But by the grace of God there go I...

The statement often has a subtext that sounds more like this:

By God I'm glad that's not me.

Is it me or has it become just a cliche?

Theology fatigue...

Wow does theology get heady, intellectual, tiresome. I still can't help, however, but feel that the Trinity is laced with Hellenist influence and philosophical conceptualism. Had it never left Jerusalem, I can't help but feel the idea would never have developed (but, then again, had it never left Jerusalem it would never have become a worldwide faith).

In studying the development of the Trinity and its course through the centuries and the various variants of it from Antioch to Alexandria with their variant 'heretical' views against which doctrine was formulated it feels as if it is defending an idea. I am still not convinced of it.

I can say, however, that much of modern day neo-Protestantism does not emphasis the Trinity. It may be given lip service but the focus is almost completely on Jesus. The Spirit is seen as the thing that makes you speak in tongues and the Father is in there somewhere but it is all about Jesus, as a modern day worship song says.

Somehow this just doesn't seem right, at least not in terms of how the ancient church worshipped. The ancient church stands on the Trinity.

"I'm coming back to the heart of worship

And it's all about You

It's all about You, Jesus..."

- Michael W. Smith, The Heart of Worship

All about Jesus.

It is?

What about the Father? The Spirit? The Trinity?

Sounds to me like Oneness theology. Seems to me that Modalism has run amuck in today's Church. In defending the deity of Christ, i.e. the Jesus is God camp, the emphasis of this proposition has led many today to comprehend it in Oneness fashion. Many lyrics in today's worship songs reflect these things.

Seems others hold a like view. A quick search of "bad theology" and "lyrics" popped up the following:

Oneness Pentecostalism's influence in modern worship songs seems to be a fact. I spent four years in a church holding this doctrine. I can sense it a mile away. Many churches, perhaps not overtly Oneness in nature, are, by default, actually espousing this view. By not emphasizing the Trinity, Oneness views become a default, what Lossky calls "the natural tendencies of the human mind" (The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, p. 48).

And another example...

Is this just paranoia? Is a conspiracy?

Or is it the same problem the Councils had back in the day, the same tendency against which the Church has had to bulwark itself against, the natural tendency of the mind? Is today's religion, in its attempt to be more 'spiritual' and less 'religious' merely kowtowing to the spirit of man, becoming self-centered rather than God-centered? Is the growth of Christianity today one Grand Illusion?

Or is this just paranoia?

Ok, I admit that this can get out of hand, analyzed and overanalyzed to the nth degree. Here is an example of the heinous nature of music in the church, period:

Music is not worship according to this site. While I do agree to an extent that music has a hypnotic effect (I know about the trance inducing effect of music as a raver) and the feelings can be misunderstood as a spiritual encounter, the site goes a bit far toward the dead letter of things. It's a good piece, however, to read to be aware of tendencies of musical enjoyment. It's also a good piece to recognize the conspirational in overanalysis of just about anything.

And, finally, an interesting piece on the content of modern worship songs:

Let's turn our attention to Praise and Worship songs. They are in collections such as Songs for Praise and Worship published by Word and in the Maranatha! Music Praise Chorus Book. Except when specifically noted, these observations refer to the first of these collections, though most of what I say applies in either case.

Theologically, very many of these songs center on the attributes of God, and on the person of Christ, especially on Christ as King and as Lamb. These songs do not center on the person of the Holy Spirit, but they do include a few prayers to the Holy Spirit to come to us, and a few that offer hospitality to the Spirit in case the Spirit should come. Only three songs even mention all three persons of the Holy Trinity, and no songs focus upon the Holy Trinity itself. No songs even mention the Trinity, or the tri-unity, or the three-in-oneness of God. No songs do that; not even one song. Very few Praise & Worship songs praise God for the church, either, or for covenant, or for holy communion, and none do this for baptism, the sacrament that publicly recognizes our union with Christ and with the body of Christ.

What's absolutely characteristic of Praise and Worship songs is that they focus independently upon the person of God the Father, or of Jesus, or of an indeterminate person addressed simply as "You" without antecedent. They then praise the majesty, awesomeness, glory, holiness, faithfulness, love, or might of this divine person. The songs either praise this person or else they say they will praise this person. Often the hymns take the name of God or of Christ as synecdoche for the attributes I have mentioned, and in good biblical fashion praise God's name as God's alter ego.

What is striking about Praise and Worship songs is that they often detach God's attributes from God's acts. More than half the time it's not at all clear from inside a song why God is so praiseworthy or so worshipable. The Scriptures, as you know, typically give us reasons for praising and worshipping God. They tell us of God's mighty acts in creation and in the liberating exodus and in the resurrection of Christ, which is the new exodus. They tell us of the way God overturns corrupt social structures and elevates people we would never have guessed. They tell us of election, redemption, forgiveness, and culmination in Christ. They tell us why we sing.

But many–perhaps more than half–of Praise and Worship songs leave our praise detached from the mighty acts of God. It's apparently not necessary to remember them. Instead, "Let's just praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! Let's just lift our hearts to heaven and praise the Lord!" But detaching the mighty acts of God removes our context, as in the old Saturday Night Live sportcast: "And now for today's baseball scores: 2-1; 5-2; 6-2; 4-0."

- Plantinga, Cornelius, Jr. "Theological Particularities of Recent Hymnody," The Hymn, 52 (October 2001), p. 14

Lots of information out there, tough to get a handle on, difficult to process. Seems to me that there is no grand conspiracy but a battle against complaceny, against allowing our selves to be the measure of all things. We must always be on guard.

P.S. Is it any wonder theology is fatiguing...?

Theology proper...

In discovering the Church Fathers some years ago I came to understand how much of what passes for 'theology' today is nothing but proof-texting. By and large, it is something of a pop theology, pseudo-theologians stating a claim, tossing in a proof-text, philosophizing about it for a few pages and moving on. The shelves at bookstores are flooded with these books and many of these authors pump out books at incredible rates to feed an audience never satiated.

Perhaps this is too harsh and judgmental; most folks don't really care to dive that deeply into theology, a word that conjures up a feeling of headiness, intellectualism, irrelevance. And this is a legitimate critique as much theological talks can leave one bound in a state of elevated intellectualism that passes for 'spirituality' but is often the trapping of concepts and illusions. Been there, done that.

This is ironic, I suppose, in that I'm defending something against which I am arguing. However, the Church would not have survived 2,000 years had it not developed a dogma on which it could stand. But would this dogma have been different if every layperson had access to the Scriptures as do people today? In other words, if the Bible as we have it were available for all people in a variety of tongues would the doctrine of the Trinity been something different? Or are we just repeating history again with all of the doctrinal debates occurring today?

And yet the more deeply I dive into theology proper, digging back through the layers of those who were there in formulating the doctrine, the more I begin to see just how it is that it developed. And it makes sense (though I'm still not entirely on board).

I'm currently reading two of Vladimir Lossky's books, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church and Orthodox Theology. The first thing that comes to mind is that this is theology proper.

