Religion
July 04, 2008
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June 25, 2008
June 13, 2008
June 12, 2008
June 08, 2008
April 28, 2008
Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism. by Cornel West. Penguin Books, 2004. 229 pages.
May 30, 2007. This the book my colleagues and I recently discussed at the new home of Professor and Mrs. Andy Lampkin here in Loma Linda.
I am impressed by how intensely "American" it is in its great hopefulness. Like so many of us who are also Americans, West apparently thinks that people can "fix" things, that it is actually within humanity's power to improve life for everybody all around the world. Not everyone is convinced of this.
West's argument is that the United States today is beset by economic, militaristic and religious fundamentalism against which it must rally the resources of its "deep democratic tradition," as seen in the legacies of Greek Socratic questioning, Hebrew prophetic practice and "dark hope."
He claims that we can detect this "tragiccomic hope" in the writings of Ralph Waldo Emmerson, Herman Melville, James Baldwin and Toni Morrison and that we can hear it in the blues, jazz and hip-hop.
West writes with the learning and passion we rightly expect from the foremost public theologian in America today. He uses democracy matters as both a noun and a verb. He is a Christian, but a fundamentalist.
As West sees them, the three overlapping fundamentalisms that now threaten those of us who are Americans compel us to face the sad plight of our nation that from its beginnings has proclaimed the ideals of liberty and justice for all while imperialistically denying these rights to millions of people within and beyond our borders.
He pinpoints the issue of race as the clue by which to understand our entire culture.
I admit without pleasure that as a white middle class male American his emphasis upon race sometimes makes me feel uncomfortable. This is what he rightly intends!
West's critiques are actually even-handed. His assessment of the Israeli/Palestinian struggle calls on both sides to act in their common interests without either one losing its identity and security. He criticizes philosophers John Rawls and Richard Rorty as well as theologians Stanley Hauerwas and John Milbank for stifling in different ways the public expression of religious moral convictions while acknowledging the positive contributions each is otherwise making. His assessments of blues, jazz and hip-hop are more judicious than many.
The examples of this book's decency and fairness are numerous.
West comes across to me as an American who calls upon all of us who are also Americans to live more and more in harmony with our ideals rather than our imperialistic impulses and practices. He does not write as an "outsider," a "former" or "anti" American ethically speaking, but as one who who lives and moves and finds his being in our culture and in its never-ending moral struggles.
We wondered in our discussion if his celebration of our "precious democratic experiment" is grounded in an optimistic or pessimistic view of human nature. Probably both. In any case his confidence that we Americans can do better cries aloud from every page.
Some might think that his hopeful conviction that we can make democracy work at home and gently (no shock and awe!) take root and flourish in different cultural soils abroad is altogether too American. I don't.
January 26, 2008
Kyle Fedler on "Bioethics and 'Biblical Personhood'"
Kyle Fedler, Chair of the Religion Department at Ashland University in Ohio, was the speaker on January 17 for the second of nine presentations on "The Moral Status of the Human Fetus" in the Jack W. Provonsha Lectures Series at Loma Linda University. This series is organized by LLU's Center for Christian Bioethics. Mark Carr is the Director and Dawn Gordon is the Manager.
Fedler's title was "Child or Chattel: Biblical Views on the Moral Status of the Embryo." It was clear from the outset that for him the Old and New Testaments constitute a religious canon and not merely a cultural classic. They do for me as well.
The conclusion of his presentation was that combining Biblical perspectives with contemporary scientific knowledge yields the conclusion that the new life should be viewed as a human person from about four to five weeks of gestational age and onward.
This presumably allows for contraceptive measures that frustrate implantation, like IUDs and RU486, so-called "morning after pills," stem cell research and discarding unclaimed embryos at fertility clinics.
Fedler reminded the audience that the Old and New Testaments were written in a variety of genres over a number of centuries a long time ago and that neither makes any direct reference to abortion, pro or con. Arguments from silence either way need to be viewed with caution, he stated.
He reviewed a number of passages that people use in support of the full personhood of the fetus. Some of these speak against shedding human blood(Genesis 9:6) and for having many children IGenesis 13:16 & 15:5). Other passages depict God interacting with prenatal human life: Isaiah (Isaiah 49:1) Jeremiah (Jeremiah 1:4), a psalmist (Psalm 139:13-16) and Job (Job 10:8-11).
Fedler also referred to two passages that seem to accord less than full personhood to the fetus. In one of these (Numbers 5:11-28), he said, the priests are instructed to give women who are suspected of being unfaithful to their husbands a potion that will cause them to abort if they are guilty. This suggests that the lives of fetuses was less important than determining what the women had actually done.
The second passage (Genesis 2:7) states that at creation God breathed "into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. " Fedler said that some infer from this passage that the new life should not be viewed as a person until he or she can independently breathe, shortly after birth.
Fedler also commented on the most controversial passage of them all:
When people who are fighting injure a pregnant woman so that there is a miscarriage, and yet no further harm follows, the one responsible shall be fined what the woman's husband demands, paying as much as the the judges determine. If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe. Exodus 21:22-24. New Revised Standard Version.
He identified three interpretative translations. In the New Revised Standard Version one finds the most frequent reading. This is that the lighter penalty of a fine is appropriate if the woman miscarries but experiences no further harm. If she, the woman, is harmed above and beyond the miscarriage, the more severe penalty is required.
In the New International Version the woman does not miscarry; she prematurely gives birth to a living infant. If this is all that happens, the fine applies. But if in addition to this either the mother or the prematurely born infant is harmed, then the greater punishment is required.
Both the NRSV and the NIV are contemporary translations, the first more "ecumenical" and the second more "evangelical" as people in the United States often use these terms.
Felder checked the Septuagint as well. In this ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament Hebrew, the distinction is between an unformed and formed fetus when the woman miscarries. If it is "unformed," presumably because it is very young in gestational age, the fine is the penalty. If the fetus is formed, presumably because it is further along in the pregnancy, it is the more drastic "life for life, eye for eye" and so forth.
Fedler noted that some see in the New Testament condemnations of pharmakeia (Galatians 5:19-21 and Revelation 9:21) a warning against using drugs that cause abortions. He also notes that the text uses brephos, a Greek word for "child," when it declares that John jumped in his mother Elizabeth's womb when she heard the greeting of Mary, who was pregnant with Jesus.
