Lord's Supper sans supper: a skeleton outside of real life, kissing grandma under a half-built bridge

Charles Kraft:

The Lord's Supper [is] probably the most potentially meaningful of the codes regularly employed within Christianity, at least when it is practiced as a full meal.

When, however, the Lord's Supper is practiced (as in most of Western Christianity) as  a skeleton ritual with precious little resemblance  to a participatory meal  (or to any other part of real life), the communication value is radically altered.  The excessive ritualization of such a code destroys its value by pushing the experience to an extreme diametrically  opposite that of the example above...enacting the drama is such a way that it was [incorrectly] interpreted as real life.

In the case of the excessive ritualization of the Lord's Supper, the communication value is lost (or at least radically changed) when it bears no resemblance to anything else in the participants' experience.  This means that our attempts to interpret the event via analogy with other life experiences are frustrated.  But since we are taught that God commands us to do it, we tend to interpret the strange, unique thing as sacred and magical.  That is, we interpret this meaningless ritual as we interpret any meaningless ritual (e.g. kissing grandma)--as required by the one in charge (in this case God) and entered into to please him rather than as a participatory experience..

...Since eating together already exists as a meaningful code within the society, all that needs to be done is to practice the Lord's Supper as a real meal (as the early church did).  This would allow the sacramental significance of the activity to develop naturally from the associations between it and real life, on the one hand, and between it and the  historical experience of Jesus with the disciples, on the other.

These [dead codes} (like poor Bible translations) are like bridges halfway across a river that require the receptors to build their own half from the opposite bank if they are to be able to make use of the part of the bridge that has been built.
-Charles H. Kraft, Communication Theory for Christian Witness,  pp 115-116

"every time the culture changes, the church becomes unfaithful..."

"Which Atonement? How Scripture Speaks Anew to Each Generation" by Len Hjalmarson
(excerpts):


....The dominant view of atonement for the first 300 years of the Church was not Penal Substitution, but Christus Victor. Jesus death and resurrection made him Lord, and established him as sole victor over the forces of death and destruction. Jesus death was a ransom paid to the devil. The Penal Substitution view was there in Scripture, but the early church was less interested in that view. Under Anselm in the 11th century the Church changed position, and began to put its weight on the other foot. It was the legal and forensic climate of those times that provoked the switch.

In other words, it was a cultural shift that provoked a theological shift. That’s a pretty important point, because we are in a time when culture is changing dramatically, and here we are having a lot of theological debates.

We could conclude from this that every time the culture changes, the church becomes unfaithful. Or, more wisely, we could conclude that when the culture shifts God speaks in new language..

.....Scot McKnight expands on the meaning of reconciliation by listing the atonement metaphors.
 He writes:

"Atonement language includes several evocative metaphors: there is a sacrificial metaphor (offering), and a legal metaphor (justification), and an interpersonal metaphor (reconciliation), and a commercial metaphor (redemption) and a military metaphor (ransom). Each is designed to carry us to the thing. But the metaphor is not the thing. The metaphor gives the reader or hearer an imagination of the thing, a vision of the thing, a window onto the thing, a lens through which to look in order to see the thing. Metaphors take us there, but they are not the 'there.'"

Well said! We are prone, when we don't recognize the way language and symbols work, to mistake the menu for the meal. It then becomes nearly impossible to actually talk about how and why we do theological work, because we are too busy defending our symbols. And atonement debate is mostly theology – not Scripture, but language that interprets what we read in the Scripture, and language that represents the dominant understanding in our faith communities.

And what do you know? Both major views – the early and the late -- can be found in a single New Testament passage in Colossians.

Penal Substitutionary: “When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross.” (Colossians 2:13-15)

 Christus Victor: “And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.” (This is the next verse, Colossians 2:16)

 The dominant view of atonement for the first 300 years of the Church was Christus Victor. In the 11th century, and in the legal and forensic climate of theological thought, the Church began to put its weight on the other foot. Cultural shift provoked a theological shift. But God is the Lord of both culture and theology. When the culture shifts, old questions are asked in new ways. In response, God speaks in new language. God speaks to a new culture in new ways through the Scripture because a new culture HEARS in new ways.

