Transgender Bill

A version of something I posted on Facebook:

So this passed.  I know some will disagree but I think there were much better ways of resolving this sort of issue than this bill. Sorry, but I'd rather not have my daughters shower with someone with male equipment just because that person has some innate wish they were born female. In my opinion, girls'/womens' restrooms were made for the female sex and transgender females are admittedly not of the female sex (hence the "transgender" label - although one could argue about this if they've had a "sex-change" surgery). Proponents of this bill, I think, are assuming that restrooms are segregated by socially constructed gender role, in which case it would make sense to allow socially female males to use female restrooms. But I think restrooms are actually segregated by the equipment you currently have (that is, by sex), which has nothing to do with which gender you identify with. In which case allowing only the female sex in the restroom for the female sex has nothing to do with transgender issues or discrimination against such people. There are other ways to accommodate transgender people, such as gender-neutral bathrooms or shower stalls, etc. that do not violate persons' privacy rights in regards to the opposite sex.

Notes on Galatians 5:1-12

More study notes by me for the sermon prep:

In verse 1, Paul is drawing on the idea that the Law with its Jewish particulars was one of the things that enslaved the Jews in a sense (along with sin and death), separating them from other peoples until the time of Christ (3:23-25), and cursing them for violation of the covenant with God.  Christ, then, provided rescue from this curse and deliverance from sin and the division between Jew and Gentile.  Jesus gave freedom – a new exodus, deliverance, or rescue of Israel from its exile/curse of the Law, something promised in the Old Testament to bring with it the ingathering of the nations (i.e., the Gentiles) into God’s one family.  This freedom from sin, death, Jewish-Gentile division, and the Law’s curse on Israel, then, belongs to those who truly belong to God’s one promised family – as chapter 4 has it, they are the children of God’s promise to Abraham – the Sarah people, not the Hagar people still under bondage to sin, death, division, and curse. 

In other words, Jesus came to fulfill God’s promise to Abraham of a single family of all nations on earth by bringing God’s salvation to the ends of the earth beginning with his exhaustion of Israel’s curse which it had acquired for covenant disobedience.  This sets up verses 2-4, as this is precisely what the agitators are, in effect, denying by forcing Gentiles to become circumcised – God’s family, in their thinking, was supposed to be restricted to one nation, the Jews alone.  They in effect deny the work of Christ in bringing about God’s promises.  So to go back to the old use of the Law in dividing Jew from Gentile (as opposed to Jesus’ and Paul’s use) is to reject what Christ has already done, to deny his work on the cross in bringing redemption and reconciliation between the nations. 

Paul’s point in verse 3, then, is that since being Jewish means, for the agitators, following all the Law’s Jewish particulars, Gentiles who obey the agitators (to become Jewish in order to become part of God’s people) are not done there – Gentiles being Jewish will have to go all the way and add to circumcision food laws, and so forth.  This is not about circumcision itself per se but the motives and theology behind why these Gentiles were becoming circumcised (Paul circumcised Timothy and would not say these things in 2-4 about Timothy).  Unfortunately, for centuries Gentile Christians became a version of these agitators themselves when they used this verse to deny that Jews could be Christians unless they became Gentiles first, thus again denying the work of Christ.  Even today, Christians unfortunately use terms like “Jew” or “Jewish” as contraries of “Christian”, further pushing the un-Pauline view that one cannot remain a Jew and be a true Christian.

In 5 and 6, Paul turns to the true marks of God’s family.  What sets them apart are not whether they are Jewish or not but whether they have faith, which is itself expressed outwardly in love, not necessarily in works of the Law (circumcision, etc.) – a love which by its very nature welcomes both Jews and Gentiles.  On the basis of this life led in faith, led by the Holy Spirit (associated with freedom from sin, etc. – see, e.g., II Cor 3:17) who is the sign that the new time of faith and Israel’s rescue has come, believers may now hope for the completion of God’s work in us, fully bringing his kingdom and establishing his new people in his new creation, even among Gentiles. 

