Theology Thursday Lite: The Great Catch of Fish
I’m going to keep this brief this week. Seriously. I was reading in Luke 5, about the Great Catch of Fish. Allow me to sum up:
Jesus gets into Simon(Peter)’s boat and tells him to go out and let the nets down again. James and John are in another 
boat. Presumably, Andrew is in Peter’s boat. They fish and come up with such a large catch that it almost sinks the boat. Peter senses there’s something different about Jesus and confesses that he’s a sinful man. Jesus reassures him that He can still use him, and calls him and the sons of Zebedee to follow Him.
I’ve always wondered what the purpose of the Great Catch was. Certainly it alerted Peter to Jesus’ power, but might there have been something else at work? I wonder if it might have been Jesus’ way of compensating Zebedee (and Peter and Andrew’s business partners, whoever they were) for the loss of their four main fishermen.
Does that even make sense?
Theology Thursday Book Review: Feeding Your Appetites
I started reading Feeding Your Appetites, by Stephen Arterburn last year and finished it this year. And I haven’t reviewed it up till now for two reasons:
- I didn’t know how to review it without being really, really transparent
- I didn’t really feel like reviewing it
So laziness and self-consciousness. That’s about the sum of it. But then this week, Tyler shared an item on Google Reader titled “If a Fat Man Can Lead a Church…”. (You can go read it if you want to. It’s a short post with long discussion in the comments. Then you can come back and see how I think this ties in to my current book review.)
First, how about I discuss what Feeding Your Appetites is about? As the title suggests, it’s about the many kinds of appetites we have and how to feed them properly. The appetites discussed are:
- Appetite for Fellowship with God
- Appetite for Pleasure
- Appetite for Food
- Appetite for Sex
- Appetite for Authority and Power
- Appetite for Work
- Appetite for Companionship
- Appetite for Wisdom
The underlying philosophy can be summed up by a quote from the forward:
So I set out on a journey to understand what I had to do to get my appetites under control. Along the way I learned something amazing: every human being has an inborn desire to know God, but our personal and selfish wants get in the way. Our desire for knowledge of our Creator is taken hostage, and we find ourselves captured instead by appetites for foods, feelings, or experiences.
Of course, the appetites described in this book are not bad in themselves. In fact, Arterburn goes to great lengths to make it clear that they’re all good things, but things which can be abused as substitutes for other unfulfilled appetites, the primary one being the appetite for fellowship with God.
(To be honest, I question the very premise of the book. The idea that all humans have an innate desire for God sounds like Christianese to me. I’m not saying it’s a wrong idea, but I’m just not convinced.)
The book is directed at anyone who has one or more appetites out of control, but I didn’t really go into it looking for a self-help book. I must admit I got it to read it with a friend, and it was cheap! Cheap books good! Reading book with friend good!
And I don’t find myself to have any completely out-of-control appetites. I don’t drink. I don’t gamble. I don’t try to control people. I don’t have any particular temptation to look at pornography. Of course, I’m carrying around a few extra pounds here and there that I’d rather not carry. So my appetite for food must be at least slightly off.
One of the things that becomes clear in the book is that we tend to abuse one appetite in substitution for another, with the abused appetite bringing pleasure to cover the pain of the unfulfilled appetite. We’ve all heard of “comfort food” and “emotional eating,” I imagine.
(By the way, it was interesting reading this article about the whole Tiger Woods thing after reading this book.)
I actually didn’t intend to do a full book review here, so I’m not even going to discuss the rest of the book, except to mention that I liked the way it ended. Arterburn didn’t expect that reading a book would solve everything, counter to what a librophile like myself would probably hope. But he hoped to provide some guidance for getting started on straightening out our out-of-whack appetites.
One interesting thing I noticed in myself while reading this book was the way our struggles seem natural to us, while others’ struggles look bad and sinful. I could sit there reading, repulsed at the idea of gambling addiction or porn addiction (and even scoff at the idea of labeling it addiction), while figuring that whatever was wrong with my appetites was both pretty much normal and perfectly understandable.
And that’s where the tie-in to the “Fat Man Leading a Church” post comes in. If you look through the comments (and I admire anyone who could read all of them), you’ll find some very reasonable ones (like mine – see, me opinion good, you opinion bad), but then a whole bunch of vitriol from either the “but gays are gross” or “fat people lack self-control” sides. And quite a few puerile “sin is sin” comments (yes, I used the word “puerile” for that overused and under-thought-out statement).