Here is a smattering of quotes from Orthodox Theology:

Theology...is a matter of opening our thought to a reality which goes beyond it. It is a matter of a new mode of thought where thought does not include, does not seize, but finds itself included and seized, mortified and vivified... (13-14)

Yet theological thought can also become a hindrance, and one must avoid indulging in it, abandoning oneself to the feverish illusion of concepts...One must avoid it becoming a flight before the necessary of "contraction" of prayer, to replace the mystery lived in silence with mental schemata easily handled, certainly, and whose use can intoxicate, but which are ultimately empty. (14-15)

Theology, then, is located in a relationship of revelation where the initiative belongs to God, while implying a human reponse, the free response of faith and love... (16)

Certainly, faith is present in all walks, in all sciences of the human spirit, but as supposition, as working hypothesis: here, the moment of faith remains burdened with an uncertainty which proof alone could clear Christian faith, on the contrary, is adherence to a presence which confers certitude, in such a way that certitude, here, is first. (16)

To think theologically is not to think of this revelation, but by means of it...Theology starts from a fact: revelation...The philosophy which speculates on God starts, on the contrary, from an idea. (18)

There are two things to consider in the above: one is the notion of prayer. Prayer, according to Lassky, is ultimately silence. It is the reciprocity of a relationship whereby the faithful seeks to leave all concepts behind and enter into relationship with a personal God transcendent to all we may think. It is this silence that is true 'gnosis', a gnosis, which, according to Lassky, is "illumination by grace which transforms our intelligence" (13).

The other idea of which Lassky speaks is to know God by apophasis, the negative way. We know God by what He is not. He is the Lover just out of our reach and it is vital for Him to remain such as if we were to know His nature we would be God. In this is the idea of deification of humanity found in the Eastern Church. it isn't that men become God by nature but that we continually participate in elevating our humanity toward the divine in our pursuit of our Beloved.

In The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, Lassky notes:

[In the apophatic way] God [does not] presents Himself as object, for it is no more a question of knowledge but of union. Negative theology is...a way towards mystical union with God, whose nature remains incomprehensible to us...This awareness of the incomprehensibility of the divine nature thus corresponds to an experience: to a meeting with the personal God of revelation. (28,34)

What a far cry this seems to much of the 'noise' of the Church today. I will say, however, that 'relationship' is greatly focused in modern churches. But I have found the theology wanting, often suspect, if not altogether absent. Theology is the backbone of any church, the substance that grounds the Church. Without this, we know not what we worship and risk worshipping a creation of our own making.

Quoting Evagrius:

The one who has purity in prayer is true theologian, and the one who is true theologian has purity in prayer.

But, Lassky notes:

...purity in prayer implies the state of silence. The hesychasts are the "silents": encounter and gift, gnosis is placed beyond the nous; it demands the surmounting and arrest of thought. (Orthodox Theology, 13)

Hesychast comes from the Greek hezychazo, translated as 'rest, peace or quiet' in the New Testament.

"And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands..." (1 Thessalonians 4:11)

According to Thayer's it means to cease being a busy body, to lead a quiet life, to cease from labor. So 'silence' is a fitting appropriation of the term. Jesus does instruct us in regards to prayer:

"But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees {what is done} in secret will reward you." (Matthew 6:6)

While public prayer may edify the hearers, the 'silent' prayer is the important prayer. It is silent in that we must listen for the Father as He already knows what we need before we even ask. This is the silence we must seek as it is in this silence that we lay aside all that may hinder the Spirit from moving in us to accomplish God's work through us.

Mountaintop dream...

It's been a long, long time since I've had a flying dream. I don't know that I've ever had a mountaintop dream but tonight I did, though I didn't quite reach the peak. I don't even know where I was. I started out where I live but I am nowhere near mountains. Yet as I ducked and dodged through some trees in a patch of woods, I came to an opening with a steep incline that required holding on to various trees to make my way up. As I moved up I had a spectacular glimpse of a mountain range, though I was still holding on to trees to view this and wasn't quite able to get to a flat spot to stand still.

And somewhere in the weirdness of my dreams I remember having the thought that two of the BeeGees died by falling from a mountaintop and, holding on to those trees, I looked down to see the jagged cliffs of the California Coast and understood how it happened so I tightened my grip.

But the view of that mountain range cause a flood of awe to flow through me, the residue of which lingered upon waking.

Jesus a Myth?

I was browsing the Web and stumbled across an argument I had never considered before, at least in not such a concise manner. Mark created Jesus from Scripture. In other words, there was no historical Jesus upon which Mark (assuming his to be first and the one upon which Matthew and Luke based their later renditions upon) based his work. In other words, he made him up.

At first glance, that's a pretty striking argument, one with a lot of merit as reading the Gospel accounts it becomes clear quickly that the Hebrew Scriptures are the backbone of everything Jesus says. But the argument is that Mark created Jesus based on a reinterpretation of the Hebrew Bible (a recent book I stumbled across claims that the Acts of the Apostles is a rewrite of Homer's Iliad).

Gotta admit, that one floored me for a moment. As one who studies the Scriptures and thier history (from a critical perspective lest I be accused of being a Biblical inerrantist), it sounds like a valid argument, especially considering that in the New Testament the sayings, events, miracles and such of Jesus are all reinterpretations or recontextualizations of Hebrew stories.

This would make Mark a brilliant writer, one of the most brilliant writers to have ever existed, to have been able to create such a character and have him followed by billions two thousand years later.

But as I meditated upon it, I realized that it raises one question in me: how is it that billions of people can be so snowballed by such a fiction? This would make it the greatest hoax ever perpetrated upon mankind, especially when considering that many (most?) Jews accept Jesus' existence as do Muslims consider it a basic tenet of their faith that a real Jesus existed. That would make roughly two-thirds of the world, no matter how Jesus is understood theologically, victims of a deception on a scale unprecedented.

Granted, many of these believers have perhaps never given much, if any, though to Jesus ever, if at all. Perhaps many, even most, are followers in name though they've never given it any thought beyond Christmas and Easter and perhaps a periodic visit to a place of worship.

This isn't to say that such a hoax isn't possible.

But is the argument about his historicity one of a real person or one of church dogma/doctrine? Is this a denial of Jesus completely or just the theology derived from his character in the Bible? Or does this stem from a denial of God?

The difficulty in refuting such arguments is that in the walk of faith there comes a point where reasoning and the intellect is transcended. This does not mean it is laid aside, abandoned or otherwise discarded. No, in the walk of faith there is something that is far greater than the intellect - love.

The love revealed through faith in Christ, even if not displayed by those who claim to follow him, is, in my experience, the deepest love available to be unveiled. The life of Jesus presents the quintessential self-sacrifice (and not, as some may argue, suicide).

If it is a delusion, it's a pretty amazing delusion. If it's a delusion, it has been overlaid with the intellectual arguments and reasonings of a bunch of deluded geniuses (though, of course, history attests to many deluded geniuses).

I guess what I see lacking is a specific criteria to judge the truth of the matter. Is reason the final criteria? If it is, by what definition? To me, defense of Christianity is possible by use of reason.

Faith is a funny thing as faith and reason often appear opposed if only because faith is something that goes deeper than or beyond the reasoning intellect. The intellect may, after the fact, shed light on what is revealed by faith but the intellect cannot reveal the mysteries of faith, any faith, on its own.