In verses 7-9, Paul turns from Christ’s work to that of the agitators.  These agitators are basically trying to counteract Christ’s work in bringing together a family of both Jews and Gentiles, free from enslavement.  And what grieves Paul most is that it seems to be working at least somewhat!  False teaching, if not checked, can easily poison the church and cause people to stumble when they are easily swayed not to attend to the truth.  It takes only a few bad influences to start affecting the life of the whole church if they are allowed to continue.  In verse 10, Paul is, however, confident in the Galatians’ case that they will ultimately side with him over the agitators, no matter what is going wrong at the moment, since it is ultimately the agitators themselves who are to blame for this mess. 

The false teaching, hinted at in verse 11, was that Paul had kept back part of the gospel and of the full Christian life from the Galatians – the part about having to become a Jew in order to be a Christian.  The position was that Paul agreed with their version of the gospel but had been too stingy and had not given the Galatians the whole thing.  Summing up his self-defense so far, Paul makes it clear that he does not agree with the agitators’ version of the gospel and he certainly has not left out what they wanted to put in since it was never a part of the gospel in the first place.  If he had agreed with them that Gentiles had to become Jews, he would not be persecuted by his fellow Jews (who thought he was betraying God and Moses with his message).

Paul concludes then in this section that cutting off part of your body (like in circumcision) does not matter since both Jew and Gentile are now accepted equally into a single family – why not just go all the way and be castrated rather than stop at circumcision?  According to Paul, there is no significant religious difference.  The irony here, of course, is that to be castrated would, by the stipulations of the Law, bar one from the religious assembly of Israel.  Only the time of Israel’s rescue and the ingathering of the Gentiles, as foretold by Isaiah, would break down that barrier and allow eunuchs in on equal footing with others – precisely the work of Christ that these agitators who think they are in a privileged religious position are now denying.  Paul is therefore being even cleverer here than it seems on first glance!

Notes on Galatians 4:12-20

More notes prepared for the Cornerstone sermon-prep study group:

In Galatians 4:12-20, Paul draws on a common Graeco-Roman discussion topic of true versus false friendship, showing that he and the Galatians had had a true friendship – he is the Galatians’ true friend (and, even greater, true family), whereas Paul’s opponents are false friends.  He appeals to them on the basis of that true and intimate relationship to be transformed into the true family of God they were meant to be, with no divisions or exclusions between Jew and Gentile. 

In verse 12, Paul echoes the common Greek idea that true friendship involved, in some sense, equality, unanimity, and likeness – becoming or being like the friend, sharing in their (mis)fortune.  As in I Corinthians 9, Paul became like a Christian Gentile in order to minister to them so they as Gentiles could also become Christians.  Hence they too should be free in Christ to be Gentiles as followers of Christ.  Paul shows that there are no hard feelings and that they have had a true friendship – true friends do no true harm to one another.  Instead, they did the opposite – despite all the reasons not to, they accepted him.  In verses 13 and 14, Paul notes that they passed the test of true friendship at the very beginning of their relationship, where it would have been a temptation to disregard Paul as cursed or wicked because of his illness.  Instead, Paul, as a representative of Jesus Christ, as an apostle proclaiming Jesus’ message, was received as a messenger of God and like Jesus Christ himself. 

While the relationship they had had involved blessing, in verse 15 we have Paul questioning the continued presence of such blessing.  Has so much changed?  Formerly they would have done anything for him – true friendship involves a willingness to undergo extreme sacrifice.  In verse 16, he wonders if the change is because he is speaking the truth to them, yet that should show that he is a true friend rather than a flatterer (a common Graeco-Roman contrast is between the true friend who is frank and truthful and the flatterer who is not).  Rather than an enemy, as the opponents may have made him out to be (since he would be seen as keeping them from becoming “real” Christians by becoming Jews), his truth-speaking marks him out as the complete opposite.

