Critical editions of Hebrew and Christian scripture are commonplace.  This, however, will be the first critical edition of the Koran ever made.  Called the Corpus Corianicum, it brings together the known changes made in the first six hundred years of the Koran.  Since many Muslims hold that the current text of the Koran is identical with a text found in heaven, this news of variant readings will cause some issues, so to speak.

I had known that this was coming, but not the state of the effort.  I understand that they’re working on Suras 19 and 20 and that the whole project will probably take another decade and a half to complete.  I wish them luck and, more importantly, safety in their efforts.

Train yourself in godliness, ⁸ for, while physical training is of some value, godliness is valuable in every way, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.  ⁹ The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance.

Godliness is probably a central theme within the Pastoral Epistles, where it occurs six more times in First Timothy, then once each in Second Timothy and Titus.  Elsewhere in the New Testament, it occurs once in Acts and four times in Second Peter.

Let us begin with the last sentence, which tells us that Paul’s advice on godliness is “sure and worthy of full acceptance.”[1] First, this affirmation occurs only three times in First Timothy, each time associated with a major element of Paul’s advice.  Second, it marks what Paul says as important.  In its own context it carries the same weight as do the “verily, verily” sayings of Jesus in the Gospel of John.  Third, it places what Paul says in opposition to the old wives tales and profane myths taught by the false teachers that Paul has earlier warned Timothy against.  Timothy and the rest of the faithful within his congregation can rely without hesitation on Paul’s advice to train in godliness, and perhaps we can, as well.

What, then, is godliness?  Here we come to a major challenge in our attempt to benefit from Paul’s sure and worthy advice, for virtues in general tend to be dependent on their historical and cultural context.  Godliness is no exception to this rule.  In many modern translation of the New Testament the Greek word behind godliness is translated as piety.  Modern definitions of piety suggest that we understand piety as a reverence for God and religious obligations.   In the Hellenistic world, however, godliness was a much more profound virtue.

Christian thinkers were neither the first nor the only authors to advocate godliness.  The Stoic philosopher Epictetus (Epik tee tus) described godliness as a combination of piety and correct behavior.  “In piety toward the gods,” he wrote, “I would have you know the chief element is this, to have the right opinions about them – as existing and as administering the universe well and justly—and to have set yourself to obey them and to submit to everything that happens, and to follow it voluntarily, in the belief that it is being fulfilled by the highest intelligence.”  Philo, writing from the perspective of a Hellenized Jew, held a similar but slightly different understanding.  To him, godliness was a function of both religion and justice, supporting a life lived in accordance with the traditions of the ancestors, in fidelity to God, and with appropriate behavior toward others.  In both cases, the bottom line is that the superior philosophy produces the superior life.

But will this sort of thing work for us?  As a twenty-first century American, my world view is considerably less confident than that of Epictetus.  I find myself informed more by that famous philosopher of engineering, CAPT Edward Murphy, who held that “if it can go wrong, it will.”  Further developments of this line of thinking are credited to Finagle, who noted that “whatever can go wrong, will go wrong, and at the worst possible time,” and finally there’s Flanagan, who held that Murphy and Finagle were both incurable optimists.  So I cannot say that I think that the universe is ticking along just fine, with liberty and justice for all.  And I do not think that much of anything that happens represents the outworkings of any intellectual activity, let alone the highest intelligence.  Therefore, I have no intention of acting as if the universe can just “perk” along without my constant attention.

I am not, however, the first Christian to hold that the world is not entirely what it ought to be, so what is needed is a Christian definition of godliness, and Philo probably points out the way with his nod toward “the ancestors.”  If we go back to Epictetus’ description of godliness as holding “right opinions” about the gods, then we can begin to define a Christian form of godliness.  For Paul, the core teaching on which Christian life was to be founded was the Easter story, that is, the triumph of God in the death and resurrection of Jesus.  Hence, he writes in First Timothy chapter three, verse sixteen that “undeniably, great is the mystery of godliness: [He] who was manifest in the realm of the flesh, vindicated in the realm of the spirit,[2] seen by angels, proclaimed to the nations,[3] trusted throughout the world, and taken up in glory.”[4] Titus builds on this thought to conclude that a life lived “in Christ Jesus,” that is, a life that is centered on the mystical union between Christ and a believer that is initiated with baptism, is the basis of a godly life.  But we will continue to follow Timothy’s thoughts.