It is this, the unwillingness to embrace anything that cannot be penetrated by the intellect before believing, that sets "believers" from those who refuse to believe.

If Jesus is in fact a fiction, he is hands down the greatest fiction ever created in the history of mankind. I suppose, however, that these mythicists would extend this argument to every Hebrew figure and could most likely extend that to Muhammad (as some do) and the characters found in the early history of the Muslim community.

Where does it end? As I've not spent much time in the debate, I just wonder about such things as hope, purpose and a source of selfless love. From whence do these things come? Or are these fictions as well?

I'd be hard pressed to sacrifice my wants and desires for a fictional character, no matter how inspiring or what 'truths' (and by what criteria do we judge what is 'true' in such a work?) it reveals.

So if Jesus is not Real the whole thing is a sham. I find this more difficult to believe than what Christianity posits as Truth.

Bart Ehrman and theodicy...

I recently read his latest book on suffering and noticed the personal element in the book. There was almost a sadness, a lostness in it, as if all the knowledge he has obtained has become a burden for him and thus the 'confessional' tone of the book. I wasn't upset or offended, as he raises legitimate questions and penetrates Scripture as few are able. His challenge is valid.

Yet as I was reading Clement's The Roots of Mysticism I came across this paragraph and thought immediately of Ehrman and those who feel as he does:

"The sanctified person is someone no longer separated. And he is only sanctified to the extent that he understands in practice that he is no longer separated from anyone or anything. He bears humanity in himself, all human beings in their passion and their resurrection. He is identified, in Christ, with the 'whole Adam'.

His own 'self' no longer interests him. He includes in his prayer and in his love all humanity, without judging or condemning anyone, except himself, the last of all. He is infinitely vulnerable to the horror of the world, to the tragedies of history being constantly renewed.

But he is crushed with Christ and rises again with him, with everyone. He knows that resurrection has the last word. Deeper than horror is the Joy." (p. 274-75)

In short:

"For the person without compassion the suffering of humanity is an obstacle to knowing God."

Perhaps those who are troubled by theodicy lack compassion. Or, perhaps more likely, they have compassion but are troubled by what it stirs up inside and it is easier to blame God than it is to wrestle with and act on what compassion stirs up. After all, there is no end to suffering and by our compassion we suffer for and with the world so, in effect, our suffering, be it mental, emotional or physical, does not end either.

Yet they crucified Christ and he endured the suffering. And was raised from the dead thus effectively breaking the bonds of death. This is the hope of the Christian message, that death does not have the final say.

Modern day theology and Orthodoxy...

By Orthodoxy, I am referring to Eastern Orthodoxy and not 'orthodoxy' as describing theological correctness.

I have dabbled in the writings of the Eastern Fathers before, even obtaining a volume of the Philokalia. I enjoyed what I read but don't think it was time to truly appreciate their writings. Coming from the emotionalism of Pentecostalism their writings, though intellectually stimulating, seemed dry. Yet in the course of this wandering I have stumbled back into Orthodoxy and, more specifically, the 'mystical' theology of Orthodoxy.

I have just picked up Olivier Clement's The Roots of Christian Mysticism and feel like I am at home. It feels as if I have bypassed the 'pop' theology of so much of modern neo-Protestantism and have found roots.

I seem to have narrowed down the problem to several things.

1) One is the dependence on the intellect, a safeguard I have always leaned upon at the expense of emotion/feeling. But too much intellect is a dry, arid wasteland.

2) Lack of or undisciplined (or misaligned) prayer.

These two are tied together in one of the first pages I opened to:

"Prayer and theology are inseparable. True theology is adoration offered by the intellect. The intellect clarifies the movement of prayer, but only prayer can give it the fervour of the Spirit. Theology is light, prayer is fire...But it is the intellect that must 'repose' in the heart, and theology must transcend it in love." (p. 183)

Transcending the intellect. Bringing it to a place where it can let go. This does not mean ignoring the intellect, dumbing it down or laying aside its abilities. No. For where the intellect is not satisfied, trouble arises. However, the intellect does not have the final say. It is when love enters that the place of the intellect is put into perspective. Pure intellect is cold; the intellect in the service of love is, as noted above, light, warmth, sustaining.

"When the intellect is filled with love towards God, it tears this world of death apart, it breaks away from images, passions, reasoning, in order to be no longer anything but gratitude and joy." (p. 184)

My problem, as always, comes down to philautia, self-centeredness. This results in a lack of gratitude and, by extension, joy.

And the fruit of this gratitude is prayer:

"When your intellect, an an ardent love for God, sets itself gradually to transcend, so to speak, created things and rejects all thinking...at the same time filling itself with gratitude and joy, then you may consider yourself approaching the borders of prayer." (p. 184, quoting Evagrius of Pontus)

If the intellect is laid aside, it is only to make room for gratitude and joy caused by the love for God. The more we love, the more we come to be grateful and joyful; the intellect sheds light on this (as I am doing now). But it comes after the fact.

"Prayer is the fruit of joy and gratitude..."(p. 182, quoting Evagrius of Pontus)

There is so much more in this little book that it has become a must-own in my library, the kind of book that is underlined, highlighted, creased and weathered over time due to use.

God died...

If Jesus is God, then God died on the cross. Depending on one's translation of Acts 20:28, God also had blood. So if Jesus is God then God died; if we say God did not die then it would seem Jesus is not God. The sophistry of theology to reckon this dilemma is something I have yet to accommodate.

I have no problem saying Jesus is Lord. According to Acts, this was bestowed upon him by God. Lord of lords. No problem. King of kings. No problem. Lord of my life. No problem. But just because, in English, the Book says that Jesus is Lord and, elsewhere, that God (or God the Father) is Lord, does that mean Jesus is God?

I'd venture that in the original languages, this would not be the case. A prime example is in Exodus 3:14. Exodus 3:14 says "I am" and John 8:58 says "I am" so Jesus must be calling himself "I am" (i.e. YHWH). But this is only in the English. In the original languages, even in the Latin Vulgate, this connection was not made so directly. The Church Fathers, reading/writing in Greek, did not make this connection, at least not so directly. For them the ego eimi in John 8:58 means pre-existence. Justin Martyr, one of the earliest writers to use specific proof-texts from the New Testament, and Irenaeus, do say that it was Jesus speaking to Moses from the burning bush in Exodus 3:14. But there is no connection between Exodus 3:14 and John 8:58.

It only works in the English. Was it intentional on the part of the King James crew? Divine intervention? In the original Greek, the 'am' is a verb and it is best translated and understood (as it was by Justin and Irenaeus) as "exist(ed)."

At most, Jesus is speaking of pre-existence. But he is not, in this sentence, referring to himself as YHWH. It's possible to argue that pre-existence makes him at least divine, if not God Himself, but the "I am" statement alone isn't it. Any use of this as 'proof' must be based on other reasoning.

There is no way, within a Trinitarian framework, to say that Jesus is God without qualifying that statement. When Muslims say that Allah is God they mean what they say, no qualifications. When Jews say that YHWH (or Ha-Shem or Adonai) is God, they mean what they say. But Christians...

