Yesterday I cited a comment I’ve heard occasionally that indicates how some evangelical Christians regard the Bible.  They seek to understand the Bible primarily so that they can tell others what it says.

Those with this sort of anxiety need to understand that the gospel sets them free to enjoy open-ended conversations with others.  They can be fully genuine and even receive others’ questions as invitations to examine Scripture more closely for themselves.

This corrupted posture toward Scripture can also be driven by a desire to argue and demonstrate the superiority of one’s understanding.

I once had a conversation in which someone asked me how I regarded a certain passage in Ephesians 5 that stands at the center of controversies over gender among evangelicals.  I gave him a succinct summary of how I thought about it.

He then asked, “well, what are the implications of that sort of reading of the text and for an evangelical understanding of Scripture?”  I knew he wanted me to speak to a conflict in which he was involved, supplying him with ammunition for his next engagement.

I told him that I could only speak to how our family appropriates this text, how it works out in our home.

That didn’t satisfy him, and then he asked the magic question: “No, what I mean is, what would you say to someone who has a different understanding of this issue and how it should be applied today?”

I told him I would find something else to talk about.

I think he was disappointed.  He wanted me to supply him with arguments, responses, and counter-responses so that he could triumph in an ongoing conflict with some folks at his church.

That’s a perverted and destructive posture toward Scripture.

We don’t have the Bible for the purpose of fighting and squabbling, strategizing so that “our side” might dominate “their side.”  God gave his word to his people that we might gain a heart of wisdom, that we might love and serve God, loving and serving one another with gladness and singleness of heart.

Heath Thomas, Jeremy Evans, and Paul Copan have edited a very fine book called Holy War in the Bible: Christian Morality and an Old Testament Problem.

It deals with the troubling appearance of God-endorsed warfare in Scripture from a biblical-theological, philosophical, and ethical perspectives.

Check out the promotional videos from IVP, one that features editor Heath Thomas, and another with a random person found walking the halls of the convention center in Chicago last November.

A month or two ago, I wrote about the relationship between a recurring comment and evangelical postures toward the Bible.

I’ve been struck by something else I’ve occasionally heard.  I wonder if it, too, reflects an inappropriate posture toward Scripture and how Christians ought to relate to other people.

While discussing biblical or theological concepts with evangelical folks, I occasionally hear a question put in this form: “Well, what would you say to someone who says that . . . ?”

For example, when teaching on election, I made a case from Scripture that God does indeed set his love upon distinct people from eternity past to pursue them and draw them into his love.  In the midst of my explanation, a student asked, “well, what would you say to someone who thinks that God chooses someone based on his foreknowledge that they will choose to be Christian?”

What struck me as odd isn’t the question but its form: “What would you say to someone . . . ?”

When I first began teaching, I would just respond to the question, thinking little about how it was asked.  But I began to suspect that students who framed questions this way were misconstruing their responsibility toward Scripture.

I wondered if students were imagining that their task with regard to Scripture was to convince others about its content.

I was struck that some students weren’t necessarily trying to understand notions in Scripture and integrate them with aspects of lives.  Their first concern was to know what to say in conversations or debates with others.

This was confirmed to me in a private conversation with a very anxious student whose assumptions about what the Bible said were being unsettled.  She visited my office quite regularly with loads of questions, but her spirit of inquiry wasn’t driven by the joy of discovery.  She seemed more burdened than excited to learn.  She remarked once that she was trying to be as equipped as possible to be ready to respond when people had questions about what she was saying.

That struck me as misguided and we had a conversation about the priority of being a faithful student before becoming a teacher.

After that I began to respond differently to questions put in this form.  I would first say that I didn’t know exactly what they should say to someone who had a certain sort of question.  It was their responsibility to grow in wisdom and to be sensitive to each situation.  I also suggested that they should consider this response: “I don’t know.  That’s a great question.”

While I couldn’t anticipate every interchange they would ever have, what could do was to give them some thoughts on better understanding the concept we were discussing.  The posture toward Scripture I find inappropriate is the assumption that one is responsible learn Bible content in order to tell others what it says.

Christians ought to engage Scripture in order to first understand, and then to give extended consideration with the further aim of strategic, glad obedience.

More on this tomorrow.