To be more provocative, the voice of the Holy Spirit did not highlight the penal-substitution (PS) view for the early church. What was it about the context of the church in those days that required one approach (Christus Victor) more than the other? And is there something about our own changing world that now requires a return, or at least a much greater emphasis, on the earlier view? Might it even be possible to hold the two views side by side, like a pair of glasses, and see in 3D? Or to ask the question in reverse, why are western evangelicals so stuck on one view, to the extent that holding other views as equal provokes an emotional reaction?  ...
 continued here 

Eugene Peterson and Bono film on Psalms: cussing without cussing

Here is the new Fuller Studio film of Eugene and Bono on Psalms.
                      Links and quotes below


Gotta love so much about this film..like Eugene calling Rolling Stone Magazine "Rolling Stones"..
and a mosh pit a "mash pit." (;

If you like the hilarious story  (excerpted above) about how EP first turned Bono down, there's  a whole video of EP on that and more here.

 --
EP:

"At twelve years old , [the psalms] showed me that imagination was a way to get inside the truth.

  ....translating a psalm...To try to get them to realize that praying  wasn't being nice before God.. The psalms are not pretty; they're not nice...just pray this psalm..  It's not  smooth; it's not nice, it's  not pretty; but it's honest.  And I think we're trying for honesty..which is very, very hard in our culture.

We need to find a way to cuss...without cussing. And the imprecatory psalms surely do that.
 We've got to some way in context; and the context is the whole Bible; whole psalter...to tell people how mad we are.

...We have crosses in every room in this house.  But when I look at those, I don't think of decoration; I think 'This is the world we live in..and it's a world with a lot of crosses . '  And I would just like to spend my life in doing something about that through Scripture, through  preaching, through friendship.  My years are getting shorter, and I don't have many  left; but I don't want to escape the violence..."

Bono: 

"The only way we can approach God..if we're honest..is through metaphor; through symbol.  So art becomes essential; not decorative.

..The psalmist is brutally honest about the explosive joy that he's feeling and the deep sorrow or confusion, and it's that that sets the psalms apart for me.And I often think,
'Why isn't church music more like that'? ..

...I'm talking about dishonesty. I find in a lot of  Christian art ..a lot of dishonesty. I think it's a shame because these people are vulnerable to God (in a good way)...porous; open.. I would love if this conversation would inspire people who are writing these beautiful.., gospel songs:  write a song about their bad marriage; write a song  about how they're pissed off at the government. Because that's what God wants from you: the truth... The truth will set you free; it will blow things apart. Why I'm suspicious of Christians is because of this lack of realism..and I'd love to see more of that in art and life and music."

(answering "What is the work of the artist..in acknowledging the intensity; the reality of the feeling without indulging the feeling?").
Having feelings is perfectly normal. ...David danced naked in front of the troops; that's one reason I like him .. abandonment... very important... understanding our bodies as well as our minds and ourspirits.  The Three-Personed God --The Trinity--is reflected  in our body, mind and spirit..,We really  do ignore this.

--
EP  prays:

"Be with us as we continue our lives of serving You with poetry, with the arts, with psalm, finding ways to enter into what You're already doing:  not calculating the chances, but doing what's right there, what You've already started doing..."

Listen for the prophetic summary in the last two words of the film
 ...from Mrs. Peterson.

 --------------------------


See:

• Story of the film, along related quotes with resources 
• Behind the scenes

•  Bono audio: God at the 9" Nails Gig 

• atu2:"The Message Author Says U2's Message is Refreshing, Faithful, and Honest

 

the transcendence and tragedy of analogy: what's a meta for?

I am enjoying Hoftstader's  new book (with Emmanuel Sander) "Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking," though it seems none of his late-career books will top/topple the Pulitzer-winning Gödel, Escher, Bach,( This review even offers an analogy/metaphor about why this book about analogy isn't quite as classic as some of his others..Touché!)

Video previews below.

Amazon blurb:

Analogy is the core of all thinking.
This is the simple but unorthodox premise that Pulitzer Prize–winning author Douglas Hofstadter and French psychologist Emmanuel Sander defend in their new work. Hofstadter has been grappling with the mysteries of human thought for over thirty years. Now, with his trademark wit and special talent for making complex ideas vivid, he has partnered with Sander to put forth a highly novel perspective on cognition.

We are constantly faced with a swirling and intermingling multitude of ill-defined situations. Our brain’s job is to try to make sense of this unpredictable, swarming chaos of stimuli. How does it do so? The ceaseless hail of input triggers analogies galore, helping us to pinpoint the essence of what is going on. Often this means the spontaneous evocation of words, sometimes idioms, sometimes the triggering of nameless, long-buried memories.
Why did two-year-old Camille proudly exclaim, “I undressed the banana!”? Why do people who hear a story often blurt out, “Exactly the same thing happened to me!” when it was a completely different event? How do we recognize an aggressive driver from a split-second glance in our rearview mirror? What in a friend’s remark triggers the offhand reply, “That’s just sour grapes”? What did Albert Einstein see that made him suspect that light consists of particles when a century of research had driven the final nail in the coffin of that long-dead idea?