Finding none of these passages definitively illuminating, whether in the Old or New Testament, Felder followed Richard Hayes in The Moral Vision of the New Testament (HarperSanFrancisco, 1996) in seeking guidance from seemingly unrelated passages that may actually be more helpful. One of these is the story Jesus told about "The Good Samaritan" (Luke 10:25-37) in which the boundaries between those who are worthy of our protection and assistance are broadened to include more those often left out.
Another is the suggestion that Christians ought to follow the example of Jesus Christ, "Who though he was in the form of God, did hot regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself,taking the form of a slave" and so forth (Philippians 1:5-7). Instead of giving us specific instructions, Fedler suggested that passages such as these depict in broad strokes what kinds of people those of us who are Christians should be and what kinds of things we should do."
Fedler's own proposal was that "somewhere between two weeks and four weeks the embryo undergoes developments that result in it becoming what the Bible would characterize as a person." This rests upon what he understands "Biblical personhood," to be, on the one hand, and scientific evidence, on the other.
"Possessing human DNA is neither sufficient nor necessary for being a 'person,' he held. It is not sufficient because things like skin cells have human DNA and no one thinks of them as "persons." It is not necessary because there may well be "persons" who do not have human DNA. If I recall correctly, Fedler described ET as a "person" of this sort.
To be a "person" in the Biblical sense of the term, Fedler contended, is to be an individual who either has the ability to be in relationships--presumably, I'm guessing, with self, others and God--or this potential. He held that the new life begins to possess this potential between four and five weeks of gestational age because this is when its central nervous system begins to form. Before then its structure is too simple.
Both at the beginning and at the end of his presentation, Fedler emphasized that there is no "definitive moment" before which nothing matters and afterward everything does. Rather, from fertilization to birth the entire process of human gestation is a relatively smooth process. But after a month or so the new life has developed enough neurological complexity to require us to treat it differently, he contended.
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If there had been an opportunity, I would like to have explored several issues with Fedler.
The first of these would have concerned Exodus 21. Although I respect and appreciate the care with which he examined its various interpretations, I find it unnecessary to do so because the verses in question are embedded in a passage that contains much material that we rightly do not apply to our lives today. The very verses in question portray the woman as the property of her husband who deserves to be compensated if she is harmed.
Instead of doing what Fedler did, I think it is appropriate to exhibit this and then to move on to other things, having established that no one can legitimately appeal to this portion of Scripture in making his or her case about the moral status of the human embryo.
My second question would have concerned the likely implications of his emphasis on "personhood" at the other end of life. I believe that his position implies that humans who have permanently lost the ability to enter into relationships are no longer "persons" in the technical way he is uses the term. The implication of this would seem to be that in such cases we need not--or perhaps even should not--prolong the individual's life but instead do everything we can to make his or her process of dying as comfortable and dignified as possible.
I agree with Fedler's emphasis upon "personhood" and I endorse these likely implications. I suspect that he endorses them too; however, I would like to know for certain. I also hope that we can replace "person" and "non-person" with terms that are less likely to be misunderstood. But I'm not sure what they might be!
My third question would have concerned the importance he put on the fourth or fifth week. I am not sure what he would find ethically acceptable before this and what he would find ethically unacceptable after it. He did say that his position does not mean that before the first month "anything goes." We can therefore presume that he would also that it does not mean that after this time "nothing goes." But to my recollection Fedler was not more specific than this.
But why choose the first month? It seems to me that implantation is the most dramatic change in an otherwise relatively smooth process and that from then on we need to keep in mind that we are dealing with two biologically human and living entities. Once it has successfully implanted, the new life has the potential, meaning the inherent power, to become a human person and that as gestation progresses it increases moves toward this goal.
Already at implantation, within the first week or so, in my view, it is a potential human person. Before that, the conceptus, and before that the ovum and sperm, are not potential but possible human persons. What happens around the fourth or fifth week is important; however, as Felder himself said, the entire process is relatively smooth. I would say that this is so after implantation but not before.
For me this means that those of us who are Christians should be much more hesitant about terminating an established pregnancy than discarding or using in research or therapy embryos that have not implanted. Although this provides much opportunity for manipulating stem cells, it amounts to a strong ethical presumption against abortion and this presumption intensifies as the pregnancy progresses.
All presumptions can be overturned and a number of additional factors can overturn this one. These include rape, incest, serious fetal malformations and significant threats to the woman's physical, mental and social wellbeing.
Just as in a court of law an individual is presumed to be Innocent until the evidence establishes otherwise, so also I think that those of us who are Christians should presume that an embryo that has successfully implanted should be protected until other factors indicate the contrary. The default position is "pro-life" but this is presumptive, not absolute.
My responses to Fedler are endeavors in Christian bioethics that say nothing about what laws or other public policies should regulate the practice of abortion for all citizens. All laws should embody ethical principles but not all ethical principles should be embodied in laws.
My view is that at present and well into the foreseeable future some national norm along the lines of Roe v Wade is the most appropriate public policy, all things considered.
December 01, 2007
John B. Cobb, Jr. on Intercessory Prayer
I found some recent reflections by Claremont theologian John B. Cobb, Jr. on intercessory prayer very helpful. Others may too! They are at Process and Faith.
November 17, 2007
Who Started the Branch Davidian Fires at Waco? Another Response to Kenneth G. C. Newport
This is the text of my response to Kenneth G. C. Newport's presentation at the Loma Linda University Campus Hill Church on November 17, 2007. Since then I have added the material in the brackets. For my summary of Newport's presentation, my response and the discussion that followed, please visit the Spectrum Blog. It may be necessary to use the Archives for November 2007.
Kenneth Newport's work [The Branch Davidians of Waco: The History and Beliefs of an Apocalyptic Sect. Oxford University Press, 2006. xi + 379 pp.] on what went wrong at Waco is scholarship at its best. Tediously researched, precisely written and dispassionately argued, it is an overwhelmingly positive contribution.
Its value for Seventh-day Adventist thought and life is especially great. I hope that many advanced Sabbath School classes around the world will discuss one of its seventeen chapters each week. Few experiences can do more to help us understand what it means and does not mean to be a Seventh-day Adventist today.
Newport's scholarship in his book is so excellent that my understanding of its central thesis is the only thing with which I disagree. I take this to be that "the end-time scenario at the heart of SDA thinking almost since the movement began, including such concepts as the remnant, the continuation of the prophetic gift, and the nearness of the end, provides the basic canvas upon which the distinctively Branch Davidian apocalyptic images can be painted." (41)
It is particularly in the next sentence that Newport goes further than I can. "More broadly," he writes, "Koresh differed in degree and detail more than in kind from countless millions of his fellow Americans who, the statistics indicate, have "'no doubt' that Jesus will one day come to earth again."