If the “right opinion” we should hold about God is centered in the great story of Easter, then we must further inquire about what this implies, for Epictetus is clear that right opinions about the gods are the wellspring of right behaviors.  What behaviors, then, does Paul think follow from right opinions about God?  Ancient philosophers were wont to answer questions such as the one I just posed with lists.  If they chose to present the positive side, they presented a list of virtues, while the negative side was conveyed by a vice list.  In this case, what Paul provides is the vice list of Second Timothy, chapter three, verses two, three, and four. In this passage, as he does many times throughout the Pastoral Epistles, Paul warns Timothy about those who do not hold right opinions about God, that is, who do not understand or teach the Easter story as it should be presented.  These are the false teachers, and the profane myths and old wives tales that they taught were incorrect opinions about God.

Describing those whom Timothy was to oppose with his right opinion about God, Paul wrote that they are “lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy,  ³ inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, brutes, haters of good,  ⁴ treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, [and] lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.”  Because they do not hold right opinions about God, their false teachings “⁵ [hold] to the outward form of godliness” as they talk a good line about God but their behavior, Paul says, denies the transformative power, the power of godliness, that arises from right opinions about God.  Timothy is therefore instructed to avoid them!

Now the purpose of these lists, whether they be virtue lists or vice lists, is not really the individual elements of the list itself.  Instead, the desired effect is cumulative.  Since all reading was done aloud, the steady of stream of unwanted behaviors left no doubt in the mind of the audience that those who behaved in this fashion did not hold right opinions about God.  So what is the picture that builds as one listens to Paul’s description of the false teachers as “lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy,  ³ inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, brutes, haters of good,  ⁴ treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, [and] lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God?”

I suggest that the central shortcoming in the behavior of the false teachers was that their relationships with other people were flawed, in the sense that they were skewed toward destructive self-interest. This coheres well with Paul’s idea of what composes a right opinion about God.  In Paul’s thought the Easter story, which is the key element of a right opinion about God, is concerned with the fact that through Christ’s death and resurrection God acted to place humankind in a right relationship with himself.  Paul thinks that those who understand and accept this offer of a right relationship with God have a transforming motivation to extend this experience of a right relationship from God to their relationships with other humans.  Thus, in Christian thought godliness is a right opinion about God, that is, a correct understanding of the Easter story as the event in which God placed humans in a right relationship with himself.  This right opinion about God transforms authentic Christians so that they wish to rectify the other relationships in which they participate.  The activities involved in restoring or rejuvenating failed relationships, and the maintenance of all relationships, is the right behavior that follows from a right opinion of God.  The mystery of godliness is the Easter story and the power of godliness is the transformative motivation that trust in the Easter story engenders.

If we return now to the passage from which we started, in which Paul instructs Timothy to train himself in godliness, we can continue to follow Paul’s reasoning about godliness.  First, the word “train” introduces the motif of athletic training – it is a word that comes originally from the world of the gym.  It is, however, also used of spiritual or mental training, for Paul’s world was a world that valued athletic excellence, and probably more than we do.  We may therefore expect that the development of godliness follows from the regular exercise of godliness, just like any other talent.

After making this analogy, which was quite natural for his earliest audiences, Paul does something unusual.  Most moralists of the time did not give reasons why those who heard them should respond favorably to their moral advice.  Paul, however, goes on to compare athletic training with training in godliness, saying, “for while physical training is of some value, godliness is valuable in every way, holding promise for both the present life and the world to come.”  As would be common at the time, Paul holds that athletic excellence is beneficial, but godliness, according to him, hold a greater promise because it has both a present and a future payoff.   This dualism, a contrast between the present age and the world to come follows from Paul’s exposure to Jewish apocalyptic thought.  The promise associated with life in the world to come is evident, or at least as evident as it’s going to be without more information on the nature of the world to come.  The more interesting question, then, is to ask what the promise of godliness in the present age might be.  For this, we turn to a third presentation of godliness in First Timothy.