Verses 17 and 18 draw somewhat on the Jewish notion of zeal, which was often applied towards the Law and the covenant between God and Israel.  Unfortunately, in Paul’s time this often ended up being twisted into a hatred of Gentiles and could be turned into violence (the Zealots).  The opponents’ misguided zeal drove them to use the Law to force the Gentiles to become Jews lest they be excluded, and thus the opponents miss the true zeal which is for the God who welcomes the Gentiles into his family on an equal footing with the Jews.  By threatening exclusion, the Gentiles are forced to depend on the opponents for their spiritual status, following their guidance and what they say in order to be proper Jews, putting the opponents on a pedestal for revealing to them the things of the Law that Paul had supposedly left out or kept from them.  True friends, true family, however, do not maintain their relationships based on personal gain.  They have zeal, but it is for good things, not bad.  True friendship is reliable – in this case, it involves a zeal which always seeks good.  And this is precisely the zeal with which Paul meets the Galatians, a zeal which involves bringing the Galatians to meet the God who would have them as a part of his one family.

In verse 19, Paul shows how deep their relationship really goes – Paul is family, he is like their mother still laboring painfully to give birth to them.  He cares for them, wanting Christ to be formed in/among them.  The community is to be Christ-shaped, with Christ as true head, they as his true body, combined together as one family in him.  Yet the opponents are trying to prevent this formation by introducing divisions and exclusions within the community in the form of the works of the Law.  In verse 20, Paul thus reiterates his true friendship, his true parenthood of them, when he expresses his care for them, wishing to be present with them physically and not merely through the letter – they have seemingly cast aside their good relationship with Paul which involved truth and belonging and accepted instead accepted a bad relationship with the opponents which involved falsity and exclusion.  Paul is bewildered that they would opt for the latter over the former.

Teaching About the Bible, Not Just Its Content

I've been thinking about writing more about apologetics, maybe book length.  One major topic, though, I'm thinking of working on is that of the Bible itself.  I'd like to see more education in churches about the Bible.  Not just what's in the Bible but its nature, origins and prehistory, ancient context, etc.  That is, we should have more that is not just about the content of the Bible but the Bible itself.  There are many, many myths and misconstruals floating around about the Bible among more moderate to conservate Christians, Evangelicals, and also Fundamentalists.  And I don't mean "secular" or "liberal" myths either - I mean myths perpetuated largely by traditional, orthodox-leaning Christians.  (To give a couple examples: the idea that every command in the Bible is a timeless moral imperative and the Bible is basically a life handbook; the idea that there cannot be any reasonable doubt about the exact text or meaning of a passage; the idea that absolutely everything ought to be taken as completely literally and describing exact historical, scientific reality and conforming to, say, modern scientific-writing genre conventions, etc.)

The trouble is that many take these myths to be integral to the Christian view of the Bible and to the faith as a whole and when these bubbles get popped, their world comes crashing down and they must either remake their views of the Bible or reject the faith entirely.  I have personally known several people who left the faith because of these myths when they could not handle their dismantlement.  And these were very intelligent people; they were simply dealing with the destruction of what they had believed and likely taught to believe for most of their time as Christians.

Now, most good Evangelical biblical scholars will reject most of these myths, and often explicitly, but that just doesn't often make its way down into the church pews.  Instead, most people's first brush with thinking about the Bible itself outside of these myths and outside well-worn cliches comes in the form of, say, the "facts" presented in the Da Vinci Code or some disturbing bit of modern biblical scholarship.  It's all very sad and, in my mind, completely unnecessary - there are people out there who are having serious doubts about the Bible and hence their faith precisely because of what we aren't (and, sadly, sometimes what we are) teaching them.

Bibliography 1st Half 2013

A bibliography similar to the previous one. This one covers January-June 2013. Again, it's not necessarily complete and contains only whole books, not articles or primarily reference works. I'm also trying to only include books that are new - i.e., not on the previous lists. (Childrens' books also not included!) Starred books are ones I consider particularly outstanding, interesting, important, or otherwise likable.

