What do early schisms in the church have to do with us?

The following is a paper I wrote for my masters class on church history, plus a short relection that didn't fit in the page limit.

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In its first few centuries after the conversion of Constantine (and even before), the Christian church faced some of its defining theological struggles. By "defining" I mean both that these struggles served as models for how future Christian leaders could contend for the faith, and that they resulted in several points of doctrine that we consider just as important and foundational as any in Scripture. My text puts it this way: "Those whom the rest of the church eventually rejected as heretics and schismatics left their mark in the theology that was developed in order to refute them."

Donatism

One of the first such theological battles of this era was the Donatist controversy. This began even before the conversion of Constantine as the question came up again over what to do with the "lapsed", those who renounced their faith under Diocletian's persecutions, or traditores, those who handed over sacred writings to destruction. A divide arose between those who favored more lenient restrictions on readmitting them and the rigorists who demanded stricter measures. This dispute came to a head in Carthage when the new bishop, Caecilian, was consecrated by an alleged traditore. The rigorists considered this consecration invalid and appointed their own bishop, Majorinus, succeeded after his death by Donatus. The presence of two rival bishops in Carthage became a flashpoint for controversy on the issue of the lapsed, and the affair came to be known as Donatism.

What was at stake was much more than practical matters of church government. The conflict between moderate and rigorist Christians was underlaid by questions about forgiveness and the true nature of the church. How were Christians who had compromised their faith but wanted to be readmitted to be treated? Are sacraments administered by a traditore valid? More fundamentally, can someone who appears to have lost his salvation be saved again? And is the holiness of the church grounded on that of its members, or of the Lord and the church offices He instituted? There was also a social element to the controversy; the rigorists tended to live outside major cities, and be poorer and less accepting of the "Romanization" of the church, which they saw as worldly corruption. The Donatist issue was the spark they needed to express their discontent with the direction the church was going, and break away.

The council of Nicea helped resolve this issue, establishing procedures for the readmission of the lapsed, after which they could presumably administer valid sacraments. The proponents of the majority view argued that if the validity of sacraments was based on the holiness of the one administering them, no one could even be sure of his own baptism; they were based on God's holiness, not ours. Augustine would later help to solidify the validity of sacraments performed by an unworthy bishop in his writings.

Arianism

A contemporaneous, and much larger, controversy in the church was Arianism. This was the teaching that Jesus, the divine Logos (Word), was not equally divine or coeternal with the Father, but was the foremost of the created beings under Him. This teaching originated from Arius, an elder in the city of Alexandria, who like others was seeking to reconcile Christian theology and classical philosophy by interposing Jesus as the Word of God who mediates between an immutable, invisible Supreme Being (the Father) and mutable, material humanity. He was strongly opposed by Alexander, the bishop of Alexandria, who claimed Arius was denying Jesus' divinity and the worship of Him that had been practiced for centuries; Arius replied that Alexander's assertion of Jesus' divinity was a denial of monotheism and that Jesus' perfect obedience to God was drained of its meaning if He was Himself God. Both parties had plenty of biblical proof-texts to support their positions.

This might have been a local controversy if Arius had not been highly popular and influential. Soon he had gathered many allies to his position and the Arian controversy had spread through the empire. It was still dividing the church when Constantine converted and Christianity became accepted in the empire. Seeking to end this, Constantine called the first ecumenical council of the church at Nicea in 325, the first such gathering of Christians from all over the known world. Its main purpose was to settle the Arian controversy. Alexander and Athanasius were the main proponents of what would become known as Nicene Christianity; Arius, not being a bishop, was represented by Eusebius of Nicomedia. When Eusebius presented Arius' views, they were received with scorn and quickly condemned by the council. The council wrote the Nicene Creed as an expression of orthodox Christianity that explicitly excluded Arianism; Arius was condemned and deposed (and banished from Alexandria by Constantine). Due to his political abilities, Eusebius was eventually able to change Constantine's mind on the matter and Arianism, though condemned, would stick around for several centuries.

Apollinarianism

The three following controversies mostly concerned the eastern branch of the church. Apollinaris, the bishop of Laodicea, was a defender of the Nicene formula of Christianity. In his eagerness to defend Jesus' divinity and to explain how He, though a man, could also be coeternal and co-divine with the Father, he began teaching that Jesus' human mind was replaced by the divine Logos. This was one form of monophysitism, the belief that Jesus only had one nature (even if He also had a physical body). Unfortunately for him, his views were judged to be heretical by several local synods before the Council of Constantinople condemned him as a heretic in 381. The council also re-asserted its condemnation of Arianism (which was still a threat to orthodox Christianity) and augmented the Nicene Creed with a description of the divinity of the Holy Spirit.

Nestorianism

The next controversy concerned Nestorius, then the patriarch of Constantinople. In his understanding of Christ's dual nature, he was concerned that Jesus' divinity not override His humanity in any way, so that He could no longer identify meaningfully with us as human. So he drew a sharp distinction between them, saying that Christ had "two natures and two persons" and that Mary should not be called theotokos ("bearer of God") but Christotokos ("bearer of Christ"). He and John of Antioch held this view and were opposed by Cyril of Alexandria. In the ensuing Council of Ephesus, Nestorius was declared a heretic and the title of Mary as theotokos was affirmed in no uncertain terms. This council contributed to the growing acrimony between the Antiochene school of theology, which like Nestorius sought to preserve Jesus' human nature distinctly, and the Alexandrian school, which emphasized His divinity even at the neglect of His humanity.

Eutychianism

Then the pendulum swung back the other way when Eutyches, a monk in Constantinople, began teaching that Christ's two natures were united into one new nature, which was "of one substance" (homoousios) with the Father but no longer with us. This amounted to saying that Jesus had only a divine nature and was no longer truly human. Though Patriarch Dioscorus of Alexandria supported him, Patriarch Flavian of Constantinople saw this teaching as close to docetism. The resulting Council of Ephesus in 449 was subject to political manipulation by Dioscorus, who ensured that it would rule in his favor, and which handled Flavian so roughly that he later died. Dioscorus also disallowed a letter from Pope Leo, which expressed a position of compromise largely from Tertullian's views, from being read. This council increased the tension between the rival schools of theology even further.

Once Marcian became emperor, he called for a new council, to be held in Chalcedon in 451. This council condemned the "Robber Synod" of 449 and finally read Leo's letter, with which most of the bishops in attendance agreed, saying it described their beliefs. Based on this, the council wrote a definition (not a creed) that would set the standard limits for Christology for the future. Eutyches and Dioscorus were condemned, but some heretical factions still clinging to Nestorianism or monophysitism broke off in the east.

Reflections

As I studied these controversies in their historical context, not just as abstract contentions over the finer points of Christology, one thing that stood out to me was how none of these "false teachers" seemed like they were "wolves among sheep" intentionally trying to lead people away from orthodox Christianity, as we usually think of them. The Donatists were expressing legitimate concerns about the direction the church was taking; Arius was looking for dialogue between Christianity and classical philosophy. Nestorius was concerned about Jesus' humanity and divinity being blurred together; the monophysite churches were contrastingly concerned about them being so separated as to render the Incarnation meaningless. Apollinaris and Eutyches seem to have arrived at their views in response to earlier heresy, in a desire to refute it. The controversies of the 4th and 5th centuries were like a pendulum swinging farther and farther away from equilibrium.

