RIP Grandpa (Sort of), or maybe Uncle

I learned that, on the same day I posted the entry about my readings for January, one of my theological influences died in his sleep. Dr. John Allan Knight, former General Superintendent in the Church of the Nazarene (roughly equivalent to bishop, but not considered a third order of ministry), former educator and university president, historical theologian, passed away during the night on February 1.

Dr. Knight was part of a great shift in Wesleyan/holiness theology, the implications of which are still being felt. He contributed, along with Dr. Mildred Bangs Wynkoop(†), Dr. William Greathouse, Dr. H. Ray Dunning, Dr. Rob Staples, and a few others the idea that sin and holiness are relational, not substantival terms. That is, the sin that is "removed" in entire sanctification is not a thing that is cut out by the Divine Surgeon as would a human surgeon remove a cancerous tumor or a wart. Or, as I expressed it in Doctrine of Holiness class yesterday, sin is not a microchip that is removed by the Divine IT Guy. Rather, sin is a perversion of relationship (to God, to other humans, to the earth, to the self) and holiness a restoration of that relationship which was marred, but not lost, not totally depraved, in the fall of humanity. The restoration of the Imago Dei is a reorientation of the relationship of freedom, such that a person can be free for God, for the Other, for the earth, and from self-domination.

Alternatively, if sin is a thing, a substance, then this renders both the Incarnation and salvation logically impossible. The Incarnation becomes impossible since, if sin is a thing that defines the essential quality of humanity then Christ could not have become fully human. (Aside: The objection could be raised that Christ did not take on fallen human nature, but human nature as it was supposed to be, in its "pre-fall" state; but this is Docetism.) It further renders salvation impossible because the removal of something that is absolutely definitional of humanity, then salvation would leave behind something less than a human; a biblically abhorrent idea.

Well, anyway, we pray for the family of Dr. John Allan Knight, and the church that misses him.

Prayer for January 20, 2009

Lord God Almighty, you have made all people of the earth for your glory, to serve you in freedom and in peace. Give to the people of my country a zeal for justice and the strength of forbearance, that we may use our liberty in accordance with your gracious will; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Rest in peace, Uncle John, but sorry, there's no handicapped parking in Heaven

My father informed me via email that my uncle John Modine passed away around 10 PM, December 30, which would have been about 2 PM on New Year's Eve for me. He had been battling multiple sclerosis for many years, and as those who are familiar with this horrid disease know it was an increasingly losing fight. But Dad did go on to say that Uncle John had become a Christian some time ago through the efforts of a pastor visiting the nursing home where he lived. Thanks be to God for that.

I just added the second part of the title of this post under a flash of inspiration: "but, sorry, there's no handicapped parking in heaven." I realize it is a quite sappy phrase, but I can be allowed a bit of sap in the aftermath of the passing of family. See, Uncle John had been confined to a wheelchair for the last few years of his life. I saw him last probably 5 years or so ago and even then he was not looking very good. He was a rather active person before the disease attacked him, and so I am sure he is active again now in heaven with his Lord.

Whenever I think of people getting saved later in life, and especially near death, as in Uncle John's case, my mind immediately goes back to the parable of the brothers, what is usually called the parable of the prodigal son, in Luke 15. A much overlooked point of this parable, in the midst of the wonderful news of even someone who has actively rejected the father's house (=salvation) being joyfully received upon returning, is the conversation between the father and the older brother while the party is going on. The older son complains that he has always been faithful, he has always done his work, and papa never even threw a small party for him and his friends. "But THIS SON of yours," and I am sure the emphasis was just like that, coming out of the older brother's resentment and desire not to have further relations with the prodigal. The father says to him, "Everything I have ever had is yours. But we had to celebrate, for THIS BROTHER of yours was dead and is alive again." Once again, I think that the emphasis was just like this. Have a relationship with your brother as I have with my son, says the father. That part of interpreting the parable is left open, because there is no more to the story.

I link it up with the parable of the workers in the vineyard in Matthew 20. There, the slackers who work only an hour get paid the same that the people who worked all day, and that makes the latter decidedly unhappy. But the point of the parable is that the landowner does what is considered right, so go your way. If the day's wage is equated with salvation, and I think it's legitimate to do so (even though we should recognize the danger we face in coming close to works righteousness), then those who have been around forever do not have any extra bonus compared with those who came along only very late in the day. So also, those who have been Christians their entire lives have the same gift as those who confess their sins and trust in God for salvation only at the very end of life. Incidentally, this is the problem I have with the contemporary chorus often sung in evangelical churches like mine nowadays, "Come, now is the time to worship." The offending line is this:

One day every tongue will confess you are God,
one day every knee will bow.
Still the greatest treasure remains for those
who gladly choose you now.

