Musings on the Message #6: The Nature of Preaching: Holistic and Exegetical

Christian preaching finds its sole authority, foundation, and energy from the text of Scripture. The New York Times, the latest celebrity trend, and the next political agenda have a supplementary, but not preeminent, space within Christian preaching. In modern preaching these things have been reversed, making the latest trends the subject of preaching instead of Scripture.

Christian preaching uses the text of Scripture in two ways. First, it uses the entirety of the Bible. This comment is specifically about those who use the NT exclusively and never venture into to OT. Not only does this often lead to heresy (see Marcion), but it also leads to a lack of understanding of the NT because one cannot understand the symbolism, metaphors, and subtleties of the NT because they are so deeply ingrained in the OT. So truly Christian preaching is not exclusively grounded in the NT. The preaching must venture into the other 2/3 of redemptive history as a necessary background to understanding the God of Israel revealed in Jesus Christ.

Second, Christian preaching is decidedly exegetical. The preacher does not go to the text as a springboard for what s/he already wanted to say. The preacher begins with the text of Scripture, itself, examining the structure, the word usages, the nuances of the grammar, and the genre of the book being studied. This is a spiritual discipline that needs to be recovered in the modern pastorate.

Topical preaching has its place (I use it!), but all good theology and practice are grounded in fully developed hermeneutical and exegetical discipline. In fact, I think I could make a pretty good case that even topical preaching ought to be primarily exegetical.

I suppose the strength with which I say this is grounded in the fact that I’ve heard too many sermons piecemeal scripture, citing texts out of their contexts in order to support some pre-established opinion, agenda, or topic. This kind of preaching does an injustice to the Scriptures, to our hearers, and, of course, the God who breathed the text. Too few of us do the exegetical work necessary to preach truly great sermons.

 

Jesus and Women

Why the NT Doesn’t Teach Male “Authority” in Marriage

The following is written by Jon Zens, a prolific Reformed writer and authority on New Covenant Theology:

First, 1 Cor.7:1-5 is the only place in the NT where the word “authority” (Greek, exousia) is used with reference to marriage. But it is not the authority of the husband over the wife, or vice versa, that is in view, but rather a mutual authority over each other’s body. 1 Corinthians 7:4 states that the wife has authority over her husband’s body. One would think that this would be a hard pill to swallow for those who see “authority” as resting only in the husband’s headship.

Second, Paul states that a couple cannot separate from one another physically unless there is mutual consent (Greek, symphonou). Both parties must agree to the separation or it doesn’t happen. The husband cannot override the wife’s differing viewpoint.

John Piper suggests that “mature masculinity accepts the burden of the final say in disagreements between husband and wife, but does not presume to use it in every instance” (p.32). The problem with a dogmatic statement like this is that it will allow for no exceptions. But 1 Corinthians 7:5 contradicts Piper’s maxim. If the wife disagrees with a physical separation, the husband cannot overrule his wife with the “final choice” (p.33). Such separation can occur only if both husband and wife are in “symphony” (unity) about such an action.

Now if mutual consent applies in an important issue like physical separation from one another for a period of time, wouldn’t it seem proper that coming to one-mindedness would be the broad model for decision-making in a healthy marriage? Piper feels that “in a good marriage decision-making is focused on the husband, but is not unilateral” (p.32). In light of 1 Corinthians 7:1-5 I would suggest that decision-making should focus on finding the Lord’s mind together. Over the years the good ideas, solutions to problems and answers to dilemmas will flow from both husband and the wife as they seek the Lord as a couple for “symphony.”

1 Corinthians 7:5 throws a wrench into the works for those who would include the husband’s “final say” in male headship. Paul teaches that unless the couple can agree on a course of action, it cannot be executed. I suggest that this revelation invites us to re-examine what the husband’s headship really entails (cf. Gordon D. Fee, “1 Corinthians 7:1-7 Revisited,” Paul & the Corinthians: Studies On A Community in Conflict, Trevor J. Burke/J. Keith Elliott, eds., Brill, 2003, pp.197-213).

