Sunday, May 1, 2011

Different ways in which the Bible is used in developing Christian ethical positions

At the ELCA Conference of Bishops, meeting in retreat March 2, 2001, Walter F. Taylor Jr., professor of New Testament studies, Trinity Lutheran Seminary, Columbus, Ohio talked about the Use of the Bible in Making Ethical Decisions. Which of the 6 views of the Bible fits your view best?

Even though I have just finished saying that I don't have enough time, I do want to take the time to suggest various models for using the Bible in making ethical decisions. As Professor Fretheim and I compared notes a couple of weeks ago, we noted how often we are asked to talk about texts but how seldom anyone asks us to deal with how people today might move from texts to modern ethical decisions. Because I think that is such an important issue and because it is so often ignored, I want to begin with that topic.

Everyone who reads the Bible comes at that reading task with underlying presuppositions. No one comes to the reading of the Bible totally fresh or totally without preconceived notions of what s/he will find. Usually those presuppositions are unstated. Indeed, most people have no idea that they have any presuppositions. In fact, the person who says, "I just read the Bible at face value and believe and try to do what it says," is operating with a whole host of presuppositions.

What I want to do briefly is ask what some of the presuppositions are when people read the Bible, especially when they read the Bible to obtain ethical direction. What are different ways in which the Bible has been used in developing Christian ethical positions--or not used, as the case may be? I would like to suggest six basic models. Part of the scheme comes from Victor Paul Furnish. [3]

A. Sacred Cow

In Hindu India, the cow is sacred. It cannot be touched, harmed, or restricted. Furnish uses this example and label to talk about our first view of the relationship of the Bible and ethics. In this view the Bible is viewed as a written deposit of God's truth valid in very specific ways for all times and places. Everything in the Bible is eternally and universally binding. The Bible's ethical statements are not to be touched, disturbed, and certainly not in any sense explained away. They are to be taken at face value. [4]

The Bible thus supplies the content not only for the church's doctrinal teachings but for ethics as well. The Bible, then, is viewed as a book of revealed morality. That is, God revealed details of the right way to live, and what God revealed was to be valid forever. So an equation sign is put between the Bible and today. In this view, what the Bible says about family life and human sexuality should be the standard for Christians today.

B. Traditional

In this view, human nature is viewed as fundamentally constant from century to century and culture to culture. Thus cultural variables shade but do not provide the primary shape of ethical norms. The ethical norms of Israel, therefore, since they are part of God's will, became part of the ethical identity of Jesus and the early church. Such ethical norms and prescriptions are valid for modern Christians, says this position, as long as they are filtered through the fundamental theological and ethical commitments of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Thus prescriptions concerning family life and human sexuality remain valid for the Christian community unless they are clearly opposed by Jesus or the rest of the New Testament witness or unless they represent cultural peculiarities (e.g., concern for sexual relations between men and menstruating women).

C. Neo-Traditional

This view is very significant today. It agrees with the presuppositions of the traditional view. The major difference is that the neo-traditional view insists that we have, in fact, often misunderstood the Bible. Traditional interpretations are therefore often misleading, for the Bible really says things quite different from what we thought the Bible said. When correctly understood, the Bible serves as the source and norm of the church's ethical values. The trick is in understanding the Bible correctly. This position has been of crucial importance in the decision of the Lutheran Church to ordain women, for example. This position maintains the authority of the Bible, but argues that previous interpretations so misunderstood the biblical witness that the freedom of women to be leaders in the Christian community was ignored. A proper understanding of the texts thus opens new possibilities.

D. Source of Principles

For Christians who take this position, the authority of the Bible for ethics does not rest in its specific moral instruction on particular problems but rather in its revealing of over-arching norms, values, and ideals that are binding on the Christian life. These norms, values, and ideals need to be translated or applied by today's Christian community, so say the proponents of this position, since the biblical material was produced in specific cultures that no longer exist. For certain readers of the Bible, this position can be close to the traditional or neo-traditional, but for many who take this position the principles are much more general. Many in this camp would take the Golden Rule ("Do unto others as you would have them do unto you") as a principle; other readers of the Bible today take "love" as a basic ethical principle. But often such folks become nervous when specific ethical directives from the Bible are applied to life today, especially in the area of human sexuality.