This is so wrong that I refuse to sing it when this chorus is sung in church services that I attend. It seems to be exactly against things like Luke 15 and Matthew 20. While the eschatological vision of every tongue confessing the lordship of God is correct, it is heinous to suggest that those who choose him now, however gladly, can expect a greater treasure than those who wait. By contrast, deathbed confessions and the stories of them that are told afterward are very powerful parts of Christian literature. This is precisely because even those who rejected God and Christ for many years, either by refusing to heed the call (Matthew 20) or by actively turning their backs on faith (Luke 15), can be redeemed and will be redeemed when they finally come and answer the call of faith. While Uncle John did not confess Christ is Lord at the very hour of his death, but rather some time before, nevertheless he has the same gift that I do after being a Christian for 22 of my 34 years.

And that, my friends, is NOT sappy.

Prayer

Manalangin tayo!

Panginoon, maraming salamat po sa araw na ito.
Maraming salamat din po sa Anak ninyo.
Maraming salamat din po sa Biblya ninyo.
Maraming salamat din po sa simbahan ninyo.
Maraming salamat din po sa buhay ko.
Maraming salamat din po sa pamilya ko.
Maraming salamat din po sa mga kaibigan ko.
Maraming salamat din po sa trabaho ko.
Maraming salamat din po sa mga estudyante ko.
Maraming salamat din po sa mga titser ko.
At maraming salamat din po sa lahat ng ibinigay ninyo sa akin. Amen.

The shack IV--HERE BE SPOILERS

Thinking about it some more, it is odd, as a student said to me today, that "one book could hit all those hands" of the different Christological heresies. So I'll back off that portion of my critique for now. I can come back to it and cite what I found for evidence of these things if anyone is interested. I'm not.

But here is the critique of organized religion. As I said in a previous post, the equation of organized religion with institutional Christianity is an assumption questionable for entirely different reasons, which I will leave aside for the moment. In literary theory, the 20th century Russian formalist critic Mikhail Bakhtin did significant work in examining the distinction between two different kinds of narrative speech. These usually apply to works of fiction, but not always. On the one hand, Bakhtin defines "reporting speech" as what the narrator says to tell the story. For example, Mack (protagonist in The shack) receives an odd letter in his mailbox, slips and falls on the driveway, borrows his friend's jeep, etc. etc. etc. What Bakhtin calls "reported speech," on the other hand, is the narrator telling us what x or y said to a or b, and what a or b responded, and so on. Often, both the "reporting speech" and the "reported speech" betray the point of view/interests of the narrator (express or implied) and/or author much more than that of the characters themselves.

How does this come to play in The shack? First of all, I criticized the book for having far too much dialogue or reported speech and, consequently, far too little action or reporting speech. Secondly, the implied narrator's viewpoint comes through quite clearly in the following couple of passages put into the mouth of Jesus. For those who are not paying attention, ascribing these words to Jesus may well grant them a particular kind of authority, since, well...it's Jesus. Consider the following:

"Put simply, these terrors are tools that men use to prop up their illusions of security and control. People are afraid of uncertainty, afraid of the future. These institutions, these structures and ideologies, are all a vain effort to create some sense of certainty and security where there isn't any. It's all fake! Systems cannot provide you security, only I can." (179-80)

This statement put into the mouth of Jesus reminds me a lot more of Freud and Marx than St. Francis or Marcarius the Egyptian! And it gets worse. Again from "Jesus:"

"Mack, the world system is what it is. Institutions, systems, ideologies and all the vain, futile efforts of humanity that go with them are everywhere, and interaction with all of them is unavoidable. But I've given you freedom to overcome any system of power in which you find yourself, be it religious, economic, social or political. You will grow in the freedom to be inside or outside all kinds of systems and to move freely between and among them. Together, you an I can be in it and not of it." (181)

But the clearest example of all of this comes a few pages earlier. In this last example, there is a bit of reporting speech that demonstrates how the implied narrator wants us to read Jesus' words in a certain way:

"Marriage is not an institution. It's a relationship." Jesus paused, his voice steady and patient. "Like I said, I don't create institutions; that's an assumption from those who want to play God. So me, I'm not too big on religion," Jesus said a little sarcastically, "and not very fond of politics or economics either." Jesus' visage darkened considerably. "And why should I be? They are the man-created trinity of terrors that ravages the earth and deceives those I care about. What mental turmoul and anxiety does any human face that is not related to one of these three?" (179, emphasis added)

And, now for the 50-kiloton bomb to be dropped on The shack. This last quote from "Jesus" is no better than the similar quote from the character "Leigh Teabing" in The DaVinci code! I do not own that horrid book either, filled with errors of historical fact as it is, and I was unable to find the quote to which I'm alluding in the movie version, but it essentially accuses Christianity of being the most murderous sect ever to arrive on the planet Earth, the cause of all manner of suffering and injustice, and Teabing wanted the lie on which Christianity was built--according to the plot of The DaVinci code--exposed so that the whole stinking edifice could be brought down onto itself. I have publicly illustrated my avoidance of The shack by reference to how long I avoided reading The DaVinci code, so it is interesting, and more than a little ironic, that I have boiled over in rage at The shack for essentially the same reasons as what generated that reaction in The DaVinci code--lies, innuendo, half-truth, rumor, sophistry, and cariacature of real historical Christianity for the author's own misguided ends. Cloaked in the veil of a well-written story--at least The DaVinci code had that in its favor; The shack does not--this seething attack on a straw figure "organized religion" is pathetic and trite. It is no better than Bertrand Russell in Why I am not a Christian. All of these people ought to know better and ought to be better abreast of the facts before they lash out in attack without really understanding the "enemy."

And this is not even to get to the racist undertones of the novel's presentation of God as a semi-inarticulate black woman (119) who is always cooking for everybody else. It bothers me tremendously that God is Aunt Jemima! Yet, later on p. 218, Aunt Jemima has become General Lee, or perhaps Colonel Sanders (complete with long white beard), for "This morning, you're going to need a Father" (219). This is the scene where God and Mack go off to see the remains of his little girl, which is what gets everything started at the beginning of the novel.

I could go on, but it's nearly 10:30 PM and I have to teach in the morning, so... Suffice it to say, that The shack, far from being the new Pilgrim's progress, should rather be assigned to a dark corner of a library somewhere, with a sign on the shelf like they used to put up in medieval monasteries: Hic sunt leones, "Here be monsters."

The shack III--HERE BE SPOILERS

I don't have time to post a lengthy response to The shack. I may post such later when I get done with my work for today. But I can say briefly that it is something other than historic Christian theology. It is infected with just about all of the major Christological heresies from the first few centuries CE: Docetism, Apollinarianism, Nestorianism, Sabellianism, Monophysitism, Monothelitism, Gnosticism. The only one I didn't see what Arianism, which I suppose is a point in the novel's favor.

A point for later: the book attacks organized religion, which is equated with institutional Christianity, a separately questionable assumption. The attack is carried out from the standpoint of a Christian. The "about the author" blurb on the back cover brags that the author was raised by missionary parents "among a stone-age tribe." Incidentally, though he shares a name with the author, the implied narrator doesn't seem to have this in his background. So this is an attack upon Christianity from within Christianity, much like what one finds in Søren Kierkegaard (see esp. An attack upon Christendom). But at least Kierkegaard knew what he was doing.

And not only this, but from the standpoint of a writer it is filled with technical errors and general aesthetical unpleasantness. I can't imagine where front-cover blurbist Eugene Peterson--a writer of whose books I own at least six and respect very deeply--gets the idea that this book can be for this generation what The pilgrim's progress was for its time. To paraphrase the best line from the 1988 US Vice-Presidential debate (credit to former Sen. Lloyd Bentsen): "I knew John Bunyan. John Bunyan was a friend of mine. Author, you're no John Bunyan!"

The shack II

It's a fast read. I read about half the book in a little over three hours yesterday. I read a little bit over breakfast and dinner, but then sat down about 8:00 last night and read most of it. And I've gotten a few more pages in this morning. But now I'm at the computer blogposting (is that a verb?) and I have to write a couple of lectures today, so "fun stuff" has to wait.

Preliminary report: It is interesting, and I can see why it would capture the popular imagination, but (as expected) I have a few mild-to-serious issues with it. More to come, perhaps...but I don't want to prejudice one of my commenters who is reading it for a book club.

The shack

I've been working on lectures all day today and my brain is mush. I prepared two lectures for Intro to Old Testament and one for Pentateuch. My goal this Reading and Research week has been to finish the lecture prep for the remainder of the semester, so that I can focus on other projects through October (mainly the Jeremiah commentary project).