Anyhow, the more polarized comments on both sides seem to stem from someone standing in judgment of somebody else’s struggles. Though I must admit that I’m standing in judgment of all those commenters, calling what they’re doing wrong. It’s wonderful being human, isn’t it?
Well, this wasn’t much of a book review. Maybe I could get a comment or two from someone else who’s read the book, filling in something else about it. Say, perhaps, someone I see several times a week? Who spotted the cheap book and ordered a couple of copies, then slipped one to me for a reasonable fee? Anybody like that out there?
Theology Thursday: Perfect Through Suffering
Well, I asked for somebody to lob me a topic for Theology Thursday, and it happened! JonV, former little kid and now full-fledged adult, working as a Clean Water Engineer with the Mennonite Central Committee in Tete, Mozambique, filled out the Suggest a Topic! form, and now I’ll attempt to do his question justice.
The big news here, though, is that Jon referred to me in the email as “Seth” and not “Mr. Heasley.” Keep in mind I’ve known him since he was shorter than I am, back when The Fair Elaine and I were working with the youth in our old church. Back in the previous century, you know.
Jon’s question is from Hebrews 5:8 and following, which says:
Hebrews 5:8-10 (ESV)
8 Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. 9 And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, 10 being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek.
This passage seems to imply that Jesus had some growing to do before he could be our High Priest. More than that, it seems to imply there was some perfection that Jesus lacked. This seems offensive to our “He’s the perfect man, he’s the Lord’s own son” sensibilities. And yes, that’s a classic Petra reference (The Coloring Song).
So there’s the question: What does it mean that Jesus learned obedience or became perfect?
Right off the top, I’d point out that there’s really only one question here. The two parts of the question, I believe, are a bit of parallelism. So “Christ learned obedience through suffering” = “He was made perfect.” I don’t think there’s a way to separate the two thoughts.
Of course, it’s tough to address a question from the Epistles without having the greater context of the letter in mind. So, being a reader, I read the book of Hebrews over the weekend. There are a couple of verses that stick out to most readers, but they’re on the Eternal Security question, and I think the emphasis on them distracts from the greater arc of the letter. I’ve read Hebrews probably ten times now, but the beauty of the letter really hit me this time.
For those unfamiliar with it, the writer of Hebrews (Luke? Apollos? Titus?) makes a sustained argument about Christ’s role as the High Priest of the New Covenant, and addresses how his new role affects humans. An outline looks something like this: (and you can find something similar in most study Bibles)
- Chapter 1 – Christ superior to angels
- Chapter 2 – Christ made like us
- Chapter 3, 4 – Christ greater than Moses
- Chapter 5 – Christ as priest despite his non-Levitical lineage
- Chapter 6 – Warnings against apostasy
- Chapter 7 – Christ superior to the Levitical Priests
- Chapter 8 – Christ as the priest of a New Covenant
- Chapter 9 – The Earthly Temple was never anything but a copy of the Heavenly Temple
- Chapter 10 – Christ’s sacrifice superior to animal sacrifice
- Chapter 11 – How we access Christ’s work: Through Faith
- Chapter 12 – Our response: Faith and endurance through suffering
- Chapter 13 – The sacrifices God honors: Praise and Serving Others
I wanted to include this outline first to inspire someone to go and read Hebrews. As I wrote, it’s very easy to get freaked by the warnings against apostasy and to miss the greater points about how Christ accomplished our salvation.
It’s really impossible to answer Jon’s question without tracing it through the whole book, or at least a couple of the chapters. Because Chapter 5 isn’t the only place where Christ’s being perfected shows up. In fact, there’s a much earlier reference:
Hebrews 2:10 (ESV)
10 For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering.
Keep in mind that Chapter 2 discusses how Christ was made like us. Further down, we have this verse:
Hebrews 2:17 (ESV)
17 Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.
In this sense, we’re looking at how Christ was made perfect for his role. He had to be like us, and to suffer as we suffer, in order for him to truly represent us.
(BTW, I want to make it clear that this idea didn’t originate with me. I did some Googling and whatnot and this is the position I think is correct, or at least makes sense.)
So anyway, I’d sum up the writer’s argument this way: Christ was the mediator of a better covenant, was qualified to be its High Priest by being appointed to it by God, was made fitting for it by what he suffered, and further qualified by enduring suffering in obedience. Which brings me to Hebrews 7:
Hebrews 7:26 (ESV)
26 For it was indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens.
One more thing I’m going to throw in here. The Internet is a great tool for researching Bible Blogs. I looked up the word “to make perfect” ("teleioo", for the record) from 2:10 and 5:9, and in the range of definitions is “to be found perfect.” Going with that definition, we wouldn’t have to do any wordful wrangling. It would just be relating that Christ endured his sufferings perfectly, not that the sufferings somehow made him perfect.
