripture. The context in which the Decalogue appears in the Hebrew Bible gives significant and obvious clues that these “words” are unique.[2] One such clue is that there are two accounts, Exod. 20 and Deut. 5. The second clue is that the transmission happened directly between God and the people; whereas, after the commandments are given, the people ask Moses to stand in their place to receive the rest of the law. The third clue is that both accounts in the Hebrew Bible are essentially the same. All of this suggests that there is something similar to the notion of constitutional law. That is, the foundations are laid for the ordering of the community.

“Iron Age Israel (roughly 1200-586 B.C.E.) occupied a world of other gods, whether Canaanite, Assyrian, Babylonian, or Egyptian. Hierarchical pantheons were the accepted method for keeping track of the many gods who functioned independently and cooperatively.”[3] These gods and goddesses were specialists who operated narrowly within their own area of expertise, such as gods of justice, rain, fertility, war, etc. Much of life revolved around identifying the god who best fit the immediate problem. During the period of the Judges and the early monarchy, Israel’s theological understanding of its world was that its particular God ruled over that pantheon, that God was suzerain.[4]

The first and second commandments in the Decalogue, which forbid the worship of other gods and prohibit the making of idols, make central their cause of asserting the supremacy of Yahweh. It is unfortunate that the English translations, in their use of uppercase LORD, obscure the proper name YHWH, or Yahweh. In Exod. 3 Moses implicitly asks God, “What is your name?” God responds, “The Lord [YHWH, a form of the verb to be], the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob…,” Just as YHWH is recognized by past associations with the ancestors, so at the covenant mountain YHWH is to be identified through the salvific acts on Israel’s behalf. In other words, out of all the gods, I AM is the god who brought you out of Egypt and slavery.

In the commentary below only the demand for worshipping Yahweh alone, the ban on images, and the instructions for Sabbath Day observances are distinctly Israelite. The other commandments are suspiciously general and commonly accepted in the ancient world. One might ask: what culture does not espouse respect for the elderly; regard for human life, property, and marriage; adherence to the truth, and cultivation of a good attitude toward one’s neighbor? “Thus the Torah, one might say, elevates common decency into a divine statute. The genius of the biblical author was to take what everybody acknowledged was right and attribute its origin to Yahweh as a special gift to Israel. In part, the intention was rhetorical, even polemical. It is a time-approved strategy to buttress one’s ideological platform with platitudes.”[5]

Order & Structure

The foundational character of the Decalogue underpinning the rest of the legal material that follows can be illustrated in its order and structure. It is clearly meant to bring together all that is important for Israel’s life—religious, familial, and societal. It moves from the fundamental requirements of Israel’s relation to God to the most basic guidelines for life in community. The Decalogue deals with responsibility to God and neighbor, in that order.[6] And yet, this simplistic division must be understood in the context of the form as covenantal. That is, the binding together of God and human community on the basis of prior redeeming grace. And, the expectation of a human response that will order life as God wills it. The implication of this is that both sections of the Decalogue, oriented to God and oriented to neighbor, must be held together as one word of God. More specifically, the relationship to neighbor is both a divine command and explicitly a matter of one’s relationship to God. Not, in simplified fashion, merely what is good for the community. So, the Decalogue begins at what is in fact the starting point of the law, the grounding of the covenantal relationship and an identification of the parties involved.

The essential stipulation of that covenantal human response is the exclusive worship of YHWH commanded in the first two commandments, and carried further in the third and the fourth. The fourth commandment, or Sabbath commandment, is a bridge of sorts from God to neighbor, in that it deals both with relationship to God and the responsibilities of human life in Israel. The fifth command is also a transitional commandment, because it begins with the closest community we experience, the family, and moves outward. The sixth through tenth commandments move more generally toward prohibitions that stand to stabilize a clear national identity in the sanctioning name of YHWH.

Commentary on Exodus 20:1-17

Verse 1-2. Preamble. The opening two verses of the Decalogue construct the foundation upon which the “words” (v.1) that follow will be built. It is preamble, but preamble is inadequate in description. The passage is more than mere preamble; it is a declaration of God’s participation in the life of Israel. The passage presumes God, God is. And moreover, God is the One who is responsible for Israel as a nation. God is the salvific force by which Israel was brought out of “slavery” (v.2). It is significant to note that God’s claim on Israel is as Redeemer, not as Creator. “The Freedom He has brought the people is the necessary foundation for the covenant.”[7] And so, the Decalogue commences with the “Spirit in history” at work, the guiding “genius of nations and individuals alike, now speaks.”[8]

The “I” in v.2 is the Hebrew word anochi, which has the same meaning as its more frequent counterpart ani.[9] The early rabbis thus took anochi to be of possible Egyptian derivation,[10] speculating that God was addressing them in a familiar language. The phrase of which anochi is a part, is “I am the Lord your God” or in other translations “I the Lord your God.” Scholars have noted that this phraseology is similar to the ancient Near Eastern preambles, such as what is found in the Code of Hammurabi.[11] To illuminate further, the phrase “your God” in Hebrew, is the singular “your.” “Even though the whole people are addressed, the syntactical focus appears to be on each individual.”[12] Thus, what follows in v.3 through v.17, is a series of principles which are concerned with the individual’s relationship with God and with humankind. It is a declaration of what is essential if divine and human relationships are to remain vital.

Verse 3. First Commandment. Just as the preamble or prologue set the framework for understanding the commandments that follow, the First Commandment acts as the means by which the following nine commandments may be successfully lived out. “You shall have no other gods before me…” expresses an expectation of absolute priority and is essential for a covenantal relationship with God.[13] “The singular verb and the singular subject and indirect object, along with the plural direct object, ‘gods,’ make the application of the command unmistakably clear.”[14] There is not to be even one other god. Each individual of this community is intimately involved.

There is significant research on the expression “before me” (v.3). One scholar noted that the expression “probably points to the cultic sphere, in so far as it contains the concept of the ‘face’ of God (‘before’ in Hebrew is literally ‘before my face’), which frequently describes the presence of God which is encountered in the worship of him.”[15] Others have argued that “over against” is a more accurate translation, suggesting that “before,” i.e. in the presence of, would have little force in this text.[16] Regardless, the conclusion that no other gods may exist for Israel at all, is held with consensus.

Verses 4-6.[17] The Second Commandment. “The First Commandment stresses the unity, the Second, the spirituality of God.”[18] The reader is struck in v. 5 with the personal description of God’s jealousy. But it is apparent from the previous examination of v. 3 that the basis for this jealousy is the “undiluted loyalty specified by the first commandment.”[19] This specific reference and the ongoing explanation in v. 5 and v. 6 underscore God’s command to be worshipped in v. 3. That is, if one rejects or compromises the worship of Yahweh, such an act is justification for God’s right to distribute punishment.[20]

In regards to the word “idol” (v.4) specifically, the consensus opinion is that it is to be understood generally. The Hebrew word pesel comes from the root meaning “to carve.”[21] And originally it was specifically in reference to a sculptured image, but its use became more general.[22] “As the strict prohibition of other gods has already been expressed previously, the prohibition of images is hardly concerned with images of strange gods but with any images which might possibly be made for the legitimate worship in Israel.”[23] In the ancient world, an image had a significant connection with the being it represented. “…with the help of an image a man might gain power over the being represented in the image. Israel is forbidden any image so that the people cannot even make the attempt to gain power over God or that which is of God.”[24]

An examination of the wording of v. 4 through v. 6 reveals similar observations. “In the heaven above” meaning “anything, anywhere,”[25] and the further division into heaven, earth, and water asserts the primary targets of God’s prohibition: heavenly bodies, animals, and fish—“all of which were worshipped among ancient peoples.”[26] As noted previously, punishment is entailed in God’s holiness. It is essential for the understanding of ethical consequences. And this punishment will be distributed to the “third and fourth generation” which is idiomatic for a long time (v. 5). V. 6 proclaims that God will show “steadfast love to the thousandth generation.” Interpreted as “forever; a contrast to the mere third and fourth generation” of v. 5.[27] It acts as a hyperbole for the sake of emphasis.

Verse 7. The Third Commandment. “Make wrongful use of” is also rendered “take in vain,” “abuse,” or “swear falsely.” The translations of “make wrongful use,” “take in vain,” and “abuse” suggest a forbidding of magical or profane use of the divine name. “Proponents of this interpretation point out that the ninth commandment, which deals with false witness, implies the prohibition of ‘swearing falsely’.”[28] V. 4 dealt with the misuse of images, but v. 7 deals specifically with the misuse of God’s name. To the ancients, both image and name are aspects of identity. And so, from the proclamations of v.1 and v.2, God speaks “words” about the visual in v. 4 and the verbal in v. 7.[29] The second and third commandments in unison signify that the whole identity of personhood must be positioned toward God.

Verses 8-11. The Fourth Commandment. The text begins with “Remember,” which implies it is already known and practiced by the Israelites. Tradition dates the institution of the Sabbath observance from the first appearance of manna in Exod. 16:30,31.[30] But tradition also emphasizes the idea that the Sabbath was built into creation itself as seen in Gen. 2:1-3.[31] The parallel commandment in Deut. 5:12 opens with “Observe.” “Both terms are, in Hebrew, couched in the infinitive absolute, enhancing the formal character of the command and thereby giving it added importance.”[32]

Sabbath, or Shabbat in Hebrew, is connected with shavat (ceased, rested) in Gen. 2:2,3.[33] The observance of rest days was common among most primitive races.[34] Scholar Martin Noth argues that the earliest passages of the Old Testament do not expressly say that the Sabbath was every seventh day,[35] but perhaps is generally presupposed throughout the Torah.[36] “…so we can reckon that the additional explanation given to the Sabbath in the Decalogue is in fact concerned with the significance of the day which is at all times binding upon Israel.”[37]

This Sabbath day observance is the first and only of the commandments to deal with a cultic practice. Little is known about the Sabbath’s origin as a central institution of Judaism. For some, the Sabbath is connected to the lunar and solar cycles.[38] For others, there is a relationship between the Sabbath and a day dedicated to the planet Saturn. Others still, note a relationship between the Sabbath and the new moon festival mentioned frequently in the Hebrew Bible. Regardless of the multiplicity of views, “If…one maintains the…Mosaic connection with the Decalogue, then one must conclude that the day was indeed known to Israel in its pre-Canaanite history and that in very early times it received special distinction as a recurrent occasion for sanctifying God.”[39]

Verse 12-17. The Fifth – Tenth Commandments. The first four commandments have dealt with obligations to God. The sixth through tenth commandments are dedicated to our responsibilities to humankind. The fifth commandment, however, has evoked discussion as to which section it belongs. The Jewish tradition has highlighted the importance of honoring “your father and mother” (v.12) by listing it among the “first tablet,” or obligations to God. Parents are God’s creative partners in the human economy, and offense to them is offense to God in Ancient Israel, the penalty of which is death.[40] The fifth commandment is the only commandment which contains a promise, specifically that “your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you” (v.12).

The fifth commandment has here been placed in the “second tablet” or obligations to humankind. This is not, however, reason to dispute the Jewish tradition. Its placement in the “second tablet” merely reflects the interpretation that the social context of ancient Israel was such that this particular instruction was necessary. V. 12 is “directed to the adult citizen who is burdened with the care of an aged parent, and is a warning against the heathen habit of abandoning the aged when they can no longer support themselves.”[41] And as a pillar of Israel’s ethical obligations and prerequisites for remaining in the Holy Land, the fifth commandment seems more aptly placed among its human oriented instructions. An examination of the sixth through tenth commandments primarily involves an analysis of the prohibitions listed: murder (v.13), adultery (v.14), stealing (v.15), bearing false witness (v.16), and coveting (v.17).

Older translations of v. 13 read “you shall not kill,” but this was thought to be too general of a translation. The later translations read “you shall not murder” which implies unauthorized homicide.[42] The penalty for murder is given in Exod. 21:12 which read, “Whoever strikes a person mortally shall be put to death.” The further explanation in v.13 and v.14 of Exod. 21 distinguishes between willful attacks and those that were “not premeditated” (v.13).[43] The sixth commandment is concerned with the protection of human life within the Israelite community, more specifically against destruction at the hands of fellow Israelites.[44]

The seventh commandment (v.14) treats the family as a social unit. “The verb on which the prohibition rests is used exclusively in the O.T. of marital infidelity or adultery, not of fornication.”[45] More specifically, adultery is here used to convey intercourse of a man with a married or betrothed woman, “not with an unmarried or unbetrothed woman or harlot (see Deut. 22:23-28).”[46] The penalty for adultery is death.[47] Such harsh punishments illustrate a concern for paternity and the transmission of property by men to their offspring.[48] The prohibition was later widened by rabbinic and Christian traditions alike.

The eighth commandment (v. 15), in its prohibition of stealing, implies the right to personal property.

The ninth commandment (v. 16) verb “witness” means to answer, or more specifically, answer in a legal sense. When in court, whether plaintiff, defendant, or witness, one must speak the truth regarding his “neighbor” (v.16). The central concern of the ninth commandment is the integrity of the judicial system in Israel. The term neighbor appears here “without expressing a definite legal relationship it means the man with whom one lives and comes into contact in the conditions of life.”[49]

The tenth and final commandment in the Decalogue is here concerned with sentiment, attitude, and thought. One will note a parallel with the fifth commandment which instructs to “honor” (v.12). Sentiment or emotion is essentially personal, and perhaps the adherence to which, may only be known to God. “The final command is not really a law at all, but an acknowledgement that desire is the root of unhappiness.”[50] But what can be seen from the explanatory text is that this personal emotive sentiment can be exampled in attempting to “attach something to oneself illegally.”[51] “The commandment therefore deals with all possible undertakings which involve gaining power over goods and possessions of a ‘neighbor,’ whether through theft or through all kinds of dishonest machinations.”[52]

Concluding Commentary Comments

While the analogy to constitutional law can only take our understanding so far, it is nevertheless further suggested by the fact that neither constitutional law nor the Ten Commandments is law, strictly speaking. Constitutional law sets forth basic principles and rules in a broad sense. The Ten Commandments do the same thing. They are not “words” that have to do with legislation and community regulations in the typical sense. Nor do they arise out of the activity of legislating or administering justice. The specific terms used for the Decalogue are, of course, “command/commandment” and also “word.” In both cases the implication is that these instructions point directly to their origin. They are the “words” of God, and therefore, imperative in nature. The Israelites received them, not as a body of law that has been formulated to address every situation in life, but as instruction from God, Yahweh, about the most basic things in life. They are, like constitutional law, the fundamental principles. They are not intended to be a manual of Israelite law. They are properly understood, by every intention of the text, identified as God’s personal address to the individual.[53] Therefore, the Ten Commandments occupy a unique place in Israelite law, under the description of personal or covenantal law. It does not assume an unidentifiable general audience, but a relationship (or covenant) between two parties—specifically, between God and “you.”

Contemporary Interpretation and Application

It is self-evident from the text that one’s contextual relationship with the God YHWH will inform the degree to which these “foundational” principles are spiritually applied. Despite the unique Israelite dimension to these “words,” the Decalogue also contains common ancient moral principles, which are further evidenced in even earlier moral codes such as the Code of Hammurabi. Regardless, of their nationality of origin, these law codes—more specifically the Ten Commandments—illustrate what this writer would consider to be a glimpse into the universal moral code, that which is essential and self-evident to the fabric of all humanity via their specific and individual self-realization occurring in community. Furthermore, in regards to a distinctly Jewish or Christian tradition, the Ten Commandments are still a vital foundation by which the contemporary context can be interpreted, if understood rightly as covenantal or personal law which is entailed in the conception of the YHWH/human relationship.

Bibliography

Buttrick, George Arthur. et al., eds. The Interpreters Bible. New York: Abingdon Press, 1952.

Carmichael, Calum M. Law and Narrative in the Bible: The Evidence of the Deuteronomic Laws and the Decalogue. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985.

Crusemann, Frank. The Torah: Theology and Social History of Old Testament Law. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996.

Durham, John I. Exodus, vol. 3 of Word Biblical Commentary. Waco: Word Books, 1987.

Eskenazi, Tamara Cohn. ed. The Torah: A Women’s Commentary. New York: URJ Press, 2008.

Hamilton, Victor P. Handbook on The Pentateuch. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1982.

Lange, John Peter. Commentary on the Holy Scriptures: Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical (Genesis- Leviticus). trans. and ed. Phillip Schaff. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1960.

Lozano, Gilbert. “Who or What Is God”. Lecture, Anderson School of Theology BIST 5110, Anderson, IN, August 30, 2011.

Miller, Patrick D. Jr. “The Place of the Decalogue in the Old Testament and Its Law,” Interpretation. March 1988.

Noth, Martin. Exodus. trans. J.S. Bowden. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1962.

Plaut, W. Gunther. The Torah: A Modern Commentary. New York: Jewish Publication Society, 1983.

Propp, William C. Exodus 19-40: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. New York: Doubleday, 2006.

Roberts, Kathryn L. “Between Text & Sermon,” Interpretation. January 2007.

End Notes

[1] NRSV translation used as per requirements for BIST 5110.

[2] Patrick D. Miller Jr., “The Place of the Decalogue in the Old Testament and Its Law,” Interpretation, March 1998, 230-32.

[3] Kathryn L. Roberts, “Between Text & Sermon,” Interpretation, January 2007, 60.

[4] Gilbert Lozano, “Who or What is God?” (lecture, Anderson School of Theology BIST 5110, Anderson, IN, August 30, 2011).

[5] William C. Propp, Exodus 19-40: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New York: Doubleday, 2006) 303.

[6] Just as the Great Commandment.

[7] W. Gunther Plaut, The Torah: A Modern Commentary (New York: Jewish Publication Society, 1983), 223.

[8] George Arthur Buttrick et al., eds. The Interpreters Bible (New York: Abingdon Press, 1952), 1:980.

[9] Plaut, Torah, 223.

[10] It occurs in multiple stories of revelation: Abraham (Gen. 15:1), Isaac (Gen. 26:24), Jacob (Gen. 31:13), and Moses (Exod. 3:6). Plaut notes that anochi is the “Hebrew version of a first person pronoun common to both Semitic and Hamitic languages (Akkadian anuku, Ugaritic ‘ank, Egyptian ‘ink).”

[11] . “…For instance, ‘Hammurabi, the shepherd, called by Enlil, am I’; or ‘I am Mesha, son of Chemosh…King of Moab, the Dibonite.”

[12] Plaut, The Torah, 224.

[13] The phrase “before me” seems to weaken the main statement. “In Genesis, other Gods are not prohibited; leading to the supposition that monotheism’s beginnings are to be connected with Moses” (Plaut, Torah, 223).

[14] John I. Durham, Exodus, vol. 3 of Word Biblical Commentary (Waco: Word Books, 1987) 284.

[15] Martin Noth, Exodus, trans. J.S. Bowden (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1962) 162.

[16] John Peter Lange, Commentary on the Holy Scriptures: Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical (Genesis – Leviticus), trans. and ed. Philip Schaff (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1960) 72-5.

[17] Some have argued that v. 4 – v.6 bring into question the Mosaic origin. “The substance of the argument is that as instituted by Moses, and until the seventh century, the Israelite cultus was not without representations of Yahweh that constituted images or idols….Therefore, it is said, the prohibition of images in the Second Commandment automatically puts the Decalogue in the era of Deuteronomy” (The Interpreters Bible, 981-82).

[18] Buttrick, Interpreters, 982.

[19] Durham, Exodus, 287.

[20] God’s jealousy is thus part of his holiness. Exodus 34:14 reads, “(For you shall worship no other god, because the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God).”

[21] Buttrick, Interpreters, 981.

[22] Ibid., 981.

[23] Noth, Exodus, 162.

[24] Ibid., 163.

[25] Plaut, Torah, 224.

[26] Ibid., 224.

[27] Ibid., 224.

[28] Ibid., 224.

[29] “Anyone who knows a divine name can make use of the divine power present in the name to effect blessings and curses, adjurations, and bewitchings and all kinds of magical undertakings. To this extent the divine name is comparable with the divine image” (Noth, Exodus, 163).

[30] “So the people rested on the seventh day. The house of Israel called it manna; it was like coriander seed, white, and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey.”

[31] “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their multitude. And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.”

[32] Plaut, Torah, 224.

[33] Ibid., 232.

[34] Buttrick, Interpreters, 986.

[35] Cf. however Exod. 16:29 and Exod. 23:12.

[36] Noth, Exodus, 164.

[37] Ibid., 164.

[38] More likely, the Sabbath derived its model from a “lunisolar calendar and later developed in different directions” (Plaut, Torah, 233).

[39] Plaut, Torah, 234.

[40] Exod. 21:15 “Whoever strikes father or mother shall be put to death.”

[41]Buttrick, Interpreters, 984.

[42] “Hence the claims of pacifists, who would see this command as a prohibition of all killing including that legitimized by the state during warfare, cannot be sustained. The same is true for the abolition of capital punishment. Laudable as these objectives are, they find no warranty in the text itself…”(Plaut, Torah, 244.)

[43] In fact, Exod. 21:13b reads “then I will appoint for you a place to which the killer may flee,” in regards to those acts “not premeditated.”

[44] The text implies nothing about suicide.

[45] Buttrick, Interpreters, 985.

[46] Plaut, Torah, 235.

[47] See Lev. 18:20 and 20:10. See also Deut. 22:22-24. Compare to Hosea 2:4-9.

[48] Tamara Cohn Eskenazi, ed. The Torah: A Women’s Commentary (New York: URJ Press, 2008) 419.

[49] Noth, Exodus, 165.