If God died on the cross, taken literally, then that is not really God. God cannot change. God cannot die. Any God that dies is not God.

So either that little statement made by many Christians is wrong or quite a bit of verbal gymnastics is required when defining 'God' or defining what it means to die.

Not sure what made me think of that today...

My car...

My car makes me laugh. It's been about a year since I last posted about my car. Quite a bit has changed since then.

My last decent car was a 1988 Honda Accord LXi. I had the money and a cheap mechanic to fix every little thing that went wrong. The car literally took me to both coasts, logging over 220,000 miles before I turned it over to my brother-in-law (who totaled it a few months later). The thing was immaculate. However, at the time I turned it over to him I had left a job that paid crazy money for a job cleaning carpets (it's a long story...).

Ever since then I've been driving beaters, dumping stupid amounts of money (with increased debt) into cars that end up in junkyards. Bad choices. A 1990 Honda Accord lasted several years, 200,000 miles and several thousand dollars only to net me $90 for scrap. A 1994 Dodge Spirit did the same but with just a bit more money to scrap. My "new" car is a 1991 Toyota Tercel with over 218,000 miles on it.

Here is a list of its woes:

- no muffler (haven't had one since November of last year)

- exhaust system (what's left of it) dragging

- thermostat broken

- wiper fluid pump broken (hasn't worked since I got it)

- brakes shot (need pads, rotors and, eventually, calipers and the rest)

- both CV boots ripped, CV joints most likely going or gone

- radio stuck on one channel

- radio will not turn off without turning on the rear defrost

- can only turn on the radio by turning off the rear defrost

- two cylinders operating at about 60%

- put about a quart of oil in monthly

- nearly bald front passenger tire (with 13" rims tires are expensive, and difficult, to replace)

But it's still going. And it's paid off. Considering I paid $900 for it and put maybe $150 into over the last two years, I'd say I've gotten my money's worth. But I don't have the money to put into repairing it nor do I have the money for a newer car, I'm stuck.

Is it too far gone? It's a gamble every time I drive it.

Why am I posting this? Originally it was meant to be funny. But looking at it in print, it's not that funny.

So where do I stand?

I'm content knowing a lot but realizing I don't know much of anything. So I remain open to learning. I will stand on what I know and will remain difficult to convince otherwise but I hold in my heart the willingness to change.

As always, there stands Jesus the filter through whom what I know passes.

In that sense, it all does come back to Jesus.

In Jesus' name...

Ok,is it me or has the phrase "In Jesus' name" been tacked on to prayer as if it is some form of formula, some mantra we feel guilt-ridden to not say? Why does it seem like it is used like a magic formula, like abracadabra or hocus-pocus?

In reading the early Church Fathers I find no precedence for this. It seems to me that this is a recent innovation. Ok, so we find "in the name of Jesus" and the like in the New Testament. I agree that the focus was on Jesus. But "in the name of Jesus" is today used much in the sense of the Oneness Pentecostals that it is Jesus as God that is our focus. How Jesus relates to the Trinity is blurred, at best. The focus of the ancient Church was the Trinity. It seems today that Jesus has replaced the Trinity, though obviously the Trinity underscores all major denominations.

I was reminded of this while listening to some worship songs. Many, many Christian songs seem to have bad, or at least ambivalent, theology. Here's an example:

"[We’re] coming back to the heart of worship, and it’s all about you. It’s all about you, Jesus."

Is it really all about Jesus? Isn't it all about God? Isn't God, according to Christian belief, a Trinity? Are we saying that Jesus is God? If so, what of the Trinity? Somehow the Trinity gets lost in this and we seem to be falling into a form of Modalism, where Jesus is God, the Trinity merely three "aspects" of God's Being, Jesus being that Being.

I can't say these lyrics are unbiblical or even un-Christian. I just wonder what our focus is. Is it supposed to be Christ, and through him, God (or the Godhead)? Or is he the end of our focus, the final repose of our worship?

I know this sounds suspect, that I am somehow minimizing Christ in all of this. But that isn't my point. In comparison to the writings of the early Church and the battles fought in the first several hundred years, culminating in the Council of Nicaea and, ultimately, the Council of Chalcedon, today's theolgy seems frequently to border on those very things that the Church fought against.

Perhaps that is why there is such a backlash against the Catholic Church and its Traditions. There seems to be a view that the Traditions of the Church equal "invented" and thus go against Scripture, not realizing the gist of Luther's argument and claims of "sola scriptura." Sola scriptura does not mean the same thing as the view commonly held today that the Bible is innerant.

However, when we stop for a moment and consider that the New Testament writings, as a whole, did not reach wide circulation until sometime in the middle of the second century, it is a certainty that, by and large, for almost 100 years, give or take, the Church functioned without a New Testament. The had the Hebrew scriptures as their "bible" and the Traditions passed on by the Apostles and early Church leaders as their foundation.

Some churches may have had copies of the letters of Paul or a copy of Mark or Matthew or Luke but there was no one composite New Testament, especially considering that the Gospel of John is believed to have been written sometime between 80-95 CE. So there was not debate about the Scriptures being "innerant." The early church theology was not contingent upon Scripture.

In fact, it wasn't until Scripture reached wide distribution and until Marcion, circa 130 CE, began to devise his only version of Scripture, that the debate began to rage. This was the impetus that would ultimately lead to establishment of doctrine based on Scriptural proof-texting.

Yet we are still 100 years out from the death of Jesus. So toss out the Traditions wholesale and what do we have? To not pay attention to what the earliest writings outside of the New Testament have to say is a grave loss.

It seems that theology has become uprooted from its historical anchors and is rooted no deeper than modern "prophets" who use the Bible, generally in English translation, to claim what is truly the faith of the early Church. By doing so, ironically, perhaps, we actually cut ourselves off from the Source.

Take a look at some Oneness pamphlets as to the true Apostolic doctrine (I have some as I attended one of their churches for about four years). It is filled with quotes from the Bible. Yet all of the modern theologies and denominations are (or claim to be) rooted in the Bible so any denominations' theology is presented with quotes from the Bible. If it was so clear, why so many denominations? Obviously, there must be something deeper.

Not sure exactly where I'm going with this but you would be hard pressed to find any of them drawing on the writings of the Church Fathers for support.

File sharing...Part Two

There are no easy answers. For each answer, more questions arise; more questions, more answers.

I have been exposed to more music than I could ever have imagined from around the world. I've stumbled across artists whose music I love that are not found on amazon or itunes or any other commercial vehicle. There is no other way I would have ever experienced them. For those artists, file sharing is a boon in terms of exposure (though how that translates into income is another story). And through blogs and other methods of exposure, like minded individualists present music they have discovered into realms of exposure only possible via the worldwide web. It's an amazing thing.

I remember watching a documentary about this debate and in some South American city where a counterpoint was being presented, artists (in this case DJs) gave their music away because what they wanted was for people to come see them perform live. And when other artists remixed and reinterpreted their music, it only promoted their name even more so 'bootlegging' wasn't frowned upon. It was about the exposure. Yet the end result - the income - wasn't the recorded music; the end result was the live performance.

