by Josh Sommer | Jan 17, 2020 | Biblical Theology, Hermeneutics, Social Justice
In their first podcast for 2020, Beeson Divinity School started the year off with a bang (transcript found here).
The hosts of the podcast, Doug Sweeney and Kristen Padilla, sat down to talk with Esau McCaulley and Osvaldo Padilla, both of which are professors—McCaulley at Wheaton, and Padilla at Beeson.
Their conversation spoke mainly to the issue of biblical interpretation and couched that discussion within the seat of what appears to be a more subjective, racialized approach to the interpretational endeavor. McCaulley states:
What I have in mind when I refer to African Americans are, the history, custom songs and experiences that have shaped the African American experience in the United States. And because of those experiences, we bring certain questions and issues and emotions to a Bible reading (emphasis mine).
Now, the assertion that we come to the biblical text with experiences, at first glance, seems prima facie true, and—in large part—it is. No one denies that we bring personal experiences to the biblical text. The question then becomes, What do we do with those experiences? He goes on to say:
And so when I talk about the African American tradition, I talk about all of those things. The way that our history, our experiences and our culture influences the questions we ask and the responses that we give to the answers the Bible brings back to us.
McCaulley, then, wants to encourage ethnically and culturally related questions to be asked by the would-be exegete as they interpret the Bible. But is this really how we ought to use experience in the task of biblical interpretation? Again, no one denies we have experiences with which we approach the text (such a denial would be absurd). The question is, What do we do with them?
I think the answer is largely found in the question that should motivate and shape all biblical interpretation in the first place. If you’ve been to seminary in the last fifty years, chances are you learned about the historical-grammatical method of interpretation. In fact, your head is probably still ringing from how hard the professor hammered it home. The fundamental question asked in that hermeneutical strategy is, What did the original author intend to say? Historically and most normally, however, the church has been motivated by the question, What does God intend by this or that text? I submit that the latter question ought to motivate and shape the way we come to the Bible. There is no more important question than, “What does God intend to communicate to us?”
So, when McCaulley talks about these questions with which blacks have supposedly approached the text he’s overcomplicating the interpretational task and he’s leading his followers and students down a dangerous road. They’ll be more prone to bend and mold the text into an attractive answer to problems arising from their experiences rather than ask and answer the question, “What has God said?” This is no way to discover truth. It’s only a way to put a bandaid on contemporary problems—what all forms of theological liberalism tries to do. Liberalism trades heaven for the here and now, and this is exactly what McCaulley is encouraging his students to do. McCaulley also says:
But we tend to say, “Well, okay, you have this one passage in Timothy, but let’s look at what the entire Bible reveals to us about God’s character and how that reveals what he thinks about slavery.” And so for that reason, we developed what I call the canonical instinct.
This just describes a tool Christians, black or white, slave or free, have been using for 2,000 years. It’s the analogia fidei or the analogy of faith. An interpretation of any given passage cannot contradict the whole of Christian teaching as it’s presented in the Scriptures. This prevents a-contextual readings of certain passages which people might use for wicked purposes.
If McCaulley wants to claim his subjective approach to the text has encouraged a canonical reading, he is sorely mistaken. It most certainly has encouraged men like James Cone and his Black Liberation Theology, but it has not encouraged a canon-centered reading of the text. That interpretational tool is as old as the Bible itself and is chiefly motivated by the question, “What did God say?” not questions arising from subjective experiences. Do not be fooled. McCaulley is not advocating for an objective reading of the Bible. He’s arguing for a reading of the Bible shaped by fluid experience; a reading that’s more Schleiermachian than orthodox.
The experiences McCaulley suggests his black students appeal to are constrained by their blackness. It’s the black experience that should motivate black Christians to ask certain questions which then motivates their biblical interpretation—interpretation designed to answer questions arising from experience. McCaulley’s suggestion gets it all backwards. We derive the doctrine first, from Scripture, then we apply that doctrine to our situation. Our situation should not determine the doctrine. Our doctrine should determine how we respond in any given situation.
