I Dispute the Bible
The other day, while driving home from work, I tuned in to a pastor named Brian Broderson - I sometimes listen to Christian sermons on the radio just to keep abreast of what those folks are up to.
His text was 1 Timothy 1:4-10, and he picked particularly on Verse 4 ("Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which minister questions, rather than godly edifying which is in faith") and Verses 8-9 ("But we know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully, as knowing this, that law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and unruly...").
Pastor Broderson drew from these verses this message (and I'm paraphrasing viciously): The Apostle Paul, by "fables" (or "myths" according to his translation) meant not Greek stories of gods and heroes, but the endless rules and regulations that the religious authorities of the day made up, and which interfered with the relationship of the people to God. It was yet another attempt by those in authority to subordinate the people to themselves as arbiters of the law (or, as we call it, the Torah). The joke is that, as Paul says in Verse 9, the Law (or Torah) doesn't apply to those who have been saved at all. The Law is obviously given to restrain evil - once a person is saved there is no need for the Law, since in our great love of God we would not wish to do those evil deeds in the first place.
I beg to differ.
I am no expert on parsing the intent of the Apostle Paul, needless to say, and I am more aware than I care to be that evangelical Christianity has little or no respect for the Jewish sages of Jesus' time, but if anyone really thinks this is an accurate statement of what the Law is for according to its own dictates, that person has been seriously misled.
Taking the pastor's points in order:
There are, indeed, those who assert that we need nothing but the written scripture to lead a righteous life. There was a Jewish movement in Jesus' day who said that very thing, the Sadducees. And there's a reason those folks aren't around anymore - that kind of belief leads directly to complete assimilation. It's a question worth asking as to whether the Jewish authorities of the day may have overinterpreted scripture, but the idea that scripture needs no interpretation at all is just foolish. And yes, following all those laws that the pastor referred to as "myths" can be inconvenient at times, but I seriously doubt that the pastor really advocates a completely free and unregulated system of religious behavior. In short, when the Bible commands us not to steal, we can say that the form of our obedience to that commandment is a matter of personal interpretation - I think taking pencils home from work is stealing and you don't, for instance - but if we do that we're going to have one heck of a mess on our hands. (Never mind the fact that according to some Jewish thought, those "myths" the pastor referred to are based on the sacred Oral Law given by God to Moses on Mt. Sinai along with the written Torah that the pastor is familiar with - "fables," my foot.)
It's all very well to assert that a system of laws interferes with our personal spiritual life - I say that trying to live without such a system interferes a lot more, and I suspect that the pastor would agree if he thought about it. If we have no agreed-upon code of conduct, how are we supposed to form ourselves into congregations and communities? How are we supposed to "fellowship," as that rather odd verb puts it? How are we even supposed to live together if you hire me in your business and I think Biblical text allows me to take pencils home from work? There's got to be some kind of agreement, which means that someone has to take the lead in formulating that agreement, and you and I would probably like a group of wise and learned people to take that lead. Otherwise, if we all have to participate in formulating that agreement, we're never going to get anything else done.
The next point is another variant on the evangelical argument that the Law, or Torah, was given us by God to "convict" us. That is, although technically one could obtain salvation by obeying the Law, one would have to obey the whole thing perfectly all the time, and no one can do that, since we're all sinners by nature. Therefore, since God knew perfectly well that the Law could not save anyone, He gave it to us so that we would know just how corrupt and sinful we are.
There's a lot to say on the subject, but the basic point is that this assertion misrepresents the Law completely. The Law is not designed to save anyone from Hell - it doesn't even mention Hell. God does not expect anyone to obey the Law perfectly - that's why the Law provides a system of repentance when someone sins. The Law does not require that anyone obey all of it - that's a physical impossibility, since some of the laws apply to men only, some to women only, some to the king only, some to priests only, and so on. And it's worth asking what kind of a God comes across in the above assertion, who would come up with such a complicated system and order us to obey it completely and perfectly when He knew all the time that we could not do so, and then punish us for our failure.
And finally, the idea that the Law is only for the unrighteous strikes me as an incredibly dangerous one, especially the way the pastor presented it. First of all, I urge anyone who seriously believes that a born-again Christian has no desire to sin because of his or her great love of God to take a look at this and this. Here's an evidently born-again man with a deep desire to commit heinous sins, and he's only one of thousands of such people throughout history. (Yeah, some people would say "His actions prove he's not a real Christian" - pretty convenient, isn't it? I could say that some of the ancient Pharisees weren't "real Jews" - think the evangelical church would buy that?) Second of all, the idea that the law doesn't apply to a certain group of people smacks uncomfortably of the "Superman" notion that Hitler stole from Nietzsche - not that these Christians are Nazis, but when they talk like this I'd bet the farm that at least some people will join a church so that they can do what they please. Third of all, the Law, or Torah, is not designed simply to restrain evil, but to promote virtue and holiness, something that the most righteous among us continue to need and want. And fourth of all, the idea that the Law does not apply to the saved is directly contrary to the Christian doctrine that we are all sinners even after we are born again, that we are simply sinners whom Jesus has died for.
Now, of course, I have no problem disagreeing with Christian Biblical text like 1 Timothy, but if my take on these ideas makes sense, what on Earth is the pastor going to do?