E. Source of Identity and Dialogue Resource

This title is a bit cumbersome, but I include this model as a way to recognize the provocative book of our emeritus colleague from Southern Seminary, Paul Jersild. In his book, Spirit Ethics, Professor Jersild proposes a model for how to do ethics in the post-modern world. The function of the Bible is chiefly to provide a major source of identity for the Christian community in its self-understanding and in its understanding of God. He adopts a reader-response model in which the Bible, essentially, says what the church says it says. The Bible becomes a resource for the dialogue between the church and the pluralistic society in which the church finds itself, but he is most restive about current application of any ethical directives from the Bible. Although application of his basic approach does lead to rather traditional positions on euthanasia and assisted suicide, when he comes to homosexuality he places major weight on contemporary experience and scientific developments, with the Bible in effect being subordinated to them.

F. White Elephant

A final position is what Furnish labels the "white elephant." A white elephant is something that is expensive but useless. In this view, the Bible is an antiquated and out-dated relic of a long-ago past that has no relevance to today. It is to be discarded because it is too old; because its New Testament authors were too excited about the coming of the end of the world; because it was written by men; etc. Ethical positions are to be developed totally apart from the Bible, with the only use of the Bible being to provide the most general outlines of the story of God with God's people.

As you look at these six positions, you will see that I have arranged them in a certain order. The order runs from taking the Bible and plunking it down into today without any attention to original context (the sacred cow position) to denying the Bible any relevance for ethical decision-making at all (the white elephant position). In between are the other four positions.

These approaches are crucial when people come to reading the Bible, for they already program how the reader will deal with the ethical material in the Bible. In addition to what I have outlined, how much the reader uses historical understanding of biblical times and the Bible itself, and/or how much the reader uses contemporary sociological, anthropological, and psychological approaches to understand the Bible also have a great deal to say about how the person will read the biblical text.

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

The Beginning Of All Exegesis is Love

Excerpts from “Augustine, Elements of Christianity”
by James J. O'Donnell

Christianity is a religion of the book, but the book did not spring out of a vacuum: hence the first book of [Augustine's] Christian Doctrine. The authority of the believing community precedes and guarantees the authority of the book. Thus the Christian student of scripture brings certain first principles along to the study of the book. The text itself, like the church, is only an instrument of divine authority. For both church and scripture the active agent of revelation is God, working through Christ, the Word.

The beginning of all exegesis is love of God and love of neighbor. "Whoever thinks he understands divine scripture or any part of it, but whose interpretation does not build up the twofold love of God and neighbor, has not really understood it. Whoever has drawn from scripture an interpretation that does fortify this love, but who is later proven not to have found the meaning intended by the author of the passage, is deceived to be sure, but not in a harmful way, and he is guilty of no untruth at all." (1.36.40)

Hence church doctrine makes it clear that all scripture will contain the praise of this double love (caritas) and the condemnation of all that is contrary to it--and nothing else. Here a special quality of a scriptural text is seen: in addition to whatever the initial writer meant to put into a text, there is also, always and everywhere, this deeper divine message. What is important, then, is that this deeper message be uncovered. This approach imputes a fundamentally instrumental quality to scriptural texts: God works on the individual soul through scripture, and however God works is good. Having a correct opinion about the meaning of an obscure word in scripture is a good thing, but ultimately irrelevant; but having a correct opinion about the need to love God and reform one's life is not only a good thing, but ultimately the only thing to be expected from scripture.

