The Shack or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Contemporary Christian Subculture

Stanley Kubrick’s classic film, Dr. Strangelove, features a rogue general ordering a nuclear strike on Russia. While the bomber moves closer to its destination, the president and his advisers attempt to recall the bomber before its payload. The incompetency and lunacy of the  council cannot recall the bomber in time. The film satirizes, among other things, the Cold War policy of the proliferation of nuclear arms as the greatest deterrent to war with Russia. Kubrick’s point was that the proliferation of nuclear weapons can only lead to their use and not to their non-use. To underscore this point, Kubrick uses numerous sexual references and symbols throughout the film signifying that we will eventually give in to our base urges and use these weapons.

That an event that would lead to the end of the world could be satirized in such way is simultaneously humorous and repulsive – and Kubrick is a genius for it. I’m sure you’re wondering what Dr. Strangelove has to do with The Shack.

I get that The Shack was intended to be read as a serious piece of allegorical fiction, and that the book supposedly aligns itself with the mission statement (at least at the time of this article) of Windblown Publishing, which published the book: “to provide creative and intellectually honest literature for those seeking a renewal of love and faith.” A noble goal that I believe The Shack fails to meet.

Yet, when interpreted along the same lines as Kubrick’s classic (i.e. as a satire), The Shack becomes a work of genius. If you’re repulsed by this point, I consider my case is already made. For those of you still unconvinced, I’ll designate this satirized version of the book with brackets – [The Shack] – and present my case.

I know that many of my friends have read The Shack, enjoyed it, and been impacted by its message. I’m not trying to diminish that impact. God uses many means to get a hold of us. You have been honest with me about your love for this book. Please let me be honest about what I feel about this book. Before we anoint it as a “Christian classic,” we ought to consider its message seriously.  It purports to break the mold of rigid religiosity and intellectualism to bring biblical concepts to a lay audience. I believe it does none of that.

But the Shack’s satirical alter ego does. Presenting us with a poorly thought-out theodicy encased in shoddily written narrative with little emotional depth, [The Shack]  is a beautifully composed, yet biting critique of the Contemporary Christian Subculture (CCS) that generates this type of media commonly represented in popular sermons, music, books, blogs, and magazines. By adjusting our lens to see the book behind the book, we will find that [The Shack] calls us to a higher standard, and we ought to get behind its message.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying…

I think the key point was the moment the main character described his view of Scripture. The letter that Mack receives from God flies in the face of what God was supposed to do:

[T]he thought of God passing notes did not fit well with his theological training. In seminary he had been taught that God had completely stopped any overt communication with moderns, preferring to have them only listen to and follow Sacred Scripture, properly interpreted, of course. God’s voice had been reduced to paper, and even that paper had to  be moderated and deciphered by the proper authorities and intellects. It seemed that direct communication with God was something exclusively for the ancients and uncivilized, while educated Westerners’ access to God was mediated and controlled by intelligentsia. Nobody wanted God in a box, just in a book.

Although many have argued that The Shack is steeped in Scripture and that it’s the allegorical nature of the book that enables the “unorthodox” pictures, I believe this statement from the main character is what enables Young to break from traditionally formulated doctrine in a way that doesn’t require him to tie whatever statements and caricatures he makes back to Scripture. The difficulty in writing allegory is making clear what real thing the allegory refers to. The Shack doesn’t do this. Whatever theological concept or Scriptural reference it has a backdrop for the allegory was extremely unclear. If the book isn’t establishing its ideas about God on heretical beliefs (I am always willing to extend grace), it’s nearly impossible to pinpoint which orthodox ideas the author is allegorizing.

Read from the point of view of [The Shack], however, the above statement takes a different significance. The CCS and its community, whether they acknowledge it or not, possess a shallow knowledge of Scripture. Any interpretation, philosophy,or theology is fair game as long as it matches the expectations of  CCS, which has become the interpretive grid through which to learn about ourselves and about God. Impersonal, irrelevant theological thinking and interpretations are perceived as generated by cold-hearted “intellgentsia” and are easily deposed because they limit God to the proverbial “box.”