What I take from this, at least, is the danger of what I will define as "negative theology": that is, "doing theology" not in order to seek what is true, but to refute or exclude what you know cannot be true. So instead of being drawn towards something (hopefully God), you are repulsed away from something else. As I think the above examples show, when this is the case you are likely to proceed straight into an opposite extreme that is at least as bad, and make some enemies in the process. Also notice how much more precise and philosophical the Chalcedonian definition is than anything in the Bible, even John or Romans, due to the necessity of navigating safely between the Alexandrian and Antiochene schools of thought. Of course I agree with it, but if you make it your new starting point for Christology, you are likely to go about the task with quite a different focus than someone who has only the "mere Incarnation". What is important is recognizing not what the definition is against (Arianism, Apollinarianism, Nestorianism, Eutychianism...) but what it is for—the simultaneous affirmation of Christ's total divinity and humanity, in light of repeated challenges to one or the other—and to continue affirming those same things.

What about you, reader? (Yes, I'm asking a discussion question) Do you think Christians sometimes think about theology not in terms of seeking what is true, but of denying what is not true? Your responses may have a major effect on the next post I'm writing about the gospel!

Gospel Faith

I'm continuing right along with this series of posts delving into the complex, often tense relationship I've had with "the gospel", the all-important confessional centerpiece of the evangelical circles in which I find myself. Recall that in my introduction I introduced the doubts and questions I had about the gospel, as it was described to me, by comparing them to a house with a front and back door. Well, this metaphor turned out to be so utterly brilliant that I'll be expanding it even further, because I'm just that brilliant. I picture the house from The Simpsons.

I'll start with the front door, that is, a highly emphasized and visible point to which we constantly return: justification by faith. This was the crucial realization that (as the story goes) Martin Luther had that sparked the German Reformation. If you hear in someone's testimony about how they found a church that "really preached the gospel", they usually mean they heard something like justification by faith there after not hearing it elsewhere. It's safe to say that evangelical (and most Reformed and Protestant) Christians make a huge deal out of justification by faith; it is the center of the gospel, if not the whole.

I increasingly try to avoid buzzphrases like "justification by faith", or at least to avoid relying on them. Weighty terms like these are like a suitcase into which rich concepts can be easily packed and transported, but if they aren't opened up and unpacked every once in a while, it's easy, for me, at least, to forget what's inside. So I'm going to try and dissect "justification by faith" as I see it used, both by myself and (as far as I can tell) in the wider Christosphere. My change of perspective on the nature of "justification" came through the back door which I'll get into later, so for now I ask: what, exactly, is this all-important "faith" that everyone says is so essential?

Faith as belief (of facts)

Personally, by far the biggest misconception I've had about faith is to keep shut the suitcase into which I pack my concept of it, until my working definition of "faith" is more informed by my own biases and habits than Scripture or any Christian tradition. "My own biases and habits" mean that my concept of faith is highly intellectual in nature, consisting of figuring out, "believing", and affirming things about God. For example, when I first started to actually care about my "faith", it led to some of the most intensive study of theology and apologetics I have ever done—and nothing more. This is why I have so frequently pointed out, from my third post onward, that faith is not just an intellectual assent to propositional facts—I need to hear it more than anyone else!

More practically, this means that where my faith is concerned, my thoughts and words are constantly running ahead of the rest of my life. I see this constantly when looking through my old journals—I will clearly describe some shortcoming or unfulfilled need or sin issue I'm facing, but then continue to struggle with it for years because I have this underlying misconception that by identifying the problem and "figuring it out", I have solved it! And the biggest irony of all is that the problem is self-perpetuating; I may even be doing it right now! The underlying issue is this wrong definition of "faith"-as-intellectual-belief that I hold, which leads me to equate faith problems with deficiencies in my knowledge, understanding, or thinking.

I'm not alone in this misconception, either. Besides how I described above, this intellectual distortion of "faith" can come about in another, related way, which I will refer to as "orthodoxy". Of course, orthodoxy is not a bad thing; its Greek root simply means "right belief", which is presented as important in, for instance, Philippians 2:2 and Titus 2:1. Historically, orthodoxy has meant conformity to the established traditions of the church, or the "rule of faith" used by the early church to distinguish orthodoxy from "heterodoxy" (different belief).

But Protestants tend to distort the old idea of "tradition" (and, therefore, orthodoxy and faith) in two ways: by intellectualizing and individualizing it. With regard to intellectualizing, I mean that we make faith dependent on affirming certain doctrinal propositions, rationalizing that "if you truly have faith in God, you will believe and affirm His teaching through Scripture of ___". The alternative, we think, is putting ourselves above what God has told us and believing whatever we want. I saw this clearly recently with the whole blow-up over World Vision's decision to hire people in legal same-sex marriages, a move which many commentators equated with denying the gospel and the Christian faith.

You might say that this is simply a continuation of how the church has always made belief of the teaching of Jesus and the apostles a non-negotiable; the idea of a "rule of faith" or a creed that all believers were supposed to abide by goes back to the early years of the church. And so today we continue this defense of the truth given us by refusing to compromise on God's words in Scripture. Right?

Are they really "God's words", though? All too often I see theologians equate what Scripture "clearly teaches" with what we make of it. This is a subtle, but common form of theological arrogance in which an interpreter of Scripture becomes blind to the fact that he is interpreting. So his conclusions are what the Bible "clearly teaches" and are thought to have all of its authority; to disagree with him is to disagree with God. If we make our opinions equal to God's, there are bound to be consequences—such as the sadly unnecessary divisions among Christians who have different opinions, all of whom refuse to budge because they believe themselves to be defending "the truth" God told them, and so unknowingly replace Him as the standard of truth.

This is where the individualism comes in, and where the difference from historic Christianity becomes sharpest. Luther had the revolutionary idea of the "priesthood of all believers", or the end of the clergy's monopoly on the interpretation of Scripture. While this was a definite positive step towards God's promise that all would know Him, from the greatest to the least (Jer 31:34), by itself it did nothing to solve the problem of sinful people baptizing their false interpretations. Now, instead of one church (or two) declaring its teaching on the Bible to be true, anyone could back their teaching with the authority of God's Word.

In our post-enlightenment age, this means that as long as we follow the methods of Sound Hermeneutics and remain blind to our own subjectivity, we can consider any conclusions we arrive at from Scripture just as reliable, and therefore just as fundamental, as the early creeds, councils, or rule of faith. We can be sure that every Christian, if his faith is authentic, will believe as we do, having listened to what God's word clearly teaches. This is evident in extreme form in Christian cults or churches that believe all other churches are false, and in less extreme form in the growing multitude of Protestant denominations.

All this is to try to illustrate how, in our rationalistic and individualistic way, we can easily add to the "faith" that justifies us in a way that stifles doubt, alienates people, and distracts us from living the gospel rather than just believing it. I've certainly done it, and I struggle not to keep doing it, especially in times like the recent World Vision controversy where there's just so much I want to say, all of it true and necessary to hear... Of course not all Protestants fall into this trap, but it's a danger we face constantly by virtue of our history.

