Coming Soon...

Haven't posted this week. This week's blog, "Incarnation or Inlibration?", is being published, and I've agreed not to post it until it comes out in print. Come back soon to read the unedited version. rws

Legacy Revisited

I wrote recently about my experience of pilgrimage in visiting St. Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai (see Legacy). It was the place where in the 19th century Count Von Tischendorf “discovered” what was arguably the most important biblical manuscript ever produced outside of the yet undiscovered autographs, Codex Sinaiticus. The manuscript dates to the fourth century and preserves a text of the New Testament older by centuries than anything we had seen prior to its discovery. Its text, along with its companion uncial, Codex Vaticanus (in the Vatican Library in Rome), rewrote the textual tradition of the Greek New Testament and became the foundation for virtually all modern translations of the New Testament today.

Sinaiticus is of particular interest to me in that my PhD dissertation, written in the late 70’s, focused on “Fear in the Gospel of Mark.” Of course, anyone who has given any time to the Gospel of Mark knows that one of the knottiest issues in the study of Mark is the ending of the Gospel. Later manuscript traditions (those that underlie the textual tradition behind the KJV) include twelve verses (Mark 16:9-20) not found in Codex Sinaiticus which concludes the Gospel at 16:8 with the rather strange ending in which the women who discovered the Empty Tomb fled the tomb in fear saying nothing to anyone about what they had seen. Indeed, in the Greek text of Sinaiticus, the Gospel actually ends with a preposition (gar, Greek for “for”). Mark 16:8, in Sinaiticus says: “And departing, they (the women) fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment (Greek, “ecstasy”) took hold of them, and they said nothing to anyone for they were afraid” (my translation). Scholars have debated this rather unsatisfying ending for years, but in my dissertation I proposed that if fear is a major theme in Mark’s Gospel (and in my doctoral dissertation I make the case that it is), then this is the perfect ending for this gospel. Indeed, rather than being unsatisfying, it completes a major emphasis in the Gospel of Mark, bringing the “fear motif” full circle. The fact that there is a manuscript tradition that concludes the Gospel at 16:8 (Codes Sinaiticus) supports my thesis in that, apparently, people read a version of Mark’s Gospel (the oldest we know of) for centuries that concluded the Gospel with the strange phrase: “…for they were afraid.” Hence, my excitement at visiting the place where this important manuscript was discovered.

I’m thrilled to report in follow up that Codex Sinaiticus will now be made available to everyone on the internet! And you thought the internet was a wasteland! Beginning next Thursday (July 31st), the first parts of the manuscript will hit the Web with the rest following throughout the year. And now the best news: They will begin with the Gospel of Mark! I can hardly wait! The full story is available on USA Today.

Somewhere Tischendorf is smiling.

Soul Size

I’m reading Douglas Hofstadter’s I Am a Strange Loop. Hofstadter teaches cognitive science (the science of thought – its origins and operations) at Indiana University. Strange Loop is an update and enlargement of his earlier book, Gödel, Escher, Bach. In both books Hofstadter explores the relationship between the self (what he calls “the ‘I’”) and the physiology of the brain. Simply put, his thesis is that what starts out as a purely physiological phenomenon involving brain biology and chemistry morphs into something that cannot be fully explained solely on the basis of physical matter; namely, a consciousness emerges that is, paradoxically and at one and the same time, both a product of the matter and master of it. That is, I Am a Strange Loop.

He’s a good writer. Even though he’s talking about a very complex subject that only the specialist can fully comprehend, Hofstadter grabs your attention and holds it with homey illustrations and punchy prose.

But what captured my attention in the book was Hofstadter’s distinction between “soul sizes.” He asserts that there are “big souls” and “little souls” all up the chain of life (from mosquito to man), and that value is (and should be) attached to souls relative to their size. His assertion is both provocative and problematic. For example, he argues that he has no compunction about swatting mosquitoes but, conversely, has become a vegetarian due to his “soul size calculus.” Moreover, on the same grounds ostensibly he asserts that he does not have a problem with aborting a five-month old fetus in deference to the mother because, on his consciousness calculus and criteria, the five-month old fetus does not have a fully developed “soul.” I find that strange.

That said, I do find his distinction between “big souls” and “little souls” to be intriguing. When C. S. Lewis once said that this world is the place for the growing up of souls, he was saying something of the same thing; namely, that souls (self, consciousness, “I” – call it what you will) have “work” to do, and that some souls do that work better than others and, consequently, have become (are becoming) either “big souls” or “little souls.” I think I’ve met some…of both kinds!

