Tag Archives: ethics

Evangelical Feminism and the Kingdom of God

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There are two interesting conferences coming up in October that I will be attending.

Toward an Evangelical Feminism

The first is the annual fall conference of the Canadian Evangelical Theological Association (CETA) on Saturday October 18, 2014 at Wycliffe College in Toronto. The conference is entitled “Toward and Evangelical Feminism: Scripture, Theology, Gender” and is co-sponsored by CETA with the Institute of Christian Studies and Wycliffe College. A flyer for the conference is available, as well as the conference schedule and the paper abstracts. The keynote address is by Marion Taylor (professor of OT at Wycliffe) on an evangelical feminist reading of Ruth, and the papers look fascinating (some of the papers attempt to define evangelical feminism and others are focused on reading the Bible as authoritative scripture that dignifies and empowers women in God’s world). Online registration is hosted by the Institute for Christian Studies (just scroll to the bottom of the page for the registration links).

Kingdom Conspiracy

The second conference, entitled “Kingdom Conspiracy: Reclaiming the Radical Mission of the Church in the World,” is sponsored by Missio Alliance, and will be held on Wednesday, October 22, 2014 on the campus of Northeastern Seminary and Roberts Wesleyan College in Rochester, NY. The keynote speaker is well-known theologian and biblical scholar Scot McKnight, who hosts the blog “Jesus Creed” on the Patheos website. The advertising says that McKnight might ruffle a few feathers by providing “a biblical corrective and a fiercely radical vision for the role of the local church in the kingdom of God.” A flyer (with the conference schedule) is available and you can register here.

I’ll report on both conferences after I attend them.

The Church’s Mishandling of the Gospel—Living with Unanswered Questions, Part 2

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In my last post, I raised some of my questions about what the Bible teaches—especially where this teaching seems to contradict human experience, modern science, or other things the Bible teaches.

But not everything the Bible teaches is difficult to understand. Some of my questions have to do with why the church distorts biblical teaching that seems to be quite clear.

To put it another way, why do Christians do such a terrible job of living out the gospel, or even of grasping what the gospel is about? This leaves me utterly perplexed.

The Church’s Reduction of the Gospel to the “Spiritual”

To start with, there is the common reduction of the gospel to some small “spiritual” area of life, as if our faith doesn’t embrace the entirety of life in the world God has made. This other-worldliness in the Christianity I was raised with (this division between the “secular” and the “sacred”) makes no sense, given what the Bible teaches.

The Bible teaches that this world is God’s creation and he loves and cares for it, despite the sinful brokenness we humans have introduced. In fact, he loves the world so much that Jesus came to die on the cross for our sin, and now forgiveness and new life are offered to all who want a part in the restoration of the world.

The Church’s Blindness to Present Evil in the World

But the sacred/secular division not only blurs our vision of this good world, it often leads to our ignoring—or even buying into—the present evil in the world (in the so-called “secular” area), since it offers us no resources for challenging that evil on the basis of how the world should be.

One egregious example of this is the unholy mixing of the gospel, especially in the United States, with secular ideologies. This results in sincere people who claim to be disciples of the Crucified One advocating military action and even torture against people whom they think of as their enemies (without any pangs of conscience or struggle about how this relates to the teachings of Jesus).

It is paradoxical that the National Association of Evangelicals in the 1980s put out a position paper on war, in which one of the positions they rejected as “sub-biblical” was labeled the “love your enemies” position! It just doesn’t make sense to use Jesus’ own words to label a position you think is unbiblical.

Perplexed but Not Despairing

But I guess I’m in good company with my questions.

The writer of Ecclesiastes long ago had “applied [his] mind to know wisdom and to observe the labor that is done on earth,” including “all that God has done.”

Yet he ended up with the conclusion: “No one can comprehend what goes on under the sun. Despite all their efforts to search it out, no one can discover its meaning. Even if the wise claim they know, they cannot really comprehend it.” (Ecclesiastes 8:16-17; NIV)

Questions like the ones I’ve mentioned leave me quite perplexed, and even confused. But not in despair.

In my next post I’ll explain why I haven’t given up on my quest for answers.

Was Abraham’s Attempt to Sacrifice Isaac a Faithful Response to God?

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In my last post I mentioned that I had just attended the 2014 Congress of Humanities and Social Sciences, at Brock University, in St. Catharines, ON, Canada.

One of the academic societies I participated in was the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies, where I presented a paper on Genesis 22, known in Jewish tradition as the Aqedah or “binding” of Isaac (Abraham “bound” [‘aqad] Isaac and placed him on the altar; Gen 22:9). I titled my paper (somewhat ironically): “Unbinding the Aqedah from the Straightjacket of Tradition.”

The gist of my paper was that contrary to traditional readings in both Judaism and Christianity, we should not understand Abraham’s response as a paradigm of virtue. Rather, I argued that Abraham’s response of blind obedience to the command to sacrifice his son was sub-par. It was better than outright disobedience. But a truly faithful response would have been to follow the example of the lament psalms (and Job) by questioning God, even protesting that this command wasn’t right.

Central to my argument was the fact that Abraham had previously (in Gen 18) protested the possibility that God might destroy Sodom, despite the fact that there were righteous/innocent people living there (the Hebrew word tsadîq can mean either). Whereas Abraham’s motive for that protest was the fact that his nephew Lot and his family were living in Sodom, it is strange that when God tells him to offer up his own son as a burnt offering, Abraham’s silence is deafening. He says nothing whatsoever (he certainly does not protest the death of this innocent victim), but blindly moves to obey—and has to be stopped in the act by an angel calling from heaven: “Abraham, Abraham! . . . don’t do anything to the boy!”

It is also significant that the text reports that Abraham returned to his servants and that they went off together, but that Isaac is not mentioned at the end of the story (Gen 22:19). Also significant is that Isaac is then reported as living in a different geographical location from Abraham (and Sarah is living elsewhere, by the way), and father and son never again see each other. This is why the subtitle of my paper was: “How Abraham Lost His Son.”

In the end, I argue that the test (“God tested Abraham”; Gen 22:1) was not whether Abraham would obey. Rather, what was being tested was Abraham’s discernment of the character of God. Was this a God of mercy or a deity just like one of the other ancient Near Eastern gods who required child sacrifice?

Well, there’s a lot more to be said (and the paper says more, and even recognizes the arguments against this interpretation). But this should give you the gist of what I presented. I am presently expanding the paper and preparing it for publication.

What’s your response to this interpretation of Genesis 22? Do you find it jarring? Or does it resonate with you? Why?