McCaulley’s method sets up an unnecessary and unbiblical competition between black and white bible expositors. If a black theologian comes to a particular conclusion from Scripture using an approach shaped, at least in part, by his experience as an oppressed black man, then any white theologian who suggests his reading is wrong will, no doubt, be accused of racism or prejudice. The quest for truth will be completely interrupted. The black interpretation of the bible must be right because it grows out of an experience of victimhood. To call the victim wrong not only appears to be impious, but it smacks of insensitivity and racism.
Why not avoid all of this conflict by reading the Bible as it was meant to be read? Why not act like children of God, who are no longer Jews nor Greeks, but Christians, and learn at the feet of Jesus, asking the all-important question, “What do you want to teach me, my Lord?” Other questions can be asked and answered after we discover what God has actually said (Jn. 5:24).
by Josh Sommer | Jan 14, 2020 | Christology, Philosophy, Social Justice
If Christ didn’t purchase the human mind, He didn’t purchase you at all.
Individual redemption is an all or nothing kind of thing. Christ didn’t only redeem the soul of man, or the spirit of man, or the body of man; He redeemed it all, the whole man (1 Thess. 5:23). But, how can Christ redeem the whole man? By becoming in every way like us in our nature, yet without sin (Heb. 4:15). Christ redeems everything in us that He Himself possessed according to His human nature; a human body, a human mind, a human spirit.
If Christ didn’t have a human understanding, the human understanding couldn’t have been redeemed. If He didn’t have a human soul or will, then neither the human soul nor the human will could be redeemed. Christ was Himself under the law to redeem those who were under the law. He has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (Gal. 3:13). If Christ didn’t have a whole human nature according to which He was subjected to the law and the punishment for our transgression thereof, no human person could be redeemed.
This makes standpoint epistemology an all the more frightening redefinition of the gospel.
Standpoint Epistemology
Earlier on Facebook I submitted a post using this term, standpoint epistemology. Another word we might use is perspectivalism. The idea of standpoint epistemology, in short, is that different kinds of men have different kinds/ways of knowing. In the present context, if you’re white, you know according to whiteness. If you’re black, you know according to blackness. So, black Christians and white Christians read the Scriptures according to distinct ways of knowing or rationalizing. I know differently than a black person or an asian person knows and because of this, we bring “unique perspectives” to the text of Scripture.
Usually, this dynamic is described in terms of life experience. On this view, life experiences not only inevitably shape how a person comes to the text, but they should shape how a person comes to the text. A black man should feel perfectly comfortable bringing his black experience to the table while using that experience as a helpful guide or tool in interpreting God’s Word. The same goes for white men, asian men, brown men, etc (well, maybe all except for white men). And, these particular standpoint epistemology advocates may also add that these experiences, when taken together, help to bring the gospel into clearer focus. The plethora of different perspectives help to bring the gospel into clearer focus.
A white person cannot interpret the Bible like a black person because both of these groups have differing sets of variables acting upon them which prevents one from filling the intellectual shoes of another. The implication, of course, is that black people know like black people, white people know like white people and so on. Of course, this is said to be all experience driven. So, the objector might say, “it’s nothing about being black or white per se that gives these groups differing ways of knowing Scripture. It’s the experiences that affect how we know Scripture which inevitably come with growing up in black or white culture, respectively.
If this were true, the problem wouldn’t be so grave. After all, varying life experiences are a given. We all have them. We all come to the Bible with them in hand (like it or not). But the claim to a difference between black/white theology isn’t so superficial. The term experience is used because no one denies we all have differing experiences. But, if it were only life experience that separated blacks from whites in their quest for biblical truth, why not say there’s also an angler interpretation of the Bible, an Australian interpretation of the Bible, a pharmacist interpretation of the Bible, a rocket engineer interpretation of the Bible, a left-hander’s interpretation of the Bible? All of these groups of people have differing life experiences. Why limit life experience only to skin color or ethnicity. It seems so arbitrary.
