Christ-centered Hermeneutics

So I really cannot say enough about the issue of hermeneutics (a.k.a. "the art of interpretation"). It is really such a vital, necessary thing for us Christians to have a well-informed hermeneutic of the Scriptures (as my previous blog post--namely the video link therein--evidences). So I want to present, in different words, a concept I have already presented in a different way in the three-part blog I wrote a while back, which was entitled "Who gets to say, 'The Bible says...'?".

I would direct your attention to the words of Christ in John 5:39-40, where he says to a group of Jews who are upset that he had healed a man on the Sabbath: "You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, and yet you refuse to come to me to have life." (emphasis mine)

Again, in Luke 24:25-27, Luke recounts the story of Jesus rebuking the two dejected disciples on the road to Emmaus: "He [Jesus] said to them, 'How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! [emphasis mine] Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?' And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself." (emphasis mine)
Later on in that same passage (vv.44b-45), Jesus serves the two disciples the Eucharist--symbolizing his own body and blood--and says to them: "'Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms [which was a Jewish way of saying "all of Scripture"].' Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures."

Why do I highlight these two passages? Because I think these passages give us a glimpse of a sort-of hermeneutical "key"--namely, that the "key" to understanding and interpreting the Scriptures is Christ himself. He himself says that all the Scriptures speak of him. He is the Word of God (Logos of God) to Whom the words of God (scripture) ought to point us.

If the Scriptures ever cease to point us to Christ--if we become more concerned about our doctrinal formations, our exegesis of the original languages, our historical and cultural background information, our "authorial intent"--then the Scriptures cease to function as they should, in the same way that they had ceased to function as they should have for the Jews Jesus spoke to in John 5.

And so you might ask, how can we--2,000 years after Christ--use Christ as our hermeneutical "key"? This may be true in a sort of theoretical way, but how does my proposal that Christ is our hermeneutical "key" really change how we read the Bible today? How can Christ really function as the "lens" through which we see the Scriptures when Christ is no longer among us?

But praise be to God, HE IS AMONG US! And how is he among us? By his Spirit. And where does his Spirit reside? Within each of us who have been baptized into the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit--in those of us called "Church."

So if you ask me how Christ can be the "lens" for our interpretation of the Scriptures, I will answer you: Christ is our lens for the Scriptures when we allow the Body of Christ--the historical Church, filled by his Spirit--to help us interpret the Scriptures.

We only rightly understand the Scriptures when we interpret them in light of the confession of the historical Church, which is the Body of Christ indwelled by his Spirit. This is our safe-guard against the myriad of misinterpretations out there (see my previous blog for one of the worst). This is how we can avoid ending up like the Jews to whom Jesus spoke in John 5--who "diligently studied the Scriptures," but who had not recognized the Savior to Whom those Scriptures pointed them.

May the Scriptures always point us to the Christ of Whom they always speak.

Bad Hermeneutics: Part 1

So, I thought about entitling this post "And you thought your pastor was bad?!" (for reasons you'll understand more clearly once you watch the attached video) but I realized that would be opening up a nasty can of worms if I did. So here is a link to a video, which forms "Part 1" of a (probably) ongoing series I'm simply calling "Bad Hermeneutics." Check out this 4-minute video, and prepare to say... "WHAT?!"

Click here to watch Independent, Baptist "Pastor" Steven Anderson talk about why real men "pisseth against the wall."

(P.S. This is where fundamentalist, independent baptist "theology" will lead you. Visit his "church's" website at http://www.faithfulwordbaptist.org, where he mentions how he did not go to college, but he's got over 100 chapters of the KJV [the only inspired translation] memorized by heart!)

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live...

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by the faithfulness of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

I've been studying Galatians lately, and I can hardly tell you how much the Holy Spirit has been revealing to me through the words of Paul in this brief, angry, yet powerful letter. And the above quoted verse (2:20) has played a central role in what the Holy Spirit has been teaching me. I wonder, do we really hear Paul clearly in this verse?

Just read this verse a few times--let it soak into your mind. Do you hear this man?

Let me try to summarize/paraphrase what I hear Paul saying here: "I'm dead. When I was baptized, I died in Christ. Christ has literally taken over my earthly existence--come into my body and animated my very being. He is now the agent who lives the life that I refer to as "my" life. When you see me move, breathe, speak, even get angry--it's not me, it's Him. It's not me living anymore; it's all Him!"

I think Paul has a much more radical vision of the Spirit of Christ at work within the life of a believer than we often recognize. But, if I'm understanding him right, how can he make such a radical statement? He explains in the rest of the letter to the Galatians (whom he is desperately trying to persuade not to fall into the trap of obeying the Torah in order to receive God's full salvation).