[50] Prop, Exodus 19-40, 306.

[51] Noth, Exodus, 166.

[52] Ibid., 166.

[53] Hence, the identifier “you shall not….”

Taking Part in the Dance: Humanity, Holiness, and a Trinitarian Theology of Prayer

2011-11-21T15:37:00.001-05:00

Nardelli's Painting "Holiness"

"Love is the essential inner character of holiness, and holiness does not exist apart from love." - Mildred Wynkoop.

"For if we love another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us." - I John 4:12

"I am the life that’ll never, never die; I’ll live in you if you’ll live in me-I am the Lord of the dance, said he" - Sydney Carter, "Lord of the Dance".

"Karl Rahner referred to us creatures as homo orans or humanity as prayer. What would such a statement mean in conjunction with Biblical passages such as the one above or to quote Mrs. Wynkoop again, "...that holiness has to do with persons in relationship"(25). What gleanings are there in these three seemingly disjointed points in combination with ideas such as holiness and God as triune? My thesis will build steadily on such thoughts as those fore mentioned. I will start with a brief look at modernity and how the residue of modernity has affected us in all the gamut of life. This will follow into a sketch of where we are now (i.e. postmodernism). This rough draft of postmodernism will lead into where we are in the context of spirituality. Is this spirituality simply a new label with modern traces and or a precursor to something deeper yet misguided? The final sections will bring in a Wesleyan bent by keying in on holiness and prayer as, in the words of C. S. Lewis, a taking part in the dance. The dance is that of humanity living in the triune God. "In hisSacred and Profane Beauty, the Lutheran phenomenologist of religion Geradus Van der Leeuw claims that dance is lived meaning; in it, body and spirit commune both with each other and with the world. Dance is the rhythmic mimesis, or representation of a theological reminiscence: that God is love, that is, movement" (Murphy 233). That living and ecstatic habituation in the Trinity is prayer and what flows from such a living, is the redemption and sanctification of the world and ourselves.

My purpose in all of this is to show how prayer is not an objective closet experience of a few saints. Prayer is participation in the Trinity. In this participation is societal redemption and not merely a spiritual agenda. Prayer as participation in the God who breaks forth is also the essence of what a holy life means. It is this holy habituation in which humanity truly becomes human. These three fold aspects interpenetrate one another in the beautiful, mysterious, and manifold aspect called the dance. It is this dance and in the unfolding of this dance I now wish to explore.

Me, Myself, and I. A few musings on modernity
Modernity is difficult to define since it was more of a movement of reaction against assumptions. "Western civilization had reached a state of maturity which led it to call into question fundamental assumptions" (Thornhill 7). Humanity was now finding a new confidence in the reasoning subject (the I) and the elements of reason such as math and scientific rational. The empirical could penetrate and clear away such ideals as miracles and healings. Divine revelation was no longer a mandate since the naked ideals of Christianity could be deduced sans the supernatural. Immanuel Kant referred to the enlightenment as an emergence from self-incurred immaturity. "Immaturity is the inability to use one’s own understanding without the guidance of another" (Thornhill 9). This immaturity, this clinging to the past authority’s and myths is overcome by "sempere aude", the courage to think. Modernity was more of an ideological movement than a period. This movement arose as disillusionment with Medievalist thinking. The shackles of antiquated myths and the church as the focal social sphere were being thrown off and in its wake humanity turned inward to the self and outward to rational explanations for existence. Ellen Charry writes, "My argument is that the modern self has been constructed around the themes of self-sufficiency and emancipation of a rather shallow sort that fails to take account of the needfulness of the self beyond autonomy and freedom. It is a hermeneutic of release that provides no larger context for transformation and growth" (Volf 96). This broader context of sorts, which is needed for humanity to be actualized, is the foremost failure of modern thought. It remains in residual forms in postmodernity. But, I am getting ahead of the game here. In such a brief paragraph, what can be learned about this movement? The enlightenment was a time of restlessness. Medieval assumptions and indeed long held notions about humanity, God, and the cosmos were being questioned. It was a detached and sterile time as humanity used reason and empirical propositions to challenge the old way of knowing. Even spirituality changed as humanity began to look for God inward with the mind and rational deductions. "The privatization of the religious led to the erasure of God-talk from the public arena-privately one could believe what one wished, but these beliefs had no "street value. Secular ethics and politics flourished in the wake of flagrant humanism" (Ward xxi). Eugene Peterson writes that intimacy is what is lacking in our spirituality; indeed our moorings are still rooted in modern "turning to I" thinking. God was reduced to Being and the highest in the great chain of beings. God was conceived of the summation of Being and by realizing our place in this chain we could realize where we are and who we are and who God may be. Catherine LaCugna writes about personhood in modernity this way:

The Cartesian method isolated the self from the world beyond the self, and presupposed that the self can be a self by itself, apart from relationship with anything or anyone else. Following Descartes, John Locke defined person in terms of self-consciousness, and Leibniz thought of personhood as an enduring self-awareness that is present to itself and knows itself despite external or bodily changes. Kant completed these definitions with the note of morality: a person is a self-conscious moral subject who is responsible for his or her actions. This understanding of person was consistent with the idea of God as unipersonal, the first cause and the ultimate referent of human subjectivity (251).

Going back to Mr. Ward for a moment, I believe he sums up this movement perfectly in writing: "Man becomes interpreter, measurer of his world-a world stretched out around him, Like Keats’s Cortez standing on a peak in Darien with the Atlantic on one side and the Pacific on the other, buoyed up by the adulation of his fellow conquistadors" (xxiv). I wish to move on now to the vague, overused, and yet relevant theme of postmodernism. Once again, I will not deal exhaustively with the mechanics and myriad definitions of what postmodernism may be. It is here however that new understandings about personhood arise and for that I look to people such as John Zizioulas with gleanings from other sources as well. It is also here where notions about God and spirituality also begin to change. It is here that the residue of modernity may still be seen.

Emerging from the self-marooned island called modernity

Graham Ward writes: "Postmodernism reminds modernity of its own constructed nature; the arbitrariness and inability of its constructions" (xxvi). I want in this postmodern section to deal with the idea of personhood and God to form the definition of postmodernity and form the crux for the following sections. "Modernity is a way of life grounded on fundamental values which were encouraged by the reformation: individuality, rationalism and asceticism. Postmodernity represents ‘an oppositional movement against the rationalizing tendency of the modern project’ and against ‘grand narratives and ‘teleological views of history" (Godzieba 325). In 1953 John MacMuarry delivered the Gifford Lectures and what arose from that were his formulations on what humans are. John saw the human as a person in relation and rejected the modern idea of self as subject and world as object. The modern person sought withdrawal into the self and away from the world of action.I will place withdraw as a formative experience later on. John replaced the "I think" with "I do" as the definition of a person. "MacMurray’s philosophy of the person implies the ethical requirement of overcoming egocentrism by orientation to the other (hetrocentrisim)" (LaCugna 257). MacMuarry was foundational in his approach. He placed the person in the context of relations and those relations and orientations are the definition of what a human being is. John Zizioulas picked up this theme some time later. "A person is not defined by what it is in and of itself but when it breaks those boundaries in a movement of communion" (LaCugna 260). Pointing to oneself as a means of definition of existence is this boundary Zizioulas speaks of. "In postmodernism the autonomous individual of the enlightenment is being supplanted by a more holistic vision of humanity" (Knight III 53). Knight writes on, "...participation in the community with its network of practices and relationships is what constitutes the personhood of the individual" (53). Person hood is not only constituted to the other but also toward God. In his new book, Altogether gift: A Trinitarian spirituality, Michael Downy refers to humanity as theonomous: from God and for God (72).

With a requisitioning of who we are and the demise of a metanarrative, modernity clings close. We seek and desire community but find we still are an island to ourselves and live within our own constructed narratives. "Given the questioning and breakdown of larger frameworks of meaning and of long-held values and assumptions, it is not surprising to find ourselves hungry and wandering" (McGarthy 195). The reemergence of spirituality is a good example of this misguided wandering and confusion. Much of what passes as spirituality comes in the guise of the "new age". "Much of new age spirituality is marked by privatization and commercialization" (McGarthy 198). "A quick tour of the local bookshop will likely display all these proclivities for individualistic quests for something ‘inner’-inner self, inner child, even (in one case I noted recently) the inner wolf" (McIntosh 5).Rowan Williams, in drawing from Ernest Becker’s work, The Denial of Death, refers to experience and individual spirituality as enslaving and supporting of the lies fashioned before us. Williams refers to this as a diet of spiritual salt water (70).As can be seen, the idea of the person as a human constituted by relation to the other (and I might add, God) is coming to the front. However, residue of modernity can still be seen in compartmentalized and individualistic spirituality. "Postmodernism denies that knowledge is secured through distancing oneself from the object" (Knight III 58). It is clear then much of our spirituality is pseudo-spirituality. "Fraudulence is rampant. Our leaders, ignorant of human nature, promote pseudo-intimacies that dehumanize. Our celebrities offer a pseudo-transcendence that trivializes" (Peterson 35). "Spirituality", according to Peterson, is "the alert attention we give to a living God and the faithful response we make to him in community". (40). What about God in this time of flux and emergence?

David Tracy writes, "God enters postmodern history not as a consoling "ism" but as an awesome, often terrifying hope beyond hope" (Godzeiba 322). Unlike the unmoved principal or a deity conceived by the rational being, God comes to the forefront of postmodernity transcendent, holy, and intimate. Even more so, God is love (as St. John so boldly declared). According to Heiddeger the god of philosophy (the god of modernity) is one neither can pray or sacrifice to...nor can one fall to his knees in awe, play music and dance before this god (Godzieba 322). "The postmodern God is emphatically the God of love, and the economy of love is kenotic" (Ward 598). We see here a God who breaks into every aspect of existence and creation; a God that is community and participation. Again Ward writes, "…the operation of this love provides a redesciption of the Trinitarian God and the economy of salvation" (598). God emerges in postmodern conception as a God in relation and not a god akin to geometrical principals, the highest being in the chain or the mover. As the person of postmodernity realizes he or she is a person in relation to all of creation, so this person sees God, experiences God as holy and immanent. We merely not just dance inthis God, but God dances with us.

Departing to dance alone. Finding strength in the solitary ballet.

Looking away from the world is no help toward God; staring at the world is no help either; but whoever beholds the world in him stands in his presence-Martin Buber (italics mine).

It would appear to be a contradiction to speak about individual times of prayer and solitary spirituality in the light of all I have just written However, we will see that being alone does not mean forgetting, ignoring, or not recalling the fact we of the other. The late Robert McAfee Brown called individual spirituality the ‘great fallacy’. He comes down hard on so called dualistic existence in which there is one realm (i.e. daily, physical existence) and then the inner realm (spiritual matters). There is an exterior reality that is left behind when the inner chamber is entered. He overturns the great fallacy by what he terms "withdrawal and return". Brown cites the examples of Moses and Jesus. Moses was not commissioned to pitch his tent after his visit from God in the burning bush. Moses was told to return to Egypt. "In the case of Jesus, each instance of "withdraw" is the vehicle for a "return" to new levels of activity…" (Brown 45). "The best way to understand "withdrawal and return", therefore, is to see it not as an oscillation between two different worlds, but as a way of concentrating for a time on a part of the single world we inhabit"(47). Henri Nouwen wrote in the book, Reaching out: "communal and individual prayer belong together as two folded hands" (113). In this world of bytes, anxiety, hectic and rushed lives, we must agree that times of clarity, refreshing, and refocusing are needed to maintain sanity, direction, and above all our love for others. "According to Nouwen, prayer is wrongly associated with a pious and devotional attitude and nothing more. Prayer deteriorates into an individual line of communion upward where the pious soul is strengthened apart from its social environment. This is the residue of modernity that characterizes a good majority of spirituality in our present day. It is the pseudo-spirituality that is salt water to the soul and leads to a shallow, narcissistic existence; the withdrawal to the subject and not returning to a diseased world.

We must not see times of refreshing and silence before God as a world denying or a forgetful time. The contemplative Thomas Merton wrote, "The love of others is a stimulus to interior life, not a danger to it" (46). The genuine kenotic love of others should drive us to times of silence. Such times of withdrawal into silence however are not empty or random times. Reformed theologian K.H. Miskott refers to such times as "filled silence" and Douglas Steere calls it "relentless clarity".

Communal and individual prayer is indeed two folded hands and seeing it as such is the overcoming of the ‘great fallacy’. Shutting out the world while I focus solely on my needs, wants, and perhaps trivial matters is a shutting out of God. Beholding the world in him and him in the world is where I wish to take this treatment next. This is a Trinitarian ethics of prayer.

Living excessively

Don Saliers writes in his work, The Soul in Paraphrase, "knowing God requires worldly embodiment" (85). Knowing, in this context, is participation and this has more to do with who God is than who we are. However, knowing who God is (triune, a community of overflow) we realize who we are. "The God who is love (ipse amore) does not remain locked up in ‘splendid isolation’ of self love but spills over into what is other than God…"(LaCugna 353). This was my very critique of the modern self. The modern person lived the great fallacy and defined itself by turning to inward realities. "Instead of the Cartesian ‘I think’…beginning with Gods love means I am loved, therefore I am (Olthuis 244). This is the rethought doctrine of humanity put forth by Zizioulas and MacMuarry. There is a two-fold sense in the two quotes above. One is God is not a distant, unmoved, firmly fixed deity. God is love and that love is excessive and spills over into creation. That being the case, beginning with this love, defines who I am to God and to the other. This takes me to the quote I began this section with; knowing this excessive God is participation. In such thinking, it is safe to presume that this excessive existence and participation is the accurate characterization of holiness and a holy life. What such overflow or excessiveness would look like is where I am headed next.

Michael Lodahl in his essay, And he felt compassion: holiness beyond the bounds of communityelucidates such notions as holiness as participation. Lodahl exegetes the parable of the good Samaritan and pivots the exegesis on Jesus’ words, "go and do likewise", which echoes the Deuteronomic code of, "do this and you will live". Jesus challenges the pervasive holiness-as-separation ideology. "To be perfect-a rather inadequate translation of the Greek teleios: complete, fulfilling ones purpose, on target-is to love without boundary" (Lodahl 161). This boundary, first mentioned in the thought of Zizioulas, is the boundary of the self which tries to define itself according to itself. "It must be confessed that there is a tendency among Christians to interpret holiness as withdrawal from society, civic concerns, "bad" people, and everything secular" (Wynkoop 29). Just a few pages earlier she writes in regards to Wesley’s view on holiness…"holiness has to do with persons in relationship" (25).

What is it that is done? What is done is a loving without or beyond boundary. In the Samaritan parable, holiness as separation is seen as perversion of what true holiness is. Holiness is answering speech that demands wine and oil be poured on the Samaritans wounds. "Do this and you will live" is defined in our relationship to one another in loving and living excessively. You may be wondering, "What has this to do with prayer"? Then it seems the great fallacy remains in you! There is a priestly element here. Our "go and do likewise" is mingled with our beholding the world in God. Ora et labora is translated from Latin as "pray and work". "The phrase Ora et labora comes out of the monastic tradition and out of a culture that placed God at the center of reality" (Halvorson 93). This is the definition of participation and worldly embodiment. Life is struggle, rejoicing, weeping, and all of the myriad emotions and experiences humanity may know. We behold the world in God and indeed God in the world and never shall the twain shall be separate. "…Holiness is realized by living in communion as Christ’s body through the Spirit amidst the vicissitudes and interruptions of living in a highly complex and fragmented world" (Downey 101). Jesus saw the whole polyphony of human life as prayer. Whether feeding, healing, rebuking, or praying before dawn, he was a priest offering up all of existence to the Father. He was not tainted by the bleeding woman nor was he defiled by eating the loaf with drunks, whores, and the IRS. In the very life of the Christ we see the abundance of God spilling over into wounded, broken down, abject peoples. They were taken into the very life of God and were changed forever. Mark McIntosh writes, "In Jesus, the finite and broken fragments of human existence are taken up into the healing and person-constituting fellowship of the divine persons" (162). Their lives became living prayers alluding to the grace, compassion, and restorative streams plentiful and flowing from God. Notice though, Jesus did not send them to seclusion or a cloister environment. He said, "go and do likewise". Knowing the Father meant worldly embodiment and such embodiment was the epitome of a holy life lived to the full. Jesus lived an excessive life and in his excess a community of pleroma was born.

Dancing in the steps of the Messiah. A rhythmic community.

In this last section, I want to view all that has been mentioned thus far in a community (i.e. church universal) element. Again, as done throughout, I will draw on various sources. I want to show how transformed personhood overflows outwardly and inwardly. A community of pleroma is a community of prayer, struggle, joy, and feasting on the fruits of the kingdom which has come and will yet come. Such a community living habitually in the Trinity is called to share such fruits with those not yet dancing and feasting.

Mark McIntosh writes, "…the Christian community is led by the Spirit to hear and respond to God’s word, offering the power of Christ in the heart of the world" (157). Johannes Nissan writes about the essence of a community thusly, "it is not a question of "what should I do" but more important is the question "who are we and who are we to be"? (200). Just as the solitary person becomes in relation to others and to God, so a community becomes as it lives to and for the other and God. William Placher refers to community as people who tell particular stories (143). These stories however are not flippant little quips and anecdotes. These stories create meaning, bring life where life was not (meaning ex nihilio), and open the community to draw in the other. These stories are embodied prayers of the community. "These narratives of a vulnerable God are not safe stories" writes Placher (141). "The Gospel of the crucified Jesus is not a safe retreat from the storms of contemporary social issues but sometimes the most direct and radical address that one can imagine"(141). Alan Torrence refers to the narrative-transforming aspect of the community as "doxological and semantic participation in God" (356).

Kenneth Leech picks up this ‘radical address of the kingdom’ (my phrase) in his work, True prayer. "The immediate indication of the presence of the Kingdom is movement: the lifeless stirs, the blind see, the dead are raised" (69). The narratives the community preaches, sings, utters, prays, etc open the community and make it what it is and should be; the body of the Christ on Earth. The community is holy when it overflows its life into the lives of others and the life of the world. "Being holy is being alive in the glory of God that transforms" (Downey 106). Its existence is an erotic existence. Erotic not in the perverted and distorted sense our culture and world has made it out to be. Erotic in that is yearns for the holistic salvation of a fallen world; a Godly yearning to see, taste, and touch the Kingdom come in full. "To preach the Gospel of the Kingdom to the poor, to heal the sick, to accept the despised, to free the prisoners, and to eat and drink with the hungry is the festal procession of Christ in God’s history with the world (Moltmann 78).

"The church is the bride who dances with him" wrote Hippolytus regarding the church (Moltmann 73). To say the church, the communion of saints is rhythmic, is to say it lives, moves, and has being in the living God who is movement, who is dance. The church as such also carries with it the theology of holiness. In the opening quote, we are given clarity in what this community is and does. As it dances in God it invites others to join the blessed motion; in so doing it is made holy. "Holiness is a wholeness transfigured. It sees all life in mysterious interconnection and bids us to join in that dance which emerges in response to the rhythm of the kingdom" (Leech 91). The Kingdom of God has rhythm! The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus reverberate through the community of the redeemed. What would the church as movement, as love and prayer in motion look like? It would be opening up our love feast to the unemployed and destitute family living an abandoned Buick. It would look like a pastor sitting in a bar listening to real life, real stories, real pain and in turn uttering the narrative of a vulnerable God who walks among such as these and calls them "blessed". It would look like a congregation opening itself in agape to the gay man, the teenager in chains, black leather, and purple hair, the stepped on, burned out, the abused…the wealthy who think they have it all. In a simpler way, it looks like Jesus who listened, lived, and touched those who otherwise would have no one and nothing. It looks radical and is indeed radical. It is a radical dance of a holy and radical God who bids us, "I’ll lead you all in the dance said he".

Bibliography
Brown, Robert McAfee. Spirituality and Liberation: Overcoming the Great Fallacy. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1988

Buber, Martin. "I and Thou 1965. ed. Walter Kauffman. New York City: Charles Scribner’s Sons

Charry, Ellen. "The Crisis of Modernity and the Christian Self." A passion for God’s reign. ed. Miroslav Volf. Grand Rapids: William Eerdmans, 1998: 89-112

Downey, Michael. Altogether Gift: A Trinitarian Spirituality. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2000

Fenhagen, James. Invitation to holiness. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1985

Godzieba, Anthony. "Prolegomena to a Catholic Theology of God Between Heidegger and Post-Modernity." Heythrop xl (1993): 319-39.