[The Shack]  enables us to see how such views have become prevalent in the CCS. What follows in [The Shack] is a slightly less than heterodox presentation of the Trinity and the inner working of their relationship. The Father can be a grammatically-challenged African American woman, Jesus, a migrant worker from the Middle East, and the Spirit, an Asian woman who possesses the wisdom and clarity of a fortune cookie. The Shack intends these pictures to challenge our notion of God. [The Shack], however, challenges the lack of interest in theological thought by presenting the Trinity in highly stereotyped human forms. All the attempts of the CCS crowd to imagine a God “outside the box” are just skin deep. CCS’s God still retains the classic stereotypes that restrict him from acting in a way appropriate to his character as described in Scripture.

God does not “have” to punish sin, sin is its own punishment. Everyone is his child already. God really wants relationship with everybody with no responsibilities or requirements and no strings attached. The notions of penal substitution as the ultimate solution to sin and evil and the call to sanctification through the power of the spirit, both explicit in Scripture, are placed in a box and set aside. We might expect a Scripture-saturated allegorical story dedicated to exploring the problem of evil to make mention of these important points. [The Shack] leaves them out in a conspicuous manner declaring that if one has an inadequate view of God, theodicy naturally suffers.

The “bare-bones” story might have the potential to explore the topic of grief and pain as long as the details are fleshed out properly. Mack is a man who was abused as a boy by his Bible-wielding father. Although his faith is not the strong faith of his wife, he loves his children and is himself a decent father. He decides to spend some extended quality time with them by taking them on a camping trip through the Northeastern United States. Each day is better than the last until two of his children accidentally capsize their canoe. When Mack rushes to the water to save his children, his youngest daughter, whom he left to save the other children, was kidnapped and eventually murdered by a serial killer.

The story is not, however, well told. The characters have little depth. There’s almost no feeling. Mack’s struggle with grief, the “Great Sadness,” is portrayed linearly. He struggles early in the story. Mack then encounters a Mormonesque version of the Trinity, eats pancakes with God, plants a garden with God, walks on the water with God, and delves into highly questionable theological thought…with God. The “Great Sadness” is all but forgotten until the narrative decides that Mack needs to let it go. The Shack deals with the issue promptly with some emotional flourish. I thought the expression of grief was flat and inadequate especially in contrast to books like the Psalms, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Job which all deal with the concept of enduring grief and pain.

[The Shack] quickly and shallowly deals with Mack’s grief and thus demonstrates the inadequacy of CCS to deal with sorrow. Grief and pain have a weak presence in the life of the Christian who knows that God is “quite fond” of him or her. [The Shack] further underscores this foolishness by narrating the story in a poorly-written style: A Scripture-less culture is simply incapable of expressing grief and pain in a thoughtful and honest way. [The Shack] limits its expression for the sake of expediency – keep the story short and flat, keep the words small and the theology vague. The reader can choose to stop and think and confuse himself or move on quickly to find out “what happens next” – always moving from comfort to comfort.

…And Love The Bible

Obviously, I didn’t like the book. I didn’t like any of the book. I thought it mocked Christian thought, sold itself short on Scripture, and left me extremely confused. Don’t get me wrong though. I think we need more books like The Shack. Well, we need books better than The Shack. We need books that can actually be what the The Shack was supposed to be. G.K. Chesterton has said, “A great man knows that he is not God. The greater he is, the better he knows it.” We may never possess the brilliance or greatness of Kubrick or David, but let our work aspire to be great by making something worthy of God. Great Christian novels should not be characterized by weak storytelling and shallow theology. Learn the art of expression, and make it good. Most importantly, learn how the Bible expresses itself, and love it. The Bible expresses itself truly and deeply. Since that’s our first and best book, maybe we should start there.

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There’s Christianity and then there’s American Christianity

I hesitate to write this post because I don’t want to spark an endless debate or add wood to the ongoing conflagration that everyone sees once they log in to Facebook. I’m not a huge fan of politics and social media. I understand that it can be done intelligently and respectfully, but often politics are reduced to pithy “truisms” with a URL to red meat articles that lambastes the opposing side. Thankfully, God in his kindness and foresight blessed us with the “hide” option.

I’m not writing to comment on this vitriol. I’m much more interested in the trend among both sides of the political spectrum to invoke the Bible as a defense of a political position and often in contradictory ways. I think this trend has to do with a misunderstanding of the politics of the Bible. The interaction of biblical politics and our own American context is a complex one, but I hope to encourage more thinking and less cherry-picking in this short post.

