Lydia is a Greek name, but that doesn’t automatically tell us that she’s a gentile, because James is also a Greek name—James the half-brother of Jesus, James the Apostle—and that tends to be a Greek translation of the Hebrew name Jacob.

I remember an episode of WWUTT several years ago where Hughes mentioned that he has not studied biblical Greek. Well, in this instance, it shows.

The name used in the Koine Greek text of the New Testament, which our English Bibles translate as the English name “James,” is Ἰάκωβος (Iakōbos) which is a Greek transliteration (not “translation”) of the Hebrew Yakov, which in English is rendered “Jacob.” In the Reina-Valera 1960 Spanish translation of the Bible, this name is rendered Jacobo, which preserves the Hebrew origin from “Jacob.” Even the Spanish Nueva Versión Internacional, which uses Santiago, is preserving “Jacob” in a way, since the more modern Spanish name Santiago is a contraction of the older Spanish Sant Iako, for “Saint Jacob.”

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According to an article by Mark Wilson at the Biblical Archaeology Society web site,

Since the 13th century, the form of the Latin name Iacomus began its use in English. In the 14th century, John Wycliffe made the first Bible translation into English and translated Iakobus as James. (However, in both the Old and New Testaments he arbitrarily used the name Jacob for the patriarch). In all future English translations the name stuck, especially after 1611, when King James I sponsored the translation then called the Authorized Version. Since 1797 it has been called the King James Bible.

So for the TLDR, “James” in an English name that developed from Jacob over time as the English language evolved—not a Greek translation from the Hebrew.

Now, I certainly don’t subscribe to Gabriel Hughes’ Calvinistic interpretations (which in my view are imposed on the text, not extracted from the the Bible). But this isn’t about interpretations or opinions that have been disputed for centuries. When you put yourself out there on the internet as an authority on understanding the text, you best make sure you have the objective facts straight. Because if you can’t get basic facts right, what basis do you have for expecting someone to buy into your interpretation of the facts?

Not everyone pontificating online about the Bible knows what they’re talking about. Too many preachers get way out over their skis.

Recommendation Roundup

Just a friendly reminder (which seems to be required these days) that my referring to something someone else has written does not entail wholesale endorsement of everything that individual may think, say, or write. It simply means that I found the particular thought of theirs I am sharing to be helpful or thought-provoking.

Is There a Doctor in the House?

Philosopher Tedla Woldeyoannes writes about the differences between a PhD and a DMin, and why it matters when it comes to apologetics presentations.

The downstream consequences become clearest when a thoughtful believer or honest seeker brings a genuinely difficult objection to an apologist whose intellectual formation consists largely of the standard apologetic repertoire. A familiar answer may be delivered with considerable confidence even though the question requires deeper philosophical, historical, scientific, or biblical investigation. What sounds decisive to an audience already committed to the conclusion may leave the person actually struggling with the question profoundly dissatisfied.

That dissatisfaction can have consequences far beyond a single unsuccessful conversation. If the apologist has been presented as one of Christianity’s leading intellectual defenders—or even as one of the “sharpest minds in Christian scholarship”—the struggling believer may not conclude simply, This particular apologist gave me an inadequate answer. The inference can become much more damaging: If this is among the best answers Christianity has to offer, perhaps Christianity has no better answer.

A Made-Up Term?

Many of my more-conservative-than-myself interlocutors online (I’ve established my conservative bona fides previously, so don’t label me “liberal” or “progressive”) have frequently called “Christian nationalism” a term made of by the media or the Left to denigrate politically active, conservative Christians. But I’m currently reading a doctoral dissertation from 2010 that uses the term in the title, which is several years before the term became common in the media (legacy or online).

Now, I am usually reticent to use AI tools (though I’m not a Luddite, but rather a digital pioneer who still values human brain-based analysis), but it is useful at times for getting summaries that pull data from various places. But I asked Google “when did the term ‘Christian nationalism’ start being used” and Gemini gave this summary:

The exact phrase “Christian nationalism” first appeared in print in the late 19th century, though the underlying concept of merging religious identity with state power dates back centuries. The term gained formal political recognition in the 1940s when far-right figures like Gerald L.K. Smith explicitly used it to name their political organizations.

Early Timeline of the Term

• Late 1800s: The explicit label “Christian nationalism” first started appearing in written texts and periodicals.

• 1940s: The phrase entered active political branding when Gerald L.K. Smith founded the Christian Nationalist Party and the Christian Nationalist Crusade.

• Mid-to-Late 20th Century: Usage of the term grew slowly in academic and religious circles to describe movements blending conservative faith with political power.

• 2000s–Present: The term entered mainstream public vocabulary, amplified by books like Michelle Goldberg’s 2006 Kingdom Come: The Rise of Christian Nationalism and heightened national discussions surrounding events like the January 6 Capitol attack.

So “Christian nationalism” isn’t a recent invention, as some pundits online would have you believe. It has a pedigree going back at least 125 years or more. The fact that people keep claiming it is a recent invention, or trying to define it in ways contrary to its historical usage, only serve to demonstrate the lack of ability to do research outside one’s own bubble. It actually makes the individuals or organizations making the claim lose credibility with anyone who knows how to think critically.

The Biggest Scandal

The English word “scandal” comes from the Greek skandalon, which means “stumbling block”—something that trips people and makes them fall. Chuck DeGroat writes about how he answered when someone asked him what was the worst scandal he had seen in his three decades of ministry:

The slow, widespread collapse of the way of Jesus into a form of religiosity that chose the way of power, relevance, supremacy, control, and wealth. Within a corrupted ecosystem like this, human scandals are not only possible but predictable.

That abandonment of the way of Christ for the pursuit of temporal power and comfort has definitely been a stumbling block for many who are straining to see the real Jesus.

The Spiritual Discipline of Anonymity

I get it. It’s ironic to talk about remaining anonymous on a platform that’s all about getting your ideas in front of people. But pastor-theologian A. J. Swoboda offers a reflection on how not insisting on taking the credit is, itself, a part of spiritual formation.

Every once in a while, someone will share an idea they heard that has transformed their life. With excitement, they will beam as they share this new piece of information with me that has turned their world upside down. There have been many occasions when the very thing they shared with me was something they got from me. That is, often, the very spot of determining my own spiritual formation at a given moment. Because if I need to ensure that they got that idea from me, then I can be assured that I’ve been caught up in the culture of credit takers. But, then again, if I can find pleasure in simply being the medium God anonymously uses without frenetically needing to be given credit, then I’m probably experiencing some great growth in my walk with Christ.

Immediate Obedience or Instant Obedience?

Jay Mallow recently republished an older article about the “instant obedience” demanded in military training and in some military-styled Christian discipleship programs:

The problem with “Instant Obedience” demanded by many Christian teachers is, it is simply a “good” that is universally accepted as a “good” in all situations regardless of what purpose that reaction serves. And “reaction” is the more proper word to use. Instant “obedience” doesn’t actually teach obedience, it trains a particular response to certain stimuli. Going back to my own experience, just because I can turn off my emotions and act without thinking doesn’t mean I always should. You can imagine the multitude of social problems I’ve had when my default is to always shut off what I’m feeling and act “rationally”. Even more when I think I am acting “rationally” and really, I’m not.

While I believe we should be immediately obedient when the Lord Jesus asks us to do something, we also have to be discerning when others—whether individuals or institutions—demand unthinking obedience from us. Is what they are asking from us truly from God? Does it align with the revelation of God given in Scripture? Or is it someone using an appeal to “God-given authority” to enlist us in the pursuit of their own ends?

For Whom Did Christ Die?

Justin Gravatt has been doing a series on the extent of the atonement. In his most recent article, he debunks the idea that universal atonement automatically leads to universalism (the belief that all are saved):

Recall that even the elect were at one time enemies of God (Romans 5:10; Colossians 1:21) and children of wrath (Ephesians 2:3), and thus did not have the atoning benefits applied. Even atonement for the elect alone is not automatically applied. Robert Lightner correctly notes, “The Bible does not teach that Christ's death saves apart from faith. The accomplishments of the cross must be appropriated by those who would be saved and until such a time as faith is exercised the elect are just as lost as the nonelect.” He continues, “The cross does not apply its own benefits... No elect person was saved at the time of Christ's dying. All men, including the elect, live some part of their lives in open rebellion to God, thus demonstrating that the finished accomplishments of Calvary must be applied by faith to reach an individual before any saving value comes to that individual.” If the Cross alone saves, without or prior to faith, then the regenerating, convicting, enlightening work of the Spirit is superfluous, and the necessity and centrality of faith is removed, which is a biblically untenable conclusion.

Purity Culture 2.0?

Over at Digital Liturgies, Samuel D. James writes about how, while the “purity culture” of the 1990s and early 2000s had its problems, much of the pushback against its excesses has fallen into the opposite ditch of libertinism:

These critiques fail from the start because they don’t heed Scripture’s clear teachings about sex. They discard these doctrines as repressive or patriarchal, conflating purity culture’s excesses with its biblical origins. The authors may have valuable psychological insights, but their rejection of Christian teaching puts a hard limit on the usefulness of their testimonies.

The best critiques of purity culture hold firm on traditional sexual ethics while calling on Christians to minister better to the sexually broken. Unfortunately, even the best orthodox contributions have fallen short of offering a viable alternative.

Whom to Follow

There are lots of Substacks you can follow. Too many to keep up with, honestly. So feel free to take or leave my recommendations (which, admittedly, will be more on the Bible nerd side most of the time). And thanks again for following me!

This week I give a nod to fellow Pentecostal Amos Yong of Fuller Theological Seminary. His newsletter, Spirited Transformation, is in the middle of a series looking at his forthcoming book (co-authored with J. Derrick Lemons) Trump and the Politics of Prayer: Inside the Spiritual World of His Faith Advisory Team.

What is different in these calls is the intensity with which governance itself becomes a primary arena of spiritual struggle and Christian responsibility. Saving souls and evangelizing the nation are no longer easily distinguished from securing political outcomes, influencing state power, and contesting who rightfully governs the country. In these prayer meetings, one can hear how older evangelical concerns about morality, freedom, and national righteousness become fused with charismatic practices of prophecy, spiritual warfare, and apostolic authority, producing a far more activist and combative vision of public faith.

Quote of the Week

Memewhile

Let’s Eat Grandma

It’s funny for an English reader. The problem is, Hebrew didn’t have punctuation marks like we do. So it falls a bit flat for those who actually know something about languages.

No One Ever Tried to Stop Me from Reading the Bible in School

I’ve seen this one a few times recently.

First, simply reading the Bible is no guarantee that one’s heart will be changed. There are a great number of scholars of religion who probably know the Bible’s content better than the vast majority of professing Christians, yet have not been transformed by it.

Second, no one is requiring prisoners to read the Bible or attend religious services. If a prisoner requests a Bible, he or she is allowed to have one (after it has been screened by security guards to make sure there is no contraband being smuggled inside it). Chaplains hold religious services for prisoners, but as far as I am aware none are forced to attend. Regarding the Bible in schools, to my knowledge no one is stopping students from bringing a Bible to school and reading it on their own initiative (before classes start, during lunch, or during time the teacher allows students to read on their own after the instructional lecture has finished). And student-initiated, student-led Bible studies and prayer groups that meet on campus during non-instructional time (before the first bell, during lunch) are not prohibited; they are protected the same as any other extracurricular student club. Students do not lose their first amendment rights when they walk through the schoolhouse doors. At the same time, they have to recognize the proper time and place for exercising those rights (no matter the subject matter of the speech they are wanting to freely practice).

The issue arises with compulsory Bible reading or prayer led by an agent of the state (such as a teacher). Forcing someone to read the Bible (or any other religious text, for that matter) can actually turn people against the faith to which that book belongs. Look at the current state of religion in Europe, where churches were supported with tax money and religious education was mandatory even in public schools. For an example of a parallel in another religion, look at the disenchantment of Iranian youth with the Islamic theocracy that has been forced on them their whole lives.

All that said, we should absolutely acknowledge the historical significance of the Bible in the development of our country. Even Founders who weren’t particularly religious themselves recognized the importance of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures to the American people, and their influence on how institutions developed. To deny the Bible’s influence and historical importance as literature and philosophy would be similar to ignoring Plato, Aristotle, and Homer as contributors to the Western intellectual tradition.

But I do not want a non-believer teaching my future grandchildren (my daughters are now adults, so no longer in primary or secondary school) what the inspired Word of God means, when the teachers don’t even believe it themselves. Goodness, I don’t even want some professing believers teaching them the Bible, because I find their interpretations to be lacking or in error. (I wonder sometimes whether Christian parents may have a tougher job undoing what their kids are taught in a Christian school not of their own denominational tradition than they have counteracting the secular viewpoints taught in public schools, because you end up with two competing claims as to what the Bible actually means in some cases.)