I am unable to follow Newport when he suggests that these differences were more quantitative than qualitative. It is difficult for me to put David Koresh and Billy Graham in the same family photograph, for example. Likewise, it is almost impossible for me to picture David Koresh and Ellen White holding hands. Their differences strike me as more than a matter of degree.
[They are differences in kind. Branch Davidian theology is not an elaboration, extension or intensification of either Seventh-day Adventism or American Christianity more generally. It is their grotesque and diametrically opposed distortion. It retains some of the terms and themes but it turns them upside down and inside out.
Perhaps the most obvious example is that for a century and a half SDAs have typically refused to bear arms, even in times of war, choosing out of moral conviction and their community's special skills, sometimes at great personal sacrifice, to serve in the military as medics who treat wounded friends and foes alike. David Koresh, on the other hand, had a phallic obsession with fire arms and he gathered a huge and diverse supply of them at Mount Carmel, just as he collected compliant women. This is a reversal, not a development, of SDA theology. In conversation Newport acknowledges this; however, he gives it less importance than I do.]
More generally, Newport attributes more of what went wrong at Waco to what the Branch Davidians believed than I can. "Theology, talk about God, and understanding of God, and an understanding of God's purposes for the world were what made them tick. It was for theology that these believers lived. It was for theology too that some of them died," he writes. (16)
Although they would probably say that they lived and were prepared to die for God, not theology, many Branch Davidians would probably agree. But perhaps this is to accept their understanding of themselves too uncritically. My view, based on Newport's research, not mine, is that theological, psychological and ethical pathologies on both sides of the conflict converged to cause what happened.
If these three pathologies had plagued only the Branch Davidians or only the government's agents, I doubt that we would have seen Waco's flames. Also, if in either or both sides any one of these three factors had not been present, I again doubt that we would have seen them [though about this I am less certain. In any case, as I see it, we are dealing with two sets of three pathologies, or six in all. All six were raging out of control on April 19, 1993. It was a perfect recipe for horror.]
Newport convinces me that the Branch Davidians probably ignited the flames of Waco. "Did the biblical text inspire this act of self-destruction?" he also asks in tonight's presentation. "I think it did, or at least I think that there was a direct relationship between the texts, what the Branch Davidians thought those texts meant, and what happened on April 19, 1993."
I agree; however, I doubt that by itself their reading of these texts would have caused the Branch Davidians to light the fires. In addition to this theological pathology, very serious psychological and ethical pathologies probably made their contributions too. Otherwise, why is it that out of millions of Seventh-day Adventists around the world and many more millions of other Christians in North America, less than a hundred of them died at Waco? [Humanly speaking, this is a huge loss; however, statistically speaking it is insignificant.]
[What caused this difference? I think that Newport might have given this question more attention. If he had, I think he would have placed much more emphasis upon the many points at which the line of thought from Victor Houteff to David Koresh fundamentally changed its theological inheritance. It is notoriously difficult to discover why things are different by concentrating upon how basically similar they are.]
Both sides exhibited theological pathologies [on April 19] in that they both tried to force the hand of God in human history. "In God we trust," declares the civil religion of the United States. Among other things this means that neither the nation as a whole nor any group within it is authorized to usurp the role of divine providence. Also, at our best, though we must concede that we are often at out worst, we Americans trust God, not the AFT or FBI, and certainly not the guns of David Koresh. Forgetting this is a huge theological problem.
Neither David Koresh and his followers nor those in the government who managed things on April 19 were dysfunctional psychotics. About this Newport is certainly correct. This does not mean that they all deserved a clean bill of psychological health, however.
A quick look down a list of psychological disorders gives one pause. Here are some possibilities that I would like to discuss with a fully qualified professional: Acute Stress Disorder, Antisocial Personality Disorder, Anxiety Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, Dependent Personality Disorder, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Paranoid Personality Disorder and Sleep Terror Disorder.
It is unlikely that everyone on both sides of the conflict suffered from one or more of these pathologies. It is even less likely that only a few of them did. My view is that we cannot understand what went wrong at Waco unless we take such psychological factors into account.
Both sides exhibited serious ethical pathologies. Two of the most common temptations are sloth, living like less than a human being, and pride, living like more than one.
I think that the Branch Davidians at Waco gave in to the temptation of Sloth. In important areas of his personal life David Koresh lived like an animal and his followers did little or nothing to stop him.
I think that the representatives of the government gave in to the temptation of pride. They did not want to be humiliated, shamed or held to scorn by their apparently unmanly inability to bring the stalemate to a close [after the better part of two months], most particularly not on the grasslands of Texas! Faced with the prospect of sacrificing either their sense of honor or the lives of the Branch Davidians, they made their choice.
Does this mean that we Seventh-day Adventists can avoid all responsibility for what wrong? My answer to this question is "no."
The proof-text method of studying Scripture can cause problems by allowing one to combine a verse from here with a verse from there and both of them with yet another text in a third location, all taken out of their settings, in order to prove anything. Koresh was the king of proof-texting and a few--very few-- SDAs and others were wrongly impressed. Even one is too many.
Another problem is the high value some in our circles place upon deference to religious authority. We know that we are supposed to be "thinkers and not the mere reflectors of the thought of others;" however, sometimes we are very hard on those who think for themselves. This, too, is a big problem. Every time we squelch someone who questions or proposes something by demanding uncritical obedience to arbitrary authority, we throw fuel onto the fires of [the next] Waco.
We should always think for ourselves but never think by ourselves!
I close with an expression of my gratitude to Kenneth Newport. We can only hope that all former Seventh-day Adventist professors who become Anglican priests and academic administrators will serve us so well! .
Kenneth Newport Explains the Fires of Waco
The Branch Davidians themselves started the fires in which they died on their compound, Mount Carmel, in April 19,1993 near Waco, Texas and they did this because they belived that this is what the Bible told them to do. Kenneth G. C. Newport contended for these conclusions in a presentation at the Loma Linda University Campus Hill Church on the evening of Wednesday, November 14. For my summary of his remarks and my response, please visit the Spectrum Blog.
November 10, 2007
Richard Rice Discusses Open Theism
Richard Rice, a theologian at Loma Linda University who launched the most recent expression of "Open Theism" and gave it its name, explained its basic themes to several dozen universities students on Friday, evening, November 14. For my summary and reactions, please visit the Spectrum Blog and SDA Gender Justice.