Halverson, Loren. "Prayer and Action". A Primer on Prayer. ed. Paul Sponheim. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988:

LaCugna, Catherine. "God for Us: The Trinity in Christian Life. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1993

Leech, Kenneth. True Prayer. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1980

Lodahl, Michael. "And He Felt Compassion: Holiness Beyond the Bounds of Community.Embodied Holiness. ed. Michael Lodahl and Samuel Powell. Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 1999:

McGarthy, Marie. "Spirituality in a postmodern era". The Blackwell Reader in Pastoral and Practical Theology. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2000

McIntosh, Mark. Mystical Theology. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1998

Merton, Thomas. Contemplative Prayer. New York City: Herder and Herder Publishers, 1969

Moltmann, Jurgen. ThePassion For Life: A Messianic Lifestyle. Philadelphia: Fortress press, 1978

Murphy, Francesco. "Whence Comes This Love as Strange as Death? The Presence of Franz Rosenweig’s Philosophy as Narrative in Hans Urs Van Balthasars Theo-Drama. Journal of Literature and Theology vol. 7 no. 3 (1993): 227-47

Nissen, Johannes and Sigfred Pederson. New Readings in John: Literary and Theological Perspectives. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997

Nouwen, Henry. Reaching out. New York City: Doubleday Press, 1979

Olthuis, James. Knowing Otherwise: Philosophy at the Threshold of Spirituality. New York City: Fordham University Press, 1997

Peterson, Eugene. Subversive Spirituality. Grand Rapids: William Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1997

Placher, William. Narratives of a Vulnerable God: Christ, Theology, and Scripture. Louisville: John Knox Westminster Press, 1994

Saliers, Don. The Soul in Paraphrase: Prayer and the Religious Affections. Akron: OSL Publications, 1998

Thornhill, John. Modernity: Christianity’s Estranged Child Reconstructed. Grand Rapids: William Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000

Torrance, Alan. Persons in Communion: Trinitarian Description and Human Participation.Edinburgh: T and T Clark, 1996

Ward, Graham (ed). The Postmodern God: A Theology Reader.2nd edition Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1997

Williams, Rowan. On Christian Theology. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2000

Wynkoop, Mildred Bangs. A Theology of Love: The Dynamic of Wesleyanism. Kansas City: Beacon Hill Press, 1972"

Author: Jerry Viou
Quodlibet Journal: Volume 4 Number 2-3, Summer 2002
ISSN: 1526-6575

-See original link.

What's So Important About The Code Of Hammurabi?

2011-10-26T14:55:00.003-04:00

The Code of Hammurabi

-Jane McGrath

When we think of ancient pagan kings, the ideas of justice and fairness probably aren't the first things to come to mind. We moderns may be more likely to imagine fickle, power-hungry despots who were ready to put someone to death on a whim. But King Hammurabi, who ruled a prosperous and thriving Babylon almost four millennia ago, doesn't quite fit that mold. He claimed to have helped protect the weak from oppression, and scholars believe he fostered an atmosphere of justice and righteousness for his people.

This belief is based on an object that was discovered only a century ago. It has already earned a place alongside the Rosetta Stone as one of the most important artifacts of the ancient world. This stela(stone pillar) bears the inscription of the Code of Hammurabi, and it has shed light on the laws, culture and life in Babylonia.

Unearthed in 1901 by French archaeologist Jean-Vincent Scheil, the stela holds the most well-preserved and comprehensive lists of ancient laws in existence. Today, the basalt monument stands in the Louvre Museum in Paris. It's just more than 7 feet (2.13 meters) tall -- clearly, it was meant for public display when it was first erected in an ancient Babylonian city. It wasn't the only one of its kind, which we learned from both the inscription and fragments of other copies that have been found in sites of other Babylonian cities.

At the top is an engraved depiction of Hammurabi with the god of justice, Shamash. Below that picture are columns of inscription in the Akkadian language. The tablet has 16 columns of text on the front and 28 on the back. Between a prologue and epilogue (in which Hammurabi invokes the gods and discusses the greatness of his justice) lies the meat of the artifact. It enumerates almost 300 laws, all in a conditional if/then format. These laws illuminate the Babylonians' sense of justice, which was surprisingly ahead of its time in some ways.

When Scheil found the stela, excited scholars published numerous books and commentary about it -- as well as dubbed it the "Code of Hammurabi." Historians continue to discuss the code's significance and lingering mysteries to this day. It offers remarkable insights into the history of law, social justice and even the Bible. To understand why, we'll inspect some of the most important aspects of the code.

Laws in the Code of Hammurabi

Inspecting the Code of Hammurabi is like looking through a window into ancient Babylon, a bustling agricultural empire with urban centers. These laws established stability and kept the society flourishing. Some historians have claimed the code paints a picture of a society even more advanced and sophisticated than the early medieval period in Europe, which began around A.D. 500 [source: Feldbrugge].

About 100 of these laws concern matters of property and commerce, including debt, interest and collateral. For instance, if a dam broke and subsequent flooding destroyed crops, the laws chalked it up to the negligence of the dam's owner, who had to compensate the farmers who lost crops. Because Babylonia's economy functioned partly on metal currency and partly on barter, the laws also established certain standards and limits for loan agreements to control an abuse of usury. The code stipulates that a lender could charge at most 20 percent for a silver-based loan and 33.3 percent for a grain loan. Lenders also had to finalize the contract in front of witnesses and wait for harvest time before demanding repayment. What's more, the code addresses the idea of a secured loan (one backed by valuable collateral) as well. Property in the form of land and houses -- or even wives and children -- could serve as collateral, too. Those in severe debt could enter indentured servitude to pay it off.

Another set of approximately 100 laws concerns family and issues ranging from marriage and children to inheritance, adultery and incest. Marriages were often a business arrangement between the prospective husband and father of the desired wife. Divorce was attainable, though more easily for the man than the woman. Divorce often carried a fee and sometimes required the husband to return the dowry. Incest and a wife's adultery were punishable by exile or death. The code sees the father, as you might expect, as the head of the household. Until the child married, the father had legal rights to use children for labor for himself or his debtors. Fathers could even choose to sell their children off. Not only that, but were a child to strike a father, the child's hands were cut off.

These last punishments bring us to the matter of criminal laws as well as the nature of punishment in the Code of Hammurabi. Some scholars think this is the most fascinating and significant aspect of the code.

An Eye for an Eye: Code of Hammurabi Punishments

To keep his society stable, King Hammarubi instituted some very harsh punishments for certain crimes. As we've learned, physical mutilation was one common option for punishment -- whether that meant a child's hands or a woman's breasts cut off. Death was another punishment. The code explicitly mentions about 28 crimes that warrant death, including robbery, adultery and casting spells of witchcraft [source: Mercer].

Punishments often depended on the social status of the perpetrator. When a member of the elite committed a grievous crime against a person of lower status, he or she may have been asked to pay a fee. When the roles were reversed, the lower-class criminal might receive a harsher punishment.

You've probably heard of the ancient law of "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." For a time, people thought this idea, called lex talionis (law of retribution), originated with Moses and Hebrew law. The discovery of the Code of Hammurabi cast doubt on this. The code not only included lex talionis, but it literally dictated such laws for eyes and teeth. If one put out another's eye, he or she would lose an eye. The same went for teeth and bones. Although it might be a little bizarre to our modern sentiments, this was perfectly rational and fair -- at least to Hammurabi.

Historians were surprised to find the idea of lex talionis in a code that predated Mosaic Law (the laws of Moses and the Hebrews) by a couple hundred years. Many jumped to the conclusion that Mosaic Law evolved from the Code of Hammurabi. Scholars quickly dismissed this idea and have come to accept that both probably share a common origin; there are too many significant differences between the two sets of laws to conclude that Mosaic Law is based on the Code of Hammurabi [source: Bromiley]. Historians frequently point out that Mosaic Law is more humane, and while the Code of Hammurabi designates punishments according to a perpetrator's class, Mosaic Law doesn't make this distinction [source:Berolzheimer].

Today, we continue to study the Code of Hammurabi for many reasons, but perhaps most importantly because it sheds light on the history of lex talionis. As nations today continue to struggle with questions of how fair and ethical this policy is, the Code of Hammurabi offers one context for the debate.

See Original Link at HowStuffWorks

Sources

Berolzheimer, Fritz, et al. "The World's Legal Philosophies." The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd., 2002 (Feb. 7, 2009) http://books.google.com/books?id=1wQSnIjDh0MC

Bromiley, Geoffrey W. "The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia: A-D." Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1995. (Feb. 7, 2009)http://books.google.com/books?id=BW_1mt4oebQC

Feldbrugge, Ferdinand Joseph Maria. "The Law's Beginnings." Marinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2003. (Feb. 7, 2009) http://books.google.com/books?id=DG_HMgPYMlMC

Homer, Sidney, Richard Eugene Sylla. "A History of Interest Rates." Rutgers University Press, 1996. (Feb. 7, 2009) http://books.google.com/books?id=w3hmC17-em4C

Iselin, Claire. "Near Eastern Antiquities: Mesopotamia: Law Code of Hammurabi, king of Babylon." Louvre Museum. (Feb. 7, 2009)http://www.louvre.fr/llv/oeuvres/detail_notice.jsp;jsessionid=JNLy43Ghytb8DL0xS2Vd2nQRy4Q02hlzZZr1QH6M1HPnv1ZDV7hp!415586341?CONTENT%3C%3Ecnt_id=10134198673226487&CURRENT_LLV_NOTICE%3C%3Ecnt_id=10134198673226487&FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=9852723696500800&baseIndex=0&bmLocale=en

Marin, Gus. "Juvenile Justice." SAGE, 2005(Feb. 7, 2009)http://books.google.com/books?id=PArJ9vwiK9wC

Mercer, Jeremy. "When the Guillotine Fell." Macmillan, 2008. (Feb. 7, 2009) http://books.google.com/books?id=f_aPIvKEnasC

Souvay, Charels. "Hammurabi." New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia. Robert Appleton Company, 1910. (Feb. 7, 2009)http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07125a.htm

Van de Mieroop, Marc. "King Hammurabi of Babylon: A Biography." Blackwell Publishing, 2004. (Feb. 7, 2009) http://books.google.com/books?id=GDr49Nd0jh4C

John Wesley's Commentary on Exodus 20

2011-10-25T23:47:00.001-04:00

Michelangelo's Moses

Exodus 20:1 God spake all these words - The law of the ten commandments is a law of God's making; a law of his own speaking. God has many ways of speaking to the children of men by his spirit, conscience, providences; his voice in all which we ought carefully to attend to: but he never spake at any time upon any occasion so as he spake the ten commandments, which therefore we ought to hear with the more earnest heed. This law God had given to man before, it was written in his heart by nature; but sin had so defaced that writing, that it was necessary to revive the knowledge of it.

Exodus 20:2 I am the Lord thy God - Herein, God asserts his own authority to enact this law; and proposeth himself as the sole object of that religious worship which is enjoined in the four first commandments. They are here bound to obedience. Because God is the Lord, Jehovah, self - existent, independent, eternal, and the fountain of all being and power; therefore he has an incontestable right to command us. He was their God; a God in covenant with them; their God by their own consent. He had brought them out of the land of Egypt - Therefore they were bound in gratitude to obey him, because he had brought them out of a grievous slavery into a glorious liberty. By redeeming them, he acquired a farther right to rule them; they owed their service to him, to whom they owed their freedom. And thus, Christ, having rescued us out of the bondage of sin, is entitled to the best service we can do him. The four first commandments, concern our duty to God (commonly called the first - table.) It was fit those should be put first, because man had a Maker to love before he had a neighbour to love, and justice and charity are then only acceptable to God when they flow from the principles of piety.

Exodus 20:3 The first commandment is concerning the object of our worship, Jehovah, and him only, Thou shalt have no other gods before me - The Egyptians, and other neighbouring nations, had many gods, creatures of their own fancy. This law was pre - fixed because of that transgression; and Jehovah being the God of Israel, they must entirely cleave to him, and no other, either of their own invention, or borrowed from their neighbours. The sin against this commandment, which we are most in danger of, is giving that glory to any creature which is due to God only. Pride makes a God of ourselves, covetousness makes a God of money, sensuality makes a God of the belly. Whatever is loved, feared, delighted in, or depended on, more than God, that we make a god of. This prohibition includes a precept which is the foundation of the whole law, that we take the Lord for our God, accept him for ours, adore him with humble reverence, and set our affections entirely upon him. There is a reason intimated in the last words before me. It intimates, That we cannot have any other god but he will know it. That it is a sin that dares him to his face, which he cannot, will not, overlook.

The second commandment is concerning the ordinances of worship, or the way in which God will be worshipped, which it is fit himself should appoint. Here is, [1.] The prohibition; we are forbidden to worship even the true God by images, Exo_20:4-5. First, The Jews (at least after the captivity) thought themselves forbidden by this to make any image or picture whatsoever. It is certain it forbids making any image of God, for to whom can we liken him? Isa_40:18, Isa_40:25. It also forbids us to make images of God in our fancies, as if he were a man as we are. Our religious worship must be governed by the power of faith, not by the power of imagination. Secondly, They must not bow down to them - Shew any sign of honour to them, much less serve them by sacrifice, or any other act of religious worship. When they paid their devotion to the true God, they must not have any image before them for the directing, exciting, or assisting their devotion. Though the worship was designed to terminate in God, it would not please him if it came to him through an image. The best and most ancient lawgivers among the Heathen forbad the setting up of images in their temples. It was forbidden in Rome by Numa a Pagan prince, yet commanded in Rome by the Pope, a Christian bishop. The use of images in the church of Rome, at this day, is so plainly contrary to the letter of this command, that in all their catechisms, which they put into the hand of the people, they leave out this commandment, joining the reason of it to the first, and so the third commandment they call the second, the fourth the third, &c. only to make up the number ten, they divide the tenth into two. For I the Lord Jehovah, thy God, am a jealous God, especially in things of this nature. It intimates the care he has of his own institutions, his displeasure against idolaters, and that he resents every thing in his worship that looks like, or leads to, idolatry: visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation - Severely punishing. Nor is it an unrighteous thing with God if the parents died in their iniquity, and the children tread in their steps, when God comes, by his judgments, to reckon with them, to bring into the account the idolatries their fathers were guilty of. Keeping mercy for thousands of persons, thousands of generations, of them that love me and keep my commandments - This intimates, that the second commandment, though in the letter of it is only a prohibition of false worship, yet includes a precept of worshipping God in all those ordinances which he hath instituted. As the first commandment requires the inward worship of love, desire, joy, hope, so this the outward worship of prayer and praise, and solemn attendance on his word. This mercy shall extend to thousands, much further than the wrath threatened to those that hate him, for that reaches but to the third or fourth generation.

Exodus 20:7 The third commandment is concerning the manner of our worship; Where we have,

[1.] A strict prohibition. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain - Supposing that, having taken Jehovah for their God, they would make mention of his name, this command gives a caution not to mention it in vain, and it is still as needful as ever. We take God's name in vain, First, By hypocrisy, making profession of God's name, but not living up to that profession. Secondly, By covenant breaking. If we make promises to God, and perform not to the Lord our vows, we take his name in vain. Thirdly, By rash swearing, mentioning the name of God, or any of his attributes, in the form of an oath, without any just occasion for it, but to no purpose, or to no good purpose. Fourthly, By false - swearing, which some think is chiefly intended in the letter of the commandment. Fifthly, By using the name of God lightly and carelessly. The profanation of the form of devotion is forbidden, as well as the profanation of the forms of swearing; as also, the profanation of any of those things whereby God makes himself known. For the Lord will not hold him guiltless - Magistrates that punish other offences, may not think themselves concerned to take notice of this; but God, who is jealous for his honour, will not connive at it. The sinner may perhaps hold himself guiltless, and think there is no harm in it; to obviate which suggestion, the threatening is thus expressed, God will not hold him guiltless - But more is implied, that God will himself be the avenger of those that take his name in vain; and they will find it a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

Exodus 20:8 The fourth commandment concerns the time of worship; God is to be served and honoured daily; but one day in seven is to be particularly dedicated to his honour, and spent in his service. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy; in it thou shalt do no manner of work - It is taken for granted that the sabbath was instituted before. We read of God's blessing and sanctifying a seventh day from the beginning, Gen_2:3, so that this was not the enacting of a new law, but the reviving of an old law. 1st. They are told what is the day, they must observe, a seventh after six days labour, whether this was the seventh by computation from the first seventh, or from the day of their coming out of Egypt, or both, is not certain. A late pious Writer seems to prove, That the sabbath was changed, when Israel came out of Egypt; which change continued till our Lord rose again: But that then the Original Sabbath was restored. And he makes it highly probable, at least, That the sabbath we observe, is the seventh day from the creation. 2dly, How it must be observed; As a day of rest; they were to do no manner of work on this day, in their worldly business. As a holy day, set apart to the honour of the holy God, and to be spent in holy exercises. God, by his blessing it, had made it holy; they, by solemn blessing him, must keep it holy, and not alienate it to any other purpose than that for which the difference between it and other days was instituted. 3dly, Who must observe it? Thou and thy son and thy daughter - The wife is not mentioned, because she is supposed to be one with the husband, and present with him, and if he sanctify the sabbath, it is taken for granted she will join with him; but the rest of the family is instanced in it, children and servants must keep it according to their age and capacity. In this, as in other instances of religion, it is expected that masters of families should take care, not only to serve the Lord themselves, but that their houses also should serve him. Even the proselyted strangers must observe a difference between this day and other days, which, if it laid some restraint upon them then, yet proved a happy indication of God's gracious design, to bring the Gentiles into the church. By the sanctification of the sabbath, the Jews declared that they worshipped the God that made the world, and so distinguished themselves from all other nations, who worshipped gods which they themselves made. God has given us an example of rest after six days work; he rested the seventh day - Took a complacency in himself, and rejoiced in the work of his hand, to teach us on that day, to take a complacency in him, and to give him the glory of his works. The sabbath begun in the finishing of the work of creation; so will the everlasting sabbath in the finishing of the work of providence and redemption; and we observe the weekly sabbath in expectation of that, as well as in remembrance of the former, in both conforming ourselves to him we worship. He hath himself blessed the sabbath day and sanctified it. He hath put an honour upon it; it is holy to the Lord, and honourable; and he hath put blessings into it which he hath encouraged us to expect from him in the religious observation of that day. Let us not profane, dishonour, and level that with common time, which God's blessing hath thus dignified and distinguished.

Exodus 20:12 We have here the laws of the second table, as they are commonly called; the six last commandments which concern our duty to ourselves, and one another, and are a comment upon the second great commandment, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. As religion towards God is, an essential branch of universal righteousness, so righteousness towards men is an essential branch of true religion: godliness and honesty must go together. The fifth commandment is concerning the duties we owe to our relations; that of children to their parents is only instanced in, honour thy father and thy mother, which includes, an inward esteem of them, outwardly expressed upon all occasions in our carriage towards them; fear them, Lev_19:3, give them reverence, Heb_12:9. The contrary to this is mocking at them or despising them, Obedience to their lawful commands; so it is expounded, Eph_6:1-3. Children obey your parents; come when they call you, go where they send you, do what they bid you, do not what they forbid you; and this chearfully, and from a principle of love. Though you have said you will not, yet afterwards repent and obey. Submission to their rebukes, instructions and corrections, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward. Disposing of themselves with the advice, direction and consent of parents, not alienating their property, but with their approbation. Endeavouring in every thing to be the comfort of their parents, and to make their old age easy to them; maintaining them if they stand in need of support. That thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee - This promise, (which is often literally fulfilled) is expounded in a more general sense Eph_6:3. That it may be well with thee, and thou mayst live long on the earth - Those that in conscience towards God keep this and other of God's commandments, may be sure it shall be well with them, and they shall live as long on the earth as infinite wisdom sees good for, them, and what they may seem to be cut short of on earth, shall be abundantly made up in eternal life, the heavenly Canaan which God will give them.

Exodus 20:13 Thou shalt not kill - Thou shalt not do any thing hurtful to the health, or life of thy own body, or any other's. This doth not forbid our own necessary defence, or the magistrates putting offenders to death; but it forbids all malice and hatred to any, for he that hateth his brother is a murderer, and all revenge arising therefrom; likewise anger and hurt said or done, or aimed to be done in a passion; of this our Saviour expounds this commandment, Mat_5:22.

Exodus 20:14 Thou shalt not commit adultery - This commandment forbids all acts of uncleanness, with all those desires, which produce those acts and war against the soul.

Exodus 20:15 Thou shalt not steal - This command forbids us to rob ourselves of what we have, by sinful spending, or of the use and comfort of it by sinful sparing; and to rob others by invading our neighbour's rights, taking his goods, or house, or field, forcibly or clandestinely, over - reaching in bargains, not restoring what is borrowed or found, with - holding just debts, rents or wages; and, which is worst of all, to rob the public in the coin or revenue, or that which is dedicated to the service of religion.

Exodus 20:16 Thou shalt not bear false witness - This forbids, Speaking falsely in any matter, lying, equivocating, and any way devising and designing to deceive our neighbour. Speaking unjustly against our neighbour, to the prejudice of his reputation; And (which is the highest offence of both these kinds put together) Bearing false witness against him, laying to his charge things that he knows not, either upon oath, by which the third commandment, the sixth or eighth, as well as this, are broken, or in common converse, slandering, backbiting, tale - bearing, aggravating what is done amiss, and any way endeavouring to raise our own reputation upon the ruin of our neighbor's.

Exodus 20:17 Thou shalt not covet - The foregoing commands implicitly forbid all desire of doing that which will be an injury to our neighbour, this forbids all inordinate desire of having that which will be a gratification to ourselves. O that such a man's house were mine! such a man's wife mine! such a man's estate mine! This is certainly the language of discontent at our own lot, and envy at our neighbour's, and these are the sins principally forbidden here. God give us all to see our face in the glass of this law, and to lay our hearts under the government of it!

-See Original Link

Matthew Henry's Commentary on Exodus 20

2011-10-25T23:34:00.002-04:00

Chapter Contents

The preface to the ten commandments. (1,2) The commandments of the first table. (3-11) Of the second table. (12-17) The fear of the people. (18-21) Idolatry again forbidden. (22-26)

Commentary on Exodus 20:1,2

God speaks many ways to the children of men; by conscience, by providences, by his voice, to all which we ought carefully to attend; but he never spake at any time so as he spake the TEN COMMANDMENTS. This law God had given to man before; it was written in his heart; but sin so defaced it, that it was necessary to revive the knowledge of it. The law is spiritual, and takes knowledge of the secret thoughts, desires, and dispositions of the heart. Its grand demand is love, without which outward obedience is mere hypocrisy. It requires perfect, unfailing, constant obedience; no law in the world admits disobedience to itself. Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all, James 2:10. Whether in the heart or the conduct, in thought, word, or deed, to omit or to vary any thing, is sin, and the wages of sin is death.