The other issue is that a lot of the music that I've come to enjoy is not stuff consumed by the masses so it is expensive to obtain. A prime example is the Headz compilations on the Mo' Wax label. I've tried but to obtain either the CD or the LP versions gets well over $50 for each of the three compilations. Now, to obtain a ripped version for free or to pay well over $50 for used (since they are out of print), the decision is pretty easy.

Is it ethical to have to pay such an exorbitant price for music? Are there ethics in the means of distribution of product?

These Headz compilations contain some of my favorite music by artists I've grown to enjoy. Most of the Mo' Wax stuff is rare and out of print and thus expensive to obtain. In a nutshell, I can't afford it. Are we back to the desire thing, learning to live without?

On one level, it comes down to basic economics. If it is not consumed by the masses, it probably won't remain in print very long. The more rare or obscure the music, the less time it spends in the marketplace and thus the more expensive it becomes to obtain. There is then a market not for the music but for the product. 'OOP' is a big tag on ebay. It isn't about the music; it is about being rare. Rare = profit.

Perhaps here is justification for 99 cent downloads as it can be rare, even impossible, to find a downloadable (i.e. bootlegged) version of much of this music online.

But with everything going digital, there will continue to be value not in the music but in the product. The vinyl market is fairly hot right now, at least to the connoisseur. But vinyl carries a pretty hefty price tag. You pay for the medium, not the message. If I paid $20 or more for some of this vinyl, I'd hate to listen to it.

So the battle rages on as the universe adapts to the information age, everything reduced to its basic component which is the bit, which is basically 'nothing' and is pure information. What price information?

What ethics are there in information?

The ethical quandry of file sharing...

I admit it. I'm a bootlegger. I have a lot of music on hard drive that has been downloaded from various sites over the years. I've also deleted a lot of music from the same hard drive as I either didn't like it or was disinterested in it. Quite a bit of it was music from my youth and I thought it would be fun to reminisce. I found I'd rather take out the vinyl version and spin it on my old turntable. That is reminiscing.

Anyhow, as for the modern day incarnation of file sharing, by and large I don't see the issue as anything other than profit. As a kid, I'd borrow friends' records and record them onto cassette to play in the car. I had about two dozen mix tapes labeled by overall mood. When CDs came out I still recorded them onto cassette as CD players in the car still didn't exist or were out of my price range. While I do have some Windham Hill records that speak out against the practice of recording onto tape, I can't recall that I ever gave it much thought. Eventually, recordable CDs came along and it was just a continuation of the same.

But it was all dependent upon knowing someone who had music to borrow. It was a very physical act.

Then came the explosion of the Internet and the digital file. Napster, of course, is the poster child for the debate. Morpheus, Limewire, Kazaa, I've tried them all. Too slow. Too many crappy files. Too much of a headache. Too inconsistent. There are other methods of downloading entire files much faster and much cleaner.

But it all depends on individuals who opt to share the music. They must put the music out there. If it is out there, people will download it. It's that simple. Punishing the end user won't stop it, just like punishing the drug user won't stop drug abuse. In other words, it is here to stay.

I've been on a 40 day fast from downloading music. I'm amazed at how much time it took up, not only downloading but organizing the files and moving them back and forth onto my mp3 player to listen to at work. A lot of distraction in the process. And with so much music, I'm not sure I actually enjoy it. It's basically a commodity.

So the fast has been good. I'm not sure I'll go back.

However, after a few weeks I've begun to contemplate the ethical component of downloading music for free. Is it really unethical? I don't sell my music to anyone and it's rare when I actually copy it for anyone, other than for my wife or daughter to play on their mp3.

And, yes, I've actually purchased some of the music I've downloaded because I wanted the quality of a CD recording rather than a ripped version. I was also interested in the artwork. I wanted the tangible package. By and large, I can't see purchasing an mp3 and ay accompanying artwork. I want to feel it. As a child of vinyl, I want the package deal if I'm going to pay for it.

I've seen the charts breaking down how much an artist makes on the sale of one CD. It ain't much. The reason for the fuss is more about the management end of the artist as the majority of the money is eaten up in the management food chain before the artist sees a penny. I suppose that's why ethically I don't give it a whole lot of thought.

If I buy a CD I buy it used off of ebay. The artist never sees a penny of that. Yet someone is profiting off of ebay so there is no fuss there. Why not fuss over the sale of used CDs? Granted, someone had to buy it in the first place. But I don't buy new CDs. Ever.

So in terms of downloading music, I suppose ethically I'm not convinced. As a writer, however, I have begun to contemplate the question as to how one is supposed to make money from their art. Is this the motive? Is it about the money? Or is the money a necessity to continue the art? How would I feel if everyone downloaded something I wrote and no one bought it? How would I continue to write if it was my means of existence? Or is that the point? Should it in fact be a means of existence or a side venture, a derivative, of something else?

As for musicians, does it come from tours? After all, the Grateful Dead, for example, allowed tapers at their shows. Their tapes were traded en masse. Yet the GD were shrewd businessmen. They had an entire organization behind them and they made lots of money on things other than their recorded music.

So I'm ambivalent. I see the artist side of view. They work hard for their craft and it is reasonable to expect to pay for this. But (and there is always a but) to pay $15 for a CD, especially knowing how much it costs, is crazy. So too to support an artist by having to pay $100 for a ticket. I used to pay $12-20 for concert tickets not too many years ago. There is no artist I would pay $100 to see. Not one.

I understand that in this day and age in order to be a super artist requires a large corporation with lots of resources to promote such an artist and everything is biggie sized. Large arenas with as many people as possible charging the maximum amount to maximize profit with the least amount of cost. I get that. It's just a business.

But from an ethical point of view, is it wrong? I am as of yet unconvinced. However, I am realizing the insidious nature of having the freedom to download anything and everything freely. It just brings awareness to the unlimited nature of our desire. I can't afford to buy everything I WANT so I download it for free.

Perhaps the real issue isn't one of ethics but one of desire.

Jesus...

In the end, when all is said and done, when we have wrestled and laughed and prayed and struggled, when we've been through all the theology we can stand, when we've wandered into the superficiality of the New Age view of Jesus because we are tired of dogma, when we've tried the 'mystical' or 'cosmic' or 'esoteric' or any other Jesus, when we've been through the literalist and innerantist positions of reading the Bible, when we've rationalized, spiritualized or otherwise analyzed Jesus to the point of exhaustion, we find he is still there. Waiting. Patiently. Wherever we are. And his arms are open wide.

No matter what we say, do or think, he doesn't change. We do.

Arrogance and fear...

Arrogance and fear, two sides of the same coin. I suffer with both. Just got involved in a road rage game today, something I haven’t done since high school. Car turning left at a red light, I swerved into the right lane so as not to have to wait for him when the light turned green, pulling in front of a pickup truck with what I thought was clear enough distance. Apparently not. When the light changed, the guy zoomed to cut me off in the left lane I needed to be in and then slowed down to the same speed as the car in front of me in the right lane. He drove that way for about a half a mile.

I sped up to try and go past and in front of him and he sped up to match me, swerving slightly into my lane to send a message. I swerved to the left to counter him, he swerved back into this lane and slammed on his brakes. I drove right up to his bumper. I know the game all too well, the adrenaline starting to flow.