Faith as passion

Another distortion of faith, somewhat the opposite of the first but similarly common, is to focus too much on its emotional side. Rather than emphasize "correct" belief, it makes authenticity of feeling what counts. You have to feel a certain way when you pray, or when you worship, or repent in a certain way, or have a certain spiritual experience to know you're saved. More charismatic branches of Protestantism are certainly at risk of this, but I have little experience with them, so I won't say any more.

I bought into this misconception about faith when I was younger, in middle and early high school. I remember one summer at the camp my old church ran, when my friend and cabinmate described praying a prayer on his bunk to ask Jesus into his heart, at which point he felt a sensation like a chill or tingle (I can't remember exactly) running up and down his whole body. When I heard this, I was amazed. This was what becoming a Christian must feel like, I thought. I longed to have a similar experience and began to get nervous that I hadn't "truly" repented in similar fashion, even talking to a counselor about it at some point. He prayed with me and tried to reassure me of my salvation, but the worries lasted for years until they were mostly replaced by the intellectualizing tendencies I described above.

So whereas faith-as-doctrine reduces faith to assenting to propositions or holding certain positions, there is also an opposite tendency to make faith all about chasing a certain spiritual feeling, or having a certain transformational experience. Given how unstable human emotions are, this is a sure path o discouragement. The KGP (Knowing God Personally) booklet that Cru distributes admirably answers this kind of thinking about faith, reminding readers not to rely on their feelings, just as the (relative) safety of a flight is in no way dependent on the fears or worries of the passengers, but on the pilot. In other words, our faith in God is not based on how we presently feel about Him, which is worth repeating. The KGP, however, does show one more way faith is often distorted...

Faith as decision

Particularly in evangelical circles, high emphasis is placed on securing "decisions of faith", or "decisions for Christ"—getting people to take that crucial step that separates believers and nonbelievers, the saved from the unsaved. I've recently referenced Scot McKnight on this kind of "threshold" evangelism and its problems, so suffice it to say here that it incorporates parts of both of the other two distortions. Great importance is ascribed to the conversion experience, to the point of distracting from what comes afterward. And yet the essence of conversion is making a decision, which (to minimize the barriers to faith) is often distilled to the "raw gospel", or a bare essential framework of propositions that people must believe to be saved. Can Christian faith really be boiled down like this without losing something valuable? How much do these decisions mean, anyway?

There is an irony to all of these working definitions of faith. We so often emphasize how faith is not about our own strength, or our works, or anything we do, but what God has done for us (more on that next time). Yet all of these definitions of "faith" come down to something we do, or at least experience. We assent to certain doctrinal beliefs, or seek a certain religious experience, or make a crucial decision, and then go to great lengths to explain how these things were really not our doing at all, but God's. I have tried to believe them (again, more next time), and ultimately I think all of these definitions of faith make it about us. That is, the answer way to know you "have faith" and don't doubt is to make sure your beliefs are in line with what Scripture "clearly teaches", or seek some new spiritual high, or rededicate your life to Christ, or just to "have more faith" (possibly the most unhelpful advice ever). All of these things are unreliable as they depend on us, and so if we base our "faith" on them we will be racked with doubts, tossed around like a wave on the sea.

Faith as trust

But, blessedly, most people don't just believe one of these three distortions about faith, not without mixing them with what I consider to be a much worthier view. The word in the Greek New Testament for "faith/belief", pistis, is also translated to "trust", or even "faithfulness/trustworthiness", which is significant. If we distill this to one of the above three things, we lose sight of the fact that Christian faith is not about us, but about the One we have faith in, or trust. It looks outward for its assurance, not inward.

The three distortions I list all diminish this powerful trust in some way. If we must think of this faith as belief in doctrine, then it is not a hollow profession but a real truth that has completely sunk into who we are and how we live. If we characterize it as a passion, then we must admit that it is deeper and more abiding than fickle emotions and religious "highs". If it consists of a decision, then it is a decision that be made constantly. We can't realize any of these things ourselves, and by accepting this our dependence on God for it becomes plainer and much truer than depending on indicators of faith we find in ourselves—putting our faith in our faith, as it were.

Some Scripture will help to define faith better than I can. Probably the clearest such definition is in Hebrews 11:1: "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." This definition is in two parts:

The assurance of things hoped for: The Greek here is interesting in that the word for "assurance" is hypostasis, which is better known as the technical term later used in the Chalcedonian definition to describe the common divine "substance" shared among the Trinity. What is this theological term doing here? I'm not yet good enough at Greek to speak with confidence, but it seems to be emphasizing the present reality of the things still hoped for, at least in the mind of the believer. It means laying claim to future hopes as if they have already been realized. In the following examples we see that it roughly means trusting God with peace and full assurance for the fulfillment of His promises. Matthew Henry's commentary is insightful:

It is a firm persuasion and expectation that God will perform all that he has promised to us in Christ; and this persuasion is so strong that it gives the soul a kind of possession and present fruition of those things, gives them a subsistence in the soul, by the first-fruits and foretastes of them.

The conviction of things unseen: Echoing Jesus' words in John 20:29: "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." In other words, faith is the firmly established belief in something unseen. To the extent that we look to things we can see (or perceive) like our doctrines, emotional state, or past decisions to find our faith, we undermine it. These things will come in later, but not here. Faith looks beyond the visible to the invisible, to what we can't know for sure by any conventional means, and trusts in that. It may appear irrational, but in fact it completes what is lacking in mere rationality.

Two stories from my own experience might help show times when I experienced faith more authentic than the intellectual kind I tend towards. The first was on the 3rd of July, 2010, in an incident described here. That night, I was watching fireworks over the lake in Milwaukee with my summer project crew. I had previously been informed by another friend from Milwaukee that for the finale, the US Bank tower shot fireworks off its top. So I eagerly awaited this; during pauses, I knew the show couldn't be over because they hadn't shot off the US Bank tower. Unfortunately, this faith turned out to be misplaced and I went home disappointed. But my faith stayed strong against what I was seeing, until the very end.

The second one is my more recent struggle with, and triumph over, doubt. As unanswered questions made the teachings about God and the gospel I'd heard for so long seem increasingly unbelievable, I lost my faith—at least by the above standards. Christianity no longer made intellectual sense to me, and I wasn't really sure what, if any, doctrine I could believe. My peace and comfort as a believer were gone, replaced by a desperate sense of having them torn away by doubt. And because of this, the previous "decisions" I'd made for Christ seemed foolish or misguided.

And yet, somehow, I still trusted. Even though all these signs of belief were gone, I didn't despair, because I still felt confident that God would restore me somehow. And He did! (The answers He subsequently guided me to are most of what led to the current series of posts) But I had to lose all these things that we normally associate with faith to realize what it really was—"mere faith", if you will. Ironically, by realizing that faith was less than I used to think, I saw how it was far more powerful and crucial than I imagined.

Application: Which of these distortions of faith do you subscribe to? This simple definition of faith has deep implications, so it's easy to (like me) say you believe that faith is more than just an intellectual assent or what-have-you but not believe it consistently. Like many others, I still tend to think that if someone disagrees with me on a theological matter than I consider important, then their faith is false, or at least self-deluded. The perspective on faith I learned for myself, I don't consistently apply to others.