I am about to turn off the computer for the evening (it's 7:32 PM, early shut-off for me), but I wanted to post about getting ready to read The shack, a novel that has gained some notoriety of late. I borrowed it from a friend and I am a few pages in already. It's interesting, seemingly having to do with theodicy and dark nights of the soul, in the former of which I'm interested as a scholar and the latter of which I myself experienced a few years back. When a book gets this much hype in the popular press, I generally try to avoid it on principle. It took me several years to read The DaVinci Code, for example, although I almost picked it up when it was first published and before all the hoopla started. I hadn't heard of The shack until this same friend asked me about it. He says he's interested to hear what I might have to say about it. To be honest, so am I.

What will heaven smell like?

I had a thought in the middle of the night, and although thoughts in the middle of the night usually are scary propositions, I stumbled out into the front room and found a piece of paper to scribble it on. I discovered, later, when I had resumed full consciousness (coffee helps) that I had written this new note over an old note that had been fulfilled and scratched out. But even though I could not read it, I still remembered the thought, perhaps simply because of having stumbled out of bed to write it down at 1:30 in the morning or whatever godawful time it was.

The thought is this: What will heaven smell like? Scripture and both Jewish and Christian extracanonical apocalyptic literature abound with descriptions of what the faithful who endure to the end will see, hear, taste, and touch on the other side of the cord--or whatever--but to my recollection there is not much at all in the way of what the faithful will smell when they get to heaven.

By contrast, there is plenty of description of what hell smells like: sulfur, brimstone, burnt things, rottenness, dankness, probably even waste material, decaying flesh...all sorts of wonderful things that you love reading about, especially right after breakfast. Near Manila as I am, my nose is filled will all manner of unsavory aromas, such that Han Solo's complaint to Princess Leia was the first thing on my mind when I stepped out of the airport into the city back in June. I've gotten used to diesel fumes, though my lungs are probably filled with soot by now, and you never quite get used to the odor of a public market with fresh fish (including the heads) mixed with chicken mixed with durian mixed with pork mixed with mangoes mixed with avocadoes mixed with rice mixed with various and sundry vegetables mixed with...well, you get the idea.

But, alas...I can recall nothing from apocalyptic literature on what heaven should smell like. There are descriptions of sights: angels, golden streets, heavenly host, visions of God, sometimes clouds. There are descriptions of things to touch: beautiful buildings, tapestries, again with the golden streets. There are descriptions of sounds: harps, pleasant conversation, unceasing worship of God. There are descriptions of tastes: sumptuous food (that seems never to make you fat), abundant drinks, fruits, vegetables--all the great stuff I might find at the public market, but without the scent. And that "without the scent" has a dual meaning, of course. On one level, the (generally) good food available at a public market often is masked over by the mixed aroma, and so in heaven you don't have the unpleasant smells to go with the food. But on the other level, there is no description of what anything would smell like. To conclude, this idiomatic question seems oddly appropriate:

Is this a cutting off of the nose to spite the face?

Top ten bad Bible geek jokes

I don't know why I'm doing this, but I am sick today so I can chalk it up to delirium if anyone asks. ;-) I posted the first of these on a NT PhD student's Facebook wall, and it got me to thinking about others that could be made. Any non-specialist who gets these needs a thorough head exam:

1. I don't like reading Wrede. He's too secretive.
2. I heard when Robert Funk arrived at the pearly gates the angels did the marble thing to see if he got in.
   
3. Know how Wellhausen first came up with JEDP? Alpha-Bits.
4. No way David could beat Goliath. He had to be juicin'!
5. Did Inigo Montoya get the idea from Ehud?
6. I wonder what funny stories the Ammonites and the Moabites told about Israel's ancestry.
7. If Bugs Bunny were an Israelite: "Shoulda taken that left turn at `Aradluquerque!"
8. Matthew's a man, Mark's a lion, Luke's an ox, John's an eagle. Is Jeremiah a frog?
9. If Bultmann got the whirlwind speech: "Demythologize this, pal!"
10. C. H. Dodd never realized his eschatology was so influential.

Wow...those are really bad. I wonder if there's a competition somewhere for bad jokes...

Prepositions, pre-positions

Wow...I feel ashamed, kinda. I looked over the blog archive and saw: 30 posts in June, 35 posts in July...and 11 posts in August. I've allowed myself to get behind, in my class preparation, in my language lessons, in my blog...well, I'll try to do better in the future. I'm not about to say that I'm having a hard time keeping everything going. After all, I am still engaging in my dream employment, putting to work the degree I spent so long trying to achieve. And I'm serving the church to boot...you just can't get any better than that.

