There's an important distinction to be made, though, between the often undeniably crazy essays and ads, reflecting little more than the bizarre obsessions of the individuals who submit them, and the excellent standard of news reporting that editor Dixon Cartwright brings together for each issue. Of course there are genuinely worthwhile religiously-oriented contributions that appear from time to time, but they tend to be buried under the avalanche of slack-jawed dilettantism that strings together nonsense parading as insight. Mercifully the restrained and accurate reporting on actual events within the movement is unsurpassed. For that reason alone I remain a dedicated reader.
The latest issue however is bound to attract a lot of comment, and perhaps a few cancelled subscriptions. Editor Cartwright, who usually stays well out of the doctrinal fray, has written a keynote article on the problem of the canon.
I think he's hit the nail directly on the head. Here we all are - or have been - idolizing the sixty-six book canon, barely aware that it is a product of early Catholicism, mediated through emerging Rabbinical Judaism (in the creation of the current Old Testament canon) and the Reformers. That's why, despite differing translation preferences, the various Churches of God share the same collection of documents with the Presbyterians, Methodists, the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Southern Baptists.
The early church however regarded the Septuagint (LXX) as scripture. Paul and other New Testament writers quote Greek renditions of the First Covenant, not Hebrew. Most modern Christians regard the LXX as inferior, with illegitimate apocryphal additions, but hey, if it was good enough for Paul...
And then there are those squawking cuckoos in the New Testament nest. Despite attributions to the contrary Paul didn't write 1 or 2 Timothy. He didn't write Titus. He probably didn't write Ephesians, Colossians or 2 Thessalonians either. Peter most certainly didn't write 2 Peter. And that's only to mention the most obvious frauds.
Dixon comes at this from his own angle, but he's asking some very pertinent questions.
"Although the Bible depicts God as Deity who loves and blesses us as His offspring, it also depicts Him as capricious, irritable and even tyrannical. Can God really be that way? ... There are ways to be a Bible-reading Christian that accept the canon for what it is: a list of recommended writings compiled and edited by humans for not only religious reasons but political reasons... The canon—which didn’t exist in its present form until A.D. 376—ultimately was conceived and built as a system of control."
I can't think of any other writer still within the COG tradition who has had the intestinal fortitude to address this issue without falling all over their apologetic shoe laces. Hopefully the full article will appear on the Journal website before too much longer.
Update: As you can read at the top of the comments section, Dixon has provided online access to the entire issue as a PDF file, including his article.
Thanks, Gavin, for the friendly comments. The whole article, in fact the whole issue, is at this URL:
ReplyDeletewww.thejournal.org/issues/issue146/jx122011.pdf
--Dixon Cartwright
Strange, ain't it? People are just now beginning to find out what biblical scholars and big shot theologians have known for 150 to 200 years. Withholding information? Maybe?
ReplyDeleteMore recently though, the "authentic" letters of Paul are also coming into question.
It was a very good article for The Journal and a breath of honesty . It is also the kind of view that would never cross the mind of the average WCG/COGer.
ReplyDeleteI also noticed an article that explains the "how to study the Bible," misstep of using "here a little, there a little...." It was spot on however reminded me of what I had exactly written a few months ago. Can't be two of us..ha.
If anyone in the COG reads that one, they will never again accept that the way to study the Bible is to jump all over the place unlocking the secret code.
We have a private email from Dixon Cartright, portions of which I am fairly certain will appear in Misery of the Ages which will show his opinion that for the most part the Armstrongist Churches of God are led by nutjobs.
ReplyDeleteYou know, Gavin, the stress to promote something which you know is absolute crap which cannot be reconciliated with reality could give Cartright a stroke or heart attack.
'You know, Gavin, the stress to promote something which you know is absolute crap which cannot be reconciliated with reality could give Cartright a stroke or heart attack."
ReplyDeleteI don't particularly feel this comment was called for Douglas. It's not funny and it is absolute crap which cannot be reconciliated with reality...as you might say.
I found myself more in agreement with Ciurana than Cartwright. Some observations:
ReplyDelete1. Cartwright's view (surprisingly) of the development of the canon is secular. He seems to assert that the Holy Scripture is preserved in the same way as any other body of literature. The idea that God might actually have a hand in its preservation seems to have been ruled out.
2. To call the canon "Catholic" is to impose modern denominational friction on an early time period where it would be meaningless. Back then there was just "the church." The canon is pre-Catholic, as we know the RCC today, in its origin. I am not sure how Armstrongites would respond to this.
3. Cartwright moves to a position where he becomes his own canonizer. He claims that there is a compassionate God reflected in the scripture but also political agendas are reflected. He will then choose and pick what to believe. This is not an uncommon viewpoint even within Protestantism. If the local Church of Christ encounters a theological conundrum, the elders will sit down, read the Bible, and come up with a decision without reference to outside authorities. But overall this approach is inferior to developing a comprehensive interpretation of the Bible that does not include some ideas and omit others based on personal feeling about what God should be.
4. Ciurana poses the question as to why an open canon is not just as possible as a closed canon. I believe there can be an open canon but vetting any new writing becomes a potentially difficult matter. But if God wanted it to happen, it would happen and the bona fides of new writing would be undeniable. To my knowledge, Armstrongism has always asserted an open canon. Back in the days of the GTA Rebellion, many lengthy and politically biased co-worker letters were published. An evangelist, I believe, stated in services at Big Sandy that these co-worker letters were a continuation of the Book of Acts and one day future Bibles would contain these letters ("The book of Acts is still being written!!"). To my knowledge, nobody objected to this wild statement. Herbert Armstrong, as the apostle of this era, could disagree with Paul for instance and did so concerning something Paul wrote about marriage. He held himself to be of the same rank as the authors of the books of the NT and was at liberty to revise their viewpoints.
