Month: December 2016

God and the NAP

On December 29, 2016

I should probably begin this post by explaining what the NAP is. The NAP is an acronym for the non-aggression principle. To put it simply: One may not use coercive means against anyone’s person or property. One may use coercion in order to protect a person or his property; or one’s own property. In Libertarian political theory, the NAP is the central ethical principle for society.

How broadly should the NAP be applied? Libertarian theorists have been careful to limit the NAP to legal matters and legal relationships. Thin libertarians, as opposed to thick libertarians, teach this. In libertarian theory, scholars have primarily applied the NAP to the civil government (Those who protect the righteous and punish the offender (Romans 13)). This, of course, does not mean that the NAP does not apply to other social spheres. Rather, the way in which it applies to the political sphere is distinct. Libertarian theory began as a critique of the civil government. Therefore, the great majority of libertarian theory works to apply the NAP to the civil government.

God and the NAP

There is work to do. I would argue that the NAP should apply to every institution. This is because I believe that the NAP is an expression of God’s nature.

As Christians, who believe that God is intimately involved in the affairs of mankind, we readily ask, does the NAP have a part in the righteousness of God. Does God deal with mankind according to the NAP? Or does God merely view man as his own property? If he pleases, he may get rid of him? There is a false dichotomy here, but unfortunately, this is how we often frame the debate. I would argue that if the NAP applies to mankind, it also applies to God.

The image of God.

God created man in his own image. When we apply a little bit of deductive logic to Ephesians 4:24 we see that this means that man was created in true righteousness and holiness. Paul tells in Ephesians 4: 24, “Put on the new man, the one created according to God’s likeness, in righteousness and purity of the truth.” The new man is Christ, whom God commands us to put on in Galatians 3:27. God gave us Christ as the true image of God since the image of God in Adam is marred. I won’t argue what exactly this image is, but we can see that God gives it “in righteousness.”

God is righteous. God created man in righteousness. The duties that God asks of us are according to the dictates of God’s own nature. If the NAP is an expression of a righteous society, then God will also deal with his people according to the NAP. God will not demand a righteousness in man that is not expressed in himself. We, after all, carry the image of God. Before the fall and later in Christ, man freely shares in the righteousness of God. God limits himself by the NAP, so that it is natural for man to limit himself by the NAP. (Granted that the NAP is a righteous principle) (We should also not that we use the word “limit” as a human way of talking about the works of a spiritual, and impassible Lord)

Our God limits himself by the NAP according to his nature, his works, and his goals. God is Creator. God is our redeemer. God will glorify his creation. The Creator God has exclusive rights over his creation but he willingly limits himself to treat us according to the nature he has created us with. To understand how this works, we need to have a deeper understanding of how God defines himself in scripture. We need to understand his work, as he has revealed himself in our Lord Jesus Christ.

If the NAP applies to God, then…

We can go further. If the NAP defines God’s relation to his creation and our relation to one another under the civil government, that means that the NAP also applies to all our institutions. It has to apply to each institution according to the nature and the goals of that institution. government in the family, government in the church, government in a business, must reflect on how the NAP applies to their institutions.

(n.b. Why did I include this post under applied hermeneutics? To keep it simple, we can begin with John 1. John 1 reveals our Lord God Jesus Christ as the logos. The logos or the word is the thing that holds all things together. Jesus not only the primary hermeneutical principle of scripture but is the primary hermeneutical principle for understanding the world. See here.)

The text has priority

By James

On December 28, 2016

In Uncategorized

There are three elements in the interpretation of a text. The author, the text, and the reader.

In seeking to understand a text, we should give the text priority. The text leaves the author’s head and becomes something different than the author himself intended. The reader may see something the first time he reads a text but when he reads it again, he realizes that he was wrong. This does not mean that that the author or the reader are less important than the text. There remains a demand to be faithful to the original author while being relevant to the present reader. It is just that the text itself is the center of the exchange. The text has its own life.

God Teaches us About Himself

By James

On December 19, 2016

In education, Genesis

When we begin with the first impressions that God himself gives to us the doctrine of divine simplicity can be a comfort. First impressions are important. The business world can teach us a lot about that. Present yourself positively and you will make a good impression. Your good impression sets the agenda for your relationships in the workplace. If you give a bad impression, you will need to unlearn that first impression, if you want those same relationships.

God gives us first impressions in the Bible through his first words in scripture. He chooses the way in which we are to think of him; the way in which we are to receive him. We don’t begin with the philosophical god. We don’t begin with a simple and impassable being, but a creator, a speaker, and giver. God is impassible and God is simple. The Christian doctrines of simplicity and impassibility are the result of our reflections on God. We understand the simplicity of God after we have understood how he is our creator. These doctrines are a response to his self-revelation.

(n.b. The doctrine of simplicity is the teaching that God cannot be divided. He is not partly just and partly merciful. He is wholly invested in everything that He does. The doctrine of impassibility is the teaching that God cannot be acted upon. If God could be acted upon, he would have to change his way in order to respond. This would deny his immutability. It would also suggest that God is responding to something unexpected and this would deny the fact that he is all-knowing and almighty.)