I’ve picked up for my summer reading Frank Matera’s God’s Saving Grace: A Pauline Theology.  For Matera, three implicit narratives underlie Pauline theology:

The first is the narrative of Paul’s own life.  It begins with the experience of God’s saving grace in Christ that was revealed to Paul at the moment of his call and conversion.  It was in light of that experience that Paul developed the second narrative, the narrative of what God had done in Christ.  On the basis of the narratives of what happened in his own life and on the basis of the narrative of what God had done in Christ, Paul proclaimed God’s saving grace to others, thereby forming communities of believers with their own narrative that can be summarized in this way: having been rescued from a past defined by sin and rebellion against God, believers presently live their lives within the eschatological people of God as they wait for the return of their Lord, when they will be conformed to his resurrection.  Thus we can speak of three narratives: the narrative of God’s saving grace in Paul’s life, the narrative of God’s saving grace in Christ, and the narrative of God’s saving grace in the lives of those in Christ (pp. 10-11, emphasis added).

I find this narrative dimension very helpful in framing Paul’s theology, which is dynamic rather than static, future-oriented and not determined only by what God has done in the past.

Many commentators and theologians note that Paul’s theology is pastoral, dealing with “on the ground” realities, but then elucidate a static theology of “Paul’s beliefs.”  Shaping his “thought” (all we have are his letters, mind you, not any “works of theology”) narratively is more organic to how we encounter Paul and what we find him doing in his letters to churches.

A few weeks ago, Peter Enns reflected on his move from teaching in a seminary to teaching Bible at a Christian college.

I moved in the opposite direction after teaching undergrads for seven years.

I loved teaching college students.  Undergrads have lots of energy and are always up for a laugh.  They have great sensitivity to inauthenticity and pretension, and that helped me not take myself too seriously.

Further, their questions were pretty undisciplined—and I mean that in a good way.  They weren’t the polite or safe questions one hears in church settings or predictable ones that come in academic contexts.  They really made me think and I enjoyed the challenge of going over familiar material in fresh ways.  A few research projects got their start from questions that made me go back to my office and look at the text more closely.

I also had my eyes opened about college students.  Many of them have been hurt deeply, few of them have illusions about life, lots of them are lonely, and they’re desperate to be known by adults they respect.

Things are quite different in seminary, and I’m having a blast.

Rather than adopting a posture as “the expert,” I see myself as the “first student.”  I’m sort of the lead learner, directing class discoveries and the communal journey through the material.

My main frustration teaching undergrads was that I wasn’t able to grapple with aspects of the academic discipline at a level that was satisfying.

Teaching seminary gives me that opportunity and I love it.  I hate to admit it, but I’m teaching seminary a bit selfishly—I’m exploiting my job for my own enjoyment!  I love regularly revisiting NT Biblical Theology, working through various Pauline letters, and engaging other aspects of the discipline even as I further my own research projects.

And seminary students for the most part are my peers.  Many of them are in ministry and most are my age—I’m just a bit older than our average student.  We’ve had similar life experiences and sharing all of this together makes for rich classroom conversations.

I’m grateful for what I learned teaching undergrads and I’m seriously enjoying myself teaching seminary students.

I’ve taken a bit of a sabbatical from the blog over the last week or two.

I’ve just completed my second year of teaching at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary, and it’s been a supremely fulfilling season.

I’m in the midst of the transition from the school year to a summer schedule and am anticipating some fruitful months of research and writing.

I’m hoping to make progress on a few long-term writing projects, finish some book reviews, and prepare two papers—on Philemon and Romans 7—for summer conferences.

Complicating matters somewhat are my ongoing negotiations with a front yard that has discovered new frontiers in dormancy.  We’re hoping to see death and resurrection dynamics at work agronomically even as I reflect on them theologically.

Just to say, I’ll be busy.

But I hope to get back to the blog shortly, reflecting on a range of topics, and especially to revive my reflections on Romans.

Stanley Hauerwas delivered this wonderful sermon last month for the Duke Divinity School Closing Convocation.

I love his plainspoken counsel, appropriating Jesus’ question to Peter for those headed into the ministry, “do you love me?”

Do you love me?  The question cannot be avoided.  The question certainly cannot be avoided by those in the ministry.  For as I think you will discover, the ministry is a playground of manipulative games derived from distrust and envy that too often produces lives of self-destructive self-hate.  If you do not love Jesus you will find it almost impossible to survive in the ministry.

It’s that time of year again—student evaluations.  In colleges and universities, students are evaluating their professors and the classes they’ve taken.

This is an essential part of quality control and offers students an opportunity to help professors evaluate their performance and improve their classes.