Not Necessarily Whom You Want Defending You

From what little I know about John Cooper’s theological leanings (he hangs out with James White and Alisa Childers), I’m pretty sure he would have some big criticisms for Charisma Media and the people they platform.

And while we’re on Charisma Media…

Gotta love it when you get a two-for-the-price-of-one combo on false teachers.

Physician, heal thyself

And the hits from Charisma just keep coming.

Just take a random sample of the works of people (1) featured in Charisma magazine, or (2) authors with books published by Charisma Media, and you’ll find plenty of examples of people using biblical language without understanding its biblical meaning. Clean up your own (publishing) house first, people.

But I wonder, how can we teach the next generation to love the truth if we don’t deeply love it ourselves? If you care about the next generation, let me ask you a question: What is education without truth?

• Education without truth becomes propaganda.

• Education without truth becomes dogma.

• Education without truth becomes the transmission of information disconnected from reality.

The importance of truth extends to online spaces. If we claim to be trying to instill truth in the next generation in our churches and schools, but then recklessly circulate dubious—or clearly untrue—information via our social media accounts, are we really standing for truth?

Back during the height of COVID, a pastor’s wife in another city in my state posted on Facebook about how Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates allegedly were roommates in college, and had been in cahoots since then, and now Gates was using Fauci and the COVID vaccines to put tracking ships in people. A quick five minutes of research from my smartphone while at Old Navy in the mall debunked multiple aspects of the purported narrative, and I pointed out the actual facts to this sister. Her reply? “Well, it could be true.”

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A few weeks ago, a retired pastor/evangelist whom I have known since my age was in the single digits posted a meme featuring Ice Cube saying glowing things about President Donald Trump. Something felt off about those words being attributed to this particular celebrity, so I used our friend Google. The quote in question had recently been popping up on Facebook, with the exact same words attributed to multiple famous people. The initial posts that were being re-shared by MAGA fans all originated from Facebook accounts based in southeast Asia (Vietnam, I believe the info said). When I pointed this out to my minister friend, he replied, “I figured that, I’m not naive, but I posted it became the message was true.” But if you falsely put what in your opinion is a true message into the mouth of a real person (as opposed to a character in a work of fiction), is that still true? I certainly don’t think so.

We cannot expect good to come from telling lies.

Lance Ford from the Roys Report has a two-part interaction with one of Bevere’s teaching videos based on his book. Part 1 is here, and part 2 is here.

The guys over at The Remnant Radio also have a look at Bevere’s work, pointing out how some things in the teaching that may not be necessarily harmful in and of themselves could easily be taken to an abusive level

I think one of the things that is incumbent on Christian writers in this day and age is to go beyond what they know about what they are thinking in their own minds, and anticipate how their ideas might be either misunderstood or misappropriated and misapplied, and head those things off. Yes, that will likely make books longer, which publishers and editors won’t like, because they’re looking at making things both fit a standard page/folio count for bookbinding, and keeping the manuscript size down to decrease cost of production on physical books.

And authors need to be willing to retract certain things they have published, or amend them with updates and corrections, and not simply dig in their heels because they feel they must stand by their published work. Part of maturing is recognizing where one has been wrong and making course corrections.

CCM Trivia Note: I wonder if Bevere was in any way influenced by this song from Petra’s 1986 album Back to the Street.

Recommendation Roundup

Just a friendly reminder (which seems to be required these days) that my linking to something someone else has written does not entail wholesale endorsement of everything that individual may think, say, or write. It simply means that I found the particular thought of theirs I am sharing to be helpful or thought-provoking.

The Will to Push Back

On the Church Politics podcast, Justin Giboney talks about how Democrats keep shooting themselves in the foot by embracing more and more fringe, extremist causes in trying to prove how open-minded and accepting they are. While their policies on affordability, health care, and other economic issues enjoy broad support across middle America, they lose the movable middle, especially some of their historic constituency among Black Christians, by their stance on moral and cultural issues.

The American Solidarity Party of Wisconsin points out an area where the Democratic Socialists of America wing the Democrat party is alienating normal Democrat voters:

But with the increase in attention, criticisms have mounted as well. An interview with a national committee member exposed the challenges in defending stances like abolishing the police and prisons. News headlines point to the party’s newly released program that aims to “draft a new constitution.” That same program frames elements of its “thriving working class communities” as “queer liberation” and free “access to reproductive and gender-affirming care.” Even some of their own candidates have begun to distance themselves from the rhetoric, and only a fraction of self-identified democratic socialists have joined the DSA.

Many within the organization appear unwilling to listen. They insist that their economic stances will continue to rally more and more voters to their side. They argue that they’re the future of the Democratic Party and American politics, and that people will increasingly accept their progressive views on social issues when enough anger accumulates against the establishment.

Just as Christians on the conservative side need to be more vocal in pushing back against MAGA extremes, Christians in the Democrat party need to stand up to the extremists on their side—even if it means losing direct access to the power brokers in the respective parties.

The Greatest Danger to the Church

Dr. Matt O’Reilly interviews Dr. Chris Bounds about one of John Wesley’s sermons where Wesley asks: if Christianity is true, why isn’t it more effective at changing the world? It comes down to a lack of 3 things: doctrine, discipline, and self-denial. If any one of these three things is missing in a Christian’s life, his or her efficacy will be greatly diminished.

To Thine Own Self Be True?

I was recently listening to a podcast hosted by a guy whose work on Ephesians I had heard and appreciated about fifteen years ago. I specifically listened to these episodes because I was going to be teaching on a passage in Ephesians 6, and his topic was spiritual conflict in this Pauline letter.

But this scholar started talking about how he had come to cast off some of the the constraints of the faith of his youth to be “true to himself.”

But our true selves can only be found through being conformed to the image of Christ- the second Adam, the only perfect human being—who is the model we are to emulate for what it means to be truly human.

In the editor’s intro to the weekly digest for August 13 at Mere Orthodoxy, Ian Harber writes:

Something I’ve been thinking about lately is how one of the fundamental shifts needed today, I think, is from an internal sense of self to an external.

Not in the sense of “I am what people think of me.” We’re not trying to be people-pleasers. But “I am who I am in relation to God and others.”

Jesus gives us our most authentic selves in the greatest commandment.

No one wants a doctor or teacher to do their job when they’re feeling “authentic.” The most authentic doctors and teachers are the ones who are the most competent.

Who I am and my most authentic self is not a conglomeration of feelings, opinions, and preferences expressed in their most raw form. I am my most authentic when I am being the most human as God designed humans, which is to be in loving relationship with him and others.

My authentic self has much more to do with how I relate to God, my family, my friends, my church, my community, my place, my work, and strangers than it does anything I can muster from inside of me.

In the next weekly episode, this same podcast host said that “there’s no exhortation in any New Testament letter to evangelize.”

But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry. — Apostle Paul, 2 Tim. 4:5

Matthew 28:19-20, with the instruction to make disciples, would also seem to implicitly include evangelizing. How can someone become a disciple of Christ if they have not been presented with the good news that Jesus is the saving King?

I love biblical scholarship. But when a scholar becomes untethered from the biblical text itself, to the point of making broad claims that anyone having a basic familiarity with Scripture can debunk, then that scholar can no longer be considered “biblical.”

We Become Like What We Behold

Nick O’Brien has a really good—if confrontative—piece that takes Greg Beale’s idea that we become what we worship and looks at some contemporary issues within evangelicalism through that lens. He points out that Jesus didn’t come to “take the test for us,” but to free us from the sin that binds us so that we can in turn be transformed into the image of Christ, the true Human One. But far too many Christians seem to not understand the transforming power of grace, seeing God’s gift instead as a get-out-of-hell-free card.

A scientist who spends her days observing microbes can easily distinguish between viruses and protozoa. An ardent birder can tell an American Robin from a Varied Thrush. An experienced baseball scout can look at two pitchers who throw 98 and see one future All-Star and one player who won’t make it out of Single-A.

When people practice observing — whether microscopic organisms, birds, or fastballs — they become skilled identifiers. They can see what others cannot see because they have practiced seeing.

Because we become who we behold, Christians are called to see Jesus. Beholding Christ will do two things in us. In addition to becoming Christlike, we will learn to identify those who do not look anything like the Jesus we behold.

Kingdom and Allegiance

Dr. Joel B. Green continues his series on the kingdom of God announced by Jesus:

Now, for Paul, the real enemy isn’t Rome or any human ruler or institution or arrangement. It’s Sin (with a capital S), cast as a power at work in the world. It’s telling that Paul’s vocabulary of sin congregates overwhelmingly in Romans 5–7, where sin isn’t primarily something people do but an active, god-like power. This power is active—and actively seeking adherents, worshipers, servants. Thus, for example, Sin “entered the world” (5:12) where it exercises power like a master or king. We humans were “slaves to Sin” (6:6 AT; see 6:16–18, 20, 22). Sin wants to “rule your body” (6:12 AT). Sin wants to recruit y’all “as weapons to do wrong” (6:13).

For Paul, Sin is a power that reigns and, then, must be overcome. Accordingly, Paul doesn’t have much to say about “forgiveness of sins” (cf. Rom 4:7; Eph 1:17; Col 1:14). That’s because, if Sin is a slave-master, people don’t need forgiveness as much as they need to be set free, liberated!

Spheres vs Mountains

Over at Reformed Journal, James Bratt writes about the differences between Kuyper’s concept of sphere sovereignty and the NAR-aligned “seven mountains mandate.”

On the eve of the 1901 elections that made him prime minister, Kuyper cautioned his followers not to view their opponents as enemies but as fellow citizens who were also motivated by love of country. Agents of Satan, on the other hand, deserve the bloody elimination that hovers like a fever dream in the Seven Mountains imagination.

Kuyper’s concept is thus based on another pluralism: not just of domains of human activity but of the various religious, ideological, or “worldview” camps that arise out of people’s different responses to Christ’s offer of redemption. Contrary to Seven Mountaineers’ dream of executing final judgment tomorrow, Kuyper reserved that exercise to Christ alone at the end of time.

In the meantime, he said, Christians were not to lord it over others but to raise in each sphere a compelling witness to the gospel’s contribution to the common good—toward realizing the creation potential in each sphere. Not to seize mountains but to cultivate fields side by side with others of different, even contrary, fundamental convictions. After all, if the gospel holds the best promise for human life, then those who claim its mantle should be able to demonstrate that by the results of their work.

Based on reading this article, I think some of the ultra-Reformed voices out there today probably don’t rightly understand Kuyper’s proposal, mistakenly interpreting it as a mandate to take over society, rather than a call for Christians not to abandon any of the spheres, which would deprive them of salt and light, leaving them completely in the hands of unbelievers.

Whom to Follow

There are lots of Substacks you can follow. Too many to keep up with, honestly. So feel free to take or leave my recommendations (which, admittedly, will be more on the Bible nerd side most of the time). And thanks again for following me!

Check out The Kingdom Way by Justin Gravatt. Justin has just started a series on the extent of the atonement, and it looks to be a good one.

What is quite helpful about John’s first letter is how he uses ‘world’ twenty-three times. If the same word carries a similar meaning in nearly two dozen cases, it would be immensely peculiar (without strong evidence) to suggest the author uses that same word in an entirely different way just one time. I believe it is quite clear that John uses ‘world’ to mean unbelievers, or spiritual forces opposed to Christianity, or the world as a whole. Never does he use ‘world’ to refer to merely believers, or Gentiles, or the elect scattered around the globe at various times.

Quote of the Week

Memewhile

Better to Consult the Experts

Yes, most churches never explain the differences. But if you want to know the differences in a truly biblical sense, then read something by a biblical scholar (for Leviticus, where these terms appear frequently, I suggest L. Michael Morales, Jay Sklar, or even Jewish scholar Jacob Milgrom). Don’t rely on a graphic from Charisma Media, a company that publishes and promotes highly questionable teachers, who often have no credentials whatsoever except their own sense of grandeur.

Again, using a single English translation

Most people know Hebrews 12:2 in its King James wording. But other translations render the Greek τὸν τῆς πίστεως ἀρχηγὸν καὶ τελειωτὴν Ἰησοῦν as:

• Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith (ASV)

• Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith (CSB, MOUNCE)

• Jesus, who leads us and makes our faith complete (CEV);

• Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith (ESV)

• Jesus, on whom our faith depends from beginning to end (GNT)

• Jesus, the source and perfecter of our faith (HCSB)

• Jesus, the originator and perfecter of the faith (NASB)

• Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith (NET)

• Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith (NIV)

• Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith (NLT)

ἀρχηγὸν is the accusative case of ἀρχηγός, which means “initiator, originator, founder, author” or “pioneer leader, founder, who continues as a leader.”1 It’s root is the Greek verb ἀρχω, which means “begin, rule, be first” and is related to ἀρχ

τελειωτὴν is the accusative case of τελειωτής, which means “perfecter, one who completes.”2 The root word is τέλος, which means “end, purpose, intent, goal.”