Well, Jon, I hope that helps. I even managed to keep it under a thousand words! Feel free to weigh in in the comments.
Theology Thursday: Something to Sing About
Reading the Bible can be interesting sometimes, just trying to figure out what it is, exactly, I’m reading. There’s some history, which would seem fairly straightforward, but even then I know that this particular history was recorded for a reason, so there’s a didactic twist to it. And there are other apparent history portions that make me wonder if they’re written as history but intended only to teach a lesson.
And then there are the Epistles, where I’m conscious of reading someone else’s mail. And then there’s poetry. Reading Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, and Job takes an extra bit of concentration sometimes, because the imagery and language style differ from Western Poetry.
And if the Epistles are like reading someone else’s mail, with all the challenges inherent there, what about Song of Songs? It’s like reading someone else’s love letters. Or even more than that, like spying on two lovers.
Throughout history, Blblical interpreters, uncomfortable with the idea that Song of Songs is basically about sex, have taken various approaches to allegorizing it. It’s about God’s relationship with Israel! It’s about Christ and the Church!
Yeah, it’s about sex. Which isn’t a bad thing, of course, because it’s nice to have a straightforward approval given, in the Bible, for sexuality in its proper place.
And yet, I’m still not sure what to make of it. I mean, it’s supposedly a celebration of married love, but isn’t it ostensibly penned by Solomon? Of the seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines? Doesn’t the whole polygamy thing dilute, somewhat, the specialness?
Then again, maybe I’m missing the point. Any tips on interpreting this book?
By the way, let the record show that I have now officially blogged about Song of Songs. One more crossed off The List, four more to go!
(Oh, and if you’re wondering why I’m in Song of Songs in February, it’s because I’ve been reading a chapter per day of Psalms and the other Poeticals. I’m saving Job for last.)
I believe I’m now out of topics for the foreseeable future, though I have a few theology books I could finish up and review. But if you wanted to lob me a topic, now would be a good time. (Use the Suggest a Topic!!! link!)
Theology Thursday: Saints or Sinners?
I generally try to come to Theology Thursday with a well-thought-out idea, complete with Bible references. But today I just wanted to write about something I’ve been wondering about, but without most of the actual effort involved with making a Biblical case for it. Call it laziness if you want.
It seems that it’s the thing to do these days for Christians to call themselves sinners. Or to emphasis their sinfulness, by way of (perhaps?) trying not to look pompous or judgmental.
Certainly, it wouldn’t necessarily help my witness if I went around calling myself a saint, right? Or should I update my Facebook profile to say something like this:
“Seth: Husband, Father, Baseball Fan, Saint.”
But isn’t just a bit odd to insert “Sinner” there, too? Is that really part of who I am, any more than “Baseball Fan” is? Do I really need to emphasize my own sinfulness? And mightn’t I just as easily put “Human” for all the information it gives? Where does this emanate from?
I suspect there are a number of different motivations that feed this tendency for us to insist that we’re “just sinners, saved by grace.”
- It’s a defense against unbelievers who call Christians hypocrites. If we call ourselves sinners, then we can hardly be called hypocritical when we fail, right?
- It just looks pious.
- We feel, acutely, our own sinfulness and express our gratitude to God by emphasizing it.
- The word “saint” just doesn’t fly today.
I mainly want to write about #4, but I’ll take comments on any of them, or suggestions for other possible motivations. I do think that #3 is certainly a common reason, particularly among men, for going with the Sinner label. I could be off-base here, but I think the types of things men tend to struggle with get more attention, and therefore are felt more acutely. (Definitely generalizing here.)
But I definitely think that the reason we can’t really get away with '”saint” is that it’s not a well-understood word these days. The word itself conjures up, at least to Protestants, images of icons or statues in a Catholic or Orthodox church, and has an almost sterile, ivory tower connotation.
(This in spite of the fact that any treatment of the Lives of the Saints will normally have ample evidence that these saintly folks were awfully human, too.)
“Saint” simply means “holy ones.” Well, that’s not much of an improvement, is it? “Holy” is another misunderstood word, because it doesn’t mean “perfect,” but rather “set apart.”
I know I said I wouldn’t get all Biblical on this topic, but go look at the salutations of the Epistles in the New Testament. A goodly percentage of them are addressed to “the saints” in a particular city. Certainly there was no implication of the people of the churches in those ancient cities being any less sinful than we are today.