The Creator

How does God begin to reveal himself? The very first words of Genesis give that answer. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” God is a creator and an inventor. We learn in verse two that “His Spirit hovered over the waters.” God cares for the things that he has made. he wants to sustain these things. From beyond eternity he planned to make the heavens and the earth.

The Word

A few sentences over we discover another truth about God. He speaks. We see this again and again through Genesis 1. Every day begins with God speaking. God is a communicative God. When we know this we begin to understand why God created a creature like man. He wanted to communicate with his creation.

The Giver

We already sense the generosity of God in the self-revelation he has given in the first verses of Genesis. The God who creates and loves what he creates; the God who wants to commune with his creation; will also be a generous God. We see this more fully in the creation of man. When God creates man, God gives man and woman his image. He also gives them life and breath. More than that he gives them all the plants to eat and gives them the challenge of having dominion over fish, birds, and animals. Creation is a generous gift.

When we begin to understand God with the first impressions He gives us, we have a much more attractive picture of God, than the God of the philosophers. The God of the philosophers is, most importantly, simple. He is impassable. The God of the Bible takes joy in his creation. He speaks his creation into being and communes with the creation he has made. He is overwhelmingly generous.

Then we add the doctrine of divine simplicity. Now every truth we read of, in Genesis, is invested with the entire being of God. As we grow in our understanding of God, we understand that he does this as a God who is almighty, fully present and whose full being is involved in everything that he does. In this way, divine simplicity is a doctrine of comfort.

The Revisionist Imperative.

By James

On December 15, 2016

In Hermeneutics

Why write revisionist history? Why re-work old theological points? Hasn’t the past done a good enough job with these things? Can’t we consider anything settled? Do we need to re-invent the wheel?

The answer to these questions is both a yes and a no. There are basic things that we can consider true. We know that Alexander conquered the world in the 4th century. We know that our God is both three and one. But as time passes the significance of these truths change. This is not only because there is growth in the amount of knowledge we have, but also because of moves in emphasis. Even as an individual grows older, so society grows older.

We don’t fully understand the meaning of events in our lives until we reach the present. We know the implications of Alexander’s Hellenism. The Trinity was formulated in opposition to Arius. As the church grows, the love of the Trinity stands in opposition to the monadic gods of Deism and Islam.

We can revise our understanding, in a false way. We can revise them without a desire for the truth or a desire to learn. Revision does not mean a revision of the facts themselves. We revise out of a desire to better understand the facts. To reject the task of revision is to lose the value of the past for the present.

The scientific community provides a good example. Scientists can appreciate and value the observations of the past (in fact they could do this more often), but they know that we have grown in our understanding of what is around us. The observations are often the same, but the significance of these observations changes. The observation is more fully understood by seeking greater comprehension.

Sacramental Curriculum

By James

On December 14, 2016

In education, sacraments

A fourth-century church father and catechist, Cyril of Jerusalem, had an interesting way of preparing new members of the church. He began with the sacraments. The connection is actually quite logical. He is preparing the members for baptism and his job is to explain the world that baptism will bring them into.

His first lecture is not explicitly about baptism. The lecture is full of the baptismal imagery of washing and purity. He lays out his theology of baptism in lecture three. This is part of a lecture series which is filled with the most important doctrines of the Christian faith: the Trinity and the Work of Christ.

Cyril seems to have a subconscious understanding that baptism externalises the Christian faith. As a ritual, it says something about who the baptizants are and who they will be. Baptism is full of the content of the Christian faith. In this way, Baptism provides a framework for all Christian doctrine. We might add, with the reformers, that this is because Baptism points to the work of Jesus Christ, which is the centre of all Christian doctrine.

Telescoping?

By James

On December 10, 2016

In eschatology, typology

Telescoping

Telescoping is a hermeneutical tool. Purportedly, it gives us a way to interpret prophetic passages. Prophetic passages foretell certain events in the future. But we notice that these passages not only apply to the events that are soon to come; they also apply to events much farther in the future. There is a double fulfillment. Telescoping is the theory that the prophet speaks in terms of both fulfillments.

In his commentary on Matthew, Hendrikson describes telescoping (he calls it prophetic foreshortening) in terms of a mountain range. We are looking through a telescope at a mountain range. We see the first mountain, which is the fulfillment, but all the mountains behind it (further fulfillments) look like part of that mountain. The prophecy is given in terms that describe all the mountains that the prophet sees. We might call what he sees a mash-up of different future events. (He writes this in the context of Jesus’ prophecies about the fall of the temple in Matthew 24. He sees them as applying both to the destruction of the temple and the 2nd coming.)

This phenomenon is common in Biblical literature. Isaiah speaks of a child that will come in Isaiah 7. In context, this could refer to the King of Judah’s son or even Isaiah’s son. There is a bit of ambiguity. Later Matthew applies Isaiah’s prophecy to the birth of Christ. The passage is fulfilled a second time. Arguably, the same principle is at play in Matthew 24. Here Jesus speaks of the destruction of Jerusalem. He implies a second fulfillment as well: his final coming.