Commentary on Exodus 20:3-11

The first four of the ten commandments, commonly called the FIRST table, tell our duty to God. It was fit that those should be put first, because man had a Maker to love, before he had a neighbour to love. It cannot be expected that he should be true to his brother, who is false to his God. The first commandment concerns the object of worship, JEHOVAH, and him only. The worship of creatures is here forbidden. Whatever comes short of perfect love, gratitude, reverence, or worship, breaks this commandment.

Whatsoever ye do, do all the glory of God. The second commandment refers to the worship we are to render to the Lord our God. It is forbidden to make any image or picture of the Deity, in any form, or for any purpose; or to worship any creature, image, or picture. But the spiritual import of this command extends much further. All kinds of superstition are here forbidden, and the using of mere human inventions in the worship of God. The third commandment concerns the manner of worship, that it be with all possible reverence and seriousness. All false oaths are forbidden. All light appealing to God, all profane cursing, is a horrid breach of this command. It matters not whether the word of God, or sacred things, all such-like things break this commandment, and there is no profit, honour, or pleasure in them. The Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain. The form of the fourth commandment, "Remember," shows that it was not now first given, but was known by the people before. One day in seven is to be kept holy. Six days are allotted to worldly business, but not so as to neglect the service of God, and the care of our souls. On those days we must do all our work, and leave none to be done on the sabbath day. Christ allowed works of necessity, charity, and piety; for the sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath, Mark 2:27; but all works of luxury, vanity, or self-indulgence in any form, are forbidden. Trading, paying wages, settling accounts, writing letters of business, worldly studies, trifling visits, journeys, or light conversation, are not keeping this day holy to the Lord. Sloth and indolence may be a carnal, but not a holy rest. The sabbath of the Lord should be a day of rest from worldly labour, and a rest in the service of God. The advantages from the due keeping of this holy day, were it only to the health and happiness of mankind, with the time it affords for taking care of the soul, show the excellency of this commandment. The day is blessed; men are blessed by it, and in it. The blessing and direction to keep holy are not limited to the seventh day, but are spoken of the sabbath day.

Commentary on Exodus 20:12-17

The laws of the SECOND table, that is, the last six of the ten commandments, state our duty to ourselves and to one another, and explain the great commandment, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, Luke 10:27. Godliness and honesty must go together. The fifth commandment concerns the duties we owe to our relations. Honour thy father and thy mother, includes esteem of them, shown in our conduct; obedience to their lawful commands; come when they call you, go where they send you, do what they bid you, refrain from what they forbid you; and this, as children, cheerfully, and from a principle of love. Also submission to their counsels and corrections. Endeavouring, in every thing, to comfort parents, and to make their old age easy; maintaining them if they need support, which our Saviour makes to be particularly intended in this commandment, Matthew 15:4-6. Careful observers have noted a peculiar blessing in temporal things on obedient, and the reverse on disobedient children. The sixth commandment requires that we regard the life and the safety of others as we do our own. Magistrates and their officers, and witnesses testifying the truth, do not break this command. Self-defence is lawful; but much which is not deemed murder by the laws of man, is such before God. Furious passions, stirred up by anger or by drunkenness, are no excuse: more guilty is murder in duels, which is a horrible effect of a haughty, revengeful spirit. All fighting, whether for wages, for renown, or out of anger and malice, breaks this command, and the bloodshed therein is murder. To tempt men to vice and crimes which shorten life, may be included. Misconduct, such as may break the heart, or shorten the lives of parents, wives, or other relatives, is a breach of this command. This command forbids all envy, malice, hatred, or anger, all provoking or insulting language. The destruction of our own lives is here forbidden. This commandment requires a spirit of kindness, longsuffering, and forgiveness. The seventh commandment concerns chastity. We should be as much afraid of that which defiles the body, as of that which destroys it. Whatever tends to pollute the imagination, or to raise the passions, falls under this law, as impure pictures, books, conversation, or any other like matters. The eighth commandment is the law of love as it respects the property of others. The portion of worldly things allotted us, as far as it is obtained in an honest way, is the bread which God hath given us; for that we ought to be thankful, to be contented with it, and, in the use of lawful means, to trust Providence for the future. Imposing upon the ignorance, easiness, or necessity of others, and many other things, break God's law, though scarcely blamed in society. Plunderers of kingdoms though above human justice, will be included in this sentence. Defrauding the public, contracting debts without prospect of paying them, or evading payment of just debts, extravagance, all living upon charity when not needful, all squeezing the poor in their wages; these, and such things, break this command; which requires industry, frugality, and content, and to do to others, about worldly property, as we would they should do to us. The ninth commandment concerns our own and our neighbour's good name. This forbids speaking falsely on any matter, lying, equivocating, and any way devising or designing to deceive our neighbour. Speaking unjustly against our neighbour, to hurt his reputation. Bearing false witness against him, or in common conversation slandering, backbiting, and tale-bearing; making what is done amiss, worse than it is, and in any way endeavouring to raise our reputation upon the ruin of our neighbour's. How much this command is every day broken among persons of all ranks! The tenth commandment strikes at the root; Thou shalt not covet. The others forbid all desire of doing what will be an injury to our neighbour; this forbids all wrong desire of having what will gratify ourselves.

Commentary on Exodus 20:18-21

This law, which is so extensive that we cannot measure it, so spiritual that we cannot evade it, and so reasonable that we cannot find fault with it, will be the rule of the future judgment of God, as it is for the present conduct of man. If tried by this rule, we shall find our lives have been passed in transgressions. And with this holy law and an awful judgment before us, who can despise the gospel of Christ? And the knowledge of the law shows our need of repentance. In every believer's heart sin is dethroned and crucified, the law of God is written, and the image of God renewed. The Holy Spirit enables him to hate sin and flee from it, to love and keep this law in sincerity and truth; nor will he cease to repent.

Commentary on Exodus 20:22-26

Moses having entered into the thick darkness, God there spake in his hearing all that follows from hence to the end of chap. 23, which is mostly an exposition of the ten commandments. The laws in these verses relate to God's worship. The Israelites are assured of God's gracious acceptance of their devotions. Under the gospel, men are encouraged to pray every where, and wherever God's people meet in his name to worship him, he will be in the midst of them; there he will come unto them, and will bless them.

-See Original Link

The Conquest of Canaan

2011-10-25T13:26:00.004-04:00

Who are the Canaanites

The Canaanites were the inhabitants of Canaan, the older native name of Palestine. As a geographical designation, the Hebrew form of "Canaan" seems to be derived from "Hurrian", meaning "belonging to the land of red purple." As early as the fourteenth century BC this term came to be used of the country in which the Canaanites, or Phoenician traders, exchanged for their wares their most important commercial commodity, red purple dye, which was obtained from the murex shells found on the shores of the eastern Mediterranean. Accordingly, the Amarna Letters apply the term "Land of Canaan" to the Phoenician coast, and the Egyptians referred to all of western Syria by this name.

By the time of the Conquest, however, the term Canaan was in vogue as the general designation of the territory later called Palestine. Canaanites lived in both the eastern and western part of the country (Josh. 11:3). According to Judges 1:9, 10, they were praactically everywhere, in the hill country, the Negev, the Shephelah, and Hebron. "The language of Canaan" (Is. 19:18) refers principally to Hebrew, but embraces the general West Semitic languages spoken in this territory, of which Phoenician and Moabite were also dialects.

The name Palestine, as a geographical term, is of later origin and is derived from the Philistines (peleste) who settled in large numbers along the southern coast in the twefth century BC. The area where they settled became known as Philisita (Joel 3:4), from which, in turn, the Greek name (he palestine) was derived (interesting note: in Hebrew, Palestinians, for instance as in Palestianian Liberation Organization, is called a philisti. This term appears in the Bible and is translated there as Philistine. Israeli is simply the English transliteration of the Hebrew yisraeli, which appears in the Bible also and there is translated into English as Israelite. One gets a very interesting and different perspective on current events in the Middle East if you think in terms of the Israelites against the Philistines. Makes it easy to figure out who the good guys are, in case you had any doubts. Is the current Israel the Israel of the restoration? see Hosea 11:10-11. Behind yahweh they will go [reversal of 2a]. Because he roars, his children -- i.e., the Israelites -- will return, but they do not return in joy, but in a state of shock and fright, in a time of disaster and panic. The word "tremble" is usually the result of dread at a sudden noise, the meaning of which is not understood, by which probably is indicated that something is wrong. They return from the west -- literally, "sea". The use of the verb "to tremble" and the statement from "the sea" gives us a clue as to the restoration being described here. It is not the restoration of Ezra's time after the Babylonian captivity. They did not come from the west or the sea then -- only from Assyria and Egypt. What is described here best fits the return in the twentieth century to the establishment of the present state of Israel. Notice in this jpassage that there is no recognition of sin, no repentance, no turning to God. they come, and not in joy, but in fear.

The NIV translates taht they come when he roars, literally, "because he roars." That is, because of the action of God, they come trembling.

Following World War II thousands and thousands of Jewish people fled Europe, coming on ships toward the land of Palestine. Many were stopped by the British and housed in concentration camps on Cyprus until Israel became independent in 1948. Many emigrants also came from the Arab countries, to the north and east and from Egypt in the South.

They left evrything they owned, many times. And they came trembling, not with assurance. See Deuteronomy 28:64-67. In the Nazi camps, in the morning the Germans would line the Jews up, pick a few at random, and those were were randomly selected would be gassed. At night, the same process would be repeated. See also Ezekiel 37 -- the Dry Bones.)

The Invasion of Canaan
In the great pagan centers on the Nile and the Tigris there was always an active movement of religious and cultural elements which tended to create an almost imperceptible synthesis. Throughout the many centuries preceding the Israelite conquest this syncretizing process had been operative upon the pre-Israelite inhabitants of Syro-Palestine, so that by the time of Israel's entrance into the land the Canaanites were enslaved by a morally degenerate paganism.
Israel's conquest of the land would be the ultimate fulfillment of Gen. 9:25-27 (see also Josh. 9:22-22).

Israel's Opportunity and Peril in the Conquest
In this moral and religious situation, which confronted Israel on the eve of the Conquest, lay the Hebrew nation's greatest opportunity for witness to its distinctive calling and mission and at the same time its greatest peril. if the nation would remain loyal to its call to separation and resist incessant pressure from all sides to yield to moral and religious syncretism with surrounding paganism, the discharge of its high task of world-blessing would be assured (Ex. 19:5-7).

If, however, the nation compromised its moral and spiritual separateness, its witness was doomed, its role of blessing forfeited. This is the reason the Israelites were divinely commanded to not only utterly destroy the Cannanites, who by their idolatry and wickedness had forfeited their rights to the land of Canaan, but also to possess their land and to keep themselves in rigid and uncompromising separation from the idolatry that led to their corruption and downfall (Gen. 15:16; Josh. 6:17, 21; Judges 2:1-3).

What they faced is the same thing we face today. To be a Christian is almost fashionable, or at least not horribly unacceptable. It is difficult to make fun of a group when one of their number becomes President of the United States (i.e., Jimmy Carter or, for that matter, Bill Clinton -- also the Gores are both Southern Baptists, and for that matter, so was Harry Truman). However, as we are acceptable, this is still within firm limits. It is okay to believe anything, just so long as you don't bother anyone with it. Live and let live. Don't hassle thy neighbor. Alternate life-styles and all. And unfortunately, many evangelicals have accepted this idea. In so doing, evangelicals, for the most part, have lost their purpose, the very meaning of their name. We don't evangelize! It is not acceptable. We don't want anyone thinking we're a JW or worse yet, a Moonie. Instead, of evangelizing, a lot of evangelicals are busy lobbying for new laws, completely obscuring the gospel in so doing.

The Biblical Resume of the Conquest
After signal victories in Transjordan over Sihon, king of the Amorites and Og, king of Bashan, Israel after the death of Moses and under Joshua's leadership, passed over Jordan and began the Conquest. The story of the Conquest is told in Joshua 1 to 12, and the allocation of the land to the various tribes is related in Joshua 13-22. After the destruction of Jericho and Ai (Josh. 6:1-8:29), the conquest of southern Canaan (10) and northern Canaan (11:1-5) is described. Joshua 11:16-12:24 summarizes the Conquest as a whole.

The events recorded in the biblical account are evidently highly selective. Summary statements (21:43-45) seemingly embrace other conquests not specifically described in the book. Those which are included were considered sufficient to accomplish the author's purpose of proving God's faithfulness to His people to give them the land of Canaan for their possession.

The Date of the Conquest
The question of the date of the Conquest is of a piece with the problem of the date of the Exodus. Both as yet contain many unsolved difficulties and are subject to limitless disagreement among scholars. As one wrote (Miller Burrows): "It must be acknowledged that archeology has not simplified the problems of the date of the Conquest, but has rather introduced new complications."

Biblical Account of the Conquest Abbreviated
The quite detailed account of certain phases of the Israelite victories, particularly the initial successes at Jericho and Ai, and the extremely abbreviated report of some of the other campaigns, for example, that in northern Canaan (Josh. 11:1-5), with apparently some important battles unmentioned, have combined to give the impression of simplicity and have thus obscured to some extent the original complexity, which in turn is undoubtedly being revealed by archeology. However, the account in Joshua does indicate that the problem is complicated by the fact that the Conquest did not take place all at once, but in stages.

It is clear, for example, that the Transjordan was conquered by Moses, much of eastern and central Palestine by Joshua, and the remaining portions by the tribes either before or after the death of Joshua (Judges 1:1-36), while other individual towns like Gezer (Judges 1:29, 1 Kings 9:16), Dor, Megiddo, Taanach and Bethshan (Judges 1:27-28) were not subdued until much later.

Biblical Chronology and the Conquest
If the biblical narratives are accepted as reliable sources and the Biblical chronology followed, the Exodus, as already noted, must be placed around 1441 BC and the fall of Jericho around 1401 BC. With this agrees the view of the British excavator of Jericho, John Garstang. The chronological notices in Judges 11:26 and 1 Kings 6:1 support this position, as well as the evident time scheme underlying the OT historical books to the Solomonic era. In addition, this position has the distinct advantage of allowing at least a partial equation of the Habiru of the Amarna letters and the Israelites led by Joshua.

Alleged Conflicting Archeological Data at Ai
A 1401 BC date of the beginning of the conquest is supposed to violate the assured results of archeological findings in Palestine, notably at Ai, Lachish, and Debir. The problem of Ai is indeed acute, if the mound of et Tell is actually the biblical city. Excavation of the site by Mme. Judith Marquet-Krause in 1933 and 1934 has shown that there was an occupational gap in the history of the mound from about 2200 BC until after 1200 BC, so that supposedly there was nothing but a ruin there when Joshua and Israel are said to have captured and destroyed it (Josh. 8).

Some critics, like Martin Noth, attempt a solution to the problem by radically dismissing the biblical story as an aetiological (a story made up to explain why something is the way it is, as in Native American stories about "how the bear lost his tail" or the like) legend, which supposedly explains how the place came to be in ruins and to be called "Ruin" (the meaning of Ai in Hebrew, after all). A less radical explanation, but one which scarcely accords much more historical reliability to the biblical account is that of Albright, who assumes that the narraive in Joshua 8 originally referred to the destruction of Bethel in the 13th century BC but that the aetiological interest in the ruins of Ai caused the story to be attached to this site instead of Bethel. But this assumption, besides being objectionable in that it reflects upon the genuine historicity of the biblical account, is extremely unlikely ecause the biblical narrative carefully distinguishes between the two cities (Joshua 8:12) and there is not the slitest hint of any destruction of Bethel at this time.

However, the destruction of Bethel in the 13th century BC by a tremendous conflagration, shown in the excavation of the site in 1934 by a joint expedition of the Pittsburgh-Xenia Theological Seminary and the American Schools of Oriental Research, under the leadership of Albright, undoubtedly is to be connected with the later destruction of the city by the tribe of Joseph quite some time after Joshua's death (Judges 1:22-26).

More reasonable is the explanation of Father Hughes Vincint that the inhabitants of Ai had merely a military outpost at Ai of such modest proportions and temporary nature that it left no remains to give a clue of its existence to the archeologists. However, the narrative clearly indicates an inhabited city.

Whatever the explanation, further investigation and excavation in the vicinity will doubtless yield the correct solution. It is still barely possible as Vincent suggests, that there was a settlement in Joshua's day there, although no trace of it has as yet been found. The biblical narrative stressed the smallness of the then-existing city (Josh. 7:3), which may have been nothing more than a fortress guarding Bethel. Then too, it should be remembered, as Sir Frederick Kenyon observed, "the the transference of a name from a ruined or abandoned site to another nearby is a common phenomenon in Palestine." Future research may establish the actual site of the late Bronze Age city which fell to Joshua is not et-Tell at all, but somewhere in the immediate or more remote vicinity of the ancient ruin, and discover that the name of the older city was transferred to it.

Alleged Evidence from Lachish
Archeological findings at Lachish (Tell ed-Duweir), the capture of which by Joshua and all Israel is related in Joshua 10:31-33, show that the city suffered violent destruction by fire about 1230 BC. A thick layer of ash containing a scarab of Rameses II, an inscribed bowl and several other details combine to establish the date. But the question may fairly be broached, is this destrction to be attributed to the invading Israelites under Joshua? Advocates of the late-date theories of the conquest readily assume this to be the case. But besides being complete out of focus with the findings at Jericho and the general biblical datings, the fact must be faced that the biblical record says not a word about the city itself being burned or destroyed when captured by Joshua. Rather, in the light of Joshua 11:13 it is clearly to be intimated that in the case of "cities that stood upon their mounds", it was Joshua's later military policy, and with few exceptions, to burn none of them.

Alleged Evidence from Debir
The city of Debir, earlier known as Kiriath Sepher, offers a similar example. Now identified with Tel Beit Mirsim, thirteen miles soutwest of Hebron, the mound was excavated in 1926 by a joint expedition of the Pittsburgh-Xenia Theological Seminary and the American Schools of Oriental Research at Jerusalem under the direction of Melvin Grove Kyle and W.F. Albright. Here, too, at the end of the Late Bronze Age there is a great burned layer, above which are Israelite remains. But is this destruction of the Canaanite city shortly before 1200 BC to be connected with Joshua's conquests? he conqueror is not said to have destroyed the city itself (Josh. 10:38-39) but only its inhabitants, and it must have been reoccupied by the Canaanites and subsequently recaptured for Judah by Caleb's nephew, Othniel (Josh. 15:15-17), Judges 1:11-13), unless two variant and contradictory accounts are assumed.

Necessity of Caution in Using Archeological Data
It is thus apparent that investigators must be extremely careful of the ever-present temptation to misuse archeological evidence to support a theory; that is, to use only some of the evidence available for a given question and, because it doesn't support the theory, to ignore or assume erroneous other data. This is a caution for all sides on the debate.

Scholars must also be extremely wary of attaching undue authority to acheologist's estimates of dates and interpretation of data. That the fixing of dates and the conclusions drawn from archeological findings are too often dependent on subjective rather than objective factors is amply demonstrated by the wise divergence between compentent authorities on these matters.

On the question of the twin problems of the date of the Exodus and the conquest of Canaan the conservative student is warranted in moving very slowly before abandoning the date of c. 1441 BC for the Exodus and 1401 BC for the Conquest in favor of a period a century and a half or more later under the plea that archeological evidence demands it. Of greater importance is the reading given in scripture.

The Extent of the Conquest
In the account of the invasion of Canaan under Joshua (Josh. 1-12), it is apparent that, although the power of the Canaanites was broken by the destruction of Jericho and Ai (Joshua 6-8), as a result of the southern (10) and northern (11:1-5) campaigns, yet the inhabitants were not wholly exterminated (Judges 1:1-36).

Extermination of the Canaanites Not Complete
Although the Canaanites were completely massacred when a city was taken, yet in many cases the city itself was not destroyed (Josh. 11:13), and not a few of the people who had escaped by flight or were in hiding returned (Josh. 10:43) to the conquered cities, and years afterward, when the tribes of Israel were scattered to settle, they met with sporadic resistance. Accordingly, places once conquered like Debir (Josh. 10:38-39) had to be subsequently reconquered (Judges 1:11-15). Among other similar cases is Hebron (Josh. 10:36-37, Judges 1:10) [alternately, the "retakings" may merely be "retellings" of the same story from different perspectives, with different emphases. Keep in mind the tendency to tell stories thematically, letting chronological order take a back seat].

Joshua's Political BlundersThree political blunders were committed by Joshua. First, he made a treaty with the Gibeonites (Josh. 9). Second, he allowed the Jebusites to hold Jerusalem (Josh. 15:63), and third, he failed to dispossess the Philistines and control the country to the sea. As a result, Judah and Simeon were cut off from the rest of the nation. The Jebusite stronghold at Jerusalem commanded the main road north and south and was skirted for some ten miles on the west by settlements of the Gibeonites. Between Jerusalem and Jericho was a tract of rocky land cut by impassible gorges running east and west. From Jerusalem westward to the Mediterranean Sea was a strip of territory occupied by foreigners -- first Gibeonites, then other Canaanites in Dan and then the Philistines as far as the sea. This situation was to have serious repercussions affecting subsequent Israelite history, not least of which was the fact that the northern tribes remained somewhat separated in their thinking from Judah, perhaps easing the subsequent splitting of the kingdom after Solomon.
And Joshua and Israel failed to drive the Canaanites out of various other sections of the country -- notably out of Gezer (Josh. 16:10) and out of Bethshan, Ibleam, Dor, Endor, Taanach and Megiddo in and about the Plain of Esdraelon (josh. 17:11); out of Beth-shemesh in the Shephelah (Judges 1:33), and out of the region of Accho and Sidon in the northwestern coastal territory (Judges 1:31). Wherever the Canaanites were allowed to remain they were to prove a snare to the Israelites, according to the divine warning (Judges 3:6-7).

