Monotheism in History

Sorry for not posting much recently - I've been away on a conference. Thoughts from that at some point...

At the moment, I'm reading The Church in an Age of Revolution by Alec Vidler. It's good as a kind of overview of the church in Britain and bits of Europe from 1789 to somewhere in the mid 1900s. One of the big events during that time is the rise of liberal Biblical interpretation and liberal scholarship challenging the authority of Scripture. One of the things that annoys me about the book is Vidler's continuing description of those who keep teaching the same truths and keep on teaching the Bible as reliable as "naive". That in itself could be a very naive description. Just because something is written by a "scholar" doesn't mean it's true, and especially not when the scholarship is done as shoddily as a lot of the stuff which was seen to challenge the Bible.

I don't even think that whole area should be described as "theology". After all, theology is about knowing and studying God ("theos"), just as biology is about knowing about and studying life ("bios"). But we cannot know God without him revealing himself to us, and if he hasn't revealed himself, as many so-called "theologians" claim, then we can't know him or study him. Anyway, enough of the rant. To the point.

One of the big areas in which the Bible is often attacked as unreliable is the way it describes the development of Israelite beliefs about God. Many modern scholars claim that Israel started out polytheistic, and developed via henotheism (believing that one god is much more important than the others) at the time of Hezekiah and Josiah (700s and 600s BC) to monotheism (belief that there's only one God) at the time of the exile (500s BC). They believe this partly because that is how they think religions develop (though without much evidence because they've never watched a religion develop), and partly because the archaeological evidence shows that there were lots of idols of different gods, particularly Asherah and Baal, around for the few hundred years before Hezekiah. And then because they think that the idea of monotheism only comes along in the 500s BC, they say that all the bits of the Bible that teach monotheism must have been written after that, and so you get most of the OT written during the Exile.

The main reason that I think this is bad scholarship is that the archaeological evidence also agrees pretty much perfectly with the Biblical account. After all, the Bible doesn't say that the people of Israel were monotheistic before Hezekiah. In fact, it says they worshipped lots and lots of idols.

Even worse, the Israelites tried to hide their sins from the LORD their God. They built their own local shrines everywhere in Israel - from small towns to large, walled cities. They also built stone images of foreign gods and set up sacred poles for the worship of Asherah on every hill and under every shady tree. They offered sacrifices at the shrines, just as the foreign nations had done before the LORD forced them out of Israel. They did sinful things that made the LORD very angry.

Even though the LORD had commanded the Israelites not to worship idols, they did it anyway. So the LORD made sure that every prophet warned Israel and Judah with these words: "I, the LORD, command you to stop doing sinful things and start obeying my laws and teachings! I gave them to your ancestors, and I told my servants the prophets to repeat them to you."

2 Kings 17:9-13, CEV

The picture the Bible paints isn't one of lots of monotheistic obedient Israelites. It's a picture where there are vast numbers of idols, but God keeps telling them that the idols are a bad idea. What Hezekiah and Josiah do is to try to get rid of the idolatry by returning to monolatry (only worshipping one god, whether or not you believe the others exist).

Hezekiah obeyed the LORD, just as his ancestor David had done. He destroyed the local shrines, then tore down the images of foreign gods and cut down the sacred pole for worshiping the goddess Asherah. He also smashed the bronze snake Moses had made. The people had named it Nehushtan and had been offering sacrifices to it.

2 Kings 18:3-4, CEV

So when people find statues that show people thought that God was married to Asherah, or that they worshipped Baal or whatever, we shouldn't be surprised at all. The archaeological evidence fits the Bible on this one just fine, so we don't need another theory.

Of course, the big difference between the two theories is what happened earlier. The Bible does say that there were a few brief periods much earlier in Israel's history when they only really did worship God and didn't use idols.

Israel served the LORD all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua and had known all the work that the LORD did for Israel.
Joshua 24:31, ESV

There's also the time from early in David's reign until when Solomon introduced idol worship to keep his wives happy - that's somewhere around 1200BC with Joshua and around 1000BC with David and Solomon.

And interestingly enough, when we look at the archaeology for those periods, we find far fewer idols. Finkelstein, for example, found a whole series of villages in the hill country from about 1200BC, with virtually no idols or pig bones. Could this possibly suggest that Israel's later idolatry was not a stage in their religious development forwards, but rather them turning away from their earlier monotheism to idolatry, before finally coming back to monotheism during the exile? In other words, exactly what the Bible says happened....

I was going to write about why teaching henotheism and monolatry are possibly better responses to idolatry than teaching monotheism, but I seem to have written quite enough for now already!

Becoming Like Little Children

Then people brought little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them and pray for them. But the disciples rebuked them.

Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these." When he had placed his hands on them, he went on from there.