There has to be something deeper than experience separating blacks and whites when it comes to the task of Christian theology. It can’t be mere experience because experiences can be sorted out into countless, arbitrary categories.
The standpoint epistemology advocate suggests men know according to their respective experiences. However, we should be asking the question, Why narrow those experiences to ethnicity? Why not something else? There has to be a reason behind why these men have chosen to narrow experiences almost exclusively to ethnicity. That reason must be that blacks and whites are different in some way; different beyond skin color or life experiences. It’s really ethnicity that becomes the distinguishing factor.
If all these life experiences must be categorized according to the ethnic backgrounds, then ethnicity is the controlling variable here. Anglos and African Americans think differently because they’re different ethnicities. They’re strapped to their ethnicity and cannot transcend it, not one iota. Everything they do, say, feel, all of it is according to their ethnicity. It’s not just experiences that shape who we are. Rather, we are, it must be thought, born with ontologically different souls, different minds, different, as it were, ways of knowing.
The Massive Christological Problem for Standpoint Epistemology
What happens when human knowing is not so much human knowing but ethnic knowing? What would happen to Christian theology if we were to suggest that my understanding is different than a black Christian’s understanding, and that that difference exists because of ethnicity or—dare I say—race? Does man know according to his humanity, or does he know according to his ethnicity? Is the nature of man’s knowing defined by his humanity or by his ethnicity?
This particular brand of standpoint epistemology would seem to suggest people know according to their respective ethnicities, making knowing a property of ethnicity, not of human nature. A person can be human, but they don’t have a human mind or understanding. They have either a Jewish mind, a black mind, a white mind, etc.
What’s startling about this prospect is that on this model of standpoint epistemology Jesus would have had a particularly first century Jewish mind. But if Christ had a first century Jewish mind, not a mind essential to all humanity but only essential to Jewishness, would it not follow that only believing Jews can be redeemed? Let me restate it in a more pointed way: Christ’s mind was not part of His human nature, it was part of His Jewish ethnicity—His Jewish nature we might say. Therefore, the human mind is not redeemed. Only the Jewish mind is redeemed. Therefore, we’re all in our sins. We can all just pack up our Bibles and go home, Christianity as we know it is false. This is the logical conclusion here. If there is not one humanity, then Christ cannot redeem one humanity. A human isn’t really a human, they’re Anglo, African American, or something else. But not human. We’re all a bunch of foreigners to one another, aliens—Star Wars style.
But I refuse to believe this is the case. It’s not the case that Jesus came only to redeem the Jewish mind (Rom. 1:16; 3:29). He came to redeem the human mind. Because of this, human minds—those essential to a single, universal human nature—are being redeemed.
Christ had to have a human mind to redeem human minds. Christ’s human mind, His way of knowing, may have existed within a Jewish context, but that didn’t make Christ’s mind an essentially Jewish mind. Jesus’ mind was essentially human. The mind, therefore, must be natural to humanity and not to ethnicity, race, etc. The human mind is transcendent of those things. It exists regardless of ethnicity. It’s not bound to ethnicity or race nor is it necessarily defined by ethnicity or race (although ethnicity may certainly act upon it). Which is just to say everyone must have the same kind of mind. Everyone must know in basically the same human way. So when standpoint epistemology tries to define the mind, or human knowing and how it operates in terms of ethnicity rather than in terms of human nature, it begins to have massive implications upon the doctrine of the incarnation and the atoning work of Christ.
Christ had a human mind. His redemptive jurisdiction was not limited to Jews, but to Gentiles also. Yet, that would only be possible if Jesus had a human mind, a human way of knowing. The question is, “Did Christ redeem our knowing?” The answer is, “Yes.” And the answer is “yes” precisely because Christ redeemed the human mind, not just the mind as it’s defined by a particular culture, ethnicity, or race. Identity politics and things like standpoint epistemology are a cancerous infiltration into the Christian system which undermine the totality of the Christian faith.
