Rev Dr Ian Paul's www.psephizo.com blog

• 28/06/2011 Matthew, mission (and Muslims?) article here
  Jesus’ ‘parable’ of the sheep and the goats in Matt 25.31–46 is very well known and widely misinterpreted. It forms one part of the extended teaching about ‘the end’ distinctive to Matthew (compared with Mark and Luke). It is most commonly interpreted as an injunction to help the poor; most Christians (in the West at least) read this more or less as the sheep being Christians, the goats being non-Christians, and ‘the least of these my brothers [and sisters] being the poor in general.
  I thought this too, until I had to read this in the context of the all-age part of our main service about 15 years ago. It is quite a long reading, so I was worried that the children and young people would get bored. But then it occurred to me: in the gospels, no-one ever tells Jesus that he is getting a bit boring. What is it we do to Bible reading which makes it boring?! So I decided on Saturday night to learn it and recite it by heart. (I can still recite it word for word 15 years later.) The effect was electric, and particularly memorable for those sitting on my left…and it made me change my mind about the meaning of the parable, which is a good argument for learning Scripture.
  
  Firstly, as Dick France points out in his commentaries, Matthew never has Jesus refer to his ‘brothers’ or sisters as anyone other than those who do the will of God by becoming his followers. This is particularly clear in Matt 12.49, when Jesus is rather radically proposing that his new family are the disciples gathered around him (which of course includes women).
  Secondly, Jesus is clear that to follow him means to be homeless; in reply to a teacher of the law who would follow him, Jesus replies: ‘Foxes have dens, and the birds in the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head’ (Matt 8.20 = Luke 9.58). In other words, if you follow Jesus you will be like him, and this is to be without home, a wandering stranger, reliant on the charity and provision of others.
  Thirdly, at the end of Jesus’ second block of teaching in Matthew (which Matthew attaches to the sending out of the 12 in chapter 10) we have a very similar idea—whoever receives the disciples in effect receives Jesus, and how they treat the disciples is in effect how they treat Jesus. (These verses, 10.40-42, don’t have an exact parallel in the other gospels, though there is a similar saying in a different context in Mark 9.41).
  
  France, in his comment on Matt 25, describes this as the closest Matthew gets to a Pauline notion of the believers as the body of Christ, and it it likely that Paul was shaped in this by the words he heard on the Damascus Road. Persecuting Jesus’ followers, he hears Jesus ask: ‘Why do you persecute me?’
  Reading the passage in this way (which we must if we take its context in Matthew seriously) has huge implications.
  
  To follow Jesus means (to risk?) being hungry, thirsty, naked, as stranger, sick and in prison. This has not been hard to imagine for many Christians in many parts of the world in many times in history. In fact, it is perhaps only in a rich West that Christians could have misread this teaching, by naturally reading themselves in the role of the powerful helper rather than the powerless in need of help.
  It raises big questions about the status of those who don’t appear to have named Christ as Lord (Romans 10.9), but have responded to Christ in being the ‘sheep’ who have assisted his disciples because they are his disciples. This question was raised by someone listening to me teach on this recently, who works in inner cities primarily with Muslims. ‘If my Muslim friend helps me out are they counted as sheep?’ In a sense it asks the bigger question of whether it is possible to become a Muslim follower of Jesus rather than become a Christian.
  Finally, it suggests a rather different model for mission. We are not going as the strong with resources to help the weak, but we come as the weak ready to receive from those to whom we have been sent. And of course this is the idea behind the idea of finding the ‘person of peace’, taught by Mike Breen and others from the sending of the 12 and the 72 in Luke 9 and 10 and Matt 10. You can read about this in my co-authored Grove booklet How to be Fruitful.
  
  