Answering caricatures of Calvinism (from Calvin)

Today, on a whim (or was it?) I picked up Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion today after about one and a half years. I picked up right where I left off, at his discourse on original sin and the enslavement of the will. Though (surprise surprise) I didn't agree with everything he had to say, I found myself resonating quite strongly with what he had to say on the will, and maybe even...learning from it. This passages in 2.2.7 convinced me that those who say Calvinism's view of free will makes people look like robots haven't read enough Calvin:

In thisu way, then, man is said to have free will, not because he has a free choice of good and evil, but because he acts voluntarily, and not by compulsion. This is perfectly true; but why should so small a matter have been dignified with so proud a title? An admirable freedom! that man is not forced to be the servant of sin, while he is, however, εθελοδουλος (ethelodoulos, a voluntary slave); his will being bound by the fetters of sin.

I think I've been misunderstanding Calvin. He does not deny the definition of "free will" that I feel so strongly that we must have (the freedom from all external causation of one's actions), if only to prevent God from being the author of human evil. Instead, he affirms it almost offhandedly, and then says, in effect, "Now, can we get back to talking about what's important?"^* This is both tremendously enlightening and challenging. The term "voluntary slavery" brilliantly sums up the bondage that (I think) Calvin is getting at: not that we are subjugated to sin against our will by having our power to choose removed, but that we use that power to submit ourselves to it in slavery. (See Romans 6)

Granted, a traditional Arminian would probably find something to disagree with in Calvin's discussion of free will, but I will be reading him with more interest from now on.

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^* Though he later seems to, somewhat inconsistently.

Believing the Gospel

"Gospel".

If you, like me, have spent any time in the evangelical Christian world, this word probably conjures up a strong reaction in you, one way or another. It's a noun, a proper noun, an adjective, a verb (especially in Greek), maybe even an adverb or interjection. It is the central truth that everyone needs to know, by which all followers of Jesus are to live, and which they are to proclaim to the world. The former pastor of a church in my neighborhood wrote a book boldly titled God is the Gospel, by which he means "that the highest, best, final, decisive good of the gospel, without which no other gifts would be good, is the glory of God in the face of Christ revealed for our everlasting enjoyment." (13) The gospel, as it is so commonly presented and emphasized, is the absolute bedrock foundation of our knowledge of the divine and our hope for transcendence.

The more I hear about it, the more I realize I don't understand.

My background

I entered into the evangelical world when I came to the University of Minnesota and, having been briefed on the potential dangers college presented to one's faith, looked for a Christian student organization to join, settling on Cru (then Campus Crusade for Christ). If I had to point to one Bible passage that served as the absolute bedrock foundation for everything Cru stood for, it would be the "great commission" in Matthew 28:18-20:

18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Cru took this call to "go" quite seriously, as shown in its mission statement, "Starting spiritual movements everywhere, so everyone knows someone who truly follows Jesus Christ." This translated to ministry on local college campuses, across the country, and across the world, building relationships and sharing with people the four steps to Know God Personally (which apparently used to be the Four Spiritual Laws) I've already written repeatedly on the friction I felt with Cru's emphasis on evangelism, but what I'm focusing on here is the account of "the gospel" that Cru placed such emphasis on learning, sharing, and training others to share. It is expressed concisely with four points:

1. God, who created you, loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life, for you to know Him personally.
2. Sin separates us from God, keeping us from knowing Him and His love personally.
3. God made a way for us to know Him personally through Jesus Christ alone.
4. We must individually accept Christ as our Lord and Savior to know God personally.

Not long after joining Cru, I began attending the church I still attend five years later, Hope Community Church, which is nondenominational but with strong evangelical and Baptist influences (having been planted by the aforementioned neighborhood church). (Update: After doing a paper on the subject, I have learned that Hope in fact belongs to two denominations, the Evangelical Free Church of America and the Baptist General Conference, but it doesn't wear either on its sleeve) Its continuing mission: "To honor God by helping as many people as possible become fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ". Its description of the gospel follows largely the same framework as Cru's, putting more flesh onto it and placing a higher emphasis on living it in community:

Quite simply, the word gospel means “good news.” It’s a such a simple message that a child can understand it, yet so complex and profound that it leaves many theologians baffled. In it’s simplest form, God created the world. We, His creatures, rebelled. But God, in unfathomable grace, sent His Son Jesus as the sacrifice for our sins.
Through faith in Jesus Christ, we have been forgiven of our sins, welcomed as sons and daughters, and empowered by His Spirit to live lives that reflect His goodness and love. This is the gospel. This is our core passion, and the source from which all of our other desires and ministries flow.
You cannot even begin to bridge the gap between the perfect, holy God and your sinful heart except by trusting in the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. But we believe that no one ever “gets past” the gospel. The gospel is the means of our entry into the family of God and the means for our continued growth together in this family.
Hope’s vision is to honor God by helping as many people as possible become fully devoted followers of Christ. As such, we do all we can to continually remind ourselves and each other of this simple truth, yet spending a lifetime to figure out all of its implications on our lives.

Of course both organizations' understandings of the gospel went deeper than this; Cru has plenty of study materials available for going deeper, and there is much helpful truth in Hope's fuller explanation of the gospel. Nonetheless, I have to admit that I can't seem to follow these expressions of the gospel as far as they're meant to take me, in mind, heart, or deed.

Where I'm at now

It's not that I've rejected Cru, Hope, or my faith; as I mentioned, I still attend Hope, I still support several missionaries with Cru, and I have many productive (you could even say "gospel") friendships with people who would disagree with me. I bear no ill will towards any of them, but at the same time I know they aren't any more perfect than I am. My struggles with doubt have made clear to me the difference between having faith (or trust) in a person and believing points of doctrine. I'm convinced that Christianity is most truly the former, so as I continually renovate what I believe, the who of my belief remains steady.

This distinction makes it possible, though still difficult, to admit that I am no longer able to affirm many of the things about the gospel I hear regularly. Over the last two years, my time and attention became increasingly devoted to maintaining my view of "the gospel" in the face of my growing doubts, rather than getting around to living it. I felt a growing disconnect between what I claimed to believe, or felt like I was supposed to, and what I actually did, as if my faith were missing a crucial step. More specifically, I'm talking about the view of the gospel expressed in claims like these (all invented, but based on my experience), the likes of which I hear frequently:

• "The good news of the gospel is that we can stop trying to earn our way to God and rest in the completed work that Jesus did for us on the cross."
• "The gospel is the wonderful message of how despite our sins, we can each have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior and look forward to an eternity in heaven with Him."
• "Because Christ is the One to whom all Scripture points, you should look for Him in every part of it."
• "Jesus came to abolish religion." (okay, this is a real slogan that went viral a few years ago)
• "After hearing the best news in the world, how much do you have to hate your neighbor to not pass it on?"
• "On the cross, Jesus took the deadly wrath of God we deserved and paid the penalty of death that we owed for our sin so that we might be forgiven."
• "The book of Romans is the most clear, complete, and glorious presentation of the gospel of Jesus Christ that we have."
• "The purpose of the law is to condemn sin and show how we can never be good enough for God. Jesus came to set us free from the curse of the law because we could never be good enough for it and it was never really meant to convey salvation anyway."