In the sixth chapter Paul begins to wind up this first letter to Timothy by returning to the undesirable behaviors of the false teachers.  According to Paul, “whoever…does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that is in accordance with godliness,  ⁴ is conceited, understanding nothing, and has a morbid craving for controversy and for disputes about words. From these comes envy, dissension, slander, base suspicions, ⁵ and wrangling among those who are depraved in mind and bereft of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain.”  Here Paul retains the idea that a lack of godliness produces what we might today think of as dysfunctional relationships, that is, relationships that are characterized by an unwholesome interest in stirring up trouble and starting fights with the intention of dominating and then destroying the other party.  The more pleasant life is characterized by godliness and contented self-sufficiency, for as Paul writes, “of course, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment; ⁷ for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it; ⁸ but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these.”  Godliness, according to Paul, finds no need to create dissension where none exists and it does not prolong hot debate when no further creative purpose remains.  Right relationships are not characterized by the desire to control and ruin.

Godliness, then, is a virtue which can be developed much the way talents are, by constant practice.  Godliness has two components: a right opinion about God and the right behaviors that follow from this right opinion.  Right opinions about God lie within a correct understanding of the Easter story, that is, that through Christ Jesus God placed humans in a right relationship with himself.  The trust engendered by this knowledge of God’s gracious act is transforming, in that it motivates us to rectify all our relationships.  Behaviors that encourage and restore relationships are right behaviors.  These behaviors profit us because they lead us to a better world even as they improve our lives in the here and now by crafting peaceful associations and a contented, self-sufficient lifestyle.  They do not, however, come without constant mental discipline, for their acquisition is compared to the long, wearing, training of an athlete.  Nevertheless, the result is worth the effort.  Therefore, may we all begin to find our way toward that spiritual weight room where the exercise of our godliness may be perfected, so that we become together a peaceable and contented society based on a right understanding of the Easter story.

[2] The two realms of reality: the realm of the created order, and the realm of the Creator.  So Christ was seen by humans after his resurrection, and when he took his position on the right hand of God his life and teachings about God were declared righteous.

[3] Once again, the two realms.  At his enthronement, Christ was attended by angels, but he is also so proclaimed by his disciples here on earth.

[4] And finally, another earth/heaven dichotomy, but this time the focus has moved from proclamation to acclamation.  Christ is accepted by humans on earth and enthroned in glory in the heavenly court.

Use of Is 14:12-15  to support Christian ideas about Satan’s displacement from heaven before the creation of the earth are far older than the modern prophets.  Most famously, I think, it is a central element in John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Milton’s epic opens with Satan and his angels pancaked onto the rock-hard surface of  the burning lake in hell.  Like any good epic, however, PL starts in medias res so five more books pass before the reader gets to the Paul Harvey moment and finds out The Rest of the Story.

I actually quite like Milton’s version — it’s a bit of fun in an otherwise serious narrative.  After Satan rebels and moves his forces north, one angel, Abdiel, stands against him.  Once this little scene is finished the battle commences in earnest. At first the obedient angels are so successful that even Satan is wounded by Micheal’s sword, at which point “nectarous humors” flow from his side.  That night, Satan and his henchmen invent the cannon and make a couple of batteries, which they also conceal from their newly awakened foes until the last minute and correctly employ en masse for maximum effect.  Their attack throws their immortal enemies off their feet but cannot kill them because there is no such thing as a mortal wound for angels — only total annihilation works.

That Satan is one devious dude!

In retaliation, Micheal’s forces uproot mountains and hurl them at their foes.  At this point God intervenes, perhaps because his infinite foreknowledge knows that the landscape repair costs are going to get out of hand, and sends the Son in to deal with the situation.  For Satan, et. al., the next stop comes after nine days of falling when they go Splat! in Hell.

Very fun, no?

Anyway, Isaiah’s version is nowhere near as exciting because it lacks all those militaristic details and is, moreover, too serious for words:

Isaiah 14:12-15   12 How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn! How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low!  13 You said in your heart, “I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit on the mount of assembly on the heights of Zaphon;  14 I will ascend to the tops of the clouds, I will make myself like the Most High.”  15 But you are brought down to Sheol, to the depths of the Pit.