Matthew 19:13-15, TNIV

Many preachers I know tend to ignore these verses. Possibly that is because they do not see many resemblances between themselves - rushed off their feet, always trying to stir others into action, wanting to see God's church grow – and little children. And these really are very little. The word used - paidion - really means “infant”, but can be used of bigger dependent children. Here, they are brought to Jesus, which suggests they aren't really mobile yet. In a description of the same event, Luke uses the word brephos which clearly means “baby”.

Probably the majority of sermons I have heard on these verses (and on the parallel passages – Mark 10:13-16 and Luke 18:15-17) tend to focus not on what Jesus meant when he said this, but on what the preacher would have meant if they had said it. So they look at what babies mean to them, and from that examine what it means to receive the kingdom of heaven as a little child. (It's pretty much the same as happens when they speak about people being the salt of the earth – they don't look at what salt means in the Bible and what it would have meant to the hearers; they just think about what it means to them or used to mean to people 500 years ago. Incidentally, salt in the Bible tends to either represent the covenant or be about God bringing judgement.)

Some people do a good job at looking at the context, particularly in Mark and Luke, and get the idea that it's about holding onto God and not seeking to get into heaven on the basis of what we do. And that's certainly true, but I think we can do better.

So what did Jesus mean?

We get a very big hint because Matthew 19:13-15 isn't the first time Matthew has mentioned little children. A chapter earlier, we get this...

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, "Who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?"

He called a little child, whom he placed among them. And he said: "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes a humble place — becoming like this child — is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.

"If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them if a large millstone were hung around their neck and they were drowned in the depths of the sea..."

Matthew 18:1-6, TNIV

Jesus uses talking about little children as a springboard for discussing “kingdom ethics”. But what he says first is that we need to repent and become like children, and that what matters specifically is humbling oneself like the child. Now I don't tend to think of children as especially humble. I certainly wasn't especially humble as a child. But in a culture where children had a lower status, it means more. Specifically, I think what Jesus is talking about here is becoming like a child in terms of rejection of status, and rejection of trusting in ourselves.

We see that in the way that the becoming like a child stories in Matthew 19, Mark 10 and Luke 18 are all linked to the Rich Young Ruler, whose problem was that he was holding onto his wealth and his status. Jesus applies the need to become like a little child by telling the rich young man that he needed to give all his money away. That was what it meant for him.

Strikingly, and this was what got me thinking about this question originally, we see the same sort of thing in Psalm 131.

My heart is not proud, O LORD,
my eyes are not haughty;
I do not concern myself with great matters
or things too wonderful for me.
But I have stilled and quieted my soul;
like a weaned child with its mother,
like a weaned child is my soul within me.

O Israel, put your hope in the LORD
both now and forevermore.

Psalm 131, TNIV

Once again, the being like a child (this is a different word, specifically to do with being weaned) is connected to humility. But also to contentment. The weaned child is calm, and does not have any ambitions beyond being with its mother. Likewise, becoming like a child for us means rejection of ambitions, rejection of status, and simply being content to be with God. And actually, isn't that what Jesus did? He laid down all of his status, to the point of dying on a cross, and was content merely to do his Father's will.

Sadly, with the busyness of life, that is a place that many preachers find it hard to be. We have too many ambitions and plans, even if they are ambitions for God's church, and not enough contentment and becoming like little children.

I suggest reading through Psalm 131 slowly a few times, and praying through it, as a good start to a remedy.

Experiencing God

We hold that an experimental [i.e. experiential] knowledge of Christ crucified and interceding, is the very essence of Christianity.

...

We hold that, as an inward work of the Holy Ghost is a necessary thing to a man's salvation, so also it is a thing that must be inwardly felt... there can be no real conversion to God, no new creation in Christ, no new birth of the Spirit, where there is nothing felt and experienced within.

J.C. Ryle, quoted in Faithfulness and Holiness by J.I. Packer, p.32

I find this very interesting. Of course, I agree with him. And so did George Whitefield.

But every Christian must be an Enthusiast! That is, he must be inspired by God, or have God in him. Had I mind to hinder the progress of the Gospel and to establish the kingdom of darkness, I would go about telling people they might have the Spirit of God and yet not feel it.

George Whitefield, quoted in Pollock's biography of him, p.86

But when did what is now called conservative evangelicalism stop having this stress on the importance of a personal experience of God? So often we look back to great men of God like Ryle and Whitefield and forget that in many respects they were quite a bit more charismatic (in today's terms) than many of those who now look back to them as spiritual ancestors. Was it simply an over-reaction against some of the excesses of early Pentecostalism that drove so much of contemporary evangelicalism into such an unemotional state?

J.C.Ryle - feeling things

To suppose that people do not feel things because they do not scream and yell and fill the air with their cries, is simple nonsense.

...

To feel trouble deeply and yet submit to it patiently is what is required of a Christian.