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History and Character of Old Testament Sources

2011-10-18T11:46:00.000-04:00

-By Allen P. Ross

THE HISTORY AND CHARACTER OF THE SOURCES

The Hebrew Manuscripts

The manuscript evidence for the Hebrew text is rather late, but very well preserved. Before 400 B.C. there is no extant manuscript (MS) of the Hebrew Bible, and so we are left to infer scribal practices from the Bible itself and from other ancient Near Eastern practices. What can be readily demonstrated is that scribes had a determination to preserve the text. The text survived through all the disasters and devastations because the books were considered sacred and the scribes insisted on accurate transmission. There was a “psychology of canonicity” which fostered a care and a concern for the preservation of the sacred writings. For a study of similar scribal care in the ancient world, see W. F. Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity, pp. 78-79; and K. A. Kitchen, Ancient Orient and Old Testament, p. 140.

But there was also the tendency in some scribal circles to revise the text. They changed the script and the orthography according to literary conventions; they also changed linguistic features. We know something of how the vocalization of Hebrew changed and can thereby discern such changes. Moreover, the priests seem to have revised synoptic portions of the text in their teaching (compare Ps. 18 and 1 Sam. 22 in the Hebrew). On top of all of this, there would have been the accidental errors such as dittography, haplography, and the like.

From 400 B.C. until the time of the standardization of the Hebrew Text in 70 A.D., the same tendencies continued. The presence of a text-type among the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS; ca. 200 B.C. to 100 A.D.) identical with the one preserved by the Masoretes (whose earliest extant MS dates to ca. 900 A.D.) witnesses to the faithful preservation of the text. We learn something of this process of preservation from the Rabbinic tradition (Talmud, Nedarim 37b-38a).

But there was also a tendency among scribes to revise. The Sopherim (“scribes”) were “authorized revisers of the text” according to C. D. Ginsberg (in his Introduction to the Masoretico-Critico Edition of the Hebrew Bible [New York: KTAV, 1966], p. 307). After the return from the captivity the scribes altered the script from the old form to the Aramaic form of writing. But more importantly, some of the more liberal scribes altered the text for both philological and theological reasons. They modernized the text by replacing archaic forms and constructions, they smoothed our difficulties, they supplemented the text with additions and glosses from parallel passages, and they substituted euphemisms for vulgarities, altered names of false gods, and safe-guarded the divine name by substituting vowels from other forms.

The result of all these tendencies was the emergence of three different recensions of the Bible: the text preserved by the Masoretes (the textus receptus), the Samaritan Pentateuch (SP), and the Septuagint (LXX)--all three of which are corroborated by the DSS.

Gesenius demonstrated that the agreements between SP and LXX can be explained by assuming a common ancestor. This has been confirmed by the work of Cross on Samuel, and of Gerleman on Chronicles (Cross, Ancient Library of Qumran, p. 142; Gerleman, “Synoptic Studies in the Old Testament,” Lunds Universitets Arsskrift, p. 9). The common ancestor probably existed in Palestine at the time of the Chronicler (400 B.C.). This “old Palestinian recension” was brought to Egypt during the fifth century B.C. and was further vulgarized before it became the base of the LXX (ca. 300 B.C.). It also survived in Palestine and became the base of SP.[1]

It may be that the “old Babylonian recension” (Cross’s description of the text that the Masoretes eventually used) was reintroduced into Palestine about the time of the Maccabees (ca. 160 B.C.). What is clear is that in the Gospel times there was a fluid state of recensions in Palestine. This is seen in the use of the Old Testament in the New Testament, Rabbinic literature, and apocryphal books.

The Rabbinic testimony is that there was a movement away from plurality of recensions to a standardization of the Hebrew Text. The rules of biblical hermeneutics, compiled by Hillel the Elder, demanded a sacrosanct text. The evidence points to the existence of an official text with binding authority from a time shortly after the destruction of the temple in 70 A.D. Exegetical comments and hermeneutical principles enunciated by Zechariah ben ha-Kazzav, Nahum of Gimzo, Rabbi Akiva, and Rabbi Ishmael, all presuppose a stabilized text, the Masoretic text type. The Rabbis had settled on this conservative recension and adopted it for Judaism (conservative in that it made less changes and preserved more of the unusual and difficult things).

The work of the scribes now changed from clarifying the text to standardizing and preserving it, even with the many archaic and difficult forms in it. Because the scribes sought to conserve the text, no further developments of any significance occurred.

The work of conserving the text was the interest of the schools of families of Jewish scholars. They represented symbolically the vowels and liturgical cantillations by diacritical marks. They were known as “Masoretes” (Hebrew masar means “to hand down” by tradition); their tradition is called “Masorah”; and the text they preserved and vocalized is called the “Masoretic Text.” The work of the family of Ben Asher of the school of Tiberias (a city on the western shore of Galilee) achieved prominence with the support of Maimonides in the eleventh century.

For a summary of the history of the printing of the Hebrew Bible, see N. H. Sarna, “Bible: Text,” in Encyclopedia Judaica 4 (1971):831-35.

Ancient Versions

The Septuagint. Wurthwein provides a basic introduction to the Old Greek Old Testament. To that outline I shall add some helpful background from other sources. In general, we may say that the Torah or Law was translated into Greek between 295--247 B.C., the Prophets were translated before the end of the third century B.C., and the Hagiagrapha by 132 B.C.

Lagarde argued, apparently convincingly, that all extant manuscripts of the Old Greek translations go back to three recensions mentioned by Jerome, namely, the Egyptian by Hesychius, the Palestinian by Origen, and the Syrian by Lucien. These three in turn go back to the original Greek version.

The two modern editions of the Greek are based on Lagarde’s theory and model. The Cambridge Septuagint, containing the Pentateuch and historical books, presents Vaticanus (Codex B) because it is the purest. Gaps are filled in with Alexandrinus and Sinaiaticus. It includes an immense Greek critical apparatus. The Cambridge Septuagint has been preserved in a Greek-English Old Testament (Zondervan) that many check first as a time saving measure. The other edition, Rahlf’s, is the Gottingen LXX; this is a critical issue, but generally comes back to B. It does not have the Pentateuch and historical books. Rahlf’s edition covers these parts.

Recensions of the Septuagint. Waltke summarizes this thorny problem:

From his studies in Samuel--Kings, Cross concluded that the original LXX was revised no later than the first century B.C. toward a Hebrew text found in the Chronicler, some Qumran MSS, quotations of Josephus, the Greek minuscles boc2e2, and in the sixth column of Origen’s Hexapla, which is not Theodotionic but also Proto-Lucianic. This so-called Proto-Lucianic recension was then revised to the kai ge revision in favor of the Proto-Masoretic Text. The third revision came in the second century A.D. by Aq. (Aquila) and Sym. (Symmachus), who revised the kai ge recension toward the Rabbinic Masoretic Text. Barthelemy, on the other hand, contended that this Proto-Lucianic text is the original LXX, and thus envisions only two subsequent revisions. But G. Howard contended that both these lacked definitive proof.

Waltke then demonstrates that the evidence in the Minor Prophets more conclusively shows such a revision of the Old Greek to the Proto-MT. From it are the recensions of the second century A.D. Aquila, a student of Aqiba, made a literal translation to suit his exegetical principles. Symmachus tried more for the Greek idiom. Theodotion’s version superseded the original translation in the editions of the LXX.

In the third and fourth centuries A.D., then, recensions of Hesychius, Origen, and Lucian appeared. Origen’s fifth column of the Hexapla was influential on later copies of the LXX. It was a text consistently corrected to the Hebrew textus receptus and therefore most corrupt.

Waltke concludes, “In the light of this history, Lagarde is perfectly correct in saying that, other things being equal, the Greek reading deviating from MT should be regarded as the original LXX.”

The Aramaic Targums. The Aramaic translations of the Old Testament are less helpful for textual criticism. They were standardized later in history, but more significantly they are paraphrastic in nature, containing haggadic material, modernizations of names, explanations of figurative language, etc. Some of the Targumic materials are helpful, though, in understanding the official interpretations of the passage in the Synagogue. This often has some bearing on the textual difficulty. For a discussion of the Targums, see Wurthwein’s general introduction.

The Old Latin and the Vulgate. The Old Latin is probably a Jewish translation based on the LXX. The evidence for it is based not on a complete manuscript of it, but from manuscripts exhibiting a pre-Vulgate text, quotations in the Fathers, and marginal annotations in the Vulgate.

The Latin Vulgate was commissioned by Pope Damasus for Jerome (345-420). Jerome attempted several approaches of revising the Latin texts, and eventually worked out a translation from the Hebrew Text. His translation of the Psalms that is in the Vulgate (the so-called Gallican Psalter) was essentially drawn from the Hexapla.

Later, under the influence of the Jewish scholars at Bethlehem, Jerome produced a translation of the Psalms into Latin that is based on the Hebrew Text, called Psalterium iuxta hebraeos hieronymi, PIH.

The Syriac Peshitta. This was the translation begun in Edessa, started in the first century A.D. for the Pentateuch, and completed by the end of the fourth century. It appears to follow the Hebrew closely, but may have been translated from the LXX. The Pentateuch, Isaiah, the Minor Prophets, and in part the Psalms, show the influence of the LXX. Ezekiel and Proverbs are close to the Targums. Job is literal. Ruth is midrashic. Chronicles is partially midrashic.

The division of the Syrian Christians into Nestorians and Jacobites meant separate versions of the Peshitta (“simple”) based on the earlier translation.

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"Pentecost and Holiness" in 19th Century Holiness Theology

2011-10-17T12:10:00.000-04:00

By Melvin E. Dieter

If main-line Methodist theology had taken a noticeable turn away from Wesley to something new by the end of the century, so also, some contend, had the theology of the holiness revival.22 The first period of revival had put into place a theology of Wesleyan perfectionism which allowed its adherents to propagate their message with the rhetoric and methods of the revivalism of Finney. This new way of understanding and promoting the doctrine excited the intense debates and controversies concerning holiness within Methodism in the decades immediately following the Civil War. These, in turn, set the stage by the last quarter of the century for the next significant development in the theology of the revival. That transition was to bring Pentecostal motifs and rhetoric to the defense and promotion of the holiness cause.

It would have been most exceptional if the holiness movement where the emphasis on the present activity and power of the Holy Spirit had been promoted as vigorously as it had been at any time in the Church's history should not have begun to think that the revival had begun a new era of divine activity in the affairs of people and nations. The ideal of Pentecost and the certainty that the revival marked the beginning of a new "age of the Spirit" eventually became the dominant force in shaping the vision of the movement and its mission. This theological development was encouraged by strong religious and cultural forces such as the optimism and millennialism which were pervading the culture at the time.

We cannot give adequate attention to the influences of these wider movements upon the revival; rather, let us try to cut to what I believe is the heart of the theological questions involved. As early as 1857, a report on the Palmer's Tuesday Meetings picked up the Pentecostal and millennial theme. A participant saw in the meetings, "the germs, the dawnings of millennial glory." They were "strikingly imitative of the pentecostal," and, "similar to the upper room at Jerusalem, where the early disciples assembled with Mary, the mother of Jesus . . . till God gave them power from on high, the tongue of fire, . . . Is this the baptism now called for . . . ere the world blossom as the rose," he asked in conclusion?23 William Arthur's Tongue of Fire, published just before the Civil War, urged upon the churches the necessity for recovering the power of the Holy Spirit as it had been revealed at Pentecost and in the Book of Acts.24 The pentecostal theme continued to swell after the Civil War. L. R. Dunn, a Methodist holiness evangelist, wrote in 1871 that, "God is now wondrously moving among the nations . . .; a mighty upheaval is now going on; all men are looking on and wondering what will come out. O blessed, Holy Comforter, finish speedily Thy great work in the world."25 Holiness revivalists believed that in the renewal of the Pentecostal experience and gifts, the Church and world were experiencing the final stage of history before the consummation of all things in Christ. Terms such as "The Baptism of the Holy Spirit," "The Gift of the Ghost," and "The Promise of the Father" charged the religious atmosphere of American evangelicalism, both Calvinist and Wesleyan.

The Church of God (Anderson, Indiana) reformation movement which was born out of the crest of the first wave of post Civil War holiness evangelism in the late 1870's believed that the Holiness revival was the instrument which God was using at the end of history to bring the true church to the purity and the unity which human organization and creeds had denied to it. "The Age of the Spirit," had come in which the one invisible Church, hidden among the many sects of the time would finally be revealed as the one true visible "Church of God." It had been organized by the Spirit and not by human devices.26 Their understanding of the church as the dwelling place of the Spirit, their emphasis upon Spirit Baptism, upon the primacy of Spirit leadership and organization of the church, their insistence that men cannot ordain those who have been called by the Holy Spirit but rather, merely recognize the Spirit's sealing of the individual, all are indications of an ethos which pervaded the revival.

The more traditional groups such as the Church of the Nazarene or the Pilgrim Holiness Church which came out of the revival a generation later failed to join them in their radical anti sectarianism. Nevertheless, they exhibited the same "age of the Spirit" motifs which formed the heart of the Church of God reformation movement. God within them, individually and in their fellowship collectively, through the sanctifying Spirit molded their concepts of the nature of the fellowship, the purity of the church, their concept of the ministry and the qualifications which is required, ministerial education, and the mission and place of the church in the world and in history.27

Let me suggest then that the adoption of Pentecostal and Baptism of the Holy Ghost paradigms as the major vehicle for the expression of Holiness thought and preaching by the close of the century was no introduction of an unnatural or un-Wesleyan element into the holiness tradition; rather, it was a natural outgrowth of a weighted factor in Wesley's own teaching on Christian perfection and the work and witness of the Holy Spirit in persons and in the world which demanded theological explication that the traditional structures of Reformed theology could not support. In this new understanding of the possibility of a different relationship with God and a new release of Christ's life through an immediate and personal experience of the fullness of the Holy Spirit's presence, Wesley moved beyond the benchmarks of Lutheran and Calvinistic theology thereby tending naturally and easily, if not necessarily toward more ready explication of the dynamics of Christian perfection in terms of Pentecost and Spirit baptism and fullness.

Donald Dayton and Timothy Smith, among others, have suggested some of the possible sources of the shift to Pentecostal themes toward the end of the century. These theses which suggest that some of the roots of this change may be found in Asa Mahan and Charles Finney are certainly valid.28 They are commonly found in Phoebe Palmer herself.29 But in the Methodist holiness movement at least, there seems to me to be no more obvious source for them than in early Wesleyanism itself-in Wesley and Fletcher. Although the stream of authentic Wesleyan continuity which allowed Pentecost and Spirit baptism to become so significant an element in holiness theology flowed from Fletcher's writings rather than Wesley's, I believe too much has been made of purported differences between the two at this point. There is no good evidence that Wesley withheld his imprimatur from the general scheme of Fletcher's pentecostal interpretation of Christian perfection. His only objection was that by using "Spirit baptism" language, as he did, Fletcher might create the impression that all Christians had not received the Spirit in the initial experience of justification.30 But as to Fletcher's main themes of the significance of dispensations and Pentecostal motifs in relation to both the theological implications of Christian perfection and the means of entering into the experience of it, Wesley seemed to raise no other objection. Explicitly, in sermon and letter, and implicitly, in what he did and did not do as he edited some of Fletcher's writings on these themes, he accepted, or at the least, had no great concern about the implications of Fletcher's understanding or use of them.31

In this Wesleyan Theological Society, the Baptism of the Spirit issue and its relationship to the Holiness traditions is more than academic, for it is obviously bound up in the warp and woof of the historical identity of the movement and the denominations to which many in the Society belong. In recent years, some of the most serious dialogue we have engaged in has been occasioned not only by a growing theological maturity which allows us to look at ourselves with more openness and honesty, but by the realization that the question is no longer merely an in-house discussion. Nor is it an issue which involves only Methodist, Holiness, or some Wesleyan Pentecostal traditions. The theology of the Spirit is now a major concern of much of Christendom.32 I am suggesting that our Wesleyan traditions may be torn as they are in trying to respond to these questions because Wesley himself in his doctrines of the present possibility of a Christian perfection in this life and the direct witness of the Holy Spirit in Christian experience, crossed a line which demanded a different understanding of the dispensations of grace from that commonly accepted in Protestant circles. It was this reality which nudged Fletcher and many others in the tradition into logical tension with the understanding and teachings of Luther and other reformers. It may be that the source of the differences in interpretation among students of Wesley as they try to explicate is his own teachings on the Holy Spirit. Their varying and sometimes contradictory views may arise, in part, because of Wesley's own attempts to defend and define his doctrines within categories that are more appropriate to Reformed teaching than to the explication of the personal relationships with God and Christ in the Spirit inherent in his doctrine. Fletcher apparently sensed the problem and turned to his Pentecostal hermeneutic. Wesley did not hesitate to applaud the move.33

Without some understanding of this shift, I believe we will fail to appreciate what really is involved in the tensions on these questions that exist and have always existed in the movement itself as well as those "hair's breadth" but crucial distinctions that exist between Wesleyan and Reformed theological development on these issues in spite of broad areas of general agreement on other evangelical doctrines. Whatever Biblical, or experiential or Reformed, or Anglican, or Catholic, or patristic and Eastern Orthodox sources may have informed Wesley's doctrinal synthesis on Christian perfection and the Holy Spirit, it seems to have set up a built-in point of irritation if not contradiction with the Reformation understanding. If there is any verifiable historical evidence for this thesis, as I am convinced there is, it may help us judge more wisely why the dynamics of Pentecost and Spirit Baptism may not only be useful but perhaps desirable, for explicating the dynamics of a holiness or even a Wesleyan Methodist theology of Christian perfection.

I would like to set forth the proposition that Fletcher's attraction for Pentecostal and Spirit baptism motifs was a natural, if not necessary, consequence of Wesley's own complaint with the Reformed understanding of the possibility of perfection in love in this life. When Wesley allowed the possibility of a denouement point prior to death and glorification in which the individual may be made free from sin and free to love God with his whole heart, he broke with the fundamental Reformation understanding of history and eschatology.

He shifted the tension point between the eschatological "not yet" and the realizable "now," which Karl Rahner, in discussing the same theme in his little book On Prayer calls the "moment of temporal eternity."34 In itself, this may be said to have begun to load Wesley's holiness dialectic of growth and crisis with a radical change factor leaning toward the crisis polarity. It will be my contention that the factor lends some logic to his tendency, as his own ministry progressed, to emphasize the "now" and the "moment" in his continuum of salvation and sanctification. Furthermore, this leaning moved naturally toward the Spirit Baptism language of Fletcher which also emphasized the moments in the Acts accounts and the moment which was central to the shaping of the revivalistic perfectionism which we saw taking place in the immediate pre- and post Civil War period in the Methodist and other holiness movements. The discussion which follows will illustrate how difficult it is to fit the implications of Wesley's affirmations into the traditional structures of time and history commonly utilized in Reformation thought.

See Original Link

22 Donald W. Dayton, "Asa Mahan and the Development of American Holiness Theology" Wesleyan Theological Journal, 9, 1974, 60-69; "The Doctrine of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit: Its Emergence and Significance" Ibid., 13, Spring 1978; 114-126; Alex R. G. Deasley, "Entire Sanctification and the Baptism with the Holy Spirit: Perspectives on the Biblical View of the Relationship," ibid., 14, Spring 1979, 27-30; John A. Knight, "John Fletcher's Influence on the Development of Wesleyan Theology in America," Ibid., 13, 1978, 13-33; Herbert McGonigle, "Pneumatological Nomenclature in Early Methodism," ibid., 8, 1973, 61-72.

23 "Meetings for Holiness-Sectarianism," Beauty of Holiness VIII (December, 1857), 364-5.

24 William Arthur, The Tongue of Fire: or The True Power of Christianity (New York: Harper and Bros., 1856).

25 Lewis Romaine Dunn, The Mission of the Spirit (or The Office and Work of the Comforter in Human Redemption), (Carlton and Lanahan, 1871) p. 299.

26 John W. V. Smith, The Quest for Holiness and Unity, a Centennial History of the Church of God (Anderson, IN: Warner Press, Inc.,1980), p.96.

27 Seth Cook Rees's The Ideal Pentecostal Church (Cincinnati, OH: God's Revivalist Office.1898) is one of the most systematic outlines of how these concepts were regarded in the movement. Rees was one of the founders of the Pilgrim Holiness Church.

28 See n. 22 above; Timothy L. Smith, "The Doctrine of the Sanctifying Spirit: Charles G. Finney's Synthesis of Wesleyan and Covenant Theology," Wesleyan Theological Journal, 13, Spring 1978, 92-113.

29 Her Incidental Illustrations was written a year before Arthur's Tongue of Fire. See pp. 76-77 of the former.

30 "Letter of John Wesley to Joseph Benson, London, December 8, 1770, The Works of John Wesley (Kansas City, Mo.: Beacon Hill Press, 1979), XII, 416. For a thorough discussion of this point, see Laurence Wood, Pentecostal Grace (Wilmore, KY: Francis Asbury Publishing Company, 1980), pp. 201-203, 209-228.

