Read this and weep

I'm still reeling from the murder of an innocent man in Minneapolis by police. Then today I read this piece in Christianity Today that he was a "man of peace." All I can say is that our culture hates people of peace and will destroy them, if possible.

I weep for what this country has become. It never was perfect, but at least once upon a time, it seemed we were trying to move in the correct direction. Now? The dollar has triumphed and hate and fear rule.

Lord, have mercy! Heal our broken land!

The rule of faith (continued)

What one sees in the rule of faith, therefore, is something of a feedback loop, what Wilken calls a reverberation of sorts and an “arc of understanding.” A community of faith, because of the faith that emerges from its experience of the divine (even if that experience, at its most direct, lies in the distant past, preserved in sacred literature), now engages in practices of faith whereby it re(de)fines both faith and practice through the course of time and in close conjunction with its central locus of revelation: in this case, its authoritative religious texts.—Brent A. Strawn in Divine Doppelgängers: YHWH’s Ancient Look-Alikes, 154

So how does it all work?

We have learned that we, made in the image of the triune God, are relational, loving, and covenantal. This is God’s will for us and for our behavior—a certain way of relating—while God’s ultimate plan for the universe is to gather us all up into a joyful play of communion together.

It is this divine reality and accompanying ethic that lies behind the diversity we see in the early church. Jews committed to Jesus and pagans converted to him coexisted within a common loving relational pattern that was nevertheless open to their cultural differences. The church lives out of its resurrected location, beyond many of the structures shaping our current life in the flesh. This allows God’s will to be expressed and obeyed diversely among different people. However, this is no flight from bodies. Our present bodies of flesh experience the empowerment of a resurrected mind and the pressure of a God who draws us ceaselessly into loving relationality.—Paul: An Apostle’s Journey, 178–79

How did he do that?

[W]e never see the importance of the Christian virtue of faithfulness more than we do in Paul’s long final imprisonment, and we never see more than here the way it is grounded in the faithfulness of Jesus himself. Paul never expected that he had to summon up this fidelity—this courage and trust and superhuman endurance—from his own meager fleshly resources. This had to be the gift of God, and all gifts of God ultimately come through Jesus, the great gift from God, and from their Spirit. We can be faithful ultimately only because he has been faithful, and yet because he has been faithful we can be faithful to an extraordinary degree. This is the final theological lesson we see figuring forth from Paul’s final biographical chapter.—Paul: An Apostle’s Journey, 177

Yahwism and the Rule of Faith

But where did this corpus of Yahwistic texts come from? Who preserved it and so forth? Obviously and most mundanely, it was originally the people of Israel and Judah, and then, belatedly, the early Jewish and Christian communities that descended from them and composed, preserved, and transmitted the religious literature that eventually came to be recognized as the canonical writings of the OT/HB. Religious literature, however, emerges from religious experience, except in the most cynical and secular interpretations of religion. What that means is that it was Israel’s experience of the god YHWH that led to the composition, preservation, and transmission of a massive amount of literature about YHWH, which in turn helped to insure YHWH’s survival and also served to separate him from his more plodding ANE peers. Since this is mostly a historical judgment based on sociohistorical factors and the existence of certain literary realia—one that could be taken in a thin way—I wish to thicken it up a bit with some theological considerations.

I do so by appealing to the notion of “the rule of faith” (regula dei), a term used in the study of early Christianity for a statement of belief that existed in something of a symbiotic relationship with further development and practice of that belief.—Brent A. Strawn in Divine Doppelgängers: YHWH’s Ancient Look-Alikes, 152–53

The power of the written word

Another major difference between YHWH and his ANE confreres is the biblical corpus, already mentioned above, which is large in size and scope. It is this corpus of sacred, authoritative literature—and one need not posit formal canonicity or an early date for canonical forms for the point to hold—that seems to have helped YHWH survive, since the other gods we know of seem to have lacked anything remotely comparable and went the way of the dodo bird as a result.—Brent A. Strawn in Divine Doppelgängers: YHWH’s Ancient Look-Alikes, 152

Death, be not proud!