If love of God and of neighbor is the goal of interpretation, the enemy of interpretation is whatever does not allow that love to grow. The root of all lovelessness is the self-assertiveness of pride. The one who sets himself up as an authoritative interpreter of scripture in opposition to the reasonable suggestions of colleagues or the benign direction of the church goes far astray, even if he does uncover much arcane and accurate lore in the process. Not only is caritas the goal of interpretation, it is also the only reliable means of interpretation.

This is obviously a counsel of perfection. Augustine knew that all are sinners and all interpretations of scripture are imperfect, and he wanted to make sure the student of scripture knew it. All interpretation is tentative and incomplete; all the more reason why the only question that means anything is the one that asks whether the Word of God is acting in the reader's soul right now.

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Discipleship Aids

I have found these short videos to be extremely helpful in explaining the life of discipleship.  As we talked about yesterday at Eastern Conference, there is a qualitative difference between membership and discipleship. We are called to make disciples not members.  I have used these in small groups, with church council and wherever else I can insert them.  They are simple yet profound.  My favorite is this one.

Friday, March 4, 2011

Either/Or? – Both/And?



The Big C* of The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America:

  • Personal Faith v. Corporate Action
  • Saving Gospel v. Social Gospel
  • Repentance v. Acceptance/Inclusiveness
  • Law v. Gospel 
  • Law for Salvation v. Law for Morality
  • Visions and Expectations v. Tolerance and Inclusion
  • Personal Obedience v. Alien Righteousness
  • Love God Push v. Love Neighbor Push
  • Confessional Theology v. Process Theology
  • Lutheran Heritage v. Ecumenical Fellowship
  • Simple Piety v. Higher Reasoning
  • Bible Camps v. Seminaries
  • Local Mission v. Global Mission
  • Congregational Decisions v. Churchwide Statements
  • Traditional v. Progressive
  • Word of God as Scripture v. Word of God as Jesus
*Continuum or Conundrum?

How do you pet both your dogs?

Sunday, February 27, 2011

CATECHISM HELP WANTED

I am having a terrible time with catechism this year.  I only have 3 in the class, so group activities are limited.  They are all introverts and getting any conversation or participation is worse than pulling teeth.  I have tried some of the stuff that I have done with small classes in the past, but they have fallen flat.  Complicating is the fact that I have one that is highly intelligent and biblically literate.  The other two are reasonably intelligent, but almost no background in the faith.

They are bored.  I am bored.  I dread catechism.  They probably do, too.  Any thoughts on how to help these youth with spiritual formation that isn't going to drive all 4 of us out of the church?

Friday, February 25, 2011

10 Things You Ought To Know About Lutherans

  1. Lutheran History – More Than a Protestant Church
  2. Lutherans and Scripture – A Canonical Church
  3. Lutheran Confessions – A Professional Church
  4. Lutheran Doctrine – A Catechetical Church
  5. Lutherans and Justification  – A Theological Church
  6. Lutherans and Good Works – A Transformational Church
  7. Lutheran Practice – An Intentional Church
  8. Lutheran Mission – An Evangelical Church
  9. Lutherans and Final Judgment – An Eschatological Church
 10. Lutherans and Five Solas - A Fundamental Church

What would you add?

What is the process by which you disciple people?

This was a question posed to our Transforming Leadership Initiative group almost 2 years ago and one that I wrestled with for a long time. "What does it mean?" I asked myself.  I realized I didn't even understand the question so I must not have been doing anything to disciple people.  At least not intentionally.  I knew about spiritual practices, of course, but an intentional process to help people along on a spiritual journey?  It was too linear for me to imagine.  And then, this image that we had been using as a parish logo of sorts began to develop into something greater in the life of our community, Trinity Lutheran (Monroeville, Ohio).

The roots began to be a metaphor for the spiritual journey of discipleship.  They began to represent the mature life in Christ.  We left some blank because it's different for everyone and yet there are always similarities: worship, prayer, devotions and study, service, mission etc.


So, it's a great question to ponder as leaders in the church. What is the process by which you disciple people?  What would you say?  

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Lenten Leanings

What are you planning for a late Lent this year? Any suggestions?