31 "Sermon on the Death of Mr. Fletcher," Wesley's Works, VII, 436.

32 Cf. Killian McDonnell, "The Determinative Doctrine of the Holy Spirit," Theology Today, 39, July 1982, 142-161.

33 "John Wesley to Elizabeth Ritchie, January 17,1775, Wesley, Works XIII, 55: "Mr. Fletcher has given us a wonderful view of the different dispensations which we are under. I believe the difficult subject has never been placed in so clear a light before. It seems that God has raised him up for this very thing—. . . By confining yourself to those who write clearly, your understanding will be opened and strengthened. . . ."

34 (New York: Paulist Press, 1968), pp. 76-77.

Post Civil War Developments in 19th Century Holiness Theology

2011-10-17T10:55:00.002-04:00

By Melvin E. Dieter

A Civil War Artillery Unit

The second period of development in holiness theology was basically a period of the solidification of the concepts and conflicts which had developed in the Palmer period. The publication of several comprehensive summaries of the standard teachings of the church on the doctrine of Christian perfection, e.g. George Peck's The Scripture Doctrine of Christian Perfection Stated and Defended and Jesse Peck's The Central Idea of Christianity17 helped to set the stage of the theological debate and even intense controversy which surrounded the doctrine in the period. The details of the struggle are now more objectively known than they were by a previous generation thanks to the many scholars who have been probing nineteenth century religious history. The confrontations were often bitter as two increasingly divergent paradigms for understanding Christian perfection vied for the loyalties of Methodism. Wesley was used against himself as both sides in the conflict drew heavily upon one polarity or the other of his crisis growth dialectic of holiness. Holiness advocates in the church commonly took up crisis; their opponents emphasized process. Purity was put over against maturity; the "now" against the "not yet." The holiness advocates relied on Wesley's definition of sin as a known transgression of the law of God to defend their witness to perfection in love when at times they may not have left a perfect witness to it in their actions; the movement's critics contrasted the sometimes deficient actions of those who claimed to be conscious of no disobedience in their hearts with the high standards of Christian maturity which Wesley at times used to confirm the truth of the experience.18

The theological tensions were exacerbated by the vigor of the holiness revival as it took up and revived the camp meeting as the chief instrument of holiness evangelism with the organization of the National Camp meeting Association for the Promotion of Christian Holiness at Vineland, New Jersey in 1867. The call for a higher quality of Christian experience swelled in the Methodist churches and spilled over, continuing to interact with Oberlin and Reformed perfectionism to develop a network of holiness meetings and associations which contributed significantly to the Methodization of American religion in the nineteenth century. It spread to England, the Continent and to mission stations around the world.

A multiplicity of factors (undoubtedly including some undue personal ambitions and injudicious actions) contributed to the critical though not total separation of church and movement which occurred by the turn of the century; but it was theological polarization and organizational tension which played the leading roles. In the course of the struggle, some denied the Wesleyan dialectic altogether by espousing some sort of Zinzendorfian theology which obviated any subsequency of sanctification beyond the new birth.19 Others who disagreed with the holiness movement's Wesleyanism marched on into the future intrigued by the new world of continental theology. A second generation of Methodist theologians moved into the churches' seminaries. For most of these, Wesley with his strong tinges of pietism and puritanism became passe.20 As large numbers of holiness adherents left the churches, most of Methodism seemed to breath a sigh of relief that the questions and the conflict had both been muted. A long period of relative silence in the churches of Wesley on their movement's central doctrine ensued.21

See Original Link

17 (New York: G. Lane and P. P. Sanford, 1842), (Boston: H. V. Degen, 1856).

18 Randolf Foster's discussion in Chapters X and XI of his Christian Purity, or The Heritage of Faith (New York: Phillips and Hunt, 1869) illustrates these points.

19 J. T. Crane, Holiness, the Birthright of All God 's Children (New York: Nelson and Phillips, 1875).

20 Robert E. Chiles, Theological Transition in American Methodism, 1790-1935 (New York: Abingdon Press, 1965), pp. 65, 66.

21 Charles Ferguson, Organizing to Beat the Devil (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Co., 1971), pp. 283-85.

The Historic Milieu of Nineteenth Century Holiness Theology

2011-10-17T10:41:00.001-04:00

By Melvin E. Dieter

A few years after he was elected bishop in 1844, Leonidas L. Hamline wrote to a friend that he was more convinced than ever that there was an inevitable conflict on the doctrine of holiness impending in the Methodist Episcopal Church. As a warm friend of the growing holiness revival in the church, he looked forward to the struggle with anticipation. He observed, that when foes of holiness were still, it meant that friends of holiness were idle.1 About ten years prior to the bishop's remarks those who had strong concerns for the cause of holiness in the church had begun to stir themselves in special efforts for a more vigorous promotion of Christian perfection or entire sanctification. Immediately, those who were not in sympathy with either the teachings or the methods of new movement began to voice their fears concerning it. The conflict which Hamline anticipated was ready to break into the open about the time of his observations given above. Controversy was to be one of the primary contextual elements within which the theology of the Holiness revival was to develop throughout the century.

Early 19th Century Camp Meeting

Early opposition to the new holiness promotion in the church rose out of the fear that any formal organization on behalf of a doctrine so central to Methodism, smacked of a potential for schism.2 (Perhaps the fact that one of these warnings came from a man who later was to become bishop constituted an early indication of his future exaltation, for in those times a good nose for the least tendency toward organizational irregularity was a gift which often seemed to commend one to the office.) In spite of Jesse Peck's words of caution in 1852, organizations and agencies for holiness promotion proliferated both within and without Methodism. It is true that three decades later the separation of the "come-outers," or more radical elements of the movement seemed to confirm the divisive propensities which some saw in the revival; but the movement as a whole did not leave Methodism in any great numbers to form new holiness churches until the end of the nineteenth century. Significant numbers of holiness pastors and lay persons chose to remain in Methodism. These holiness Methodists continued to relate to the newly formed Holiness churches through the numerous associations and camp meetings which became the coordinating centers of the movement. Such centers still bring both groups together today.

The institutional tensions created within the tightly disciplined Methodist ranks of the nineteenth century by the activities of the holiness adherents may, in themselves, provide an adequate reason for the church's rejection of not only the more radical elements of the revival, but even many of its moderates. Aggressive holiness bands, circles and associations with their local, county, state, and national organizations, replete with presses and periodicals sprang up everywhere. As in most such divisions within the American churches, however, there was also the charge of doctrinal deviation. The fact that the chief concern of the special efforts was the promotion of Christian perfection, the central and special doctrine of the Wesleyan movement merely intensified the doctrinal confrontations which accompanied the revival throughout the century.

The task in this brief review is to try to identify points of theological transition in the developing teaching of the holiness revivalists and the component elements which may have fed into such changes. From time to time, papers presented to this society have spoken to those questions.3 The nature and extent of any perceived modifications or deviations are now being reviewed more intensely because of the general revival of Wesley studies within the on-going Methodist Holiness Movement, within Methodism in general, and within the ecumenical Christian community. With due deference to Peter Berger, we can say that there is a rumor going the rounds of the theological world that sanctification and Christian perfection may still be vital components in any theology which can support a truly Christian witness to God's redemptive involvement in His hurting world.

See Original Link

1 Beauty of Holiness VIII (May, 1867), 154.

2 Guide to Holiness XXI (April, 1852), 113.

3 The Wesleyan Theological Journal, 13, Spring, 1978; 14, Spring 1979; and 14, Fall 1979, address this issue.

Palmer Theology

2011-10-17T10:24:00.000-04:00

By Melvin E. Dieter

Phoebe Palmer

The starting datum for our discussion of a holiness theology is the scholarly consensus that the doctrines of Christian perfection which the Methodist Church espoused during its formative decades in the new American nation were essentially those passed on to it by the standard works of Wesley, Fletcher, Clarke, and Watson along with the always popular biographies of early worthies such as Bramwell, Carvosso and Rogers.4 Holiness advocates consistently and persistently appealed to these as their authority base along with their final appeal to Scripture. Phoebe Palmer's introduction of her "altar terminology" and "shorter way" into the Methodist understanding and promotion of the doctrine marks the point at which new directions begin to emerge from this standard milieu of Wesleyan perfectionism. Palmer and her sister, Sarah Lankford, were prominent lay persons in the burgeoning center of Methodism in the equally burgeoning city of pre-Civil-War New York. They helped to launch early Methodist overseas missions with their enthusiastic financial and moral support. Phoebe was one of the leading lights in establishing the Five Points Mission on New York City's east side. Contemporary interest in her life and ministry centers on the pioneer role she played in modeling and defending the right of women to a place of public ministry in the church. But she and her physician husband, Walter were best known for the Tuesday Meetings for the Promotion of Holiness which began to meet in their home in 1835 as a women's class meeting. The meetings quickly became the center for holiness promotion within Methodism and beyond.5 Soon after the meetings, then under the direction of her sister, had moved to their home, she herself professed to enter into the experience of entire sanctification as the Wesleyan doctrine came to be known in the holiness movement.6

Out of that experience and a study of the Bible, she put together a series of Old and New Testament passages to create a new scala sancta by which the Christian believer could be cleansed from all the remains of inbred sin and enter into the Canaan land of perfect love. It represented a blend of the accepted Wesleyan standards mentioned above in interaction with other forces at work creating the currents of revivalism and reform which had been surging through the national experience of the day.

Christ, she said, is the Christian's altar. Exodus 37 told her that whatsoever toucheth the altar shall be holy; therefore, every Christian believer who is willing in faith to present himself or herself, without any reservation whatsoever, as a "living sacrifice" (Rom. 12:1, 2) upon the altar provided by the finished work of Christ is entirely sanctified and cleansed from all sin.7 The clear promises of Scripture are the voice of God because the Spirit is speaking them to us. Action upon a divine promise in faith constitutes the assurance that the promise is fulfilled in us.8 In this, she seemed to be blending the act of faith and the assurance of faith into one. Her more theologically disciplined friends warned her of this tendency.9 She did believe, however, that the testimony of the inner witness of the Spirit which Wesley strongly emphasized would accompany the witness of God's faithfulness quickly if not immediately to those who cast themselves completely upon Christ for full salvation. The Bible also taught her that without holiness no one will see God and that our sanctification is His will for us; furthermore, "now" is always God's time for acceptance of his gracious offers of salvation. Therefore, the failure to act on these words of promise issues in unbelief, and unbelief issues in sin and disobedience. She also insisted that when persons experience the blessing, it is their duty to confess it and zealously seek to bring others into the same experience.10

Time will not allow us to get into all of the complex questions which are raised here, but we can sense that something has changed theologically. Although each of Mrs. Palmer's assumptions and statements can be documented with almost identical statements in Wesley himself,11 at the very least, there has been a shifting of the focus for understanding the tension between the Wesleyan polarities of growth and crisis in relation to coming to perfection in love. It is obvious in her message that the "moment" of revivalist appeal, the immediacy of response anticipated lest the hearer demonstrate unbelief and fall into condemnation by delay, the entire cleansing in the moment of total consecration . . . all tended to shift the point of balance away from that which Wesley had maintained and moved it closer to the crisis polarity and away from the gradualism and growth which formed the other pole of his dialectic. The experience of Christian perfection as the beginning of the life of growth in holiness rather than the culmination of its mature graces became the focal point of the Christian life. This tended to revise the continuum of salvation within which Wesley had envisioned the experience. Phoebe Palmer had done for the crisis element of Wesley's perfectionism what William Warren Sweet said that Finney had done for the conversion experience; she had made perfection in love the beginning of days instead of a point somewhere at the culmination of struggle and growth.12

It appears that Wesley himself in the later decades of his ministry moved in his own position closer and closer to the crisis polarity of his crisis process teaching on the attainment of Christian perfection. His letters of spiritual counsel and to his preachers and others from the 1760's to his death indicate this. Consequently, Palmer's followers could make use of copious portions of Wesley's writings to affirm the essential Wesleyanism of their position.13 Phoebe Palmer herself guarded her statements with some sense of balance. Nathan Bangs, who attended her meetings and frequently led them, pronounced her teachings essentially Wesleyan.14 She knew Wesley and the other standard authors well and did not extend some of the implications or possibilities of her "altar" teaching to the extreme degree which some of later followers did who were immersed mainly in the revivalistic milieu. The latter commonly had considerably less acquaintance with the theological context within which certainly Wesley and even she understood the dynamics of the work of sanctification.

But the most important key to the theological transitions taking place here may lie in Palmer's claim that what was taught in the Tuesday Meetings was not in the final analysis the teaching of Wesley, Fletcher, Clarke, or Watson, but rather the teaching of the Bible. The intent and meaning of Scripture, on her points of concern at least, were clear and definite. Wesley would have had no problem with her appeal to Biblical authority, but there is no doubt that her readiness, within the context of the revivalistic preaching of her day, to proof text her understanding of the experience of entire sanctification and how to attain it by what she considered the plain answers of Scripture set a pattern of closure in complex issues which Wesley and maybe Fletcher would not have readily allowed. Wesley often hesitated to bring every difficult Biblical question to a point of final resolution; there was room for a tension within Scripture itself which could be lived with without allowing for any uncertainty as to the way of salvation or the gracious nature of God. One of the most forceful illustrations of the nuances of theological distinction which are present here is the response which Wesley made to questions on free will and the sovereignty of God in relation to individual salvation. He said that he would not say that persons cannot come to God if they will but neither would he say that persons could come to God whenever they will.15 The consequence was that after all the Scripture which argued the question had been presented, one still should not be too ready to assume that all persons who read the Word of God or hear it preached will receive its truths in equal and similar fashion or see the same clear path of faithful response. Phoebe Palmer's "altar terminology" like the "Four Spiritual Laws" used in many sectors of evangelism today was often abused by the assumption of a kind of automatic operation of Scripture: To read or to hear the words is to know God's will. It was at this point of what constitutes "light," that the "shorter way" may have been relying on an epistemology which was different from that which Wesley relied upon.

The charges that there was something here that was un-Wesleyan may have arisen out of theological sensitivities at that point. If there is any truth in this, however, the questions raised did not prevent the rapid and widespread adoption of "Altar Terminology" within Methodism and throughout the broader holiness movement. Even today, one could hardly preach the virtues of the totally consecrated life without hearing the overtones of "laying all on the altar." Phoebe Palmer had forged a simple syllogism which allowed higher life evangelists to present Christian perfection to the masses in the language of American revival. The altar motif became a permanent part of evangelical spirituality. These new revivalistic emphases on consecrated life contributed significantly to the dramatic outburst of revival in 1857-58; the Layman's or Fulton Street Revival gathered up many of the perfectionist dynamics created by the Finney-Palmer holiness revival,16 generating momentum for the post Civil War movement.

See Original Link

4 See John L. Peters, Christian Perfection and American Methodism (New York: Abingdon, 1956), Chap. IV.

5 Richard Wheatley, The Life and Letters of Mrs. Phoebe Palmer (New York: Walter C. Palmer, Jr., 1876), is the main source for Phoebe Palmer's life. To this date, the corpus of Palmer correspondence and papers has not been discovered if it still exists.

6 Wheatley, Palmer, pp. 36ff.

7 For typical summaries of her "altar typology," see Phoebe Palmer, The Way of Holiness (New York: Palmer and Hughes, 1867), pp. 52ff; the same, "The Act of Faith by which the Blessing Is Obtained" in J. Boynton, Sanctification Practical; a Book for the Times (New York: Foster and Palmer, Jr. 1867) pp. 115-130; "We Have an Altar," Guide to Holiness XXIII, May 1853, 158, 159.

8 Phoebe Palmer's "Letter" to Mrs. L. L. Hamline quoted in Wheatley, Palmer, p. 516. See also, Palmer Faith and Its Effects, or Fragments From My Portfolio (New York: Published for the Author at 200 Mulberry St., 1854), p. 190.

9 See Timothy L. Smith, Revivalism and Social Reform, American Protestantism on the Eve of the Civil War (Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980 [originally published 1957]) pp. 126, 127; Abel Stevens, Life and Times of Nathan Bangs, D.D. (New York: Carlton and Porter, 1863), pp. 396-402; Melvin Easterday Dieter, The Holiness Revival of the Nineteenth Century (Metuchen, N.J.: The Scarecrow Press, 1980), pp. 28-32.

10 Melvin E. Dieter, Holiness Revival, pp. 35-37.

11 Phoebe Palmer, Incidental Illustrations of the Economy of Salvation (Boston: Henry V. Degen, 1855), pp. 36-42; John Wesley, "The Scripture Way of Salvation," Works of John Wesley (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, n.d.) VI, 53.

12 William Warren Sweet, The American Churches: An Interpretation (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1947), p. 126; Charles Jones, Perfectionist Persuasion: The Holiness Movement and American Methodism, 1867-1936 (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1974) p. 5; Peters, Christian Perfection, pp. 112, 133.

13 Christian Perfection as Taught by John Wesley (Boston: McDonald and Gill, Publishers,1885), compiled by J. A. Wood with "Introduction" by Bishop W. A. Mallalieu, gathers together most of the Wesley proof-texts and passages.

14 Abel Stevens, Life of Nathan Bangs, p. 351; E. S. Jones, Sermons on the Death of Nathan Bangs (New York: Carlton and Porter, 1862) p. 27; Bishops Simpson, Mallalieu, and Newman testified to the essential soundness of her theology. See: Wheatley, c.v; George Hughes, Fragrant Memories of the Tuesday Meetings and Guide to Holiness (New York: Palmer and Hughes,1886) p. iv; and John A. Roche, The Life of Mrs. Sarah A. Lankford Palmer, Who for Sixty Years Was the Able Teacher of Entire Holiness (New York: George Hughes and Co., 1898), p. 11.

15 As quoted by Peters, Christian Perfection, p. 113.

16 Smith, Revivalism, Chap. IV; Dieter, Holiness Revival, pp. 57, 58.

"The Rise and Fall of the TV Journalist" (Adam Curtis)

2011-10-17T01:10:00.001-04:00

"Oh Dearism" (Adam Curtis)

2011-10-17T01:04:00.001-04:00

Intermission: Dramatic New York City Timelapse

2011-10-17T00:54:00.001-04:00

Josh Owens, also known as Mindrelic, created this wonderfully dramatic timelapse video of his favorite corners of New York City. The soundtrack, by Dredg, certainly takes it up a notch.

Paranoia (Adam Curtis)

2011-10-17T00:49:00.002-04:00

Adam Curtis, Filmmaker

"Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace" (Adam Curtis)

2011-10-17T00:41:00.001-04:00

new revolution.

2011-10-17T00:29:00.000-04:00

It is right of you to ask, "What is the new revolution?" And perhaps more importantly, "What has warranted such a revolt?"

The new revolution, as I intend on articulating it, is a reaction to the primary and seemingly essential paradigms that the church-at-large has embraced in North America within the last two hundred years. What is the next step in the evolution of North American Christianity? What is the destiny of the church-at-large if these paradigms are left to run there course in history? In my estimation, the answer to both questions is dismal if nothing is done to correct our trajectory. The new revolution is a concerted effort to re-imagine our faith outside of the paradigms listed below.

The initial problem with any critique of the church-at-large is that the information available is often an asymmetrical collection of experiences and ideologies. We can see through the glass, but only dimly. Nevertheless, I feel compelled to note these paradigms as a dialogical starting point for others interested in a major theological re-articulation.

I have spent the last five years lurking in the shadows of these discussions. But my silence is something I can no longer tame. The historic struggle of any culture is the tension between the transitioning of generations, each having their ideas as to what should endure. But inevitably a new community is being born. A community not built upon exclusion but inclusion. Not built on the right/wrong concept but on love through respect. Not built upon the construct of war/peace but on co-existence. A community built on the right now, not only the not yet! Though such a revolution is in its infancy, the pace toward change is quickening. The disconnected are growing ever more disconnected. The disheartened ever more disheartened. The spiritually mute ever more still and lifeless. The time for new prophets has arrived. The revolution is beginning. The future is not in old wineskins, but new!

#1 Epistemic Absolutism

The genealogy of epistemic absolutism is easily traced back through the enlightenment and the emergence of the modern era. The modernist seeks primary foundations as means to his knowledge, with which truth can be determined. As it pertains to our current discussion, the church-at-large has embraced “God as creator” as its primary foundation. Humanity is made in God’s image, and God is an intelligent creator. Hence, all “true” knowledge is derived from God and so infallible by definition. This paradigm alone has enabled the church-at-large to understand it to be the bearer of the truth...moreover theologically, the Absolute Truth. That is, the cultural narrative of Jesus and his teachings has emerged as the meta-narrative to explain the one "true" view of reality. The epistemic absolutist presupposes that the “truth” is not a topic for true dialogue, because it is unchanging. But can such questions--Is there a God? Is there life after death? Are the gospel accounts true?--be answered adequately with the epistemic standards imposed by a modern framework. I think not.

Consider the developments in science and technology during the last century. The universe, we now see more clearly, is larger than our minds are capable of understanding. The mysteries are to complex for comprehension at this stage in our evolution. The universe is not as calculable as once thought. And yet, technology has in a very real sense made the planet a much “smaller” place, a closer community. A planet isolated in the vast universe. Communal needs are emerging to the surface as the planetary community is being more adequately understood, through both environmental and humanitarian concerns. This new era of global community is what I believe to be the signpost for an incredible opportunity to move forward with an evolved religious Christian vision: co-existence. This vision of global co-existence seeks to find harmony through religious and philosophical pluralism, and epistemic relativism. This evolved Christian community will be proud of their cultural narrative, interested in preserving it, but cautious to not make absolute judgments as to the one “true” view of reality. Seeking, rather, a greater understanding of the collective religious narrative.