Paul no longer killed for God; but he had learned that he needed to be willing to be killed for God. It is this type of leadership and this narrative that allows minority Jewish and Christian groups to continue to survive in the face of acute pressures from the powers that rule pagan-majority cultures. Church leaders must be prepared to stand firm whatever the cost inflicted on them—the story of the martyr. This is Political Survival 101. The church remembered Paul as someone who would endure prison, which meant enduring arrest, intimidation, interrogation, trial, and the threat of punishment. In so doing it was equipped to survive everything the Roman Empire, and every other empire, could fling at it.—Paul: An Apostle’s Journey, 176–77

Not really one of the gang

But there is also YHWH’s distinctiveness to consider. So, while YHWH is part of the gang—at least some of the time, and maybe more frequently than that—there are still moments when he is not one of the gang, or at least not only that. This judgment is no less historical than were assertions about YHWH’s similarity, since the same could be said for each and every ANE deity, at least to some degree. Each one of these gods, that is, is unique in some fashion. Marduk is not Baal, and Hathor is not Isis, and Ishtar is not Nabu—well, until they sort of are. The gods retain individuality, except when they don’t, which is what happens in certain relatively rare cases where they are collapsed into each other via a focus on just one high god in a move that is summodeistic, henotheistic, monolatrous, or monotheizing, if not fully monotheistic. Or it can happen in moments of god mergers, where formerly if not formally distinct gods are equated and identified thereafter.—Brent A. Strawn in Divine Doppelgängers: YHWH’s Ancient Look-Alikes, p. 151

The proof is in the dying

This long incarceration and final execution also wrote martyrdom into the church’s definition of leadership. Paul’s faithfulness and courage must have impressed if not chastened the other leaders of the early church. He had endured a great deal and then died for his Lord—more than most of them had yet done, although several would eventually join him. Paul’s martyrdom would have sealed the sincerity and power of his mission in his own blood. Moreover, it wrote the importance of being prepared to die into the church’s leadership manual. And embracing this narrative would prove crucial to the survival of the church during the centuries that followed (and it still does). Paul, like Jesus, modeled a willingness to die on behalf of God, which meant a willingness to face down charges and trials, to endure imprisonments, and to refuse to be frightened by death, all the while eschewing the weapons of the world.—Paul: An Apostle’s Journey, 176

Random question

Random question: What do you make of an essay where the only references are to works written by the author of the essay?

Does that raise questions in your mind? Should it?

One of the gang?

We might begin by saying first that, while YHWH is more than just one of the gang, YHWH is nevertheless and most certainly a part of the gang, at least to some degree and to some extent. To what degree precisely and to what extent exactly will vary from scholar to scholar and will depend on the nature of the data (texts and/or artifacts) at hand, but the general point is (or should be) uncontroversial. As Patrick D. Miller rightly asserts, YHWH is the most distinctive aspect of Israelite religion. But, with this point granted, it is important to note that the deity name YHWH appears to be attested outside and earlier than both the biblical material and Israelite epigraphic remains.—Brent A. Strawn in Divine Doppelgängers: YHWH’s Ancient Look-Alikes, p. 146

A block of wood, thinly sliced

It seems, then, that the words spoken in the past by God and now treasured up in a written form as Scripture, are not the words of God if they are not spoken again by God. Without the animation of the Spirit and the summons of Christ, they are just words that have been written down by human hands with pen and ink and parchment—treasured and valuable to be sure. They were the words of God, after all. However, words about God’s former wishes drawn from the handwritten texts that record them are sadly open to demonic exploitation unless God reiterates them overtly for us again. In particular, when Scripture says not to do something it makes a direct suggestion in that very moment about how to sin. The command not to covet as it is written in the Scriptures immediately suggests all sorts of sins—desire for a neighbor’s house, spouse, servants, donkey, ox, property, and much else besides.—Paul: An Apostle’s Journey, 156