Reminds me of something Forrest Carter wrote in The Education of Little Tree. In the story, a little boy goes to live with his grandparents. His Grandma is a Cherokee and gives him a Cherokee name – Little Tree. She teaches him about life from her unique perspective. One day, in an impromptu lecture on “soul sizes,” she tells him that people have two minds – one for “body living” (animalistic impulses) and one for “spirit living” (the higher functions of “human”). She tells Little Tree: If you only use your body mind and think greedy or mean; if you are always cuttin’ at folks with it and figuring how to material profit off’n them…then you’ll shrink up your spirit mind to a size no bigger’n a hickor’nut. She goes on: When your body dies, your body mind dies with it; only the spirit mind lives on. And if you’ve thought all your life with only your body mind, there you’d be, stuck with a hickor’nut spirit.

Intriguing, isn’t it. I’d like to explore this more fully with you, but I’ve got to go exercise…my soul.

*The use of the image above to illustrate the article discussing the book in question qualifies as fair use under United States copyright law.

The Shack

People have been asking me what I thought of the new book by William P. Young called The Shack. They say: “You gotta read it; it’s a great book.” And so I ask them: “Okay, what’s so great about it?” What I get is theology – they like the view of God the book espouses. Of course, that means I’m in. So I read it. It’s a good read, really. Real page-turner. Young manifests a rare gift of language and imagery. Example: The central character, Mack, receives a note, presumably from God, which he then proceeds to open. Young describes this rather pedestrian task with language that is anything but – Turning his back to the breath-snatching wind, he finally coaxed the single small rectangle of unfolded paper out of its nest. Now, that’s nice.

Theologically, the book is a bit schizophrenic, perhaps intentionally so. When the tortured protagonist, Mack, is speaking, the theology espoused is a sort of new age, postmodern, existential, anti-intellectual, “roll-your-own” spirituality that gives priority to feeling over thinking, experience over tradition, immanence over transcendence, and the personal (individual) over the corporate and cosmic. One passage in the book is telling:

Try as he might, Mack could not escape the desperate possibility that the note just might be from God after all, even if the 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 the intelligentsia. Nobody wanted God in a box, just in a book. Especially an expensive one bound in leather with gilt edges, or was that guilt edges?

But when “God” is talking (as “Papa,” “Jesus,” or “Sarayu” – Young’s take on the Trinity) the theology expressed is more fully orbed, satisfying, and, occasionally, even profound. For example, when Mack asks Papa who’s in charge in the Trinity, Papa responds:

Humans are so lost and damaged that to you it is almost incomprehensible that people could work or live together without someone being in charge. …Creation has been taken down a very different path than we desired. In your world the value of the individual is constantly weighed against the survival of the system, whether political, economic, social, or religious – any system actually. First one person, and then a few, and finally even many are easily sacrificed for the good and ongoing existence of that system. In one form or another this lies behind every struggle for power, every prejudice, every war, and every abuse of relationship. The ‘will to power and independence’ has become so ubiquitous that it is now considered normal.

Actually, that’s not a bad interpretation of Jesus’ statement about the “will to power” in Mark 10:42-45 in which he suggests that power is pagan and cannot be redeemed; only aborted.

Of course, the theological issue at stake in The Shack is theodicy – the problem of evil; literally, the "judgment of God" as in God on trial. (See the collection of essays by C. S. Lewis titled God in the Dock.) Mack’s daughter, Missy, was kidnapped and murdered at The Shack and he returns to the scene of the crime three and a half years later to make sense of it all…and peace with God. C. S. Lewis, in The Problem of Pain, expressed the essence of the issue of theodicy when he says, “There are three statements, only two of which can be held together – God is all-powerful; God is good; Bad things happen.” The Shack resolves the “problem” (just as Rabbi Kushner does, When Bad Things Happen to Good People) with an appeal to impotence and immanence – God may be “all good,” but he is not “all powerful,” God’s power being limited by human choice and freedom. That resolution to the problem of evil works (in the sense of being satisfying) if the pain/evil we’re talking about is personal pain/evil. When what I’m dealing with is individual, personal, intimate suffering then it’s enough to have a God Who puts His arms around me and says “I know just how you feel even though there’s really not very much I can do about it.” When my pain is personal, immanence trumps transcendence. But when the pain is cosmic – when the bombs are falling, or the 767’s are flying into the World Trade Center – I want more than just empathy; I want sovereignty. I observed that churches were full on Sunday September 16, 2001, and the worshippers weren’t so much looking for a Caring God as a Sovereign God. Indeed, someone even said to me on that Sunday: “I needed to come here today to be reminded of Who’s in charge.” To be sure, it didn’t last. Never does. Life settles in and settles down and the tuff stuff, while not painless, is at least personal rather than cosmic, and therefore seems more manageable, and we think that with a little understanding we can handle it. That’s The Shack’s approach to theodicy; and that’s all right, I guess, so long as we remember that God is also the “Blazing Fire” the writer of Hebrews talks about (see Hebrews 12:18-21). Immanence and transcendence – we need both in our gods. Fortunately, with the Bible’s God, we get both.