At the risk of sounding like Stuart Smalley, isn’t there some value in positive affirmation? I’m not into the Word of Faith doctrine, in which faith is seen as a force and words as having some mystical power. But it seems to me that calling ourselves “sinners” is similar to a person who’s been sober twenty years calling himself an alcoholic. (And here I really step in it.)
Yes, we are sinners. But we’ve been bought with a price and set apart to be saints.
Thoughts?
Theology Thursday: Redeemed
Back on New Year’s Eve, I engaged in a short debate-ish thing with my Esteemed Partner in Pavement Pounding about Jephthah, and specifically about whether he sacrificed his daughter in Judges 11. (Whoa, I just totally pulled that chapter reference out of my head! Sweet!) I took the negative proposition, that Jephthah did not sacrifice his daughter, though the wording of the passage seems to indicate he did. (You can go read it if you want. I’ll wait.)
Mostly my position is based in logic. And it goes like this:
- God does not approve of human sacrifice
- God approved of Jephthah (Hebrews 11)
- Therefore, Jephthah did not engage in human sacrifice
But then, a couple of weeks ago, I came across an additional bit of support for my position. (By the way, you’d probably like to know what I think Jephthah did sacrifice, right? The short answer is something acceptable.)
My new evidence came from Exodus 13, when the Lord commanded the consecration of the firstborn. Here’s the passage:
Exodus 13:12-13 (ESV):
12 you shall set apart to the LORD all that first opens the womb. All the firstborn of your animals that are males shall be the LORD’s. 13 Every firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb, or if you will not redeem it you shall break its neck. Every firstborn of man among your sons you shall redeem.
The “shall be the LORD’s” part seems to indicate that they would be sacrificed. But not all species would be sacrificed. Only clean animals. Others would be redeemed with a lamb. And firstborn sons, in particular, were consecrated to the service of the Lord (see Numbers 3), though later the tribe of Levi was taken for that service (but all firstborn sons of other tribes still had to be redeemed).
But my main point here is that an Israelite couldn’t offer just anything to God. Even when bringing a clean animal to sacrifice, it had to be spotless. God seemed to be very particular about what could be offered.
In this passage, the example of a donkey is given. Checking Leviticus 11 (a lot of 11th chapters in this post), we note that the donkey doesn’t have cloven hooves, so it’s unclean. It has to be redeemed (or throttled, apparently).
So, back to Jephthah’s case. He promised to offer what came out of his tent to the Lord. But he was an Israelite, and knew that he could only offer something clean. Anything unclean, he would have to redeem. But it would still belong to the Lord.
So, Jephthah’s daughter would have been redeemed, but would have been consecrated to the Lord. If this is so, and she was dedicated to service, she may not have been able to marry. This makes a good deal more sense when one considers that she lamented not her impending death, but rather her virginity. Jephthah’s grief would be explained by his knowledge that his line would end with her, since she was his only daughter.
This also seems to match the chronology of Judges 11, as one of the concluding verses says this:
Judges 11:39 (NKJV, just because it’s more word-for-word)
39 And it was so at the end of two months that she returned to her father, and he carried out his vow with her which he had vowed. She knew no man.
It might be stretching things a bit, it seems the “she knew no man” happened after Jephthah had fulfilled the vow.
BTW, I’m comfortably out of the mainstream with my interpretation here. Most commentators think that in the time of the Judges, the Law wasn’t observed particularly well, and so resorting to human sacrifice wasn’t be all that surprising, and Jephthah was honored for keeping a painful vow. But the writer of Hebrews doesn’t mention the sacrifice at all, so I think my explanation fits.
Now that we’re done with that, I’m shocked that my feeble little brain is just now really connecting the redemption of the firstborn with the fact that mankind was redeemed by the Lamb of God. The unclean redeemed by the clean. The broader idea of redemption by a lamb/bull is pretty well documented, but this specific idea is just now settling in for me. Guess I need to keep reading.
Theology Thursday Lite: In All Points
I have to say that I’m enjoying my less rigorous read-through this year. I’m finding I’m enjoying the reading more, going at a slower pace. I’ve even got a few Theology Thursday topics rolling around between my ears.
So, it’s my first New Testament post of the year!
Matthew 4 details Christ’s temptation in the wilderness. The three temptations are:
- To change stones to bread, to fill his hunger
- To jump off the Temple, counting on God’s protection
- To worship Satan, in exchange for the kingdoms of the world
You can find any number of creative interpretations of the three temptations and what they represent. But the thing I’ve been pondering is this:
Could Jesus have sinned?