You may say, "These claims don't really represent what I believe. You're attacking a straw man!" I hope that I am. What I am trying to get at are bad habits that we (especially I) are prone to in our handling of the gospel, but not intrinsic to it. I am trying to critique these caricatures of the gospel as they are understood in my head, not necessarily as they actually are. Several of the above statements (the first five) I wouldn't actually disagree with, just say that they're incomplete or misleading. I am posting my thoughts publicly because, though I may be mistaken in some of the ways I heard what "the gospel" is, I don't think I'm alone. As God helps me through my own doubt, He also calls me to try to help others.

Or, on the other hand, you may say, "These claims describe what I believe. How can you not affirm them and still call yourself a Christian?" In which case, I ask that you take what I'm going to say as constructive criticism, and that though these beliefs didn't work for me, I am glad that you hold them. But I ask that you consider the possibility that the gospel is better than you think, that these things don't wholly define it. I don't think it's a huge stretch to say that God and His gospel are big enough to allow for multiple points of view.

What I'll be writing about in the immediate future are the clues that led me to rethink my assumptions about the gospel (which often resembled the above sayings), things which tend to be bundled in as part of "the gospel" but which I came to suspect don't necessarily belong. My questions, as they coalesced, became kind of like a house, with a front door and a back door. The front door is the things about the gospel, as I heard it, that I either couldn't believe, rejoice in, or live practically as the "good news" it is supposed to be. The back door is a problematic implication that no one else seemed to see, but which has preoccupied and challenged me for over a year.

But where there is a time to tear down, there is also a time to build up, and I look forward to it. A lot of my present doubts about the gospel began in 2012-2013 when I took a survey class of the entire Bible, which left me much more confused than when I started as I kept finding more cracks in my beliefs. I'd like to try again, and seek to understand the gospel in the narrative of the whole Bible. This isn't something I can resolve in a few days, or weeks; it will be an ongoing project that will hopefully represent a new, more positive direction for this blog.

"Unwholesome complexity"

Scot McKnight's scientist friend RJS put up a really fascinating post on a book I am almost certainly going to pick up at some point, Ronald Osborn's Death Before the Fall: Biblical Literalism and the Problem of Animal Suffering. As the title indicates, it addresses an issue I continue to have questions on, namely how the biblical narrative in which Adam's sin introduced sin and death into the world (if only according to Paul) can make sense in light of the (we now know) fact that animals died long, long before humans were around.

But even the quotes from the book that RJS posts were illuminating. Particularly this one, calling out the arbitrariness and (ironic) lack of respect for the Bible of an approach of strict biblical "literalism":

The greatest problem with strict literalism’s “plain” reading approach to Genesis, however, is that it is not plain or literal enough. Creationists have treated Genesis as a story that is all surface with no depth that must now be validated or “proved” through – irony of ironies – the tools of a thoroughly rationalistic, quantifying and materialistic science. But the demand for scientific and historical correspondence – the criterion of “truth” demanded by modern, post-Enlightenment minds – introduces unwholesome new layers of complexity to our readings. These layers are not located inside the text, drawing us into its mysterious and undisclosed depths as I have attempted to do in my reading in Chapter one, but rather are piled on top of the story from without, strangling its poetic and doxological heart. (p. 52)

Osborn says what I think far better than I can. The term "unwholesome complexity" (one of his chapter titles), refers to the complexity that is not intrinsic to the message of Scripture, but that we create by trying to  fit it into a hermeneutical mold (such as literalism or reading it to speak to modern science) that it was never intended for. Says RJS, "Unwholesome complexity comes when we try to shape scripture into the book that we think it should be rather than immersing ourselves into the story to be formed by God’s message and work in the world."

Jesus, Friend of Sinners (Like Me)

On the way home last night, I heard the Casting Crowns song "Jesus, Friend of Sinners".  I'm not trying to single them out or say that the thoughts that followed were directed against them, this song was just what got me going. And, in fact, I wasn't really thinking about any of the lyrics, other than the title.

Of course we are aware of this picture of Jesus; we make much of it, and like Casting Crowns we find joy in the fact that Jesus seemed to prefer the company of "sinners" rather than the influential pious people who seemed to have it all together. And, of course, in His word God happily points out our sin, and so we know that as fallen, helpless sinners we, too, can find Jesus' love for us, making Paul's words our own: "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost." (1 Tim 1:15, ESV). It's safe to say that these two points, the depth of our sin and the magnitude of God's love for us in the midst of it, are cornerstones of the form of Christianity I find myself in. A common saying at my church is, "The most graceful thing you can know is how sinful you really are."

First of all, if you take the Bible seriously, you can't be the foremost of sinners, because Paul is. He said so himself. But more seriously, I'd like to point something out. Notice in the previous paragraph how many times I used first-person pronouns: "we", "us", "our". I tend to do this in lots of my posts, but it's a tendency that's far from specific to me. I think this is at least partially reflective of our western tendency to personalize and individualize our spirituality. You accept Jesus as your "personal Lord and Savior", you tell people about entering a "personal relationship with Jesus", and so on. It's pretty big right now.

Of course there is a danger (maybe even a certainty) of self-centeredness with this kind of thinking, which is why I tend to try to avoid this kind of "personal relationship" language. But when the song reminded me of how Jesus was the "friend of sinners", I realized another danger, which, in typical fashion, I will present in the form of a question: what if, by focusing on and emphasizing our own sinfulness and then taking comfort in the fact that Jesus befriended sinners, we are forgetting that everyone sins and is loved by God? In other words, we often hear that "Jesus loves sinners" and, in our modern personalizing way, mentally add: "like me." Which often shortens to, "Jesus loves people like me." As comforting as this is, we also need the challenge of mentally adding, "like those people", whoever "those people" are to you: the bus driver you can barely stand, the guy who asks you for money to buy soda every time he sees you, the man you look down on because you know he's going to a casino. (If you couldn't tell, those are all real people from my life, and I'm feeling pretty convicted about how I view them)

The really ironic part is how we take the designation of "sinner" that the Bible assigns us and turn it into almost a kind of privileged status by rejoicing in how "Jesus loves sinners like me", unaware that the whole point of passages of Scripture like, say, Romans 3 is not to show the depth of our sin (and therefore how much we have been loved and forgiven by God) but to utterly demolish any pretense we might field to gain a moral high ground over anyone else. We often call the kingdom of God, which Jesus frequently preached about, the "upside-down kingdom", and for good reason, but this doesn't mean that the standards for being a bigshot have been turned on their head. The implications go much deeper in His words, "If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all." (Mar 9:35)

Comparative Study and Ancient Near Eastern Theology

The following is a research paper I wrote for my latest course, "The Bible in its World".

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Introduction to Comparative Study

The advent of archaeological and cultural study of the ancient Near East (ANE) since the mid-nineteenth century has been a double-edged sword for Christian thought. The discovery through comparative study of extensive parallels between the Hebrew Old Testament and contemporary ANE cultures has led some to point to the similarities as evidence of the Bible's "merely human" status, while others emphasize the differences to defend its inspiration. In truth, these discoveries reveal many fascinating similarities and differences; in their differences they show how the Old Testament, though thoroughly situated in its cultural backdrop, steps beyond it to reveal a God who is simultaneously grander and more intimate than the gods of Israel's neighbors. But especially in their similarities they also carry implications for our hermeneutics which are worth considering.

