Paul’s Bible and More with Derek Flood (Loose At the Wild Goose Part 2)
Jul.31, 2012 in
Guest Appearances, Podcast Episodes
In this episode Ray is joined by Derek Flood for Part 2 of the Loose At the Wild Goose series recorded at the Wild Goose Festival. Join in the conversation as Derek and Ray discuss how Paul reinterpreted the Old Testament in the light of Jesus, and how we are to follow the trajectory rather than the letter of the Scriptures. Make sure to check out Derek’s blog and be on the look out for Derek’s new book Healing the Gospel. Thanks Derek for a great conversation! (Thanks also to Brian Hilligoss for sharing his poem Boxing at the beginning of the podcast!)
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July 31st, 2012 at 8:35 pm
Hi Ray,
The other day I was reading a blog that quoted Paul in 2Thess. 1:5-9…roughly he’s saying that God is just and will pay back those who’ve trouble them etc. and it’ll be when Christ returns with fire etc.. and he will punish w/everlasting destruction those who do not know God etc. In any case sounds pretty menacing and retributive. I bring this up because I’m trying to get over seeing God as mostly scary. Since you guys were talking Paul here, do you have any helpful thoughts on this?
August 1st, 2012 at 12:52 pm
Ray, I enjoyed the podcast, as usual. I was wondering about the comment you made early on at about the 12 minute mark when you and Derek were talking about what essentially is cherrypicking when people choose the parts of the bible they like and ignore the rest. You made the point to say that you were not talking about “liberal sensibilities”. I was wondering what you meant by that as you mention that your background is “conservative”. There are so many ways in which people pick and choose verses to make their point for or against an issue in the culture, which may in fact be the only way to conduct the conversation and is ultimately a way to wrestle with the text. There are some texts in the Bible which I frankly ignore because they do not mesh with my point of view in today’s world. I don’t think that every word is relevant, but it was for those who wrote it. I have to admit that every age has found itself in a similar position, why the bible has been reinterpreted for 2000 years. It just was not written for us. We choose to make sense of it because it is part of the fabric of our Western mindset (ironically as it is so not a Western text). How Paul, Jesus, and the other writers of the Bible saw the world is so drastically different from how we see the world. I don’t think it is really possible to genuinely see it through their eyes (nor should we.) I hold the truths in the texts close because they are universal to what it means to be human. All the other stuff I take with a grain of salt. For me, the universality of the text starts with what Jesus say, or supposedly said. What he meant is something of a challenge because what he meant is not the “word of God” but pearls of wisdom to be found in a field. How to distiguish what he said as opposed to what others said about him is another challenge. I try to “reinterpret” those horrific lines and I admire how more “liberal” Jews and Christians reinterpret them. For me, a literal interpretations brings things back to the fact that the person who wrote it beleived what they did in their time and place and it is irrelevant to me as they believed it. I don’t believe in asking God to do those things. Should I? According to some people today, I should and they give a good argument why Jesus would agree with them. So, I have to avoid anyone who says, “The Bible is clear when is says…” Maybe I am wrong, then. If I am, well, I disagree with God. The question too is how inclusive are we all willing to be to bring all types of people into the text, into the community that shares the texts? We all give ourselves away eventually as we encounter those who are different from us. That is why my inclusion of certain people today might not be the same of who you think should be inclusive. My background is not from a conservative evangelical community. Mine is not necessary liberal either, but that is a perspective I have always held without any community formation. I also have to admit that looking at Paul, I think he was limited by his time and history as we are, in trying to be as inclusive as he could be. Also, let’s be honest in saying that what we get from Paul is a mere glimpse of his thoughts. We should continue to subvert the text, as Paul did, through Jesus, but the Jesus as we understand him in our historial and cultural context and not in the historical and cultural context of the 1st century C.E.