• 06/07/2011 Starting training at St John’s article here
  To all prospective students: We are very much looking forward to your joining us at St John’s in September. Our experience is that people coming to St John’s vary enormously in the amount of time and energy they have prior to starting here to do some reading and thinking. So if you only manage the least amount, don’t panic—and if you read everything and would like more, please be in touch!
  Here are the links to the books and resources that prospective students will have in their preparatory reading instructions, sent out in July.
  Overview of the Bible
  Ian Paul and Philip Jenson, What’s the Bible All About
  Stephen Travis, The Bible as a Whole (BRF, 1994)
  G Fee, D Stuart, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth (SU, 1997)
  Scripture Union’s E100 Challenge http://www.e100challenge.org.uk/
  Introductions
  Steven Croft and Roger Walton Learning For Ministry
  David Runcorn Spirituality Workbook
  Video: Introduction to the BBC programme The Big Silence
  Practical Theology
  Robert Warren Healthy Churches’ Handbook
  James Lawrence Growing Leaders
  P Ballard, J Pritchard Practical Theology in Action
  Arthur F. Holmes Ethics: approaching moral decisions
  Biblical Studies
  A J Jacobs The Year of Living Biblically
  D Wenham and S Walton Exploring the New Testament vol 1
  Travis, Marshall, Paul Exploring the New Testament vol 2
  G Theissen Shadow of the Galilean
  Stephen Barton Invitation to the Bible
  Mark Goodacre’s resources can be found at the NT Gateway
  Christian Thought and Worship
  Robert Wilken  The Spirit of Early Christian Thought
  Frances Young Brokenness and Blessing
  William Placher A History of Christian Theology
  Roger Olson  The Story of Christian Theology
  Tony Lane A Concise History of Christian Thought
  Phillip Cary’s courses on the History of Christian Theology can be bought here from Great Courses.
  There are plenty of great free resources at our YouTube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/StJohnsNottingham
  In addition to these, you might want to read some Grove booklets on subjects that interest you. These are accessible and affordable, and cover a wide range of practical issues.
  
  


• 30/08/2011 Work in progress article here
  I am just in the process of changing the layout and design of the blog—so please bear with me! If you have an eye for design,  any suggestions welcome!
  


• 12/09/2011 Undesigned coincidences and historical reliability article here
  Dr Tim McGrew of the Library of Historical Apologetics just posted a fascinating document in a private Facebook group of which I am a part:
  Sometimes two historical records incidentally touch on the same point in a manner that would be very unlikely if one of them were copied from the other or if both were copied from a common source. For example, one account of an event may leave out a bit of information, leaving some natural question unanswered, while a different account indirectly supplies the missing detail and, in so doing, answers that question. When this happens, the best explanation is that both records are grounded in the actual historical event; that is why the two bits fit together so well.
  Forgers do not want to leave loose ends like this that might raise awkward questions; they take care to tie everything together neatly. But these are just the sort of things we would expect to find in authentic records of the same real event told by different people who knew what they were talking about.
  He then goes on to give some key examples from the gospels:
  1. Why does Herod Antipas ask his servants about Jesus? (Matt. 14:1-2) Answer: One of the followers of Jesus was the wife of Herod’s steward. (Luke 8:3)
  2. After the transfiguration, why do the disciples tell no one? (Luke 9:36) Answer: Because Jesus specifically told them to tell no one. (Mark 9:9)
  3. In the lead up to the feeding of the 5,000, why does Jesus ask Philip (a minor figure in the Gospels by any standard) where they are going to find bread to feed all of these people? Answer: Because the setting was Bethsaida (Luke 9:10), which was Philip’s home town (John 1:44).
  4. In John 18:32, Pilate asks Jesus whether he is a king. What prompted that question? (Nothing earlier in the chapter indicates that this was a charge leveled against Jesus.) Answer: Though John does not record it, the Jews did make that very charge against Jesus. (Luke 23:1-2)
  5. In Luke 23:1-4, Pilate asks Jesus whether he is a king, and Jesus gives an answer that is certainly not a denial and that many scholars take for a terse, idiomatic acknowledgement. Then Pilate declares that he finds him innocent. How can this puzzling fact be explained? Answer: Luke is giving only a summary of the interview. In a fuller account, we discover that Jesus told Pilate that His kingdom was not of this world. (John 18:36)
  6. In Mark 14:58 and Mark 15:29, the charge is reiterated that Jesus threatened to destroy the Temple. Yet nowhere in the Synoptics do we find his saying anything about this—not even something that could plausibly be misunderstood. What lay behind the charge? Answer: In John 2:18-19 we find Jesus saying, “Destroy this Temple, and in three days I will raise it up again.”
  This last example fits quite well (in linking Mark and John) with Richard Bauckham’s argument, first put clearly in his chapter ‘John for readers of Mark’ in The Gospel for All Christians. But the others suggest links in other directions, and as Tim says, the most obvious explanation is that the different accounts are all working from a single historical reality.
  Another connection that has interested me for a while is that between Luke and Revelation. Uniquely in Luke’s version of the ‘Sinai Apocalypse’, Luke 21, Jesus talks of people falling by ‘the edge of the sword’ (v 24), an allusion to Jeremiah 21.7 also found in Rev 13.10, and also uniquely describes Jerusalem as being ‘trampled by the Gentiles’ (same verse), a phrase found in Rev 11.2. I look forward to reading more on this in Paul Penley’s recent monograph on Synoptic traditions in the Apocalypse.
  All this suggests that the NT documents are closely related to historical events, and closely related to one another in ways we have not always appreciated. And it also suggests that modern biblical scholarship has not attended to this data sufficiently. For where do these insights come from? None other than William Paley, the famous apologist, in his 1790 Horae Paulinae, material from which was picked up and expanded by John James Blunt in 1869. You can find a full bibliography at the Library of Historical Apologetics.
  