The Problem of Improper Reading

One of the greatest temptations we as Christians face is to overread a biblical verse or story based on our own context. For example, sometimes Jesus’s saying about himself in John 12:32, “When I’m lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself,” has been interpreted to mean that when God’s people really worship Jesus, he’ll save people through his people’s example. This statement may be true in some way but not based off this verse. The next verse tells us that Jesus is actually speaking of his “lifting up” (i.e. death) on the cross.

That was pretty easy. Let’s take a look at a more relevant example from 2 Chronicles 7:14: “If my people called my name humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear them, forgive their sin, and heal their land.” This verse has been applied to Christians in America countless times. The idea of Christians praying for America so that “America can be great” in the eyes of God “again,” however, is an improper application of this verse. If anything, the promise of 2 Chronicles 7:14 is fulfilled in Christ. Th previous verse (7:13) echoes the curses of the law found in Deuteronomy and Leviticus. Verse 14 is God’s way of saying, “Just because you’re under the curse, doesn’t mean you’re permanently stuck under the curse. There’s a way out, and it’s through repentance.” Of course, the “way out” of the curse is ultimately fulfilled in Christ. America is not God’s people. The church is God’s people.  Jesus did not die for the US; he died for his people. Even if America continues its long history of committing evil against God, God’s people are secure in Christ, safe from sin and curse.

The Explicit and Implicit Nature of Biblical Narrative

Before I get to the beef, I think I need to address an important hermeneutical (i.e. interpretive) point. The Bible is a subversive book. It’s subversive because it undermines humanity’s corrupt way of thinking about the world, and it does this in two ways: explicitly and implicitly.

Explicitly, the Bible tells and shows us that we are sinful. We are incapable of loving God and doing what he tells us to do. We are incapable of repentance. We are stiff-necked, hard-hearted, dead in our sins kind of people. We are told because of God’s faithfulness to his promise and his kindness toward us, he gave his Son as a sacrifice for our sin, and he gave the Spirit to call us to his Son, convict, sanctify, and live in us. The Bible is clear about these facts. Jesus is Lord of all and Savior of his people.

Implicitly, the Bible speaks to a great many other questions. Because we must receive these answers from Scripture by means of implication, we must work hard to ensure that we are not misusing Scripture. This can be really hard and really frustrating. Sometimes, Scripture does not give an answer to a particular question. That’s okay. The Bible is not an instruction manual for everything. It’s not an instruction manual at all. It’s a story or a history of God’s dealings with his people. Actually, it’s more than narrative, so maybe we can call it “theological and ethical instruction through reflection on history, poetry, epistle, and apocalypse.”

Well…okay, it’s difficult to really sum up without generalizing too much. The point I really want to make is that the message of Scripture is cohesive and unified around God and his dealings with his people. Everything that we glean from Scripture – our hermeneutics, our interpretations – should be submitted to the main point: Jesus is Lord of all and Savior for his people. Without that point, Scripture loses its cohesive nature, and we end up doing what we want with Scripture, which is what got us into trouble way in the beginning of things.

So Where’s the Beef?

My complaint is that we pick without reflection verses to justify this or that political policy or democratic, socialistic, capitalistic idea. I’m not saying that Christians can’t use their reflections on the biblical message to justify policies on immigration, healthcare, racism, or environmentalism. The more biblical we are, the better. I’m not convinced, however, that the Bible cares about where “America” comes out on the issue.

As far as the Bible is concerned, America is as good as Rome (or rather as wicked as Rome). In the beginning of several gospels (Mark in particular stands out to me), Isaiah 40 is quoted in reference to John the Baptist. It’s the “prepare the way of the Lord” passage. Isaiah 40 declaring the coming rule of Yahweh to save and to judge the earth. If John is preparing Jesus’s way, the gospels are declaring the Jesus is both Yahweh and king of the world.