August 1st, 2012 at 3:57 pm
Matteo,
I think I followed what you were saying until the very last sentence. Then I ran into a wall. If I understand what you are saying (and I could be wrong so feel free to correct me), you do not see the cultural/historical context of the first century C.E. or second Temple Judaism as a framework or background to understanding Jesus. Am I correct? If so, then it seems to me you take a similar approach to that of Paul Tillich for whom ‘Jesus Christ’ is a symbol or cipher of humanity engaging God. I long ago rejected the Tillichian solution (which is pretty close to the Bultmannian solution). It depends too heavily on an outmoded approah to the gospel tradition, writing and historiography in the first century C.E., a quite limited and empiricist view of history, a quasi gnostic approah to the gospels and a vacuating of the doctrine of the incarnation. Pax.
August 1st, 2012 at 5:07 pm
Michael, thanks for your reply. I think we can understand Jesus in the historical context of the first century C.E., but after that, Jesus doesn’t exist anymore, only “the Christ” can be spoken about. As you know there are many different versions of that “historical” Jesus to choose from. That Jesus I am not that interested in as much as I am interested in the Christ. I have not read Tillich outside of The New Being and have never read Bultmann. However, I guess that my view of the Christ conforms more with creation spirituality. This to me makes Jesus more relevant (to me again) in that he is the embodiment of that which is within me to transform into. This is a quote from Richard Rohr which resonates with me.
“Western Christianity has plucked Jesus completely out of the Trinity. The historical Jesus has become the new monotheistic God — God the Father for all practical purposes. Once you no longer have a Trinitarian view, you no longer have a dynamic view of God. When you emphasize Jesus apart from the Father and Holy Spirit, then creation is just an afterthought or a backdrop to a limited salvation drama, “an evacuation plan to the next world,” in Brian McLaren’s phrase. We become preoccupied with those last three hours of Jesus’ life, when we get the blood sacrifice that gets us humans saved, our ticket to heaven punched.”
This is the article I took the quote from. Rohr articulates my views more than I can.
http://ncronline.org/news/spirituality/eternal-christ-cosmic-story
One difference of opinion I would have from the article too, would be that if there was a video camera recording the resurrection, there would not even be a flash of light. There would be nothing the eye – or a recording device – would record.
It makes it more real to me, though. Not sure if this is what Tillich was approaching in his view from a Protestant angle. With respect to God, well, I think God exists and I personally try not to say anything more about it as I don’t think any of the language we use adequately expressed anything about God. But, that being said, Jesus is the point at which the seen and the unseen intersect.
1st or 2nd Century Temple Judaism is the closest we can get to understand Jesus, from then on, it becomes symbolic or,,,I know this is a bad word…mythological. I may be completely wrong, but so far it works for just me, not anyone else as I don’t want to tell anyone what to think or believe, but it works for me to focus on the life I can live following Jesus’ example, The Christ is the fuel, or source, of that human part of it.
Sorry I was so vague at the end of the last posting.
August 2nd, 2012 at 1:21 am
Perhaps we could say that
1) in order to understand Jesus we need to understand the cultural world in which he was speaking. But we also need to recognize that most of the time he was challenging the assumptions of that world.
2) Today we need to understand the cultural world we live in, and similarly ask: how might Jesus challenge our assumptions? We ask: WWJD?
That’s essentially the idea of recognizing the trajectory that Jesus was moving in so that we can appropriately apply it today in our very different situation.
August 2nd, 2012 at 7:23 am
Wow–Can it be this complicated??????????? The average person does not have a chance to understand it all. Maybe we should be like little children and somewhere Trust our, the one supreme power, God, of this creation. Maybe Love has something to do with it too.