As Christians, we do not have a black mind or a white mind, a black way of knowing or a white way of knowing, “we have the mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:16).”
by Josh Sommer | Dec 18, 2019 | Christology, Practical Theology, Systematic Theology
Celebrating the incarnation is an every-Sunday-thing for our church. We don’t believe Christians ought to celebrate Christ’s incarnate work more during some parts of the year than others. This is largely because we believe the Bible directs our worship rather than a liturgical calendar. However, since the surrounding society does celebrate the incarnation more this time of year than anytime else (albeit in a nominal fashion), I’m happy to use it as an occasion to talk explicitly about God with us (Emmanuel).
How Did God Become Man?
The Baptist [Keach’s] Catechism reads:
Q. 25: How did Christ, being the Son of God become man?
A. Christ the Son of God became man by taking to himself a true body (Heb. 2:14, 17; 10:5), and a reasonable soul (Mt. 26:38); being conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary, and born of her (Luke 1:27, 31, 34, 35, 42; Gal. 4:4), yet without sin (Heb. 4:15; 7:26).
The question itself is paradoxical. God? Becoming man? This seems to run against every grain of our thought concerning who or what God is. God, after all, doesn’t change. He doesn’t move along with His creation. He’s not in a process of any kind. God is not a man. He is God. Right? The question above brazenly stares us in the face. It assumes this as fact: God has already become a man. More than this, Christ confronts us all as we read His own claims in the New Testament along with the testimony of the Old (Mic. 5:2; Jn. 8:58).
How should we understand this? Can we understand this? I am a firm believer that if God reveals something to us, we can understand it insofar as it’s revealed to us. In Scripture, God is presented to us and so is the incarnation of the Son of God. Scripture assumes these two doctrines “fit.” They’re not illogical or contradictory, but complementary—two pieces of the redemptive puzzle which make for a consistent and coherent whole. Yet, paradox will always remain.
Nothing about the above question is distinctly baptist. It’s mere orthodoxy—Nicene Christology at its core. The Son of God became man by taking to Himself a true body. This wasn’t a phantom body. It wasn’t only an apparent body. Everything about it was real—true flesh and blood. Hebrews 2:14a says, “Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same…” The Son of God was human in every way you and I are human, yet without sin. Matthew 26:38 says, “Then He said to them, ‘My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Stay here and watch with Me.’” The Son, therefore, took upon Himself a human body and a human soul. Everything about Him was man.
He became like us in every way, even being born of a woman, the virgin Mary, by the power of the Holy Spirit, yet without sin. Hebrews 4:15 says, “For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.”
That is the way in which God the Son became man.
The Paradox Understood
True, everything about Him was man. But, everything about Him was also God. Hebrews 1:10 identifies Jesus with God by quoting Psalm 102:25—a Psalm addressed to Jehovah. So, what do we do with this? Do we have the luxury of just punting the question to mystery? Are we to believe a real contradiction exists, throw up our arms and say, “Well, God can do all things”? Absolutely not. Logical contradictions have no place in Christian theology, though paradoxes abound.
We need to review what an actual logical contradiction is. An example of a logical contradiction would be to say something like: “My red car is also blue at the same time and in the same sense.” This, of course, is ridiculous. A car is either red or blue, but it can’t be both. When Christians read of the incarnation, they may be tempted to think that God is God and man at the same time and in the same sense thereby producing a logical contradiction.
The orthodox doctrine of the incarnation, however, fails to produce a logical contradiction of any kind. This is because the doctrine stated is as follows: God the Son took into union with Himself the fullness of a human nature. There’s nothing contradictory about this statement. Difficult to understand? Sure. Contradictory? No. The Person of Christ is God in nature, and man in nature. The Son is God and man—the divine nature being eternal, the human nature being assumed in time.
So, the apparent contradiction may be put to sleep if we rightly understand the doctrine. It is God taking to Himself a human nature. Yes, God is God and man, but God is not God in the same sense He is man. Therefore, there’s nothing formally contradictory about the doctrine of the incarnation.