The meme also ignores the fact that faith (pistis, which can also be translated “allegiance”) is a response to grace (charis), and a response requires active participation on one’s part. James 2:26 says that faith without works is dead; that implies the human being doing something in cooperation with what God is doing.

The gift of salvation is entirely God’s to give. Man accepting that gift no more means they have merited that gift than if someone offered you a monetary gift and you accept it. God commands us to believe in His Son for salvation. It is not that obeying the command earns the salvation that results. It is simply the means to receiving salvation.3

Those who don’t study the past…

Church history is important, as it warns you about the past occurrences of the heresy your own off-the-cuff interpretation of Scripture may be about to lead you into.

Dying to Tell the Story

Considering Muslims do not consider Mohammed to be divine, but simply a prophet, I’m not sure followers of Islam would expect to see him.

According to a paper looking at NDEs across various religious belief systems,

Faith in an afterlife is based upon the belief in the oneness of God and the belief in a day of resurrection and judgment for all regardless of religious belief. At that time, the spirit will be judged, based upon its deeds in life, and allowed either to enter into Paradise and be with God, be thrown into the Fire for a period of purgation, or condemned to everlasting punishment in the Fire. Most Muslims believe that non-Muslims can reach Paradise only after a period of purgation.

Muslims have reported having near-death experiences. Muslim near-death experiencers report seeing and meeting recognizable spirits. This conforms with the Islamic tradition that the souls of the faithful, in paradise, welcome the "incoming souls" and with other reports of visions of people awaiting the newly deceased. In Muslim near-death experiences, the Being of Light is identified as Allah, whereas in other religions the light might be identified as God.

Christians rightly get upset when people of other religions (or no religious belief) misrepresent what we believe. We should extend the common courtesy of actually understanding what others believe before making snarky pronouncements. A little more missiology and a little less politics could go a long way in gaining the gospel a hearing.

But we’re not responsible for them over there

Slavery anywhere in the world is deplorable and an attack on the image Dei. Groups such as the International Justice Mission are doing noble work trying to combat slavery in its varied forms around the world.

But most people I have seen posting this meme are doing so as a deflection from the ongoing legacy of race-based chattel slavery in the United States. It’s almost like a child who complains about a verbally abusive parent being told, “Well, at least you’re not being physically beaten, and you get three square meals a day.” The fact that some people in another place may have things worse doesn’t lessen the impact of what one is going through or has gone through. We cannot excuse our own country’s failures by pointing to the failures of others on the other side of the globe.

Earlier this week, I was listening to a sermon posted on Facebook. The passage being preached from was 1 Samuel 17, the account of David and Goliath. At one point, about a third of the way into the message, the preacher said:

In verse 11, Saul and all of Israel were dismayed, and they were afraid. In our language today, we could say they were unnerved and unsettled. They were scared and they were troubled. They were shocked and they were horrified. They were shaken, disheartened, and greatly alarmed. Go back just a few days into chapter 14 where we find the Israelites had won a decisive battle against the Philistines. They should have been compelled to go on and attack with great confidence. Generally, if a football team wins a great football game, that next Monday morning they show back up at the field house, and they’re pumped, they’re ready to go out and take on the next foe. If they have lost a bunch in a row, their confidence is not there.

But Israel had won a decisive battle, and they should have been up. They should have gone into that attack against the Philistines with great confidence, but instead, they were cowering in fear and dismayed, and they felt they could not defeat they enemy. Why is that? What happened between chapter 14 and chapter 17 that caused the Israelites to go into complete dismay and fear and anguish in their hearts? It is because they allowed the enemy to dictate the terms of engagement.

What happened between chapters 14 and 17?

Plenty.

According to BibleHub.com, the events of 1 Samuel 14 occurred circa 1041 BC, and the events of 1 Samuel 17 occurred circa 1024 BC. That’s a span of 17 years, not “a few days,” as this preacher stated.

• Jonathan’s miraculous victory over the Philistines takes place in 1041.

• Samuel rebukes Saul for his disobedience regarding the total destruction of Amalek in 1028 (1 Samuel 15).

• Samuel anoints David as Saul’s replacement in 1024 (1 Samuel 16).

• Then that same year (1024) we have David killing Goliath in 1 Samuel 17.

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This is the kind of thing that happens in sermons when preachers just go with their own cursory reading of the text, and don’t avail themselves of solid resources that supplement it with scholarly research.

I get it that forty years ago, not every preacher necessarily had a complete set of commentaries where they could get the timeline information cited above. But it took me just 60 seconds to ask Google, “What is the time span between 1 Samuel 14 and 1 Samuel 17?” I skipped the initial answer from Google Gemini AI (I will not cite AI summaries as a source unless I can corroborate the results elsewhere), and looked at the search results list for a site name I felt I could trust, which was BibleHub.com.

There’s no excuse for saying that chapter 14 was “a few pays earlier” when the information is that easy to find. Granted, the preacher may have said that “few days earlier” part extemporaneously, off the top of his head, without having looked anything up during sermon prep. But is making such a claim off the cuff even being responsible with the handling of God’s word?

But let’s leave commentaries and online resources to the side for a moment. If the preacher had even actually read through chapters 14-16 while preparing to preach on chapter 17, he should have realized that there was a considerable time span involved, certain more than “a few days,” simply based on how much activity — the war on Amalek, Saul’s failure in that war, Samuel’s rebuke, and the anointing of David — is narrated in between 14 and 17, even without knowing the approximate years the events took place.

Pastors talk about wanting their congregants to be actively engaged with the Bible. Pastors need to make sure they are being careful in their handling of the text themselves, as biblically literate and fluent parishioners will notice errors such as this one. If such mistakes occur repeatedly, the sheep may come to not trust that their shepherd knows what he/she is doing. And if the preacher cannot get the basic facts of the story right, why should the listener trust the conclusions the preacher draws?

I just started reading Nadya Williams’ Cultural Christianity in the Early Church during the past week. The introduction lays out the structure of the book, looking at the interactions between Christian faith and surrounding culture in the New Testament era, in the era of persecution between the New Testament era and Constantine, and then in the period where Christians went from being persecuted to privileged. Sounds like a very interesting read, and the podcast author interviews I have heard have been good.

A Spurious Argument based on an English Word

Chapter 1, “More for Me, Less for Thee,” talks about Greco-Roman attitudes toward wealth and how it should be used, and how that seems to have influenced some people in the early church (Ananias and Sapphira selling some property and giving part of the proceed to the church, while claiming to have donated all the proceeds, in what seems to be an attempt to gain status as generous benefactors, rather than out of true generosity).

Williams says that Barnabas, a Levite from Cyprus, “appears to have previously been a cultural Jew. In particular, did you catch the contradiction in the idea of a Levite with property?” She goes on to mention how the tribe of Levi received no inheritance when the Promised Land was allocated to the tribes of Israel and “thus had to depend on the largesse of the other tribes in exchange for their work as teachers of the law and leaders of worship in the temple. A true Levite should have owned no property, so this anecdote shows just how far the Jewish community had drifted at this point from its roots” (p. 7).

This seems to ignore the fact that, while the tribe of Levi did not receive a single contiguous allocation of land for the tribe as a whole, they were given towns with their associated pasturelands scattered among the other tribes (Joshua 21 mentions a total of 48 towns, each with its pasturelands, that were allotted to the Levites). Leviticus 25, where the stipulations for the Jubilee are laid out, says that a house sold in a regular walled city was not to be returned in the year of Jubilee, and could only be bought back by the seller within the first year after the sale. Houses in villages without walls were considered part of the fields that were adjacent to them, and such properties of production were to be returned in the Jubilee. According to verses 32-34, if a Levite had to sell his house in a Levitical town, it was always redeemable and to be returned in the Jubilee, as the Levitical towns were the Levites’ land grant from God. So much for the Levites not being permitted to own real property.

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Williams goes on to discuss the description of Barnabas as a native of Cyprus. She asks, “Should not he, as a Levite, have considered himself a native of Israel?” First, the text of Acts says nothing about how Barnabas considered or described himself with regard to his nationality or place of birth. Luke simply describes Joseph, who was descended from the tribe of Levi and whom the disciples had given the nickname Barnabas (“Son of Consolation”), as having been born on the island of Cyprus in the Mediterranean (Acts 4:36). The English word “native” used in some translations1 comes from the Latin word nativus, which simply means “innate, produced by birth.” It has nothing to do with one’s ethnicity or lineage (an Israelite or Jew of the tribe of Levi), but with geography. Dr. Williams herself, while now living in the United States (and I assume, by now, a naturalized citizen), is still a "native of Russia” even if she primarily identifies with her adopted homeland rather than the place of her birth.

The Greek Luke uses here reads “Κύπριος τῷ γένει,” which means “born in Cyprus.” The NIV describes Barnabas as “a Levite from Cyprus” here, which makes it clearer that this is more about his place of birth than his self-identification.2 A parallel construction, “συροφοινισσα τω γενει,” is found in Mark 7:26 to refer to the woman as “born in Syrian Phoenicia.” In Acts 18:2, speaking of Aquila, the NIV translates “ποντικον τω γενει” as “a native of Pontus,” even though Aquila and his wife Priscilla were clearly identified as Jewish. Acts 18:24 describes a Jew named Apollos as “αλεξανδρευς τω γενει,” or “a native of Alexandria.”

This particular episode reinforces the importance of looking at the wording in the original biblical language whenever possible, or, if one does not have knowledge of Greek or Hebrew or access to tools such as Logos or Accordance, consulting a variety of English translations before making a big deal out of one or two English words.

Not Paying Sufficient Attention to the Text’s Narrative

Using Saul of Tarsus as an example to bolster her argument that Barnabas was a “cultural” Jew because he identified as a native of Cyprus, Williams writes, “Paul was born into a family of Pharisees based in Tarsus in modern Turkey, and his father was the first in the family to receive Roman citizenship. Eager for his son to receive the best possible theological education, his father sent him to study in Jerusalem where the family also still had relatives. Though Paul never lived in Tarsus again, he continued to refer to himself by this place of origin” (p. 7)

Notice the beginning of that last sentence, which says, “Paul never lived in Tarsus again.” The book of Acts plainly contradicts this claim. Acts 9:30 says that the believers in Jerusalem, upon learning that some Hellenistic Jews had tried to kill Saul, sent him away to Tarsus. Acts 11:25 has Barnabas traveling to Tarsus to look for Saul (who is still living there at this point two chapter later in Acts) to bring him back to Antioch to help with the church there.

Conflating Jewish Sects

On page 11 of the book, in a discussion about the reaction of the Jewish religious leaders to Jesus’ overturning the tables of the money changers and driving out the animals being sold for sacrifice in the temple courts, Williams refers to them as Pharisees. Williams specifically references Matthew’s account of this event, and Matthew 21:15 mentions the “chief priests and the teachers of the law” protesting the children crying out in praise of Jesus. The chief priests would have been associated with the Sadducees, not the Pharisees, and while it is possible that the “teachers of the law” here may have been Pharisees, it is more likely they were the scribal elite associated with the temple, and therefore also allied with the Sadducee party.

Singleness and Church Leadership

In chapter 9, “The Siren Call of the Desert,” Williams takes on the asceticism of the Desert Fathers, who sought to separate themselves from society (ostensibly to avoid the temptations of a decadent culture in more populated areas). Many of these monks became something of a tourist attraction for Christian pilgrims—something akin to early celebrity pastors, but without the expensive sneakers and multiple book deals.

In taking these ascetics to task for abandoning Christian community to live on their own in isolation, Williams writes:

The elders receive significant consideration in the New Testament because they are individuals who serve their local churches in a particularly intensive way. The qualifications for elders leave no room for the desert ascetics. Only those married (husbands of one wife) and raising faithful children are deemed qualified for church leadership. (p. 194)

Then on the next page, she writes:

The requirements for elders and deacons, which cite marriage, highlight how rejecting marriage, the ascetics rejected the enormous responsibility of discipling other image-bearers in their homes and communities. (p. 195)

How does Williams square these claims with Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 7?

Now for the matters you wrote about: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” (v. 1)

I wish that all of you were as I am. But each of you has your own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that. Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.(vv. 7-9)

The same Apostle who gave the requirements for elders and deacons in his letters to Timothy and Titus tells the Corinthians that it is better to be single, as he is. By Williams’ logic, Paul himself, who laid out the stipulations for church leaders, would himself have been ineligible to be an elder.