In a world where Caesar rules over everything significant, a king comes who is greater than Caesar. One of the only times Jesus mentions Caesar is when he is asked if it is lawful to pay taxes. Jesus famously takes a coin with Caesar’s face on it and says, “Give to Caesar what belongs to him and to God what belongs to him.” Explicitly, it appears that Jesus is saying there are two kingdoms and one is not concerned with the other, but there are other implications to Jesus’s words. They raise other questions. Why mention God’s belongings at all? What actually belongs to Caesar?  Doesn’t everything belong to God? Jesus appears to be saying it doesn’t matter what Caesar claims for himself. If Caesar wants you to pay taxes, pay them. Be concerned with what God wants from us because he owns everything.

Imagine how political that message actually is. Caesar is not lord, Jesus is lord. Jesus, amazingly, rarely mentions Caesar despite the obvious contrariness of Jesus’s message with Rome. This is intentional. Jesus isn’t merely focused on replacing Caesar’s temporary kingdom. Though Caesar rules today, there will be a time when his kingdom is no more. Jesus’s kingdom is now, and not yet, from now and forever.  God already passed judgment on the kingdoms of the world in the Old Testament. We know that God’s rule isn’t limited geographically by borders or by ethnicity or by time or by money or by progress. Caesar’s rule, and by extension, any other non-Jesus kingdom, including one whose borders extend from sea to shining sea, is limited.

It would be great if America or any other country submitted itself to God, but there will be a time when America will no longer exist. Why should it? God’s kingdom is better.

Where the Rubber Meets Route 66

The difficulty for Christians is that we live in two societies. We have a dual citizenship. One society is a democracy or something resembling it. We have a say in how society is run, and we play a part in its success. Our choices and hard work matter for the society and ourselves. The other is an autocracy. We submit lovingly to the One who commands us how to live and supplies us with whatever we need in order to fulfill our purpose in that society – we work, but in the power of the Holy Spirit. One society is incredibly individualistic. The other, while concerned with the individual, emphasizes unity with each other as brothers and sisters.

Can you see how this might cause conflict and how it makes reflecting on Scripture for political guidance difficult? Here’s a harder question: when what’s good for America contradicts what is right for a Christian what stance will we take? Besides that, a lot of America’s values line up with Enlightenment values rather than Christian ones. At the end of the day, Jesus calls people to himself in submission to his Lordship. America attempts to preserve the right of the individual to believe and act as they want as long as it doesn’t hurt others. America has defended slavery, butchered natives, developed and implemented eugenics programs, and still battles with racism and poverty and abortion. America is postmodern, agnostic, pagan, and so on. Worst of all, America doesn’t submit to God but in many ways still invokes God to bless it.

The answer is absolutely political. Jesus is Lord of all and Savior for his people. Christians, our dedication to our first and best citizenship is the answer. Our faithfulness to Scripture and to our Lord is the best political action we can take. The obligations we have as a church to preach the gospel, take care of each other, and live lives that have been redeemed by God takes precedence. In some cases, we may end up having to take political action in the American context. But we must be humble when we do. We don’t know everything, and the Bible is as concerned about America’s rule as it is for Caesar’s. America is a part of the world that is passing away, let the work we do in it have eternal value. Let it be honoring to God. Let us be prepared to work hard and pray that our reflections on Scripture cohere with its central message.

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Luke and the Kingdom of God

I taught several weeks ago about the kingdom of God and used Mark’s characterization of the kingdom as an example. In continuation of the theme of my last blog post, I wanted to provide a short discussion on the nuances of Luke’s characterization of the coming kingdom of God in his gospel. I have two topics I want to address in this post. First, what does the kingdom of God look like in Luke and how does Jesus’s mission fit into it? Second, what does life in the kingdom of God look like and what kind of people are in it?

What Kind of Kingdom is the Kingdom of God?

We should understand that when Jesus and others refer to the “kingdom” of God, they do not refer to a chronologically- or geographically-bound entity. Kingdom refers to wherever God carries out his will against opposing powers and for his people. Whether he casts out demons, rebukes the Pharisees, heals diseases, or forgives sin, Jesus is bringing all things under subjection to God’s rule. For Luke, God’s rule on earth means salvation has come for the marginalized people of society.

