It’s virtually impossible to know objective scientific fact (so-called). For example, suppose a videographer recorded the assassination of JFK, even that won’t provide an inerrant record of events.

We question whether biblical stories are true because we doubt them. We don’t constantly question the sun; we accept its reality. But our continual debates about whether biblical stories go back to actual events may arise from doubts that such events occurred, in any form.

“Objective scientific history” is a myth of the modern age. The moment something occurs, the reality of it begins to recede into the past. Human finitude places it beyond absolute knowledge.

But we can know with a high degree of certainty that an event occurred, without having total command of “objective scientific data” about it. To say that we cannot know the precise details of the life of Abraham is not to say that it doesn’t matter whether he lived, or is simply a story or legend.

I relate today to Abraham in precisely the same way that I relate to the good Samaritan: through the biblical story. Of course it matters that Abraham lived in ancient Mesopotamia about 3500 years ago, whereas the good Samaritan is a character in one of Jesus’ parables. Nevertheless, as a reader and a believer, I relate to both in the same way, the only way that is available to me.

(Another kettle of fish is the question of whether reality itself is a story in the mind of God.)

Endlessly debating the degree of objective historical veracity in a biblical account is like a dog chasing its tail – it goes on ad nauseum and gets you nowhere.

I don’t want the Bible to be “objective scientific history.” That’s way too small and too leaky a boat to trust eternal truth to.

What I’ve been reading in the interim includes: Tony Hillerman, author of great mysteries that feature a Navajo detective; N. T. Wright, author of Simply Christian and Mark for Everyone. Also books about Celtic spirituality by Esther de Waal and others.

Celtic spirituality is very exciting. I’ve begun to recite St. Patrick’s breastplate every morning, the classic 8th century prayer.

Wright describes a powerful metaphor for our age, that is the age we’re just emerging from: the dictator has paved over every spring, every well, every river – in short every source of water. He requires people to drink from authorized pipes only, and puts additives in the water at will. Now, however, water bursts through the concrete; muddy water floods everywhere.

Water represents spirituality. Since the Enlightenment, people in the West have been trained to ignore matters of spirit, except those coming through authorized channels, the mainline churches, which often present a tame version of spirituality. Since the mid-60s, however, people have been seeking for all things spiritual, often without discerning that some are positive and some are not.

Wright’s metaphor is compelling to me. People are hungry and thirsty for spiritual truth, but as the song says, they are “looking for love in all the wrong places.”

Well, it’s good to be back. I promise to write regularly. Please comment to let you know you’re there. Shalom!

As a veteran of the SBC Church Struggle years ago, I saw this happen a lot. Good people who refused to see, refused to hear—lest they turn and be saved.

The great tragedy is that willful stupidity, intentional blindness/deafness if you will, infects groups of people, and renders them vulnerable to misrule by tyrants.

If scientists are right, and our world is ticking away toward ecological meltdown, then we can expect God to call on us to throw our lives away on behalf of the children of the future, from whom we have borrowed and are squandering the world.

Bultmann worked at de-mythologizing the NT, an enterprise reversed by Tolkien and Campbell. Turns out myth is language for truth humans have no language for. Tillich used psychology and philosophy to translate the obscure language of philosophy into an unknown tongue of his own devising. Bonhoeffer’s rather startling terms such as “man come of age” and “religionless Christianity” must be put into the context of his imprisonment and resistance to Nazi Germany and the churches’ failure to oppose effectively.

I found a careful discussion of Robinson by NT Wright online, which was helpful.

Next I’m tackling a first reading of volume 8 in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works/English, Letters and Papers from Prison.

I found a copy of John AT Robinson’s Honest to God (1963), which presented a brash, shocking version of Bonhoeffer’s ideas to the world; in so doing, he served to give push to the need for a careful, wholistic presentation of Bonhoeffer’s writing—which has led to the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works (German and English).

I’m fascinated by Christians of the WWII period who were in resistance to totalitarian regimes. I’m not totally sure why. I think we have much to learn.

The tyranny of our world is not political or by overt force in many cases (countries like Libya, Burma, Latin American dictatorships, and China being exceptions). Rather, it is social: the understated pressure of advertising, peer groups, and neighborhood associations. It is financial, the burden of maintaining a certain lifestyle at any cost. It is the sneering laughter of the cynical and sophisticated (see C.S. Lewis’s third sci fi novel). It is the silence of a church, numbed by prosperity and approval.