November 07, 2007
Christianity and Particularity
Here is something I posted on the current Spectrum Blog discussion of "I'm an Adventist because....." The Spectrum Site is worth visiting too!
Several of us have commented on the differences between being a Christian and being a Seventh-day Adventist, usually indicating that the first is prior in some way to the second. In many ways this makes sense.
Yet I doubt that it is possible entirely to separate these chronologically or experientially. When anyone becomes a Christian he or she necessarily becomes one of some sort. No one gets to become a Christian as such.
When we become Christians we do so either as SDAs, Roman Catholics, Baptists, Methodists.......or some mix of these. We might deny this but this is usually because we are unaware of the pedigrees of the types of Christianities we embrace.
There are no birds as such, only particular kinds of birds. There are no horses as such, only particular kinds of horses. There are no flowers as such, only particular kinds of flowers. True, these all may have mixed pedigress; however, none of them is wholly without one.
We might call this the principle of particularity. Nothing exists unless it exists in some specific way.
This is why I am not ashamed that I am a Seventh-day Adventist Christian. At least I know part of my pedigree!
November 06, 2007
"Adventist Today" Comments on the Andrews University "Questions on Doctrine" Conference
For reports and commentaries on the Andrews University Questions on Doctrine Conference by Ervin Taylor, Arthur Patrick and Robert Johnston, please visit Adventist Today.
October 23, 2007
The "Questions on Doctrine" Conference: Heading to Andrews University
It is 4:39 a.m. California time on Tuesday, October 23, and my wife and I are on our way to Andrews University in Berrien Springs, Michigan for a three-day conference celebrating the 50th anniversary of the book Questions on Doctrines (Washington, D. C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1957).
This book undoubtedly has caused more controversy within the Seventh-day Adventist Church than any other the denomination has published. Authored by a small group of leaders in response to inquiries to Donald Barnhouse and Walter Martin, two very conservative Protestants, it is widely credited for making Adventism more credible in the eyes of such Christians while also creating much division within it. This theological discord has continued for half a century.
Some summarize the debate as one over whether the human nature of Jesus Christ was like that of Adam and Eve before the Fall [prelapsarianism] or after the Fall [postlapsarianism]. This seemingly arcane question continues to be debated outside the denomination as well, albeit without a literal reading of the stories of the "first parents" of all human beings, with theological giants as influential as Karl Barth and Wolfhardt Pannenberg taking sides. Both are postlapsarian.
Philosophical and theological differences are often like points on a compass. If one is traveling short distances their variations hardly matter. But the further away from the compass one goes, the more the lines established by its different points diverge. They can eventually be so great that a difference in only five or so degrees can cause one to miss the destination if it is thousands of miles away. Likewise, in the short run theological differences have negligible consequences. In the long run they can matter a great deal.
In this case the difference between the prelaspsarian and the postlapsarian views of the human nature of Jesus is an unimaginably small variation on the theological compass, so tiny that within the last couple of weeks, Jan Paulsen, the denomination's world-wide leader, a theologian himself who earned his doctorate at Tubingen University in Germany, stated in public that he doubted the value of the upcoming conference partly because he can't imagine that the contesting doctrines would be of any interest to a postmodern person in Europe, a business man in Asia or a farmer in Africa.
This comment has itself become a matter of further discussion with some agreeing, others disagreeing and still others thinking that this new debate about Paulsen's remark not worth anyone's time and energy!
Because for years my position has been very much like Paulsen's, I am surprised that I have been invited to the conference and even to present a paper. My recently deceased father was very active in these debates, especially during the last fifteen years of his life; but as far as I can recall this is the first time I will have commented on them in public because I have felt that I have more important things to do. Some at the conference may be surprised that my father and I have both been postlapsarian all along because his reputation for being traditional is as great as my reputation for being the opposite.
This demonstrates that it is not the case that one of the positions is "conservative" and the other "liberal," even though some may try to frame the issues this way. We are talking about overlapping but somewhat different paradigms within which there are more and less traditional stances.
Generally speaking, the prolapsing position emphasizes the differences between Jesus and the rest of us and thereby the importance of God's forgiving graciousness. Some say that it eventually leads to moral irresponsibility. The postlapsarian emphasizes the similarities between him and us and therefore the significance of God's empowering graciousness. Some say that it leads to legalistic perfectionism. The first sees him more as "Saviour" and the second more as "Lord."
My view is that the unattractive implications that each side attribute to the other are exaggerated. I also believe that both sides have shared certain unpersuasive premises that have resulted in what theologian James Gustafson, who long taught at Yale and the University of Chicago and then Emory University, in another context called "a misplaced debate."
So, we're off! This should be an interesting weekend!
October 19, 2007
Thoughts After Seeing "For the Bible Tells Me So"
Last weekend my wife and I saw "For the Bible Tells Me So," a movie about how we straight Christians relate to gay and lesbian ones. it is a sobering account. I recommend it very highly!
If you can't see it now, watch for the DVD. It should be available early in 2008. More information is available at its web site.
For reviews by Daneen Akers, Obed Vazquez and Jacqueline Hegarty and me, followed by a lively thread of comments, please visit the "Spectrum Blog."
The more I look into these matters, the more convinced I am that the most important ethical issue at this time is not what gay and lesbian people do in private but what straight people do in public.
When last did we hear of homosexual men hurting or even killing a heterosexual man? Although this probably happens, it seems to me that usually it is the other way around. Straight white Christian men like me may be the most dangerous animals on earth, particularly when we think that something is "unnatural."
Yet what we take as "natural" and "not natural" partly reflects our circumstances. We see this in the New Testament itself and how we read it. In his letter to the first Christians at Rome, Paul describes homosexual activities as "against nature." Most Christians take him seriously at this point, even if they end up partly disagreeing. But in his correspondence with the first Christians at Corinth, Paul says that nature teaches that it is disgraceful for men to wear long hair. Perhaps he was wrong about this or perhaps there was something about the situation in Corinth that gave long hair on men a negative meaning there that it does not have everywhere. My point is that most of us do not take Paul seriously enough at this juncture even to wrestle with what he says. Why?
If we stick with Scripture a bit longer, we will notice that it condemns homosexual activity and condones slavery. But many Christians today say that it should be the other way around, that we should condemn all forms of slavery and condone some types of homosexual activity, and they say this in the name of Scripture! Some find this puzzling and who can blame them?
One way to understand all this is to note that Christians differ in how they interpret and apply Scripture. In a way that is roughly analogous to how people differ in the readings of the Constitution of the United States, some view it as static and the others see it as dynamic.
