SEPTEMBER 2013

In this edition . . .

DEVELOPING A PASSION FOR GOD (PSALM 42): A Poem For Contemplation (The Superscription)

ARCHAEOLOGY: Solomon’s Temple, Part 1

OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD: Things Not Crossed Off

WHY MARBURG MATTERS: The Unfortunate Legacy

EMERGENT CONCERNS: The Bizarreness that is Rob Bell, Part 1

FEEDBACK: I Wanna Know What You’re Thinking

Welcome to the September 2013 edition of The Eclectic Kasper, a monthly web journal about a variety of topics.  This month we begin a series on Psalm 42, and we also discuss how Solomon’s Temple is both unique and similar to other ancient near eastern religious structures.  We continue discussing some of the “bizarre” thoughts of prominent emergent church leaders. 

Also, do you have end-of-summer guilt from all the things you didn’t do?  Well, you’ve come to the right place.  Absolution is available for you in our article “Things Not Crossed Off.” 

So, what’s your favorite article from this edition or any of our recent editions?  What would you like to see more of?  What topics should we address in the future?  You can let us know by sending a wave to feedback@eclectickasper.com or by giving our The Eclectic Kasper Facebook page a “like” and leaving some of your thoughts there.

DEVELOPING A PASSION FOR GOD (PSALM 42): A Poem For Contemplation (The Superscription)

    What began as a simple study of Psalm 42 for me has blossomed into a full length series of articles. I have been studying this Psalm and I wanted to share over the next several editions of The Eclectic Kasper how we can develop a deeper passion for loving and trusting in God. Doing so helps us bring the joys and sorrows of life into proper perspective. 

    Before even approaching the magisterial truths embedded in Psalm 42, I recognized that I would have to deal with the brief superscription, “For the director of music. A maskil of the Sons of Korah.” I really just wanted to skip over this line and move directly into the text. In this superscription, however, I found some gems that give us a sense of how the author of Psalm 42 expected us to approach this poem.

    First, Psalm 42 is for the “worship leader” or “song leader.” The phrase “for the music director” or “choir director” is lamenatsecha; it is used in the superscription of 55 of the 150 Psalms and also in an inscription at the end of the hymn/ poem in Habakkuk 3. It comes from the verb natsach, meaning, “to be pre-eminent” or “enduring.” Thus, it refers to the main worship leader either in Jerusalem, or, presumably, at other places where worship was conducted.

    Off the bat, we see that this psalm was intended for the worship directed toward God, which is appropriate because it addresses God in the second person in v. 1. It was also intended to be sung, which accounts for the meter and verse. As a poem put to music, its author certainly expects that its content would be remembered and ingested by the congregation.

    The superscription also refers to Psalm 42 as a maskil, which is a letter-by-letter transliteration of the original Hebrew word. Thirteen of the Psalms are designated as maskils, eleven of which are in Book II of Psalms, from Psalms 42-89 (Psalms 32 and 142 are the only other maskils outside of Book II). 

    It’s unfortunate that most translations only give you the transliteration maskil and don’t actually give you the translation of this word. The term maskil comes from the verb sakal meaning “to be wise,” “to consider,” “ponder,” or “contemplate.” Some significant uses of the verb include Gen 3:6, Deut 32:29, Josh 1:7-9, Ps 2:10, 119:11, Prov 12:8, Is 41:20 and Jer 3:15. Therefore, the word maskil, a participial form of the verb, means “something that should be contemplated” or “a means or tool for encouraging contemplation.” Psalm 42 and the other maskil Psalms are contemplative poems and meditative songs, and we should treat them as such.

    Perhaps the word maskil should slow the eyes of the Bible speed-reader. The believer who labors beneath the legalistic pressure to “read through their Bible in a year” may limit their ability to fully appreciate a passage like Psalm 42. It will be read but not ingested; skimmed over but not meditated upon. Some parts of the Bible are not meant to be breezed through, but should be carefully consumed for maximum spiritual and contemplative benefit.

    At the same time, the fact that Psalm 42 is a contemplative poem should stay the hand of the overly-enthusiastic exegete, who wants to tear every word and phrase apart without absorbing the contents of the psalm as a whole. I always believe that careful exegetical spadework is valuable, but a maskil should not just be exegeted by the reader, it should also exegete the reader. That is, Psalm 42 should tear us apart, examine our affections and intentions, force the minds of the readers to contemplate our motives, and urge us to conform to the will of God rather than be molded by our circumstances.