Some of you may notice that my wording of the above-mentioned verse is a little different from the way it is probably printed in your Bible--only in one spot really: I have translated "the faithfulness of the Son of God" where it is usually translated "faith in the Son of God." Why? OK, a little Greek lesson! This phrase is in a certain kind of Greek case--called the "genitive"--which allows "the Son of God" to be translated as either the subject of the action implied by the word "faith" (the faithfulness of the Son of God) or the object of that implied action (faith in the Son of God). So English translators essentially just have to choose one. So why do I choose the translation I do? Because I think it makes better sense of the rest of the verse: "...who loved me and gave himself up for me." This last part of the verse described how Christ was "faithful"--i.e. he was faithful unto God and unto us in his sacrificial death on the cross.

But I digress from Greek....(Really both translations are "true" in that it really wouldn't matter if we put our "faith in Christ" if Christ hadn't been "faithful" to sacrifice his life for us on the cross; but because he did, we do put our "faith in Him.") Why is this important though?

I think it's important because I think Paul has a much more radical view of the eschatological nature of Christ's death on the cross.

Whoa. Whoa. Whoa! Greek AND technical theological words?! Come on, Ian--do you seriously expect me to keep reading this?

Yes, I do. "Eschatological"--from the Greek, eschaton, which literally means "last things." Eschatology is often talked about in terms of "end times" events--death, heaven and hell, the Day of Judgment. However, Paul--and the entire rest of the New Testament writers for that matter--were fully convinced that the "end times" actually started with Christ; i.e. Christ's death and resurrection were eschatological events! Not only that, Paul and the rest of the NT writers believed that we are living in a new age--the age of the kingdom of God, which is, in a sense, already here, and in other sense, not yet here.

The Israelites were looking for this new age to come: Remember the passage Peter quotes to the people at Pentecost? Joel 2:28-32. It begins, "In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people...." Not only did the NT writers--including Paul--see the Christ event as eschatological--i.e. ushering in the "end times"--but what's more, they saw the pouring out of the Holy Spirit as an extremely eschatological event.

Bringing it back to Paul in Gal. 2:20, do we understand now a little bit better the enormity of what Paul is saying? He is saying essentially, "Look, we're living in the last days! The Christ has come and sacrificed himself for us. The Spirit has been poured out freely upon all of us--Jew and Gentile alike. Now, our very existence is defined by Christ's Spirit alone animating our very beings." This is why Paul begins wrapping up the letter to the Galatians by saying, "So I say, live by the Spirit...."

This is the message I wish to convey--which the Holy Spirit has been conveying to me in a stronger way than ever recently: we who have been baptized into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are dead; and yet we live because Christ, through his Spirit, animates our very being. We ought to expect, then, that we will start looking less and less like our old selves, and more and more like the Christ "who loved [us] and gave himself for [us]." And this is exactly Paul's point too: he says, "Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is a new creation." (6:15)

And what does this "new creation" look like according to Paul? Does it look like going to church a lot? Reading and memorizing more scripture? "Witnessing" more? No, none of these things are the primary indicators that Christ's Spirit is forming us into his likeness. Paul says, "The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love." This fits with our odd translation of 2:20--since Christ's faithfulness unto death on the cross was the demonstration of his love for us, the demonstration that the Spirit is at work within us, forming us into Christ-likeness, is our faith expressing itself through love.

May all you who bear his Name live through the eschatological power of the Spirit of Christ within you this week. Amen!

How do we know Christ has been raised?

This is the question that has haunted me when my faith has faced the most difficult doubts: how do we know Christ has been raised? How can I--as a Protestant Christian, living 1,950 years after the fact, living in a land 10,000 miles from the events described in the New Testament--how can I know that the reports of Christ's resurrection are true?

Have I ever stopped believing? Thanks be to God, no. But have I ever had what I felt to be an adequate answer to this question--which is really a question of certainty? Well... no, not really. However, today I'd like to reproduce for you--my Christian friends and family, and anyone who has yet to believe in the resurrection of Christ--a portion of what I wrote in my journal this morning.



"A sort of epiphany has occurred to me this morning. The Holy Spirit, in speaking through my thoughts, has answered a pivotal question for me--the question which has for some time been the most disturbing to me when my faith faces doubts. I have for some time now realized that the entirety of a Christian's hope and faith rests upon the historical event of Christ's resurrection--the event which serves as the focal point for the New Testament gospel. (Paul even writes that if the resurrection of the dead has not occurred in Christ, then we Christians are among the most pitiable people on earth, and our faith is in a lie [1 Cor. 15].)

"I have often wondered, though, how I--as a 21st c. North American Christian--am supposed to even know, with any degree of certainty, whether or not the reports of Christ's resurrection from the dead are true. I have never ceased to believe it, but this is the form through which my deepest doubts have sometimes been manifested.