Now clearly this is mythological writing at its finest.  Moreover, whatever it’s earliest provenance, at this point it is clearly intended as a taunt song against the king of Babylon:

Isaiah 14:3-4  3 When the LORD has given you rest from your pain and turmoil and the hard service with which you were made to serve,  4 you will take up this taunt against the king of Babylon: How the oppressor has ceased! How his insolence has ceased…

Now to be clear, I have no problems with using this as a proof text for Satan’s experience of the war in heaven.  The only thing I’d like to see is a clear presentation of what is being done when we so use it, and why.  I bring this up because with the new semester I’ve got new students and as usual they are astounded at what their scriptures do or don’t say when it comes to stuff like this.

Most have no real problem once they get a chance to deal with the fact that the teachers they trusted didn’t tell them quite all truth, but there are some for whom it is quite a shock.  And it ought not to be so.  We really ought to be more forthright about how we use scripture, and our diligence in doing so ought to increase as our interpretive methods depart from a more literal and historical-critical approach.  Just so everybody knows…

Introduction:

1:1 In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth,  ² the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.

Most modern translations eschew the AV’s “in the beginning” in favor a reading that takes explicit notice of the opening verbs to yield a sentence that runs something like, “when God began to create the heavens and the earth.”  This sometimes prompts people to ask what God was doing before he began his creative enterprise.  Martin Luther had, I think, the appropriate answer when he said, “creating a hell for those who ask that question.”  That got a bit of a laugh.

Now it’s important to note that the word translated as create is used by our Hebrew writers only for the activities of God.  This lexical discipline makes it clear that whatever God was doing, it was qualitatively different from the sorts of things humans involve themselves in.

Now there’s darkness on the face of the deep before God begins to work.  By the time of Second Isaiah, however, God’s role had been expanded to include creating darkness as well:

Isaiah 45:7   7 I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe; I the LORD do all these things.

I personally like the idea that God created darkness.  It reinforces the idea that all of reality, even the apparently less pleasant parts, are imbued with God’s goodness.  But there’s something good about darkness, as well.  It’s one of two times when we’re not required to be productive.  The other “rest” is, of course, the Sabbath.

Finally, there’s the “wind from God” or, as the AV puts it, “the Spirit of God.”  The Hebrew word here can be translated three ways according to context: spirit, wind, or breath.  Translators who opt for the idea of the Spirit sweeping across the waters are also usually fans of reading a triune God back onto the Hebrew Bible.  Modern translations tend to select “wind.”  In either case, the import is the same.  Wind or Spirit, God is the source and this first notice of motion presages the changes that are to follow.

Day 1:

³ Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.  ⁴ And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.  ⁵ God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

Here we find the first of three modalities of creation: divine fiat.  God speaks and it happens.  Here also is the first notice that God finds the results of his work “good.”  I’ve often wondered exactly what that meant, that is, does it refer to beauty, functionality, morality, or what.  Probably all of the above, but I’m not sure.

In v.4 we find the second mode of creation: separation.  The universe started out formless and void so creation moves toward life-sustaining organization pervaded with generational potential to fill it.  The last element of the creative act is naming.  It may be that some of Genesis’s earlier audiences (probably aural) understood naming as something that anchored existence.  In any case, naming always follows the creative act.

Finally the last thing that happens is that God sets up the first in a series of relationships.  In this case, he links time and light and calls it the first day.

Day 2:

⁶ And God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.”  ⁷ So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so.  ⁸ God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.

God always uses that phrase “let there be” for celestial object: light, the sky, and the celestial lights in v. 14.  The word that is translated “dome” is elsewhere unattested but it has a verbal cognate that has to do with hammering out metal.  So this is a three level cosmology: the earth, the abyss, and the heavens above the earth.  The primordial water is separated so that some of it is stored above the sky to become rain and some is left on the earth.