#2 Isolationism

Unfortunately, the epistemic absolutism of the church-at-large has produced isolationist tendencies. For many the world, lost and sinful, is evil by nature. One is to remove oneself from the world, and all its earthly attachments. I find it telling that the majority of “church growth” is occurring in the predominantly affluent white suburbs of North America, away from the diversity of a metropolitan area, away from Main Street, isolated from many of the realities of existing within our current culture.

This Isolationism coupled with the moral absolutism that epistemic absolutism affords, allows for an “interesting” moral debate within our culture. The church-at-large is quick to proudly enter their position into the record of public discourse. They are quick to label persons as sinners, to label lifestyles as sinful, and to label this world as evil. With this posture there is no potential for dialogue. Dialogue presupposes the potential for change; unfortunately it appears as though the church-at-large has no intentions for change. But this is naiveté. The world is primarily defined by matter, energy, and motion. Everything is changing and at all times. A student of religious and theological history will observe a similar pattern. The ebb and flow of religious and theological discourse has consistently grown more diverse over the years, ever changing as result of cultural, linguistic, and primal hurdles (such as famine and/or natural disasters). Dialogue, however, is essential to being operative in the new global community.

#3 Propositional Evangelism

Emboldened by the epistemic absolutism of the modern framework and tempered by the comfort of Isolationism, the church-at-large is given the imperative to take their "gospel message" to the world. But what is the "gospel message"? To many it appears that the gospel is essentially propositional. The evangelistic enterprise has long been evaluated on the degree to which the hearer is receptive to the teller's set of beliefs. Moreover, the language of salvation and/or "getting saved" has come to substantially mean that the hearers have now taken on a new set of beliefs, namely the tellers'. As I read the teachings of Jesus, however, the “good news” and its efficacy appear to me to be more properly understood as positional decree, not propositional. That is, evangelizing is essentially learning to effectively be in the world, not learning to convince the world of your beliefs.

Consider, for instance, Jesus’ popular “Sermon on the Mount” in Matthew chapters 5-7 (NLT). Observe some of the recurring positional themes: “…if you are angry with someone, you are subject to judgement!” “…don’t resist an evil person! If you are slapped on the right cheek, turn the other, too.” “…love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you!” “If you love only those who love you, what good is that?” “Don’t do your good deeds publicly, to be admired…” “Give your gifts in secret…” “…don’t be like the hypocrites who love to pray publicly on street corners and in the synagogues where everyone can see them.” “If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly father will forgive you.” “You cannot serve both God and money.” “Stop judging others, and you will not be judged.” “Do for others what you would like them to do for you.” The Gospels are full of these positional teachings of Jesus; imploring a particular posture toward the other human beings we share our community with, even if that is now a global community by definition.

Conclusion

Essentially I am saying that the church of the new revolution is going to prize religious and philosophical pluralism, the global community, and the pursuit of co-existence. Could a theology be constructed to support such a church community? I think so. These paradigms I have mentioned, which in my estimation are foreign to the essential teachings of Jesus, are my attempt at locating a starting point for the dialogue. With a particular interest in what the local expression of a new theology would look like.

I would love to know what you think!

5 Ways "Common Sense" Misleads You

2011-10-16T11:13:00.002-04:00

Contains Adult Language!

By Geoff Shakespeare

"Albert Einstein said common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by the age of 18. It is also a result of some pervasive and extremely stupid logical fallacies that have become embedded in the human brain over generations, for one reason or another. These malfunctioning thoughts--several of which you've had already today--are a major cause of everything that's wrong with the world.

#5. The Historian's Fallacy

You'll Hear it As:

"Hey I heard Lisa tried to stab you! You should have known that ho was crazy!"

How It Screws Us:

Remember that time you decided to jump off your roof and do a back flip into your little brother's kiddie pool? Remember how all your friends thought it was a great idea and it was going to be so cool? And do you remember when you regained consciousness three months later in the hospital, how suddenly they all laughed at you and said you should have known better? Congratulations, you were bitch-slapped by the Historian's Fallacy.

The problem is, there is something about our brains that just won't let us put ourselves in the other guy's shoes. We're the fat guy on the couch screaming about how LeBron James "choked" because he took that bad shot instead of driving the lane. We're all convinced that, had we been in the same situation, we would have made the right decision; the Titanic wouldn't have sank, the stock market wouldn't have crashed and the PlayStation 3 wouldn't have been priced at $599.

The moment we see their mistake in hindsight, we tell ourselves what morons they must have been. The problem, of course, is that when your reaction is to shake your head, laugh and call them dumbasses, it keeps you from learning from their mistakes.

It Gets Worse...

To see this happening on a grand scale, just open a history book, or watch the news. George Santayana famously warned in 1905 that, "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" and people have spent the last hundred years ignoring him. It's not so much that we don't remember the past, it's that here in the future everything they did looks retarded
.

What were they thinking?

People don't realize that given the exact same set of circumstances and foreknowledge as Hitler in 1941, we would have invaded Russia, too. If we had been Sylvester Stallone in 1985, we would also have made Over The Top and married Brigitte Nielsen.

#4. The Nirvana Fallacy

You'll Hear it As:

"You gave that homeless guy a sandwich? Ha! Like that's really going to fix poverty!"

How It Screws Us:

The Nirvana Fallacy is when you dismiss anything in the real world because you compare it to an unrealistic, perfect alternative, by which it pales in comparison. It wouldn't be a problem, except it keeps us from getting anything done.

"We were GOING to write an album, but...Nevermind." The Nirvana Fallacy.

For instance, procrastination can happen for a lot of reasons--you drank too much the night before, or you're feeling uninspired, or...you're having second thoughts--but one of the most common reasons we procrastinate is fear that the end result won't live up to the "perfect" idea in our heads. Think about the writer friend of yours who has never actually written anything, because they're "waiting for the right idea" for a book to come along.

This is why people wind up living in their parents' basement--waiting for the perfect job, the perfect girl, the perfect friendship--before committing to anything.

If you're not full of that kind of self-doubt, don't worry, there are plenty of assholes willing to supply it for you. Any incremental improvement on someone else's part is mocked as some kind of deluded hypocrisy, because anything short of perfect is not worth doing, so you might as well do nothing, like them. "Ha! You're drinking a Diet Coke with your hamburger? Like that's really going to make a difference!"

"A wedding dress. Right. Like THAT will attract a guy. You're pathetic."

It Gets Worse...

Politicians use this to attack any idea they don't like. "Sure, your plan is helping millions of families in poverty. But I found examples of people abusing it! So we might as well scrap the whole system!"

Or, you'll hear radical political types on the Internet say, "I'm not voting for any of those guys! They're no better than Bush! They're all corrupt agents of the NWO! I'm staying home until you can show me a perfect, incorruptible, intelligent politician who believes the exact same things I do!""

Read Full Article Here: 5 Ways 'Common Sense' Lies To You Everyday | Cracked.com

Steve Jobs 2005 Stanford Speech

2011-10-06T22:06:00.002-04:00

Steve Jobs Dies at 56

Plot Overview of "The Epic of Gilgamesh"

2011-09-20T16:12:00.000-04:00

The epic’s prelude offers a general introduction to Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, who was two-thirds god and one-third man. He built magnificent ziggurats, or temple towers, surrounded his city with high walls, and laid out its orchards and fields. He was physically beautiful, immensely strong, and very wise. Although Gilgamesh was godlike in body and mind, he began his kingship as a cruel despot. He lorded over his subjects, raping any woman who struck his fancy, whether she was the wife of one of his warriors or the daughter of a nobleman. He accomplished his building projects with forced labor, and his exhausted subjects groaned under his oppression. The gods heard his subjects’ pleas and decided to keep Gilgamesh in check by creating a wild man named Enkidu, who was as magnificent as Gilgamesh. Enkidu became Gilgamesh’s great friend, and Gilgamesh’s heart was shattered when Enkidu died of an illness inflicted by the gods. Gilgamesh then traveled to the edge of the world and learned about the days before the deluge and other secrets of the gods, and he recorded them on stone tablets.

The epic begins with Enkidu. He lives with the animals, suckling at their breasts, grazing in the meadows, and drinking at their watering places. A hunter discovers him and sends a temple prostitute into the wilderness to tame him. In that time, people considered women and sex calming forces that could domesticate wild men like Enkidu and bring them into the civilized world. When Enkidu sleeps with the woman, the animals reject him since he is no longer one of them. Now, he is part of the human world. Then the harlot teaches him everything he needs to know to be a man. Enkidu is outraged by what he hears about Gilgamesh’s excesses, so he travels to Uruk to challenge him. When he arrives, Gilgamesh is about to force his way into a bride’s wedding chamber. Enkidu steps into the doorway and blocks his passage. The two men wrestle fiercely for a long time, and Gilgamesh finally prevails. After that, they become friends and set about looking for an adventure to share.

Gilgamesh and Enkidu decide to steal trees from a distant cedar forest forbidden to mortals. A terrifying demon named Humbaba, the devoted servant of Enlil, the god of earth, wind, and air, guards it. The two heroes make the perilous journey to the forest, and, standing side by side, fight with the monster. With assistance from Shamash the sun god, they kill him. Then they cut down the forbidden trees, fashion the tallest into an enormous gate, make the rest into a raft, and float on it back to Uruk. Upon their return, Ishtar, the goddess of love, is overcome with lust for Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh spurns her. Enraged, the goddess asks her father, Anu, the god of the sky, to send the Bull of Heaven to punish him. The bull comes down from the sky, bringing with him seven years of famine. Gilgamesh and Enkidu wrestle with the bull and kill it. The gods meet in council and agree that one of the two friends must be punished for their transgression, and they decide Enkidu is going to die. He takes ill, suffers immensely, and shares his visions of the underworld with Gilgamesh. When he finally dies, Gilgamesh is heartbroken.

Gilgamesh can’t stop grieving for Enkidu, and he can’t stop brooding about the prospect of his own death. Exchanging his kingly garments for animal skins as a way of mourning Enkidu, he sets off into the wilderness, determined to find Utnapishtim, the Mesopotamian Noah. After the flood, the gods had granted Utnapishtim eternal life, and Gilgamesh hopes that Utnapishtim can tell him how he might avoid death too. Gilgamesh’s journey takes him to the twin-peaked mountain called Mashu, where the sun sets into one side of the mountain at night and rises out of the other side in the morning. Utnapishtim lives beyond the mountain, but the two scorpion monsters that guard its entrance refuse to allow Gilgamesh into the tunnel that passes through it. Gilgamesh pleads with them, and they relent.

After a harrowing passage through total darkness, Gilgamesh emerges into a beautiful garden by the sea. There he meets Siduri, a veiled tavern keeper, and tells her about his quest. She warns him that seeking immortality is futile and that he should be satisfied with the pleasures of this world. However, when she can’t turn him away from his purpose, she directs him to Urshanabi, the ferryman. Urshanabi takes Gilgamesh on the boat journey across the sea and through the Waters of Death to Utnapishtim. Utnapishtim tells Gilgamesh the story of the flood—how the gods met in council and decided to destroy humankind. Ea, the god of wisdom, warned Utnapishtim about the gods’ plans and told him how to fashion a gigantic boat in which his family and the seed of every living creature might escape. When the waters finally receded, the gods regretted what they’d done and agreed that they would never try to destroy humankind again. Utnapishtim was rewarded with eternal life. Men would die, but humankind would continue.

When Gilgamesh insists that he be allowed to live forever, Utnapishtim gives him a test. If you think you can stay alive for eternity, he says, surely you can stay awake for a week. Gilgamesh tries and immediately fails. So Utnapishtim orders him to clean himself up, put on his royal garments again, and return to Uruk where he belongs. Just as Gilgamesh is departing, however, Utnapishtim’s wife convinces him to tell Gilgamesh about a miraculous plant that restores youth. Gilgamesh finds the plant and takes it with him, planning to share it with the elders of Uruk. But a snake steals the plant one night while they are camping. As the serpent slithers away, it sheds its skin and becomes young again.When Gilgamesh returns to Uruk, he is empty-handed but reconciled at last to his mortality. He knows that he can’t live forever but that humankind will. Now he sees that the city he had repudiated in his grief and terror is a magnificent, enduring achievement—the closest thing to immortality to which a mortal can aspire.
-See Source

"The Perfection Theology of John Wesley"

2011-09-19T09:42:00.002-04:00

"A student seeking to understand the gospel of John Wesley must first begin with an understanding of how he viewed sin. Wesley said, "We know no gospel without salvation from sin." To Wesley, sin in its essence is not merely an outward act of rebellion towards God (though he also understands sin in these terms). Rather, Wesley saw the heart of sin to be a broken relationship with God. Sin is not merely something that sneaks up on an individual and overtakes him, rather it is something that arises out of a person. Sin results in a sickness that leads to corruption, and that corruption's ultimate end results in the death of man. Wesley saw humanity as being "sick unto death."

Wesley's understanding of sin was twofold. He considered sin to be both an act as well as a state of being. As a state of being, Wesley saw that man, who was originally created holy and good in the image of God, as a result of sin saw a corruption of his nature (though not a total destruction as taught in Calvinism). It is out of the sinfully corrupt human nature that actual acts of sin flow. Within this twofold view of sin, Wesley distinguishes between "sin so properly called" and "sin so improperly called." The former being a voluntary transgression of a known law of God. The latter being an involuntary transgression of a law of God, known or unknown.

As a result of a broken relationship with God because of sin, man falls under His wrath that is to be revealed against all ungodliness and is in danger of hell fire. However, there is hope for man. Through the atoning death of Jesus Christ, man's relationship with God can be restored, and he can escape the sentence of hell. The journey to heaven in Wesley's theology is only possible through God's grace. Failure to truly understand Wesley's doctrine of grace has led some to erroneously conclude that Wesley believed in man's ability to obtain salvation on his own, as if one were saved by works. This is simply not in any way true.

The starting point of this journey Wesley called "prevenient grace." Prevenient grace speaks of the grace that comes to man before any conscious personal experience of divine grace. Prevenient grace speaks of God who makes the first move to reconcile man to Himself. To use more biblical language, it is the grace that is offered to man while still yet sinners (Ro 5:8). Prevenient grace begins to move men towards a place of repentance by creating sensitivity to God's will, as well as producing a slight conviction of having violated God's will, and then begins to stir in an individual a desire to please God. The doctrine of prevenient grace explains why man, depraved as he is in his fallen state, is capable of doing any sort of good or holding any sort of virtue (however limited that might be).

It must be emphasized that prevenient grace is not sufficient enough to bring about salvation. It is not a saving grace. If such were the case, then according to the theology of Wesley everybody would be saved. For Wesley did not believe that prevenient grace was by any means limited to the select few. Rather, he saw prevenient grace as grace that is available for all. There is not a single individual in the world that does not experience this grace, for Christ died for all.

For Wesley prevenient grace was important, because otherwise man could not be viewed as truly responsible for his sins if he were simply predestined to do them. For such an absolute decree would undermine genuine responsibility. For man can only be accountable if he has a genuine power of choice. But because man is responsible for his sins before God, Wesley believed that prevenient grace created this "response-ability." Therefore through grace man is enabled to be truly responsible! As Wesley said, "God worketh in you; therefore you can work. Otherwise it would be impossible." Man's freedom of choice is a "grace-infused ability."

The most important thing to note about prevenient grace is that this grace enables man to make a response of faith in Christ. Only through faith in Christ does grace become saving. This saving faith has two aspects to it: repentance and belief. Wesley called repentance "the porch of religion." However, repentance itself was not sufficient to save. Belief is also needed. For in repentance a person turns from a life without Christ, and in belief man completes the turn by embracing the way of Christ.

For Wesley, true belief and obedience are coupled together, and are not to be divorced. Such obedience is not simply duty driven and cold, rather it joyfully arises out of a hunger to do God's will. Because Wesley believed a life of obedience was part of saving faith, for this reason Wesley was never content when ministering to individuals if they said they were saved "x" years ago. If somebody would appeal to a past salvation experience, Wesley would go on and ask, "But are you saved, in this moment?" Wesley wanted to know if the past experience was still alive in the present. For if the saving faith of the past was still not active in the life of the individual, then it was no longer saving.

Along with salvation, Wesley taught that there are a number of effects that accompany man in his conversion. First of all, Wesley taught that men are justified. Prior to justification, the sinner stands before a just and holy God guilty for the sins he has committed. After a man is pardoned through justification, all his past sins are covered and blotted out, to be remembered no more. In the eyes of God, the man is no more guilty for those sins than if he had never committed them to begin with.

Along with justification comes "initial sanctification," where both inward and outward holiness begins for the believer. For Wesley, it was unthinkable that God would call people something they were not. In the conversion experience, not only is man imputed righteousness, but he also has righteousness imparted to him. He's not simply declared righteous, but he's actually made righteous. This infused righteousness is nothing less than the righteousness of Jesus Christ. In this view, Wesley borrows from both Western and Eastern traditions. He incorporates the forensic images of Latin Christianity into his conception of justification, and borrows from Eastern Christianity a "participation motif" as is seen in his views on sanctification.

It is through this participation motif that regeneration occurs. By being infused with the righteousness of Christ, the sinner genuinely undergoes a transformation of character. Such causes the sinner to experience the new birth. In the new birth, the fallen image of God inside of man is restored in true holiness. As a result, the Christian is no longer bound to sin, and can in fact, overcome sin. After all, since God is not bound to commit sin, and in fact, conquered sin through Christ, neither is the regenerated man bound to commit acts of sin. For through the new birth, the image of God in man was restored, enabling man to live as Christ lived.

After an individual becomes a Christian, they might perhaps think that the salvific work of God has been completed in regard to their soul, and that there is nothing more to the Christian life save to grow in grace, without further conviction, repentance, or any spiritual crises. However, as they go along in their new found life in Christ, they begin to find (perhaps to their amazement), that though they have a great desire to serve Christ and to live according to His commandments, they also still seem to have strong desires in their soul to turn away from God, and still feel the presence of sin within themselves. The new believer begins to realize that though he has dedicated his heart to God, that his entire heart is not indeed so dedicated, and has affections for things other than God. There was a reason for this according to Wesley. According to Wesley, there is still a far deeper work that God wants to accomplish in the soul beyond justification.

For though a believer has been made right in the sight of God, and the fallen image of God has been renewed in the regenerate man, there still remains in the believer the need to grow in respect to the initial sanctification the Christian has experienced. For in initial sanctification, the work of God has only begun in the soul in respect to it's cleansing. To Wesley, "it is evident that if any sin remain, we are not cleansed from all sin." Here Wesley is not speaking of any actual acts of sin that the believer needs to be cleansed from. Remember, Wesley viewed sin in a twofold manner as actual acts of sin, as well as being a state of being.

According to Wesley, in justification man is cleansed in regard to the guilt of his crimes against God, but in his soul still remains the inbred desire to commit the same offenses. Therefore, while the Christian is holy in regard to his outward conduct in that he is guilty of no offense towards God by having been forgiven of that offense, inwardly there still is room for improvement in respect to holiness, as rebellious desire is still a present reality. Wesley therefore believed that the Christian was still in need of further sanctification.

By further sanctification it is meant that Wesley believed the Christian though forgiven of his sins through his justification, still needed to undergo a further inward cleansing of the heart. He did not believe that the newly justified believer had a fully cleansed heart. Therefore, the moment the believer is justified, the sanctification process begins in which the believer gradually dies to the sin in his heart, and is cleansed from all the unrighteousness that still remains within. Perhaps this doctrine is best expressed in part of a Methodist hymn that reads: "Heavenly Adam, life Divine, Change my nature into Thine; Move and spread throughout my soul, Actuate and fill the whole." The culmination of this process will eventually result in the complete sanctification of the Christian, where inwardly he has experienced a full cleansing of rebellion from the inner man.

It is at this point that John Wesley's theology becomes extremely controversial. For Wesley insisted that, contrary to the teachings of Roman Catholicism and the leaders of the continental Reformation, that "entire sanctification" can take place in this life. For these groups believed that a Christian could only be entirely purified of inward sin through death (and through purgatory to be specific, in the case of Roman Catholicism). Wesley stood at contrast with these traditions because in them he saw that they not only erred in respect to when entire sanctification takes place, but also the means by which entire sanctification occurred. For Wesley the sanctification process did not reach its climax through purgatory or death, but rather, through the Holy Spirit of God. Wesley caused further controversy not only insisting that entire sanctification can take place in this life, but to make matters worse, he called this experience, "Christian Perfection."

Wesley believed that Christian perfection was attainable in this life because Christ had commanded, "Be ye perfect, as your Father who is in heaven, is perfect" (Matt 5:48). In essence Wesley's reasoning was, Christ would not command somebody to do something if it were not something that could not actually be done. If Christ commanded it, then it might be asked, just when in this life does entire sanctification occur? While in general, Wesley believed most did not experience Christian perfection until just shortly before their death, he believed it was attainable before then, to those who by faith, "expect it sooner." Wesley did not believe it was attainable until a period of time had indeed passed since the believer was justified, though he would not set any sort of definite time frame on it, since he saw the experience being at the disposal of God's sovereign pleasure. For some, Christian perfection might happen sooner in some than others.

Just what exactly is Christian perfection? In what sense are Christians who experience entire sanctification, "perfect?" Wesley attempted to answer these questions and more in detail in his famous work, A Plain Account of Christian Perfection. It is beyond the scope of this paper to fully survey his views contained in this book, not to mention numerous sermons and letters in which he also addressed this topic. However, a few additional comments can be made.