Grand Theological Term Alert! The doctrine of The Impeccability of Christ says that Jesus was incapable of sin. I do not hold to this doctrine, and the reason is simple: I don’t think it’s Biblical.
Hebrews 4:15 (ESV, my emphasis):
For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.
Okay, yes, I’ve strayed a bit from Matthew, but in my defense, I did once do a read-through where I read Matthew and then went straight to Hebrews (whoa, and my first Bible-Blog post was about it.)
I think the verse pretty much says it all, but I’ll admit that my thoughts on this are more logical than anything. And in that respect, I’m willing to have my logic adjusted.
I guess my objection is also a bit emotional, because if Jesus couldn’t sin, I’m not sure what was admirable or meritorious about His resisting temptation. How is it even remarkable in any way? And why would the writer of Hebrews think to mention it?
After all, how could Christ sympathize with us if the temptation He experienced was anything but just like ours?
For instance, I can’t really sympathize with an alcoholic, because I have no particular temptation to drink. (In fact, I’m putting it somewhat mildly. I think beer and wine taste alarmingly like vomit. And that’s when trying what others call “the good stuff.”)
Maybe I’m way off base here, but I think I’m making sense. Comments?
Theology Thursday Book Review: The Creed
I’m singing in church this weekend, and I was also asked to lead the reading of The Apostles’ Creed for one of the services, and so you just know what my reaction was going to be, don’t you?
Okay, so my initial reaction was, “No, thanks.” Nervous as I can get about singing into a microphone, it’s ten times worse to speak into one. However, the service I’ll be speaking in is a small one, and the atmosphere is very family, so I’m going to stretch myself a bit.
My next reaction was, “I’ve got a book about that!” The Creed: What You Believe and Why, by Michael Bauman, is a concise 
treatment of The Apostles’ Creed, explaining each point and adding in testimonials from Christians about what the Creed means to them. I picked it up for a buck from CBD. Mmm…dollar books.
One would hope that most pew-dwellers would already know what each line means, rather than just reciting the Creed without understanding, but then a book such as this would be unnecessary.
Having grown up in a decidedly non-liturgical church (Assemblies of God), I didn’t grow up knowing any Creed other than Petra’s. (Which I still think is an awesome song.) But after taking a Church History course in college, and doing quite a bit of self-study on the topic, I’m now reasonably familiar with the various Creeds.
There are a couple of points I disagree with the author on, but that’s hardly surprising given my tendency to disagree with everyone on something. The first disagreement comes in the Introduction:
A well-written creed marks out the truths that the Bible reveals and requires for salvation.
I’m not one to put knowledge tests on salvation, given that the Disciples were apparently saved before knowing much more than “Jesus is Lord and Christ.” Yes, we have more knowledge today, and so we have more responsibility to shepherd that knowledge, but imperfect belief in Christ is still belief in Christ. Errors can be corrected after conversion.
The other issue is Bauman’s treatment of “He descended into hell,” in which he makes the common mistake of not recognizing that “hell” is a bad translation of “Hades,” which is better understood as The Grave, or the place of the dead, and not a place of punishment. The idea that Christ suffered the tortures of Hell is interesting, to say the least, but I’m not aware of any Biblical case that can be built for it.
One other minor thing was that Bauman recycles the very common idea that God the Father turned away from Christ when he was on the cross. I’ve written before that the idea makes sense but isn’t explicitly taught in Scripture and shouldn’t be taught so dogmatically.
Other than that, though, The Creed is a nice, short work of basic apologetics, and it would be very useful as a resource for new converts or those just wanting to brush up on the particulars of their Faith.
But, of course, I was looking for something I could use, man! And I found it. Actually, several things. First, Bauman mentions the legend of the origin of the Creed. The legend says that the Twelve all collaborated on it (after Pentecost, so including Matthias rather than Bad Judas), with each of them contributing one statement to it. A cool idea, to be sure, but not provable.
The next thing is the fact that The Creed is personal. Even though it’s often spoken communally, it’s phrased “I believe,” not “we believe.”
And finally, Bauman emphasizes that there are two sides to faith. The first is the mere intellectual assent, stating things like “I believe this.” The other side is the trust aspect of faith, where we say, “I believe in Jesus.”
It’s the difference between knowing facts about God and knowing God. It’s the difference between saying, “I know what I believe,” and saying with Paul, “I know whom I have believed.” It’s certainly useful to know what you believe about God, but it’s only a stepping stone on the way to knowing Him.
So now I guess I’m ready-ish for Sunday.