Another way to put this is to say that for some Scripture is a series of snapshots of the past that depict how we should live in the present. For others it is more like a movie that has not yet ended. We can see the people and the plot and we can trace the direction in which they are moving; however, it is up to us to continue the story. This is how I see it.
Slavery is discredited by the trajectories of Scripture and so is treating women as property. We can say the same things about the movements from patriarchal and monarchical forms of government to democratic ones and the responsibility of the group to the accountability of the individual. In all these cases the important point is to trace the trajectory and to move forward in the direction to which it points.
Thinking of the trajectories of Scripture highlights how important it is that we neither excise nor ignore any portion of it. We must know where we have been in order to know where we should go. Those who have no past also have no future. Scripture is the Christian's memory. It sets the course. It plots the play. It moves us into the future with a sense of moral direction. Without it we would be lost.
October 15, 2007
Sigve Tonstad on God's Coercive or Persuasive Power in the Book of Revelation
Last night faculty and friends of the Loma Linda University School of Religion discussed a book by one of its newest professors. Published by T &T Clark in its Library of New Testament Studies series in 2006, the revised St. Andrews University doctoral dissertation is titled "Saving God's Reputation: The Theological Function of Pisits Iesous in the Cosmic Narratives of Revelation." Sigve Tonstad, a physician and Biblical scholar from Norway, is its author.
As indicated by the Greek words in its title, Tonstad's book examines the meaning of the expression "faith of Jesus" as found in Revelation 14:12. Over the centuries, commentators have tried to clarify the meaning of these words in several ways. Tonstad makes an unusual case for understanding them to mean "the faithfulness of Jesus," and thereby God, to others rather than the other way around. I think that the phrase therefore becomes analogous to the exclamation of some Psalms that "God's steadfast love endures forever."
Because he cannot make it on linguistic grounds alone, Tonstad buttresses his case by providing a detailed study of the entire book of Revelation and this is where things get more interesting and controversial. Most commentaries these days on the last book of the New Testament make the conflict between the first Christians and the Roman empire its foreground and the cosmic conflict about the way God governs the universe its background. Reversing these, Tonstad holds that the imagery of cosmic conflict is primary.
In addition, even if it is qualified by some commentators, there is a widespread impression that in the Book of Revelation God conquers all foes by violently abolishing them. Tonstad reverses this as well. He holds that the book's imagery of the victory of the "slaughtered lamb" suggests that God prevails by using persuasive rather than coercive power.
Either one of these major revisions would have been provocative. Taken together they constitute a major challenge to most interpretations. Tonstad avers that his case is a "complementary and partly contrary" alternative. This puts it gently!
One might anticipate that responses to his book would probe both his emphasis upon the theme of "cosmic conflict" and his proposal that in the book of Revelation God wins by using persuasive power. These are exactly the directions last night's discussion headed with one addition. This is that we explored not merely what the ancient document says but what we should say today about its central question: If God is as good and powerful as so many say, why do we see so much evil around and within us?
This question always expresses the greatest possible objection to Biblical faith, whether Jewish, Christian or Islamic. It is the problem of theodicy, or the "justice of God." When it comes to monotheism, in the end it is the only question worth discussing. If we believers answer it in ways that are at least partially satisfactory, much falls into place. If we fail here, nothing else matters.
Although in this volume Tonstad does not engage his Biblical scholarship with contemporary philosophical theology, I hope that in time that he or others will bring them together in mutually fruitful ways. I believe that his emphasis upon God's persuasive rather than coercive power in the Book of Revelation should be interesting to process theologians and vice versa, for example.
It will be tempting for these to square off against each other as to whether this is how God chooses to act (Tonstad, I think) or is compelled by the inescapable nature of reality to do so (process theology). I hope that this does not happen because I think it more important for them to collaborate against other positions in providing an alternative to what Alfred North Whitehead called "the deeper idolatry."
This is the tendency of Christians and others to depict God as a capricious dictator rather than the loving parent for whom Jesus of Nazareth lived and taught. Because it is the case that in the long run we become like those we worship, the future of human civilization rests in part upon which form of power we most prize. We have magnified our reliance upon coercive power beyond measure and we can see the results. Perhaps it would be helpful to try another approach. It is difficult to imagine that the outcomes would be worse.
October 14, 2007
Ralph S. Larson (1920 - 2007)
Memorial Service
Loma Linda, California
September 1, 2007
Our father was born on November 14, 1920 near Salem, Oregon. He was the eighth child in a family that would include five sons and four daughters, once his younger sister Doris was born. Of the nine children in his family of origin, she is the only one who still lives and we are delighted that she and her husband are with us today from Maryland. His mother’s family, which was of Irish and Scottish descent, traversed the Great Plains in the wagon trains of the nineteenth century. His father was an undocumented immigrant from Sweden.
The men in his family worked in the forests, lumber mills, dairies and businesses of the Pacific Northwest. He might have lived a similar life had he not become a Seventh-day Adventist through the evangelistic campaigns and radio broadcasts of Elders Dan and Melvin Venden, the “true” Venden brothers who are respectively the uncle and father of Louis and Morris. One evening when he was a teenager, after listening to one of their radio sermons, he knelt beside his bed and quietly gave his life to God.
He studied at Walla Walla College, quit for a while to earn some money when his father died, and returned to continue his preparation for ministry. He noticed that in the meantime Jeanne Reiderer had arrived on campus from Ketchikan, Alaska. Although she was in a steady relationship with another man, she noticed him too. They were married after our mother had graduated and worked in Portland, Oregon for a year because she refused to walk down the aisle with anyone until she had proven that she could support herself.
They transferred to La Sierra College where she worked and edited the student newspaper. He studied during the day and drove taxi cabs at night, often delivering military men to March Air Force Base. They lived in one of the tiny cabins that still stand on the west side of the campus. After he graduated, he did his ministerial internship in Elko, Nevada where they lived in a house that had been built out of used railroad ties. This was the start of sixty years of ministry.
The Early Years of Ministry (1946 – 1966)
In 1946 he took our mother and me, when I was three weeks old, to Hawaii by way of Alaska to see her family. With her gregarious and intelligent help, he pastored the church in Kappa, Kaui for three years, moved to the congregation at Hilo on the “Big Island” for another three and then transferred to the Central Church in Honolulu for an additional four. By then our family had expanded to include Thomas, who was born in Honolulu in 1948, and Karen, who was born in Hilo in 1950. Along the way, in order to benefit the church schools, he had helped run a poi factory on Kauai and an orchid exporting business on the Big Island.