Prophetic Typology

Yet I would argue that this is not the best way to think about the interpretation of these passages. I prefer what I would call “prophetic typology.” The first fulfillment really fulfills the prophecy. Isaiah’s prophecies about the birth of a son a fulfilled soon after he gave them. Then the same prophecy is applied to a later, greater fulfillment. Matthew applies that same birth of a son to Christ. It is applied typologically the 2nd time.

This allows us consistency in the way we interpret the rest of the bible and prophecy. Prophecy is not a completely unique genre with its own set of hermeneutical rules. To an extent it is unique; prophecy speaks of the future, not the present. However, the New Testament uses the narratives of the Old Testament in the same way as it uses the prophecies of the Old Testament. The narrative of David’s sufferings and Moses’ teachings are applied to Christ typologically, just like the prophecy of Isaiah.

The telescoping view contains some truth. Isaiah likely saw that a greater fulfillment was necessary when he saw the first fulfillment. The church always applied Matthew 24 to the 2nd coming of Christ, though he spoke of the fall of Jerusalem in that passage. Christ certainly kn ew that there would be a fuller fulfillment. Even the idea that there is a greater fulfillment in the later type than in the earlier type is not completely wrong-headed. Christ teaches in Luke 24 that all the Old Testament was about him.

What I don’t like is the suggestion we need to separate sections in various prophecies that apply to the first fulfillment and others that apply to later fulfillments. Seeing prophecy as typological gives us a simpler tool for working with prophecy. Advocating for the typological method in interpreting prophetic fulfillment does not completely rule out the idea of telescoping, but it does give consistency in the way we interpret scripture.

Another trans-hermeneutical principle

By James

On December 7, 2016

In Hermeneutics, The Basics

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. (Prov. 1:7)

This has often been interpreted as an epistemological principle. We know truth because we know the Lord. Ultimately this doesn’t make sense of what we see in the world around us. People have knowledge of the truth; people have knowledge of the “works of the law” as Paul notes in Romans 2: 14 and 15. Historically the church has always taught that people may have some knowledge of God and the world through “natural law” or through the “created order;” even through the “image of God.” The fear of the Lord can only be the epistemological beginning of knowledge in a limited sense then.

Perhaps we should see this principle as a hermeneutical principle. One can only rightly interpret the world through the fear of Lord. When we approach the world from the position of trust, we can begin to rightly interpret the facts that are before us. Without the fear of the Lord, the basic instrument in the interpretation of the world is lost.

A trans-hermeneutical principle

By James

On December 7, 2016

In Hermeneutics, The Basics

Everything matters.

Yes, it is true that some things matter more than others. Sometimes, when we study something, we devalue certain phenomena in order to get a conclusion. This is part of being human because we are not able to comprehensively account for all knowledge. We will never be able to develop a theory that is based off of a truly comprehensive knowledge. We will never be able to have a truly comprehensive knowledge of a minor discipline. Even if we did, we do not have the capacity to account for every fact in that discipline. Yet we do need to realize that everything matters.

In some sense, this is a theological point. We read in Colossians 1 that not only is everything made through Christ but everything will also find fulfillment in him. Christ himself told his disciples in Matthew 5 that our Heavenly Father clothes the lilies and cares for the sparrow. He knows the hairs on our head. Even though Creation was in six days, God took care of every detail. God continues to watch over every detail in our lives.

When we approach scripture then, having this awareness that everything matters, we should know that every word matters, every turn of phrase matters. There is a reason God is putting all these words together in a certain way. This is more true of Scripture than other books. We should note the little details in Shakespeare but Shakespeare never has the attention to detail that God has. God intends a greater significance in the little things than Shakespeare could have imagined.

(A “trans-hermeneutical principle” is something that applies to interpretation in every area of knowledge. A variety of thinkers have noted that a “hermeneutical point of view” not only interprets texts but is a filter for receiving all knowledge. We are applying the metaphor of hermeneutic to all of life. This does not mean that we have accepted Derrida’s view that everything is text. Rather, this means that we see an analogy to text in everything around us.)

Hermeneutics and Education

By James

On December 6, 2016

In The Basics

Welcome to Respondeo. I plan to use this site in order to reflect on the twin disciplines of Hermeneutics and Education. Hermeneutics is, of course, the study of how we are to discern meaning, particularly in texts. It is not the same as Epistemology, which answers the question of “how we know what we know.” Hermeneutics, is rather, the study of how we appropriate meaning. It is the study of interpretation. Education doesn’t necessarily seem to be a natural spin-off, but in so far as educators attempt to communicate texts to students there is a connection.

I am studying to be a pastor, which gives me insight into the book whose meaning has been wrestled over more than any other book in history: the Bible. What does it mean? How do we know what the author meant? How do we teach that book to people today so that it has relevance for them as well as those it was originally written for? For that matter, how does any old book hold relevance for today?

These are some of the questions I will be exploring on this blog. I hope you enjoy it.