The Journal - 180th issue

The latest issue of The Journal: News of the Churches of God is devoted in large part to Ron Dart, who recently died after a long period of ill health. I can recollect few if any other figures in the Church of God movement who have been held in this kind of regard across the fractures, and frankly stated, there will likely be few if any who will be so regarded in the future. As Ian Boyne notes, "No matter how cynical, you could not help but be impressed..."

Brian Knowles, a former Plain Truth editor, has also written in this issue about his friend, the late David Jon Hill.

A PDF of the issue is available to download.

The Malleable Jesus

The current issue of Word & World (Winter 2016) has an editorial by Frederick Gaiser called The Malleable Jesus. It's a reminder that your Jesus may not be mine. Being a church publication (out of ELCA's Luther Seminary in St Paul, Minnesota) Gaiser is obligated to find a silver lining, and I can't say I blame him, but the unpleasant fact remains that we tend to create Jesus according to our tastes.

But who is the “historical Jesus,” the one sought by various “quests” of recent time? He is related to the Jesus of the “Jesus Seminar,” who seems to have spoken remarkably little, unlike the Jesus of some editions of the King James Bible, who somehow spoke in red letters.

I'd almost forgotten Bruce Barton's Jesus. He was referred to in various editions of a certain Bible correspondence course which some readers will remember. Barton's actual views weren't touched on, but the name of his book, The Man Nobody Knows, was used to great apologetic effect. (The ever-original Darris McNeely cribbed the same trick in an episode of Beyond Today.) What was Barton on about? Gaiser gives details.

So, who is this malleable Jesus? Perhaps most odd is Bruce Barton’s The Man Nobody Knows, the title of his 1925 book. Upset by the sissified “Sunday school Jesus,” “a physically weak, moralistic man, and the ‘lamb of God,’” Barton describes Jesus as “the world’s greatest business executive” who was nothing less than “The Founder of Modern Business,” the strong masculine man “who created a world-conquering organization with a group of twelve men hand-picked from the bottom ranks of business.”

You can see how this 'hard' image of Jesus might appeal to an ambitious 1930s advertising salesman turned evangelist. Barton has a lot to answer for. Somebody should tell Darris.

Gaiser spends some time (not a lot; the editorial is only a two-pager) mulling over various artists' impressions of Jesus. Now there's a study in kitsch. Thanks to really bad artwork hanging in the 'sitting room', I grew up with the door-knocking Jesus imprinted on my mind ("behold, I stand at the door and knock"), looking a bit like a zoned-out Jehovah's Witness. Even then I thought it was pretty awful. I'm sure Barton would have concurred.

There's something to be said for iconoclasm.

Wisdom of a Pharaoh

I love this time of year. It's still summer. Everyone is back at work. The kids are back at school, as are their teachers, so the beaches are suddenly uncrowded. This weekend is an exception as New Zealanders observe Waitangi Day on Monday, a welcome respite from the return to routine. Oh, alright, I realise that you Northern Hemisphere types are still wrapped up against the cold and megadosing on Vitamin C, but that's half a world away from where I sit.

Of course, there are those who seem to feel they have to work every hour God gives them. To them comes this sage advice from the ancient scrolls. No, not the Bible, Herodotus. And not Herodotus himself, but Pharaoh Amasis II of Egypt who, according to Herodotus, was advised thusly by his counsellors:

"Sire, you are not conducting yourself properly by pursuing worthless pastimes. You ought to be seated solemnly upon your stately throne, transacting affairs of state throughout the day; that way, the Egyptians would know that they were being governed by a competent man, and your reputation would improve. But as it is, you are not acting at all like a king."

To which the pharaoh replied:

"When archers need to use their bows, they string them tightly, but when they have finished using them, they relax them. For if a bow remained tightly strung all the time, it would snap and be of no use when someone needed it. The same principle applies to the daily routine of a human being: if someone wants to work seriously all the time and not let himself ease off for his share of play, he will go insane without even knowing it, or at the least suffer a stroke. And it is because I recognize this maxim that I allot a share of my time to each aspect of life."

Though I wonder whether the lowly citizens of Egypt were blessed with the ability to follow this ancient endorsement of a balanced lifestyle, nonetheless it stands as great advice long centuries later.