Luke and Role-Reversal

God’s rule is counter-cultural. The Messiah did not come to be considered among the elite. He did not come to raise an army agains the Romans. He came to lift up the humble and to bring low the proud. We can see this role-reversal theme from the beginning of the gospel:

His mercy extends to those who fear him,
from generation to generation.
He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;
he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.
He has brought down rulers from their thrones
but has lifted up the humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things
but has sent the rich away empty. (1:50-53)

The proud and rulers are humbled, but the humble are lifted up. The hungry are fed, but the rich are sent away with nothing. God’s salvation reaches out to society’s lowlifes and includes them. The kingdom of God has different boundary markers than the kingdoms which rule this world.

Luke carries this theme throughout the gospel. The Jewish people at that time focused on renouncing idols and keeping themselves clean from anything that could defile them. They kept the Sabbath in a strict fashion. They studied the Law. They fasted and prayed. Are they not Abraham’s children? Are they not entitled to the kingdom of God? John the Baptist answers this question: “God can raise up children of Abraham from these stones!” (3:8). They do not have the birthright to the kingdom. Their actions demonstrate that they are not truly Abraham’s children. In fact, they are children of snakes (3:7) because they do not act consistently with repentance.

Jesus also answers this question through his actions. He heals people and casts out evil spirits. He saves a leprous man – healing him and restoring him to society. He demonstrates his authority to heal by completely restoring, physically and spiritually, a paralyzed man. He calls a tax collector as a disciple and eats with sinners. The kingdom of God is made up of people whom society has regarded as outside the bounds of God’s community.

Salvation as Jubilee

Luke characterizes the kingdom of God as a kingdom of release. Jesus’s first act after coming home from the wilderness was to proclaim the fulfillment of the Isaianic Jubilee. He conflates two passages from Isaiah (61:1-2 and 58:6) and leaves out the clause about God’s judgement. Both modifications emphasize the role of “release” in Jesus’s own mission:

The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind [Is 61:1],
to set the oppressed free [Is 58:6],
    to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor [Is 61:2] (Lk. 4:18-19)

This “release” is both spiritually and physically oriented. Jesus heals physical ailments and forgives sins. This “release” is for all kinds of people, and often, the lowest rungs of society are the ones who benefit from the message. They are released from bondage of sin and societal marginalization. The lowly are the ones who experience the blessing of the Lord. The only way to attain this “release” is by entering the kingdom of God through repentance and faith.

One prime example of improper grasping of the kingdom of God comes in the following verses of the same passage. Jesus’s direct audience reject Jesus’s message. They identify Jesus as Joseph’s son (instead of God’s son). They say, “Jesus will bring these blessings into effect especially for us since he is a local boy.” They misappropriate Jesus’s message for themselves by laying claim to Jesus’s heritage. No one owns the kingdom by right; it must be entered by repentance (24:46-47). Only the humble can obtain entry. Thus, the poor, already brought low by society, are in prime position for entry.

Who Needs the Kingdom of God?

Jesus says: “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (5:31-32). If Jesus’s ministry is oriented around society’s outcasts, do the rich need a savior? Luke answers that question with a resounding “Yes.” Recall Jesus’s interaction with the rich ruler (18:18-29). He came to Jesus to ask how he may enter God’s kingdom. He claimed obeyed every law of God from his childhood. Jesus, however, identifies his need. The ruler was dependent on his wealth and status in society. Jesus calls him to renounce his dependence on his wealth, but the ruler is unwilling to do so. The lowly and marginalized recognize their need for a savior because they lack everything society values. The rich possess those things (one might say are possessed by those things) and have trouble leaving them behind.

He further illustrates this principle in the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus. The Rich Man enjoys life now while Lazarus suffers. When they die, the Rich Man ends up in torment and Lazarus is comforted. This role reversal occurs because the Rich Man valued his possessions and current comfort and despised the message of Moses and the Prophets (the same Moses and Prophets that testify about Jesus [see 24:25-27]).

In Luke 13:1-5 Jesus says that just because a person avoids evil things happening to them, doesn’t mean that they are in any less danger of hell. No one can escape the coming judgement who does not cling to Jesus. Everyone needs to enter the kingdom of God through repentance. Jesus does not limit his community to any boundary marker that society sets up for itself. Jesus breaks those societal rules and reorients society around himself. Thus for Luke (and for Jesus) the Kingdom of God is for anyone regardless of social class who renounces everything that God does not value and places their trust in Jesus. The poor do not gain entry because they are poor, and the rich are not barred entry because they are rich. Everyone who enters the kingdom enters by faith in Jesus.