The answer to all these questions, of course, is analogy-making—the meat and potatoes, the heart and soul, the fuel and fire, the gist and the crux, the lifeblood and the wellsprings of thought. Analogy-making, far from happening at rare intervals, occurs at all moments, defining thinking from top to toe, from the tiniest and most fleeting thoughts to the most creative scientific insights.

Like Gödel, Escher, Bach before it, Surfaces and Essences will profoundly enrich our understanding of our own minds. By plunging the reader into an extraordinary variety of colorful situations involving language, thought, and memory, by revealing bit by bit the constantly churning cognitive mechanisms normally completely hidden from view, and by discovering in them one central, invariant core—the incessant, unconscious quest for strong analogical links to past experiences—this book puts forth a radical and deeply surprising new vision of the act of thinking.

Also on the primacy of analogy/metaphor, I am  rereading of Eugene Peterson's "Eat This Book," where  he can talk about metaphor being simultaneously so holy that it “signals transcendence an encounter with the One who speaks everything into being’ (98), and also call it “literally a lie” (94)

I remember Cytowic's conclusion the brain only thinks in/as/by/through.to metaphor.

see also:

holy heteroclite:: St Mike Nesmith on genius and madness

.

holy heteroclite:: holy blending...just do it

holy heteroclite:: meaningless (?) metaphors

 ...

holy heteroclite:: What's a meta for? metaphor creates ...

holy heteroclite:: Music as Metaphor for Emotion

Book Trailer
:

"Christ Can't Be Pictured"

I was stunned to see this title at the used book store.
I shouldn't have been.

It's a classic Reformation principle .. for some.. that words are more important than images;

even that any images/imaginations of Jesus..therefore art..are forbidden as they are idolatry.

Note the picture (image!) on the cover consists of words about Jesus. 

The well-meaning, but misguided premise, according to the author's blog:

Pictures "de-present" Christ—much more than they "re-present" him. The purpose of this book is to call Christians back to the Bible for their revelation of who Christ is.

The pictures everybody uses to represent Christ are not pictures of Christ at all. They are forbidden by Scripture. They are rooted in a non-biblical monistic idea of God—akin to pantheism. They become idolatrous, not just when they are "worshiped," but at the moment they are given the name of Christ.   link

The whole book can be read on the right-hand bar of the author's blog.

An ironic quote:
"This book is necessary to bring Christians to their senses."— Richard Bennett

Hmm, primacy of senses and primacy of word..

The author comments:

"'The Passion of the Christ' movie  by Mel Gibson...That is perhaps the deadliest influence of the movie is its subliminal denial of the Deity of Christ. Those who made the movie can insist that this man on the screen images Christ. Promoters of the movie may claim that the movie proclaims the Deity of Christ. But the movie makes us call Jim Caviezel “Christ”. This is idolatry.  link

What would Mark DeRaud say?

sola scriptura or prima scriptura?

Ken Schenk's "first thoughts" on What is distinct about a Wesleyan hermeneutic?

• Historical method is historical method. I think what is more distinctive are the hermeneutical values in which we place the results of historical study.
• The priority of the Bible for Wesleyans is transformation, both corporate and individual. This is God's doing and it is on God's agenda. The priority is formation rather than information.
• The priorities of the individual for God are 1) our hearts, 2) our behavior, 3) our thoughts. So God is most interested in forming our attitudes and living through the Bible. Ideas are secondary.
• Because of its sense that God's love is his central feature, the Wesleyan tradition naturally gels with an incarnational God, a God who comes to us. As such, we believe God speaks to us whatever our understanding of Scripture may be. We don't have to get to the original meaning to finally hear God. God will meet us without us having to have a certain understanding.
• Thus, the Wesleyan tradition is more open to "more than literal" and figural readings of the Bible than other Protestant traditions. We are not bothered if the NT does not read the OT in context. We are open to the Spirit speaking to us out of context through Scripture. God's goal with the Bible is to meet us, not to give us a homework assignment.
• On a side note, the "new perspectives" are far less a problem for the Wesleyan tradition than they are for the "high Protestant" traditions. 
• We are not opposed to the way the Spirit has used the Church to clarify the application of Scripture in the Church. We are more a tradition of prima scripturarather than sola scriptura. link

meaningless (?) metaphors

Click here for meaningless (?) metaphors

What's a meta for? metaphor creates meaning; and is not just for optional illustration

Kenneth Bailey:
At least since the fifth century B.C., and the great days of classical Greece, the Western mind has done its serious thinking in concepts. In most forms of discourse, we from the West begin with an idea and then occasionally illustrate that idea with a simile, metaphor, or parable.

