I recently wrote a relatively impassioned term paper about the Age of The Earth. I know what you might be thinking, “That sounds so interesting!” or “We all love reading about radiocarbon dating in a theology class!” If you are- let me tell you that you are completely and totally incorrect. When you write a paper about the Age of the Earth for anything concerning Christian theology, you have to read about Young Earth Creationism along with legitimate systems of thought. Young Earth Creationists are a loosely associated group of fundamentalists who believe that the Earth was created somewhere around 6,000 years ago. You might ask, “Well, how do they arrive at that number? And how do they respond to empirical scientific data that would point to a different conclusion?” To answer: they added up the (clearly exhaustive and comprehensive) genealogies in the Old Testament and then the years since Christ; also they just say that science is wrong because it doesn’t match up with the Bible. BOOM.
I would like to say, firstly on the count of the adding up of the genealogies in the OT and calling it a legitimate form of measurement of the Age of the Earth. That is ridiculous. Can you really say this with a straight face? Do you think that God gave humanity the Biblical text so that we might legalistically ascertain the age of the planet we live on? How might this help us love others better and on whose abacus was all this done? Also, is this a point of contention for which you are willing to spread hatred and discord among the Christians and towards non-believers everywhere? Yes, you are? Okay, well to my second point.
You cannot just say that science is wrong because it does not jive with the biblical text. A person who thinks that Moses was the pinnacle of scientific thought does not know very much about science or probably too much about Moses. I wonder what Moses would’ve thought about iPhones? Probably that they were magic from the devil and we are at least pretty sure that isn’t true. We know that the Earth moves and the universe is not geocentric even though Habbakkuk, Joshua, Psalms and 1 Chronicles (http://hypertextbook.com/eworld/geocentric.shtml) would have us believe differently. Do Young Earth Creationists believe that somewhere, out there (Fievel Goes West reference, who’s with me?!) are pillars that the Earth is resting on (Job 9:6). Humans have been to space. It’s a thing. Satellite’s orbit around a moving Earth and we are pretty sure there are not giant pillars holding it up. The Bible is not a text book, the way of the world is not the way of Scripture. The Bible teaches us to love, and to have joy and peace, and to be good to one another in Kingdom Community. How does disagreeing with every credible way of testing information because it does not match up with a several thousand year old cosmology, which believes that the Earth is a big flat land with no curvature and heaven is the place in the sky that we can’t reach (too bad we can, we have space shuttles), help us, as brothers in Christ, further the purposes of the Kingdom? I’m looking at you Institute for Creation Research.
My Theology of the Church class was recently asked to respond to the prompt, “In 2-3 pages, who is God (triune) and what is his purpose in Christ expressed through us? To what extent does this influence our understanding of ourselves?”
The following essay is my response. I use words purposefully and intentionally in an effort to be both concise and meaningful.
On The Nature Of God
God is not a human being. God is love. God is gracious. God is impossible to fully know. God is creator. God is not created. God is community. God is not separated from Himself. God is the creating Father. God is the manifested Savior. God is the empowering Spirit. God is perfect. God is holy. God is not sin. God has many names. God interacts with His creation. God wants to reconcile humanity to Himself. According to modern theology, God is in relationship with humanity embodied in 3 conceptions. These include: God as creating Father, God as manifested Savior, and God as empowering Holy Spirit. The triune conception of God is both confusing and freeing. The idea of Trinity is confusing because, in its very essence, it is describing a God who is impossible to fully know. The idea of Trinity is freeing because, in its very essence, it is describing a God who is impossible to fully know. The conception of the nature of God is made more difficult because humans have a need to fabricate certainty in situations where it is not only impossible but also inappropriate. Some scholars and preachers do not give credence to the phrase, “the nature of God is impossible to fully know.” They are willing to use it; they might even try to represent it as a statement of presupposition to their book on understanding the nature of God. But even in their admission of the inherent, impossible complexity of the idea involved, they continue to try to write bulleted paragraphs or 3-point sermons about the nature of God. Surely humans cannot imagine capturing the identity of God in clean, neat, definitive prose. Humans feel as if they have to seek the Creator’s definitive nature because the full knowledge of His identity would ensure their ability to please Him fully. Yet, making comprehensively authoritative statements about God besides the ones stated in the Biblical text is dangerous. It leads humanity down a path that ultimately seeks not to know God so as to please Him, but rather to know God so as to be Him. We must relinquish power over our own lives. Instead of using human logic to work out the nature of God to try to please Him, we should seek to be in relationship with Him so that we might be a part of His body (1 Corinthians 1). How often can humanity forsake God before He will offer forgiveness no longer? This question is wrongheaded. God is grace. Sin separates humanity from God. In the sin act, humanity consciously makes the decision to separate itself from the perfect creation. Because God is ontologically perfect, the sin act separates humanity from Him; because God is ontologically love, He desires to reconcile humanity to Him. God sent His Word, whom we know as Jesus, to be the Savior of the world and to redeem humanity from the death of sin. God manifested the Christ on Earth in sinless human form so that He might be a pure sacrifice. The purity of Christ’s sacrifice made it so that a sinful humanity could be redeemed from the separation of sin. The salvation act marked the reconciliation of imperfect humanity and God. God’s Kingdom is breaking into the world. God asks humanity to enter into community with Him and be His hands and feet. God asks humanity to enter into relationship with Him and be empowered by His Spirit. His Spirit knows that which is good for us and will lead us to the Kingdom. God asks humanity to enter into community with each other and be each other’s brothers and sisters. The perfect sacrifice is the head of the Body that is changing the world each day. In community with each other we must seek to purport love, the fruit of the Spirit, unity among believers, social justice, equality, and emotional and physical healing. God desires for humanity to live out a Kingdom lifestyle because it is better than the separation of sinfulness. The call of the Kingdom of God is at hand; we must shift our paradigm to see every action through the lens of the purposes of the Kingdom.