    One last note about the superscription. It was written by a group of men known simply as “the sons of Korah,” who are responsible for almost a dozen of the Psalms in Book II (Pss 42, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 84, 85, 87, 88). I am not sure whether this group is tied to Korah the Edomite (Gen 36:14; 1 Chron 1:35) or to the evil Korah of “Korah’s rebellion” (Num 16, Jude 1:11). If, as I suspect, the sons of Korah in the superscription of Psalm 42 are the progeny of the Korah from Num 16, it should be noted that some of his descendants did indeed survive the judgment that Korah and others earned for their insurrection (Num 26:9-11, note especially v. 11!).

    Additionally, if they are the descendants of the mutinous Korah, then these Psalms produced by the sons of Korah would be beautifully fitting illustrations of redeemed and godly people who descended from a rebellious and godless person. No matter what our background is like or what wrongs have been done in the past, we can still choose to long for God in the present.

    This is, of course, a snapshot of the entire of redemptive story of the Bible. Those who don’t deserve grace are offered grace freely by God because of the suffering, death and resurrection of Christ Jesus. Because of Christ’s sacrifice to pay for the penalty of sin, we can have eternal life and forgiveness of sins, no matter who we are, what our background is or what we have done. After becoming believers in Christ, we realize the new ways in which we can, as Psalm 42 suggests, long for God both in the joys and frustrations of life.

    See how important that superscription at the beginning of a Psalm can be? In the next article in this series on Psalm 42, we will dive into one of the most incredible images for Christian spirituality and examine how we can be people who long for God as a deer pants for water. 

ARCHAEOLOGY: Solomon’s Temple, Part 1

      For many who adhere to the Judeo-Christian tradition, the great Temple of Solomon stands at the crossroads of theological significance and architectural splendor.  Certainly, through the supervision of the God of the universe and the legendary wisdom of Solomon, the Temple was the most superbly innovative structure of its time!

      Or was it?

      Actually, archaeological evidence indicates that Solomon’s Temple was quite ordinary relative to ancient Canaanite religious standards.  The following discussion will seek to show that the Temple in Jerusalem was typical in its architecture and function to other Bronze Age and Iron Age religious structures found throughout Canaan.  In this series, we will also discuss how this impacts our perspective of the Temple itself and the God for whom it was built.

      In dealing with the structure and design of Solomon’s Temple, it is helpful to consider other Bronze Age (3000 - 1200 BC) and Iron Age (1200 - 600 BC) religious structures.  Amihai Mazar suggests that the “plan of the temple [of Solomon] is rooted in religious architecture of the second millennium B.C.E. . . . the Middle Bronze Age temples at Ebla, Megiddo, and Shechem are clear prototypes” (Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, 377).  Jack Finegan discusses a common threefold structure of Middle Bronze Age and Late Bronze Age temples and cites four such examples that have been found at Hazor.  He comments, “The basic plan of [these] and many other Canaanite temples seems prototypical of the later temple of Solomon in Jerusalem” (Myth and Mystery, 126).  Other similarly-shaped religious structures have been excavated at Tell Tayinat and ‘Ain Dara in northern Syria.

      The tragedy that results from the tyranny of the undone morphs into the comedy of a phenomenon I refer to as “list roll-over.”  My 2012 “to-do” list (80% of which didn’t get crossed off) became my 2013 “to-do” list.  There was a sub-2013 list for spring.  Tasks not crossed off were far-too-easily rolled over into my summer 2013 list.  Now, with minimal change, that same list (actually I had several summer 2013 lists) becomes a fall 2013 to-do list . . . and on and on and on.  I could have made millions if I had become a professional list-collector.  Instead, I am left with many lists undone and many tasks not crossed off.  Despite all my doing, I continue to labor under the tyranny of the undone, the ceaseless cadre of tasks great and small that I just can’t seem to get off my lists. 

      So, how do we free ourselves of the guilt and remorse of undone lists?

      Keep in mind that there are only so many things you can do.  I have come to realize I am not as efficient as I wish I were because of interruptions, phone calls, and life in general.  And there is always more to do: more e-mails I could write, more home improvement tasks to accomplish, or more articles that I should have written for my dumb web journal.  But there is only so much time.  So, just go easy on yourself; you are just as limited by time as the next guy.