I needed to turn left up ahead so decided to wait until he passed the street and then swerve quickly behind him from the right lane into the left lane to turn so he had no chance of turning behind me. He was going the same way. I waited until he was in the turning lane and waved at him as I went by him on the right. Not surprisingly, he opted not to go left and was now headed up behind me.

I stepped on the gas and drove up the road at about sixty in a thirty-five zone, swerved left and bounced over a curb into a gas station, my suspension already in tatters, and watched him go straight, stopping at a red light. A State Highway Patrol car was at the intersection and I figured I was safe, that he wouldn't do anything because the Trooper was there. I even let a car in the parking lot go in front of me to turn. Bad move. As it was lunch time, there were cars backed up at the light and the car I waved in front of me was going left out of the parking lot. I was stuck. Couldn't go right, couldn't go left, couldn't get into the street.

I looked in my rear view mirror and, panicking, saw the truck coming over the curb toward me. In an instant, looking for an out, I opted to shoot through the drive-thru lane to get away. Bound by a curb on one side, a fence on the other and a car in front of me stopped at the drive-thru window, I was trapped.

The truck had stopped and a rather large man with long hair, pony tail, Harley shirt, dark sunglasses, beard, boot cut jeans, and cowboy boots was coming at me. I wouldn't have stood a chance.

I slammed into reverse and maneuvered back through the drive-thru lane and out onto the main street, causing at least one car to slam on its brakes in order not to hit me. Horns honking, verbal threats of bodily harm from him as he ran toward the street and I gunned it to get out of there, making a quick right at the light, just missing another car coming my way, accelerating to top speed (which, on my car, is about sixty miles an hour on its three cylinders of four that work).

I drove with a constant eye on the rearview mirror. He wasn't behind me. After turning down the street, through another light, I pulled into the parking lot at work just in time for the lunchtime buzzer and had a moment to sit and think. The adrenaline gone, I was forced to reckon with me.

Here I am, supposedly some spiritual dude, playing childish and dangerous road games. I could have caused serious damage to a lot of people, myself not included. What the hell was I thinking? Arrogant. Stupid. Why did I do that? Fortunately, there was no rush, no way I could have justified it, no charge like back in the day. There was simply a pang of regret.

I could have, should have, gotten my ass kicked. It would have been justified. I should have just slowed down, let the guy keep going and be done with it but no, I had to tease just a little, just enough to piss him off but lacking the guts to back it up. My ego is fragile, weak and cowardly. Big man behind the wheel of a car.

Strength would have been to let him go. True strength would have been to find a way to own up to it and apologize to him. That would have been the truly ‘spiritual’ thing to do. I thus exposed something deep inside of me I need to look at, something dark that I need to face, something that needs brought to light.

Bad - took about 100 steps backwards. Good - needed to retrace and repair those steps.

I have lots of work that needs done, the first being humility. There's not much room inside for growth with pride in the way. It's time to work on surrender.

Talem eum vidi qualem capere potui...

I saw him in such a form as I was able to take in.

And when the ninth hour was fully come, they rose up to make prayer. And behold certain widows, of the aged, unknown to Peter, which sat there, being blind and not believing, cried out, saying unto Peter: We sit together here, O Peter, hoping and believing in Christ Jesus: as therefore thou hast made one of us to see, we entreat thee, lord Peter, grant unto us also his mercy and pity.

But Peter said to them: If there be in you the faith that is in Christ, if it be firm in you, then perceive in your mind that which ye see not with your eyes, and though your ears are closed, yet let them be open in your mind within you. These eyes shall again be shut, seeing nought but men and oxen and dumb beasts and stones and sticks; but not every eye seeth Jesus Christ. Yet now, Lord, let thy sweet and holy name succour these persons; do thou touch their eyes; for thou art able -that these may see with their eyes.

And when all had prayed, the hall wherein they were shone as when it lighteneth, even with such a light as cometh in the clouds, yet not such a light as that of the daytime, but unspeakable, invisible, such as no man can describe, even such that we were beside ourselves with bewilderment, calling on the Lord and saying: Have mercy, Lord, upon us thy servants: what we are able to bear, that, Lord, give thou us, for this we can neither see nor endure.

And as we lay there, only those widows stood up which were blind; and the bright light which appeared unto us entered into their eyes and made them to see. Unto whom Peter said: Tell us what ye saw.

And they said: We saw an old man of such comeliness as we are not able to declare to thee; but others said: We saw a young man; and others: We saw a boy touching our eyes delicately, and so were our eyes opened.

Peter therefore magnified the Lord, saying: Thou only art the Lord God, and of what lips have we need to give thee due praise? and how can we give thee thanks according to thy mercy? Therefore, brethren, as I told you but a little while since, God that is constant is greater than our thoughts, even as we have learned of these aged widows, how that they beheld the Lord in divers forms. (Acts of Peter, XXI)

Talem eum vidi qualem capere potui.

Men and brethren, ye have suffered nothing strange or incredible as concerning your perception...inasmuch as we also, whom he chose for himself to be apostles, were tried in many ways: I, indeed, am neither able to set forth unto you nor to write the things which I both saw and heard: and now is it needful that I should fit them for your hearing; and according as each of you is able to contain it I will impart unto you those things whereof ye are able to become hearers, that ye may see the glory that is about him, which was and is, both now and for ever.

And so when we had brought the ship to land, we saw him also helping along with us to settle the ship: and when we departed from that place, being minded to follow him, again he was seen of me as having rather bald, but the beard thick and flowing, but of James as a youth whose beard was newly come. We were therefore perplexed, both of us, as to what that which we had seen should mean.

And after that, as we followed him, both of us were by little and little perplexed as we considered the matter. Yet unto me there then appeared this yet more wonderful thing: for I would try to see him privily, and I never at any time saw his eyes closing (winking), but only open. And oft-times he would appear to me as a small man and uncomely, and then againt as one reaching unto heaven. Also there was in him another marvel: when I sat at meat he would take me upon his own breast; and sometimes his breast was felt of me to be smooth and tender, and sometimes hard like unto stones, so that I was perplexed in myself and said: Wherefore is this so unto me? And as I considered this, he . .

And at another time he taketh with him me and James and Peter unto the mountain where he was wont to pray, and we saw in him a light such as it is not possible for a man that useth corruptible (mortal) speech to describe what it was like. Again in like manner he bringeth us three up into the mountain, saying: Come ye with me. And we went again: and we saw him at a distance praying. I, therefore, because he loved me, drew nigh unto him softly, as though he could not see me, and stood looking upon his hinder parts: and I saw that he was not in any wise clad with garments, but was seen of us naked, and not in any wise as a man, and that his feet were whiter than any snow, so that the earth there was lighted up by his feet, and that his head touched the heaven: so that I was afraid and cried out, and he, turning about, appeared as a man of small stature, and caught hold on my beard and pulled it and said to me: John, be not faithless but believing, and not curious.

