God's Knowledge Bowl

Pagans 3––Saints 0

The pagans of this world, God’s world, exist in a paradoxical relationship with the saints of the Old Testament, New Testament, and modern times. On occasion, far too rarely, the saints of God, the saved, the elect, act like they are suppose to and truly outshine the pagans of the world, which they are suppose to do all the time.  But the scorecard of the saints in this regard is not impressive and is unlikely to change since many current “Christian leaders” that possess the pulpits and TV ministries of the USA only ridicule the idea that God might remember, by name, those who deserted their posts in his service and failed to show up for his work in this world.  Moreover, since the conviction of the early Protestant Reformers about the necessity of transformed lives has often been lost on their later namesakes, the poor performance of the elect often goes unnoticed or, if observed, swept under the carpet.

It is really pretty simple to highlight the pervasiveness of egregious sin in the current Christian community, it is like the idiomatic “shooting fish in a barrel.”  In this post, however, I want to point out a few episodes where the Lord himself tells the elect that their pagan neighbors sometimes score higher on the “RQ” (Religious Quotient) exam than the saints do.  Of course IQ (Intelligence Quotient), EQ (Emotional Quotient), and SQ (Social Quotient) can be very important, but they are all mere rubbish if the saints cannot first pass the RQ exam.

Question 01            Should a religion keep changing the god/s it worships?

Pagans answer-No, how stupid would that be!! (Jer. 2:9-12)

Saints answer–Yes, if it is politically helpful or you lack courage as a nation.

Correct Answer NO!                        Pagans 1; Saints 0

Question 02 Should a religious community allow sexual perversion like incest?

Pagan answer-No, even we pagans know better than that!!  (1 Cor. 5:1)

Saints answer-Well, maybe; sure, why not? Yes.

Correct Answer NO!                        Pagans 2; Saints 0

Question 03 Should Christians ever tell the truth about how corrupt the surrounding culture is?

Pagan answer-Yes, if your fellow citizens are “liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons,” then it is fine to say so occasionally. (Titus 1:12)

Saints answer-No! What kind of backward, intolerant, misanthrope are you? You trying to run off ever possible visitor for the next 5 years? NO!

Correct Answer YES!           Pagans 3; Saints 0

       Let me leave you with a RQ challenge from the pagan world in which John lived.  The famous Roman philosopher Seneca has been a favorite Roman philospher for many later Christian authors and theologians.  John Calvin, for example, wrote his first published book on Seneca’s work entitled De Clementia rather than on a book of the Bible.  In a letter to a friend who was a Roman governor Seneca warns about how desensitized and cruel one can become by watching activities that promote such.  Seneca becomes transparent and admits how unhealthy his thinking becomes after visiting the arena during gladiator combat.  In Letter 7 to his friend Lucilius Junior he writes,

But nothing is so damaging to good character as the habit of lounging at the games; for then it is that vice steals subtly upon one through the avenue of pleasure.  What do you think I mean? I mean that I come home more greedy, more ambitious, more voluptuous, and even more cruel and inhuman . . . .

       Hardly a surprise that Seneca feels this way when he sits with others at the games who enjoy the murder and cruelty.  While humans are being butchered, they shout,

"Kill him!  Lash him!  Burn him; Why does he meet the sword in so cowardly a way?  Why does he strike so feebly? . . .  Whip him to meet his wounds!  Let them receive blow for blow, with chests bare and exposed to the stroke!"

And when the games stop for the intermission, Seneca continues, they announce: "A little throatcutting in the meantime, so that there may still be something going on!"

       Compared to some contemporary believers whose TV and movie diets expose them to every conceivable evil, inhumanity, and perversion on the planet, Seneca’s aversion to viewing brutality might just give him a higher RQ score than some modern Christians would get.