What about married couples who would love to give birth to and raise faithful children, but either cannot conceive, or have suffered one or more miscarriages, and the doctors say that trying to get pregnant again could pose a serious health risk? Are they disqualified as a pastoral couple or serving as deacons?

What about the ministry of John R. W. Stott, who, like the Apostle Paul, stayed single so that he could devote himself fully to serving Christ and His church? Should he have abstained from being a priest in the Church of England, and founding an organization that has helped provide advanced theological education to countless pastors from less-advantaged countries?

Now, Williams does state on page 194, “The examples of Jesus and Paul, who both remained unmarried throughout the duration of their earthly ministry, only highlights this further.” But I’m not so sure this is actually a good example of the maxim that “the exceptions prove the rule.” As far as we know from the text of Scripture, Timothy never married either, yet Paul sent him to deal authoritatively with false teachers in Ephesus, which is obviously a task involving oversight of the church there. We also don’t know whether Titus was married, yet Paul says he left Titus in Crete to appoint elders in the churches in every town. Is it really logical that Titus could carry out this task faithfully if he was not qualified to be an elder himself?

I understand Dr. Williams’ desire to point out the errors of the Desert Fathers (and Mothers) in pursuing extreme asceticism and restricting their involvement in Christian community. But in warning about the dangers of one ditch, she seems to fall into the opposite ditch, with her zeal to correct one problem leading to faulty exegesis.

Are the Editors Theologically Trained?

I don’t bring up these issues to discredit Williams or her book. She is, after all, a military historian of the Greco-Roman world. Her doctorate is not in theology or biblical studies. I agree with a lot of the application points she makes with regard to Christians and culture. This does, however, raise questions in my mind concerning the editorial staff at Christian publishing houses (Williams’ book is published by Zondervan Academic). The fact that Levites did own property in their allotted villages in ancient Israel after the conquest of Canaan, and that Saul did return to live in Tarsus for a time, are not intricate theological nuances, but rather basic facts in the biblical text.

Anyone who reads the Bible through on a regular basis would have bells go off in their brains when reading some of the things I have pointed out here. While I understand that a big part of a book editor’s job is tightening up wording and making sure the book’s content is understandable, when we’re dealing with material related to the Bible, shouldn’t editors also be on the lookout for basic errors related to the biblical text? I’m not talking about interpretive issues where there are long-standing differences in understanding—it’s not the editor’s job to correct the author’s theology, that’s for certain. But when things such as claiming Saul never lived in Tarsus again make it past the editor, a disservice is done to both the reader and the author, as observant readers may question whether they can trust the author’s conclusions when basic errors of fact that do not require interpretation are put forth as a basis for the argument.

While I greatly appreciate Dr. Williams’ work in diving into how the early Christians were not always the shining examples of piety that the lure of nostalgia would often lead us to believe, she definitely departs from her lane (her discipline of Roman military history), and could have benefited from some input from biblical scholars and historians specializing in church history to fact-check her work before it was published. (This raises the additional question for me as to whether the biblical scholars and church historians who endorsed the book—many of whom I greatly respect, having read and benefitted from their scholarship myself—actually read the entire manuscript and offered any corrections on the points I raise here, and if they did point out these issues, why Williams and her editor did not incorporate such feedback to correct the errors.)

Things that grabbed my attention and made me think.

Just a friendly reminder (which seems to be required these days) that my referring to something someone else has written does not entail wholesale endorsement of everything that individual may think, say, or write. It simply means that I found the particular thought of theirs I am sharing to be helpful or thought-provoking.

What is Success, Anyway?

Theologian A. J. Swoboda observes:

I put the word “success” in quotes because what God thinks of as success and what we think of as “success” tend to be wildly far apart. Success, in God’s kingdom, is a life of worship of God, of total abandonment to the ways of the Spirit, of submitted love for brother and sister, of kindness, mercy, truth, honesty, and detachment from sin and addiction. But in Satan’s kingdom, of course, success looks very, very different.

In Satan’s kingdom, we are always haunted by the belief that we are behind.

My success is judged in relation to what God has called me to do. Am I being faithful to the commands of King Jesus for my life and ministry. How I stack up against others is irrelevant.

De-Calvinizing Romans 9-11

Dr. Jason Staples has been on a couple of YouTube channels recently, discussing where John Calvin missed the target in his interpretation of Paul’s language.

First, on Dr. Matt O’Reilly’s Theology Project:

Dr. Staples, author of Paul and the Resurrection of Israel, shows how Paul is not talking about individuals being eternally elected or condemned, but about God’s covenant faithfulness to Israel as a people even after their rebellion. He offers a vision of election in which Israel is chosen in order to be God's instrument of blessing to the nations. This corporate view of election, grounded in Israel’s story of exile and promised restoration, stands in contrast to the individualistic and deterministic framework often found in Reformed interpretations of Romans 9–11.

Dr. Staples was also on Soteriology 101, hosted by Dr. Leighton Flowers, discussing this passage.

Penal Substitution Keeps Popping Up

Dr. Beth Felker Jones from Northern Seminary writes in defense of PSA based on Hebrews and Leviticus.

I cannot let go of the conviction that God takes sin more seriously than I do. This is not because God is some vengeful giant in the sky. It’s because God is more loving than I am. Love does not shrug at violence. Love does not tell victims to move on. Love does not pretend wounds are imaginary.

Though after reading her brief article, I’m wondering if her version of PSA is as penal as the commonly held interpretations of this atonement model. I would love to hear her thoughts interacting with the work of Phil Bray, Jewish Leviticus scholar Jacob Milgrom, and Will Hess.

God’s Nuclear Option?

Brian Kaylor looks at recent statements from Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill claiming that the USSR’s development of nuclear weapons was an answer to prayer:

If the nuclear weapons were a sign of “God’s grace and mercy” on the Soviet Union, then why did the United States get them first? Did God want to bless the United States more? But that doesn’t make sense since the United States is clearly the “enemy” in the story that God was allegedly saving the Soviet Union from. Wouldn’t real “grace and mercy” by God have been to block anyone from developing these weapons?

Also, this development came not in a godly nation but during the time when the Soviet officials were suppressing Christianity. Kirill even mentioned that in his homily on Saturday, as he often does. He referred to the “storm” of the “terrible revolutionary events” and “the terrible turning point in the life of our people and country.”

Phoebe-maxing and Phoebe-dissing

Everyone’s favorite Australian theologian Michael Bird takes on Denny Burk’s misrepresentation of Phoebe:

Complementarians claim in effect: “I don’t know what Phoebe did, but she never had authority over any man, and she never did any preaching in the presence of men.”

Well, if we do not know for certain what Phoebe did do in Corinth or Rome, then we do not know for certain what she did not do either.

The fog of circumstances surrounds both the egalitarian and complementarian positions.

We simply do not know for certain her status and activities and any speculation of what she did do is equally as speculative as to what she did not do.

Picking and Choosing?

I don’t only listen to people whose views align with mine. I will read articles and books, and listen to podcasts, from people with differing views, both to the left and right of my own position on issues, whether political or theological. It keeps me aware of the discussions going on, and helps sharpen my mind on being able to debate and refute errors.

Daniel Miller at the Straight White American Jesus podcast, on a recent “It’s in the Code” episode (#202), tried to answer a listener’s question about why many Christians quote the Old Testament laws when it comes to certain issues, when Christian theology supposedly says that because of Christ we are no longer under the law. Miller oversimplifies the answer, overlooking the work by scholars of the New Perspective on Paul (which points out, in part, that Paul was dealing with the parts of the law that related to Jewish “boundary markers” regarding ritual purity and food laws, while still upholding what many label the “moral law”), and apparently ignoring the Acts 15 Jerusalem council’s instructions for gentile believers in Jesus:

You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things. (Acts 15:29, NIV)

The Apostle Paul himself—whom Miller points out as the one arguing that Christians are free from the law of Moses—still warned against the sexual sins that Miller claims Evangelical Christians run to the OT law to condemn.

Miller is a professor, an academic with a terminal degree, so he should know how to do research and cite sources. Yet here, while he does acknowledge that there are probably seminary-trained pastors and conservative biblical scholars and theologians who can set forth reasoned arguments and explanations (as opposed to the run-of-the-mill laypeople on whom he focuses), he doesn’t bother to interact with them, because that would upset his narrative which claims that Christians are inconsistent and only resort to the Old Testament laws when they want to “attack” someone who participates in actions they personally find distasteful or repulsive.

The truth of the matter is that a consistent Bible-believing Christian will denounce not only homosexual practice and transgender ideology, but also lust, pornography, pre-marital sex, adultery, and other sins of a sexual nature the Bible speaks against. But rather than acknowledge what a consistent biblical ethic concerning human sexuality would look like, Miller chooses to only point out the inconsistency of some professing Christians, seemingly using that as an excuse to reject biblical sexual morality in toto.

I have a couple of articles related to this topic (here and here), and I actually cite and interact with real biblical scholars on the matter, such as Paul Sloan.

You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know

Dr. George Yancey from Baylor has a great video on confirmation bias.

How often do we seek out information that might contradict what we already know or believe that we know? We don't often do that. And in failing to do so, we have an ignorance where we think we know the right answer because we're only looking at part of the evidence, where if we had all of the evidence we might come to a different conclusion.

Christian Philosophy vs Ideology

Christian philosopher Tedla Woldeyohannes asks whether a MAGA Christian philosophy is even a possibility:

The deeper question, however, is not political but philosophical: What makes a philosophy genuinely Christian? Does a philosophy become Christian simply because it is defended by Christians, employs biblical language, or seeks to preserve Christian civilization? Or does Christian philosophy possess a deeper intellectual vocation that transcends every political movement?

In my recent essay, Ideological Apologetics Is Not Christian Apologetics, I argued that apologetics ceases to be genuinely Christian whenever it abandons the pursuit of truth and becomes primarily a defense of an ideology. The same structural danger confronts Christian philosophy. The question is therefore not whether MAGA philosophy is politically conservative, but whether it remains philosophy in the Christian sense or whether it has become ideology wearing Christian clothing.

Whom to Follow

There are lots of Substacks you can follow. Too many to keep up with, honestly. So feel free to take or leave my recommendations (which, admittedly, will be more on the Bible nerd side most of the time). And thanks again for following me!

Kyle Strobel, son of well-known atheist/agnostic-turned-apologist Lee Strobel, is a thoughtful writer. In a recent piece, he addresses the problem of people thinking their past experiences in a life of sin somehow make them experts in all aspects of that category of sin, whose job it now is to have a platform warning others.

Sin does not make you an expert in anything other than what is unreal and untrue, and the truth is not discerned or advanced by how you were ignorant of it.

Quote of the Week

Memewhile

For future reference and usage

OSAS falls off its horse

The lengths to which people will go to explain away the warning passages is astounding at times.

Work the Formula

The placement of the verses underneath the timeline would seem to imply that each Scripture is supposed to correspond to the portion of the image above it. Otherwise, why put them in the same figure? Truth be told, none of the verses seem to have a clear application to the figure immediately above them.

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But when Paul is writing to the church in Philippi here, he isn’t talking about Christ taking all believers to be with Him in heaven. He’s talking about his own approaching death.

I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body. (Phil. 1:20-24, NIV)

I’m hoping this was just a poor design and layout choice that slipped through in the publishing process, and not the author actually thinking this verse belonged in that place in the figure. Because if it’s the latter, well…

I have a longer piece coming out Monday, August 17, about what editors of Christian books should actually be capable of in order to do their jobs.

Recommendation Roundup

Just a friendly reminder (which seems to be required these days) that my referring to something someone else has written does not entail wholesale endorsement of everything that individual may think, say, or write. It simply means that I found the particular thought of theirs I am sharing to be helpful or thought-provoking.

Introvert Pastors

Daniel over at Doctoral Discipleship has a great piece on the ministry of introverts. As I read the article, I was like, “I feel seen. This guy understands me.”

If I am 100% honest, I don’t entirely know. For me, it’s a cocktail of reasons that aren’t fully understandable. When I was in college, I was the life of the party, spontaneous, and couldn’t ever be alone. And I would love to talk to people. I wanted to know their contexts, names, families, places, and what made them tick.

And then at some point, idunno, ideas just became more interesting to me than people.

My problem is, I was never the life of the party. Not in high school, not in college. In fact, I didn’t mind when I wasn’t even invited to the party (partly because things went on at come parties I certainly didn’t want to be associated with).

I couple of books I have enjoyed on this topic are Introverts in the Church: Finding Our Place in an Extroverted Culture by Adam McHugh and The Introvert Charismatic: The gift of introversion in a noisy church by Mark Tanner.