Have a great weekend!


(A version of this posting appeared here in December 2011 under the title 'When Archers String Their Bows'.)

That Blog Roll

Not that anyone has probably noticed, but the blog roll (eyes right) has been split up, much like the Soviet Union. The idea is that very different blogs no longer jostle together, but the herbivores are now safely behind a predator-free fence.

Or something like that.

Trying to classify some blogs is however a bit like deciding where to draw the border around Crimea, it just hurts the brain. Could you describe Tim Bulkeley's excellent Sansblogue as "progressive Christian"? Yes, I think so.  How about James Pate? Quite possibly, but then again perhaps not. If anyone is offended with the way things have shaken down, my apologies and do feel free to set me straight.

The Etymological Fallacy - By Golly!

When I was a young bloke, still in short trousers and serving time, age 11, at Peachgrove Intermediate School, I had a friend who was much given to using the word 'flip' as an exclamation. "I just heard Miss Levesque will be having a test on the algebra chapter after lunch." Response, "Oh flip!"

The term I preferred was the time honored "gosh!" (I much later incorporated it into the name of this blog on a bit of a whim, fusing it with the name of a certain fine - if chilly - institution of higher learning.)

Later I was informed that terms like these were euphemisms. Their original purpose was to wickedly circumvent evil and damnable outbursts. Gosh was just a sly way of saying God, thus taking the Lord's name in vain, whether or not you realized it or intended it, hence a serious sin, and I was on very thin ice indeed.

As for 'flip', well, I'll leave that to your imagination. But the list goes on; 'shoot' anyone?

This nonsense was reinforced in the fundamentalist cult that I was drawn into in my late teens. Religious fundamentalism and language fundamentalism are not unrelated. This was a sect where ministers actually thought they could prove a theological point by citing a Webster's definition.

This sort of logic is based on a fallacy, and happily linguists even have a name for it: the etymological fallacy. The idea is that words mean what they originally meant, world without end, amen.

Which is clearly wrong.

Word origins are intriguing. I'm a devoted follower of the UK Channel 4 show Countdown which features a segment on origins of words with lexicographer and etymologist Susie Dent. You'd have to be the classic "moron in a hurry" to maintain the etymological fallacy after a even a couple of those episodes.

Meanings change and evolve. English - like all other modern tongues - is a living language. As difficult as it is for language fundamentalists to accept, usage determines meaning. I mean, where do these guys think the definitions in Webster's (or Strong's Exhaustive Concordance for that matter) came from in the first place? Clue: they didn't drop down from the sky on stone tablets. A word means what those of us in the land of the living believe it means. Consider words like gay and bimbo. The latter originally meant "a young child". In the Jim Reeves song it referred to a young boy!

"Bimbo is a little boy who's got a million friends,
And every time he passes by, they all invite him in.
He'll clap his hands and sing and dance, and talk his baby talk,
With a hole in his pants and his knees a-stickin' out,
he's just big enough to walk."

That's not how it's used in these Kardashian times.

If Granny thought differently, that's okay, then was then, now is now. It's also the reason that nobody today uses the first edition of the Concise Oxford, published in 1911, except as a bookshelf curiosity.

There is a great example of shifting meaning with the word (ladies be warned, a wicked word follows) bugger. The aforementioned 1911 Concise Oxford had no doubts, racing straight to a then illegal sexual practice. Move ahead into a new century and the first definition in The New Zealand Oxford Dictionary (2005) reads "an unpleasant or awkward person or thing (the bugger won't fit)."

But if you were pedantic, insisting on the original meaning come hell or high water, neither would be accurate. The term simply meant heretic, with special reference to non-Catholic Bulgarians.

Flip!

More Misery Synod Madness

The Missouri Synod continues in its relentless quest to give all Lutherans a bad name. This time its target is Doreen Pawelk,  a 92 year old woman who wants to be buried next to her husband. In fact the plot had already been paid for.

News of the elderly woman's treatment went viral after a letter upbraiding Mrs Pawelk for not taking the eucharist at a legalistically-determined frequency was released by family. A huge negative reaction led to a backtracking by Synod leaders and local pastor, LeRoy LaPlant. It was, so they now say, all a big mistake.