“Christianized” Moral Corruption and the Mass Destruction of Nagasaki in WWII

“Father George Zabelka, chaplain for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bomb squadrons, later came to repent of his complicity in the bombing of civilians, but his account of that time is a stunning judgment on the church’s acquiescence in violence. Here’s his post-bomb testimony:

“To fail to speak to the utter moral corruption of the mass destruction of civilians was to fail as a Christian and as a priest as I see it…I was there, and I’ll tell you that the operational moral atmosphere in the church in relation to mass bombing of enemy civilians was totally indifferent, silent, and corrupt at best – at worst it was religiously supportive of these activities by blessing those who did them…Catholics dropped the A-bomb on top of the largest and first Catholic city in Japan. One would have thought that, I, as a Catholic priest, would have spoken out against the atomic bombing of nuns. (Three orders of Catholic sisters were destroyed in Nagasaki on that day.) One would have thought that I would have suggested that as a minimal standard of Catholic morality, Catholics shouldn’t bomb Catholic children. I didn’t. I, like the Catholic pilot of the Nagasaki plan, “The Great Artiste” was heir to a Christianity that had for seventeen hundred years engaged in revenge, murder, torture, the pursuit of power, and prerogative violence, all in the name of our Lord.

I walked through the ruins of Nagasaki right after the war and visited the place where once stood the Urakami Cathedral. I picked up a piece of censer from the rubble. When I look at it today I pray God forgives us for how we have distorted Christ’s teachings and destroyed his world by the distortion of that teaching. I was the Catholic chaplain who was there when this grotesque process that began with Constantine reached its lowest point – so far.”

Taken from Richard Hays, “The Moral Vision of the NT” (pg. 318-319)

QoD: Atheist NT Scholar Becomes Believer

In the following article, A.N. Wilson, British NT scholar gives a first hand account of his journey from Christianity to Atheism to Christianity. The entire article is worth reading as it is largely centered on why people of faith should not feel bullied by the likes of Richard Dawkins. But I found this quote especially interesting:

“My belief has come about in large measure because of the lives and examples of people I have known – not the famous, not saints, but friends and relations who have lived, and faced death, in the light of the Resurrection story, or in the quiet acceptance that they have a future after they die.”

It just kind of goes to show that the veracity of Christian faith barely if ever hinges on the logical proof for the existence of God or the resurrection of Jesus (significant as these things may be). Rather, it is the everyday, consistent, faithful lives of average believers. For all our attempts at apologetics and argumentation, it is a simple living out of the Christian faith that will convince even some of the most adamant skeptics.

This may also suggest to the degree to which our cheap cliche’s and lack of obedience hinder others from believing the gospel.

Think on these things.

You can read the entire article here:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1169145/Religion-hatred-Why-longer-cowed-secular-zealots.html

Women Teachers in the Book of James

Most evangelicals have come to recognize that it is perfectly acceptable and often desirable to translate adelphoi in the plural into English as “brothers and sisters” in contexts in the New Testament where it is unambiguous that men and women alike are being addressed. But James 3:1 is more ambiguous. The NET Bible renders it, “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, because you know that we will be judged more strictly.” The NLT, TNIV and NRSV likewise all employ “brothers and sisters.”

Some argue, however, along the following lines. (1) We know that the first Christian generation did not have female teachers. (2) Including “sisters” as part of the translation of James 3:1 suggests that they did. Therefore, (3) translations such as the four mentioned above are seriously in error at this point and should be shunned.

There are so many holes in the “logic” of this “argument” that one barely knows where to start. But let’s take the three points in order.