The conceptual language is primary and the metaphor or parable is secondary. The first is critical, the second is optional. If the listener/reader is intelligent enough, the speaker/writer may dispense with illustrations. For indeed the story is presented only to clarify the meaning of the concept. If people are able to catch that meaning without using up time with illustrations, so much the better.
 

The illustration is useful for simplification, the Western mind thinks. It aids memory. It assists in adding emotional coloration and in catching and holding attention. But through all of this, the pictorial remains a secondary form of speech. The concept continues as the primary form of theological language.
 

A theological discourse is created by attaching one concept to another by means of logic. Philosophy then provides an overall structure for the material. This has been the primary Greco-Roman form of theological discourse and thereby the dominant Western form. It has been in use for centuries.

But there is another way to “do theology.” Middle Eastern creators of meaning do not offer a concept and then illustrate (or choose not to illustrate) with a metaphor or parable. For them the equation is reversed.
Rather than
 

concept + illustration
 

the Middle Easterner offers
 

parable + conceptual interpretation.
 

The Middle Eastern mind creates meaning by the use of simile, metaphor, proverb, parable, and dramatic action. The person involved is not illustrating a concept but is rather creating meaning by reference to something concrete.
 

The primary language is that of the metaphor/parable and the secondary language is the conceptual interpretation of the metaphor that in Biblical literature is often given with it.

[An] example of this structure is in the well-known text of Isaiah 53:7-8:
 

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth, INJUSTICE/ SILENCE

like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, PARABLE

and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, PARABLE

so he did not open his mouth SILENCE

By a perversion of justice he was taken away. INJUSTICE
 

The parable appears in the center and is encased with concepts that direct any reflection on the parable’s meaning. The meaning is created by metaphor. At the same time the metaphor, as it were, “cries out” for conceptual interpretation which appears in the text as a frame set around the metaphor. Thus concepts appear with the parable in Biblical literature and are not strangers to it (cf. also Isaiah 5:1-7).
 

Second, clearly the metaphorical language is the primarylanguage which creates the meaning set forth in the discourse. The metaphor says more than the conceptual frame. The conceptual interpretive language is important yet secondary. The reader of Is. 53:7-8 knows that the lamb is unjustly treated and that it is silent. Thoughtful contemplation on this “parable of the lamb before its killer and shearer” has for centuries taken readers into great depths of meaning that reach far beyond the interpretation that encases the parable.
 

The concepts that surround the Biblical metaphors (as can be seen in the above texts) catch only a part of the meaning of the metaphor. Yes, the servant of God is unjustly treated. Yes, he is silent. But the picture of the lamb standing mute before the butcher or shearer creates far more meaning than the concepts which surround it.   Finding the Lost Cultural Keys to Luke 15

NT Wright and CS Lewis on pointing your dog to something: sign>signified>signpost>sacrament

photo

The whole video here by NT Wright is worth watching.

He so reminds me of C.S. Lewis with his series of apt metaphors.  Here are three

• Think if I offered you a drivers license, claiming  i had authority to issue it
• -Think if someone destroyed all bank records and evidence of any debt you owe? 
• Think what would happen if you pointed at something, hoping for your dog to look at it?

  But let's focus on  the third (4:13ff) here:



 The telling and true-to-life illustration of pointing your dog towards something;
and the temple being a signpost pointing to something (Someone) else is so good.

Try it on your dog, I double dog dare you(:

He may have clarified this in the longer video of which this is an excerpt, but it's likely Wright is  actually drawing (as he often acknowledges) on C.S. Lewis:

The sunlight in a picture is therefore not related to real sunlight simply as written words are to spoken.  It is a sign but something more than a sign, because in it the thing signified is  really in a certain mode present. If I had to name the relation I should call it not symbolical but sacramental..
..I have tried to stress throughout the inevitableness of the error made about every transposition by one who approaches it from the lower medium only..You will have noticed that most dogs cannot understand pointing. You point to a bit of food on the floor; the dog, instead of looking at the floor, sniffs at your finger. A finger is a finger to him, and that is all. -"Transposition," from The Weight of Glory...someone has uploaded the whole essay here)

--
Related:

When did dogs figure out pointing?