Bartlett, John, ed., Archaeology & Biblical Interpretation

*Best, Ernest, The First and Second Epistles to the Thessalonians. BNTC.
Block, Daniel, Judges, Ruth. NAC.
Brueggemann, Walter, Deuteronomy. Abingdon.
Brueggemann, Walter, Divine Presence and Violence: Contextualizing the Book of Joshua
Brueggemann, Walter, First and Second Samuel. Interpretation.
Butler, Trent, Joshua. WBC.
Craigie, Peter C., The Problem of War in the Old Testament
*Dalrymple, Rob, Eschatology: Why it Matters
Davids, Peter, The Epistle of James: A Commentary on the Greek Text. NIGTC.
Douglas, Mary, In the Wilderness: The Doctrine of Defilement in the Book of Numbers

Earl, Douglas, The Joshua Delusion?: Rethinking Genocide in the Bible (with a Response by Christopher J.H. Wright)
*Johnson, Luke Timothy, The Letter of James. AB.
Levine, Baruch, Numbers, 2 vols. AB.
Malherbe, Abraham, The Letters to the Thessalonians. AB.

Mazar, Ahimai, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible: 10,000-586 B.C.E.
McCarter, P. Kyle, I Samuel. AB.
*McKnight, Scott, The Letter of James. NICNT.
Milgrom, Jacob, Numbers. JPS.
*Moreland, J.P., Christianity and the Nature of Science: A Philosophical Investigation
Moo, Douglas, The Letter of James. PNTC. 

New Interpreter's Bible, Volume II (Numbers-1&2 Samuel)

Noth, Martin, The Deuteronomistic History
Polzin, Robert, Moses and the Deuteronomist: A Literary Study of the Deuteronomistic History, Part One: Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges.
Polzin, Robert, Samuel and the Deuteronomist: A Literary Study of the Deuteronomic History, Part Two: 1 Samuel
Stern, Ephraim, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, Volume II: The Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian Periods (732-332 B.C.E.)
Tigay, Jeffrey, Deuteronomy. JPS.
*Wenham, Gordon, Leviticus. NICOT.
Wanamaker, Charles, The Epistles to the Thessalonians: A Commentary on the Greek Text. NIGTC.
*Wright, Christopher J.H., The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible's Grand Narrative. 
*Wright, Christopher J.H., Deuteronomy. NIBC.
*Wright, Christopher J.H., Old Testament Ethics for the People of God
Younger, K. Lawson, Ancient Conquest Accounts: A Study in Ancient Near Eastern and Biblical History Writing

Some More In-Depth Notes on Galatians 3:1-18

Basically, this is a revised, more in-depth version of parts of this previous post, this time focusing in on the first 18 verses of Galatians 3 and with some other applications:

To understand what’s going on in this passage (and much of the book), we have to understand the Old Testament background – the basic narrative of the people of God – that Paul, in line with other Jewish writers of the time, would have been presupposing as he writes.  As the narrative goes, Adam and Eve messed up and sin entered the world.  God then chooses Abraham to begin his rescue operation – to defeat sin and death and create a new humanity, a loving family, out of all the nations on earth.  The means will be through Abraham’s descendants – they will be the beginning of that family, through which others will also join into it, and sin will be taken care of.  Once Abraham’s descendants are many, God, in order to proceed with the rescue operation, redeems them and gives them a covenant with instructions as to how to live within that covenant (the law) so as to bring others into the family.  But these descendants, Israel, fail in their vocation and suffer the consequences of violation of the covenant – the curse of the law, which is exile and suffering.  The prophets foretell that return from exile, the lifting of the curse, is coming and that this will usher in the completion of God’s rescue operation (the age to come/kingdom of God/restoration of all things as it gets variously called) – Israel’s vocation will be completed, the Spirit poured out on God’s people, sin and death defeated, and all nations will join together in one family along with Israel.  Yet, when they return to the land geographically, they are forced to acknowledge that the prophecies have not been completely fulfilled – they are still in spiritual exile, not fully restored, and God’s rescue operation has not been completed.  Here the Old Testament ends.  Now enter Jesus, who Paul and other early Christians saw as the one who completed Israel’s vocation – as the true king and earthly representative of his people (the True Israel), he took their plight and their mission upon himself, suffering and completing their curse and exile in his own person and thus bringing about the promised restoration, thus paving the way for the Spirit and opening the way for all nations to come into the family as prophesied. 