In 1957 the Hawaiian Mission made our father’s dreams come true by commissioning him to full-time public evangelism. We moved from Honolulu to Kailua on the Windward side of Oahu. This home was our family’s headquarters from which we traveled throughout the Islands accompanying our father on his evangelistic tours. We studied in a correspondence school, helped out with the efforts, and enjoyed the experience immensely.
We moved to the Northern California Conference in 1959 where he continued his evangelistic work. We first lived at Walnut Creek on a ten-acre property near the North Gate of Mount Diablo State Park and then we moved to another 10-acre property at Angwin where he built the first of three homes that he would construct with his own hands and some hired help.
He rooted us on these plots of land as he commuted to the evangelistic meetings that he held throughout Northern California in an airatorium, an inflated tent that attracted much attention because it looked like a huge upside down bathtub. He enjoyed mechanical things of this sort, preferring to overhaul the engines of the family automobiles himself and being one of the very first to build a motorized home by riveting a trailer house it to the chassis of a truck in which he had installed a powerful Chevrolet engine. We called this mammoth vehicle our “ark.”
Those were very happy years for our family. He was an excellent father who regularly scheduled us time with him for swimming, horseback riding and other fun things and he let no one interfere. While we lived in Honolulu, for instance, our parents made certain that the family was always ready for Sabbath by noon on Friday. Every week we then spent the rest of the day at Prince Kuhio beach at Waikiki, returning home only after we had all enjoyed an ice cream cone at the nearest Dairy Queen. This is how our Sabbaths always began!
Our father was not a severe disciplinarian, spanking me only three times: once for going out of my way intentionally to insult another youngster, a second time for lying and a third for joining another fellow in roughing up a third. His expectations were simple and clear: act respectfully, speak truthfully and fight fairly.
His response when as an early teenager in Northern California I was suspended from school for striking a bully hard enough to burst some blood vessels in his left eye was characteristic. “How would you like to spend a few days with me at the campaign in Camino?” he asked. “Sure!” I replied and the two of us had a great time together. Not once in my entire life did he ever say a word to me about that fight.
Knowing that someone was about to present to our parents a long list of complaints about her, including the charge that she was acting inappropriately with young men, one evening many years later Karen sat down our parents and explained in advance her side of each the stories. When she had completed her detailed defense, our father’s reaction was typical. “May I please go to bed now?” he asked. They never discussed these issues again.
Although it may have seemed to blunt to others, his candor made us feel secure. When Karen regained consciousness after a very serious horseback accident that nearly took her life, she was frightened by a woman who kept saying, “Don’t cry, Don’t cry! Everything’s going to be all right!” when she knew in or six or seven year old heart of hearts that this was not true. She felt safe when our father pushed his way through the gathering group and said, “Karen, you’ve been badly hurt. But I will never leave you.” True to his word, he rushed her to the hospital in a car because the ambulance drivers would not let him ride with them. All the way he kept saying to her, “Squeeze my hand, Karen. Keep squeezing my hand!”
Our father was not the most scrupulous member of our family. That would have been me! We once tethered a horse on a distant property and it was my responsibility to ride him bareback to the house, groom him and give him grain and water and either take for a ride or back to his grassland. Somewhere along the line I became convicted that I should neither ride nor lead him on Sabbath because I enjoyed it too much. I insisted that our father transport the water to the horse by car in a large and heavy container. “Are you certain that this is what God requires?” he asked. “I’m working harder than the horse!” “Never mind,” I replied, “we are not supposed to do our own pleasure on the Sabbath.” He hauled the water.
I once listened with much moral admiration as a young man explained to our father that he had progressed in his Christian life to the point that he no longer played popular music on the ukulele, some of which was for Hawaiian dances. “Don’t be impressed,” he said. “That kind of fanaticism is usually the last gasp of a spiritually dying person.”
Many years later, when I was old enough to know better, I asked my father at Sabbath dinner whether he knew that his church organist was gay. I knew I had said the wrong thing the minute the words left my mouth because everyone at the long table stopped eating to see what would happen next. My father glared at me as if to ask if I had lost my mind. “I know that,” he replied in measured words that all could hear. “But we need that young man. That young man needs us. He is not hurting anybody. So nothing is going to change.” With that he returned to his meal and eventually everyone else did too.
The Middle Years of Ministry (1966- 1985)
Our father’s middle years of ministry, roughly the time between 1966 and 1985, flourished in a time of much turbulence. In society at large, after the ethos of the 1950s disappeared with the murder of John F. Kennedy in 1963, everything seemed to change. This was a tumultuous time in the life of our denomination too. As we should have expected, the turbulence in our society and in our church found their parallels in our family. From our infancy on our father had taught us to think for ourselves, never imagining that in doing so we might come to see some things differently. As children we naively assumed the same thing, that if we thought clearly and followed the evidence wherever it led, we would arrive precisely where our highly respected and deeply loved father had. When it slowly became clear to all of us that this is not how things were turning out, everyone in our family experienced much pain. And yet, although they were often stressed and strained to the very end, the cords of love that bound us never snapped. That he requested that his children tell the story of his life on this occasion is evidence of this. He trusted us.
After leaving Northern California, our father served in the state of Washington and, after completing additional graduate work at Andrews University, on the campus of Atlantic Union College, where Doctor Herbert Douglass, whom he chose to present today’s homily, served as President. While at AUC, he earned his Doctor of Ministry degree from Andover-Newton Theological Seminary, one of the oldest and most respected in the nation.
He eventually accepted an invitation to do evangelistic work, always his first love, in New Jersey because it included a willingness to put to a trial a detailed formula he had developed for financing such efforts. Shortly thereafter he moved to Phoenix, Arizona to pastor one of its congregations, after he concluded that the leadership of the church in New Jersey was not as interested in testing his formula as he had thought.
Our parents thoroughly enjoyed Arizona, so much so that they did not want to leave it. Only intense encouragement from some administrators and some relatives like me persuaded them reluctantly to move to Loma Linda and to the Campus Hill Church. Because he became embroiled in intense theological debates, this was a difficult chapter in his life. This was not lost on those of us who had encouraged him to come here in the first place. Yet as always he found enough courage and strength to persevere and many people benefited from his ministry. Many of us were happy when he accepted an invitation to teach at the SDA theological seminary in the Philippines! This allowed him to return to public evangelism, which was always his first love, as he took his students on the campaign trail from that campus.