Polemical? Maybe not

So, to take Ps 29 as an example, if Frank Moore Cross and those who have followed him are right, that psalm was originally one for a weather god who was not YHWH; for Cross, it was Balu. Now, maybe Cross and company are wrong, but assuming they are correct for the moment (even if only for sake of argument), Israelite reception of this “Baalistic” text need not be polemical in nature. The replacement of one god’s name with another’s is not polemic per se. It is, instead, a matter of reattribution or replacement, redaction or revi sion. Polemic would seem to require more than that, and perhaps a lot more: it needs explicit and contrarian tone over against another subject, which, in this particular case, is another deity. Barring that, Ps 29 looks more like a famous song that has been covered by another group on a different album from the original recording by the initial artists, rather than a protracted argument against the previous band that serves the primary if not sole function of making the new band look altogether better, completely unique, and entirely sui generis.—Brent A. Strawn in Divine Doppelgängers: YHWH’s Ancient Look-Alikes, pp. 144–45

"Yes, but" theology

[R]eligion is alive and well in the modern church. I sometimes call religious versions of Christianity “Jesus—but” theology. Any time someone says the name Jesus, thereby referencing what he does for us, and goes on to add the little word “but,” we are most likely in the presence of Christian religion, not the gospel, and this is, as religion always is, unsettling and destructive.—Paul: An Apostle’s Journey, 148

<idle musing> A. W. Tozer, in Pursuit of God talks about "God and" theology being the same thing. People say, "I want God and. . ." He argued (persuasively in my mind) that what they really mean is they don't want God.
</idle musing>

Too simplistic

If the first response was overly historicized, this second one is overly apologetic—too confessional even, and to the extreme—but unnecessarily so, or perhaps better, in ways that are just too simple, especially theologically, if not also historically. To take the latter point first, there is more than sufficient historical reason to deem a number of instances in the Bible as heavily and directly dependent on ANE antecedents in an appreciative, not solely contrarian way. One simply has to admit this point, and let the comparative “team” put some points on the board, as it were. How could it be otherwise? Why shouldn’t it be otherwise? Ancient Israel was, after all, part of the ancient world and located on a prime piece of real estate: an important crossroad between the superpowers to the south, north, east, and (later) west.—Brent A. Strawn in Divine Doppelgängers: YHWH’s Ancient Look-Alikes, p. 144 (emphasis original)

Why do you do it?

We do not behave in the right way because we covet or fear the final consequences of this in terms of going to heaven or being cast into hell. To behave in this way is a betrayal of our relationship with God. Reasoning in this fashion, we don’t care about God, and we don’t care about the good either. We are behaving selfishly, and if we behave correctly for this reason we still sin. We should behave in the right way because we love God and want to do what pleases him. He has shown us what the good thing to do is and we want to do the good thing to please him. Christian ethics is covenantal because it flows from personal relationships—our personal relationship with a loving God—and we must hang on to this, earnest religious ethicists notwithstanding.

In sum: to be covenantal is to be ethical in the deepest possible way. To be contractual, supposedly on ethical grounds, is to weaken ethics drastically. So I am going to stay covenantal and read Paul in that way too, not least because I think he was so ethical.—Paul: An Apostle’s Journey, 143

But, doesn't that mean…

Many people become anxious at the thought that God might be unconditionally and permanently committed to us in love—strange but true. They worry that people will take God for a ride and misbehave. If we are permanently in God’s good books, then why would we want to do the right thing and respond to him and to others as we should, sometimes in costly actions of kindness? The concern here, in other words, is ethical. Does this understanding of God undercut ethics? Will we stop behaving well because we are under the gaze of a covenantal God? This was probably the concern that Paul’s Enemies had.

I understand these concerns, but they are the absolute opposite of the truth. A covenantal relationship exerts the strongest possible ethical pressure on its partners. Abandoning a covenant, conversely, and structuring relationships with a contract, relaxes those pressures and allows unethical behavior in all sorts of ways. It is, paradoxically, religion that is unethical!—Paul: An Apostle’s Journey, 141

