Keeping the Tenth Commandment by "Walking" in the Spirit


Last night I preached a sermon at Redeemer Presbyterian Church of New York City on the Tenth Commandment closing out our summer series on the Ten Commandments. If you'd like to, you can purchase it here.

What follows is an abbreviated intro and the outline:


Intro
We may think that the Tenth Commandment is the least important of the Ten and/or it may be the one we least understand. We may think it's the least important because it's the last in the list of the Ten. So we think to ourselves, if it's the last in the list, then it must me the least important. But the Tenth Commandment may be the second most important simply because it is the tenth; simply because it one of the bookends of the Ten.

But also, it may be the one we least understand because we've become completely desensitized to its meaning. Think of all the synonyms for the word covet: desire, envy, crave, yearn. Every one of these words has a perfume named after it. So we have Desire by Dunhill; Envy by Gucci; Crave by Calvin Klein; and, Yearn by Victoria's Secret. Therefore, our culture has done a good job of desensitizing us to its meaning.

So, let's figure out what this commandment means by looking at it under three headings. Let's look at:

1. What It Is (let's define it)
2. What It Leads To
3. How It Can Be Kept

The Book the PCA Study Committee Needed to Read:
The Saving Righteousness of God by Michael Bird


Michael Bird has done a wonderful and fair job sifting through the data on the New Perspective on Paul. Moreover (and for some strange reason) he has an interest in the debates inside the PCA (why? I don't quite know!). So, if you want a solid treatment of the issues pertaining to the debate within the PCA, PLEASE READ THIS BOOK!

At this point I'm only about halfway through the book, so to review it would be unfair. But I will say that it is the single best treatment of all the issues that I have read to date. Bird reminds us and demonstrates that Richard B. Gaffin (my former professor) has been more aligned with the NPP than he cares to admit! He also does a fine job of dealing with, dikaiosune theou; pistis Christou; and the biblical texts surrounding these issues and others related to justification by faith. Lastly, he grounds his work historically when necessary.

A MUST READ!

Promises, Promises! (Part 1)


A comparison reading of Romans 4:13 and Genesis 12:7 show us the eschatological mind of Paul's understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ. (And when I use the term "the gospel," I mean by it, "the good news about just what the death and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah of Israel affects/renews--individually, corporately, and as we'll soon see, cosmically.)

Romans 4:13 reads, "For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith" (NRSV).

And...

Genesis 12:7 reads, "Then the LORD appeared to Abram, and said, 'To your offspring I will give this land'" (NRSV).

All that YHWH promised Abram in Gensis 12 was the "land of Canaan." Now, I don't know of a scholar who would say that the use of ha erats (the land) in the book of Genesis (particularly this verse in Gen 12) should be understood as "the entire earth," (cf. Walter Breuggemann's, The Land). What makes reading ha erats "globally" in Genesis 12:4 more difficult is that Abram is standing on the threshold of Canaan--a single plot of land in the Ancient Near East.

But of course Paul blows the doors off what all ancient commentators (both Jewish and Christian) believed about this passage. Paul's use of ho cosmos (the world) in Romans 4 goes far beyond the literal, physical earth. Moreover, it goes far, far beyond the promise given to Abram in Genesis 12. Paul now sees the gospel as an affectual and renewing means of "the entire cosmos!" Furthermore, Paul sees the gift as something far beyond Canaan, which is far beyond the original garden-gift to Adam. Paul would have said that Abram, Moses, David and every Jewish commentator (especailly Rabbinic) thereafter were extremely short-sighted! Why? Paul coundn't help but recognize the eschatological implications of the gospel. In Paul's mind, the gospel was nothing less than cosmic in it's scope (cf. Colossian 1).

The Contemporary Pulpit: Midrash at its Best! 

Instead of all the commotion some are causing in reformed-evangelical circles about the use of Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism sources and whether or not they are helpful to current Christian discussions, one might begin by thanking these Jewish exegetes and preachers for the helpful framework and tradjectories they provided us with.  Can anyone truly admit that contemporary Christian preaching is anything other than midrash?  Richard N. Longenecker says that midrash is

"...exegesis which, going more deeply than the more literal sense, attempts to penetrate into the spirit of the Scriptures, to examine the text from all sides, and thereby to derive interpretations which are not immediately obvious." 

and

"Midrashic interpretation, in effect, ostensibly takes its point of departure from the biblical text itself (though psychologically it may be motivated by other factors) and seeks to explicate the hidden meanings contained by means of agreed on hermeneutical rules in order to contemporize the revelation of God for the people of God."  