In addition to using terms such as "entire sanctification" or "Christian perfection," Wesley also employed other terms to describe this work of God brought about in the life of a believer. Sometimes Wesley employed Pentecostal phrases such as "baptism of the Holy Spirit" or "receiving the Spirit" to describe this experience. He also used terms such as, "full salvation," "a higher salvation," "to save to the uttermost," and "perfect love," amongst many other terms.

In essence, Christian perfection can be described as an instantaneous work of God's grace brought about in the life of a believer that is the culmination of the sanctification experience, whereby a believer is cleansed of all inward sin, resulting in a "habitual disposition of the soul" that entails being endued with "those virtues which were in Christ Jesus." It is the ultimate realization of holiness in the soul. It ultimately is a singleness of intention where the fully sanctified believer now has nothing but a constant and abiding love for God and neighbor in their heart. It is to, "have the mind that was in Him [Christ], and always walk as He walked." This is in contrast to the believer who has not attained Christian perfection, whose heart is a mixed one. For while bent towards loving God, the believer who is not yet entirely sanctified still has an inward love for sin.

In hopes to keep misunderstanding concerning this doctrine down, Wesley also testified to what Christian perfection was not. Wesley did not believe that those who had experienced Christian perfection were spiritual infallible, being unable to sin, and were still liable to mistakes. Wesley called such a notion “angelism.” Nor did he think such made one a superior Christian, as those who were perfect would be filled with humility. Christian perfection also did not make one vaccinated against the problems of real life. He also denied that perfect Christians no longer need Christ, saying that when they receive entire sanctification, they do not receive a stock of holiness apart from Christ. For they still need Christ to supply them every moment of their lives the grace they need, otherwise, “nothing but unholiness would remain.”

Also, Wesley would have rejected any notion that somebody that has experienced Christian perfection has in any sense, “arrived.” For even after the experience of Christian perfection, Wesley still expected the fully sanctified believer to grow as a Christian. The growth a Christian experiences after entire sanctification is now a fully pure heart that continues to grow. Wesley himself said that it was an improvable condition, “constantly preceded and followed by a gradual work.” Wesley sees the Christian as one who never ceases to grow in the love and knowledge of God. He will do so not only until death, but even through all eternity. Finally, it is interesting to note, the evidence suggests that Wesley himself, never arrived at the experience he so deeply was convinced was true (though he knew others that did). Wesley is never known to have experienced Christian perfection."

-Via sermonindex.net

An Introduction to the Enuma Elish

2011-09-18T11:21:00.002-04:00

Introduction to the Enuma Elish

Enuma elish, "when the skies above. . .", is one of the oldest written creation myths in existence. This Babylonian creation myth was found on seven tablets in the library of Assyrian emperor Ashubanipal (667 - 626 BC) in Ninevah. The Enuma Elish tells the tale of the creation of the universe, and of man himself. Often compared to the biblical creation account in Genesis, the earliest tablets date from around 2000 b.c., although scholars feel that it was an ancient oral tradition before then.

Marduk

The Enuma Elish is often compared to the creation account in Genesis. For example, the Babylonian god finished his work within the span of 6 tablets of stone and Genesis reports six days of creation. In the Enuma, the last and 7th stone exalted the handiwork and greatness of the diety's work while Genesis reports the seventh day as Rest of God. Mankind formed on tablet 6 of the Enuma Elish and Adam and Eve are formed on day 6 in the Genesis account. Other similarities include the following: Earth and sky are formed on tablet four in Enuma Elish and earth and sky separated on day two of Genesis account; The sun and moon and stars are created in the sky to mark seasons on tablet 5 of Enuma Elish and on day four of Genesis account.

Although these similarities are undeniable, there are also many obvious and major differences between the Enuma Elish and Genesis. The following is a synopsis of the Enuma:

Tablet 1: The primitive scene is presented. Apsu (the fresh water god) and Tiamat (the sea goddess) give birth to Anshar and Kishar, gods representing the horizon, which forms the boundary between the earth and sky. To Anshar and Kishar is born Anu, the sky god, who in turn bears Ea (the goddess representing earth). This brood of gods is so ill-behaved that Apsu determined to slay them. Instead Ea kills Apsu and establishes her abode above his body. Marduk (the city god of Babylon) is born to Ea. Tiamat, transformed into a raging avenger of her slain husband, takes a new husband, Kingu, in place of the slain Apsu.

Tablet 2: As goddess of the sea, Tiamat represents malevolence and chaos. She must therefore be challenged and subdued. First Ea confronts Tiamat, but fails. Then Anu challenges Tiamat, but even the sky god is unsuccessful.

Tablet 4: Finally, Marduk is selected to fight the raging Tiamat. He is chosen on the basis of ability to remake a destroyed garment. He is vested with great power and authoritative word, and he faces Tiamat, slaying the sea goddess and cutting her body in two. With one half he forms the sky, and with the other he forms the earth.

Tablet 5: Marduk places the celestial luminaries in the sky to establish days and months and years.

Tablet 6: Kingu, the husband and commander-in-chief of Tiamat, is also slain, and from his blood is formed mankind, who are assigned to perform menial tasks for the gods.

Tablet 7: Describes Marduk�s elevation as chief of Babylon and head of the Babylonian pantheon because of his role in creation. The Gods of Babylon rest.

-Via theologywebsite.com

Summary of "A Plain Account of Christian Perfection: The Annotated Edition"

2011-09-18T11:14:00.002-04:00

The John Wesley Christian Perfection Library
-Mark K. Olson

Introduction

When Wesley published his A Plain Account of Christian Perfection in 1766 his aim was primarily twofold.¹ In the wake of the great revival of the early sixties multitudes were professing the experience of perfect love and Wesley wanted to counsel them further regarding the path of inward holiness. But besides this pastoral concern there was a more immediate one. Many charged Wesley with being inconsistent in his message of full salvation. Thomas Maxfield (Wesley's "son in the gospel") and a young recruit, George Bell, spearheaded a version of attainable perfection that proved to be in sharp contrast to John Wesley's version of perfect love.² Besides being inconsistent, they further accused Wesley of changing his message over time.³ Critics outside of Methodism seized upon this brand of revival enthusiasm to attack Wesley over his beloved doctrine of Christian perfection.⁴

In response Wesley felt compelled to clarify his thoughts and to present a definitive apology of his perfection doctrine. So in 1764 he took the time to comprise an eleven-point summary of his perfection beliefs and in 1765 he put into writing those beliefs in his definitive work on the subject, A Plain Account of Christian Perfection. As John Peters so aptly put it, the Plain Account represents the "most comprehensive exposition" of John Wesley's doctrine of full salvation.⁵ Though the book went through several editions in Wesley's lifetime and was recommended by him to earnest seekers of the experience, the question of Wesley's consistency has remained an open question. It is this latter question that engages this present study. To answer this question we must examine carefully what holiness meant to Wesley at different periods of his career and track his theological journey.

John Wesley enjoyed a very lengthy career.⁶ Beginning at Oxford and his hometown surroundings, he later ministered in America and throughout England, and became a founding leader of the burgeoning evangelical awakening of the eighteenth century. While it is commonly reported that he preached over 40,000 sermons and traveled around 250,000 miles during his lifetime, Wesley was also embroiled in controversy much of his career. At times this controversy centered on his perfection theology. All these factors played a role in shaping his convictions and thoughts regarding salvation from all sin. But to fully grasp how Wesley's doctrine took shape and why it took the path it did, we must return to his Oxford period and map out the theology which first informed his perfection beliefs. This is where this study begins. After this we can then proceed to demarcate the theological path Wesley traveled as his perfectionist leanings evolved into a complete, mature theological system. Only in this way can we answer the question with any satisfaction as to whether Wesley was consistent or not in his message of holiness, and if so, to what degree. In this way our present volume moves beyond volume one. That volume focused on Wesley's doctrine of perfection as articulated in the Plain Account. The purpose was to clarify what Wesley's mature doctrine looked like, and to empower students of Wesley to dig deeper into the nuances of his perfection theology. This study compliments volume one by capturing the development within Wesley's theological journey over the course of his long career, thereby empowering a firmer grasp of the subtle nuances that informed his theology of perfection at different periods of his career. Hopefully, the reader will receive the blessing of not only learning to appreciate the faith journey John Wesley traveled, but will be stirred to reflect more deeply on the subject of Christian discipleship as well.

Methodology

Something should be said about my approach and guiding principles. As was just noted, Wesley's career was exceedingly long. Accordingly, historians have found it helpful to divide his career into three periods: early, middle, and late.⁷ Early Wesley covers his time at Oxford and in America, until he set foot again on English soil in early 1738. Middle Wesley picks up the story leading to his Aldersgate "heart-warming" conversion and his involvement in the evangelical revival, and ends in the mid-sixties when his theology and message coalesced into its mature articulation. Late Wesley continues from this point until his death on March 2, 1791. The three-epoch scheme has been helpful to understand the broad contours of his lengthy career. The reader should note that in this present study I often use these labels to identify Wesley's thought at specific eras of his career.

But in the attempt to present an in-depth study explaining how Wesley's theology of perfection developed over time, and to probe into the reasons why it took the path it did, I found the three-period scheme cumbersome and less than helpful. My research led me to look for a different framework to explain the why's and how's of Wesley's doctrinal evolution. For starters, this a doctrinal study, not a biographical one. While history plays a large part, it is not the central focus of the book. So I searched for a framework more suited to my purpose. Also, Wesley's perfection theology takes on major shifts within each era of the three-period model. As we will learn in section one, Wesley moves from one theology of perfection to another in a matter of approximately two-plus years following his Aldersgate conversion. A framework was needed that would highlight these doctrinal transitions. So a four-gospel scheme was chosen to structure the evolution of Wesley's thought. Each gospel is titled to help the reader remember the essential idea or related concepts of that particular perfection theology. It is hoped this will make the development of Wesley's perfection theology easier to remember and recall. In the chapter Evolving Contours⁸ this subject is addressed more fully as a five-period approach is used to historically review the main contours of Wesley's perfection theology within his long career.

While the locus of this study is the development of Wesley's perfection theology, a secondary theme emerges as the study progresses. Like a subplot, the story of how Wesley's doctrine of perfect love matured also parallels the formation of his theological system. I am referring specifically to the order of salvation (ordo salutis). A related term used heavily in this book is the "faith journey," which refers to the spiritual journey toward full renewal in God's image. The reader will soon learn that Wesley's doctrinal development is inextricably bound to his own faith journey. In many ways, Wesley's theology serves as a mirror of his own faith journey to find God and his fullness. So this study shows how Wesley's perfection beliefs profoundly shaped his theological system (hence the longer subtitle: Developments in Doctrine & Theological System). This broader interest led me to refer often to Wesley's "theology of perfection" (or its shorter version "perfection theology"). My purpose in using this language is to convey that this study is more comprehensive in scope than volume one by seeking to look at how Wesley's doctrine of Christian perfection informed his theological system and visa versa. Hence the book's main title: John Wesley's Theology of Christian Perfection.

Connected to the above is the need to identify Wesley's views at each period within his ministry. To do this I have relied on Wesley's own literary corpus, not on secondary literature about him. I deliberately chose to place the footnotes at the bottom of the page to make them easier for the reader to check the sources as they move through the book. Along with identifying Wesley's views at specific periods is my purpose to highlight the factors which shaped and changed those views. We want to understand the reasons behind the development of his thought, not just the thoughts themselves. This entails probing into Wesley's letters and other writings for important clues.

A similar purpose is to recognize those trends which influenced his doctrinal development. Again, this requires we pay close attention to the details embedded in Wesley's many writings. For by doing so we will recognize subtle shifts emerging within his perfection theology. If there is one area I feel I open myself up to potential criticism it is in this area of emerging trends. I realize some will probably want to chastise me for overstating my positions at times. For example, in chapter four I speak of works being reintroduced into Wesley's perfection theology. It would be easy to point to a number of Wesley's earlier writings to rebut my point. But after much thought on the subject I still hold to my guns: what we see in the latter sixties is an emerging trend in Wesley's thought regarding works in the salvation process that culminates in the controversial 1770 Minutes. I believe such language is warranted to emphasize the point being made. No doubt others will see it differently than I do. Others will want take issue with some of my terminology, like the use of "states" to identify specific stages in the ordo salutis.⁹ But Wesley did use such terminology himself, and it accurately conveys his expectations of specific attainments at each stage in the discipleship process. So the use of such language is defendable and warranted, but must not be pushed to an extreme.

One more point. While this is not an historical study, nor a biographical one, it does pay close attention to chronology when quoting Wesley or referring to his views. This methodological principle is essential if we are to accurately grasp any shifts within his perfection theology. Utmost care must be maintained at this point. Yet, Wesley himself was not always helpful in this area. Since he was no systematic thinker he seldom worried about being comprehensive whenever he addressed a subject. Though this is to be expected in his letters (which are situational by nature), it is true of his sermons and other writings. Wesley often simply expresses the points he needs to make at a given time. So we must remain sensitive as to how Wesley quotes and publishes himself. Now that I have covered the methodological principles guiding this study we can turn to an overview of the book's organization and design.

Organization & Overview

Order This Book

The book is divided into three major sections, followed by an extensive Appendix. Section I addresses the early develops within Wesley's theology of perfection from 1725 to the early 1740's when his two-works gospel became a staple in his theological system. Section II picks up the story in the early sixties and traces further developments within his mature perfection theology over the next three decades. After this, Section III addresses how to best make sense of Wesley's holiness views and the evolution of his thought. Let's now look at each section in turn.

In Section I the reader is introduced to the three gospel systems that will inform Wesley's perfection theology: Holiness, Faith Alone, and Two Works of Grace. Chapter one presents a thorough survey of the theology that informed Wesley's early perfection beliefs. Though this chapter is the longest, it is crucial since it lays the foundation for the rest of the book. In Wesley's Oxford period lie the seeds which will later blossom into his mature theological system. So a careful reading of this chapter is indispensable to the rest of the book. Those less familiar with Wesley's early sermons and letters will find an ample amount of quotations in the text and footnotes, offering a plentitude of support for the conclusions drawn. Some of these might surprise the reader, like Wesley's already evangelical leanings, his belief in present forgiveness of sins (though he did not equate this with justification as he does later), and his robust doctrine of salvation assurance.

We next trace the steps which led Wesley to embrace the Moravian gospel of salvation by faith alone, in Christ alone, through the Spirit alone, in an instant alone. Though Aldersgate is the best known event in the life of John Wesley, the theology which informed that event is much less known and is often misunderstood. Possibly, even less understood is the influence which Moravian stillness theology played in Wesley's expectations at Aldersgate. We will learn how stillness served to fuel his struggles over assurance in the months following Aldersgate. Yet it was through the fires of personal struggle, combined with continuing controversy between the revival's key players, that Wesley's theology of perfection eventually embraced a gospel of two works. This story is covered in chapter three and sets the stage for later developments within his mature theological system.

Section II picks up the story when Wesley's Gospel of Two Works enters a new phase of major development. The sixties opened with a powerful revival that emphasized the instantaneous gift of full salvation. But as volume one in this series so poignantly reminds us, the revival soon sank into open schism. It was the revival and schism which finally compelled Wesley to reevaluate his own perfection beliefs. As a consequence Wesley began to alter the emphasis within his holiness message, and, most significantly, led him to rethink his own faith journey following his Aldersgate conversion. This personal crisis I call "Aldersgate II." So powerful was this spiritual upheaval within Wesley's self-understanding that it propelled his perfection theology and ordo salutis into new directions. But I leave it to the reader to take the journey through chapter four and discover for themselves what I believe is one of the most significant insights of this study.

As Wesley's two-works gospel matured so did his doctrine of sin. To understand this process, chapter five examines the structural organization of Wesley's doctrine of sin. In addition, this chapter explores how Wesley related the Christian doctrine of original sin to his theology of perfection. Few studies offer a better survey of the subject, and none offers a better visual explanation through a series of connected charts. We next turn to Wesley's letters to pick up significant insights into the maturation of his thought. Chapter six looks at his later correspondence to gain a better appreciation of what perfection meant to the early Methodists. Interesting bits of insight are gleaned about their struggles and the obstacles they faced as they sought to attain and retain the experience of perfect love.

Next, we close Section II by examining how Wesley's robust doctrines of prevenient grace and the servant state broadened his ordo salutis. This opened the door for a much stronger inclusivist understanding of salvation within his theology. At the other end of the faith journey spectrum the hope of a fully restored new creation inspired Wesley to envision the process of perfection beyond the article of death. As redeemed humanity will rise one day to the level of the angels, so at the resurrection the animal kingdom will be loosed from its servitude to "irregular passions" to rise to the level of the human race in present intelligence and knowledge of God. Thus, in chapter seven we see John Wesley's theology of perfection attain full maturity in its articulation and development.

In Section III we shift directions and take a more panoramic view of Wesley's long journey. We begin by returning to A Plain Account of Christian Perfection to isolate the essential themes of his mature doctrine of heart holiness. The Plain Account serves as Wesley's most comprehensive statement from his own pen regarding his beliefs concerning perfect love. After this, in chapter nine, we reflect on Wesley's mature understanding of the faith journey, or as we theologically refer to as the ordo salutis. Through the help of several charts the major stages of spiritual development are identified along with their chief characteristics. In this way, our study adds an additional blessing by leading the reader to ponder the nature of discipleship itself. If God's redemptive goal is to conform his children to the image of Christ, how is this accomplished? And, what marks each stage in the life transformation process? What we will learn is that Wesley's lifelong passion to articulate a cogent doctrine of perfect love provides a lens by which we can tackle these questions for ourselves.

The next chapter takes another historical review of Wesley's career to bring out those factors which shaped his perfection theology through the decades. Several factors of a historical and doctrinal nature are identified as profoundly shaping his thought. In this way the reader gains additional insights into what influenced the development of Wesley's doctrine of perfect love. Finally, the last chapter probes into the question of an Achilles heel in Wesley's message of full salvation. I will leave it for the reader to agree or disagree with my conclusions. But the question of whether Wesley was consistent demands we ask the question.

We can now turn to the Appendices. These are a series of specialized studies of a smaller nature and cover a variety of topics (this is one reason why I did not make them chapters). Their purpose is to enrich more fully the reader's understanding of Wesley's doctrine of holiness. There are seven in number:

Timeline on Wesley's Doctrinal Development: Covers the entire period under study in this book (1725-1791).

John Wesley's Confessions: This appendix examines Wesley's four January 1738 journal confessions to show that the last one (the post-script to journal extract one) was not written in January 1738 as is often assumed. Therefore, the theology contained in the last confession reflects not his earlier theology but his Aldersgate system.

Early Testimonies of Perfect Love: These early testimonies are ordered according to Wesley's three gospels. In this way they confirm the conclusions of this study. This collection can also be compared to those in volume one so the reader can compare how Wesley's message of holiness possibly changed over a period of twenty-plus years.¹⁰

The Evolution of the New Birth: In this appendix I show that Wesley's understanding of the new birth was interwoven with his doctrine of perfect love up until the early sixties. When reading many of Wesley's earlier sermons and writings this study reminds the reader to be cognizant of this fact.

The Roots to Wesley's Servant Theology: The servant state profoundly shaped Wesley's later doctrinal development and empowered a robust doctrine of prevenient grace within his mature theological system.

Clement of Alexandria: A Second Century Wesleyan?: This small study compares Wesley's views to that of Clement on the subject of perfection and holiness. In this way the reader can appreciate how Wesley was inspired by this church father.

Doctrinal Resource Lists: Included here are all the significant references in the entire Wesley corpus (sermons, letters, journal, and other writings) to empower personal study of the shifts and growth in Wesley's perfection theology. The references are grouped according to the four gospel framework used in this study. Plus, the references for Wesley's servant state and his doctrine of sin are included.

All together this book represents one of the most exhaustive and penetrating studies available on the development of John Wesley's theology of perfection. It is my hope the reader will come to appreciate the faith journey Wesley traveled in forming his understanding of a perfect love which conquerors all sin, both inward and outward; while at the same time acknowledging the sober reality of this present age that awaits full redemption in the new creation.

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1 See Volume One: John Wesley’s ‘A Plain Account of Christian Perfection: The Annotated Edition, 11-16; hereafter Plain Account or PA.
2 Works J 3:126; PA chs 20-22, 25:105-167.
3 PA 27:3 n.
4 See JW’s letter to John Newton (JWJ 5/14/65); PA chs 27-28 and notes.
5 Christian Perfection and American Methodism, 32.
6 In terms of this study 66 years (from 1725 to 1791).
7 Chapter 10 explores this subject in greater depth. See also PA 1:3 n.
8 Chapter 10. In this study the terminology of evolution is used periodically to convey the process of development and maturation within JW’s perfection theology. While some may feel uncomfortable with this term the reader should remember its general and broader use than the question of origins.
9 Many prefer to speak of via salutis, the way of salvation. Compare Kenneth Collins’ perspective (The Scripture Way of Salvation, 70) to that of Randy Maddox (Responsible Grace, 157).
10 PA ch 24 end note.
11 Besides JW’s text the Reader will include introductions showing how the particular texts fit into his doctrinal development.
12 By saying this I cast no aspersions. The reasons are many and complex. The statement just reflects current reality. My own denomination (The Church of the Nazarene) is currently wrestling with the issue (Quanstrom, Mark R. A Century of Holiness. Beacon Hill: Kansas City. 2004).
13 White, Jame F. John Wesley’s Prayer Book: The Sunday Service of the Methodists in North America. OSL Publications: Akron, 1991; 125.