Rule of the Kingdom

Jesus did not found a social club or a Facebook group where people could gather an commiserate over the wrongs of society and their pitiful state at the lowest level of society. He established a community of women and men who had been released from the bondage of sin, disease, and oppression. In laying out laws for living in God’s kingdom, Jesus continues the theme of role reversal: Love your enemies, lend freely without expecting anything, and perform acts of love toward everyone (6:27-36). They are not to set up artificial boundary markers. They are a community that is marked by God’s mercy and hold to God’s truth. They who are under the rule of God experience true life and live as humanity was supposed to live: oriented around loving God and people.

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The Synoptics and a “Problem”

When we hear stories about Jesus preached and taught, the telling of the story is usually centered around the historical event with an emphasis on the theological significance of that event. I can think of no major theological issue in teaching on “Jesus’s baptism,” “Jesus’s feeding of the 5,000,” or “Jesus’s crucifixion” as historical happenings, nor can I imagine any major problem in drawing from different Gospel accounts to paint a more accurate picture of “what actually happened.” Might I suggest, however, that we may be losing something when we do isolate these events from their context?

We have four Gospels, not one. While four (or fewer) accounts of the same events help corroborate a story, we were not given four gospels merely because we needed the veracity of each testimony confirmed by several witnesses. Each Gospel brings a nuance to Jesus’s life and mission that is unique. Four Gospels prevent us from flattening Jesus into what we think he should be even though it is popular today to do just that. By isolating the event from text and/or supplementing the account with details from another Gospel we override the nuance author was bringing to the text – almost like we are letting one voice speak over the top of another.

Perhaps we can illustrate this best by talking about how each of the Synoptics (sorry John!), which share a lot of the same language and stories about Jesus, talk about the healing of the paralytic.

Mark: Yahweh’s Kingdom Unstoppable (Mark 2:1-12)

Mark’s version is probably the most well-known. Mark presents Jesus as Yahweh finally coming to restore his people and establish his kingdom on earth. What that looks like is totally different from Jewish expectations at that time. Jesus begins his mission by teaching, calling disciples, casting out demons, and healing the sick. Except for all the healings and exorcisms, nothing “out of the ordinary” happens until he heals a leper by touching him. Jesus risks becoming ritually unclean in order to cleanse the leper, but the leper’s uncleaness doesn’t sully Jesus. Jesus’s cleaness overcomes the leper’s uncleaness and heals him. At that point, Yahweh’s coming kingdom takes on more dimension. Neither demons nor sickness nor perpetual uncleaness are outside the bounds of Jesus’s mission of restoration. The healing of the paralytic comes next. Mark sets the scene by emphasizing how full the house was more than the other Gospels. The fullness of the house serves to show the depth of the five friends’ faith. They believe Jesus and stop at nothing to get their friend to him. Mark’s placement of the story is strategic as well since he uses the story to add another dimension to the type of kingdom Jesus is bringing to earth. Jesus heals the man by forgiving his sins. Jesus’s actions raises an important question: How does this man think he can do what only God can do? To the scribes, Jesus is denying God’s oneness. Jesus, however, affirms his ability to forgive sins by  healing the man. One commentator calls this “hard evidence” of Jesus’s ability to forgive. From Mark’s perspective, this story demonstrates that forgiveness is not just a heavenly thing: “The Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sin.” Forgiveness – as has the kingdom – has come to earth.

Matthew: Jesus’s Authority Demonstrated (Matt 9:1-8)