Sound familiar?  We are post-modern midrashic preachers of Chirst!  

Women and Silence: Is "Saul the Rabbi" Employing a Rabbinic Formula in 1 Corinthians 14:33-35?

For my ethics class at Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, I decided to engage the "women's issue" as my topic (but more specifically, "the women and silence" issue of 1 Cor 14). I thought it would be good for me--in my final semester--to wrestle with this issue, especially since it is one of the hot-button topics in post-Christian NYC. I chose to interact with Richard Hays on the matter: (1) because I agree with a handful of his outcomes; and (2) because I disagree (as of now) with his hermeneutical entry-gate into the issue. But to engage Hays means I must also engage Elizabeth Shussler Fiorenza, Victor Paul Furnish and others, since Hays follows their lead on a variety of issues.

1 Corinthians 14:33-34 reads:

For God is not a God of disorder but of peace. As in all the congregations of the saints, women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church. (NIV)

Preliminary Considerations
(1) The first thing we must remember is that the punctuation is interpretive.
(2) With the punctuation in mind, the "As in all the congregations of the saints" of v. 33b should be read as continuing the thought of v. 33a, not beginning the thought of v. 34 (as the NIV renders/obscures it). By following the NIV, the thought of v. 33b is redundant, since the Greek for "congregations" and "churches" is the same word, ekklesia. "As in all the churches...in the churches."
(3) Hays uses Gal 3:28 as the hermeneutical lens into the 1 Corinthian passage. (Moreover, Hays believes that 1 Cor 14:33-36 is an interpolation. Fiorenza, on the other hand, says we must deal with it regardless if it is Pauline or deutero-Pauline.)
(4) Most commentators, including Hays, recognize that Gal 3:28 has rabbinic roots--it is part of the prayer that every good Jew of the first-century would say each day:

Rabbi Jehuda said, One must speak three prayers every day:
Blessed be God that he has not made me a Gentile.
Blessed be God that he has not made me a woman.
Blessed be God that he has not made me a boor. (T. Berakoth)

(5) If Paul is echoing a rabbinic formula in Gal 3:28, why not in 1 Cor 14:33-35?
(6) With point (5) and point (1) in mind, can we read 1 Cor 14:34b-35 as follows: "[Women] are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says, "If [women] want to inquire about something, they should ask their husbands at home..."
(7) We do know that the women of the first-century were not entitled to speak in the ekklesia, both Jewish (the "assembly," in the LXX) and Greco-Roman (the "assembly" of the polis).
(8) Is Paul just carrying this understanding into the church?
(9) If so, what does that do to how we understand Paul's understanding of the "law?" Is Paul's understanding of the "law" wider than we have come to believe?

Of course, point (6) is not fully substantiated at this moment. But I am hopeful to find something in the rabbinic sources that makes some sense of it.

Again, these were just some of my initial thoughts.

New Testament Backgrounds and World Christianity

According to Lamin Sanneh--D. Willis James Professor of Missions and World Christianity and professor of history at Yale Divinity School--World Christianity as opposed to Christendom or Global Christianity may benefit the western Christian mindset by providing a fresh perspective into NT backgrounds. Sanneh writes in Whose Religion Is Christianity: The Gospel Beyond the West,

The West can encounter in the world Christian movement the gospel as it is being embraced by societies that had not been shaped by the Enlightenment, and so gain an insight into the culture that shaped the origins of the NT church. That might bring about a greater appreciation for the NT background of Christianity. It might also shed light on the issues the early church faced as it moved between Jewish and Gentile worlds.

This statement flies in the face of those who would state unequivocally that the New Perspective on Paul and contemporary Jesus studies like that of N.T. Wright are a direct result of a post-Holocaust agenda and sentiment. To not recognize how the world Christian movement may contribute to our own understanding of scripture and practice is to be thoroughly anti-catholic and perpetuate our post-Enlightenment self-delusion.