Conclusion
Of course there will always be questions and objections. Some may say we haven’t successfully escaped the paradox. And that’s okay, since it was never our mission to eliminate the paradox, but to point out how no contradiction actually exists. Part of the problem with the Western mindset is that it’s unable to appropriate paradox. Paradox, not formal contradiction, ought to be embraced by Christians. Paradox merely tells our minds, “You’ve reached the edge of your capacity!”
The glorious truth upon which our faith may rest is this: the Son of the Father took to Himself manhood and dwelt among us. Therefore, we ought to worship this Lord, the Savior, in season and out of season. The God-man ought to be so precious to us that we race to church on Sunday’s fully intending to fall down and worship Him.
— J. S.
by Josh Sommer | Dec 8, 2019 | Biblical Theology, Practical Theology
Now I want to move to some biblical examples of meekness.
Let’s start with Moses
I think sometimes when we think of Moses we think of a harsh judge. That’s, in one sense, a right way to think of Moses because Moses received and communicated the law of God to the people of Israel, and we know there’s no saving efficacy in the law itself. So, to speak of Moses is to speak of the man through whom God delivered His condemning standard of holiness. However, Moses, though not perfect, is a shining example of meekness. Numbers 11:1-3 says:
Now when the people complained, it displeased the LORD; for the LORD heard it, and His anger was aroused. So the fire of the LORD burned among them, and consumed some in the outskirts of the camp. Then the people cried out to Moses, and when Moses prayed to the LORD, the fire was quenched. So he called the name of the place Taberah, because the fire of the LORD had burned among them.
When the people cried out, what did Moses do? Imagine the situation. Moses is a faithful man. He’s seen what God has done in the past and he grasps the magnitude of grace shown to the people of Israel. Can you imagine coming through the red sea—walls of water on either side (who knows how tall)? Can you fathom watching the destruction of Egypt’s army after the Jews finished crossing. And these same people—the people who witnessed all these wonders—now come before Moses grumbling. They’re complaining. What would you do? What did Moses do?
Moses prayed. The people complained, the Lords wrath was burning hot, and before the Lord’s fire spilled forth in holy anger, Moses—as a faithful intercessor—prayed. He prayed! He didn’t return the people’s complaints with insults. He didn’t return the people’s complaints with snarky impotence. He prayed. What is this but exemplary meekness toward God and neighbor? Moses is trusting in God for the sustenance of the people, and he’s loving the people by interceding for them.
The second example is Solomon, son of David
Solomon was known for many, many sins. Among them were adultery, covetousness, and idolatry. Yet, Solomon managed to demonstrate meekness. In Ecclesiastes 7:9, writing in his older years, he says, “Do not hasten in your spirit to be angry, For anger rests in the bosom of fools.” What’s the elder Solomon’s advice? It’s meekness. It’s the humility which, like a firehose, dousts the flames of unrighteous anger. To be meek is to imitate God in humble long-suffering. Nahum 1:3 says, “The LORD is slow to anger and great in power, And will not at all acquit the wicked.”
The third and most primal example is that of the Lord Jesus Christ
Matthew 12:14-15 says:
Then the Pharisees went out and plotted against Him, how they might destroy Him. But when Jesus knew it, He withdrew from there. And great multitudes followed Him, and He healed them all.