As the theological controversies in our church intensified, our father increasingly identified with those who believed that many of them could be traced back to 1957 and the publication of Questions on Doctrine. In forceful sermons, articles and books, he contended that on some issues this book did not accurately portray the writings of Ellen White and a number of our other pioneers and that these inaccuracies were too massive to be accidental and too important to be ignored. Although he was often lampooned, he did not relent but stood his ground and advanced his cause whenever he could. In the end he and his colleagues turned out to be right on this issue, as the annotations in the most recent edition of QOD repeatedly document. These annotations were prepared by George Knight, an Adventist historian who often disagreed with our father even though he became an Adventist in one of our father’s evangelistic campaigns. George Knight is honest.
QOD and later developments prompted theological issues as well. Although the jury is not yet back on these matters, and perhaps it may never be able to render a verdict, I think that some version of the positions our father and his colleagues took will prevail there as well. I think this will be a good thing. Some may be surprised to hear me say this because he thought of himself as a conservative Seventh-day Adventist and I would not use those terms to describe me and I doubt that many others would. What some may have overlooked is that we are both Wesleyans. This means that we have always had more in common with each other than either of us had with those in our church who seem to us to be trying to nudge it a bit in the direction of a somewhat different paradigm.
Over the years it has been difficult for me to figure out why our father seemed not to understand from the inside why so many Adventists were drawn to the somewhat different paradigm and its relatively heavier emphasis upon God’s forgiveness. While thinking about the whole of his life since his death, I saw clearly for the first time something that I must have known all along without giving it much thought. This is that, as far as I know, our father never obsessed about his salvation or anything else. He never tossed and turned throughout the night wondering if he had confessed all of his sins or if he had fallen short of Christian perfection by making some mistake. Never! This was largely a matter of his temperament. But it was also because he was confident that God would judge him and everyone else fairly.
In this respect our father’s Christian experience was not at all like that of Martin Luther whose obsessions about his sins and God’s wrath in his early life have given some psychiatrists much valuable data. I believe that this made it difficult for him to understand from the inside the anguish of those whose experience is more like Luther’s and why such people need to be told again and again and again and again, as if the gospel contains no other good news, that no matter how many mistakes they make God still loves them.
Our father often viewed this emphasis upon God’s forgiveness as a theological excuse for irresponsible conduct. In some cases this was so; however, in most instances it wasn’t. The more ethically obsessive Martin Luthers of every age like me need to camp on the doctrine of justification by faith and never move much beyond it and then always keeping it view. There was nothing in his temperament to help him understand this. I now think that in this area of his life he was the healthier.
The Latter Years of Ministry (1985 – 2007)
When he officially retired in 1985 at sixty-five years of age, two decades of ministry were still before him. Working with self-supporting ministries whose mission in life is to preserve historic Adventism was a matter of integrity for our father. Also, in these endeavors he enjoyed a measure of collegiality with other ministers that he had not known since he left Hawaii in 1959. In addition they prevented him from wasting his retirement years in idleness, requiring him to preach, teach, write and travel to many parts of the world instead. These were all pluses. Yet these efforts cost him and our family a great deal because for the first time he was working outside of, and in some cases partly against, the denomination. It saddens us that some people became acquainted with him only in this chapter of his life.
The year of 1990 was especially sorrowful. In its months our brother Thomas died. My first marriage ended. And the Pacific Union Conference revoked our father’s honorary ministerial credentials, something our denomination provides its retired clergy who are in good and regular standing. Especially my mother could not understand how the church that they had served with dedication and distinction for decades could now reject them. Our parents fully expected that they would also lose their church membership. But the Loma Linda University Church became their shelter in a time of storm. In this congregation their membership was safe and secure. Doctrinal diversity has its pluses after all!
Our mother died from cancer on November 16, 1994, one day short of her seventy-fourth birthday. How fortunate our father was that Betty Newman caught his eye in March of 1995 at a meeting of historic Adventists. Thirteen days later, he proposed marriage. She resisted and he insisted. They were married in this chapel in July of that year. Their union gave us three fine adult step brothers: Robert, Paul and Jim.
In comparison with the last nine, their first three years together were relatively easily. Everything changed for them when a misfortunate cardiac procedure nearly killed him, sending him home a physically devastated man after four months in the medical center. Then he was diagnosed with Parkinsonism. As he slowly declined in physical strength, but very little in clarity of mind, at their home in Cherry Valley, Betty’s loving care of him became increasingly heroic. All the rest of us joined our father in requesting that she hire some help, something they could afford. But she refused to transfer to anyone else what she often described as her privilege of caring for our father.
His characteristic courage in the face of adversity did not fail him. Rarely complaining, he suffered from not being able to speak above a whisper, a consequence of having a tube in his throat for so long, and from his inability to continue working with his colleagues. I once asked him what he did when he could not sleep at night. “I rehearse every detail of my life, reciting all the ways God has blessed me,” he replied. These blessings included Gary Larson cartoons, the carbonated beverages he added to virtually everything he drank, including milk, and football, which he watched with the sound off because he believed with some justification that his commentaries on the games were superior to those that were broadcast.
In order to give Betty some rest, Hospice arranged for him to stay at Heritage Gardens for five days, beginning Thursday, August 16. On Friday and Sabbath, he very much enjoyed visits from friends, former students, his wife, his living son and daughter, his daughter-in-law, and three of his five grandchildren. Although his whisper was sometimes difficult to decipher, his grandchildren often doing this better than the rest of us, his faith, courage dignity were as strong as ever. No matter what the adversity throughout his life, he had never blinked and he had never ducked and he faced his upcoming death the same way. When we paused in prayer to thank God for all the blessing of his life and ours, he mustered all of his remaining energy repeatedly to exclaim, “Amen! Amen! Amen!” A hugely powerful man, he never was a wimp; and he certainly wasn’t one now.
He relaxed on Sunday and peacefully slipped away. His nurses told us that rarely do they see such an easy death. Several of us circled his lifeless form for about two hours, grateful that he was no longer suffering. When the vehicle arrived from Montecito Mortuary and Memorial Park, we were ready.
Our father’s greatest legacy is not what he said and wrote in the heat of theological controversy after he retired. It is the thousands of people all over the world who were blessed in his active ministry. In his professional life, first and foremost he was a public evangelist and then he was pastor and teacher. People, not polemics, were always his highest priority.
One of our earliest memories is watching our father leading a congregation in Hawaii as it joyfully sang, “Trust and Obey!” Please help us sing it again!