Xenophobia and Anti-Christian Pogroms

            Ancient Roman sources, some written before the traditional date of Revelation and some written after it, provide very helpful social and legal observations that shed indirect light on the conundrum of the perennial hostility of various cultures toward the followers of Christ.  One could quote the Gospel of John where Jesus states, “If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you” (John 15:18), but that still leaves a lot of questions unanswered regarding the reasons that people were hostile to Christians.  One of the factors in the complexity of the issue is that the animosities against Christianity are rarely homogenous; they varied from generation to generation, from culture to culture, and from locale to locale.  Moreover, if the public face of Christianity varied, then so could the responses to it.  A modern example demonstrates how different the public face of Christianity could be even within similar locations.  Within less than a half-century and within the same American State, two colleges associated with Churches of Christ existed, one (Cordell College, Cordell, Oklahoma) known for anti-Americanism during World War One and the other (Oklahoma Christian College, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma) known for strong ties to conservative Americanism.  Some Christians associated with Cordell College were persecuted/imprisoned during World War One for their pacifism, which would not have happened to anyone associated with more nationalistically oriented Churches of Christ Colleges.

However, the diversity of the charges against Christians differed not only because followers of Christ differed, but also because their critics differed.  A Christian author named Marcus Minucius Felix, probably of the late second or early third centuries AD, had to refute charges that followers of Christ were cannibals, or practiced incest since they called one another “brother and sister.”  The anti-Christian slur from Caecilius Natalis, the pagan detractor that Minucius Felix addresses, that Christianity is a “religion of [sexual] lust” is beyond the pale of belief, unless one wants to believe that same charge when it is made against ancient Jews by anti-Semitic Roman authors. 

I want now to focus on one particular kind of criticism of early Christianity, namely that it was seditious and a threat to Roman national security.  At Thessalonica (Acts 17:1-9), for example, fanatical anti-Christians brought political charges against the Christian mission on the basis of accusations whose accuracy (from a Christian perspective) would make a tabloid paper look like the Encyclopedia Britannica. 

“ . . . a mob formed and started a riot in the city. They rushed to Jason’s house in search of Paul and Silas in order to bring them out to the crowd.  But when they did not find them, they dragged Jason and some other brothers before the city officials, shouting: ‘These men who have caused trouble all over the world have now come here, and Jason has welcomed them into his house. They are all defying Caesar’s decrees, saying that there is another king, one called Jesus.’  When they heard this, the crowd and the city officials were thrown into turmoil” (Acts 17:5-8). 

At one level, this slander brought against the Pauline mission in Thessalonica presupposed that a group of Jewish Christians in pagan Macedonia were actually going to try to make a fellow Jew named “Jesus” the Roman Emperor?  Really? 

Light can be shed on this episode from what is known about the Emperor Cult as well as local patriotism in the early Roman world.  Until about forty years or so ago it was very common to hear ancient historians and New Testament scholars characterize emperor worship in the early empire as a dry, perfunctory, religious duty, devoid of any true devotion or personal loyalty to the emperor and his family.  This older view has now largely been overthrown.  This reversal of understanding arose from the discovery of more inscriptions and papyri, better understanding of imperial temples in urban landscapes, and less “monotheistic” assumptions about emperor worship.”

Based upon the major work left to us by the Roman Emperor Augustus (Res Gestae Divi Augusti, The Achievements of the Divine Augustus), we know that cities and provinces regularly took an oath of allegiance to the emperor and his family.  One such “pledge of allegiance” was discovered in central Turkey, dating from the year 3 BC.  Those inhabitants of Paphlagonia swear in the presence of “Zeus, Earth, Sun, all the gods and goddesses, and Augustus himself” to make decisions about friends and enemies based upon someone’s attitude toward the Roman Emperor and his family.  Moreover, this loyalty to the emperor continues “all the time of my life,” and it is so comprehensive that it includes one’s “word and deed and thought.”  According to this pledge, a loyal subject is to report not only possible actions against the emperor, but even words that are spoken against the emperor and his family.

This emotive oath include words of self-condemnation if the oath taker fails to uphold the obligations of loyalty mentioned in the oath.  It is stated in these powerful terms of devotion, “I pray that there may come upon myself, my body and soul and life, my children and all my family and whatever is of use to us, destruction, total destruction till the end of all my line and off all my descendants.”  It is little wonder, then, that such xenophobia and hysteria occurs in some locations when early Christian evangelists proclaimed that Jesus is Lord or King, terms also used to designate the Roman Emperor.