Finally, notice that God does not yet judge his work, that is, there is no notice that God examined what he had done and called it “good.”  It may be that the phrase has just dropped out, or it may be that it was deliberately omitted.  As it stands, the waters are not quite yet in a position to do much good because there is no dry land.  Although rain could fall, it wouldn’t do much good falling on an undifferentiated ocean.

Day 3:

⁹ And God said, “Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so.  ¹⁰ God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.  ¹¹ Then God said, “Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.” And it was so.  ¹² The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good.  ¹³ And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.

During the third day God twice notes that his work is good.  The first notice comes after the separation of land and sea, while the second marks judges the success of the new plant life.  This plant life appears because of the third mode of creation, that is, God creates by giving generative powers to the earth.  For Genesis’ earliest audiences, this may have encouraged the idea that the fecundity of the earth was not the result of a fertility goddess.  Considering what fertility rites typically entail, this probably engendered a bit of disappointment in certain circles.

So that’s all we got through!  Probably the least comprehensive GD class ever, but that’s the way it went.  If I teach twenty-three lessons this year, and each averages thirteen verses, that’s about three hundred verses.  I think I can rise to the occasion… 

Narrator’s Introduction:

Mark 1:1-45 The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.  ² As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, “See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; ³ the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,’”

First off, the Christian message is good news.  Why?  Hm.  Well, we’ll have to talk more about that one.  Just file it away for the moment.  Next up,  Jesus.  Affirmed to be Messiah and Son of God.  The two titles introduce the idea that Jesus of Nazareth was someone special.  What kind of special?   Well, his status as messiah links us thru him to all those OT promises.  Son of God has its own nuance in Mark, but at this point it identifies Jesus as someone who has a unique relationship with God.  That’s the basics, right there.

The Baptism of Jesus

⁴ John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  ⁵ And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.  ⁶ Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey.  ⁷ He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals.  ⁸ I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”  ⁹ In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.  ¹⁰ And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him.  ¹¹ And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

John the Baptist is the living link between Jesus and the OT prophets.  The NT authors held that Jesus was predicted by the dead prophets and look, he’s predicted by the latest OT prophet!  Then there’s the promise of the Holy Spirit, which at this point in Christian thought is more God’s power than a person — but a relationship with God through the Spirit is a key element of Christianity.

And the baptism itself, yes, Matthew is right: if Jesus was baptized then Christians likewise, despite the fact that it doesn’t seem to have played much of a role in Jesus’ own work.  Then the heaven are torn open.  Not opened, but torn, suggesting that the relationship between heaven and earth is irreparably changed.  And finally, God’s affirmation of Jesus’ status confirms the special relationship identified in v. 1 and sets us thinking about why baptism brings about this tender theophany.  Hm.  More later on that one.

And then somebody usually notices that Jesus’ baptism doesn’t look much like their own, so this sends us off on a tangent looking at all the different idea about baptism in the NT.  For History of Christianity guys, this tends to puncture the myth of early Christianity theological unity pretty effectively.

The Wilderness Temptation

¹² And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.  ¹³ He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.

If there’s one thing Christian agree on, it’s that Jesus was tempted and that he overcame temptation.  This always interests me because Milton’s Paradise Regained makes this episode, not the Passion, the point at which Christ’s success is assured.

And then that business with wilderness, beasts, and angels.  Sounds a bit like a return to Eden, no?  Or at least a move in that direction.  Heh.  Protology is eschatology in much Christian thought, no?

Summary of Jesus’ Teaching

¹⁴ Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, ¹⁵ and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

This are the first words spoken by Jesus, so they set the “tone” for developing his character.  Do you want to know what Jesus did, at least as it’s taught in the Synoptics?  He preached the coming of the Kingdom.  Notice that we’re back on the good news, but this time it’s God’s good news.  Gotta be something about the fulfillment of all those OT prophecies to save his people, no?  Good news, indeed!

And look at that: “the time is fulfilled.”  Hm.  God has a timetable and a plan!    And then there’s the term “kingdom of God.”  When I ask students what this means, they inevitably tell me “heaven.”  So we have to talk.  In general terms, which is all that’s appropriate on the first and second day of class, it means that we yield our will to God.  In the Gospels it has both a present sense, that is, there are places where the kingdom is already present, where it is near, and where it has a far future sense.  Christian life takes place in a world with multiple temporal horizons.