Chapel sermon by one of my faculty colleagues this morning really made me think. She said, in part, "So much of our theology as we speak it in English depends upon and revolves around our prepositions." I'm not sure if that's an accurate quote, but it's close enough. Her essential point is when we come to the Cross, when we are at the Cross, when we are near the Cross, we realize that Jesus was not just on the Cross, but that he came through the Cross to save us.

Jesus, keep me near the Cross,
there a precious fountain,
Free to all, a healing stream
flows from Calv'ry's mountain!

Near the Cross, a trembling soul,
love and mercy found me;
there the Bright and Morning Star
sheds its beams around me.

Near the Cross! O Lamb of God,
bring its scenes before me;
help me walk from day to day
with its shadows o'er me.

Near the Cross I'll watch and wait,
helping, trusting ever,
Till I reach the golden strand,
just beyond the river.

In the Cross, in the Cross,
be my glory ever,
till my raptured soul shall find
rest beyond the river.
--Fannie J. Crosby (1869)

The tyranny of language

One of the things drilled into me as a graduate student (both on the master's and doctoral levels) was the power, the terrible power, of language. Sometimes without even realizing it, we can say things that exclude others or make them feel less valuable or valued--and I'm sure there is a philosophical distinction between those similarly spelled words. In my present context, this shows up rather frequently in the American idioms that pepper my speech. (And even "pepper my speech" is an American idiom!) With many of these, I just take their meaning for granted (what the late Pierre Bourdieu would call doxa). But I have learned, and am indeed still learning, to see the nonverbal clues on my students' faces that indicate bewilderment. When I see The Look, I usually catch myself and go back and define what I just said. ;-)

Another way this came up in the last few days is a discussion with the Master of Science in Theology (MST) student to whom I've been assigned as adviser. By the way, Master of Science in Theology is a very Thomistic-sounding degree, perhaps to be expected in a country whose dominant theological and educational ethos is Roman Catholic. But I digress. In reading over the student's sketch of his first chapter, I said that he needed to italicize something, "because it's a word in a foreign language." I was thinking about that particular phrase this morning, and I realized how another American cultural assumption came into play by how I said that. To wit: saying that a non-English word was "foreign" implies, quite simply, that all non-English words are foreign. Even though they are so to me, as English is my heart-language, nevertheless it highlighted for me a cultural-linguistic bias in my own mind which I had previously taken for granted. But now I am in an Asian context. More properly, I am in a multicultural, English-as-a-second-language (ESL) context, so American assumptions about the priority of English as a language need to be called into question.

Unfortunately, the more precise statement is also the more cumbersome. Rather than saying, "All foreign (i.e., non-English) words written with English characters should be italicized or underlined," it should be "All words from languages other than the primary language of the document, and written with the characters of that primary language, should be italicized, underlined, or similarly identified as different from the remainder of the text." That is an awfully complex statement, but it is accurate. The seminary catalog does say that all non-English words should be italicized or underlined, but this does not betray the same cultural-linguistic bias becuase the rule is built on the assumption of English being the language of all instruction, discussion, and writing at the seminary. Whether that assumption reflects a bias is another matter that I will not explore, except to say that it is a matter of practicality to enforce a common language in multicultural environment. English was chosen as the language of official seminary business because it is one of the official languages of the Philippines and also many Filipinos can speak it, whereas they sometimes have difficulty communicating even amongst themselves in the multivariate languages spoken in the archipelago.

So I will continue to say that non-English words need to be italicized when it comes to written documents at the seminary, but forever after I will remember that even talking about the differences between languages can lead to favoring one language over another. Oh, that the Tower of Babel had never been built and that God had not confused our languages...

Prayer for Travelers

This is my favorite prayer for travelers. It comes from the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer:

"O Almighty God, whose glory fills the whole earth and whose presence we find wherever we go: Preserve those who travel, especially the passengers and crew of Horizon Air flight 2363; and China Airlines flights 21 and 631. Surround them with your loving care, protect them from every danger, and bring them in safety to their journey's end. Amen."

Limerick

Four months is a very short notice,
and ignorance is not really bliss.
Could it really be
that God's calling for me
to use what I know in his service?

Haiku

Headed for Manila;
interesting adventure!
God goes before me.