Some thoughts on making the most of this exercise:

First, when making comments about a class, be specific.  If an aspect of the course was helpful, note how it was helpful and how it enhanced learning.  If parts of the course were unhelpful, note how and why.  If you can, cite a specific example or two.

Second, make practical suggestions.  If something about the course needs improvement, do you have a thought about how that might happen?  Feel free to offer some ideas.  Many of us are interested in concrete ways our classes can be made more effective.

Third, don’t be mean.  Professors are people, and sarcasm, rudeness, and unkindness can be tremendously hurtful.  Positive comments don’t erase the one or two harsh comments we receive and those tend to be the ones that stick with us.  And because comments are anonymous, we wonder who would have written such a thing and why.  Be kind.

Fourth, if you had a bad experience in a class, write out your experience plainly and directly.  Record why it was a bad experience and what might be done to change things in the future.

Fifth, on the other hand, if you had a good experience, be plain and direct about it.  Take a moment to note why it was a fruitful experience, beyond, “this class was great!”  Those comments are certainly positive, but they don’t really affirm why the course worked well.

Sixth, envision yourself blessing future generations of students who will take the course.  At the end of the semester, everyone is tired and worn out and it’s easy to blow off evaluating a course thoughtfully.  Resist that temptation and see this as a great opportunity to serve your professor and fellow students.

A colleague stopped me in the hallway last week and passed on a positive comment from a student about one of my classes.  It was a shot in the arm and I appreciated it.

It got me thinking about academic environments and passing on encouraging words.  In his memoir, Hannah’s Child, Stanley Hauerwas notes that academic departments are hives of professional envy—and he’s speaking of Religious Studies departments and divinity schools!  Academics often have fragile egos and tend toward self-importance.

These dynamics can produce competitive environments in which colleagues don’t encourage one another.

Several years ago a colleague relayed to me a positive comment he had heard about something I had written.  I thanked him and said that was really great to hear.

He then said that he thought about telling me when he had originally heard it, but declined because he didn’t want me to get a big head.  I still don’t know how to think about that sentiment.

It seems to me that we ought to be eager to pass on good reports to others.  It’s a practical way of encouraging one another and fostering an environment of mutual support.

Another colleague told me that he had heard good things from students about a professor in our department.  I asked if he had passed it on to him, and he shook his head, saying, “nah, he probably hears it enough.”

I’m always baffled when I hear about someone intentionally withholding praise.

These are strategic opportunities to foster fruitful community life, strengthen relationships, encourage others, and keep the destructive dynamics of envy at bay.

Further, it’s a good spiritual discipline.  Envy and destructive competition shrink our spirits and shrivel our souls, distorting our vision and corrupting our hearts.

Taking initiative to speak an encouraging word expands our hearts and enlarges our spirits.  We want to be the kind of people who love and honor one another, who seek the good of the wider learning community.  Encouraging one another is an excellent practice that makes us better people.

I have so thoroughly enjoyed teaching 1 Corinthians this semester.  It’s been a blast to participate in wonderful discussions with students keen to kick around every aspect of the text and its theological implications.

At point after point, Paul stresses the unity of the church and the corporate character of Christian discipleship.

His statement in 1 Corinthians 3:16-17 stands over many of the topics he addresses.  Those that divide the church or exploit the weaknesses of others run the risk of judgment.  It’s a stark warning.

In light of its importance, it’s unfortunate that many English translations don’t do it justice.  It ends up being synonymous with 1 Corinthians 6:19, where Paul states that individual bodies are temples of God’s Spirit.

In 3:16-17, however, Paul is speaking of the corporate body, the church.  The three appearances of “you” are plural:

Do you not know that you (plural) are a temple of God and the Spirit of God dwells among you (plural)?  If anyone destroys the temple of God, God will destroy him.  For the temple of God is holy, and that is what you (plural) are.

The NASB and ESV note this in the margin, but the translations don’t capture Paul’s sense and leave the impression that it’s singular.

The updated NIV, however, nails it:

Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst?  If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for God’s temple is sacred, and you together are that temple.

One could quibble with the choices of “you yourselves,” “in your midst,” and “you together” (and I’m sure the translation committee considered several options), but they should be commended for rightly representing Paul’s corporate intention.

In light the prominence of this notion throughout the letter (and its importance for Paul’s thought in general), it’s crucial to get this right.  How much more so for those who read Scripture in a culture that can only imagine being Christian as an individual pursuit and that marginalizes the place of the church.