Confusing Eschatology

The vlog below is very well presented. The speaker has a good grasp of Jewish eschatological expectations as well as Christian eschatology. His presentation likely finds allies in ‘former’ Christians, those acquainted with and/or adhering to orthodox Jewish beliefs, and those generally opposed to Christianity.

His basic premise is that the split nature of Christian eschatology, specifically the ‘already’ (inaugurated eschatology) and the ‘not yet’ (future eschatology)—which is at odds with Jewish expectations—was a Christian invention in the wake of Jesus’ death. In accordance with this view, he thinks the New Testament writers fabricated Jesus’ resurrection as a means by which to alleviate the supposed cognitive dissonance resulting from His Crucifixion. Furthermore, he claims that the 2000 year gap between Jesus’ first century appearance in flesh and the Second Coming makes such a split view of eschatology even more untenable.

There are many ways to counter his views; however, given that he does not affirm the NT writings as (in any way?) authentic, the argument would be unable to properly proceed. Yet, there are a number of Old Testament passages one could point to, the first of which I think should be Isaiah 53. Surely, if this is describing the Messiah, and yet Jewish expectations include a Messianic reign, then the Resurrection must implicitly be part of the plan. Motyer lays out Isaiah’s implied resurrection in 53:10–12 succinctly:

Isaiah does not use the word ‘resurrection’ but these verses display the Servant ‘alive after suffering’ (Acts 1:3). Not, however, alive in the Old Testament sense that the dead possess in the half-life of Sheol  [ED: cf. Luke 16:19–31] . . . The dead (9) is alive (10), the condemned (8) is righteous (11), the helpless (7) is the Victor (12).¹

The way the vlogger chooses to discount the split aspect of Christian eschatology, though, is problematic. In tune with his confirmation bias, he posits a false analogy. He uses failed ‘prophecy’ in the form of Second Coming predictions—even though such predictions violate the Scriptures Christian orthodoxy accepts—to ‘prove’ how Christians use Cognitive Dissonance Theory (CDT) to resolve such failed prophecy.

He uses the Millerites and Seventh Day Adventism as his example, in which the failed date-setting is salvaged via a ‘spiritualized’ fulfillment, while the Second Coming remains yet future. He then implicitly equates this to the Resurrection and its attendant eschatology, suggesting that first century Christians supposedly used similar CDT in order to relieve their dissonance following Jesus’ Crucifixion.

My point in posting this is to show merely one way a person can try to cast doubt on the truths contained in Scripture. It’s all about one’s presuppositions.

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¹ J. Alec Motyer, Isaiah: An Introduction and Commentary, Tyndale Old Testament Commentary [TOTC], (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2009 [1999]), p 381 (I Capitalized “Victor”).

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Related:

Creating Straw Men from Cognitive Dissonance

Keener Faith

This is a fantastic account of faith in action! I don’t wish to dilute its strength, so I’ll let Craig Keener tell it in his own words in less than two minutes:

Oh, if I could have that kind of faith and that kind of outcome!

Part of the reason I’m posting this—and I’m a bit uncomfortable stating the following—is that four different individuals have assumed that I (Craig, the writer here at CrossWise) am Craig Keener. In a way, I suppose I should take that as a compliment, for he is a scholar whom I greatly respect. (One particular insight of Keener’s was integral to help support my case in this article on Pilate’s inscription above Jesus’s cross.) But in another way I have a feeling that I’ve somehow misrepresented myself, giving readers here the wrong impression. I’m not sure how, for that was never my intention. Quite simply, I wish to retain a certain amount of anonymity. That’s all. With all this in mind, I’ve made a very small change to my CONTACT tab, adding the phrase “a self-studying layman”. To be completely clear, I have no formal seminary education or theological training. And I state nowhere on this site anything to support anything of the sort. I’m just a (kinda) regular guy on a journey seeking Christian truth—wherever that leads.

I do find this mistaken identity a bit curious though. For, besides Keener, there are other Christian scholars sharing the same first name, such as Craig A. Evans (check out his layman-friendly Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels), Craig R. Koester (see, e.g., Symbolism in the Fourth Gospel: Meaning, Mystery, Community), and Craig L. Blomberg (see, e.g., A Handbook of New Testament Exegesis).

In any case, I’ll direct you to Keener’s blog. I appreciate not just his work, but his brand of off-beat humor, as exemplified by this cartoon for a new illustrative Bible glossary.

Independent Thoughts

Just now as I was perusing Greek professor Dr. David Alan Black’s unblog, I was struck by the following from his Friday, July 31 entry:

As I was riding along a thought had been forming in my subconscious mind and now I let it surface and examined it. One of the things I really want to emphasize in my classes this year is independent thinking. Tell me, do you have a mind of your own so that you reach your own mature, Christian convictions? Or are you like the persons described in Ephesians 4 who are tossed unsteadily about by the strange doctrines of others and whose opinion is always that of the last person they spoke to or the last book they read? You don’t know what you believe or why you believe what you do believe. I strongly believe that all of us need to develop a holy discontentment with the ecclesiastical status quo (bold added).

Amen! This idea was one of the thoughts undergirding yesterday’s Consider the Source post.

For Black’s thoughts on what a New Testament ‘church’ (ekklēsia) should look like, see his booklet Seven Marks of a New Testament Church: A Guide for Christians of All Ages.

Continuing Black’s words:

Most of us are too conservative, too complacent, too content to parrot what others are saying. We are content with our church practices and polities even when there is no scriptural support for them. The end result is a dull, mindless, conformity. But Paul teaches that the church should be constantly growing into maturity in Christ. I don’t know the way through to the other side on this one, folks, but I do know that I don’t want to be ruled by ravenous groupthink anymore. Full life is lived when we have a personal encounter with the living God through his word, and when the mind and heart work together to discover and practice the truth. Coming back to a tired old cliché, less is more. Less commentaries, more Bible. Less podcasts, more listening to the Holy Spirit. In my life, I’m a more kind of guy, and I struggle with making this transition. But if I don’t make it, how can I turn around and ask my students to do the same? It would be a dreadful thing to be deluded in this matter — to think that we are pleasing God with our minds when we are not. The only way to avoid this error is to find out what God wants by turning to his word, the Bible. This is what I will doing in my four classes this fall, and my five in the spring. Holy discontentment will be an emphasis in my teaching this year because I am concerned that much of our thinking about the church is confused and often unbiblical. Don’t take my word for it. Make up your own mind to study the Scriptures to see what God says about this important subject! (bold added for my emphasis)

It’s as if he took the thoughts right out of my head and filtered them through his own experiences!

I’ve long been frustrated with the way ‘church’ has become a “dull, mindless, conformity”. Where’s the true vibrancy of Christian fellowship? It’s too often a Sunday-only thing, with the rest of the week consumed by secular concerns. Bible study? That’s many times relegated to whatever time is left after all other ‘obligations’. And, of course, that typically means no time at all.

I differ a little bit, though, as I do enjoy reading commentaries for points of view I’d not considered. Or points of view that are not commonly promoted. In a post I’ve been working on for a while (taking MUCH longer than I’d anticipated!), after wrestling with the Greek text, I turned to a few commentaries for clarification on matters. Most, of course, parrot the same line; but, there were a few with some different lines of enquiry. Now, that gets me thinking! It doesn’t mean they are right, and there are times when I’ll reject a particular line of thought. But there are other times when the insights of the writer provide astute illumination to the text. In response, my heart and spirit overflow with joy: “Yes!” How wondrous is his word!

Yet, I constantly struggle with this thought: Am I reading/studying/thinking for my own intellectual curiosity, or is there a higher purpose? Am I pleasing God or myself—or both? I hope it’s both.

Consider the Source

You’ve undoubtedly come across the statement “consider the source.” Wise words, if meant to induce you to consider the biases of a speaker or writer before reaching any conclusions on the material.

But it is unwise to categorically reject material simply because its originator has statements you disagree with. It is equally unwise to categorically accept material simply because its originator has statements you agree with. Both are examples of the genetic fallacy, a logical fallacy in which a particular work is either uncritically accepted or uncritically rejected based solely on its origin, its genesis.

The wholesale acceptance of all claims by a trusted source, and/or the wholesale rejection of all claims by an untrusted source, can stunt intellectual growth. Just because a source is right in one area, does not mean the source is right in all areas. Conversely, just because a source is wrong in one area, does not mean the source is wrong in all areas.

Any claim should be judged on its own merits, regardless of source. If you know the biases of the speaker/writer, you may be able to more critically review the claim for these sorts of biases. Such informed critique may find the claim either true or false, mostly true or mostly false, etc.

An example may help you recognize this fallacy and perceive the possible ramifications for falling prey to it.

I have seen websites explicitly forbidding the excellent resource A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd Edition (usually abbreviated BDAG), simply because the lexicon is based on an earlier one by Walter Bauer. The reasoning? Bauer also authored the controversial Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity.

In it, Bauer theorized there were competing ‘Christianities’ in the first and second centuries. Christianity as we know it today won out. All other losing beliefs were actively suppressed or eradicated by the victor. A sort of ‘might makes right’ theological battle. Bauer purports that the resulting Christian belief of today is different from that of Jesus and the Apostles.

But Andreas J. Köstenberger and Michael J. Kruger ably refute this theory in their The Heresy of Orthodoxy: How Contemporary Culture’s Fascination with Diversity Has Reshaped Our Understanding of Early Christianity. Yet this doesn’t necessarily mean that the lexicon based on Bauer’s original is similarly defective (or that Bauer’s German language original itself is defective). In the Foreword to the Köstenberger and Kruger book, I. Howard Marshall makes this point very well, defending Bauer’s lexicon:

Old heresies and arguments against Christianity have a habit of reappearing long after they have been thought dead…When this happens, they need fresh examination to save a new generation of readers from being taken in by them.

Such is the case with the thesis of the German lexicographer Walter Bauer, who single-handedly read the entire corpus of ancient Greek literature in order to produce his magnificent Lexicon to the New Testament. Its worth is entirely independent of the fact that its compiler was in some respects a radical critic who claimed on the basis of his researches into second-century Christianity that there was no common set of “orthodox” beliefs in the various Christian centers but rather a set of disparate theologies, out of which the strongest (associated with Rome) assumed the dominant position and portrayed itself as true, or “orthodox.”[1]

One faulty book and one excellent resource by the same author! Marshall illustrates how not to fall prey to the genetic fallacy.

Let’s all endeavor to fairly evaluate material that comes our way. Yes, consider the source. Don’t categorically accept or reject it. Assess a claim by a particular source with a critical eye on known biases for evidence of such. Evaluate each individual claim on its own merits.

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[1] Andreas J. Köstenberger and Michael J. Kruger, The Heresy of Orthodoxy: How Contemporary Culture’s Fascination with Diversity Has Reshaped Our Understanding of Early Christianity (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2010), p 11. Bold added for emphasis.

Booklet Review: English Grammar for Language Students, by Frank X. Braun

[©1947 Frank X. Braun, Ph.D., Edwards Brothers Publishing, distributed by Ulrich’s Books Inc., Ann Arbor, MI, 23 pages]

Excellent English grammar refresher for language students

Dr. Braun’s concise 23-page booklet is great for those who need a refresher course in the various terms and concepts of English grammar. As Braun states in the preface: “It is the aim of this booklet to assist the student of foreign languages in the review of those basic terms of English grammar the knowledge of which the authors of many introductory texts to foreign languages take for granted.” The terms are in alphabetical order and each concept is illustrated by at least one example.

So, in case you no longer recognize your dative from your accusative, Braun’s booklet can assist you in correctly identifying and declining the object you desire and with concurring verbal agreement.