The comparative study of ANE cultures began with the excavation of the library of the Assyrian King Ashurbanipal in ancient Ninevah, when thousands of clay tablets with writing were discovered. (Enns 23) Written in Akkadian (the language of ancient Assyria and Babylon), the tablets contained texts on law, economics, and history, as well as private letters (Enns 25), but of present interest were the religious writings. These writings were similar to parts of the Old Testament; they included a creation story and a flood story with some parallels with the corresponding accounts in Genesis. Since then, we have collected many more ancient Sumerian, Assyrian, Babylonian, and Egyptian writings, which reveal a portrait of ANE religion that is at once quite different from and intriguingly similar to the religion presented in the Bible. Theology is almost everywhere in ANE literature because, unlike us, ancient people had no concept of a natural/supernatural divide. Rather, "every aspect of what we call the natural world was associated with some deity in the ancient Near East. The result is that the term 'natural world' would be meaningless or nonsensical to them. There was nothing about the world that was natural...everything was imbued with the supernatural (another artificial category)." (Walton1 97)

A Summary of Ancient Near Eastern Theological Writings

The deepest parallels with the Old Testament are found in Sumerian and, later, Akkadian literature, which is not too surprising since, as Enns rightly points out, the family of Abraham, the first Hebrew patriarch, was originally from Babylon and shared in the Babylonian religion (see Gen 11:26-32, Josh 24:2). (Enns 52-53) One of the most well-known and frequently-cited Akkadian writings is a creation story, Enuma Elish (the first line of the myth, which translates to "When on high..."), which is dated to the Old Babylonian period, the early second millennium B.C. (Pritchard 60) It opens with a scene of primordial chaos: "When on high the heaven had not been named/Firm ground below had not been called by name.../When no gods whatever had been brought into being/Uncalled by name, their destinies undetermined..." Only Apsu, Mummu, and Tiamat, representing the intermingled primordial waters of chaos, exist, and they proceed to give birth to gods, who in turn give birth to more gods.

It is worth mentioning at this point that the gods were coterminous with entities or functions in the visible world, so besides a pantheon, the world was also being created and set in order. "The cosmic deities were manifest in that element of the cosmos with which they were associated, and had some jurisdiction there. ... Hence cosmogony (cosmic origin), cosmology, theogony, and theology are all inextricably intertwined." (Walton1 97)

At any rate, the primordial gods are annoyed by the noise and restlessness of their divine offspring and plot to destroy them. "With the birth of the gods from chaos, a new principle—movement, activity—has come into the world. The new beings contrast sharply with the forces of chaos that stand for rest and inactivity." (Frankfort 173) The new gods are alarmed when they hear of this, until the wise god Ea/Enki comes forward with a plan. Using a magic spell, he kills Apsu and traps Mummu with a string through his nose. Tiamat plans to retaliate against the gods with the forces of chaos and her second husband, Kingu. After Ea fails to defeat her, the gods convene and appoint Ea's son Marduk as their leader and champion; he defeats the forces of chaos, slays Tiamat, and splits the halves of her body into the sky and the earth. Following this, Marduk organizes the stars and calendar and, to ease the toilsome labor of the gods, creates mankind to serve them. The other gods honor Marduk and give him fifty names representing different aspects of his being.

Atrahasis, though much more fragmentary than Enuma Elish in its preservation, also shows numerous parallels with Genesis, or more specifically the flood narrative in Genesis 6-9. The myth begins "when the gods were humans", or when gods and men had not been separated. After separating humanity out in order to assist in their toilsome labor, the gods decide to wipe them out—not for their sins, but because they are becoming too numerous and noisy, preventing the gods from sleeping. They attempt to destroy mankind with a variety of means, and eventually a flood, but one man, titled Atrahasis ("Exceeding Wise") (Pritchard 104), hears of their plans and prays to Ea/Enki for deliverance. Ea instructs him to build an ark on which to bring his family and the animals, and so mankind is delivered.

There are quite a few older Sumerian myths, which involve many of the same gods as the Akkadian ones (and serve as their precursors). In Enki and Ninhursag, we are introduced to the paradise of Dilmun, which is introduced as being "pure" and "clean", along with further descriptions that seem to evoke Biblical parallels of the redeemed creation: "The lion kills not/The wolf snatches not the lamb..." (Pritchard 38) But here they actually express a problem: "animals and people were incognizant of how they were to function." (Walton1 45) So we also hear that "the raven utters no cries", "The dove droops not its head", "Its old man says 'I am not an old man'", and other incongruities that seem less positive. So Enki brings fresh water to the island to establish a city there. Enki proceeds to plant seeds and father more gods which are all given functions, including one who is to be the lord of Dilmun. Sumerian mythology also has The Deluge, another tale of a family being delivered through a flood on a boat, and several myths about the hero Gilgamesh, which are continued into Akkadian literature.

Egyptian mythology, though less similar to the Old Testament than that of Akkadia, could certainly have made a mark on it given the time the Israelites spent in Egypt. In contrast to Mesopotamian thought, which (its people dependent on the instability of the weather and two great rivers for survival) was more resigned in its attitudes toward the gods (Frankfort 127), Egypt was protected on all sides by sea and desert and lived off the reliable rhythms of the Nile and the sun.

This reliability gave rise to a civilization more impressed by human success, which was thought to carry over into the next life. "There was a youthful and self-reliant arrogance, because there had been no setbacks. Man was enough in himself. The gods? Yes, they were off there somewhere, and they had made this good world, to be sure; but the world was good because man was himself master, without need for the gods." (Frankfort 96) This was especially true in the Old Kingdom, the first age of Egyptian dominance, when the Pyramids were constructed. After its collapse swept away these values, two great changes came to Egyptian values: "a decline in the emphasis on position and material property as being the good of this life, with a corresponding shift of emphasis to proper social action as being the good." (Frankfort 106-106) People sought immortality through the mark they made in the world and on others, rather than an impressive monument. After the fall of the Middle Kingdom and the transition to the New Kingdom/Egyptian empire, the "good life" in Egypt became more communal, conforming to societal norms, fatalistic, and focused on the afterlife rather than this world.

The Egyptians, like the Mesopotamians, saw their civilization as a cosmic state, governed and ruled by the gods—especially the Pharaoh, "the land's representative among the gods". (Frankfort 64) They were the center of the universe, the norm against which all other peoples were judged. (Frankfort 37-38) Like the Mesopotamians, they saw their gods as humanlike and of the same basic substance as humans, just grander and more powerful. The most basic Egyptian creation myth had the self-created creator god Atum rising from the waters of chaos on a primeval hillock (which was evoked in the shape of the pyramids), from which he created the other gods representing the cosmos. Atum is also named as Re (the sun god) and Nun, the waters themselves, demonstrating how the divisions between gods were frequently fuzzy in Egyptian mythology.

One of the most interesting ANE creation accounts is found in the Memphite Theology. It dates to the beginning of Egyptian history, when they had made the capital of the upper and lower kingdoms at Memphis. This meant that Ptah, the god of Memphis, had become the ruling god, his city the center of the universe. Evoking the early creation story, Ptah is associated with Nun, the primordial waters from which Atum emerged; therefore, Ptah is the true progenitor of the other gods. What happens next is interesting: the heart and the tongue are presented as the instruments by which Ptah gave life to the other gods, and by controlling every other member of the body, they demonstrate that Ptah (as the creative agents heart and tongue) is still active "in everything that lives". (Pritchard 5) It's a surprisingly philosophical take on creation reminiscent of God speaking creation into being in Genesis, and also interesting in how it includes the earlier creation story.