Matthew takes the same story, compresses it, and places it in a series of stories about Jesus’s authority. First, Jesus and his disciples are traveling in a boat when a storm comes. The disciples, afraid for their lives, summon Jesus to ask for help and declare that they are about to die. Jesus rebukes the disciples. Then he rebukes the storm. The storm is pacified, and the disciples are left wondering at the type of man that Jesus is: “What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him?” Answer: the type of man who you should put your faith in. Next, Jesus goes to the country of the Gadarenes where he encounters two demon-possessed men (by the way, Mark and Luke place this story some time after the healing of the paralytic). These demons convince Jesus to send them into a herd of pigs. After Jesus  permits their request, the pigs rush out of their pen, fall into the water, and drown. Due to Jesus’s actions, the men are calm and sane – all is right. Not even the most powerful of demons can stop Jesus. The people of the town, however, beg Jesus and his disciples to leave the region.  Are these people responding appropriately to Jesus? Finally, we come to our story. As mentioned before, it’s a compressed version of what we see in Mark and Luke. There’s no mention of the crowds or even the house. The friends bring the paralytic to Jesus, Jesus forgives the man’s sins. The scribes question Jesus, Jesus responds to scribes and demonstrates his authority over sin and sickness by healing the man. The people respond with great wonder that God would give such authority to men. By arranging the stories the way he does, Matthew shows that Jesus has supreme authority over everything on earth. What kind of response is appropriate when we face a man with that kind of authority? We must put our faith in him and be disciples.

Luke: The Kingdom and Great Role Reversal (5:17-26)

Luke’s story looks very similar to Mark’s telling with a few exceptions. In the beginning, Luke prepares the reader for the coming conflict between Jesus and the scribes and Pharisees:  ^“He was teaching one day, and Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting (they had come from every village of Galilee and from Judea and Jerusalem). The power of the Lord was with him to heal.” Jesus and the religious leaders were about to clash over a healing.  We also know that the Lord was with Jesus, that is to say, what is about to happen to the paralytic falls in the purview of Jesus’s mission: to set captives free (4:17-21).  Jesus’s interaction with the paralytic demonstrates the orientation of Jesus’s ministry toward the lowly and marginalized, and forgiveness is a vital part of that ministry. While the Pharisees express outrage at Jesus’s actions, Jesus addresses the need in front of him. Jesus restores the man in front of him completely. He silences his opposition not with the power of a sword but the power of a healing. Jesus did not come to make war with the Romans or slaughter his human opposition. He came to restore his people spirit and body.

Summary

In all three gospels, the story of the paralytic gives dimension to Jesus’s ministry. In all three, Jesus confirms his authority and, arguably, his divinity. Yet, the three gospels use the story differently in their own presentations of who Jesus is. If we isolate the story or supplement the details from another gospel, we risk distorting that presentation. The story is a part of a tapestry. We can appreciate the design by itself, but let us not try to remove design from the fabric it’s woven into. Instead, let’s take a step back and appreciate how the design contributes to the beauty of the whole piece.

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Identifying Inner-Biblical Allusions by Jeffery Leonard

Recently, my professor had everyone in my Ezekiel class read this helpful article describing parameters for identifying a) an inner-biblical allusion and b) the direction of dependence of that inner-biblical allusion. The scholarly community has demonstrated quite a bit of interest in the particular field of inner-biblical allusion. From my understanding, their interest extends beyond the OT into the Second Temple literature and the NT as well. Leonard’s criteria seems to apply to the OT best from my reading of his article (I would love anyone’s thoughts on how one would identify inner-biblical allusion in the NT).

He gives 8 guidelines:

1. Shared language is the single most important factor in establishing a textual connection. I think this is pretty self-explanatory. If one text is going to allude to another, the texts need to possess the same (or similar) lexemes in order to indicate that allusion.

2. Shared language is more important than non-shared language. If the texts do not share significant terms or phrases but not all of the same terms or phrases, the terms or phrases that are not shared do not  have much impact on the possibility of an inner-biblical allusion.

3. Shared language that is rare or distinctive suggests a stronger connection than does language that is widely used. Again, fairly self-explanatory. The rarer the terms or phrases, the higher the probability of an allusion.

4. Shared phrases suggest a stronger connection than do individual shared terms. Establishing an allusion based on a couple of shared terms can be tenuous.

5. The accumulation of shared language suggests a stronger connection than does a single shared term or phrase. The more shared language, the better.

6. Shared language in similar contexts suggests a stronger connection than does shared language alone. The probability of that one text is alluding to another increases if the two contexts are talking about the same thing using the same language.

7. Shared language need not be accompanied by shared ideology to establish a connection. With #6 in mind, that being said, authors bring their own ideas and purposes to the text. Therefore, the language from text A alluded to in text B may serve another purpose in text B than it did in text A.

