Geoff's Miscellany

When we read our bibles we’ll often come across well-crafted images which were meant, at the time, to pack tremendous rhetorical punch. Two of the biggest mistakes we can make are to:

1. Read over the images with no feeling and think of them as ancient curiosities.
2. Work hard to understand them academically without reference to the feelings that the human and divine authors wished you to feel.

An example of this might be to read something like Psalm 23 and simply observe that it is about God’s care or to read it and look at ancient parallels and attitudes toward shepherds or whether or not David wrote it. But the Psalm is using imagery to be formative and evocative.

A while back I wrote about the importance of keeping a personal copia, a topical index of quotes, arguments, illustrations, and examples.

Here the point is far, far more specific.

It’s about pastors and their writing habits.

A friend, who will remain anonymous, thought he had nothing to say when I suggested he write a systematic theology.

For those who don’t know, a systematic theology is a book covering the various topics of theology and stating, not merely what the author things is true about them and why, but also the interconnectedness of the themes of the Bible, Christian tradition, and Christian confessions of faith.

In previous posts I’ve been writing about God’s grace and what it means to grow in that grace.

To grow in anything, at least on purpose, we need to have three things. Vision, Intention, and Means.

Today, we learn about means. By what means can we grow in God’s grace?

A word about means, means are method or instruments for accomplishing something.

For instance, if I am fastening two boards together, the means by which I do it could be a nail or an adhesive like glue. The means by which I drive the nail is a hammer.

Pro 6:6-8  Go to the ant, O sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise.  (7)  Without having any chief, officer, or ruler,  (8)  she prepares her bread in summer and gathers her food in harvest.

There are four ant-traits in the text that are relevant for settling accounts (Proverbs 6:1-5) and avoiding poverty:

The main idea is that in order to approach the Biblical vision of Christ-like character there must be a moment of decision as well as several moments wherein we actually intend to make the vision a reality in our lives in cooperation with what God’s grace is already doing.

In the previous posts in the series, I mentioned Dallas Willard’s V(ision)-I(ntention)-M(eans) rubric for personal transformation and then gave a picture of a Biblical vision for Christian character.

Many people feel insecure about how smart they are. This can even be the cause of anxiety when reading a difficult book or taking a test in school. This anxiety holds a lot of people back from the happiness they want. I know many religious people who don’t study their holy books or bright young men or women who are afraid to take college algebra. I think I can help you. You having nothing to lose by trying to improve your intelligence except for time spent playing on the Internet or watching television. 

In the Bible there is a significant body of moral commands directed to the human emotions, passions, and desires.

There are essentially two ways these passages are explained:

1. Commands to Feel as Literal Commands to Feel They are commands to the passions and passions can only be activated by specific experiences, therefore while God is right to command our passions, God himself must change our passions for us to obey these commands. John Piper defends this idea here and here the related idea that one must be regenerated by God who causes you to have those feelings in the first place.*
2. The "act as-if" hypothesis When the Bible issues commands to the emotions, desires, and passions, the idea is to "act as-if" this or that emotion, passion, desire, or affection is true. This does not really depend upon a theory of free-will or regeneration. It instead is simply a theory about how these commands are intended to be obeyed. For instance, one could be a Calvinist and still have this point of view. The command to rejoice is meant to be obeyed, not purely by feeling joy, but by doing the things a rejoicing person does: praising, thanking, and showing the kindness which comes from being joyful.

1. The ancient Mediterranean world had what some scholars call a dramatic orientation. While one could paint with too broad a brush, the idea is simply that emotions were often seen as external actions rather than mere internal cognitive states. Hypocrisy is bad, not because the feelings aren't there, but because actions are done to hide evil intentions. Rather, actions seem to have been meant to illustrate feelings which should be there whether they are there or not.
2. Stoic theories of human action typically include learning to manage one's internal emotional states by applying reason and acting in reasonable ways regardless of feeling. Many scholars note the influence of Stoic theories of ethics on the New Testament authors. I do not think that they are incorrect.
3. In Psalms rejoicing in the Lord is often connected directly to singing, playing music, and meditating on or exclaiming publicly the acts and attributes of the Lord, the God of Israel. New Testament commands probably have the same application.
4. In general, the New Testament's picture of the commands of Jesus is that they are not burdensome. This doesn't mean "not hard." It means they they do not weigh you down like the teachings of the Pharisees as impossible or absurd idealism. If you don't believe me read 1 John 5:3 and Matthew 11:26-30. Even Matthew 7:13-28 show that Jesus means for his commands to be the foundation of Christian character. The point is that the teachings of Jesus are, by the power of God's Spirit, the change of mind brought about by the gospel, the influence of a heavenly hope, the experience of God's love, and the persuasive example of the best representatives of God's church are meant to be joyfully followed.

*Note: This idea is strongly related to Jonathan Edward’s identification of the will or the faculty of choice precisely with whatever one’s strongest inclination happens to be. This philosophical predetermination of what it means for the Bible to give commands to the emotions actually leads to an interesting problem for John Piper’s over all theology. He defines hypocrisy as “acting as if you have feelings you do not have.” Yet, Piper acknowledges that feelings may indeed not be there in a genuine Christian (this is a case of a philosophical idea having empirical data to the contrary), and therefore one must fight for joy in God despite not desiring God. But this makes them a hypocrite and not a real Christian (because for Jesus, the hypocrites are merely pretending and not truly faithful). In other words, for Piper, the commands are necessary parts of a moral calculus wherein God rightfully gives impossible commands and forgives the elect of their lapses, but otherwise commands simply because he can.

Main Points

Therefore, such a vision is important for spiritual growth.

The Christian vision for human excellence and happiness is found most directly in the person of Christ and explained in differing degrees of clarity and intensity throughout Scripture.

Introduction

In it I explained Dallas Willard’s V-I-M paradigm for personal transformation.

In Xenophon’s book on Socrates, he describes the great man like this:

In the first place, apart from what I have said, in control of his own passions and appetites he was the strictest of men; further, in endurance of cold and heat and every kind of toil he was most resolute; and besides, his needs were so schooled to moderation that having very little he was yet very content.^[1]

The Greek word for “control” can also be translated as “mastery.” I prefer this translation, but I used the work on another in the quote above because translating classical Greek takes me longer than I care to spend. But back to the main idea. At a young age, I wished to learn the virtue of self-mastery or enkrateia. Here is my experience with this virtue in relationship to physical and emotional distress:

When I was a kid, I often experienced extreme physical pain.

Aggression is often associated with toxic masculinity, malicious violence, or ignorance. In one sense, this is reasonable. The word aggression does indeed typically refer to encroaching upon the rights of others or unlawful military activity.

But, in the past, the virtue of fortitude was said to consist of both aggression and endurance in the face of the danger of death for noble purposes. And the fact of the matter is that the Greek word for fortitude was also the word for masculinity, so absurd levels of daring or risk-taking for no reason do, in fact, have a linguistic connection to masculinity. But the association of masculinity or masculine drive with outright evil or lack of nobility itself seems malicious because the conceptual connection is entirely lacking, especially when one looks at Aristotle and Aquinas' understanding of fortitude and aggression.