Dog Breeds: pointing

Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of a Sacramental Tapestry

by Hans Boersma

-"

the "elegance of language" allows a crude "loud fart": prophetic paranomoasia and structural synesthesia in Isaiah 5:7

The  multiplex literary canvas of Isaiah 5 includes the well-known  verse 7 phenomenon of...well, a very little-known literary term,  paranomoasia (Paronomasia - Merriam-Webster Online).
 You might call it a pun or a play on words; but hey, impress your friends by calling it a proleptic and prophetic  paranomoasia.  Or   "paranomoasia plus"  (:

I looked for justice,  but I saw oppression.
I looked for  righteousness, but I heard an outcry (of pain).

justice   (A)                           oppression  (B)
righteousness  (A)                 outcry   (B)

--

Jim posts:

Since I’m presently working on Isaiah for the series it’s only natural that I’d wind up in Chapter 5 with it’s stunningly beautiful pun

לְמִשְׁפָּט֙ וְהִנֵּ֣ה מִשְׂפָּ֔ח לִצְדָקָ֖ה וְהִנֵּ֥ה צְעָקָֽה׃

God looked for justice (mishpat) but only saw oppression (mispach). God looked for righteousness (tzedakah) and instead he heard an outcry of pain (tz’acha).

This pun is virtually impossible to render in English. The Common English Bible tries, but meets the same resistance as every other rendition has-

God expected justice, but there was bloodshed; righteousness, but there was a cry of distress!

The REB is essentially the same. What this shows, it seems to me, is that the rendition of puns from one language to another is excessively difficult. Perhaps translators, and especially commentators, should indicate the pun in transliteration in a footnote or in their comments so that readers of English can at least have some sense of the beauty and brilliance of the underlying original. link

Or try this on:

and he looked for justice — Both the administration of justice by magistrates, and justice in the dealings of the people with one another: but behold oppression — From the powerful upon their inferiors; and for righteousness — For equity, mercy, and benevolence; but behold a cry — From the oppressed, crying to men for help, and to God for vengeance. “The paronomasia, or play on the words, in the Hebrew, in this place, is very remarkable;mispat, mispach; zedakah, zeakah. There are many examples of it in the other prophets; but Isaiah seems peculiarly fond of it. The rabbis esteem it a great beauty: their term for it is, elegance of language.” — Bishop Lowth, in Benson Commmentary

I have color coded the words above to highlight the obvious contrasts between what God was looking for, and what he found.  This the vertical connections:

Justice                                           oppression
righteousness                                  ":cry 

But  once one reads the above in the original Hebrew, it;s clear the color-coding should (also) work horizontally:

mispat                                            mispach

zedakah                                         ze'akah

AA
BB



I keep expecting this to create a chiasm; but it's   a powerful punch of a  paranomoasia  kind of parallelism.

And to reinforce the contrast, another striking feature: a kind of structural synesthesia in the league of Revelations 1:8's  "I turned to see the voice."
Did you notice the (literally) non-sensical:


I looked for justice,  but I saw oppression.
I looked for  righteousness, but I heard an outcry (of pain).

How do you hear something you're looking for??
(See Webb's "The Divine Voice" and Cytowic's "The Man Who Tasted Shapes")

Brueggemann quips about this exact literary/thematic connection and it's practical application:,"This comes as close to a  synergism as a Calvinist could want" (Using God's Resources Widely," p. 49; he also spins this out in another article.

The prophetic pronouncement is devastating. And it took a lovely literary "elegance of language" to provide the ugly practical app.  The words must have landed like...well, in Eugene Peterson's classic line about  yet another poetic device, metaphor... " a loud fart in the salon of spirituality."

Being quite steeped in Scripture (and known to love Isaiah), I think Bono nodded to Isaiah's pun (and maybe a line from a Jackie Pullinger book)  in his live introduction to "Last Night on Earth"  (See  "I wanted to know Jesus, but you gave me a library").

Eugene Peterson on Psalm 40: pastors are blockheads, God digs ears, Virgin Mary's surprising organ, we hear with eyes

I have been reading Eugene Peterson since...well, before you were born. (:

Due to a providential fluke (theologians call it a 'pruke'), I'm recently taking a  re-look at an early  (1987)   EP masterpiece (how many does he have?)  "Working The Angles: The Shape Of Pastoral Integrity."   It was only his fifth book (as of this year he has published  13,567,998...and they're all good).  As often with folks like this, he was prophetically  (and proleptically) ahead of his time..