      Also, I have to keep my lists themselves in perspective.  Everything on those lists will either get done, or else it won’t get done, and most folk won’t really mind that it didn’t get done.  The only one who really cares about your lists is you.  For the most part, everyone else is happier with your efficiency and your task-completion abilities than you are.  That is, if you are too lazy to read an article like this one, then you are probably a slacker that people wish would be more efficient.  But for those two percent of you still reading this article, you are probably more task-conscious, and thus, efficient, than you realize.  Again, go easy on yourself!

      I and my fellow efficiency enthusiasts need to realize that I am more than my lists.  And I am certainly more than the things that have not been crossed off.  It is not the tasks that I do, or those I don’t do that make me who I am.  Besides, think of all the things you did do that never made it onto your lists in the first place!  When you consider all that you did this summer, the mundane tasks like laundry or reports for work, the interpersonal tasks, like meeting for lunch with a friend or writing to people on Facebook, or the bigger accomplishments, like helping with a church event or organizing a family trip . . . well, you, my efficient friend, had a pretty productive summer!!

      More importantly, most of what constitutes my to-do lists will not make it into eternity, anyway.  Most of those tasks, home projects, academic aspirations, civic duties, will not last.  Ironically, it is not the more “permanent” home tasks or work projects that persist.  What lasts are the fleeting moments of playing games with my children, a kind word to a struggling co-worker, or snuggling up to my wife and telling her how much I appreciate her.  Those moments will endure longer than grouting my tub or submitting suggestions for next years’ budget at work.  

      So, if you’re like me, you probably have end-of-summer depression as you guiltily think about all the not-crossed-off items you had intended to do.  Well, The Eclectic Kasper officially absolves you of your guilt!

      But more than the clemency that you receive from us is the fact that you need to forgive yourself for not getting everything done that you wanted to do.  Don’t let those things-not-crossed-off accuse you or make you feel like a failure.  You can’t go back; just move on into new opportunities of accomplishment in the fall.  Remember that undone lists are signposts reminding us of the dreadful fleetingness of life and whetting our appetite for a blissful eternity with Christ where there is no pressure of urgency, and no guilt from tasks undone. 

      And if you, too, regularly ritualize the phenomenon of “list roll-over,” consider that not all your not-crossed-off items from summer need to roll over onto your fall lists.  You may want to let some tasks slide into the nirvana of the probably-never-gonna-happen-and-probably-nobody-cares pile.  Then, there will be less not-crossed-off items at the end of fall and, consequently, less guilt and discouragement. 

      Many of those things on our hallowed lists are simply not as important as we think they are.  And many things in life that are not on our lists – a timely piece of advice, a hug, a compliment – are probably much more meaningful and enduring than we will ever realize. 

WHY MARBURG MATTERS: The Unfortunate Legacy

      Just to recap: in the 1520’s, just as the Protestant Reformation was gaining popularity, it was also being torn apart by the issues of the Eucharist.  While many Reformers – like Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli, Philipp Melanchthon, Johannes Oecolampadius and Martin Bucer – agreed on many protestant principles, the varying views on communion prevented them from unifying and consolidating.  Most of the Reformers wrote books about the ceremony and theology of the Lord’s Table during the 1520’s.  While some of these were civil and measured treatments of the topic, some of them, especially those written by Luther, were at times quite nasty and acerbic.  Many pastors, theologians and political rulers feared that this issue would shatter the young Reformation movement.  Protestantism could fail to present a unified front theologically and politically, especially as they faced the reprisal of the Pope and the wrath of the Habsburg rulers.

      Thus, one German ruler, Philip I, summoned protestant leaders to the Marburg Colloquy of October 1-4, 1529.  As we addressed in our last article, this meeting to bring Reformers together, especially those on Luther’s side and those who supported Zwingli’s position, was a complete failure.  Luther biographer Heiko Oberman suggested that, “The general vilification of opponents [before and at Marburg] made it inconceivable for them to take each other’s positions seriously” (Oberman, Luther: Man Between God and the Devil, 224).  However, this vilification is more characteristic of Luther, who had refused to attended other meetings with fellow Reformers, and who only attended Marburg reluctantly.  Gottfried Locher suggests that during the meeting at Marburg, “Luther’s irritability breaks through repeatedly” (“The Change in the Understanding of Zwingli in Recent Research,” Church History 34 [March 1965], 12).  The meeting failed to forge the unity that was hoped for because of the intransigence of some of the participants, but most evidently Luther. 