8. Shared language need not be accompanied by shared form to establish a connection. E.g. A psalm can allude to a narrative in the Pentateuch.

After laying out all these guidelines, Leonard stresses that just like Textual Criticism, establishing an inner-biblical allusion is as much an art as it is a science. Thus, no magic method exists to determine a connection.

He provides 6 criteria for establishing which text is dependent on the other:

1. Does one text claim to draw on another?

2. Are there elements in the texts that help fix their dates?

3. Is one text capable of producing the other?

4 .Does one text assume the other?

5. Does one text show a general pattern of dependence on other texts?

6. Are there rhetorical patterns in the texts that suggest that one text has used the other in an exegetically significant way?

I still have a few questions:

1. While shared language is the most important criteria, I think that exegetical purpose would come in close second. If one cannot come up with a reason for an allusion, how can one call it an allusion? I taught Psalms 1 and 2 at my church. While most scholarly articles I read seem to think that Psalms 1 and 2 share a strong connection, two of the criteria were the use of the word for meditate (הגה – a fairly rare word) and the inclusio about the blessed man. I still think that connection is tenuous at best.

2. How much do our presuppositions about how the canon was shaped determine what can and cannot be dependent on the other? Is Ezekiel, a pre-destruction of the temple prophet, dependent upon the P source (a supposedly 6th century document) or vice-versa? With the plurality and complexity of source models that exist in the scholarly world today, the area of inner-biblical allusion just adds more complexity.  Personally, I think a more conservative model makes better sense of the evidence. It also seems to me (I speak ignorantly) the conservative model greatly simplifies the task of establishing inner-biblical allusions too.

All of this is very exciting. I do look forward to reading more about this topic. I hope clarity comes in the research! I welcome any thoughts about this subject in both the OT and the NT!

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Quick Hits: Discourse Grammar of the Greek New Testament

I just began reading Steven Runge’s Discourse Grammar of the Greek New Testament. I just want to list several points that I thought were significant:

1. Runge’s work is both cross-linguistic and function-based. Runge does not just focus on Greek alone but looks more broadly at the nature of languages in general to formulate rules that all languages follow. His work is function-based in that he focuses on what each discourse piece accomplishes.

2. Choice implies meaning. How one decides to communicate and the choices one makes in the words he or she uses can communicate meaning beyond syntax and semantics. To draw on an example from the book, if you ask your wife how her day was and she says “Your kids…” she is not just employing the 2nd person pronoun as a stylistic variation in her speech. She is communicating something about her day and it relates to the children by distancing herself with the use of that pronoun.

3. Not all word choices reflect a “special” meaning over and above the semantic meaning. Runge calls the form that does not communicate “special” meaning default, and the form that does, he calls “marked.” Runge explains from the previous example:

Consider the aforementioned example of “my” children compared to “your” children. I could organize the various options for referring to my kids into a qualitative set. When I have no special task to accomplish, I most typically use “the kids” as a referring expression. Taking this expression as the default, using expressions such as “your kids,” “my kids,” or “Ruth and her sister” would be expected to signal the presence of some quality or discourse feature that “the kids” would not have signaled. Using “the kids” does not explicitly signal whether I am distancing myself from them or not, whereas “your kids” does.

Thus, we need to pay attention to what is default versus what is marked. We also need to know what is idiomatic in a language since such expressions may seem strange to us but normal to the speaker of that language.

4. These types of devices give a story its texture. Using these discourse devices can bring prominence and contrast to features in a narrative and draw the reader’s attention to what the main point is.

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Hermann Gunkel: Romantic Interest in Israel’s Earliest Traditions

I decided to write on Hermann Gunkel’s contribution to Old Testament studies during the past semester in my Reformation and Post Reformation Interpretation of the Old Testament class. The class was among the best that I’ve taken so far. I really enjoyed this final project since I got to read a bunch of works that I had not read before (but really wanted to read). Like the course, I found Gunkel’s work and Sitz im Leben challenging and informative. I hope you enjoy reading the paper as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Thesis: What makes Gunkel the focus of this paper is how a philosophical idea, Romanticism, drove Gunkel’s genius as a biblical scholar to create a way of thinking about the Bible that set the agenda for Old Testament scholarship in the twentieth century.

Download it here: Gunkel.

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