August 2nd, 2012 at 11:28 am
Hi David,
I really appreciate your concern. I know that alot of what we have covered in the last year or so can seem overwhelming at times and rather complicated. However, I think it might just be the opposite problem in some respects. What I hear Derek saying is that we need to learn to trust our hearts in interpreting Scripture rather than simply going with something that completely violates our sense of love and justice. I can only speak from my own experience, but I think part of my problem has been that I was made to believe that I should trust in a God who violated everything I innately understood about love and justice. I think it is much simpler than the hoops that I tried to jump through within conservative Evangelicalism. For example, I remember during a sermon I preached one time using the idea of eternal conscious torment to defend God’s love. I was convinced that the Scripture taught both that God loved everyone, and that many would suffer eternally for rejecting His love. I tried to demonstrate that God’s allowing someone to suffer eternally actually showed us that He loved us so much that He entrusted us with freewill, and He therefore would never take that gift away, even if it meant our own eternal harm. Stop and think about that argument. Doesn’t that fly in the face of everything we know of parental love? When did a parent ever allow a car to hit a child who was playing in the street simply out of respect for her/his free will?
What I am trying to say is this: I think part of why this all looks so complicated is because we are so used to a version of the Gospel that describes God’s love as entirely of a different nature than our own. When it comes to God we redefine the terms so that (A)Love can cause eternal suffering, (B)Justice can punish eternally for a finite life of sin, and (C)God is someone who ends up looking nothing like us, which undermines the idea of our being created in His image.
Maybe what we have always believed is actually the complicated version. What if the way we have arranged reality is actually just the Matrix, and trusting our hearts is the first step in taking the Red Pill?
I’m not making a bunch of definite statements. I’m just trying to think through this with you.
Thanks for taking the time to interact with us
August 2nd, 2012 at 11:31 am
David: True, how very true. I am of the opinion that Scripture calls us to “trust” (= faith). However, we have 2,000 years of Christian theology to deal with, much of which has not been very helpful, some of which has been detrimental and a little of which has been downright destructive. I often tell my students that if I did not have to spend so much time deconstructing the awful theology they have inherited we could spend so much more time worshipping the Trinity. Love has everything to do with it. So what do you do when Love is compromised (as in the penal substiution view of the atonement)or adulterated (as in a retributive eschatology)or mixed with hate (as in some Calvinist doctrines of election)? In addition, Christian theology has been assimilated to unhelpful phiosophical viewpoints from Plato to Heidegger; people believe whatever they are told. Of course they cannot be faulted as it takes an incredible education to get through the swamp of bad theology. On the other hand there is so much excellent theology and Bible Study out there that is below the radar, that the Evangelical church dismisses, that the progressive church is afraid of. But it is there, especially now in our global information age. Time will tell if the old Christian sacrificial god will be sufficiently undermined by the glorious God of the gospel of Jesus Christ.It is why I do what I do and will continue to do until my last breath – to bringlight, hope and healing to a broken, dysfunctional Christianity.
August 2nd, 2012 at 4:46 pm
Derek
I have a problem with the WWJD thing. The answer is filtered through us and not through Jesus. That’s why there’s theology. Because contrary to what we believe, what Jesus said or didn’t say, do or didn’t do is part of the conflict. Would Jesus go to war? Ask a million questions and get a million answers. I think Paul contended with this, which is why he said that the letter kills. I take this to mean scripture. I think if we are guided by the spirit, then the door is open. In the end, it is not about what your theology is but if you really, really live by the spirit of the law, which Jesus did or didn’t show us – or as people said he did. Again, why I don’t think the bible is the literal word of God and the notion of the person of God is about literally a person as we understand it. In fact, I am personally more of an atheist in that I don’t buy into the supernatural theism which is clear in the Christian tradition. Talking about God in anthropomorphic terms is all we have. I’ve found the Christian mystics (Meister Eckhardt, St. John of the Cross, etc. more helpful to my trust in God as it’s about a silence that is both within and without you). The more one talks about God, the more I wonder how much one really knows God. Should we even speak about God? Maybe we should just act as if we know “Him”.
August 2nd, 2012 at 5:12 pm
Rabon and Michael,
Thanks so much for responding. What you both are saying makes sense to me and I too truly believe one needs to look at all the theology (as bad as some of it has been) that we have been dealing with. Both of your responses mean a lot and I thank you for what you both are doing. I will keep moving forward and keep learning from our God. Thanks
August 2nd, 2012 at 5:55 pm
David I agree. The history of Christian thought to me is an evolution of Western civilization’s consciousness. I can’t say that anyone was “wrong” in their theological views but they were appropriate for their time and place and consistent with the (dominant) worldview. These thinkers were the intellectual giants of the time. My understanding of the world and the universe is different than theirs. The current running through all of time is God – which contains the Father, the Son (the Christ), and the Holy Spirit. Raborn, I’ve always thought life as we know it is like the Matrix, even before the Matrix.
August 2nd, 2012 at 6:11 pm
Re this discussion check out the naked pastor cartoon at http://www.facebook.com/TheFreeBelieversNetwork (Aug 02 post)
August 2nd, 2012 at 9:46 pm
I have echo what Raborn was saying. It’s not that complicated. It’s actaully really simple.
Everyone seems to know perfectly well that Jesus was all about nonviolence and love of enemies. In fact, the only people who question this are Christians(!) Why? Because we’ve somehow been indoctrinated with these completely backwards ways of thinking. We’ve made it really complicated in order to get around doing what is actually pretty simple to understand, and hard to do: loving others in the same way Jesus loves.
There’s a pretty funny video by Bill Maher that makes this same point: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyYlF3aonho
Yes, we can get nitty-gritty and complicated, yes we can get in-depth. But the bottom like is that we DO know “what Jesus would do,” and the more we follow in that way, the better we get at acting and thinking and looking like that too.
August 5th, 2012 at 6:58 pm
Matteo,
I’ve got to go back and catch up on all of the comments, but I realized that I didn’t respond to your first comment. I apologize its taken me so long to get back to you.
You said:
I was wondering about the comment you made early on at about the 12 minute mark when you and Derek were talking about what essentially is cherrypicking when people choose the parts of the bible they like and ignore the rest. You made the point to say that you were not talking about “liberal sensibilities”. I was wondering what you meant by that as you mention that your background is “conservative”.
I was not trying to knock “liberal sensibilities” per se. I guess this is part of the problem of unedited spontaneous conversations. There are many times that I say something that I wish I could just edit out because it doesn’t communicate what I am trying to say. This is probably one of those times. This was just the first phrase that came to my mind at the time. What I was trying to communicate was that what Derek was saying could not be easily dismissed as just an emotional response to the Scriptures. Many times people accuse those of us who believe in the nonviolent nature of God as simply ignoring the difficult passages in the Bible and falling back on our emotional presuppositions. I was just trying to point out that what Derek was saying was not simply a preprogrammed, limp, emotional response, but rather relied on a demonstrable apostolic hermeneutic. I hope this helps
August 5th, 2012 at 7:05 pm
Matteo,
You said:
The more one talks about God, the more I wonder how much one really knows God. Should we even speak about God? Maybe we should just act as if we know “Him”.
I am very sympathetic to what you say here. I think you might really enjoy the works of Peter Rollins. I have his newest book sitting on my shelf (haven’t gotten to that one yet), but your comment reminds me of the title of his book “How (Not) to Speak of God”. Yet another book I haven’t read yet, but the reviews, etc. have definitlely gotten my attention. Anyway, I am becoming less and less confident of many definitive statements about God, but I remain confident that God looks just like Jesus!