• 14/09/2011 How should Luke 16.19­–31 shape our view of heaven and hell? article here
  The story of the rich man and Lazarus appears on first reading to depict a detailed ‘map’ of ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’, but is this the right way to read it?
  First, it is worth noting that the words ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’ themselves do not occur in the parable. The NT talks about post-mortem life in a range of ways, not all of them easy to reconcile with one another. Perhaps the most controlling one would be the idea of ‘sleep’ as used by Paul in, for example, 1 Cor 15. ‘Heaven’ in the NT mostly appears to refer to the realm of God’s presence, reign and reality, and the central NT hope is not that we will leave the earth to go to heaven, but that God’s realm will come down to the earth (see Rev 21). (See Tom Wright’s Grove booklet for the most accessible exposition of this.)
  The term used in v 23 is the Greek Hades which was usually understood as the abode of (all) the dead, and does not have a straightforward relationship with the OT notion of sheol. Interestingly, Howard Marshall (in his NIGTC commentary) thinks that a popular Egyptian tale about life after death offers the best explanation for the shape of the story, and there is some support for this in the way the text was received in that region.
  Secondly, like all parables this is a story told to make a point. Such stories have varying degrees of connection with ‘reality’. No doubt sowers went out to sow in the fields of Galilee, but it is not clear that Jesus has in mind a particular such person in Mark 4. Shepherds were concerned about their sheep, but the point of the story in Luke 15 is not that a real shepherd would leave the 99 in search of the one; to the casual reader this one looks rather inept. In fact, in some parables, it is the contrast with reality which is striking. A man who paid hired workers the same regardless of how many hours they had worked (Matt 20) would not only be unjust but foolish! There is a clear sense that the parables (as it were) create their own world, and it is the shape of this world, as much as the actions of the characters, which provide the impact of the story and help to make the point.
  Thirdly, therefore, we need to focus on the point(s) that Jesus was making in this parable. There is a strong link between the language here and that of Luke’s version of the beatitudes with their theme of reversal of fortunes. Lazarus longs for what the poor will have (16.21 and 6.21) and the ‘comfort’ he receives in 16.25 is that which is denied the rich in 6.25. And miracles in themselves cannot melt hearts that are hardened to God’s word (16.31). This final verse clearly chimes with the post-Easter experience of Jesus’ followers, as the majority of their countrymen refuse to accept Jesus for who he (and they) claimed him to be. To use this as a map for the afterlife is to miss these key points.
  This is part of a wider issue in reading Scripture: if we seek to clarify issues which don’t appear to have been the purpose of the writer, then we are in danger of making the text say things that it does not, in fact, say.
  (For an alternative allegorical reading of this parable as a judgement on the nation of Israel [which I find unconvincing] go here.)
  (A shorter version of this will be published in a forthcoming entry on Scripture Union’s Word Live Bible reading resource.)
   
  


• 28/11/2011 How should we read Mark 13? article here
  Like many, I had to preach on Mark 13 yesterday, though unlike most it was a dialogue sermon where I was asked (prepared) questions, and we then opened it up to the ‘floor’ for further questions. So I had to make my mind up about this passage!
  There are three main ways this has been read:
  1. The ‘traditional’ approach, which goes back at least as far as Jerome in the fourth century, that this is primarily about the ‘end of the world’ though with specific predictions about the destruction of the temple mixed in.
  This has a number of problems to it:
  
  The main one is Jesus stern saying in v 30 ‘Amen I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have happened.’ There is some wriggling about the meaning of genea embedded in an NIV footnote as ‘race’—but all other uses of this in Mark (and the other gospels) make it clear that it really does mean ‘this generation.’
  To solve this, commentators for the last couple of hundred years have seen a Jewish ‘apocalypse’ embedded here and (clumsily) incorporated. So in fact in context what Jesus’ saying means is ‘Amen I say to you, this generation will not pass away until around three of the five things I have just mentioned have happened.’ This is very unsatisfactory since, like much source criticism, it suggests that neither Mark nor his first readers really understood what Mark himself had written, and had not understood what Jesus said.
  It fails to pay attention to Mark’s language. So Cranfield at one point comments on ‘Mark’s depiction of the Parousia’ without noticing that the word parousia is conspicuous by its absence in Mark 13.
  