Drawing Comparisons

It goes without saying that in many ways related to its religious thought Israel was quite different from, even unique among, its neighbors. One of the most obvious differences, which is frequently mentioned in comparative study on all levels, is Hebrew monotheism vs. the general rule of polytheism in the surrounding pagan nations. This difference ran deeper than simply believing in one or multiple deities; in ANE paganism, the whole phenomenal world was a multiply-personified "Thou"  rather than an "It", saturated with the divine. This was true for both the Egyptians (Frankfort 41) and the Mesopotamians (Frankfort 130). In contrast the Hebrews believed in a single God who created and ruled the whole world (Psa 24:1), but was not personified or contained in any part of it, and in fact the second commandment prohibited any physical representations of the Lord. The first two chapters of Amos show how, unlike pagan deities who ruled over individual cities in piecemeal fashion, the Lord exercised His will and passed judgment over all peoples (even those who were thought to be under other gods). "The 'national god' concept is for Israel broken and discarded." (Frankfort 226)

But at the same time, this difference shouldn't be overstated. A few times in the Old Testament a "divine council" is mentioned (see Psalms 29, 82, 89). In 1 Kings 22 we see the council in deliberation, and it may also be the "we" of Isaiah 6:8 or Genesis 1:26; 3:22; 11:7. This council is likely related to the divine assembly by which, the Mesopotamians believed, the gods governed the universe similarly to how they governed their city-states. "The general assembly in the cosmic state was therefore an assembly of gods. ...the highest authority in the universe. (Frankfort 136)

Of course the parallel is not exact—God is clearly supreme in His council, and in Genesis He enacts its decisions personally—but in light of the implication in Isaiah 40:14 that God consulted no one in the creation, this concept of the divine council, or "monotheism lite", seems like an idea that was not revealed to Israel but brought into their religion as background knowledge and slowly abandoned, or at least modified. "The thinking about it is adjusted in the Bible so that it is in line with the revelation about the nature of God." (Walton1 95) In other words, for God's purposes of revelation it doesn't seem as important for God to make clear whether or not He keeps a divine council as it is for Him to teach about Himself by taking the Israelites' preexisting idea of a divine assembly and teaching about Himself by modifying it. This is a pattern that we will see in other parallels.

Perhaps even more significant than the difference in the number of deities between Israel and its peers was the difference in the nature of deity. This was perhaps its biggest break from its ANE background, which saw the gods as humanlike. "The Egyptian gods were very human, with human weaknesses and varying moods." (Frankfort 67) They displayed inconsistencies in personality and function; they had limitations; they could suffer injury and die. The Mesopotamians took this even further; "the gods not infrequently run up against their own established ordinances" (von Soden 185), so that one god would face the judgment of the divine assembly (which coincided with the god's city being destroyed). The gods had a second home in the temples, where their effigies ate like normal humans (fed by the priests). (von Soden 188) People could take on the identities of the gods to reenact cosmic drama. (Frankfort 199-200) And the gods were essentially consubstantial with their functions in the phenomenal world, where they labored to carry out their assigned functions (me) in the sustenance of the universe. In Atrahasis, the gods created humans to relieve them of the toilsome work involved with keeping the cosmos running.

The contrasts with the God of the Old Testament here are obvious. The Lord is transcendent, ruling the created world but not truly residing in it (though His presence was believed to dwell especially in the Most Holy Place). In Genesis 1, no mention is made of God's origin, and He creates with a word rather than procreation or any other physical means, a process which is only echoed in the Memphite theology. Whereas Egyptian thought saw humans and deities as being consubstantial, different only by degree, the Lord made clear that He was utterly unlike His people: "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." (Isa 55:8-9 ESV) Again, "All the nations are as nothing before him, they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness. To whom then will you liken God, or what likeness compare with him?" (Isa 40:17-18) The pagan gods of the ANE were viewed as preeminent within the world, but the Lord was viewed as preeminent above the world.

Besides being singular and transcendent, one other group of differences I see regarding the beliefs of Israel and its ancient neighbors regarded how God (or the gods) was thought to interact with His people. Throughout the Old Testament God is shown taking initiative and speaking to people, either directly or later through prophets. Here was a God who clearly had a will and a plan for people, and who was quite upfront in communicating to them when He wanted. "For what great nation is there that has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is to us, whenever we call upon him?" (Deu 4:7) Other ANE gods were thought to be capricious, their wills mysterious and largely unknowable, except in part, through various means of divination (which is expressly proscribed in the Mosaic law—see Lev 19:26,31; Deu 18:10-12). Jacobsen records an interesting case about a Mesopotamian king who painstakingly figured out whether and how to build a temple to his god via dream interpretation and the consultation of multiple gods. (Frankfort 189-190)

Besides the contrasts in the nature of divine revelation, the content also tended to be different. Prophecy in the ANE served to legitimize the reign of the king or advise him; "in contrast to Israel ethical demands were scarcely uttered in the form of threatening speeches." (von Soden 196) For example, Enuma Elish, in the form we have it today, appears to have had the character of Enlil changed to Marduk, the god of Babylon, to explain Babylon's rise as the capital of the empire. Similarly in Egypt, myths served to explain or legitimize the way things were. Hebrew prophecy was often more anti-establishment because the establishment (the monarchy or temple worship) was part of the problem. You simply don't see anything like the prophetic polemics—God warning and accusing His people—of the OT in other ANE literature. More generally, there is little sense of an ongoing cosmic story or of the gods having a larger "plan" for their people; people simply sought the favor of the gods to uphold the cosmic order and avoid or mollify their immediate displeasure.

But to dwell on these similarities too long would be to give an impression that I want to avoid, that the Old Testament is quite different than contemporary literature, and this because of its divine inspiration. Many surface-level differences between Israel and its neighbors are based on deeper similarities, ways that they "breathe the same air" (Enns 27). I will describe a few of them more shortly:

• Cosmology. Israel and its peers all held roughly the same view of the layout of the cosmos, which was as standard then as the Big Bang Theory is today. As Walton explains, this view was based on simple observation and reasoning, from which ancient peoples got the idea of the earth being a flat disc, the sky being a solid dome to hold up rain water, mountains at the edge of the world holding up the dome, water under the earth with pillars supporting the solid land, and so on. (Walton2 27-28) This same cosmos is depicted in Biblical language that we usually consider "poetic" or "phenomenological" but is in fact more literal, like Gen 7:11, Job 38:4-38, or Amos 9:6.
• Functional ontology. This is one of the biggest ways in which the thinking of ANE peoples differed from ours. As modern people, we think with a material ontology—"the belief that something exists by virtue of its physical properties and its ability to be experienced by the senses." (Walton2 22) So when we read that "God created the heavens and the earth", for instance, we think about this creation in material terms, which makes it hard for us to understand how ancient people thought about existence in a different, functional way. "In the ancient world something came into existence when is was separated out in a distinct entity, given a function, and given a name." (Walton1 88) We see this quite clearly, among many places, in the beginnings of Enuma Elish or Enki and Ninhursag, which describe the pre-creation state as unnamed and nonfunctional. Likewise, in Genesis we don't see God creating things ex nihilo (as is commonly supposed) so much as separating light from dark, water from water, water from earth, and then giving these things names and functions.
• Afterlife. The Ancient Hebrews had much less of a developed view of what lay after death than the later second temple Jews, and the view they did have was most similar to that of their eastern neighbors. Mesopotamians saw the underworld as a "shadow existence" (von Soden 201); one could only live on through his or her children, or perhaps through deeds performed in life. Likewise the Hebrew concept of Sheol, somewhat equivalent with "death" or "the grave", was thought to be under the earth (Amos 9:2), a place of decay (Isa 14:9-11) and forgetfulness (Psa 6:5) where people are separated from God after death. Particularly, it is at least heavily implied to be the destination of everyone (Ecc 3:20), not just the wicked, as in Mesopotamia; there is no concept of a final judgment or a separate destination for the righteous.
• "The good life" as a reward for obedience. "In [Mesopotamia,] a civilization that sees the whole universe as a state, obedience must necessarily stand out as a prime virtue." (Frankfort 202) Man was created to be the servant of the gods, and if he is a good servant, he will be rewarded like any other, with "earthly success...the highest values in Mesopotamian life: health and long life, honored standing in the community, many sons, wealth." (Frankfort 205) Similarly, at the end of the reiteration of the Mosaic covenant in Deuteronomy 27-28 and 30, the Lord's blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience are (extensively) spelled out in largely material terms (see especially 28:3-6,16-19). If there is no otherworldly reward to look forward to, then it stands to reason that any rewards for obedience will have to be given in this lifetime.
• The righteous sufferer. But, of course, this formula does not always hold. The author of Ecclesiastes describes the all-too-common situation: "There is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man who prolongs his life in his evildoing." (7:15) Or, as it is more recently asked, "Why do bad things happen to good people?" Of course the Old Testament has the book of Job which addresses this question in detail through extensive dialogues, ending with Job humbly submitting to God's will after being shown the lord's majesty and his own smallness. The Mesopotamian work whose title is translated "I will praise the lord of wisdom" (that is, Marduk) portrays essentially the same situation, and comes to a similar conclusion: "The ways of the gods may seem inexplicable to man, but that is because man lacks the deeper understanding which actuates the gods. And though man may be plunged into the deepest despair, the gods do not abandon him; he shall and must trust to [sic] their mercy and goodness." (Frankfort 216)

One other similarity which I have found especially thought-provoking is the often-cited problem of "divine violence". The warfare against the native Canaanites, which often seems to border on genocide (see Josh 10-11) is clearly stated to be by divine order (see Josh 9:24). There are plenty of examples of this elsewhere in the Bible, such as the tenth plague in Egypt (Exo 11:1-12:30), the celebrated destruction of Pharaoh's army in the Red Sea (Exo 14-15), Jael's slaying of Sisera in Judges 4, which earned her the title "most blessed of women" (5:24), or the imprecation against the Babylonians in Psalm 137:9: "Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!"

This portrayal clashes not just with our modern sensibilities, but also with the depiction of God we see through Jesus, who explicitly tells us to be peacemakers (Matt 5:9), to love our enemies and not to resist the evildoer (Matt 5:38-48), and that "all who take the sword will perish by the sword." (Matt 26:52) And yet "whoever has seen me has seen the Father"! (Jhn 14:9) In the New Testament, God seems much less tribalistic and more interested in other nations, beyond simply using Israel to punish them, so that John sees "a great multitude...from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages" (Rev 7:9) in his vision of the coming kingdom. This revelation of God as interested in every nation doesn't seem to have really gotten into peoples' heads in the Old Testament, or indeed until after Christ (see the amazement in Acts 11:18).

This tension is only increased as we realize how Israel was resembling its Mesopotamian neighbors (though told not to follow their abominable practices, Deu 18:9-14), who had a "tendency to view what was, in purely human terms, a naked conflict of force as a legal procedure in the state of the gods, as an execution of a divine verdict". (Frankfort 195) For example, in the Moabite inscription, the Moabite king Mesha (see 2 Kgs 3:4) describes how his god Chemosh told him to take Nebo from Israel, mentioning how Chemosh "drove [the king of Israel] out before me" (Pritchard 320). (See Deu 11:23)

Applications of Comparative Study

What kind of implications can we draw from this comparative study? I can count at least three, two helpful and one more difficult (or, at least, thought-provoking). Says Enns, "a contemporary evangelical doctrine of Scripture must account for the Old Testament as an ancient Near Eastern phenomenon by going beyond the mere observation of that fact to allowing that fact to affect how we think about Scripture." (Enns 67) I hope to begin to do this in the remainder of this paper.

First, to state the obvious, comparative study can be a great aid to exegesis for those who believe the true meaning of Scripture is found in the "literal" sense: the meaning the author intended to convey to his original audience. Our different modern context can lead us to read Biblical texts in ways that may seem straightforward or "commonsense" to us, yet bear little resemblance to the authorial intent. Simply translating the text from one language to another is not enough; the challenge of hermeneutics is to translate the context from one culture to another. Comparative study has the potential to reshape how we read the creation and flood stories in Genesis, the Mosaic law, books of history, and more. (Chapter 2 of Inspiration and Incarnation addresses this opportunity in detail)

Second, on a more holistic level, comparative study helps us to glimpse the human side of Scripture, which is easily forgotten in a strictly modern context, swept away in claims about "divine inspiration". This is the most helpful point I've read from Peter Enns: the Bible is both divinely inspired and thoroughly human, like Jesus; "Christ's incarnation is analogous to Scripture's 'incarnation'." (Enns 18) The Bible's human nature doesn't threaten or lessen its inspiration any more than Jesus' divinity was diminished by His putting on flesh. Enns calls this the "incarnational analogy". Reading the Bible incarnationally means seeing it as inspired truth situated in a particular time, place, and culture, all of which shape the way this truth is expressed or simply meant.

Third, the apparent contradictions or intrabiblical diversity in some of the areas compared (especially regarding the "divine council", afterlife, definition of "the good life" and divine violence) should raise questions about how we read Scripture. Does God really consult a council of divine beings? Do people go to Sheol, heaven, or somewhere else when they die? The Bible doesn't seem to give a single answer on these and other questions as we might expect. But by looking below the surface of diverse biblical texts to find what was meant to their original audiences rather than what was simply said, we gain clues to fitting them into the great story that God has told in the world, and continues to tell.

The comparative study of the Old Testament and contemporary ANE nations has spurred considerable change in how even more conservative Christians read their Bibles, and it will probably continue to do so well into the future. It has been something of a Pandora's box, at once enlightening and challenging us by showing us how Israel's understanding of its God was (and was not) different from its neighbors. This comparison, while not threatening the inspiration of Scripture, forces us to think about how it is inspired. And it is a mirror, showing us our own modern preunderstandings by contrast with those of the Biblical authors. This is a paradox of the Christian life I have been realizing: we have been blessed to know the Truth, yet in this life we are constantly questioning the nature of the truth we think we know. Our knowledge of biblical truth is truly knowledge only if it leads us to greater knowledge and love of our God. The apostle couldn't have said it better: "If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God." (1 Cor 8:2-3)