Link to English translation of Greek oath of allegiance

http://faculty.fairfield.edu/rosivach/hi222/augustus-oath.htm

Magical Language in John’s Revelation

            In my judgment one is better prepared to appreciate parts of Revelation if he has been exposed to The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis.  When a believer is exposed to The Chronicles of Narnia he knows immediately that he stands in the presence of the truest story of all stories, the “deepest magic” that exists.  Narnia doesn’t need to be allegorized, de-mythologized, or particularized, it just needs to be told and experienced. Similarly, there is a profound depth to the magical language found by Revelation.

I suspect that the prophet John would be aghast if he were to see how the truth and magic of some of his scenes were dismantled and cast off by later literalists who had no sense, or at least no sense of the reality of the imaginative and magical depictions given by John.  How could anyone familiar with the imaginative narratives and visions used by certain prophets of the Old Testament, such as Isaiah, Ezekiel, Joel, and Amos, anticipate any less from the prophet John? 

John’s scenes of the “four living creatures” who reside in the vicinity of God’s throne is a case in point.  With total disregard for the details of accuracy, John tells a truth that does not rely upon literalism, and he understands that attempts at harmonization are more than inappropriate; they would be detrimental.  John mentions the “four living creatures” in Revelation chapters four, five, six, seven, fourteen, fifteen, and nineteen, and almost all interpreters of this material believe that John’s imagery stems from Ezekiel chapter one.  Unless the “four living creatures” of Ezekiel chapter one have died off and been replaced by an evolved species, then there really is no easy way to harmonize their descriptions in Ezekiel and Revelation.

If I can rather easily see that in Ezekiel chapter one each of the four living creatures had four faces, for a total of sixteen faces, while in Revelation each of the four living creatures had only one face each, for a total of four faces, then I am confident that ancient Jewish and Christian believers could see the same.  John clearly was not so bereft of  math skills that he could not see this noticeable difference. 

In the prophetic imagination given to John (Rev. 1:1), these types of scenes are arrayed in Revelation to capture the heart, mind, and soul of believers.  Those early Asian believers that John addresses, who face hostilities and perhaps death, are surely more energized by a tableau from the unseen world than by a rigidity of thought that smothers all reliance upon the deeper magic of John’s visions. The magical realities of these scenes of prophetic imagination sweep away the feeble efforts of  those with little or no respect for the truths contained in prophetic imagination, an imagination that employs a spiritual dialect that easily converses with the profound magic of John’s Revelation.

I will end as I began, with a quotation from C. S. Lewis (provided to me by a friend and student of C. S. Lewis, Corey Latta).  On the whole topic of the need for discourse about God and his truth to be expressed both in literal and imaginary language (cf. Letters to Malcolm 21) Lewis wrote, “The whole subject [of theology and God and feelings] was associated with lowered voices; almost as if it were something medical.  But supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday school associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency?  Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons? I thought one could” (Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What's to Be Said).

GRANT

Graeco-Roman Antiquities & the New Testament

THE TREE OF LIFE

            John’s teachings about the tree of life clearly play an important role in his prophecies.  The main reason for its importance stems from its association with the New Heaven and New Earth in chapters 21-22.  There it is portrayed as part of the eternal blessing for those found faithful in their following of the lamb.  As is often true with blessing promised by God to the elect, egregious sin can lead to the forfeiture of those blessings; in this blessing of the tree of life, the same is true.  The reader of Revelation is told that those who overcome have “a right to the tree of life” and entrance into the eternal city (Rev. 22:14).  In the same chapter, however, John recognizes that there is the possibility that “God will take away” a believer’s “share in the tree of life” for denial of the faith (Rev. 22).

Ancient Near East Tree of Life

              This vibrant imagery of the tree of life is found in the Jewish Scriptures on which so many of John’s messages stand.  Of course the story of Eden with its two named trees is the ultimate sources of this imagery in Scripture, “the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (Gen. 2:9).  The  profoundly special nature of the tree of life is reflected in the following words toward the end of the Garden of Eden narrative when God said, "The Man has become like one of us, capable of knowing everything, ranging from good to evil. What if he now should reach out and take fruit from the Tree-of-Life and eat, and live forever? Never—this cannot happen!" So God expelled them from the Garden of Eden and sent them to work the ground, the same dirt out of which they'd been made. He threw them out of the garden and stationed angel-cherubim and a revolving sword of fire east of it, guarding the path to the Tree-of-Life (Gen. 3:22-24, The Message).