  This was the view I was brought up with, and it was explained by means of the ‘prophetic telescope’: when you are looking to the future, you see things in the near and distant future next to one another, so you might not explain things in order. This does make Jesus look like he does not really know what he is talking about!
  2. Tom Wright’s view is that this ‘whole chapter’ is about the destruction of the Temple (see Jesus and the Victory of God pp 339f and Mark for Everyone 176f). (However, he appears to have a different view when going to read the more extended version in Matthew 24–25; the ‘eschatological’ parables do in fact appear to be about ‘final judgement’.) A key to his argument is the language about the ‘coming of the Son of Man’:
  
  ‘The Son of Man coming on the clouds’ is an exact citation of Dan 7.13 LXX, and of course the ‘coming’ is not a coming to earth but a coming to the Ancient of Days, the Power (meaning the God of Israel) for vindication as the one personifying the faithful people of God. This is the sense it is used in the trial scene in Mark 14.62, and makes most sense of being understood as referring to Jesus’ vindication in his resurrection and the subsequent preaching of the good news about him. Note that ‘coming’ in this saying is erchomenos, the participle of erchomai, to come or approach to, and not parousia meaning ‘presence’ and used of the Emperor’s coming to cities in the Empire.
  The language of sun, moon and stars in Mark 13.24 comes from Isaiah 13 and 34, and refers to the fall and judgement of great empires and political powers (in this case, Assyria and Edom). It is also used in Joel 2, and strikingly is cited by Peter in Acts 2.17f. Peter appears to think that these ‘apocalyptic events’ are happening in his day.
  
  3. Dick France sets out a third position, with agrees with much of Tom Wright’s revision of the traditional understanding of this passage—though (as Dick pointed out to me!) he was proposing this some years earlier, and so might well have influenced Wright’s own thinking. Contra Wright, he believes that the last part (from v 32) is about Jesus’ return, for several reasons:
  
  Although there is quite a strong all a (‘but’) at v 24, the much stronger break comes in v 32 (though this is obscured in NIV and other English translations). This is the phrase peri de ‘Now concerning…’ which indicates quite strongly a change in subject. (Paul uses this phrase in 1 Corinthians to introduce a new subject in 7.1, 7.25, 8.1, 12.1, 16.1 and elsewhere in his letters).
  The sign of the fig tree in v 28 closes an inclusio in relation to the Temple, matching the example of the withered fig tree as an enacted parable in chapter 11.
  ‘That day or hour’ in v 32 is introduced without an antecedent; such a ‘day’ has not been mentioned before (the distress in the earlier verses is referred to as ‘those days’ in the plural).
  The idea of a long time of waiting is in marked contrast to the previous language of an intensity of specific ‘signs’.
  
  France also notes that the disciples’ initial question to Jesus, whilst focussed on when ‘all these things will be fulfilled’ in Mark, in Matthew is more explicitly made a double question: ‘When will this [the destruction of the Temple] happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and the end of the age?’ This is then given a double answer, in Matt 24.4–35 about ‘these things’ and then in 24.36f about that day.
  It is also interesting to note that the focus in Mark is on the Temple events, but in Matthew there is a more extended interest in the signs of ‘the end’ following the Temple. This would make good sense if Mark was written in the 60s, possibly during the Jewish War, and Matthew was written post-70, so that the main interest in Jesus’ depiction of the fall of the Temple is in his words coming true, rather than as immediate advice.
  Both these last two views leave the real problem for most readers of how to make sense of Mark 13.27: ‘He will send his angels [messengers?] and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens’. Some things to note:
  
  Jesus has already inserted language of the good news being preached to ‘all the nations’ prior to the destruction of the Temple in 13.10. This is, arguably, a key theological point behind the narrative of Acts, with Peter then Paul preaching to the known world prior to AD70. Indeed, it could be argued that knowing this saying of Jesus was part of Paul’s motivation in writing Romans to get support to fulfil this goal.
  It is clear elsewhere in the NT that the OT promise to ‘gather the elect’ from the nations has now been fulfilled in the preaching to the Gentiles, for example in 1 Peter and in the seven-fold phrase ‘every tribe, language, people and nation’ in Revelation.
  In the Matthew parallel, there is a ‘loud trumpet call’ (Matt 24.31) which we usually read in parallel with the ‘last trump’ of 1 Thess 4.16. But in fact the shofar was used to call people to worship at the start of the Sabbath, an invitation to enter the rest of the seventh day, both in imitation of God’s resting at the end of creation, and the invitation to enter the promised ‘rest’ of the coming kingdom (Hebrews 4).
  
  So I now find option 3 the most persuasive, since on the one hand it takes seriously the form of Mark 13 as we have it, and its first-century context, but addresses the criticisms of option 2 as underplaying the role of Jesus’ second coming within both Mark and Matthew.
  [Apologies for not posting this prior to Advent Sunday, but, hey, there is always next year!]