Capitalist Religion

Joey Cochran has a piece over on Patheos that prompted a question in my mind.

These evangelicals were the vanguard for preserving capitalistic, Protestant, Western Civilization from the onslaught of modernism, communism, and Catholicism. Since their organizations depended upon thriving in the context of the free marketplace of religion, evangelical institutions were loosely affiliated with one another. They were both non-denominational and anti-denominational, and many organizations were parachurch institutions meeting spiritual and sometimes social needs from outside the oversight of denominational structures.

The question that came to mind is this: is the American Protestant defense of capitalism as an economic system based primarily on scriptural arguments and principles, or is it what they default to because (1) a free-market system in the area of religious ideas is what allows many denominations to exist or (2) since there is no government funding of churches, as there was in European Christendom, they need economic capitalism to succeed in order to source people’s offerings?

I know that last part may sound cynical, but it’s a question we must ask honestly, especially when looking at how Christian groups around the world in non-capitalist systems seem to be growing despite the lack of monetary resources.

A House Divided

An article at the New York Times by Elisabeth Zerofsky looks at the massive turnover at one of the country’s leading conservative think tanks:

What looked from the outside like an exodus of Heritage staff in response to the Carlson controversy is, in fact, only a small portion of the 293 people who have left Heritage since 2021. By the time of the video incident, multiple former staff members told me, there was a pervasive atmosphere of insecurity and disillusionment. Employees were being fired or resigning without any announcement or explanation. “People would just get disappeared,” one former Heritage policy staff member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of professional repercussions, told me. “There would be a weekend where you’d come in and be like, Wait, I’m sorry, how many people are no longer here?” Staff members called it the “Heritage Hunger Games.” As leaks to the media intensified, and as more people sought positions elsewhere, a paranoia settled in. Some employees, believing that their work computers were being monitored, took to communicating with each other over Signal and on burner phones. (Asked about this and other specific allegations by former employees, Andy Olivastro, the chief advancement officer at Heritage, wrote in an email, “Their self-serving, bitter and vindictive attempt to disparage Heritage from the outside demonstrates perfectly why they are no longer on the inside.”)

This mass turnover, multiple former staff members told me, was intentional. “There’s this movement that’s been brewing on the right, and they have crept into a variety of mainstream conservative institutions and taken over,” one former senior Heritage analyst, who insisted on anonymity for fear of professional reprisal, told me. That’s what had happened at Heritage. “It was planned,” the analyst said. “And it was a coup.”

From what the rest of the article says, it seems there is a battle between ideological purity (those who want to distance the org from extremist elements” and hyper-practicalism (“we can’t afford to exclude anyone because we need the strength of numbers”). The problem is, when you lower the ideological bar to build your numbers, you no longer have a cohesive ideology.

Fake It to Make It?

Dr. Joseph Lear discusses questions he had as a teen about his experience of Spirit-baptism and speaking in tongues.

I was never the rebellious kid. I read my Bible and prayed every day so I could grow (grow, grow…as the song goes). But my relative spiritual maturity didn’t lead me to be puzzled by my lack of tongues-speak. Rather, it convinced me that there was something fundamentally wrong with my spiritual walk. I must have had some sin, some deficiency. I mustn’t have surrendered to God enough.

Paul and Christian Leadership

Dr. David A. de Silva shares some good points about the Apostle Paul’s vision for Christian leaders at any level:

For Paul, what matters is not following this leader as opposed to that leader; what matters is following a leader who is faithful to the genuine gospel. Our leadership only has value – and only enjoys God’s blessing – to the extent that we live in line with, and faithfully pass along to the people in our care, the genuine good news of God in Christ. Following Paul’s pattern, we must refuse to accommodate the gospel’s claim on our collective lives to suit the tastes of our congregations or the society around us. Rather, we are called to preserve the challenge that the gospel poses to the world and call our people to conform their practice to the gospel, not vice versa. This is the gospel that has power from God to transform, to justify, to bring us in line with God’s own righteousness.

Slopulism

Economist Noah Smith talks about what he calls “slopulism,” which is basically policies that have a lot of appeal with populists but which have not been thought through properly, only sloppily.

The idea of a 10% discount on self-checkout as a way to incentivize human employment is pure “slopulism” — stuff that seems like populism, but wouldn’t achieve the results that people want from the policy.¹ It’s snake oil that sells well based on people’s inability to see the consequences of what they’re being sold.

Slopulism is an inevitable outgrowth of populism. Once people decide that technocrats, elites, experts, and gatekeepers aren’t worth listening to, they become vulnerable to all sorts of policy scams.

The Theological Scandal of Biblical Illiteracy

Over at Coffee and a Few Thoughts, SJ writes:

The diagnosis here is that this is a pulpit problem — that people simply aren’t sitting under sound preaching. There is real truth amid both. But a subtler and more uncomfortable diagnosis deserves attention: in an age of biblical illiteracy, congregations often lose the categories to tell the difference between sound doctrine and its counterfeits. The prosperity gospel is the easy target — it announces itself with health-and-wealth language recognizable enough that most discerning believers can spot it. But there is a second counterfeit that hides in plain sight precisely because it looks like its opposite: sophisticated fire-and-brimstone preaching dressed in the language of “sound doctrine,” which is often little more than hyper-moralism — behavior management with biblical footnotes.

Far too often, people think the Spirit is moving simply because the preacher is animated and excited, or emotional and tearful, all while what he/she is saying has no solid basis in Scripture.

Romans 13 Redux

Back in mid-April of this year, I wrote a short piece on Romans 13. Dr. Joel B. Green gives a much more thorough treatment (which I am happy to say aligns with my own, so I’m in good company).

Here’s the problem: Most of us have heard appeals to Romans 13 that are superficial, as though its contemporary appropriation were obvious to all right-thinking people.

We’ve heard it demanded, in the form of unconditional obedience—a dangerous approach that leaves congregations vulnerable to unjust power. That approach basically outsources moral judgments to the state—judgments that belong to Christ-following communities.

We’ve also seen avoidance of this text, perhaps because of its misuse. That’s dangerous, too, since it leaves some of our least discerning interpreters in control of what the text says. The church needs a better, more faithful account of public authority, not silence.

Quote of the Week

Memewhile

When You’re So Bright But Come Off Looking Dim

This is simply obfuscation to avoid dealing with issues. While I certainly agree that the redefinition of marriage in opposition to centuries of human understanding of the institution across almost all cultures was a serious error, calling women’s rights “redundant” when the term originally referred to calling attention to the fact that women were not being treated equally (19th Amendment and women’s suffrage, equal pay for equal work, equal opportunity for advancement) should be beneath someone of Sowell’s intellect.

That’s not what Jesus meant

When You Don’t Know that You Don’t Know

Hinn wouldn’t know how to recognize sound doctrine if it slapped him in the face.

Now that’s just funny

I’ll see your pretentious multisyllabic theological pronouncements and raise you a hamala-shamala.

Apples and Kumquats

First off, we need to deal with the fact that while the Bible was written for us, it was not written to us (thank you, Dr. John Walton, for that line).

Now to the meme itself: comparing a present-day Berean who is carefully paying attention to how the Scriptures are being used and pointing out when a particular interpretation is ignoring the literary, cultural, and historical contexts, is not the same thing as the people in the synagogue in Luke 4 getting angry at Jesus and wanting to kill him. Bringing correction to a misinterpretation or misapplication of the biblical text is not the same as instigating a murder attempt.

Oh, and while we’re at it, let’s go back and look at the context in Luke. When Jesus said that the Scripture was fulfilled in their hearing that day, the people’s first reaction was positive:

Everyone spoke well of him and was amazed by the gracious words that came from his lips. (Luke 4:22, NLT)

It wasn’t until Jesus talked about a prophet not being honored in his home town, and mentioned how God showed favor to non-Israelites such as Naaman and the Sidonian widow, that the people got angry.

So even this meme didn’t pay attention to the full context of Luke 4 in the upper frame.

Now, let’s get to the incident that prompted me to write this post. Earlier this week, I received a text message, a screenshot of which is presented for your perusal:

Now, let’s look at how this paid political text message subtly shifts things to sway opinion by catastrophizing the matter.

Note the actual quote from candidate Shoffner:

Yes, I would vote to defund ICE as it exists right now.

The political text morphs that into “open borders, defunding law enforcement, rolling out the welcome mat for drug smugglers and human traffickers.” Let’s take a moment and look at this analytically, to see if the attack ad is putting words in a candidate’s mouth.

Defunding law enforcement?

Shoffner doesn’t say ICE shouldn’t exist at all. She doesn’t say ICE should never have been established under George W. Bush’s administration in response to homeland security concerns after the events of September 11, 2001 (replacing the INS, or Immigration and Naturalization Service, that had handled immigration enforcement up until that point). I haven’t heard her say anything critical of how ICE operated under former president Obama (if you know of anything to the contrary, please let me know in the comments; I don’t follow either major candidate in this race closely, as it is more important to keep up with theology and biblical studies than with the temporary trappings of empire, especially when neither Shoffner nor Cotton is acceptable to me).

Shoffner is saying that ICE, as it is currently operating under leadership put there by Donald Trump to execute Donald Trump’s xenophobic anti-immigrant prejudices, would be up for having its budget stripped. That’s not “defunding law enforcement,” as the political text message alleges. It’s simply saying what some already in Congress tried to do during the budget impasse earlier this year: rein in one out-of-control agency that is rushing agents into the field without proper background checks or training and re-assigning agents who were working to track down seriously and dangerously criminal elements to go after the low-hanging fruit of immigrants who are showing up for their court dates and appointments with local ICE offices (immigrants who are doing their best to follow the rules as they have been told them, in other words).

Nowhere have I seen Shoffner talk about taking away funding from the FBI, the U.S. Marshalls Service, or state or local police. That would be “defunding law enforcement.” But forcing ICE to clean up their act or risk losing their budget is not that.

And I just looked at Shoffner’s campaign web site (for the first time) and found this:

Keeping Arkansas safe means supporting local law enforcement and first responders with the training, staffing, mental health support, and strong unions they need to do their jobs safely. It also means investing in community-based crime prevention and taking domestic violence, human trafficking, and crimes against children seriously.

Open borders?

A common tactic of Trump and his acolytes is to label anyone who opposes the particular enforcement methods being employed by this administration as being in favor of open borders. Honestly, that’s a scare tactic and a dog whistle, meant to excite people’s emotions and keep them from using critical thinking skills (which, sadly, are all too lacking in modern America).

People hear “open borders” and think that politicians and immigrant advocates are endorsing a policy of removing border crossing checkpoints and just allowing anyone and everyone into the country. Most often it’s the Democrats who are accused of being in favor of “open borders,” while the truth is that border enforcement—and accompanying deportations of those caught crossing the border without inspection—has been taken seriously under presidents from both parties. Consider this meme I saw on Facebook (I have not been able to fact-check the exact numbers, so they may be off; there are also other versions that include presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush):

Another meme I have seen circulating frequently actually talks about how other presidents have deported more undocumented immigrants than Trump, but somehow he is unfairly targeted with injunctions and lawsuits challenging his policies. It seems Donald Trump and his supporters want to have their cake and eat it too. Out of one side of their mouths, they say that Obama and Biden oversaw more deportations, so people shouldn’t be concerned about what ICE is doing under this administration; yet out of the other side of their mouths, Obama and Biden had an “open borders” policy. Make up your minds already! (As I was typing that, something about double-mindedness and instability came out of my memory banks, but I don’t want to risk eisegesis, so I’ll leave that for now.)

Very few people are actually advocating for what could truly be called “open borders” with no enforcement whatsoever. On August 4, 2026, while preparing this article, I actually heard for the first time someone say that a long-term goal would be the elimination of the border.1 But the vast majority of people opposing ICE’s current enforcement tactics (and overreach) are not going nearly that far. Pointing out that the current system is broken and in urgent need of reform is not the same as saying there should be no system at all. Yet political power brokers treat people as though they’re simple-minded enough to not understand the difference.

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Rolling out the welcome mat for drug smugglers and human traffickers?

Again, this is broad-brush, hyperbolic language meant to stir people up with visions of worst-case scenarios. Certainly, many drug smugglers and human traffickers take advantage of weak links in border security to move product and people into the country. But that’s something that calls for more enforcement and surveillance along the border, not raids of apartment buildings hundreds of miles inland, indiscriminately hauling everyone onto the lawn in their pajamas (or underwear) in the dead of night.