He begins his "pull no punches" beginning as early as the first page:

"[Many American pastors] have gone whoring after other gods. What they do with their time under the guise of pastoral ministry hasn’t the remotest connection with what the church’s pastors have done for most of twenty centuries” (page 1)

But the section I want to quote extensively below stands out for several reasons.
 (And since this  was written  long before Peterson became a Bible translator himself ..The Message Bible was 2002...,I would be fascinated to hear to ask him why his older self eventually chose to ignore his own  younger self's  advice re: translating Psalm 40:6 in a way that "is not to be countenanced"!

On with it:

Turning Eyes into Ears

A brilliantly conceived metaphor  in Psalm 40:6   provides a pivot on which to turn the corner; literally it reads: "ears thou hast dug for me" (azenayim karîtha lî). It is puzzling that  no translator renders the sentence into English just that way They all prefer to paraphrase at this point, presenting the meaning adequately but losing the metaphor: "thou hast given me an open ear" (RSV) . But to lose the metaphor in this instance is not to be countenanced; the Hebrew verb is "dug."

Imagine a human head with no ears. Where ears are usually found there is only a smooth, impenetrable surface, granitic bone. God speaks. No response. The metaphor occurs in the context of a bustling religious activity deaf to the  voice of God: "sacrifice and offering thou dost not desire . . . burnt offering and sin offering" (40:6). How did   these people know about these offerings and how to make them? They had read the prescriptions in Exodus and Leviticus and followed instructions.  They had become religious. Their eyes read the words on the Torah page and rituals were formed.
They had read the Scripture words accurately and gotten the ritual right. How did it happen that they had missed the message "not required"?  There must be something more involved than following directions for unblemished animals, a stone altar, and a sacrificial fire.  There is God speaking and must be listened to.But what good is a speaking God without listening human ears? So God gets a pick and shovel and digs through the cranial granite, opening a passage that will give access to the  interior depths, into the mind and heart.  Or–maybe we are not to imagine a smooth expanse of skull but something like wells that have been stopped up with refuse: culture noise, throw-away gossip, garbage chatter. Our ears are so clogged that we cannot hear God speak.  God, like Isaac who dug again the wells that the Philistines had filled, redigs the ears trashed with audio junk.

The result is a restoration of Scripture: eyes turn into ears. 
The Hebrew sacrificial system included reading from a book, but the reading had degenerated into something done and watched.  The business with the scroll was just part of the show, a verbal ingredient thrown into the ritual just because the recipe called for it.  Now with ears 
newly dug   in the head of this person, a voice  is heard calling, inviting.  The hearer responds, "Lo, I come, in the roll of the book it is written of me; I delight to do thy will, O my God; thy law is within my heart  (40:7-8).  The act of reading has become the act of listening.  The book is discovered to have a voice in it directed to the reader-become-listener: 'it is written of me.'  The words on the paper that were read with the eye are now heard with the ear and invade the heart:
'I delight to do thy will.. thy law is within my heart.'   God's word ("thy will"), which had been objectified in a written word ("thy law"), now is personalized in an answering and worshiping word ("my heart"). The act of reading becomes an act of listening.  What was written down is revoiced:'I have told the glad news..I have not restrained my lips ' (40:9) No longer is God's word  merely written, it is voiced.  The ear takes over from the eye and involves the heart..

....Listening is back.  The dynamic sequence has been restored.  The psalm began with God listening: "I waited patiently for the Lord.  He inclined and  
heard my cry."  Now the psalmist listens. God has  has dug through his thick skull and opened a passage for hearing. The living voice of God is attended by the human ear. The consequence, as always when God's word works, is gospel ("glad news of deliverance," "thy saving help"; 40:9, 10) It was a medieval commonplace that the organ of conception in the Virgin Mary was the ear. 

...Can any pastor in good conscience  be content to leave the written words of Scripture  on the page for the eye to read?   Our business is with ears: 'O learn to read what silent love hath writ/To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit. To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit.' {Shakespeare}
-Eugene Peterson Working The Angles: The Shape Of Pastoral Integrity, pp. 70, 73

 

holy blending...just do it

"Jesus never opened his mouth without a parable coming out," (Matt 13:34-5)

“The greatest thing by far is to be master of analogy....it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars.”
(Poetics, 1459 a 5-8, "The Basic Works of Aristotle")


"If genius is the ability to see analogy;
certainly madness is the ability to see analogy where none exists." -Mike Nesmith
---


One of the most important disciplines for stretching your brain and creating creativity is

...whatever you want to call it:

• "looking for the unobvious" connections between two things
• reading, engaging parables that compare/contrast
• making a song mash-up of two songs
• seizing synesthesia
• making metaphors

In light of this photo by Brant Hansen 
(great blogger, hope he starts again), I have a new metaphor for

this whole metaphoring discipline:

holy blending

The look on the blender's face reminds me of the look on the faces of some students who at first think they can't do it/don't want to do it.
Usually, it's more fun than they thought.