"I was blind, but now I see! I should have seen this so long ago--but I don't know if anyone has ever explained it to me this way: How do I know (how do we all, as Christians, know) that Christ has been raised from the dead? Because we have received His Holy Spirit! He could not have given us His Spirit if He had not been raised from the dead. But He has been raised! And we have received His Spirit, at baptism! And I cannot deny that I have seen the evidence of the Spirit--in the church, in my life, in the Scriptures, in the ordering of life in general. We have received His Spirit--Who is the deposit, the guarantee, not only of our resurrection to come, but, primarily, of Christ's resurrection, which has already come! He is the first fruits from among the dead, and we have received His Spirit as evidence of His resurrection!"

May this be an encouragement to all who have received His Spirit--those of His Church--and to all who have yet to receive but wish to know the power of the Resurrection.

Christ is Risen!
He is Risen, indeed!
And we have received His Spirit as the evidence thereof.

"I will come again." Really?

Do we really believe that Jesus is going to return? I mean, do we really think that at a particular point in history we will all stop what we're doing and watch as the Son of Man himself appears in our world and begins to judge the world?

Wow. These questions have hit me in the face over the past few days as I've begun courses in both "Apocalyptic Literature/Revelation" and "Eschatology" (which is the name given to the theological study of the doctrine of "last things"--judgment, heaven, hell, etc. [from the Greek, eschaton, meaning "last things"]). It's not that I've never confessed to believing the doctrine of Christ's return (or his parousia as its often referred to, using the Greek word that is quoted in the NT). It's just that something inside of me started asking: do you really believe this?

I mean, it's been 2,000+ years (!) now since the first advent of Christ. It seems extremely doubtful that any of the apostles or the 1st century Christians could have expected a delay in the parousia this long--most of them expected his return within their own lifetimes to be sure! And even the most generous estimates by Peter in 2 Pet. 3:7-9 only hint toward a one-thousand year waiting period: what if we could go back in time and tell Peter, "hey buddy, we can tell you for sure it's at least two-thousand years." I think we'd blow the biblical authors right out of the water if we went back and told them that--and still we wait.

So do we believe it? Do we believe Jesus is coming back "to judge the quick and the dead"?

Now, let me clear that I am not asking you--nor have I been asking myself--to believe the strictly dispensationalist, premillennial understanding of his return. (If you're unfamiliar with what this means, just pick up Hal Lindsey's Late Great Planet Earth, or the newer Left Behind series of novels... or better yet, just check out the picture below.) This particular eschatology has arisen over the past 200 years or so, beginning in colonial America, and is very popular amongst North American evangelical groups (though hardly with anyone else) today. While I certainly have to consider the implications of this popular view--and I think we all should--the question I have been confronted with is much more basic, simpler, and more to the point.

The "Rapture"of dispensationalist, premillennial, apocalyptic eschatology. (The idea being presented here is that Christ's parousia will be preceded [by 7 years] by a mysterious removal of all true believers from the earth, which will mark the beginning of the last dispensation of history--the 7-year reign of the antichrist.)



What I've really been wrestling with is this: do I--as a fairly comfortable, well-off, North American Christian--really believe that Christ is going to step back into history at a decisive moment in order to judge the world--welcoming some of us into his kingdom and banishing others of us from it? I mean: heaven? hell? judgment? Aren't these words a bit too cryptic to really be taken literally? Do I really think that one day I might just look up at the sky and see JESUS--the bodily resurrected Lord? I mean, come on... SO many Christians have looked for the Lord to return throughout history--many of them setting specific or general dates for his return--and have been either vastly disappointed or even thoroughly humiliated when they're date passes right on by without event. I mean how can modern, 21st-century Christians--with the long history behind us, and surrounded by the scores of out-right wackos and con-men who take this stuff seriously--be expected to say with a straight face, "I believe the Lord Jesus will come again."

And yet... here's my confession: I believe the Lord Jesus will come again.

I don't know how it's all going to take place. I'm almost certain that when someone says they do know details that those details are almost certainly wrong. I don't know when it will take place, but I believe I should be expecting it every day. I don't know who goes to heaven or who goes to hell, but I know Christ has called us to follow him into his kingdom. I am extremely frustrated with the popular images and stories and interpretations in the evangelical Christian world that seem to ask you to suspend your intelligence, jump through a gazillion mental hoops, and sign your name to a time-line of the end of the world, which is the result of adding 400 to 1260 subtracting 7 taking the square root of "pi" and ending up at November 10, 2009. All of this confusion aside, however, and this remains for me....

I believe that history has a beginning and an end, and at both ends we find Christ--the One through Whom everything was made, and the One through Whom everything will come to its culmination.

So I truly pray and hope you'll pray with me: Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus!