Did Paul blow it?

For instance, Paul gave the Christian position regarding the structure of a Christian society thus: “In it there is no room for Greek and Jew [social distinction]; circumcised and uncircumcised [religious rite distinction], barbarian, Scythian [cultural distinction], slave, or free man [social, economic distinction]; Christ is everything and everywhere” (Col. 3:11, Moffatt). And in Gal 3:28 he adds: “There is no room for male and female [sex distinction]; you are all one in Christ Jesus.” That is the Christian position—clear, positive, sweeping. And in Peter’s speech at Pentecost he said: “Your sons and daughters shall prophesy”—note “and daughters”—(Acts·2:17, Moffatt).

But in 1 Cor. 14: 34 (Moffatt) Paul enjoins something else: “Women must keep quiet at gatherings of the church. They are not allowed to speak; … as the Law enjoins.” Note that he appeals to “the Law” for authority. Is he falling into the very thing he told the Galatians they were doing? It seems so. Every time Paul tried to put woman in a subordinate position, he appealed to the Old Testament, not to Jesus. Note: “but woman represents the supremacy of man. (Man was not made from woman, woman was made from man; and man was not created for woman, but woman for man.)” (1 Cor. 11:7–9, Moffatt); Here he turns back to the first creation for corroboration for his position—the first creation, not to the new creation in Jesus where “there is no room for male or female.” Again in 1 Tim. 2:12-14 (Moffatt) he says: “I allow no woman to teach or dictate to men, she must keep quiet. For Adam was created first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, it was Eve.” Here he turned to the first Adam for the sustaining of his position—the first Adam, not the Second Adam, Christ. His Christianity slipped a cog. And that slipping back to the pre-Christian has caused much confusion. Paul says that sometimes he was not inspired-he was speaking on his own. This was one of the times. And the ages have suffered because of it.—E. Stanley Jones, Growing Spiritually, 307

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You can not accuse E. Stanley Jones of being a progressive! Yet, he sees something wrong here and isn't afraid to say it: Paul blew it! Paul spoke out of himself and not at the leading of the Spirit!

Just an
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Reallexikon der Assyriologie links

I have these links on the abbreviations page, but its handier to have a separate page linking them.

RlA abbreviations:
https://rla.badw.de/reallexikon/abkuerzungslisten/literatur-und-koerperschaften.html

RlA entries:
https://publikationen.badw.de/en/rla/index

Table of contents for copyediting stuff

A sense of mission? Not so much…

Many Christians know little or nothing about personal guidance from God. They go from event to event and live a kind of hand-to-mouth spiritual existence—a spiritual and moral opportunism. They have no sense of working out a plan of life under God’s guidance. They have little or no sense of destiny, of mission.

This is true of the nation as well as the individual. When a nation loses its sense of mission, it is beginning to disintegrate. Someone asked President Eisenhower, before he was nominated for the Presidency, what was the greatest need of America, and he replied: “A sense of mission.” A very wise and penetrating reply. Personally I believe this sense of mission for America is to be true to the last line of the pledge of allegiance to the flag: “One nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” This is the thing we have been raised up to do: to give “liberty and justice for all,” at home and abroad. This rules out all imperialisms—economic, social, political, military. We have been the proving ground of an idea—an economy of liberty and justice for all, apart from race and birth and religion and color and sex. We have been brought up to make the word “all” operative in all relationships at home and abroad. This is the mission of America. We must work it out—or perish. And if we don't work it out, we ought to perish—we will be a useless, amorphic mass of selfish people struggling for personal advantage. If we as a nation go out to dominate anyone economically, socially, politically, militarily, then our “name is mud.” “Ichabod”—“God has departed”—will be written on our banners, and angels will weep. For we who began by breaking with imperialism would end in setting up one of our own—the saddest ending to the greatest beginning in human history. One of our greatest needs is a call for a national day of prayer in which we will humbly bow our knees to get back as a nation “a sense of mission”—a sense that we are working out a divine destiny in the world.—E. Stanley Jones, Growing Spiritually, 274

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He wrote this in 1953. His fears have definitely been realized, haven't they?
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The greatest danger

I'm reading Abraham Joshua Heschel's great work, The Prophets. Came across this yesterday and it seems appropriate for our time, when outrageous evils are happening every day:

There is an evil which most of us condone and are even guilty of: indifference to evil. We remain neutral, impartial, and not easily moved by the wrongs done unto other people. Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself; it is more universal, more contagious, more dangerous. A silent justification, it makes possible an evil erupting as an exception becoming the rule and being in turn accepted.—Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets, 2:64

Technological Progress…

Let us labor under no illusions. There are no easy solutions for problems that are at the same time intensely personal and universal, urgent and eternal. Technological progress creates more problems than it solves. Efficiency experts or social engineering will not redeem humanity. Important as their contributions may be, they do not reach the heart of the problem. Religion, therefore, with its demands and visions, is not a luxury but a matter of life and death. True, its message is often diluted and distorted by pedantry, externalization, ceremonialism, and superstition. But this precisely is our task: to recall the urgencies, the perpetual emergencies of human existence, the rare cravings of the spirit, the eternal voice of God, to which the demands of religion are an answer.—Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man, 372

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Mind you, he wrote this in 1951! How true it has proven to be : (
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The Nazi myth recycled … as a MAGA myth!

I read Karen Armstrong's A Short History of Myth over the weekend. On the whole it's just a rehash of Eliade and Joseph Campbell, but with a good dose of Walter Burkert thrown in to make it more interesting. But, the final chapter had this tantalizing paragraph:

We are myth-making creatures and, during the twentieth century we saw some very destructive modern myths which have ended in massacre and genocide.… These destructive mythologies have been narrowly racial, ethnic, denominational and egotistic, an attempt to exalt the self by demonising the other. Any such myth has failed modernity…

Sound familiar? But she doesn't stop there. She suggests that

We cannot counter these bad myths with reason alone, because undiluted logos cannot deal with such deep-rooted, unexorcised fears, desires and neuroses. That is the role of an ethically and spiritually informed mythology. We need myths that will help us to identify with all our fellow-beings, not simply those who belong to our ethnic, national or ideological tribe. We need myths that help us to realize the importance of compassion, which is not always regarded as sufficiently productive or efficient in our pragmatic, rational world. We need myths that help us to create a spiritual attitude, to see beyond our immediate requirements, and enable us to experience a transcendent value that challenges our solipsistic selfishness. We need myths that help us to venerate the earth as sacred once again, instead of merely using it as a ‘resource’. This is crucial, because unless there is some kind of spiritual revolution that is able to keep abreast of our technological genius, we will not save our planet.—Karen Armstrong, A Short History of Myth, 136–37

The road goes ever on… but this blog won't

I've been blogging now for twenty years (today is the twentieth anniversary). Some years I've blogged more than others, but I've been pretty consistent. I've seen lots of blogs come—and go. Some just disappear without a trace—witness the dead links on some of my earlier posts.

Over the years, I've made a lot of friends through the blog, many of whom I've later met in person at a conference. I've probably made a few enemies as well, but that's ok. I've always tried to be honest and not put on a different face. When I review books—even ones I'm supposed to be selling—I try to show the good and bad points.

In short, I've tried to conduct this blog as I try to live my life: with integrity.

But, as they say, all good things come to an end. So, after twenty years, I've decided to call it a day. It's rather ironic, in a way. For a few years now, my stats have been abysmal, but in the last two months they've been more in line with the early days of blogging. Nevertheless, I'm no longer going to be posting here—outside of (maybe) a copyediting note here and there. Those are mostly for my own personal reference anyway.

So, after twenty years, I wish all my readers a future full of shalom, in its fullest meaning.
James

The social net and the gospel

I say we cannot preach it [the gospel] honestly, not because people might look at lack of community in our own lives and say, “You aren’t practicing what you are preaching,” but because, when we cannot offer community to people, we put them into a position where, by hearing the Gospel, they find themselves in an intolerable but hopeless situation. The Gospel challenges them to leave one life behind but does not offer a concrete road to a new life.—Ronald Rolheiser, Forgotten among the Lilies: Learning to Love beyond the Fears, 300

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That's the final snippet from this book. I hope you enjoyed the book and were challenged by it. I know I was. Stay tuned (as they used to say) for what is next on this blog.
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