Look Who's Talking Now, or Thoughts on Leviticus

I'm currently reading through that great and exciting tome, the book of Leviticus. What a joy it is indeed! In all seriousness, many people get bogged down when they reach this book. How many people (myself included) have had their "read through the Bible" campaign halted when they reach this seemingly dry, boring and utterly inapplicable book? Why is it still even in the Bible at all, we surely wonder. This time 'round, though, I have been reading Leviticus through a different lens, and although it cannot take all of the dry, technical writing out of the book, it has been teaching me about God--knowledge that is well worth the work.

What is this lens, this magic magnifying glass through which I am observing the text? Perhaps it is best expressed through the title of Francis Schaeffer's book He Is There and He Is Not Silent. Most people in the Ancient Near East (ANE) worshiped local gods, who were represented by idols. These idols were carved by the hands of men. They did not speak; they had no power. They were, in reality, nothing at all. Yet a group of former slaves from Egypt do not need idols carved by men. They don't need a silent representation of God; they hear His very voice. In the ANE, this is unheard of (pardon the wordplay)! What's more, this God is very, very powerful. He spoke the universe into existence, and now He speaks to them personally. He provides structure and order to their fledgling country. He describes in painstaking detail how to build the tabernacle, how to construct the priests' garb, and how and when to make sacrifices and have feasts. He gives them a civil law code, so they can know how to act, and a dietary law code, so they can know what to eat (quite a helpful thing in an age without refrigeration!). The maker of the universe condescends to talk to a rag-tag group called Israel, and even goes so far as to help them set up their government and cult, so that they might be an established nation.

Is Leviticus dry? Unless you enjoy reading blueprints and law textbooks, yes. Is it boring? When you remember that God is doing most of the speaking, it becomes much less boring. Is it inapplicable today? God is shown to be personal and to desire orderly worship. Furthermore, He wants our total devotion to Himself in all areas of life--civil, religious, even in what (or how) we eat! These truths alone will take a lifetime (and then some) to apply. The bottom line? Don't discount this admittedly hard-to-read yet enormously important book of Scripture. After all, God is there, He is not silent, and he wants to speak to you and me--even through Leviticus.

The New American Commentary: Judges by Daniel Block

"No book in the Old Testament offers the modern church as telling a mirror as this book." So ends Daniel Block's New American Commentary on Judges.* One might very well add, "The book is a telling mirror of American society as a whole." Block takes a biblical book describing events that took place 3,000 years ago and shows how relevant they still are through his solid exegesis of the text.

Throughout his commentary, Block reviews and expounds upon the continual decline of Israel after they entered the Promised Land, during the time of the shofetim (traditionally translated "judges," but Block uses the more technically correct term "tribal leaders"). Block traces two main themes of of Judges throughout his commentary. The first is the gradual Canaanization of Israel. In every episode, Israel and her shofetim take on more and more of the characteristics and culture of the surrounding peoples (the Canaanites), which of course is in direct disobedience of God's original command to them to completely and utterly destroy the native peoples. By the end of the book, the only people Israel attempts to destroy in this manner is the tribe of Benjamin--their own brothers and sisters! Block shows that this is the dramatic effect of acquiescence and indeed full acceptance of a sinful culture. The second main theme Block traces throughout the book is God's grace. Israel and her leaders follow and disobey the laws of God in whatever manner is most convenient for them at the moment. Although they cry out to God on multiple occasions, it is always a cry for help and never a cry of repentance. Every judge, save two (Othniel and Deborah), are shown to be poor leaders. And yet God continually saves them from destruction! As Block mentions several times, God is more concerned with redeeming his people than they are!

There are several other important topics that Block tackles in his commentary, not the least of which is the narrator's repeated observation that "there was no king in Israel." For those discussions, I would refer you to the commentary itself, which I felt was a good resource overall. Block provides the reader with the usual discussions of grammar, history and so forth that one expects in a quality commentary. I appreciated, too, how he wove the aforementioned themes together to provide his commentary and the biblical book with a good and memorable flow. On the other hand, I felt his "theological and practical implications" sections were rather weak. I would have liked to have seen some of these implications more drawn out, since Judges is so incredibly apropos to today's culture (and indeed, it was all too easy for this reader to find his own implications). I also must sadly admit that the commentary suffered from bad proofing. I have never seen so many basic grammar and punctuation errors in a published book. (I even found some of the Hebrew transliterations to be incorrect!) All in all, though, these negatives did not detract from the overall quality and value of Block's commentary, and it has become a welcome addition to my personal library.

*Note: The volume also includes a separate commentary on Ruth, which I have not yet read.

Ability and Desire: An Article Review

In my last post, I discussed an article from the (now) penultimate issue of the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society (JETS) on biblical literacy of Victorian Britain and present-day America. A few short pages later, I discovered another stellar article that deserves comment, one that deals with the oh-so-contentious area of human free will.

The article, entitled “Ability and Desire: Reframing Debates Surrounding Freedom and Responsibility” and authored by Scott C. Warren, provided me with a valuable tool to use in my own theological journey. For quite some time now, I have been wrestling with the Calvinist/Arminian debate. To put it simply, I can see both sides of the argument. God is sovereign, and no one comes to Him except those that are drawn by Him (Calvinism). At the same time, sinners are held morally responsible for rejecting God, which implies that they had the freedom to choose this route (Arminianism). (I don't buy the hyper-Calvinist idea of double predestination, and I don't think John Calvin would, either.) But how do these two truths intersect? How does one marry the ideas of divine sovereignty and human free will in a logical, non-contradictory way? While I don't expect to resolve this tension completely in my lifetime, Mr. Warren provided me with an answer to a piece of the puzzle.

What the author did was to look at the word "freedom." What does freedom really mean? To answer that question, he draws a diagram. The outer perimeter of the diagram is a box labeled "all conceivable actions." That is, the box represents anything you might think that a person could do in any situation. Inside of the box is a circle representing those things which are actually actionable--that is, what a person has the ability to do in a certain situation. A second circle inside the box represents those things that a person desires to do--what he or she would like to do in a given situation. Finally, the two circles form a simple Vinn diagram, and the overlapping segment is where free actions reside. To make a long explanation simple, Warren defines freedom as "the ability to do what you desire to do." Freedom is thus comprised of ability and desire.

This turns out to be an extremely important distinction that throughout history and the present has been overlooked. But it helps to explain the biblical data very well. Take, for example, Hebrews 6:18, which states that "it is impossible for God to lie." Really? Something is impossible for an omnipotent being? Couldn't God tell a lie if he wanted to? And that is precisely Warren's point: God would not want to lie. An omnipotent deity may very well have the ability to lie, but a good God would not have the desire to lie. To lie would fall so far outside of God's desires that it may be referred to as impossible. In the same way, Jesus, who was fully man, was really tempted to sin and therefore had that ability, but being fully divine, did not have the desire to sin. Therefore, we can agree with Millard Erickson's words, "[Christ] could have sinned, but it is certain that he would not" (italics original).

This idea also works with human freedom. The author argues that humans in their natural state have the ability to repent of their sins and turn to God, but they do not possess the desire to do so. They are free to choose to follow or reject God, but they freely choose to reject him 100% of the time. Warren aptly sums it up when he writes, "The essential problem is not that sinners cannot do what they must, but that they will not do what they can."*

How, then does one change her inmost desire? How does a sinner change his propensity to sin? He doesn't--God alone can do this. Thus in Warren's ordo salutis, regeneration precedes acceptance of salvation. In other words, men and women freely act on their natural desire to reject God until God changes their desires, at which time they act freely to accept His rule. The author contends, and I agree, that without regeneration, a person cannot desire to repent. Thus even though she has the ability to repent, she would never act on it. Thus the certainty of sin and the justice of God's judgment of sinners are harmonized.