The point of Galatians 3:1-14, then, is all about what time it is – it is not the time before the coming of the restoration/kingdom of God, for Christ has changed everything and it is now the prophesied time of the ingathering of the nations into God’s people.  The Spirit of God is a gift of the kingdom and associated with Christ’s time, made available by his crucifixion, and not the previous time.  If it is the eschatological gift of the age to come, then it is not associated with being a Jew (“works of the law”), which would instead associate it with the previous epoch.  The promise to Abraham was blessing for all nations as those nations, not as Jews – a promise of a single family made of Jews and all other nations.  Since this promise has been and has begun to be fulfilled by Jesus in his crucifixion, being a Jew and doing the works of the law cannot be tied necessarily to the reception of the Spirit.  Instead, it is trust and faithfulness to God that marks one out as a member of God’s people, not one’s ethnicity since the family is to be from every ethnicity on earth. 

Paul contrasts in this passage those who are “out of faith” (ek pisteos) and those who are “out of works of the law” (ex ergon nomou).  For Paul, who are the ones who are “out of works of the law”? Israel, of course – they are the ones to whom God gave the works of the law and who would be living with their identity marked out by the law.  However, by putting its faith in Christ, ethnic Israel is able to become part of those who are “out of faith” – whose identity is determined by faith, not by ethnicity.  This begins to make sense of verses 10-14, then, since the idea here is not an individualistic focus but one on Israel as an ethnic group.  In 3:10, we find that Israel is under a curse – the curse of the law, the exile which the Old Testament and Second Temple Jewish writings all declare to have ended geographically but not spiritually or in regards to the full restoration of God’s blessings and the ingathering of the Gentiles which was to come from this.  Israel has not been restored or come out from God’s wrath for its failure to abide by its covenant as enshrined in the law.  The quote from Deuteronomy is, in its original context, part of a broader set of passages about Israel’s disobedience and the predicted result of exile.  In other words, 3:10 gives us the following reasoning: if Israel fails to abide by the law, it is cursed/under exile; Israel has in fact failed in that regard (as Leviticus and Deuteronomy predict and Joshua-II Kings (and the prophets) repeat over and over); hence, as the Old Testament affirms, Israel has been cursed/under exile. 

In 3:11, Paul quotes from Habakkuk.  In its original context, this quote comes again in the context of exile.  Habakkuk begins with lamenting over the deplorable state of God’s people, to which God replies that Babylon will come and basically destroy them (Babylon took them into exile).  Habakkuk then laments over this and God replies that Babylon will itself receive judgment, thus presenting a glimmer of hope.  In the midst of this, we find the quote noting that the identity of the true Israelite, the one who is right with God, by contrast with the Babylonians, will be one founded on faith.  In other words, for Paul, coming out from the curse will involve a new era of faith-based identity. 

The Law belongs to the old era, however, as Paul emphasizes in 3:12.  In 3:13-14 Paul says that that era is past – the new era has come through Christ.  Christ brought a new exodus (note the Exodus word “redemption” here) – a return or restoration from the curse of the law/Israel’s exile suffered by Israel (“us” here refers to Paul and his fellow Jewish Christians).  The blessing to the nations, which was to flow from Abraham’s descendants, had been blocked by their own sin, which brought the curse.  But now that Christ has exhausted the curse in his own self, taking Israel’s exile/curse onto himself on their behalf, that has opened the way now for the blessing to come to the Gentiles as well.  In other words, the restoration of Israel, the time of faith-based identity, and hence the gathering in of the Gentiles into a single people of God (and the pouring out of the Spirit) has come, and this has been fulfilled through Christ’s sacrificial death on behalf of Israel. 