J.C. Ryle, quoted in Faithfulness and Holiness by J.I.Packer, p.24, 26

Answering Richard Dawkins?

Some years ago, there was a group of men called the Jesus Seminar. They didn't believe that what the Bible said was true, and they were trying to work out what Jesus actually said. They did so using a rather strange method. They tried looking at what the Bible said that Jesus said, and getting rid of everything that might have been said by the Judaism of the time or by the early Church. Since Jesus was a Jew of the time, and the early Church came into existence largely as a result of what he said and did, those criteria are going to give an awful lot of false negatives. In addition, they wanted it to be in more than one source, but if the gospels were too similar they didn't count them, which is more bad criteria. Using their criteria, what you get out even a sceptical non-Christian historian would pretty much have to admit that Jesus said. But there are a lot of things that Jesus pretty certainly said that they will miss out. But anyway...

As I remember it, they ended up concluding that there was one thing that Jesus absolutely definitely said, which was so different from anything other people were saying, and it's something that we still ignore pretty spectacularly. It was this: "love your enemies".

If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.
Luke 6:32-35, TNIV

All too often, we just don't do it. We love people who are like us or people who are nice to us. If people aren't nice to us, we try to be polite back and sometimes pray for them or something. But we don't really love them.

Let's take a clear example. Richard Dawkins. I lived round the corner from him for three years, and the extent of my love for him was not running him over in my car when he was cycling. That's polite, but not exactly what I'd call really loving.

The way that most Christians respond to Richard Dawkins usually seems to be taking one of the following options:

• Ignoring him and hoping he'll go away
• Finding a Christian who knows a bit about science to do a talk
• Writing a badly thought through response
• Finding someone who really has read Richard Dawkins and engaged with him to do a talk or write a book
• Finding someone to do a public debate with Richard Dawkins
• Praying for Richard Dawkins to become a Christian

I don't think any of those should be our first course of action. Some of them are helpful and useful, and some good books have been written on Dawkins. I think our first course of action should be to love him. I sincerely hope there are Christian organisations and churches and individuals who send him a Christmas hamper or something. Not because they want him to pay attention to them, but because they love him.

The way that things should work (e.g. in 1 Peter 3) is this:

• People attack Christians
• We respond by loving them
• People ask us about what we believe
• We tell them about Jesus

Pritchard - Real Life

Without God we cannot live; we can only take a longer or shorter time to die.
John Pritchard, The Life and Work of a Priest, p.28

Apologies

Sorry for the lack of posts at the moment. I've moved house and don't currently have internet access. This should hopefully change before too long!

Nerdishness

I haven't done one of these in a while...

Fernando - Radical Preaching

In my visits to the west, the most common response I hear to sermons is something to the effect: "I enjoyed that sermon." Sermons should disturb, convict, and motivate to radical and costly obedience. I have wondered whether people's desired result from sermons is to enjoy themselves rather than to be changed into radical disciples who will turn the world upside down. If this is so, the church has assimilated the postmodern mood that considers inner feelings more important than commitment to principles... Such a church may grow numerically, but it would not be able to produce the type of missionaries that the world needs - men and women who will pay the price of identification with the people they serve and endure the frustrations that involves.
Ajith Fernando, Jesus Driven Ministry, p.23

I think it's important to point out though, that our ultimate enjoyment is most found in the sort of radical discipleship Fernando talks about. The real distinction is between short-term pleasure in wordly comfort and delight in God, both long-term and short-term (as Piper). The distinction is one of faith.

Pointless Scaremongering...

There's an interesting story here. It's true that the orbits of planets in the Solar System aren't quite stable - they're just pretty stable, but that's good enough for us. So I suppose that it is possible that Mars might collide with Earth in about 3 billion years.

But let's get a bit of perspective. According to evolutionary biologists, the most complex organisms alive 3 billion years ago were single-celled organisms too small to see with the naked eye. What people would be like in 3 billion years time is an interesting question, but it's pretty likely we wouldn't be much like we are today. The total of recorded human history is about 10,000 years or so, before which time (if we existed at all), we were living in caves and hitting things with sharp rocks. 1 billion years is 100,000 times as long as that. So the whole of human history, back to back and left to run for 300,000 times. That's how long 3 billion years is.

But that's not the point either. Because even if Jesus hasn't come back by then, our understanding of how stars work suggests that the Sun will by that stage be a fair bit warmer. So much warmer in fact, that many predict that by then the Earth will be too hot to have important things like liquid water on the surface and we'll all be dead anyway, unless we've invented some clever spaceships or something.

This page, for instance, suggests "the end of large surface life on Earth" in about 1.1 billion years due to how the Sun is expected to change with time.

So given that, I don't think that we need worry too much about being crashed into by Mars another 1.9 billion years after the Earth has become uninhabitable.