Have you ever heard of “mules” in drug smuggling? Mules are people who are not the drug dealer bosses themselves, or even lower-level lieutenants, but expendable individuals who are either financially incentivized (offered money they either desperately need or simply want for the sake of having it) or coerced (family members’ safety or lives being threatened if they don’t participate) into helping move drugs across borders. The classic example, often seen in TV and movies, is cocaine being stuffed into latex condoms, which are then tied off and swallowed by the mule. The mule then either crosses the border with documents at a checkpoint, or flies on a commercial airline and goes through immigration at the airport. The mule has a limited amount of time to get those cocaine-packed condoms out of their body before they either rupture or the latex is otherwise compromised, leading to a lethal dose of coke being absorbed through their digestive tract. It’s much less likely that someone with such a package in their gut is going to risk a clandestine crossing in the desert, where the risk of capture could mean the condom will burst and kill them while in detention. A mule is going to try to enter the country in a way that calls the least amount of attention. Additionally, drug smuggling is an ongoing enterprise, requiring crossing after crossing after crossing. Most undocumented immigrants, once they are in the country, aren’t going to go back and forth over and over again. Once they’re here, they’re usually settling down, finding work and a place to live, and trying to stay off the radar so as not to lose what they worked so hard to attain.

On the question of human trafficking, I would point us back to the quote above from Shoffner’s web site, where she advocates “taking domestic violence, human trafficking, and crimes against children seriously.”

Bottom line: humane treatment of undocumented immigrants fleeing violence in their home countries, or simply seeking a better life in the United States, is for the most part unrelated to drug smuggling and most human trafficking (beyond that done by the coyotes, whom the immigrants themselves paid to help them cross the border). Stopping ICE’s aggressive tactics enacted toward people who have been quietly living productive lives here for five, ten, or twenty years or more is not “rolling out the welcome mat” for criminals, and will not impact Customs and Border Protection’s ability to catch drug smugglers and human traffickers. If anything, the highly visible, open and untargeted sweeps and raids ICE is currently using may actually draw more attention and make it easier for violent criminal and drug-dealing immigrants to evade capture, because everyone knows where ICE is operating in those activities, which tells the criminal element where to avoid.

And finally, in my experience, most advocates for immigrants’ rights will agree with the need for better security and enforcement at the border, as well as the apprehension, conviction, and deportation of violent offenders. What is causing so much consternation among even conservative Christians (who have for the most part supported the Republican party for the past four decades) is immigration officers, acting more like elite military units deployed overseas, violently chasing down and apprehending — and in some cases, killing — people who have no violent criminal past (whether convictions or pending charges), whose only crime is not being documented (all while native-born criminals who have done much worse get overlooked).

While I was writing…

While I was still in the process of developing this article, I received the following, similar text message from the same organization:

Repeating a blatant misrepresentation only increases the seriousness of one’s dishonesty.

And it appears that it’s not just the out-of-state super-PACs that are making these claims. Tom Cotton’s own Facebook page had the following on August 3:

I don’t know where in the process this immigrant’s criminal case stands, whether an arrest with charges filed (which Cotton’s post seems to indicate), or conviction and sentencing. I’m not a mind-reader, so I don’t know Shoffner’s take on this case, but I would guess that she would be fine with this person being deported if convicted at trial. Cotton saying Hoffner wants this criminal to stay, without providing a source to back up his claim, is very risky if one’s goal is getting at truth as opposed to simply scoring points.

It’s Complicated

The truth is that politics and policy, like most areas of life, are much more complicated than most people want to deal with. Rather than actually studying the issues, learning the ins and outs, the pros and cons, far too many voters simply want someone they semi-trust to authoritatively tell them which way to vote, so they don’t have to strain their brains dealing with details and nuance. They just want to get back to binging Netflix, watching silly TikTok dance videos, or doom scrolling social media (we are, after all, in a post-literate society now).

And political candidates, PACs, and operatives are more than willing to provide people with facile solutions to complex problems, as long as it means getting the populace to keep returning them to positions of power. But, more and more frequently, candidates focus sufficiently more on how bad/dangerous the other guy is than they do on what their own positive contribution to our republic will be.

A Different Era

There once was a time when one candidate could disagree with another candidate’s ideas or policy positions and still respect them as a human being, dissenting honestly without caricaturing their opponent.

Back during the 2008 presidential campaign, Senator John McCain, the Republican nominee, was speaking at a town hall meeting. When one woman in the audience said she couldn’t trust Barack Obama because “he’s an Arab,” Senator McCain quickly took the microphone and corrected her, stating that Senator Obama was a decent human being and a family man with whom he had significant policy disagreements.

Those days seem to be long gone, with what passes for political debate today being more about personalities and attacks on character (by people whose own character is frequently sadly lacking—physician, heal thyself) than it is substantive, in depth discussion of the issues.

The other side?

Allow me to reiterate that, while this post criticizes a super-PAC supporting Tom Cotton (and Cotton himself for utilizing the same tactics), I’m not carrying water for Shoffner by any measure. I have enough disagreements with her stances on other issues that I won’t be casting my vote for her, either. I simply want people to slow down, think critically, and see through the propaganda methods politicians use to manipulate and shape public opinion.

Do any of my subscribers have an example of a similar trickily misleading political text or ad from a Democrat? I’m more than happy to do a dismantling article on that as well (as long as I have the knowledge base, or can find out enough about the candidate, to do so efficiently—so Arkansas races are preferred). I am beholden to neither the elephant or the donkey, so I’ll gladly tear apart ads from either side. DM me a screenshot, or put a link to such an ad in the comments.

Back in the early days of this blog, I published several articles in both English and Spanish. That’s why the title of this site is Bilingual Bible Blog (even though I rarely post articles in both languages any more, due to limited time available to devote to writing the same article twice).

But something I’ve seen going around recently on social media recently prompted me to think in bilingual terms. Here is the meme that had been circulating:

The thought expressed here is a nice, sentimental devotional idea. But it doesn't work universally.

As a bilingual person, I am frequently confronted by things like this in memes, written social media posts, and spoken statements I hear. As someone who has frequently interpreted from English to Spanish for teachers and preachers, I cringe when something like this comes up, because it just doesn’t translate, and for me, for a truth to be universal, it has to work across languages.

While e, a, and r may be the middle three letters of the English word “heart,” there is actually no linguistic relationship between the two words. It’s a coincidence of spelling.

If we look at Spanish, we find absolutely no such correspondence with oido (the inner part of the ear where hearing actually occurs, as opposed to the oreja or outer ear that funnels the sound toward the eardrum) and corazón (heart).

Now, if this kind of wordplay occurred in the original languages of the Old and New Testaments (Hebrew and Greek, respectively), then I could put more stock in it as something intended by the biblical writers. I don’t know Hebrew, but I do know that in Greek, ear is οὖς (ous) and heart is καρδία (kardia). Again, as with Spanish, there is nothing in common about how the words are spelled.

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Now, stepping away from the nerdy linguistic points, I want to deal with the final sentence in that meme, which says, “If you want God’s heart, learn to listen to Him.” That statement can be interpreted two ways that I can discern. The first is, “If you want God’s heart to be formed in you, so that the things that matter to Him matter to you, learn to listen to Him.” That is totally valid.

The other possible way to take that is, “If you want God’s heart to be turned toward you, to be favorable toward you, learn to listen to Him.” That would actually be in opposition to the teaching of Scripture. God’s heart is already inclined toward those created as His image. He loves His human creations, even when they do not return that love. Romans 5:8 says, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Perhaps the most well-known statement of God’s love for humanity is John 3:16. His heart has always been toward human beings made as His image, and He desires for all to be restored to proper relationship with Him.

On another note: Is it just me, or does that image of left and right ears joined together look more like a smiling face than a heart shape (especially considering a real heart does not look like the conceptualized image of a heart we associate with Valentine's day)?

Recommendation Roundup

Just a friendly reminder (which seems to be required these days) that my linking to something someone else has written does not entail wholesale endorsement of everything that individual may think, say, or write. It simply means that I found the particular thought of theirs I am sharing to be helpful or thought-provoking.

The Gospel and Goldilocks

In our efforts to make sure people don’t think the gospel is all about them as an individual (consumeristic Christianity), we can sometimes overcorrect, emphasizing the cosmic scope of the good news to such an extent that someone we are evangelizing cannot see what it has to do with their life, right here and right now. David Fitch writes:

We certainly endanger the gospel when we move too fast to make the gospel compact and easy to understand. Yet we can also endanger it when we try to protect its cosmic dimension at all costs making it incomprehensible to those who are in need. Being the gospel in the world therefore demands a continual traveling back and forth from the grand scope of all that God is doing in Christ to the simple offer of salvation to the stranger. And then of course, we must return (hopefully with the new convert) back again into His grand Mission all over again.

So we must strive to tell the gospel story in such a way that our presentation is neither too big nor too small, but just right for the context we are in at the moment of connection with the person who needs to hear it.

How Will We See Revival?

James Bell offers a long, but much-needed, look at what happens when Christians depend on social prominence and political power instead of the Holy Spirit.

The church is not promised steady growth in every culture or country. What is promised is that the gates of hell will not defeat the church as a whole. This is important: the global church will survive, but that does not mean every local or national church will. American Christianity is not the key to God’s plan. God’s kingdom will move forward, with or without American cultural power. Accepting this truth is the first step to letting go of the worry that troubles much of Western Christianity.

Not Just the What, but the How

David Baggett points out that while policy goals are important, character and how we achieve those goals is just as crucial.

American Christians exercise political stewardship and therefore ought to use their political influence to seek the good of their neighbors. I have little quarrel with that conclusion. My concern lies elsewhere: What moral constraints govern Christians while they pursue those political goods? How should political stewardship remain faithful to the ordinary demands of truthfulness, justice, humility, constitutional fidelity, respect for legal institutions, and moral consistency? One can wholeheartedly affirm that politics should be directed toward human flourishing while still insisting that there are moral limits on the means by which those political ends may be pursued.

Can We Exercise Self-control Without God?

New Testament scholar Joel B. Green shows how this is the wrong question, because with an understanding of prevenient grace, we see that God is working in people’s lives before they even realize it themselves.

For Wesleyans, this isn’t a scandal. Rather, it’s exactly what we’d expect, those of us for whom prevenient grace is a central theme of the entire journey of salvation. This prevenient grace shouldn’t be confused with the Reformed tradition’s “common grace”—which names God’s general bounty toward all creation. Prevenient grace is more than “God’s goodness,” since it names the Spirit’s activity in every person, a powerful presence that generates the very capacity to respond to God’s goodness, even before one has consciously turned toward God. For Wesleyans, it’s already a species of saving grace, working ahead of awareness.

Personality or Theology

Over at the Daily Wire, Seth Tower Hurd looks at the correlation of personality types with what kind of church people prefer to attend.

And before you say it’s really just theology in disguise, they checked. In a follow-up study of more than a thousand pastors, the same split held up even after the researchers controlled for how conservative and how charismatic each person was. Strip out the theology, and the personality gap is still there. Their own conclusion was that it tracks a preference for a style of worship, not a doctrine.

The organ people and the fog-machine people were sorting themselves by temperament. They just called it conviction.

While I believe there may be some truth to the claims (and the UK research that backs up some of it), I think it fails to look at people who grew up in a denomination or tradition that “codes” for a different personality type, but choose to stay there, often truly for theological reasons, when another tradition might “fit” their personality better. I’m an introvert’s introvert, and highly value order and structure (my undergrad degree is in computer science with a minor in mathematics, for crying out loud), but I attend an Assembly of God church, part of the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement, which often has a more feelings-based, experiential flavor. (Granted, the A/G church I have attended for over five decades has always had a very strong Sunday School/Christian education program, has avoided the excesses of “Charismania,” and has multiple staff pastors with doctoral degrees; if it weren’t for those factors that push or more structured and orderly, I might have found another congregation some time ago.) I found Mark Tanner’s book, The Introvert Charismatic: The Gift of Introversion in a Noisy Church, very enlightening on this matter.

The Bible-church guy who thinks the liturgy crowd is soft is, in part, a Sensing preference sneering at an Intuitive one. The traditionalist who finds the megachurch shallow is, in part, an Intuitive wrinkling his nose at a room full of Sensors having a perfectly nice time. We dress our temperament up as discernment, and we call our comfort zone orthodoxy.

Where this really seems to break down is when you look at guys in liturgical traditions who are also very Word-centric, such as Anglicans N.T. Wright and Michael Bird.

Using Stricter Standards to Build Oneself Up

Michael Clary writes about what he sees as a besetting sin of conservative Christians: putting more and more rules in place about behavior in order to fee secure, out of a fear that they’re not good enough for God.

Third, he can become divisive, because he makes his personal scruples the standard for everyone else. Since his conscience makes him more rigid in more areas, he claims the moral high ground with an air of spiritual authority. We’ve all known people like this, and we may even be this way ourselves. When we have a strong conviction about something, it’s natural to feel a little superior to others who don’t have that same belief.