Woman’s Silence in the Church
Silena Moore Holman
Part 1: Woman’s work in the Church Part 2: A Peculiar People Part 3: Woman’s Work in the Church Part 4: “Let Your Women Keep Silence”
http://www.mun.ca/rels/restmov/people/sholman.html
In reading the discourse from the Gospel Advocate between TJ Hunsaker, David Lipscomb, Silena Holman and AA Bunner the legalistic viewpoint that was predominant in the 1888 Churches of Christ is easily perceived. In this conversation, TJ Hunsaker writes an editorial letter to The Gospel Advocate, which poses a question that essentially asks David Lipscomb to address a situation in a Church of Christ, which involves an elder who refuses to take part in the assembly because of women speaking in Bible Class in the congregation. In his answer, David Lipscomb sets the precedent that the elder should by no means be separated from the assembly because of this issue and even says “that a man who abandons the worship of God because things do not work to suit him—is not fit for an elder.” He concedes that it is impossible to expect that women should have no role in Church life, and must interact (to a point) in the life of the Body, specifically in their interaction in the home and with children. However, he then goes on to state that the role of women in the Church is one of subservience to the men of a congregation and that the Bible very clearly and evidently says “women should be silent in the Church.” (1 Corinthians 14:34)
Silena Holman decides that another response is necessary in addition to Lipscomb’s on the subject so that she might “look at this question from a woman’s standpoint.” She exegetes beautifully, exerting a comprehensive biblical knowledge while conveying humility from which she is so eloquently seeking the gospel truth. She quotes scripture, but not just the one that most people look to for the evidence that requires the muzzling of our Christian sisters. She reads the New Testament with eyes that see the overarching message of the Love of God that unifies all peoples with neither regards for gender, race, socioeconomic status nor nationalistic affiliation. She reads it as a metanarrative (shoutout to Dr. Lavender) and as such can see the irony that it is not now society, but rather the body of Christ, who are trying to lock women in shackles in which they have been so unjustly held.
Of course, because of the bigoted nature of this era in Restoration History, a snarky, dismissive, and altogether disrespectful response was bound to be delivered by the pharisaic leaders of the day. AA Bunner writes this response. He writes what he probably considered a tongue in cheek (which turns into a foot in mouth) editorial response to Holman’s article addressing women’s roles. He uses an asinine semantic argument which (to him) “proves” Holman’s interpretation and comprehensive view of Scripture to be faulty. He states that she cannot “yoke together” verses so as to prove her point because he can do that same thing with other verses and make them command a reader to act utterly nonsensically. However, Bunner does not take it into account that the verses that Holman quotes together not only refer to the same subject, but also reference the way that Paul interacts with prophecy. Holman responds forthwith.
Her reply is not only an indictment of the close-minded system within which the Churches of Christ of this time period were operating, but also an excellent example of why the pejorative nature of the writing of Brother Bunner, because he was speaking to a woman, was altogether misguided and outright incorrect. Her response encompasses a wide range of scriptural references and also asks some very probing and (if viewed from a traditional Church of Christ standpoint) uncomfortable questions.
The belittling treatment of the Christian woman in the modern church is sometimes a painful reminder of the antiquated view that females should be second-class citizens in the Kingdom of God. Even though not a single elder with whom I commune at my home congregation would approve of this theological sentiment, it was held for years (in more euphemistic terms of course) as the scriptural view. There were women in our very own church family who were feeling left out, abandoned, and silenced; it is not until within the past two years that we, as a congregation, have done anything that would lead an outside observer to a contrary opinion of this heinous statement. Why do we hold so stubbornly to the socially unjust positions of our forefathers, just so that we might propagate the societal woes of previous eras of thought? Especially in a day and age that lacks head covering and the requirement of short haircuts for men, why should we proof-text so ardently to put a glass-ceiling on the Christian Woman, in the context of intellect and faith, that we might hinder her from overcoming her stature within the congregation that she teach none but children and non-believers and thus prevent her from preaching the truth of the God of Love to men who she equals or surpasses in both intelligence and faith?
Patterns of impartiality plague our perfect picket fences, paved roads, smooth skin and white teeth. We love each other… here. We even care about our neighbors, you know, the people who live in our neighborhoods who are nice and well groomed, like us— as they should be.
Which is, of course, garbage.
Have we let society make the decision that we must change the definition of the word neighbor away from what Jesus meant when he told us to love them because the people who he meant for us to love were dirty, far away and inconvenient? The Kingdom of God is not a gated community-
Our neighbors have dirty skin and scraggly beards and wrinkled, scarred, pained faces and chipped, yellowed teeth with stale, smokey breath, tearful smiles and mental diseases. Take off your damning gloves and gas masks-O High Priests of this World- and take in the pain that is the reality of the people you have created and love them. Quit believing the hatred for the poor and read the words of Jesus that you so often profess as your own, for if you do not—
You will read it and weep for yourselves that your lives were lived in this hellish lack of love instead of the community that is the Kingdom of God because Kingdom Life is always better.