Ancient Near East Tree of Life

Ancient Near East Tree of Life

            Much like earlier Jewish theology (Ezek. 47) John remembers the association of the tree of life (and the water of life) with being in the presence of God. Ezekiel already knew that the magical quality of the water and the trees that he describes have their origin in the presence of God, “because their water flows from the sanctuary” (Ezek. 47:12b).  And even though the imagery given in Revelation 22 has been altered and expanded in some ways, there is little doubt that Revelation relies upon both Gen. 2-3 and Ezekiel 47 for its theology of the tree of life.

Divine being taking care
of the tree of life

Tree of life in Ancient Near East

            Given the historical setting of Ezekiel in a foreign land and the fact that the long period before that was characterized by syncretism among both Israelites and Judeans, it is not unnatural to ask about the historical setting in which the exilic prophet Ezekiel wrote. What one discovers is that nations of the Ancient Near East also had traditions about sacred trees, trees of life.  This clearly suggests that Israel’s theology about the tree of life took place in a context where other cultures also depicted sacred trees.  This reality does not “prove” that Israel’s understanding of the tree of life was borrowed from anyone else, but it does suggest at the least that the belief in the sacred tree was part of the religious lingua franca of both Israel and the Ancient Near East.  It is suggested by archaeologist and historians that these photos represent sacred trees/trees of life from ancient Assyria.  Examples of these “trees of life” can be seen today in the museums of Turkey, the USA, Russia, and Germany. 

THE BLOG IS BACK

I had  to spend  many  hours in the  past few

weeks completing  my manuscript on the book

about the letters to the 7 churches in Revelation.

It is at the publisher and should appear in a few months.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE IN MY ABSENCE!

WHY IS JESUS WORTHY?

I suppose that this question has more than one answer.  It is clear that John the prophet embraces the conviction that the Messiah Jesus is worthy. One of the best known and favorite perspectives on this topic is given in Revelation 5:12 where John relates Jesus’ worthiness to the fact that he was slain to redeem humankind: “Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” (Rev. 5:12).  Believers are probably attracted to this perspective because it reminds them of Christ’s sacrificial death and bloodshed on their behalf.

In our enthusiasm for this popular interpretation of Christ’s worthiness there is a related idea given by John that has sometimes been overlooked.  In Rev. 5:9 John writes, “You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.” There are really two points in this verse; there is the traditional understanding focused upon Jesus’ vicarious death and secondly Jesus’ worthiness because of the global consequences of his death for the Christian mission.  In making this second point John tries to move the readers beyond two typical misunderstandings. The first of these tendencies is one that hides and secludes salvation from others because of feelings of nationalism or ethnocentrism.  The second misconception that John’s teaching combats is the idea that converts to Christianity are there to bolster the agenda, needs, programs, and budget of the church.  John’s emphasis is upon the fact that Christ’s role in the first instance is to purchase man and women “for God.”  The church never owns Christian converts; their only rightful owner is God.

It has been easy for a complacent church at times to laud, magnify, and praise Christ for his redemptive work on the cross, but manifest less enthusiastic about a commitment to the style of globalism in missions contained in the words “from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Rev. 5:9b).  One does not need to have advanced theological training, or even know Greek and Hebrew, to realize the necessary connection in the heart of God between a believer’s embracing the personal benefits of salvation and then showing a commitment to the globalization of those benefits.

Living in an empire such as Rome’s, a believer would clearer and frequently see the signs of Roman colonialism in Roman artwork recorded on coins, in statues, and on major monuments.  Christians knew they lived in an Empire that controlled the lands and seas between the rivers Thames and Tigris.  When Rome thought of “tribes and languages and peoples and nations” they imagined more areas to conquer, to dominate, and to exploit for their resources, both human and material resources.  It was difficult in antiquity to surpass Rome’s activity in human trafficking.  John the prophet, in contradistinction to the prevailing regime, saw “every tribe and language and people and nation” as parts of God’s alienated, but beloved, creation, longing for a partial redemption in the present, and a complete restoration and redemption in the New Heaven and New Earth (Rev. 21-22).