Repent.  Turn back.  Pretty straightforward: turn away from anything that isn’t God and turn toward God.

Believe.  In the NT, believe usually means “trust” and I tend to use trust a lot more than believe when I teach since there are some connotations of believe in English that don’t do justice to Christian faith or hope.

Calling Disciples

¹⁶ As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea– for they were fishermen.  ¹⁷ And Jesus said to them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.”  ¹⁸ And immediately they left their nets and followed him.  ¹⁹ As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets.  ²⁰ Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.

Disciples are another key element in Christianity and the foremost trait of a good disciple is willingness to leave job (Peter and Andrew) and family (James and John) and follow Jesus without hesitation.  This is the first place where my NT classes do a little bit of historical reconstruction because I always ask them which of the two pairs of brothers appears to be the most wealthy — James and John, of course because they have a boat.

Teaching/Healing/Exorcism

²¹ They went to Capernaum; and when the sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught.  ²² They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.  ²³ Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, ²⁴ and he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.”  ²⁵ But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!”  ²⁶ And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him.  ²⁷ They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, “What is this? A new teaching– with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.”  ²⁸ At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.  ²⁹ As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John.  ³⁰ Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once.  ³¹ He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.  ³² That evening, at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons.  ³³ And the whole city was gathered around the door.  ³⁴ And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.

Here you get typical Jesus stuff: teaching with authority, healing, and exorcisms.  This also links the teaching with the power because the miracles Jesus does reinforce his message that the kingdom is at hand and that his listeners should turn back toward God and trust him.  After all, they can clearly see that Jesus is more powerful than the representatives of the demonic kingdom, so why not?

At this point I like to ask what traits this reveals about Jesus’ character.  Most students go with “power” or “wisdom” but I have never had a class where one student, perhaps a bit more perceptive than the rest, failed to point out that everything Jesus does, he does for others.  And then I get to explain the concept of love as the Bible teaches it, which is quite a distance from the crap they tend to associate with love.  This is my favorite part of the lesson, BTW.

Jesus Prays

³⁵ In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.  ³⁶ And Simon and his companions hunted for him.  ³⁷ When they found him, they said to him, “Everyone is searching for you.”  ³⁸ He answered, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.”

Jesus prayed, and so do Christians.  No matter how powerful or successful, they pray.  That’s because the source of their vigor is God.  Prayer is more important than sleeping, eating, or companionship, and even one’s daily tasks must wait upon prayer.   But  Christian prayer is the beginning, not the end, so once his communion with God is interrupted Jesus returns to his task.

Success in Galilee

³⁹ And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.  ⁴⁰ A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, “If you choose, you can make me clean.”  ⁴¹ Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, “I do choose. Be made clean!”  ⁴² Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean.  ⁴³ After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, ⁴⁴ saying to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.”  ⁴⁵ But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter.

The healing of the leper is an interesting story because it opens up the relationship between Jesus and the Law.  We don’t get into it much early on, but it does highlight the fact that Jesus is properly identified as the most famous Jew in all of Christianity.    And beyond that, there’s the notice that Jesus was so popular that he could no longer visit the towns.  This sounds like success, but it is also the narrative “instability” that opens up the next phase of the Gospel narrative because all this excitement attracts the attention of the Jewish leadership — attention that will ultimately be fatal for Jesus and life-giving for the rest of us.

So there.  That’s a good selection of Christian thought.  Toss in a parable or two about the growth of the kingdom, Peter’s confession, the passion narrative in Mark and the resurrection narrative in Matthew, and you’ve got a nice little synopsis!

I gotta say, the LDS reading makes God’s judgment suspect.

The Jesus Tax. Also known as the Lloyd Blankfein Apotheosis Tax. To be paid by any individual who says he’s acting on God’s behalf but can’t prove it. Includes the Pope’s U.S. representatives.

The rest of them are here.

My current opinion: What presents challenges is not really speculation per se, but ill-disciplined or ill-advised efforts.   Here, I’m trying to catch a rather wide spectrum of issues, such as an unwillingness to swear off the sorts of things we simply don’t know much about, an unhealthy interest in esoterica, a lack of discretion in choosing conversation partners, or failure to consider the diversity of opinion that already exists, even within the canon.