Go to it.  Blend two items that you don't think blend well...

Ephesians 2:20, Jews and Gentiles and "St. Paul saying the exact opposite of what John MacArthur is claiming"

Helpful post  from Morgan Guyton, "How I read the Bible differently than John MacArthur".

If only we read everything in Ephesians and Romans through the grid of Jew/Gentile unity, we'd have a lot less eisegesis, verse-itis and hermeneuwars/Pneumatic drills.

Excerpt:

....Here is how MacArthur cites Ephesians 2:20 in his interview:

When did the gifts cease? One important passage that helps answer that question is Ephesians 2:20, which explains that apostles and New Testament prophets were the “foundation” upon which the church was being built. Before the canon of Scripture was complete, that foundation was still being laid through the apostles and prophets, and through the miraculous and revelatory gifts that accompanied and authenticated their ministries. But once the foundation was laid, those offices and gifts passed away. To follow Paul’s metaphor, the foundation is not something that is rebuilt at every phase of construction. It is laid only once.

It is true that Paul talks about a “foundation” of the prophets and apostles in Ephesians 2:20 (though he doesn’t mention spiritual gifts or give any commentary about their purpose). The question is what purpose does Paul’s metaphor serve. Is Paul making the argument that MacArthur is using him for? In the image Paul is creating, is the important thing about the “foundation” the fact that no impurities should be mixed with it? Is Paul concerned with setting boundaries for the canon? Or has this concern been anachronistically projected onto a metaphor with a very different purpose?
If we look at Ephesians 2:19-22, it gives us enough context to consider the image as a whole:

Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

This section of Paul’s letter is addressed to the Gentiles who had been excluded from the Jewish community prior to Christ’s coming. He is saying that they are now members of the same household and even part of the structure of the temple of God. The purpose of describing the foundation of the apostles and prophets is to say that the Gentiles are part of the same building as they are. So Paul is attributing to them an incredible honor: to become the Holy Spirit’s dwelling-place along with the apostles and prophets. It is amazingly ironic that John MacArthur chose this passage as a proof-text for cessationism because Paul is saying the exact opposite of what MacArthur is claiming!
If God’s temple were built according to John MacArthur’s specifications, it would be a concrete slab of foundation without anything on top of it. Can a foundation with no walls or roof become a dwelling-place for God’s Spirit? Paul seems to be saying pretty plainly here that the temple needs to include the Gentiles who had been foreigners and strangers in order to be a complete building. The most straightforward interpretation of Paul’s metaphor is that the church is a temple which continues to be built.... 
-Morgan Guyton, "How I read the Bible differently than John MacArthur".

Eller's zanily prophetic framework for not framejacking the episode formerly known as the temple tantrum

meme by Quaid

Here's an excerpt from a great book that surprisingly few know about (Greg Boyd interacts with it.  See A Critique of Eller's Thesis  andA Defense of Eller's Thesis)

Don't avoid the book  because you fear it's trying to convert you (violently) to pacifism.
It's not. 
 Vernard Eller's "War and Peace: From Genesis to Revelation" is creative, simple/profound, prophetic 

...and funny!

Funny? 
In this review of a previous version of the book, Ratzlaff called it "zany."   Oh, click that link to see the zany name the book originally had.

In a remembrance in Christianity Today, David Neff celebrated Eller as The Mad Theologian.
He was master of the heterolitic ...and hugely helpful...metaphor (church as ballerina, misguided church as antacid, in this one book alone).