5. This view of mine is unorthodox (or should I say Neo-Orthodox). I believe that the Bible is a part of the Falleness visited on Adam (in the collective sense of mankind) because of his rejection of God. I know the Bible is praised with such adjectives and "magnificent" and "enlightening" but it is also obscure and controversial. It is not the mode of communication that God originally intended. It accreted over great lengths of time based on God's working with various individuals. It is colored by abstruse historical contexts and social norms. It is very different from walking up in person to God and asking him your question. In reading the Bible, one can come up with such extraordinarily different views as Calvinism and Arminianism.
My conclusion is that the Bible is a communication form compatible with our Fallen condition.
Further, I read a book a while back by a professor of Hebrew from, I believe, Hebrew University. He stated that we really do not understand ancient Hebrew vocabulary. When you sit down to translate the Hebrew writings you do not have a dictionary of Hebrew as it was spoken in 3000 BC. One must instead develop meaning from context. For instance, the word "nephesh" which is popular in some Armstrongite articles is not well understood to students of ancient Hebrew. He went through the process of how its meaning was developed and it is considerably more heuristic than Christians or Atheists would like to admit. It means something like "everthing about a living creature that is tangible." This meaning is acquired solely from context because nobody knows how the ancient word nephesh was really defined.
ReplyDelete"He seems to assert that the Holy Scripture is preserved in the same way as any other body of literature. The idea that God might actually have a hand in its preservation seems to have been ruled out."
ReplyDeleteWell, you'd need some pretty solid evidence to assert that "God might" is actually "God did", not just special pleading and wishful thinking. I've yet to see anything on offer, and doubt you have either.
However, if you step back and view the Bible as a kind of testimony to the human voyage into a deeper appreciation of life and its meaning... well, that's another kettle of fish altogether.
"Back then there was just "the church." The canon is pre-Catholic..."
That's just naive. You need to do a bit of digging. I suggest Lee McDonald's The Formation of the Christian Biblical Canon (Hendrickson) and/or Harry Gamble's The New Testament Canon: Its Making and Meaning (Wipf & Stock).
My conclusion is that the Bible is a communication form compatible with our Fallen condition.
ReplyDeleteA conclusion is what someone comes to when they get tired of thinking.
If you're going to go back to Adam & Eve in a garden in Mesopotamia, you're going to have to ignore the fact that humans came from Africa. You will also have to ignore the 100,000 year old human artifacts found in Arabia.
"Fallen condition", indeed. I think the human condition has risen far above the old volcano worship of our ancestors. However, the worship of sacred trees by our more recent ancestors is reflected in the biblical account.
The storm god, Baal, seems to be Yahweh's nemesis in the OT but Yahweh flooded the whole world - top that, Baal. The sun god, too, was a top god in those days but even a human Israelite warrior can command the sun to stand still in the sky and it obeys him.
Cartwright moves to a position where he becomes his own canonizer.
ReplyDeleteHe also is the canonizer of Armstrongism. Perhaps posterity will preserve The Journal as an altogether complete accurate representation of the Armstrongist Churches of God.
Of course, the originals will be lost, but we can certainly count on totally scrupulous scribes transcribing The Journal into whatever interGalactic language in universal use -- with complete assurance that not only will The Journal be completely understood itself, but the nuances of the language in which is was crafted will be preserved for the preservation of such worthwhile thoughts.
Some questions may arise in the seeming contradiction of many of the codas embedded in The Journal Scripture, but apologist Armstrongists of the day will certainly be able to explain away the contradictions.
"canonizer of Armstrongism"???
ReplyDeleteHuh?? Chronicler maybe... and I for one appreciate the effort.
Unknown wrote: An evangelist, I believe, stated in services at Big Sandy that these co-worker letters were a continuation of the Book of Acts and one day future Bibles would contain these letters ("The book of Acts is still being written!!"). To my knowledge, nobody objected to this wild statement.
ReplyDeleteI remember hearing something like this in a WCG sermon tape in the early 1980s. Evangelist David Albert declared some of HWA booklets will "someday be scripture."
Yet to my knowledge, no church group (not even Philadelphia Church of God) has dared to publish an Armstrong Study Bible incorporating his writings into holy writ. Fred Coulter didn't even go that far.
And it was Herman Hoeh who, uh, taught me in church magazines the book of Acts was left open-ended, by having no "amen" at the end.
Which leaves an open question: is the Old Testament still not finished, based on Malachi 4:6?
That was Waterhouse, who said the letters would be added to the book of Acts; at least, that's how I remember it. I also remember that no one, really, actually believed anything Waterhouse said. Sure, some of us thought it was strange, that he was able to stand up there and lie at such great length without being struck down...but when he started going around to all the churches, telling us to "follow Joseph Tkach Sr into HELL if you have to" things became suddenly clearer.... (And this, a scant few years after a picketer at the Feast in Victoria broke into the Royal Theatre and yelled "You're all going to hell!" Charming Baptists, those were.)
ReplyDeleteThanks for the link to the PDF, good article!
ReplyDeletePS: The Journal blurb on David Pack starting construction of his "Magnificent World Headquarters" on the auspicious day of April 1st made my evening. :)