The structures of tyranny are corporate. Injustice is outsourced, made invisible. Decisions made in New York affect West Africa, China, Indonesia.

[I know everybody doesn't get hung up on gender exclusive language. The basic rule is simple: "man" now refers to males almost exclusively, not to either males or females in a group. If you do get hung up, check out Discipleship, volume 4 in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works English, part of the complete works set.]

BEING CHRIST’S DISCIPLE

Reading: The Cost of Discipleship, pp. 86-101

“The cross is neither misfortune nor harsh fate….The essence of the cross is not suffering alone; it is suffering and being rejected. Strictly speaking, it is being rejected for the sake of Jesus Christ….

“‘…let them take up their cross…’ From the beginning it lies there ready. They need only take it up. But so that no one presumes to seek out some cross or arbitrarily search for some suffering, Jesus says, they each have their own cross ready, assigned by God and measured to fit. They must all bear the suffering and rejection measured out to each of them. Everyone gets a different amount. God honors some with great suffering and grants them the grace of martyrdom, while others are not tempted beyond their strength. But in every case it is the one cross.” (Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 4, pp. 86-87; this is a new translation)

Scriptures Cited

• Mark 8.22-38, a second look at Jesus the Messiah
• Leviticus 16.8-10,21-22,27; Hebrews 13.12-13, atoning for people’s sins
• Galatians 6.2, Bearing one another’s burdens
• Matthew 26.39-42, Jesus in Gethsemane (means “the oil press”)
• Matthew 11.28-30, “my yoke is easy, my burden is light”
• Luke 14.25-27, hating those dearest to you
  (“Hate your mother” is an example of exaggeration/hyperbole; also hate vs. love is an idiom of Jesus’ language Aramaic, meaning choose one vs. the other)
• John 1.3; 1 Cor 8.6; Heb 1.2, Christ stands as mediator between us and all else
• 1 John 2.15-17, love not the world (that is, all that opposes itself to God)
  but John 3.16 “God so loved the world” (that is, creation)
• Genesis 12.1-3, God comes between Abraham and his father; Genesis 22, God comes between Abraham and his son Isaac.
• Mark 10.28-31, receiving 100-fold with persecution in this life
• Mark 10.32, Jesus’ leading the way to the cross alone
• Galatians 2.19-20, I am crucified with Christ.
• Hebrews 12.1-2, who for the joy set before him endured the cross

Questions for discussion

• What are some phony “crosses” people bear today?
• How can you discern between phony crosses and real crosses?
• What if you can’t find the genuine cross in your life?
• Suppose you’re feeling like you should be a martyr, if you “really” followed Christ. How might the Living Christ respond?

The Cross, session 2

Check out Bonhoeffer’s Discipleship, chapter 4.

God does not love because Jesus died for us; Jesus died for us because the Father loved us.[1]

Only as we by faith admit Christ into our own life does he become in us a personal and transforming presence. As we are brought to drink from the cup which he drank and to be baptized with his baptism, so we are freed from the tyranny of sin and freed for the creative life in the fellowship of God.[2]

“In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.” 1 John 4.10-12

The cross lays bare the heart of God as nothing else does.[3]

“But we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”  1 Corinthians 1.23-24

In modern sports, a player may be taken from the game and replaced by a ‘substitute.’ But Jesus never becomes our substitute in that sense. We are never taken out of the game. Rather, Jesus quickens in us the faith by which we admit him to ourselves and our struggle. He in us brings about the victory over death unto life as he brings about the death of the old and the birth of the new. Jesus alone can save, but he does not send us to the bench while he plays the game for us. In us he achieves what we could never achieve for ourselves.[4]

Salvation is accomplished in our human self as God in Christ Jesus gains the kind of entrance into us that transforms us from within. The cross must become a living reality within the heart; else it is only judgment and not redemption….

The cross is God’s gift and God’s demand. Christ died for us; and again, in Christ we are crucified that we may be delivered from the false [self-centered] way of Adam to the true way of Christ….

This is not to be seen as a human work by which we bring about our own salvation. It is first and last the work of Christ brought about in us…. The New Testament holds out no hope that anyone through their own power can follow Christ’s example. Rather, it calls us to our one part, that of faith. Faith is trust and faith is receiving. It is openness of heart and life to Christ that he may come in and save.[5]