What clearly isn't a mistake is the existence of a nasty form letter saturated with a spirit of legalism that would take the breath away from any real Lutheran - or any decent person from whatever religious or non-religious background. Even if this was the 'wrong letter', it has clearly exposed the unpleasant side of the already famously narrow LCMS mindset. Adding insult to injury, this is a form letter that, despite its tone and gravity, can be churned out without the need for the pastor, or any congregational official, to as much as dignify it with a signature.

Of course there's a simple solution. In Minnesota there are a lot of ELCA Lutheran churches. I'd bet the farm that none of them have "self-exclusion policy" like this.

Greg Albrecht and the Imaginary Mark

Greg Albrecht has set out to educate us all about Mark's gospel.

This Gospel was written by John Mark, the cousin of Barnabas. He is probably the young man who fled from the soldiers in Gethsemane (Mk 14:51-52)
Greg Albrecht, CWR Bible Survey, Mark, Week 1.

Well, that's fairly straight-forward. Greg, no mean wordsmith, paints a colorful portrait of the first evangelist.

Think about Mark as a boy. He grew up in Jerusalem, the city of the holy Temple, central to Jewish history and religious practice. He probably followed Jesus, Peter and the other disciples through the streets of Jerusalem during the week of the events leading to the crucifixion. He may well have been the young man who escaped the Temple soldiers that fateful day (Mk 14:51-52). 

Youthful experiences of Mark would have included knowledge of the early growth of the church, the gift of land by his cousin Barnabas to the church, the sermon and martyrdom of Stephen, and the conversion of the adversary Paul. He traveled with Paul and Barnabas to Cyprus and Asia Minor, but left to go home to Jerusalem, greatly upsetting Paul (Acts 13:13; 15:37-38). 

Why did he leave? The Bible doesn't say. Perhaps he had family responsibilities, or a fiancee waiting for him. Perhaps he was homesick, traveling through unfamiliar lands far from home. 

Whatever the case, Mark eventually decided to record the most important story ever written.

The problem is that most of this is pure invention. Greg is clearly a talented story-teller, but fiction rather than fact is his forte. We know very little about Mark. We can't be at all sure that he was the 'John Mark' written about elsewhere in the New Testament, and in fact it's fairly certain he wasn't! Here are some quotes from a few of the standard reference works that are readily available.

Like the other Gospels, the text does not identify its author, but early church tradition... attributed it to "Mark," a companion of Peter in Rome (1 Peter 5:13), who is then identified with the "John Mark" of Acts... This attribution is called into question by the apologetic desire to associate a nonapostolic Gospel with the apostle Peter, by the frequency of "Mark" as a name in the Roman Empire, and by the ancient tendency to attribute works to important figures from the past.
John R. Donahue, Mark, HarperCollins Bible Commentary. 

About the author of the gospel we probably know very little. Ancient tradition calls him Mark, almost certainly intending to identify him with the John Mark mentioned elsewhere in the NT... None of this, however, is certain. It seems very unlikely, for example, that the author of the gospel was a Palestinian Jew. He appears to be rather ignorant about local geography (see Mk 5:1; 7:31), as well as about Jewish customs or laws (see Mk 7:3-4; 10:11-12). He may well have been called Mark, but the name was a very common one in the Roman empire and we cannot simply equate all the Marks we know!
C. M. Tuckett, Mark, Oxford Bible Commentary 

Although the Gospel is anonymous, an ancient tradition ascribes it to John Mark (mentioned in Acts 12:12; 15:37), who is supposed to have composed it at Rome as his summary of Peter's preaching (see 1 Pet. 5:13). Modern scholars find little first-century evidence to support this tradition.
Richard Horsley, Introduction to Mark, The New Oxford Annotated Bible, NRSV, 4th edition

It seems those in-the-know know a good deal less about Mark than Greg does. A number of commentators (for example Paul Achtemeier in the Proclamation commentary series) largely ignore the issue of attribution given the dearth of real knowledge on the subject. Obviously Greg is unencumbered by any such reservations, which is okay as long as you bear in mind that he is primarily a spinner of yarns, an apologist more interested in flair than scholarship.

Not even informed by scholarship actually. Maybe he should take some classes...