3:15-18 is basically about how there was meant to be a single people made of both Jews and Gentiles, not just Jews, and that one should not misread the purpose of the law as if it was meant forever to exclude Gentiles and thus cancel the promise.  The earlier promise of a single people out of both takes precedence and is fulfilled in Christ, who takes on the role of the single people (Abraham’s seed) as their representative and king and hence all who are in him are part of that seed, whether Jew or Gentile (3:29 – which says that we are Abraham’s seed).  That is, God promised Abraham a single family, the promised seed, which begins with Israel.  Jesus takes on Israel’s destiny as the true Israel/seed, so that those who have him as their representative also take on that identity as part of the people of God.  This shows that the ethnic-specific aspects of the law were never meant for God’s whole people forever.

In other words, Christ’s roles as promised seed and as curse breaker are really the same – he is being the true Israel, taking on both Israel’s punishment and its mission in himself and fulfilling both so that all nations could have a place in him – that is, in his family with himself as head and representative so that what is true of him may be true of us.  We are to follow his example, bringing people from all nations into God’s family and not excluding or ignoring based on irrelevant factors like culture, preferred worship style, etc.  It is Christ’s faithfulness, formed now in us as our own faithfulness to God, that provides us with our identity as part of God’s people, not any of those other things.  And as Christ took on responsibility for his people even when he did not himself sin, so we too can follow his example and take responsibility for the sins of our own groups, whether racial, ethnic, religious, or any other kind of group we may belong to.  This may involve apologizing or trying to make repairs for something we were not involved in (e.g., the legacy of slavery and racism, crusades, past misdeeds of the US, etc.), but it is what Jesus himself modeled for us with his own ethnic and religious group. 

Why We Shouldn't Use the Word "Legalism"

Regarding my previous post, I'd like to make a qualification to my statement that Galatians 3 is not "about legalism".  The qualification would be that it really depends on what we mean by "legalism".  As it is normally used, "legalism" does not really have a strict definition - it is more a term of abuse - everyone says something different when asked to define what they mean by it.  In actuality, it is used of anything involving rules and which we do not like.  For instance: X says we should follow rule Y, but I don't like Y - legalism!  X applies Y in a way I do not like - legalism!  X applies Y in a way I do in fact like - ...NOT legalism....

The word therefore is not useful except to register one's disagreement and maybe to vilify what one disagrees with.  It does not tell us why you disagree with it - it's simply an easy way to condemn and scorn something by sticking it with a bad name, yet without actually giving any substantive reasons why we should think it is wrong.  This is argument through persuasive labeling, not actual reasoning.

But not only is using the word pretty useless, it can actually also be harmful (and, yes, I have in fact seen versions of what I'm about to describe - this isn't purely just made up).  Our preacher in a sermon we listen to might define the term as carefully as he can - say, in way W - and show that something A is legalistic in that sense and then go on to say some bad stuff P about A (or those who do A) because of W applying.  Now suppose we run across some new behavior B involving rules and we do not like it - we will not remember and use our "legalism" terms in way W like the preacher did but rather in the normal way as a term of abuse and will apply it to B even though, say, it doesn't fit with W.  So we will apply "legalism" to B and, because of the sermon, will associate P with B even though W doesn't apply as it did with A. 

Example: Suppose W has to do with trying to earn salvation apart from Christ through following certain pagan rules.  And suppose P is something like lacking true salvation in Christ.  We will remember, after the sermon, that "legalism" is associated with lack of salvation and, seeing someone, say, tell someone else that Christians shouldn't dance (a stance we don't like), we will be tempted to doubt that person's salvation since they are engaged in "legalism".  And then, of course, someone might disagree with us and think we are legalistic and in danger of not being saved.  And then someone else might disagree with them about that, and so on.  So we might have a mess.

In other words, let's stop using "legalism" and actually give reasons for what we disagree with instead of vilifying people and positions with that label.  (As an aside, in theology, I think "supersessionism" is another term like this - a term of vilification used for any view we don't like involving how Christians view Christian stuff in relation Jewish stuff and which puts Christian stuff in a good light)