One final comment. I find it interesting…and encouraging that The Shack is the number one best seller right now on the New York Times Best Seller’s List. It documents what some of us have long suspected; that, despite the ubiquitous secularism and just plain silliness being served up these days as a “junk food diet” for the desperate and the disconnected, there is yet a deep, abiding longing for God hardwired in every one of us. And it shows up at the strangest times…in the strangest places. That’s probably important.

Goodbye and Hello

I almost met Senator Jesse Helms. It was the fall of ’89, and I was Associate Professor of New Testament at Midwestern Seminary in Kansas City when the call came. First Baptist Church of Raleigh was looking for a new pastor, and I had been asked to preach for the search committee. My friend, mentor, and teacher, Dr. George Balentine, was pastor of the Hayes Barton Baptist Church in Raleigh, and he offered to let me supply the pulpit for him so that the search committee from First Church could hear me preach.

At 11:00, George and I entered the sanctuary for worship and took our seats on the chancel. He leaned over and whispered to me: “Don’t get nervous, but Senator Jesse Helms is here today.” I got nervous. I knew Senator Helms was a member of Hayes Barton, but I figured that with George out of the pulpit, and with the Senator’s busy schedule, there was not a prayer that he’d show. And yet, there he was. I nodded to him, and he nodded back to me. Don’t remember what I preached that day; doesn’t matter anyway. Other than that nod, I never met Senator Helms; I was spirited away immediately following the service to meet with the search committee from First Church Raleigh where I was to serve as pastor in the 90’s.

I would later learn that Senator Helms had been a member of First Baptist Raleigh during the tenure of my predecessor, Dr. John M. Lewis, during the tumultuous 60’s. He left the church over Dr. Lewis’ stand on the civil rights movement – Lewis was for it; Helms was against it. He joined Hayes Barton, but the two of them remained friends nonetheless. Senator Helms later came around to Dr. Lewis’ point of view on that issue, and who knows how many others. Senator Helms grew up in the Piedmont of North Carolina and knew, and related at close range with, many people of African-American descent. I rather suspect that his early opposition to integration grew more out of his distrust of big government (President Johnson’s “Great Society”) than it did dislike or distrust of people of color. But who knows? I don’t.

All I know is that though the Senator and I would have been on opposite sides of a number of issues I nonetheless admired his integrity (a quality all-too-lacking these days), his stubborn refusal to do “group think” no matter what group is doing the thinking, and his willingness to go-it-alone, if need be, for the principles he believed in.

And so, on the day when the State of North Carolina and the country says “goodbye” to the Senator from the Ole North State, I could not help recall the day that I almost said “hello.”

Just Detail

I’m not writing about anything biblical or theological in this blog. Nothing that complex or profound is occupying my attention these days. You see, we have Eastern bluebirds raising their second family of the summer in our backyard. I love bluebirds. They’re so…unexpected…and blue. Most of the birds that visit our backyard are appropriately attired in “earth tones” – brown, grey, yellow, rust, black. But bluebirds have the unmitigated gall to dress up in the showiest shade of blue imaginable. When I look at them, I can’t help but wonder how God came up with this one. “What were you thinking? Blue?”

And then there’s the whole “attitude thing.” Bluebirds have an attitude, anger management issues. They’re not much bigger than a sparrow, but they think they’re hawks! Cheryl and I sit on the deck in the evening and watch the show as Daddy Bluebird chases other birds and squirrels that dare venture too close to his bluebird box wherein Mrs. Bluebird is “great with child,” to employ the biblical idiom. (Okay, okay, I’ll taper off gradually.) He positively torments the squirrels which we, of course, love because they positively torment us, emptying our bird feeders, rearranging anything on the deck not to their liking, and generally making a mess of things and a nuisance of themselves. We sometimes catch ourselves cheering for him as he makes a “strafing run” at the squirrels: “There's one now! Sick ‘em! Get ‘em!” What bluebirds lack in size and camouflage they make up for in attitude and chutzpah. If I’m ever in a bird fight, I want the bluebirds on my side. Their carnivors, you know. All right, so they’re insectivors, but you get the point.

Don’t have a heavy theological question to explore in all this. I’m even going to resist the urge to talk about “natural revelation.” Don’t thank me; it’s what I do. But sometimes I’d like to ask God: “What’s up with the bluebirds? What were you thinking?”

I want to know, sometimes, what God was thinking. Not that I could understand it if I knew, but I still want to know. It’s His fault – He made me that way, with a voracious curiosity about Him and an insatiable appetite for Him. Deepak Choprah (How to Know God) once said: “I want to think God’s thoughts after Him; everything else is just detail.” Now that I understand.