Monday, February 21, 2011

The Fifteen Minute Rule

Before my 20+ year trip to the mission fields of Southern California, I was well taught the ways of mid-west life. Growing up in Northern Ohio in a town of less than 7000 people teaches you some things. I loved and hated the fact that everyone knew my business. I loved the fact that if I had an emergency on the way home from school, I could knock on a door and someone who knew me would help me. And I hated the fact that everything I did got home to my mother before I could. What's that about a village?


My best friend Tom and I would visit girls or grandparents on a summer evening. I'll have to leave the stories of the girls for later, but there was a predictable pattern of our conversation with the grandparents on their front porch. I clocked it for a while, and Tom and I would laugh about it. I called it the fifteen minute rule. For the first fifteen minutes you talk about current events. After fifteen minutes it was this:

"The folks out at Limestone Corners put that back 40 acres in corn this year. No one has had corn there since Elmer Swanson planted crops there!"

"Elmer Swanson, did Elmer farm that land?"

"Yes, his sister-in-law was a Benson. She married Carl, Elmer's brother and they farmed together for a while."

"I didn't know that. You mean they're related to Bud and Fran?"

"Yup!"

The folks who wrote the Old and New Testament loved the fifteen minute rule too. There are genealogies all over the Bible. To know me is to know my people. Small town ministry knows that. Small town ministry grows that.

Zion Lutheran in Huron OH, the church I'm serving,  will be 106 years old on March the 10th. After fifteen minutes we'd tell you our momma is Zion Lutheran in Sandusky. Long before Churchwide expressions of the Church created mission packages -- plans, procedure, and funding from the national HQ to establish new congregation, church starts were local.


We have amazing archieves in our church so a few years ago I checked it out. What does the fifteen minute conversation look like for Zion. To whom do we belonged? What's our Synodical History?

Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church, Huron was chartered on March 10, 1905 and became a member of the:

Joint Synod of Ohio [Evangelical Lutheran Joint Synod of Ohio and Other States] (joined 1905)

American Lutheran Church (ALC) (joined 1930)
  1. Iowa Synod (est. 1854),
  2. Buffalo Synod (est. 1845)
  3. Joint Synod of Ohio (est. 1818).

The American Lutheran Church (TALC) (joined 1960)
  1. American Lutheran Church (German), 
  2. United Evangelical Lutheran Church (Danish) 
  3. Evangelical Lutheran Church (Norwegian) 
  4. The Lutheran Free Church (Norwegian) came into the ALC in 1963. 

(Lutheran Church in America (LCA) (1962))
      1. ULCA (German, Slovak and Icelandic)
      2. Augustana Evangelical Lutheran Church (Swedish), 
      3. Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church
     4.  American Evangelical Lutheran Church (Danish)

ELCA (1988)
  1. The American Lutheran Church (ALC) (1960)
  2. Lutheran Church in America (LCA) (1962)
  3. Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches (AELC)


About every 30 years or so we  change our letterhead. We have been in the ELCA for 23 years now.

The people and the building(s) have been here for 5510 Sundays so far. We have known the global connection of our church through synods and we have found the local ministry of our parish through our neighborhood.

In the middle of the things we question about synodical affiliation, can there be some comfort that God works beyond labels? It the midst of all the questions, does the fifteen minute rule still rule. Now where is that rocking chair again?

Clergy Members Suffer From Burnout, Poor Health : NPR

Clergy Members Suffer From Burnout, Poor Health : NPR



Saturday, February 19, 2011

Butterfly Circus

Check out this short video called butterfly circus on You Tube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtxANzN2Woo

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4um8qubQh0&feature=related

Friday, February 18, 2011

Experiment

New from clergycloud@gmail.com

Thinking it through

Let's see what we discover with having a blog that has more than one author.  We can add links to other files or sites: Like David B or add a picture of my grand-daughter Maya:




Or a video




A Document on the web somewhere



Would this work?

Comments?