I so enjoy your interaction here Matteo! You really contribute to our community here
August 6th, 2012 at 4:59 am
Raborn, I appreciate the mention of Peter Rollins. While I believe that God exists and that I stick with the Christian expression of God, I’m less inclined to think Jesus was God. He obviously emanated that imago dei more intensely in his time and place and in his cultural context. I am less inclined to take the orthodox view that he was consubstantial and begotten and all that. I think all his stories are based in historical events, but at the same time don’t think they happened exactly like they are described. He is obviously the example to follow for me despite me failing miserably to do so and the meaning of the incarnation, transubstantiation and resurrection are more important to me that their literalness. I am sometimes frustrated by the tensions that are in the gospels which make me want to walk away from it only that there is too much pain and division created by it, but then I am drawn back to it like a tide (as if I had no choice, which is fine with me.) I can’t say that I have doubt which someone like Peter Rollins addresses. I appreciate that part of it. What concerns me about Peter Rollins is how accessible he is to Christians who are not as well read as those who are drawn to him. That I blame orthodoxy for. There is a simple faith that sometimes eludes me when I address all the conceits and propositions that orthodoxy puts forward, but at the same time which the emergent folks all seem to want to just garnish with a new coat of paint. I appreciate the intellectual evolution of thought for the last two thousand years, but that is what has gotten us into trouble, too. We’d be better off with out religion as we know it. Like Peter, we have an experience and then we want to build a tent around it. Just like Paul did. That is why I think Christianity has failed – failed within the first generation of its formation. Which for me makes me question Jesus’ veracity. He left people out in the cold. If this is the best way God can work in the world, I sometimes think, I sometimes say, really? That’s it? I don’t buy it. It makes me think that supernatural theism is not the way to go when it comes to approaching God. Maybe it’s good enough that we just try.
August 6th, 2012 at 12:32 pm
Matteo, you have certainly thought long and hard about the traditional Christian worldview. From your comments, I surmise that your view of Jesus is similar to that held by Bart Ehrman or that of the famous Al Schweitzer from a century earlier. I guess my view differs from yours a bit and is based on my fuzzy feeling factor – lol (sorry but that’s the only reference I have at this time). I agree that it is difficult to know the exact words of Jesus due to translation complexities (Aramaic to Greek to English), scribal error (human mistakes/deliberate insertion) and nearly 2 millennia of orthodox brainwashing. Still, I think we have a reasonable idea of His concepts on what matters to God.
I guess my fuzzy feeling factor is based on a hope that He revealed a Father that is apparently more relational than focused on behavior. Hopefully this was somewhat grounded in His pre-existent experience. I also hope that Jesus was divine in origin because if He caused creation into being, I think it would be noble for Him to spend some “real time” with us in this shit pile, none of the “other gods” did this. I also like the concept of Him conquering death (physical and spiritual).
I do think your comment “Which for me makes me question Jesus’ veracity. He left people out in the cold. If this is the best way God can work in the world, I sometimes think, I sometimes say, really? That’s it? …” is very difficult to answer especially in light of all the suffering we see in this world. I had always hoped that God would do something “visible” like maybe a triple summersault, but I suppose the “tangible” is more low key – the Spirit of God living inside humans who trust in His approach (non-violence, helping others in need etc.) being the only tangible miracle. Unfortunately Christian writings through the ages have not focused much on this aspect, but mainly on doctrine.
I really appreciate your honesty which is quite opposite to orthodoxy that is more concerned with exterior coating. I hope one day we will both get some answers to our questions – I’m sort of expecting BtB to do that (answering all questions along with doing excellent podcasts, maintaining an insightful blog and facebook page, etc.).
August 6th, 2012 at 1:06 pm
jim
I believe that Jesus did reveal God in his words and actions as far as they are accounted for in the gospels. That to me is what following Jesus is about for me. I have to be honest that the comment about him leaving us in the cold is something I struggle with. The only logical conclusion I can come to in my thoroughly heretical and sinful way is that he didn’t say what is written, or if he did, then he didn’t mean what we think he meant. It seems that for 2000 years we’ve struggled with what he meant and only recently do we worry about whether he said it or not. If the story of the woman caught in adultery is agreed to have been added into the scripture, it is no less important a message. When he says that he is the bread of life, then, well, yes, I agree. I admit with all sincerity that when I mediate on the gospels I sense that I am fulfilled and not in a merely sentimental way. I am only starting to live it. It is much harder to do isn’t it. So, I think I just try to distinguish between what he said or night have said, what he meant, and then what other people thought about him and put words into his mouth. For all the failure of faithful people throughout the ages, they were still faithful. Even guys like Calvin and even people today who don’t agree with on much of anything when it comes to what a Christian is or is supposed to be. I admit to having a love/hate relationship with orthodoxy as to some extent it makes up some of the rungs of the ladder I climb and as I climb more rungs are being built – as is demonstrated by podcasts like this and the new ways to rethink the old. That might be a poor analogy but it is something I’ve thought about.