Concerning (1), (a) we in fact do not know nearly as much as some complementarians and egalitarians alike confidently affirm about the first generation of Christian history. Some egalitarians believe that there were no “official” first-century women teachers in the church but that because of changed culture, it is acceptable to have women in that role today. Others, however, point to Priscilla (teaching Apollos) or Junia (as an apostle) or Philip’s daughters who prophesied and infer a prominent teaching role from them. Assuming, for the sake of argument, that complementarians have successfully refuted all such claims, there is still (b) the question of how “teacher” is being used here. In Ephesians 4:12 “pastors and teachers” are closely linked but not (necessarily) equated, and a case can be made from Acts 20 and Titus 1 that Paul often uses “pastor,” “overseer” and “elder” interchangeably. A case can also be made that he limited this office to men, but that still stops short of demonstrating that he equated “teacher” with this office. Even if he did, (c) nothing requires James to be using the term in the same way. Luke and Paul, for example, differ in how they use the term “apostle,”—Luke in all but one instance reserving it for one of “the Twelve,” and Paul often using it as a spiritual gift. Finally, (d) Paul clearly uses “teaching” as a spiritual gift in his various lists of gifts which the Spirit gives without reference to gender, and James could be using it that way.

Concerning (2), (a) James regularly uses adelphoi throughout his letter to address his entire congregation, and in no other instance is there any contextual reason for thinking he has only men in view. Even if he had only men in whatever role he was calling “teachers,” (b) he could still be addressing the entire listening congregation. If all New Testament authors were as uniformly conservative as some complementarians suggest, James could be wanting to forestall any women trying to become teachers as apparently had happened in Ephesus, thereby necessitating 1 Timothy 2:12. After all, his comments are cautions against too many wanting to become teachers. In a traditional society he could be gently saying, in essence, “there are already too many men aspiring to this office that we need to cut back on “applicants,” and the women could easily have heard, “so women, don’t even think about it.” Or (c) James might simply have continued his standard form of address to the whole congregation without being nearly so subtle, because he knew both genders would be listening to the letter being read and women would quickly recognize from the standard practice of the day that he was focusing on men at this point.

Concerning (3), even if none of the previous options should turn out to have been the true situation, the number of ways in which James could indeed have meant “brothers and sisters” that we have surveyed suggests that, if he did not mean this, (a) the inclusive translation can scarcely be called a “serious” error. It would be a fairly minor one. Finally, (b) even if someone remained unconvinced and still deemed it serious, every Bible translation ever created has equally if not more “serious” errors in various places and we can’t shun all of them!

What, then, of a final but quite different counterargument? Shouldn’t we still err on the side of a conservative translation if there is any reasonable doubt that James had both genders in mind. Isn’t that part of where translations differ from commentaries because of our high view of the inspired text of Scripture itself? This may be one of the most widespread and dangerous fallacies afflicting certain wings of evangelical scholarship and the conservative church in general in the U.S. today. Every translation, in fact, has to balance some measure of literal rendering (formally equivalent translation) with understandability (dynamically equivalent translation). The only completely literal translations are interlinear Bibles that are consistently unintelligible if one were to read them solely in English! So one always must ask (and balance the answers to the two questions) both what is at stake if someone misunderstands a translation because it is too literal and what is involved if someone misunderstands a translation because it is too free.

In this case, the answer to the first question, in an absolute “worst-case scenario” would be that someone would think there were women teachers in James’ church(es) in some unspecified role when in fact there were not. But no one could fairly derive from the text that James himself approved (or disapproved) of this fact, since the only prescription (rather than description) in the text involves reducing those who would be teachers (from either gender). And all the other passages in other parts of Scripture used by complementarians to ban women from certain roles or offices would remain unchanged in their translation (and all four translations noted above preserve sufficiently traditional translations of those passages for such interpretations to remain completely plausible).

On the other hand, if James did have women teachers and was not discouraging anyone from the role based on gender, merely on overeagerness, and someone misunderstood a more “traditional” translation as gender-exclusive, and if egalitarian interpretations or applications of the other texts in Scripture appearing to limit women’s roles in church leadership turned out to be true, then the translators preserving the more “traditional” translation would have the guilt on their hands of unwittingly stifling a woman’s gifts and/or calling, and perhaps even quenching the work of God’s Spirit in the world.

I don’t ever want consciously to risk that. I’ll stick with “brothers and sisters” in James 3:1. But then I don’t think he was talking about what Paul called elders or overseers anyway!