The differences

[T]he data presently available must be reckoned with, and this includes the material from the OT, which, despite its distinction from texts recovered directly from the dirt and its more “traditioned” nature, still counts as evidence, and thus has to be taken into thorough consideration in any sort of discussion of YHWH. To put the matter mildly, the profile of YHWH found in this corpus—quite apart from its particular problems or irregularities—outpaces every other ancient Semitic god we know, in quantity alone if not also in quality. There are similarities, to be sure, among YHWH, Chemosh, Marduk, and their other divine friends, but differences are also manifest—again in quantity alone, if not also quality. Simply put, we know a whole lot more about YHWH’s “interior life” than we do about Balu’s. The differences between YHWH and the gods that are apparent at this juncture (and not only here) highlight the inadequacy of this first, overly-similar response (over-similarity), even as they also lead directly to the second unhelpful perspective.—Brent A. Strawn in Divine Doppelgängers: YHWH’s Ancient Look-Alikes, p. 143

Love? Or Justice? Covenant or Contract?

If God relates to us conditionally, through a contract, in a religious way, then God no longer loves us. We must be talking about another sort of God. Certainly we are not talking about the God who is definitively revealed by Jesus.

Love is not conditional. We have just seen this when we talked about healthy families and deep friendships. Love is irrevocable. It is unconditional. It never gives up, never lets go. If we introduce conditions into our relationships with people then we only love them if they fulfill those conditions. If they break those conditions we stop loving them. If God only loves us when we fulfill certain conditions then God has to be conditioned into loving us, and this is quite a limited situation. God’s fundamental attitude toward us—to which he will immediately return if the right conditions are not fulfilled—is something different from love, and is presumably just. This is, moreover, how God relates to most people since most people in history have not been members of the church. Now justice is okay, but it can be very harsh, and it certainly isn’t love; and love based on the fulfillment of certain conditions isn’t love either. I am not a husband or a parent who loves his family because my spouse and my children fulfill certain conditions. Our relationships are not based on contracts or justice. My family can do nothing to break this relationship. It is a covenant, not a contract, and God is just the same. Love is higher than justice as the heavens are higher than the earth.—Paul: An Apostle’s Journey, 140–41

<idle musing>
It boils down to this: Is love an attribute of God? Or is love who God is in essence? If an attribute, then God isn't love; God chooses to love some and not others. If that is true, then god is capricious and not worthy of love. Such a god is worthy of fear and probably worship, but not love.

Personally, I believe the scriptures teach that God is love. It is who God is, not a mere attribute like justice or power.

Just an
</idle musing>

An inadequate response

The first inadequate response is to posit YHWH as just one of the ANE “gang,” no more and no less. In this perspective, YHWH looks like “Chemosh and Com- pany” (and vice versa) simply because he is, like them, a deity from ancient southwestern Asia, and that’s just the way things were back then and over there. Strong and extensive family resemblances between the various Semitic gods exist, therefore, because these deities are of a piece geographically and chronologically, at the very least, in the same way that Norse gods or Greek gods are of a piece and, as such, not of a piece with the other types or with the Semitic variety. We can, of course, parse the gang out more finely: YHWH is not just Semitic, he is southern Levantine and also strongly northwest Semitic. And so it is that he looks a whole lot like Ugaritic Ilu and Balu, but also like Moabite Chemosh and Edomite Qaus, and maybe Ammonite Milkom to boot. Insofar as YHWH controls the storm, he favors that specific branch of the divine family tree, which includes Balu but also others, especially as one moves further north into Hatti and eastward into Mesopotamia. Insofar as YHWH is sometimes said to come from desert climes, he reveals his relationship to other family members; as a god of the mountains, he favors still others. Maybe even YHWH’s seriously depopulated pantheon—the fact that he often appears to be an austere bachelor mountain god—is further evidence of his affinity to certain regional subgroups.—Brent A. Strawn in Divine Doppelgängers: YHWH’s Ancient Look-Alikes, pp. 141–42

<idle musing>
As he said, an inadequate response. I would say a lazy response—and reductive. But, in the early part of the 20th century that type of research was rampant via the history of religions approach. The approach has merit, but at that time some of the caveats we now have weren't in place. For an example, read James Frazer's Golden Bough. It's great fun to read—as long as you realize that a serious reductionism is going on. The same with most of Joseph Campbell's stuff, and to a large extent Mircea Eliade, as well. Fun stuff to read and provocative thinking. But usually wrong.

Just an
</idle musing&gr;