  So buy it already.  (You won't be surprised to hear that he also wrote "The Sex Manual for Puritans)

I had to take the trouble/time to type out the follwing section on the temple tantrum (I'll have to quit calling it that, Eller suggests a better name) as (amazingly) it appears nowhere online (Many of Eller's other books are a free read online, click here).  This section doesn't have much Ellerian mad zaniness, but should be wrestled with.    Often we eisegete an "alien template" in reading the scriptures, especially such a "mad, zany"  one as the temple encounter(acted parable/guerilla theatre).  Granted, you may need to read the whole book to get all Eller means by the Zion/purgation cycle (hint: the  'reverse fighting"  motif of the  subversively Suffeing Servant, and God  temporarily using Holy War/enemes to fight against ..not for..Israel).  Also, for context, I have posted the amazing Chapter 8 for my students here):

 

...the cleansing of the temple, Jesus' condemning of the corruption and the chasing out of its money men and their animals.  However, more than any of the other writres , Matthew again points us to an  interpretation of the incident.  All that is required to bring the matte clear is to change the customary label from "the cleansing of the temple" to "the purgation of Zion" and recall the words of Isaiah:

1 25 I will attack you;
I will purify your metal with flux.
I will remove all your slag.
²⁶ I will reestablish honest judges as in former times,
wise advisers as in earlier days.
Then you will be called, ‘The Just City,
Faithful Town.’”
²⁷ Zion will be freed by justice,
and her returnees by righteousness

An even clearer precedent comed from Malachi..It represents the late  prophetic tradition and focuses almost exclusively upon the "purgation of Zion" rather than upon the Zion Cycle in its entirety--although there are clues to indicate that the writer was aware of the larger picture.  But in any case, these are the words which surely must form the setting within which Jesus' action must be understood

Malachi 3:1-4

New English Translation (NET)

3 ¹ “I am about to send my messenger, who will clear the way before me. Indeed, the Lord you are seeking will suddenly come to his temple, and the messenger of the covenant, whom you long for, is certainly coming,” says the Lord who rules over all.
² Who can endure the day of his coming? Who can keep standing when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire, like a launderer’s soap. ³ He will act like a refiner and purifier of silver and will cleanse the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then they will offer the Lord a proper offering. ⁴ The offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in former times and years past.

 Put it within the Zion framework and rename it "the purgation of Zion," and the cleansing of the temple becomes so "right" and so properly situated that it must be that Jesus himself was thinking in "Zion" terms.  The purgation of Zion, which triggers Jesus' crucifixion, itself points to the stroke of the "sword not of man which in its striking heals"  What other alignment would makes sense?

Matthew puts it on the track of this interpretation in away that the other gospel writers do not, because his account includes an element the others lack, namely a description of Zion purged,  The verses following the cklean sing read

^{Matthew 21:14} The blind and lame came to him in the temple courts, and he healed them. ¹⁵ But when the chief priests and the experts in the law saw the wonderful things he did and heard the children crying out in the temple courts, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they became indignant 

The Messiah (at least for the moment and in as symbolic way) has with justice redeemed Zion and restored her tio what she was meant to be, a center of healing and servant m inistry for the world.

Because the temple incident figures so large in current thought, we need to comment further.  This event constitutes the golden text of the Bible for many pacifists; in fact, some of them give the impression thatt it is the only text they know.  It forms the rationale for those who feel the need top become quite militant in their peacemaking.  Aggressive confrontation is their style; and they claim to be following the temple-cleansing Jesus in applying something of his technique to the White House, Pentagon a nd Selective Service offices.
  

But it won't wash; it won't even begin to wash!  If what Jesus performed was the purgation of Zion, then it was not in any sense an act of human political activism...There is no suggestion at all that this is an aspect of his  work in which he called his dsiciples to share..

...But if Christians are to find their place within the model of the cleansing of the temple,it is as Zion (=Israel=the new Israel).  The passage calls for them to open themselves to purging by God so that, as delivered Zion, they are ready to perform a healing and foot-washing ministry to the world..

...there is a further line of thought that relates to  the purgation of Zion.  In Matthew and some of the other accounts...abd once, in Acts..the charge is brought that Jesus had talked about how he would destroy the temple and rebuild it...the most likely explanation would seem to be that Jesus had spoken of the purgration  of Zion and his words had been misunderstood and/or distorted.

..Finally, in Matthew 23, within Jesus condemnation of Scribes and Pharisees., there is a passage that rellated strongly to the purgation of Zion:

³⁷ “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to you! How often I have longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you would have none of it! ³⁸ Look, your house is left to you desolate! ³⁹ For I tell you, you will not see me from now until you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!’”

The lament does not describe the entire action., of course.  Nevertheless, we need always to remember the NT understanding pf peace goes deep enough that it can call for and include a painful yet creative purgation of Zion, the holy community which will become, in turn, an instrument for the healing of the world.  Truly Christian peacemakers must themselves be open  to the  purging of God  (pp 131-133)