Benshlomo says, Come let us reason together.
His text was 1 Timothy 1:4-10, and he picked particularly on Verse 4 ("Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which minister questions, rather than godly edifying which is in faith") and Verses 8-9 ("But we know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully, as knowing this, that law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and unruly...").
Pastor Broderson drew from these verses this message (and I'm paraphrasing viciously): The Apostle Paul, by "fables" (or "myths" according to his translation) meant not Greek stories of gods and heroes, but the endless rules and regulations that the religious authorities of the day made up, and which interfered with the relationship of the people to God. It was yet another attempt by those in authority to subordinate the people to themselves as arbiters of the law (or, as we call it, the Torah). The joke is that, as Paul says in Verse 9, the Law (or Torah) doesn't apply to those who have been saved at all. The Law is obviously given to restrain evil - once a person is saved there is no need for the Law, since in our great love of God we would not wish to do those evil deeds in the first place.
I beg to differ.
I am no expert on parsing the intent of the Apostle Paul, needless to say, and I am more aware than I care to be that evangelical Christianity has little or no respect for the Jewish sages of Jesus' time, but if anyone really thinks this is an accurate statement of what the Law is for according to its own dictates, that person has been seriously misled.
Taking the pastor's points in order:
There are, indeed, those who assert that we need nothing but the written scripture to lead a righteous life. There was a Jewish movement in Jesus' day who said that very thing, the Sadducees. And there's a reason those folks aren't around anymore - that kind of belief leads directly to complete assimilation. It's a question worth asking as to whether the Jewish authorities of the day may have overinterpreted scripture, but the idea that scripture needs no interpretation at all is just foolish. And yes, following all those laws that the pastor referred to as "myths" can be inconvenient at times, but I seriously doubt that the pastor really advocates a completely free and unregulated system of religious behavior. In short, when the Bible commands us not to steal, we can say that the form of our obedience to that commandment is a matter of personal interpretation - I think taking pencils home from work is stealing and you don't, for instance - but if we do that we're going to have one heck of a mess on our hands. (Never mind the fact that according to some Jewish thought, those "myths" the pastor referred to are based on the sacred Oral Law given by God to Moses on Mt. Sinai along with the written Torah that the pastor is familiar with - "fables," my foot.)
It's all very well to assert that a system of laws interferes with our personal spiritual life - I say that trying to live without such a system interferes a lot more, and I suspect that the pastor would agree if he thought about it. If we have no agreed-upon code of conduct, how are we supposed to form ourselves into congregations and communities? How are we supposed to "fellowship," as that rather odd verb puts it? How are we even supposed to live together if you hire me in your business and I think Biblical text allows me to take pencils home from work? There's got to be some kind of agreement, which means that someone has to take the lead in formulating that agreement, and you and I would probably like a group of wise and learned people to take that lead. Otherwise, if we all have to participate in formulating that agreement, we're never going to get anything else done.
The next point is another variant on the evangelical argument that the Law, or Torah, was given us by God to "convict" us. That is, although technically one could obtain salvation by obeying the Law, one would have to obey the whole thing perfectly all the time, and no one can do that, since we're all sinners by nature. Therefore, since God knew perfectly well that the Law could not save anyone, He gave it to us so that we would know just how corrupt and sinful we are.
There's a lot to say on the subject, but the basic point is that this assertion misrepresents the Law completely. The Law is not designed to save anyone from Hell - it doesn't even mention Hell. God does not expect anyone to obey the Law perfectly - that's why the Law provides a system of repentance when someone sins. The Law does not require that anyone obey all of it - that's a physical impossibility, since some of the laws apply to men only, some to women only, some to the king only, some to priests only, and so on. And it's worth asking what kind of a God comes across in the above assertion, who would come up with such a complicated system and order us to obey it completely and perfectly when He knew all the time that we could not do so, and then punish us for our failure.
And finally, the idea that the Law is only for the unrighteous strikes me as an incredibly dangerous one, especially the way the pastor presented it. First of all, I urge anyone who seriously believes that a born-again Christian has no desire to sin because of his or her great love of God to take a look at this and this. Here's an evidently born-again man with a deep desire to commit heinous sins, and he's only one of thousands of such people throughout history. (Yeah, some people would say "His actions prove he's not a real Christian" - pretty convenient, isn't it? I could say that some of the ancient Pharisees weren't "real Jews" - think the evangelical church would buy that?) Second of all, the idea that the law doesn't apply to a certain group of people smacks uncomfortably of the "Superman" notion that Hitler stole from Nietzsche - not that these Christians are Nazis, but when they talk like this I'd bet the farm that at least some people will join a church so that they can do what they please. Third of all, the Law, or Torah, is not designed simply to restrain evil, but to promote virtue and holiness, something that the most righteous among us continue to need and want. And fourth of all, the idea that the Law does not apply to the saved is directly contrary to the Christian doctrine that we are all sinners even after we are born again, that we are simply sinners whom Jesus has died for.
Now, of course, I have no problem disagreeing with Christian Biblical text like 1 Timothy, but if my take on these ideas makes sense, what on Earth is the pastor going to do?
Benshlomo says, Come let us reason together.
posted by benshlomo at 3:52 PM
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