GRANT

Graeco-Roman Antiquities & the New Testament

“Try a Little Kindness”

There were a lot of attributes of primitive Christianity that produced consternation and dismay among its onlookers.  This includes the early church’s insistence upon kindness, gentleness, and tenderheartedness.  Those early followers of Christ recognized that these virtues were incontrovertibly part of the message of God’s kingdom, to a degree that has been forgotten in the modern western church.  We modern western Christians, at our very best, would be uncertain if and why they should choose tenderheart over Braveheart.  In our workaday existence we would often prefer the excitement and adventures of a brutal, concupiscent, and deceitful gigolo rather than a tale that promotes kindness or tenderheartedness.

American popular culture has one foot firmly planted in the church of North America, and it has desensitized followers of Christ to gratuitous violence and the harsh mistreatment of others.  There are perhaps still some plots and scenes in TV or movies that would cause believers to flinch or blanch, but typically violence and cruelty produce kudos and applause.  Biblically conservative Christians in America are often known for their participation in the “culture wars.”  It is sin of incalculable significance that these modern “culture warriors” have neglected the weightier matters of Christian virtues, such as kindness, gentleness, and tenderheartedness (e.g., Hos. 2:14; 11:8; Eph. 4:31-32; 5:29; 1 Pet. 3:8; Matt. 11:29; Gal. 5:23; Eph. 4:2, 31-32; Phil. 4:5; 1 Tim. 3:3; 2 Tim. 2:25; 1 Pet. 3:4, 8, 15-16; NRSV).

Flavian Colosseum in Rome, with moon.
Wikimedia, Creative Commons.

When we 21^st century Christians in the democratic West muse and ruminate about the contrast between the Christian virtues of kindness and tenderheartedness and the rule of brute force in Rome, it would be a mistake to imagine that brute force was only on display in the capital of Rome or in places like the famous Flavian Colosseum in Rome.

A few decades ago an important Latin inscription was discovered in a town in southern Italy.  For our purposes the importance of this 1^st century AD inscription is the casual way in which it described extreme violence and execution.  It talked about the prerogatives of slave owners to summarily crucify their male or female slaves, what supplies the provider of crucifixions had to bring to the event, and the details of dragging the bloody corpse through the city to the place of disposal.  This Roman inscription was not found at the Colosseum in Rome, or in the graveyard of ancient gladiators, or the dumpsite for bodies of nefarious criminals.  In prosaic words this stone revealed some  of the most brutal and inhumane treatment of another human being imaginable; this display could occur in a normal day’s activities.  In what many have regarded as an advanced civilization, the men and women and boys and girls of Rome were sated and jaded with scenes of brutality, bloody flesh, and excoriated corpses.

Both believers and non-believers recognized that the Pax Romana was neither established nor held together by ideals such as tenderheartedness and kindness.  These early Christians knew, nevertheless, that such ideals and virtues had been spoken and lived out by Jesus, the ruler of God’s kingdom.  Such teaching flowed from the pens of Apostles, and from the lips of early Christian prophets, teachers, and martyrs.  Most importantly, the followers of the Lamb in John’s congregations knew that Jesus himself had been slain, without retaliation or resistance, and that the followers of the Lamb should not resist either: “If anyone is to go into captivity, into captivity he will go. If anyone is to be killed with the sword, with the sword he will be killed. This calls for patient endurance and faithfulness on the part of the saints” (Rev. 13:10, NIV).

Take a survey of your own life and values and those in the culture surrounding you.  When given the opportunity [and it will be given to you daily] , do you take your stand with the kingdom values of kindness, gentleness, and tenderheartedness or do you prefer their antonyms?

A VOICE AMONG THE NATIONS

The next post on this blog will return to the book of Revelation and the blog's regular format.  I wanted to pause at this point to acknowledge my appreciation to all those who have viewed this blog regularly and have found it helpful.  With this long list of nationalities below from which the readers of this blog come, it should be clear that the readership is more than family, friends, and former students.  I do participate in distance education where I teach [Harding School of Theology], but even that would not have enabled me to have taught so many students in distant nations.  As the number of page views approaches 9,000 [since September 2011], I hope that the ideas and themes found on this blog have been true to Scripture as well as relevant to God's people throughout the world.  If you have found this blog to be helpful, I hope you will share its URL with others.

With Blessings,

Richard Oster