October 12, 2007
Cultural and Culinary Diversity: Some Parallels
A social event it was my priviledge to attend earlier this week prompted me to think again about the parallels between cultural and culinary diversity. Organized by the Intercultural Dialogue Student Association at the University of California at Riverside and sponsored by Pacifica Institute, it consisted of a splendid dinner, group discussions and several speakers. The theme of the evening was "Diverse Traditions, Shared Values." The purpose of this annual gathering is to encourage more positive relationships among Jews, Christians and Muslims. Once again this year's meeting was a success.
The three primary speakers were John W. Webster of La Sierra University, Atilla Kahveci of the Pacific Institute and Howard K. Wettstein, of UCR. Kahveci spoke first. As a Muslim he contended that all three Abrahamic religions share important values such as honesty, generosity, compassion and kindness. We should build on these, bringing unity out of diversity without destroying it, he held.
Webster, a Christian, contended that first of all Jews, Christians and Muslims must overcome some mutual misunderstandings. Once they do this they will recognize that they have enough in common to collaborate, even on matters of public policy.
Wettstein reflected on his life and work as a Jewish Zionist who is ethically uneasy about Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands. He also spoke about his experiences teaching in Palestine and about religion's great power for good and evil. He agreed that it often takes religion to make good people do bad things. It often takes religion to make bad people do good things, he added.
Webster distinguished between "experiential expressivism," on the one hand, and "cultural linguistics," on the other. The first holds that at bottom all people experience life basically the same way even though they express themselves diversely. The second holds that the differences among cultures are so thoroughgoing that finding experiential common ground beneath them is difficult.
The intercultural stratigies of these two groups differ correspondingly. The first attempts to identitfy views and values people share and build upon them. Regarding this as an unsuccessful and undesirable enterprise, the second attempts to find methods by which people can interact in mutually acceptable patterns even though they experience life in fundamentally different ways. Diversity, even in this radical form, should be viewed as something positive, he held.
It is at this point in such discussions that my mind returns to cultural and culinary diversity and how they might be analogous. The number of different things people around the world eat is incredibly vast, so much so that we might be tempted to think that we can eat anything can get away with it. Yet we know that this is not so.
It is true that there are some things that some of us can eat and others can't and vice versa: nevertheless, whether they do so slowly or swiftly, if we eat them some things will kill each and everyone of us without regard to factors such as race, religion and society. Although we ingest nothing that is fataly toxic, we will also die if we our diets do not include certain basic nutritional necessities. Culinary diversity is great and good, but it is not limitless. At some point it stops. This is a description, not a prescription. It is the way things actually are whether or not we think they ought to be.
We can say some similar about cultural diversity. It is incredibly and delightfully vast; however, speaking descriptively, it has its limits. Cultures can arrange their lives in self-destructive ways, as the study of human history amply demonstrates. Also, there are certain fundamental human needs that all cultures must provide. If they don't, these societies will die just as certainly as those whose diets do not provide their basic nutritional needs.
Over long periods of time we have learned what each culture must avoid and what it must provide, just as we have learned what we must not eat and what we must. All cultures need to develop ways for different generations to relate to each responsibly and respectfully. They must figure out how to identify and protect property. Although they differ in how they define unjustifiable homcide, all cultures must find some way to protect human life. Likewise, they must figure out how to encourage people to speak truthfully, especially about issues of great significance. And they must learn how to prevent envy from escalating into destructive class warfare. This usually means that they must not let the gap between the rich and poor get too wide.
We know what at minimum each culture must and must not do to survive and flourish. We know that these requirements have long been summarized in ethical mandates such as the Ten Commandments. We also know that it is dangerous for any individual or group to ignore these basics needs. The parallels between cultural and culinary diversity are almost exact.
October 10, 2007
Humanity and God in Christian Ethics
Class Presentation
Loma Linda University
October 16, 2007
1. John Calvin: All our knowledge consists of two related things: our understanding of God and our understanding of our selves. One can understand neither without reference to the other. All work in Christian ethical thought includes both. This outline concerns the second.
2. Many ways of understanding ourselves are dualistic. The thought of Plato in antiquity and Rene Descartes at the dawn of modernity are examples. Plato pictured Socrates encouraging his friends not to mourn his soon death because his soul would not perish when his body did. Descartes distinguished between thinking substance (“mind”) and extended substance (“matter”) and held that human beings are comprised of both.
3. Despite its less than inclusive language, the Loma Linda University motto “To Make Man Whole” is ethically significant. It expresses the institution’s rejection of dualism. Hoping not to be confused with other positions, the university summarizes its view as “wholism” rather than either “holism” or even “monism.” Wholism is one of the beliefs of the Seventh-day Adventist Christians who founded and still operate the university.
4. SDAs are among many others who reject dualism for a variety of reasons. One of these is that its conceptual incoherence is seen in its inability to depict how two fundamentally different kinds of things (“mind/matter” or “soul/body”) interact. This has led to many forms of idealism that make matter or the body secondary and perhaps derivative and many forms of materialism that make mind or the soul secondary and perhaps derivative. Hegel’s thought is an example of the first, Marx’s of the second. Rejecting both of these alternatives, others have proposed ways they might interact more equally. None of these alternatives is entirely satisfactory.
5. Continuing developments in neurology and other sciences constantly erode dualistic convictions in favor of those that picture the mind or soul as “functions” rather than “substances.” The brain thinks just as the eye sees and the ear hears. We should therefore probably speak of “minding,” along the lines of “seeing” and “hearing,” rather than of “the mind.”
6. The implications of dualism for economic, sexual, medical and ecological ethics have not been entirely favorable. When sharp distinctions are drawn between mind or soul, on the one hand, and matter or body, on the other, the second almost always is depreciated in favor of the first. The negative consequences of this over the span of centuries are evident.
7. Ecumenical Biblical scholarship today widely contends that Hebrew thought was wholistic and Greek dualistic. In neither case is this difference absolute or complete because there are portions of Scripture that sound dualistic and perhaps some forms of ancient Greek thought that don’t. The contention is that in general the weight of evidence tips one way in Hebrew thought and the other way in Greek.
8. Holding that the human body is the temple of the Holy Spirit rather than the temporary prison of the soul, the SDAs who founded and operate LLU have held that physical health and healing is spiritually significant and vice versa. This is one reason why they have invested so much in preparing people for service in the various medical professions.
October 09, 2007
August 09, 2007
July 26, 2007
July 21, 2007
July 15, 2007
Primary Author
- David R. Larson
Themes
- "Nothing is more practical than a good theory."
- "Always think for yourself; never think by yourself."
- "The best medicine for bad religion is n