There are many more nuances to ponder and resolve (at least in my own mind) in the Calvinism/Arminian debate, enough to keep me busy for the foreseeable future. But thanks to a scholarly article in an obscure (for some) academic journal, I have received a nugget of wisdom that puts one more question to rest.

*In other words, if sinners were judged because they did not repent--and this because they could not repent--God would be unjust. But if sinners could reorient their own hearts toward God in their own strength--that is, if they themselves could obtain the desire to repent--there would be no need for grace.

Why 19th-Century Britain Challenges Me

Sometimes inspiration comes from the most unexpected places. I received the latest issue of the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society (JETS) in early December and saw an article entitled "Literacy and Biblical Knowledge: The Victorian Age and Our Own." Interesting, I thought. I'll get to learn some history. Instead, I learned about myself.

The author, Timothy Larsen, discusses the basic attitude of 19th-century Britain concerning the Bible and the reading thereof, and then compares them to 21st-century America. What he found is alarming.

Victorian Age Britain:

• "Even the scientist T.H. Huxley, the original agnostic who wrote polemical works attacking the Scriptures, insisted on 'the use of the Bible as an instrument of popular education.'"
• Catherine Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, had read the Bible in its entirety eight times by the age of twelve.
• Florence Nightingale, who denied that the Bible was special revelation, nevertheless "read it earnestly every day, both by herself and aloud to her servants."
• "Obviously figures such as [the ones mentioned above] represent best practice, but the point is that Victorians across the denominational and theological spectrum agreed that this [voracious and regular (read: daily) Bible reading] was best practice, and there was a mass culture of aspiring to attain it across the traditions."

Current Day America:

• In 2004, the National Endowment for the Arts discovered that 43.4% of adults had not read a single book (much less the Bible!) in the entire previous year.
• "Most Americans now cannot name the first book of the Bible and half cannot name even one of the four Gospels."
• And finally, a personal quotation from me: "What percentage of people think that the axiom 'a house divided against itself cannot stand' was originated by Abraham Lincoln?" (Hint: Read Mark 3)

The article really hit home for me. It made me think about my own Bible reading habits. What I realized was that while I am academically familiar with scripture, having studied it in the classroom for many years, I was not as personally familiar with it as I should be. Even my own Bible reading was focused on studying various biblical books, and really diving deep. While this is a good habit, and one which I have not dropped, I was neglecting the broad, surveying reading that allows familiarity over time (and a more developed matrix for those deep dives). It is important to note, this was not an exercise in self-guilt, but rather a realization that I could be doing better. (Also, I didn't like the idea of being upstaged by a twelve-year-old girl!)

Because of this article, I have changed my own personal reading habits. I now carve out time to read the Bible every day, with the goal of reading it through multiple times this year (a feat accomplished by reading just 15-20 minutes a day). I still keep up on my other reading, too, but now I am prioritizing differently. I'm finding that I look forward to it, too. I'm beginning to engage with the story lines and connect with the characters. In short, I'm enjoying it.*

I would encourage you, then, to dust off that Bible and read it--purposefully, chapters and books at a time, not randomly, verses here and there--not as a guilt-ridden duty, but as a joyous opportunity. Don't try to understand everything the first time through, either, but remember that with discipline, you will have many more opportunities to increase your understanding. With this mindset, you just might be unexpectedly surprised. I know I have been.

*And I'm watching less TV--and added bonus!

LiterateTwit

I've finally done it. I've joined the Twitter craze. I did it on a whim, really. I was reading a book and had just marked a sentence as important with my pen when I thought, "What if I tweeted this?" What if I provided brief excerpts of what I've read in the hopes that someone, somewhere would be intrigued enough to pick up the text in question? I thought it was a worthy enough idea that I implemented it. Therefore, I bring you LiterateTwit.

Be forewarned: I will not be tweeting about my daily life--when I go to the store, when we run out of toilet paper, and that sort of thing. My tweets will deal exclusively with material I am reading so as to edify the recipient and encourage him or her to read quality books, journals and articles. It will also be replacing the Reading List section of my blog. In the future, then, in order to know what I'm reading, just check Twitter!