And I said unto him: But what have I done, Lord? And I say unto you, brethren, I suffered so great pain in that place where he took hold on my beard for thirty days, that I said to him: Lord, if thy twitch when thou wast in sport hath given me so great pain, what were it if thou hadst given me a buffet? And he said unto me: Let it be thine henceforth not to tempt him that cannot be tempted. (Acts of John 88-90)

And he gave me his hand and raised me up; and when I arose I saw him again in such a form as I was able to take in. (Acts of Peter, XX)

Talem eum vidi qualem capere potui.

Alvine discharges...

As for Jesus being in the shit, it may seem pretty irreverent.

"And He said to them, "Are you so lacking in understanding also? Do you not understand that whatever goes into the man from outside cannot defile him,

because it does not go into his heart, but into his stomach, and is eliminated?" (Thus He declared all foods clean.)" (Mark 7:18-19, NASB)

The word translated here as 'eliminated' is from the Greek aphedron which is, according to Thayer's (Unitarian that he was), "the place into which alvine discharges are voided." Or, from Strong's, "a place where the human waste discharges are dumped." It's a polite way of saying latrine or, in modern parlance, the crapper. Jesus wasn't afraid to go there to make his point.

Metaphorically, if you wish, Jesus went among those who were, in the eyes of 'higher' society, including those of the Pharisaical elite, basically living in the latrine. He went among society's waste products. Jesus went into the world's shit. So there ya' go.

Jesus is in the shit...

Without divulging into the personal issues that led to the statement in the title, I can give you the basics. It would seem that in the culture at large (and perhaps it has always been this way through all cultures in all times) there is a tendency to project the perfect life as one free from stress, with a perfect view of some exotic locale, a nice fat bank account, in perfect health with not a care in the world. In other words, the perfect life is viewed as an escape from the 'real 'world. Perhaps this is my own observation, a projection of the sheltered and often superficial world in which I was raised, both nationally in the United States and more locally in the Midwest.

But this is a dangerous way to live as such a worldview is, by and large, unattainable if it in fact attainable at all. It is something akin to retirement, working our entire lives in order that we can enjoy life when we are in our 60s. By and large, most people do not live to see such a retirement.

The religion of Christianity (and, arguably, other religions as well) seems to project this future oriented, pie-in-the-sky worldview that a better day is coming to there is no need to pay much attention to this one. It's somewhat nihilistic. If our sole focus is the future it leaves us no energy for the present. Christians long to see Jesus, to be with him, to live in eternal bliss free from pain and suffering. A noble goal, certainly. But what of this world? Is our sacrifice a life of fifty or more years of misery until that time? Is this why so many Christians fill their lives with the stuff of the world? Is this the disconnect?

In other words, since the future is not yet and is intangible, do Christians in fact give religious justification for the use of 'stuff' to fill the void left by the 'not yet' and thus give a religious stamp to materialism? We long for escape, for distraction. But what about the real stuff? What about finding the joy in the middle of it? What about finding ourselves content in any situation?

In my personal life at the moment there is a lot of stuff going on. It's 'real' world stuff, stuff where places exist in order for us not to have to deal with it (provided, of course, you have sufficient income), where we can shoo off these problems to some systemic solution. We tend to do this don't we? We send alcholics to rehab, the homeless to shelters, the aged to nursing homes, the mentally ill to psych wards, troubled teens to juvenile detention centers. In other words, we have the intermediary of a 'system' to handle problems we ourselves do not have the time, the money or the inclination to handle.

And we expect these systems to solve the problems, as if these systems are real people. But they are made up of people for whom their work is just a job. You may find the occasional individual who adds the personal element to their work but this is rare. In the end, these things just lead to more systems and less solutions. Prisons are not places of rehabilitation; homeless shelters don't solve the problem of homelessness; nursing homes provide a dumping ground for a society for whom a youthful, abundant and vivacious life is the ideal. Anything outside of this ideal tends to be marginalized and systematized.

I am aware that I am generalizing to a great degree. But these are observations from many years doing social work, including working with the homeless, with substance abusers, those living with a mental illness, those living with HIV/AIDS, the elderly and a combination of all of the above. It was in this work that I really learned about Jesus, more than I could ever learn in church or in school.

'The system' always fails. Yet to remove 'the system' would do more damage as it is embedded into the very fabric of our culture. To remove it would be foolish. But 'the system' will never save anyone.

No. It is we who must bring about the saving. It is through us, not some system, that God moves. He moves through His people. This is His story. He works through men. And so we have Jesus. Jesus came and brought a system to its knees. Jesus brought the personal to an impersonal system, a system that bound men rather than save them.

He came to the lost, to the sinners, the drunkards, the beat down and broken, the poor and the sick. He came to the lowest of the low. He got down in the shit. This is where salvation comes. This is where life is. This, my friends, is the real world. And it is finding joy and peace and contentment in it that is what the walk of faith is about.

Faith is not a provision for us to escape from the shit. Faith is the calling to walk in it.

Objective evidence...

While I respect, appreciate and admire the genius of the New Testament writers in their recontextualization of the Hebrew Bible, I cannot take it literally. I believe the events happened. I don't believe we have a literal take on the details of events. I believe we have a basic story of the person of Jesus which is presented in a basic retelling of the Hebrew stories. In other words, rather than the words told in the form of a book they are told in the person of Jesus.

The entire Hebrew Bible speaks of the perfecting of man. Its entire purpose is to perfect man. Every sentence, every page radiates this attempt, to restore man to his former glory.

What we have in Jesus is this person that the entire Hebrew Bible has in mind. Seen from this point of view, it makes sense that all the stories point to him as it is he who lives what the Hebrew Bible only hints at as all the men in the book fall short. If it was not for the falling short, there would be no tales of the heights. For Christians, then, Jesus is this man. It is the original creation begun anew, not in a physical sense but in a spiritual sense yet this occurs only through the orignial physical creation.

Because of this I have no problem not taking it literally. The literalist position is a backlash against the views of science and is, in fact, using the very same tools to view the Bible which will always put such a person at a disadvantage because they are using someone else's tools rather than an interally developed set of tools (which, of course, is what the scientific community tends to mock).

There is a certain irony in this. Argues Tom Cheetham in his The World Turned Inside Out:

Science in the West may well have developed partly as a response to the dogmatic closure of official Christianity in an attempt to recover something of the angelic function of beings and to re-establish the means for the individual to attain knowledge.

Quoting Jacob Bronowski, he notes:

It is said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That is false, tragically false...[Auschwitz] was done by arrogance. It was done by dogma. It was done by ignorance. When people believe they have the absolute knowledge...this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods...We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge.

Of course, scientists also fall prey to dogmatism. The letter kills. Dogma, more specifically the men wielding that dogma from a position of power, have killed the spirit and, quite literally, men. Scientists, religious people, serial killers, all coming from the position of power, the desire to be gods.

Science, in part, can be seen as a backlash to the closure of thinking, of individualization, of freedom. Men have taken this freedom of inquiry, turning it once again to, in this case, the Bible and, though thinking they are safeguarding it are, once again, killing through the letter. The inerrantist belief is thus a backlash against the inquiry of science, though using its tools, to once again return to dogmatism. We thus have the bursting forth of a growing movement of atheists, those who are not open to the innerantist Bible believers (and quite condescending to those who are 'liberal' in their views of the Bible, atheists of this sort as dogmatic as the innerantists, that it is an either/or proposition) and seek to silence them.