Here was Jesus—He had just healed a man on the Sabbath, and it was witnessed by the religious elite. This point in the text represents a tipping point in the tension between Jesus and the surrounding religious leaders. We need to notice two things about this situation. First, at this juncture, the Pharisees began plotting against Jesus, how they might destroy Him. Second, Jesus found out about the scheme. Now Jesus had two routes available to Him. He could’ve taken an offensive posture and reviled the Pharisees, inciting all kinds of violence against them. Or, He could’ve retreated, without retaliation. And in fact, that’s exactly what He did; and Matthew makes it clear to us that this was the fulfillment of a prophecy in Isaiah 42:1-4, when it says:
“Behold! My Servant whom I have chosen, My Beloved in whom My soul is well pleased! I will put My Spirit upon Him, And He will declare justice to the Gentiles. He will not quarrel nor cry out, Nor will anyone hear His voice in the streets. A bruised reed He will not break, And smoking flax He will not quench, Till He sends forth justice to victory…
This is the example for the Christian. Christ perfectly defines what it means to be meek in His interaction with the Pharisees. He does not recompense evil for evil, and when He does sharply respond to the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Scribes, it’s in the interest of the sheep, so that they would no true religion from false religion, true faith from false faith, authoritative teaching from man-made teaching. Jesus is the very perfection of meekness.
by Josh Sommer | Dec 5, 2019 | Uncategorized
What is it to be meek?
Growing up, I was taught that meekness was something akin to weakness. Meekness, I thought, was to become weak or impotent in my dealings with others. But, it turns out, meekness is not weakness, but quite the opposite. Meekness is a grace given by God (Matt. 5:5) which moves the Christian to withstand injuries caused by others. It’s ultimately exemplified in the Lord Jesus Christ (Matt. 11:29), and it’s seen throughout the Bible as both a grace and a virtue, something desirable to those whom love God.
What I want to do is write a three-part series purposed to draw out what meekness is. In this first installment, we’ll look at the nature of meekness. In the second, examples of meekness. In the third, motivating reasons for meekness.
The Nature of Meekness
Thomas Watson presents a two-fold meekness (Beatitudes, 105). Meekness toward God, and meekness toward man. Toward God, meekness looks like (a) submission to God’s will, and (b) conformity to His Word. The meek-spirited Christian desires, above all, to obey God’s will, and not only obey it, but be satisfied with it in his heart of hearts. A meek-spirit is apt to accept whatsoever providences God has for it. It doesn’t curse the heavens when the hurricane comes, but bears the trial knowing it’s all part of God’s gracious will which works all things for the good of those who love Him.
The meek-spirited Christian recognizes his want of conformity to the Word of God and, by faith, seeks to bend himself to the high calling of holy writ (2 Tim. 3:16, 17). He is humble to understand the violence of a carnal standard and, by faith, doesn’t struggle with the Word of God, but with his own sin.
Another quality to meekness is the bearing of injuries. Now, before I go here, I want everyone to be aware that this bearing of injuries does not preclude self-defense, which is just to preserve life and the lives of loved-ones against life-threatening danger. Self-defense is not retaliation, but the preservation of the good. Meekness, on the other hand, requires that we forgo retaliation and instead repay evil with good. A meek spirit ought not be quick to anger at others, and is opposed to revenge in any form (Rom. 12:19). Whilst it’s incumbent upon the magistrate to bring the sword, it’s not acceptable for the individual to even show a flash of the blade. In the words of Watson, “Revenge is Satan’s nectar and ambrosia.”
Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6:7, “Now therefore, it is already an utter failure for you that you go to law against one another. Why do you not rather accept wrong? Why do you not rather let yourselves be cheated?” Brethren seeking vengeance upon other brethren is a contrary dynamic to the principle of meekness.
It follows, therefore, that meekness precludes evil-speaking and slander. Paul says in Ephesians 4:31, “Let all evil-speaking be put away.” We ought not speak harshly of others in an effort to demean their character, and if a sharp disagreement arises, any terse language needs to be carefully and exactly used not in order to demean, but in order to edify. This appears to be Jesus’ example (Matt. 12:34).
Conclusion
All this leads to a forgiving spirit. The meek Christian constantly forgives and never withholds forgiveness. In Matthew 18, Peter tries to quantify the number of times Christians are to forgive their enemies. Jesus’ reply insinuates there’s never a point where the Christian has the right to withhold forgiveness.
In the next part, I want to look at example of meekness. First, Jesus, then Moses, then the philosophers.