      So, what is the lasting legacy of Marburg?  We’ll start with a positive, but it is bittersweet.  At the end of the meeting, fifteen points of theology were written up, called the Marburg Articles.  These dealt primarily with doctrines about God, Christ, salvation, and the church.  The various Reformers consented to fourteen of these fifteen points.  In fact, in that fifteenth point about communion, they even agreed on several assertions, including that the Lord’s Supper is an important institution critical to every believer’s spiritual growth.  The only real disagreement is that Luther and his faction demanded Christ’s literal presence in the bread and the wine while Zwingli and others denied the literal presence.  Thus, despite the enormous theological agreement, this one theological discrepancy was used to block unity.  And despite an affirmation in the Marburg Articles that both sides “should show Christian love to the other side,” soon after Marburg, both sides again took up arms in literary combat against one another.

      Many historians have glumly described the unfortunate legacy of the Marburg Colloquy, an event that has largely been swept under church history’s rug of embarrassments.  Oberman asserts that “Marburg marked a profound, painful turning point in Reformation history” (224).  Diarmaid MacCulloch sees that the Marburg Colloquy was “a great missed opportunity,” and he refers to it as the “first in a line of failures” to unify Protestantism (The Reformation, 168).  But, the meeting at Marburg was not an isolated event.  Jill Ratt sees that the failure of Marburg was the cause of an irreconcilable rift between Lutherans and the Swiss Reformed that sent theological and political ripples of dissent and division throughout Europe (The Colloquy of Montbéliard: Religion and Politics in the Sixteenth Century, 50-51).  Liturgical historian James F. White sees that Marburg created a “pattern . . . that has ever since been a prominent characteristic of Protestant worship—disparate traditions” (Protestant Worship: Traditions in Transition, 58).     The Marburg Colloquy is recognized as an ominous precedent in Protestantism for further division over non-essential issues.

      The first Reformers made a tremendous impact by excising true believers away from Roman Catholicism and providing for successive generations a rich theological heritage.  But in my opinion, the worst legacy of the Reformers was their inability to recognize the difference between Christian issues that are essential (and therefore non-negotiable) versus those, which are secondary.  Luther especially did not perceive the theology of communion to be non-essential the way most modern protestants consider it to be.  Therefore, he would not budge from his position regarding Christ’s literal presence in the elements.  Even Luther’s close associate Philip Melanchthon later affirmed that communion was not an issue that should divide Christians and there could be toleration within the body regarding it (Hermann Sasse, This is My Body: Luther’s Contention for the Real Presence in the Sacrament of the Altar, 252-255).  But Luther refused to affirm that other scholars might have legitimate alternative interpretations which could be debated but which should not cause a schism in the body.  Christ’s presence or absence in the Eucharist elements are not, and never have been, considered to be essential doctrines in Christianity, except at this narrow time period and by a few who continue to adhere to the intransigence of this time period. 

      The Protestant Reformation fractured because of the Reformers’ inability to recognize the difference between essential theological issues worth dividing over, and secondary or tertiary issues that were not worth dividing over.  Unfortunately, the great, prolific, and influential Martin Luther was one of the biggest actors in this tragedy.  Marburg set a sad precedent whereby Protestantism continues to splinter over non-essential issues, some of which are important, but not critical, and many of which are just plain silly.  The legacy of Marburg demonstrates a haunting irony of church history, specifically, that while Luther attempted to steer people toward pure Christianity, he contributed to fragmenting Christianity, as well.

EMERGENT CONCERNS: The Bizarreness that is Rob Bell, Part 1

      We all have weird ideas from time to time.  But some make lots of money from publishing them. 

      Whether or not Rob Bell is a heretic, he is at least very bizarre: his questions are bizarre, his approach is bizarre, his method is bizarre (in fact, this article is longer than most, because there is so much bizarre!).  I appreciate a good dose of creativity, but I just think that he is far too bizarre to be an appropriate spokesperson for evangelical Christianity. 

      Unfortunately, he is seen by many as a prominent evangelical leader and was even included in Time magazine’s 2011 list of 100 most influential people.  By the way, you should read that Time article because it portrays Bell as a universalist and it claims he asserts that the Biblical message of salvation is “contradictory.”

      He is also seen as a significant voice in the emergent church movement.  That Time article says of him, “Bell argues for mystery, not certitude.”  As we have discussed previously in this series, that lack-of-certainty is a fundamental plank in emergent thinking. 