We see this playing out as well in conservative Christian approaches to politics, where one political group is seen as God’s Own Party and the other party are all demon-possessed. And anyone who chooses to vote for neither major party is accused of abdicating their moral duty.

Clary also observes:

…every Christian should obey his or her own conscience. You should follow your own conscience, and you must also leave room for other people to follow theirs. Your have freedom in Christ, but your freedom stops at requiring other people to do it the same way you do.

If an individual’s Holy Spirit-informed conscience impedes them from voting for the Democrat or the Republican, or leads them to vote third party, then to insist that by doing so they are being unfaithful, or are somehow failing to love their neighbor adequately because they’re “throwing away their vote” and not doing anything significant to move the needle in the culture, is in a way to insist that they should obey another human being’s evaluation and opinion rather than the Holy Spirit who has spoken to their conscience.

Real History vs Fake History

Aspects of the United States’ history can be debated and discussed, but the discussions need to be based on information from people who actually know how to study history and whose work stands up to scrutiny.

Despite having no degree in history, David Barton calls himself a historian. He has amassed a large collection of documents related to America’s founding and published several books. For decades, he has pushed the view that the founding fathers never intended for there to be a separation between church and state. David Barton’s work has been rejected repeatedly by actual historians. Most notably, a book he published in 2012 about Thomas Jefferson was pulled from the shelves by its publisher after a group of historians from Christian universities accused him of including distortions and false information.

I have seen videos online of pastors citing the Bartons in the pulpit. What will happen to those preachers’ credibility with their congregations when they learn the truth? I recommend the work of Christian historians such as Mark Noll and George Marsden, who actually have terminal degrees in history and whose books are used in college and seminary classrooms.

What Happened at Calvary?

Debates over how the atonement actually functions seem to be endless. Sterling Sherrill observes:

If your theology requires the people who wrote your scriptures to be wrong about the event their scriptures are built on, the problem is not their theology.

It is your math.

Whichever atonement mechanism you land on, we need to be honest about whether it is explicitly in the text, a necessary entailment of what is explicitly in the text, or simply the result of thinking and pondering by people centuries after the events living in a different social context.

They Took Prayer Out of Schools

Bonnie Kristian, author of the forthcoming book In Defense of Evangelicalism, takes a deep dive into a topic that had to be cut from the manuscript:

So here’s what I think has happened: a sort of mass forgetting. When Engel and related decisions first came down, evangelical views were mixed. In many cases, institutional evangelical opinion (at CT, the NAE, and associated organizations) leaned favorable, possibly drawing on the longstanding Baptist tradition of separation of church and state for the sake of the church. (The phrase “wall of separation” comes from the earlyBaptist Roger Williams, not Thomas Jefferson, as is widely believed.)

As time passed, though, and school-sponsored prayer ceased to exist post-Engel, it also faded from popular memory, especially in the school-aged set (i.e. the people actually affected). It became unfathomable that public schools would have official prayer, so comments from the early days of this issue were misunderstood by later readers exactly as I would misunderstand Taylor if I read him out of context: to mean that individual student prayers had been banned.

By the time I was in school in the 1990s and early 2000s, then, it literally never occurred to me that a state government could write school-sponsored prayer into law. So when I heard that they took prayer out of public schools, I naturally assumed that kids weren’t allowed to bow their heads at the lunch table. What else could it mean?

Interpreting historical events relies on seeing them in their actual contexts, just like they teach about Bible interpretation in hermeneutics class.

Whom to Follow

There are lots of Substacks you can follow. Too many to keep up with, honestly. So feel free to take or leave my recommendations (which, admittedly, will be more on the Bible nerd side most of the time). And thanks again for following me!

A Substack you should check out is the Theology Project by Dr. Matt O’Reilly. Dr. O’Reilly is Lead Pastor of Christ Church Birmingham, Director of Research at Wesley Biblical Seminary, and a senior fellow of the Center for Pastor Theologians. He also hosts a YouTube channel where he addresses issues in the church and theology, and interviews other biblical scholars and church leaders.

In a recent article on the inerrancy of Scripture, Dr. O’Reilly writes:

The phrase “in all it affirms” is thus an important qualifier to “without error.” It is a constant reminder that we can’t just pull random passages from the Bible and make them say what we want them to say. We can’t assume we know exactly what they mean all on our own with little to no attention to the way things are framed. We can’t overlook the literary character of the text. In all it affirms reminds us that we are looking for what Scripture teaches as true. And that requires a lot from us. It requires interpretation. It requires humility. And it requires a faithful community of believers to whom our interpretations are accountable.

Quote of the Week

Memewhile

Who Shot First?

Zombie Voters?

I get it. It’s the old saw about dead people still being on voter registration rolls, and some people occasionally trying to vote under the name of a deceased person in order to stuff the ballot box. If we’re honest, there is more noise than substance here, with this meme being a stupid attempt by one party to make the other party look stupid.

If you look at it that way…

If we take into account that, without the Democrats’ continual headlong rush into identity politics and trying to satisfy every extreme fringe group on the left, Donald Trump would never have gained the traction he did with conservative voters, then there is definitely some truth in this statement. One could make the argument that it was the lurch to the left that caused the counter-lurch toward Trump (for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction). Oh, for the days when politics was a battle between two slightly different groups of centrists.

From Charismatic Cheetah on Facebook:

This was accompanied by the following description, which explains what the terms in each side of the image refer to:

Neo Cessationism: the cessationism of John MacArthur, Justin Peters, and others that essentially denies all miracles in practice, even if they claim they still happen in theory.

Hyper Charismaticism: Bethel, Kenneth Copeland, Benny Hinn. It’s all about manifestations of the Spirit, often leading to a form of Christian witchcraft.

One is neat and tidy, carefully curated, contained.

The other is loose and messy, all over the place.

But the essence of them is the same: bad, stinky theology.

Let Me Fix This for You

How about this instead?

God loves you so much, because you were made in His image and likeness, that He utterly despises what sin is doing to you, enslaving you and leading you to destruction. He offers freedom from that slavery, if only you will stop holding on to what is killing you and give your allegiance to His Son, Jesus Christ.

The Christian Post has this article; America Magazine reports on it; New York Times columnist David French wrote about it.

As French’s column reports,

The Billy Graham Center Research Institute at Wheaton College in Illinois recently released polling data showing that almost half — 48 percent — of Gen Z adults surveyed said that Christians’ support for Trump made them less likely to want to attend church, at least to some degree.

There have been lots of hot takes online, especially in social media spaces. I’m not going to dive in to a lot of opining and analysis myself, but wanted to offer readers and friends a few resources I found constructive in the conversation around this report.

Church Politics

Over on the Church Politics podcast, attorney Justin Giboney and pastor Christopher Butler have a conservation about the study.

Justin pushes back on Allie Beth Stuckey’s claim that it is all a misunderstanding, that if anyone thinks many in the church are simply being apologists for Trump, then they’re getting it wrong. While it is certainly true that not every single person in the church who voted for Trump is acting as an apologist for him, there are enough who are doing so, whether actively defending him against legitimate critiques or simply refusing to be vocal about where he is wrong in his words, policies, and actions. When professing Christians defend Trump’s denigrating speech against image bearers, and refuse to call him out on it, how is that not equivalent to being an apologist for the man? While White evangelicals may not be in love with Trump, when they hate the left so much that they give him a pass (because—it seems—power is more important than principles), hat cannot help but cause a lack of trust and a lack of credibility.

Justin also mentions that, in his view, someone saying they are more likely to stay away from church because of the political views of other church members is a sign of a lack of spiritual maturity. We must keep in mind that the survey interviewed young adults ages 18-28. These are individuals who are still maturing in every aspect of life. Many 18-year-olds still have no idea what they want to do with their lives vocationally; they won’t declare a major (if they go to college) for two more years in many cases. I remember reading a couple of decades ago that an individual’s personality doesn’t really solidify until around age 25 (which has been cited as one possible factor in the higher rate of divorce among couples who married when one or both individuals were under 25 than when both were older—the husband or wife can literally be a different person within a few years’ time).

I would also think that many of these young adults eschewing church attendance because of overpoliticization in the church may have an immature faith because they’re relatively new believers. It may take a new believer five years, ten years, or longer to naturally mature to the point they will be willing to “tuff it out” and keep attending no matter what. Others may be mature enough in their faith to spot the hypocrisy of many in the church around partisan politics, but they’re having trouble finding a church that aligns with their (possibly very conservative) theological views that hasn’t also drunk the MAGA Kool-Aid.

Now, can there be misunderstandings, as Stuckey categorizes this? Certainly. I remember when my oldest daughter (Gen Z, born in 1999) was in college. It was a year or two before COVID (she graduated high school and started college in 2018). She was concerned that that lead pastor at our church “followed” Donald Trump on Twitter (this was before the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the capitol and Trump’s subsequent banishment from that platform, before Elon Musk bought all the shares of stock). I pointed out that our pastor would follow whoever was currently in the White House on social media, as as to be informed what that person was saying. That alleviated her concerns. If the pastors at our church were vocally promoting or defending him from the pulpit or in their own social media posts, that would be another matter entirely.

Two Pastors Look at the Issue

On the Esau McCaulley podcast, Dr. McCaulley (a professor and local church pastor), pastor Sharon Hodde Miller, and producer Mike chime in on report.

Esau says:

If you say, “Hey, we’re going to support this person at eighty percent over the course of three elections,” and then a lot of the rhetoric that surrounds the support of this president is not this lament, but a whole-hearted embrace, and then to see the church beginning to reflect the personality of this person—the idea that no one’s going to see that and have some questions about it, when the person then goes and says sexist and all these other things—what I’m saying is, the people who find issue here are not crazy; they’re saying, “Hey, this person says this about immigrants. This person says this about women. If you listen to the things that he said at the White House press dinner.” People see this and go, “How can you support this?” I’m not saying that Christians can’t concoct an argument. I’m saying that people don’t find that argument persuasive. We’ve heard it, right? And I think the part that’s frustrating to me is, at a certain point you have to look at the situation at hand. Because what I see is, “Oh, we want to talk about how bad Biden was.” And there’s always this constant relitigation of the past as a way of deflecting from the present. So I think that the idea that people would see this and say, “Hey, I want nothing to do with this,” I think it’s true.

Dr. McCaulley then goes on to talk about how there is not a necessary one-to-one correspondence between churches vocally supporting Trump and every single Gen Z person who won’t attend church. Even if churches stayed completely silent on specific candidates, not every Gen Z’er who has left the church would come back. But it cannot be dismissed as a legitimate factor for some of them either. It can’t all be chalked up to people simply wanting a church to mirror them in every opinion and life choice.

A Substack Article

Fellow Substack author Scott Bessenecker writes:

Of course, the political leanings of Christians and churches are varied, and plenty of Christians oppose Trump. Also, some of the 18–28-year-olds surveyed would not attend church regardless of how they perceive church politics. But the reality is that a significant segment of American Christianity has been very public about their devotion to Donald Trump – praying over a 22-foot gold statue of him, or prominent preachers who laud Trump as God’s anointed. Then there is Trump, himself, who reinforces this alliance between his presidency and the church. A part of the church has wed itself to Trump and this has soured the view some young people have of the church.

So the problem is real, not imaginary as Stuckey would have her audience believe. And many of those vocally defending President Trump seem oblivious to the damage being done to the church’s witness when they argue that policy is more important than character, especially when one of the major thrusts of the New Testament is about the development of Christian character—being conformed to the image of Christ. Christian leaders, sadly, not only excuse the poor character of their favored politician, but can tend to start emulating that poor character as well.

The problem in my estimation is not that Christians support various political policies, though I will note that some Christian traditions eschew nearly all forms of involvement in state matters including voting or serving in the military or police force. It’s that when church leaders begin getting into bed with Presidents, there’s an attempt to serve two masters, each party believing they can exploit the relationship to their advantage. It will almost always become a win for the state and a loss for the church.

In what seems to me to address Giboney’s concern about spiritual maturity, Bessenecker says:

Many in the 18-28 age range have not yet become jaded. There is still a belief in idealism that hasn’t been spoiled. I see in the history of the church men and women in that age group who create idealistic versions of the faith whenever the church has become intoxicated by the power of empire. St. Francis and St. Clare were in this age range when they began their orders. Ignatius of Loyola and his companions were around this age when they started grasping for a more authentic Christian spirituality, eventually forming the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). The same is true about the founding of most monastic movements; they were borne of the spiritual discontent of young people.

These young people are still naive enough to believe that Jesus meant what He said, and that it will be God’s power, not political force, that will protect believers when they put God’s ways over the ways of empire.