So is the New Testament, and the Bible in general, telling a literal, scientifically verifiable story? I don't think so. I think to bury the text in such historicity is to kill its spiritual import. It is to toss it right back into legalism.

Yet this does not mean it is myth, that it is fairy tale and legend with no verifiable history. In other words, it is not a lie (which is insinuated in such accusations). Yet the words of the Bible do come alive in those who believe it to be true and we begin to see the truth when we live our lives and we recognize how certain passages resonate and become relevant, meaningful and even freeing in our daily lives. This is the power of the living word.

And this word cannot be bound by dogma. We cannot toss out dogma as it safeguards from a relativism that is nothing more than Man as the measure of all things. But we must avoid the arrogation of the spirit of that dogma and become those very same people Jesus scolds in Matthew 23. While he may have been talking to the Pharisees in that passage, he speaks to all of us who claim to follow him today. We too can be Pharisees.

Still wrestling...

The more in-depth I read Henry Corbin, the more clearly I see the dogma of the Church. This isn't a judgment (yet, anyhow). It's simply a fact. I seek to 'believe' the dogma of the Trinity, of the God-man idea, of the Incarnation rather than just 'get' them as one can 'get' these things and yet not believe them.

Just when I think I'm about to go there, I find something else that verifies or corroborates what I believe. The latest of these finds has to do with Isaiah 9:6, a proof-text often used to go beyond just that of proving Jesus to be Messiah but proving that Jesus and, historically speaking, the Messiah, will be divine, nay, will be God. But I know far too well the role of translation so this has never been a big deal to me.

It is often quoted as a proof-text and as I am no Hebrew scholar, I merely let it roll. Well today I dug a bit deeper. I have been reading Michael S. Kogan's brilliant book Opening the Covenant. It threw me right back into the Jewishness of Jesus once again bringing forth my belief that once Christianity left the environs of Jerusalem and went abroad there was no turning back. Once it went beyond the apostles and Paul and entered into a non-Jewish and thoroughly Gentile/pagan educated clergy it was over. It has become a predominantly Greek religion thus uprooting the true Jewishness of the faith. But when these roots are removed it becomes a malleable faith, one that latches itself onto the dominant culture.

In this day and age and for the past several hundred years that dominant culture has been Protestant, European and, most recently, American. This culture has attached itself to the faith of Christianity and has thus been associated, perhaps unjustly, with colonialism. This is changing, however, as the largest growth is coming from South America and Africa and these cultures are changing the Christian landscape. It will be interesting to see the theological impact as well.

Anyhow, as for this book, it is a profound and honest attempt at Jewish-Christian interfaith dialogue, really scrutinizing, to a refreshing degree, Christianity in its roots through a Jewish lens. Chapter 2 of the book tackles 'The Qusetion of the Messiah.' In essence, he takes apart the idea that there is a 'messianic pattern', some normative idea of a Messiah that all Jews of Jesus' day held. Anyone who knows a bit about Jewish history of this period knows that there were a multitude of ideas about the Messiah. There were, in his words, messianisms. To think otherwise is to deny history.

He hits on the major verses used in Christian proof-texting. In my example here I am looking at Isaiah 9:6. The traditional translation is this:

"...his name will be called

Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God,

Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."

I wish to look at the 'Mighty God' claim.

Kogan's translation is this:

"...his name will be called

'A wonderful counselor is the Mighty God,

The Everlasting Father.' [He will be a] peaceful prince."

Kogan notes that the name (and it is a name, not a statement of ontology) "does not imply divinity, but rather indicates that the appearance of this child-king is a sign that God has not and will not abandon the Davidic line no matter the failings of [Hezekiah] (and the abomination of his son Manassah)" (42). Placed in its context, there is no declaration of the Messiah being divine.

El is a component of many names, yet these names are not seen as statement of ontology. Here are a few examples:

Daniel – Judged by God or Judgement of God

Ezekiel – God will Strengthen

Ishmael, Ishamael – Heard by God, Named by God, or God Hearkens

Israel – Struggles with God

Joel – Jah is God

Samuel – Name/Heard of God

Not one of these figures was seen to be divine, let alone God. So when Jesus is called, for example, Emmanuel, it is a name not a statement of his nature. 'God with us' does not mean that it is Jesus that is God but that it is in Jesus that God is with us.

Let's break this down a bit further. 'Mighty God' translates the Hebrew gibbor el, el being 'God' and gibbor being 'mighty'.

El is the word most often translated as 'God' in the Hebrew Bible. But this is not the God specific to Israel. This is not YHWH. This is not the LORD. It is the root of the word elohim, the word most often associated with the word 'God', though the word elohim is used of men and of angels (see, for example, Psalm 82:6, which Jesus quotes in John 10:34).

The Hebrew for this passage is Pele-joez-el-gibbor-Abi-ad-sar-shalom. Yet in many passages in the Hebrew Bible, the word el (or elohim) means mighty or powerful and is not a stand alone address for God. For example in Psalm 50:1, mighty God is actually el elohim, el meaning mighty and elohim meaning God.

Pslam 82:1:

"God (elohim) standeth in the congregation of the mighty (el); he judgeth among the gods (elohim)."

Is this an acknowledgment of others gods? Is this a throwback to former times when YHWH was competing amongst a pantheon of gods? It's interesting to me that the word el here is translated as mighty and gives room to believe that other 'gods' might also be among the el in the sense of 'mighty'.

But in Ezekiel 31:11 it is Nebuchadnezzer who is called el, the mighty one. In Ezekiel 32:21 we see both el and gibbor in the same sentence:

"The strong (el) among the mighty (gibbor) shall speak to him out of the midst of hell with them that help him..." (KJV)

This speaks not of God but of men.

Gibbor el is frequently translated as 'Mighty God' in various other places in the Hebrew Bible (Isaiah 10:21, Jeremiah 32:18, etc.)

In essence, it comes down to more than tossing out one verse in a particular translation. It comes down to context, both of the passage and of the use of the terms in the greater context of the various places throughout the Hebrew Scriptures which, of course, also means keeping the books in the context of the times in which the passages were written or written about. In other words, there is no one 'messianic pattern' to these texts used as proof. If we study the development of the idea of an individual Messiah rather than a dynastic king back to its Zoroastrian roots up through the Second Temple period we find an amazing diversity in the concept and realize that there is simply no one understanding of the idea of the Messiah.

My point is simply this: proof-texting Isaiah 9:6 to claim that Jesus, or the Messiah, is God is not enough. In fact, standing alone, it doesn't prove anything. It's just a soundbyte. The passage as a whole may be seen as Messianic (or it may simply be referring to the historical person of Hezekiah) but this isn't the same as saying that the Messiah is God.

For if, in this verse, Jesus is God then he is also literally, not figuratively, the Father. And while this may align perfectly well with Oneness (i.e. modalist) theology it is certainly not compatible with Trinitarian theology. So as for Isaiah 9:6, it is at best Messianic. But proof that the Jews of Jesus' day held it to mean the individual in question would be divine, let alone God Himself? That's a tough sell.