      So what is Bell’s role in the emergent church movement?  Well, if Brian McLaren is the granddaddy of the emergent church, Rob Bell is the squirrelly nephew, lacking the sense to think about what he is saying before he says it (or writes it).  This has not only been embarrassing for those of us who are real evangelical, orthodox and fundamental Christians, but he lacks the maturity to test his bizarre notions against Scripture’s assertions first, and historical theology second.  While I have not perused the entirety of Bell’s works, I’ve read enough to know that the following bizarre quotes taken from his book Velvet Elvis (2005) are representative of his thinking and odd methodology. 

      Bell want believers to be “rethinking and repainting the faith” (Velvet Elvis, ix).  For instance, as we quoted in our article “The Difficulty with Diversity,” in the AUGUST 2011 edition, Bell gives this “repainting” a try, and his canvass is one of the most foundational and distinctive doctrines of Christianity: “What if tomorrow someone digs up definitive proof that Jesus had a real, earthly, biological father named Larry, and archaeologists find Larry’s tomb and do DNA samples and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the virgin birth was really just a bit of mythologizing the Gospel writers threw in . . . . Could you still be a Christian? Is the way of Jesus still the best possible way to live? Or does the whole thing fall apart?” (26-27).        He similarly undermines another distinguishing and fundamental tenet of the Christian faith.  While Bell claims to know a great deal about church history, he suggests that the doctrine of the Trinity is not Scriptural and evolved several centuries after New Testament events.  He asserts:

While there is only one God, God is somehow present everywhere. People began to call this presence, this power of God, his ‘Spirit.’ So there is God, the then there is God’s Spirit. And then Jesus comes among us and has this oneness with God that has people saying things like God has visited us in the flesh.  So God is one, but God has also revealed himself to us as Spirit and then as Jesus. One and yet three. This three-in-oneness understanding of God emerged in the several hundred years after Jesus’ resurrection. People began to call this concept the Trinity. The word trinity is not found anywhere in the Bible. Jesus didn’t use the word, and the writers of the rest of the Bible didn’t use the word.  But over time this belief, this understanding, this doctrine, has become central to how followers of Jesus have understood who God is. It is a spring, and people jumped for thousands of years without it.  It was added later. We can take it out and examine it. Discuss it, probe it, question it. It flexes, and it stretches (22).

     Here Bell borders closely on heresy (though some readers may legitimately feel that Bell bounds far into heterodoxy with this quote!).  First of all, the Trinity is not a stretchy doctrine; in fact, I hardly know of a doctrine that is more significant to the New Testament and less flexible than the doctrine of the Trinity.  It is how God chose to reveal himself, and the New Testament authors, though without using the exact word “Trinity,” spoke of the concept regularly (Matt 3:16-17; 28:19; John 14:26; 15:26; 1 Cor 13:14; Gal 4:6; Eph 2:18; 1 Peter 1:2).  He is also wrong that Christians went thousands of years without the Trinity.  Why would we even begin to question doctrine or bizarrely assume that it appeared centuries later?

      Bell strenuously suggests that he affirms the basics of Christianity.  And yet, throughout his writings, he continually proposes, What if this or that doctrine isn’t true?  He actually queries, “If the whole faith falls apart when we reexamine and rethink one spring [i.e., a foundational doctrine], then it wasn’t that strong in the first place, was it?” (13). 

      Here, again, Bell, and the emergent movement in general, is entirely missing the point.  The whole system would fall apart if one of these doctrines were removed.  But that is not because the system is so weak; rather it is because each of those foundational truths is so strong.  Paul recognizes this to be true regarding the critical importance of the resurrection, without which, Christianity would be in vain (1 Cor 15:13-19).  The virgin birth is essential to Biblical Christology, the Trinity is the way God is and how He has revealed Himself, and there would be absolutely no salvation for anyone without the resurrection of Christ.  We can’t casually and bizarrely excise these truths from Scripture, reshape them according to our sensibilities, and then wonder why they don’t fit back into the faith, which is what Bell regularly does.

      And don’t get me wrong: I agree with some of what he says and I have said some of it myself!  For example, I appreciate his focus on the present aspects of salvation (106; though it sometimes feels like he has little certainty of the future aspects of salvation).  I resonate with his assertion that everyone believes in something (though when he says on page 4, “We are all believers,” he shouldn’t be surprised when people take that statement out of context and portray him as a universalist!).  He says several good and helpful things; but most of us are smart enough to curb and suppress our more bizarre notions in light of Scripture and the history of theology.  Bell apparently lacks that capacity and discernment.