August 6th, 2012 at 9:28 pm
Jim,
I hope one day we will both get some answers to our questions – I’m sort of expecting BtB to do that (answering all questions along with doing excellent podcasts, maintaining an insightful blog and facebook page, etc.).
I would say those expectations are completely realistic
Matteo,
I completely hear you on the “leaving us out in the cold” part. Steve and I went to hear Bart Ehrman a couple of years ago and he said that for all of the textual criticism, etc. that he had been exposed to in the academy, the thing that really caused him to lose faith was the problem of evil. I am very sympathetic toward this. I often find myself asking the “why” question.
I really appreciate Brad Jersak’s viewpoint on the problem of evil. Have you listened to the “Theology of Consent” podcast with Brad? Here is the link: http://www.beyondtheboxpodcast.com/2012/01/a-theology-of-consent-with-brad-jersak/
Brad draws alot on the thinking of Simone Weil in addressing the problem of evil. It really helped me think through some things, but don’t get me wrong, I don’t think there are any easy answers(at least none that I know of). However, I just can’t picture God (as seen in Jesus) leaving us out in the cold.
I find myself doing the same thing with my experience as I am doing with scripture—I keep squeezing it through the filter of Jesus. I don’t understand the human experience (much like I don’t understand much of scripture), but I keep coming back to Jesus as my cornerstone. That’s where I’m at, but I keep asking questions…
August 7th, 2012 at 6:46 am
I think I have also failed to express one thing. When I say things like feeling that Jesus left us behind, this comes from a literalist, even orthodox way of reading the Bible. This is why when I hear atheists and Christian apologists debate, I side with the atheists. It is orthodoxy that’s been the problem. I believe that God doesn’t work in the way we have expressed that he does. I do think we have constructed a Jesus the same way that Peter wanted to build tents when Jesus supposedly revealed himself to him, John, and James. We don’t really get what James thought and we get the idea from John, if we can attribute what John wrote that he is nothing more than a fanatic with some good ideas, but he’s a fanatic nonetheless. I think we are also at a loss for not having nine other gospels – even more, from the other members of the twelve which are as “authoritative”. It might have presented a more cohesive and equally complex portrait of Jesus. The four we have are good at expressing his character, but it would be interesting nonetheless to know with certainty about what the others thought. If you can look at the noncanonical books attributed to characters in the drama: Judas, Thomas, Mary, etc. maybe there is something to that. We also should admit that books we don’t consider worthy of attention were circulating at the time that the gospels were being formulated, so they need to be taken somewhat seriously.
My own take on the problem of evil is that it is not a problem. I don’t buy the duality that makes up this tradition as I don’t raise the devil to a demi-god. I think it all comes from God and that even sin is necessary for us to learn from. When horrific things happen in the world it usually comes from man’s inhumanity to man. I don’t believe that God can do anything about it as God doesn’t work that way. That’s just my belief. I don’t want to sound flippant about the evil in the world. I try very hard to attribute any human attributes to God.
August 7th, 2012 at 11:35 am
Re the canon, you bring up some interesting thoughts. I guess it is good for me to remind myself that the NT canon (besides the gospels) basically covers the journey of the message from Palestine westward to Rome and includes mainly views from that region/culture. The NT doesn’t cover much about what was happening thought-wise in the expansions to the east or south in the early days (first century).