But I don’t really think we can avoid speculation.  I think it’s part of the learning process.

In the course of his argument Watson points out, as John Calvin did before him, that the description of heavenly bodies in the fourth day of creation is quite different from that derived from modern science.  In Genesis, the Sun is the “great light,” the Moon is a lesser light, the stars are mentioned more or less as an aside, and the planets do not come up at all.  Science, however, knows that the Sun is a mediocre star and most planets are larger than the Moon.  Following Calvin, Watson writes:

…Our capacity for reason enable us both to operate within our own given and immediate perspective and to transcend it.  We transcend it in the context of a scientific investigation in which a perspective on reality comes to light that is quite other than the one from which Genesis speaks.  Here, we learn (among other things) that the least conspicuous of all the visible planets [Saturn] is actually much larger than the moon–in spite of appearances to the contrary.

This discovery of a scientific perspective is all good, because it discloses something about God and his work.  Despite this, however, it is not good to pursue the scientific perspective to the exclusion of the Genesis perspective because:

There is a danger that ‘the knowledge of the divine gifts we enjoy’ may ‘vanish away.’  That is to say, we may acquire a knowledge of abstracted natural phenomena at the cost of a knowledge of our own giftedness.  If so, the idea that a scientifically explicable phenomenon such as moonlight is a gift of God will imperceptively lose its persuasiveness, as we understand ourselves no longer as participants in a God-given order, but as observers of a reality become neutral and indifferent.

I like the idea that one of the transcendent truths we learn from Genesis is our own giftedness.  I agree that this is a perspective that we will not get from science, and that it is important.  Anyway, from his reading of Calvin’s argument Watson develops four hermeneutical rules:

1.  In those  cases where science and scripture differ, it is unwise to assume that science must give way.  Instead, we need to evaluate each case and discern whether we really face one truth claim in opposition to another or simply a difference in perspective.

2. The perspective in scripture is that “of our own life-world understood as the gift of God,” and is foundational.  Because of this, when scripture comes in contact with science the biblical account “should take precedence.”

3. Because scientific discourse reveals God and his creation it must not be neglected.  It also “provokes a more insightful reading of the scriptural text that is not content merely to note and paraphrase its fact-like assertions, but seeks to uncover their significance and rationale.”

4. Since science operates in a different realm than scripture, interpretation should “explain the difference rather than deny it.  Where one attempt to show that scripture is confirmed by science or science by scripture, the integrity of both discourses may be compromised.”  [emphasis in the original]

Darwin’s contribution, according to Watson, arises precisely from the fact that he did not interpret Genesis.  Instead, he worked strictly within the natural world.  This left Genesis to the theologians, “who will perhaps succeed in restoring it to its natural habitat with the Christian narrative of “salvation” or final human well-being–incidentally learning from Darwin to avoid some of the serious interpretive errors that have clustered around this text in the past.”

Revelation 12:7-9  7 And war broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. The dragon and his angels fought back,  8 but they were defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven.  9 The great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world– he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.

The unsettling thing about the LDS use of this as a proof-text for a pre-mortal war in heaven is that in its current literary context it doesn’t have anything to do with the pre-existence.  Consider the verses that precede it:

Revelation 12:1-6  A great portent appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.  2 She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pangs, in the agony of giving birth.  3 Then another portent appeared in heaven: a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems on his heads.  4 His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. Then the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, so that he might devour her child as soon as it was born.  5 And she gave birth to a son, a male child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron. But her child was snatched away and taken to God and to his throne; 6 and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, so that there she can be nourished for one thousand two hundred sixty days.

If we chose to read the rapture of the man-child into heaven as the exaltation of Christ, which is quite common among Christians, then the war in heaven described in vv. 7-12 takes place after the resurrection of Christ.  This means that Satan’s exile to the earth is the proximate cause of the persecution of Christians in the 1st century, C.E. rather than an explanation for the presence of demonic forces on the earth since the creation of humanity.