HT: Craig Blomberg, NT Scholar: http://www.koinoniablog.net/2008/11/james-3brothers-and-sisters-as-teachers-commentary-and-discussion-with-craig-blomberg.html#more

Effortless Egalitarianism: NT Scholar Gordon Fee on Women in Minsitry

The debate surrounding women in ministry is often accompanied with emphatic discussions and poignant testimonies. Noted New Testament scholar Dr. Gordon Fee merely shrugs his shoulders.

“This is a non-issue for me, because I was born and raised in a tradition where God obviously gifted people who were male and female.”

Now professor of New Testament at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, Fee was raised in the Pentecostal tradition, where both women and men served in every aspect of ministry, including the roles of pastor, missionary and prophet.

Fee remembers one couple in particular who were long-term missionaries in Indonesia who visited his church when they were on furlough.

“He was a good missionary and a great worker, but when it came to declaring,” Fee said, “she was the preacher — a superb preacher, and far more articulate than he.”

As his parents also held each other in high regard, Fee said there was never a controversy about the ways in which women could minister and serve in the home or church.
It wasn’t until Fee began teaching at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary in Boston that he was drawn into the controversy about women in ministry. He was asked to sit on a panel with three other evangelical scholars discussing the issue.

At his chance to speak, Fee began by saying that he was born and raised in a tradition in which God obviously gifted both men and women. “That caused us to read texts like 1 Timothy 2 in light of what God had done,” he added.

A well-known evangelical scholar who was also on the panel strongly criticized Fee for reading the text out of experience.

“The thing that bothers me [about] what you’ve just done,” Fee replied, “is that you read the text out of your experience in the church as well, which doesn’t have women in ministry. [You] don’t recognize that you’re even more conditioned by your culture than I am.”

Responding to this kind of criticism, which Fee says he encounters regularly, is something he would rather not devote his time to. “I’m just not of a kind that’s going to spend a lot of time fighting windmills,” he said.

Fee was unable to avoid controversy though, when the public and press discovered Zondervan and the International Bible Society (IBS) were intending to publish an updated version of the NIV Bible approximately four years ago. One aspect of the new version was gender accurate language in reference to the people of God.

As a member of the New Testament team of the NIV Committee on Bible Translation, Fee suddenly found himself in the midst of a Bible battle. Beginning with its March 29, 1997 issue, World magazine led a critique of the new translation, calling it “the Stealth Bible” and “gender neutral.” Others quickly joined in criticizing the translation.

“I still have a lot of pain about that,” said Fee. “I am still having difficulty with the deliberate deceit … that the World magazine did. And certain people allowed themselves to get caught into that, and without talking to us at all, called what we were doing into question.”

Because of the pressure applied by the Bible’s opponents, Zondervan and IBS made the decision not to publish the Bible in the United States. The New International Version, Inclusive Language Edition (NIVI), is currently being published in the United Kingdom by Hodder & Stoughton.

“My problem with that whole thing was that this was being driven by the market, not by scholarship, not by integrity,” said Fee, “and we were trying to do our work with great integrity as scholars.”

“It’s an unfortunate piece of American church history,” he added. “It says something far more about a community driven by fear than by grace, and when people are driven by fear, they do things that grace would never allow them to do.”

While Fee continues to serve on the Committee on Bible Translation, his recent work has included the book Listening to the Spirit in the Text (Eerdmans 2000). This book is a collection of essays, many of which appeared first in other publications.

While the essays address issues like wealth and possessions, worship and the church’s global mission, two of the essays focus on women in ministry. One addresses hermeneutics relating to women in ministry, and another the question of gender issues and Paul, which was first given as a class lecture at Regent College.

By addressing this issue in lectures and other formats, Fee said he is seen as an advocate for women in ministry, but this advocacy is sometimes misunderstood.

“I care about the women who have been gifted very, very deeply,” he said. “But my advocacy is not so much on their behalf, as it is on the behalf of the Holy Spirit in the church.”

“God was there before me,” he concluded. “To those whom he has gifted, who am I to say, ‘God, you have to take this gift back.’”

http://www.cbeinternational.org/new/about/Gordon.Fee.shtml