And like the monastic saints of old, attempts at a more authentic Christian spirituality may offend the Christian sensibilities of those of us who’ve been around a while. Some of us have become encrusted with a jaded practicality—you have to work with political leaders to get stuff done, don’t you? And some of us have resigned ourselves to the need for wealth—you need money to grow a movement, don’t you? But how about we suspend our cynicism of idealistic youth and unlearn the ways of empire.

Everything Scott says in his article seems to fit perfectly with a book I just finished reading, Kingdom Over Empire: Recovering the Gospel from Political Captivity by pastor Brian Drinkwine. Drinkwine eloquently puts into words so very much of what I, as a 57-year-old believer with 54 years in the faith, have felt over the past decade or so.

And the Lord answered me, and said, Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it. (Habakkuk 2:2, KJV)

And it’s usually quoted from the KJV or a translation with similar wording, because that word “vision” is key. In my 57 years of life experience, this verse is used much, much more frequently in self-help teachings on achieving your goals, having success in business, or making your dreams (vision) become a reality, than it is in actual study of the writings of this biblical prophet.

The idea of applying this verse as a self-help or personal growth principle is so pervasive, that when I typed “write the vision and make it plain” into Google’s search engine, the AI summary it came back with said this:

"Write the vision and make it plain" is a timeless principle of clarity and focus, originating from the biblical verse Habakkuk 2:2. It means taking vague ideas or dreams out of your head, putting them into words, and breaking them down so clearly that anyone reading them can immediately understand and take action.

Since AI models are trained in material that is available on the internet, that kind of tells us that this usage of this verse predominates in what is publicly available online.

Looking further at Google’s AI response, we see what has become the common usage of this verse in Christian small groups and Bible studies:

Transforming your thoughts into a concrete roadmap involves three steps:

1. Define the “Why” and the “What”

• The Destination: Write down exactly what your end goal looks like. Be specific. Instead of “I want to get healthy,” write, “I will run a 5K and eat whole foods 6 days a week.”

• The Purpose: Note why this vision matters to you. Your “why” will provide motivation when you face obstacles.

2. Make it Plain and Visible

• Keep it short: Condense your vision into a simple statement or a few core bullet points.

• Keep it visible: Write it on a physical card, on a sticky note on your bathroom mirror, or as the background of your phone. Seeing it daily reinforces your focus.

3. Break it Down to Run

• Set milestones: Divide your big vision into small, actionable steps.

• Take action: A vision is just an imagination until you move toward it. Set deadlines for your first few steps to build momentum.

Now, is writing down your goals and plans a valid idea? Certainly. Writing something down helps you to solidify your thoughts and ideas. When you have to put something into written language, you are pushed to clarify it, hash out the details, and organize it logically. I have a lot of thought pieces I have written in drafts here on Substack that have never actually been published. But taking the time to write them out helped me to work through things methodically, gather supporting references, and even find gaps or contradictions in my thinking. In business, it is essential to write out a detailed business plan to make sure all the bases have been covered and as many contingencies as possible considered. A carefully written mission statement or list of core values helps keep a business or organization focused.

Even writing down our prayer requests in a prayer journal can be beneficial, allowing us to look back and see how many of our petitions God has answered over the months and years, which both reminds us to give thanks for the responses He has already given (something we might overlook if we don’t have a visual reminder of what we asked for in the first place) and builds our faith to believe He will answer again in the future.

But that’s not what Habakkuk 2:2 is actually about. And there’s a problem when we reach for a Bible verse to baptize an idea—even a good idea that can benefit our lives—as a “biblical principal,” while at the same moment we ignore the context of the passage, both literarily and historically/culturally.

Linguistic note: “Write down the revelation,” as the New International Version and other modern translations phrase it, just doesn’t work with the whole “personal vision for your life/family/business” take. But using the translation “revelation” does seem to better clue the English reader in that this is not about a personal vision for one’s future, but a divinely revealed message from God, a point we will see more clearly below.

What Does the Text Say?

Let’s look at the literary context of Habakkuk 2:2—the verses coming before and after that one sentence that is so popular. The first thing we notice in this verse is that it begins with, “The Lord answered me.” Which means this sentence is part of a longer conversation between the prophet and God. So what had the prophet said that prompted the Lord to answer with these words?

Going back to the first chapter of Habakkuk, we find the prophet crying out to God. Verses 2-4 contain Habakkuk’s first complaint (all Scripture quotes hereafter are from the NIV):

² How long, Lord, must I call for help,
but you do not listen?
Or cry out to you, “Violence!”
but you do not save?
³ Why do you make me look at injustice?
Why do you tolerate wrongdoing?
Destruction and violence are before me;
there is strife, and conflict abounds.
⁴ Therefore the law is paralyzed,
and justice never prevails.
The wicked hem in the righteous,
so that justice is perverted.

Habakkuk is grieved over all the evil and injustice he sees around him in the southern kingdom of Judah. Corruption and oppression abound. The legal system is not doing anything to punish evildoers. The prophet has been calling out to God for some time, asking YHWH to do something to right the wrongs and balance the scales of justice. But it seems like God is either unaware, doesn’t care, or is powerless to stop the rampant evil.

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God answers Habakkuk in verses 5-11, telling Habakkuk that He is about to do something the prophet never would have seen coming, even if he were informed about all the details ahead of time. God is raising up the Babylonian Empire—a “ruthless and impetuous people” (Hab. 1:6)—to come in and clean house in Judah. The Babylonians are a “feared and dreaded people” and don’t submit to any external law (v. 7). Like an eagle swooping in to capture and devour its prey, they come with one intention: violence (vv. 8-9). Babylon is a “guilty people, whose own strength is their god” (v. 11). To sum it up, they’re really bad dudes.

The prophet seems somewhat relieved that God is finally going to do something about the evil and injustice, saying, “You, Lord, have appointed them to execute judgment; you, my Rock, have ordained them to punish” (v. 12). But Habakkuk also seems to have questions. God’s eyes are too pure to look on evil, and He cannot tolerate wrongdoing (v. 13), so why in the world would He use a lawless nation to punish lawless Judah? Why would a holy and righteous God use a pagan nation that doesn’t even know Him—and is arguably more ruthless and wicked that Judah’s own corrupt rulers—to be the instrument of judgment on His chosen people?2 Can’t God find a nation with some semblance of moral integrity to bring the judgment? That would seem much more appropriate, with good (or at the least, halfway decent) people triumphing over evil people. But an even more wicked nation as the hammer of justice? That simply doesn’t seem right to Habakkuk.

But even with all these questions, Habakkuk looks to God for the answers. The first verse of chapter two closes out the prophet’s second complaint thusly:

I will stand at my watch
and station myself on the ramparts;
I will look to see what he will say to me,
and what answer I am to give to this complaint.

Habakkuk has said what he needs to say; he has put the question to God, and now he will wait for God to answer. Even though he doesn’t understand it all so far, he still trusts that God will respond and make it clear.

The Context After

That brings us up to the verse at the center of this study. But verse 2 is only the first small bit of God’s second reply to Habakkuk. Let’s look at the entire response from the Lord before we discuss things further.

² Then the Lord replied:

“Write down the revelation
and make it plain on tablets
so that a herald may run with it.
³ For the revelation awaits an appointed time;
it speaks of the end
and will not prove false.
Though it linger, wait for it;
it will certainly come
and will not delay.

⁴ “See, the enemy is puffed up;
his desires are not upright—
but the righteous person will live by his faithfulness—
⁵ indeed, wine betrays him;
he is arrogant and never at rest.
Because he is as greedy as the grave
and like death is never satisfied,
he gathers to himself all the nations
and takes captive all the peoples.

⁶ “Will not all of them taunt him with ridicule and scorn, saying,

“‘Woe to him who piles up stolen goods
and makes himself wealthy by extortion!
How long must this go on?’
⁷ Will not your creditors suddenly arise?
Will they not wake up and make you tremble?
Then you will become their prey.
⁸ Because you have plundered many nations,
the peoples who are left will plunder you.
For you have shed human blood;
you have destroyed lands and cities and everyone in them.

⁹ “Woe to him who builds his house by unjust gain,
setting his nest on high
to escape the clutches of ruin!
¹⁰ You have plotted the ruin of many peoples,
shaming your own house and forfeiting your life.
¹¹ The stones of the wall will cry out,
and the beams of the woodwork will echo it.

¹² “Woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed
and establishes a town by injustice!
¹³ Has not the Lord Almighty determined
that the people’s labor is only fuel for the fire,
that the nations exhaust themselves for nothing?
¹⁴ For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.

¹⁵ “Woe to him who gives drink to his neighbors,
pouring it from the wineskin till they are drunk,
so that he can gaze on their naked bodies!
¹⁶ You will be filled with shame instead of glory.
Now it is your turn! Drink and let your nakedness be exposed!
The cup from the Lord’s right hand is coming around to you,
and disgrace will cover your glory.
¹⁷ The violence you have done to Lebanon will overwhelm you,
and your destruction of animals will terrify you.
For you have shed human blood;
you have destroyed lands and cities and everyone in them.

¹⁸ “Of what value is an idol carved by a craftsman?
Or an image that teaches lies?
For the one who makes it trusts in his own creation;
he makes idols that cannot speak.
¹⁹ Woe to him who says to wood, ‘Come to life!’
Or to lifeless stone, ‘Wake up!’
Can it give guidance?
It is covered with gold and silver;
there is no breath in it.”

As the reader can see, the message from God is much longer than simply verse 2 (where almost everyone who uses this verse stops quoting). Verses 2-3 are only instructions on how the message from the Lord is to be handled. The actual message begins in verse 4.3 Again, it must be noted that this message or revelation is not a personal vision for one’s own life, but a declaration of what God will do in regard to nations and people groups that are overrun with sin, evil, and corruption.

And the point of writing down the revelation is not to keep an individual focused and on track in achieving their dreams and fulfilling a personal vision for life or business. Writing the visions down is, rather, so that “it may remain permanently on record, and that, when it comes to pass, people may believe in the prophet’s inspiration.”4 The vision was to be written on tablets (likely stone, or clay that would be baked and hardened), making the message durable (unlike something written on a papyrus or parchment scroll, which would deteriorate more quickly, or could be easily burned; see Jeremiah chapter 36). The fulfillment of the prophetic vision would not be immediate; it “awaits an appointed time” (v. 4). It would take some time to come to pass (“though it linger,” v. 3)5, possibly even until after the death of the prophet. Thus, it needed to be written down, clearly and legibly, in a fixed form so that when it did come to pass, it would be obvious that the fulfillment corresponded precisely to the prophetic word, even if Habakkuk were no longer alive to remind people of what he had prophesied.

The instruction to make the message plain, or write is clearly, was not what the self-help gurus would have us think about having a detailed plan. That would be making it plain for the writer himself, as a memory aid, or a way to stay focused. Rather, making the message plain and clear was for the benefit of others who would see and read it, so that they would understand it correctly and not be misled by vague language.

The divine message itself—the “vision” or “revelation”—starts out with God saying that yes, the coming enemy is prideful and does not have pure motives (agreeing with Habakkuk’s assessment of Babylon). The Babylonians seek conquest and plunder, not the restoration of justice. But the righteous person will live by his faithfulness: allegiance to YHWH and His instruction (torah) and ways.6 Just because things appear to be going from bad (corrupt Judahite officials) to worse (being dominated by a pagan empire) is no excuse to abandon God, thinking that He has somehow abandoned the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Those who remain faithful to God will live; the remnant will be preserved.

But the Babylonians, even though they are being used as God’s instrument of judgment, will not ultimately get away with the evil born of arrogance and greed that they have perpetrated all over the Fertile Crescent: conquering and taking captive nation after nation, committing extortion, shedding blood, wiping out civilizations. When the time comes, God will also judge them and make them pay for their own evil, with other nations coming to do to them the same things they have done to others. What the Babylonians have done to increase their own glory will end up bring them to shame. The bare fact that God uses someone to carry out His will in bringing judgment doesn’t mean God puts his stamp of approval on that person or group. If they are evil and rebellious, they will face the consequences sooner or later, because God is a God of justice. And when God finally executes justice, “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (v. 14).

Curiously, verses 18 and 19 appear to be a possible foreshadowing of the golden image Nebuchadnezzar will erect on the plain of Dura in Daniel chapter 3 and the Babylonian king’s hubris in Daniel 4:29-30 (that’s something I just noticed while preparing this article). Even if that is not in view as a sub-prophecy here, what is clearly present is the fact that the idols of pagan Babylon will be of no help to them when God’s judgment falls.

All Truth is God’s Truth

As Saint Augustine of Hippo pointed out, something doesn’t have to be found in Scripture to be true. Since God is Truth and the source of all that is true, all truth ultimately flows from him. Something can be true without being “biblical” in the sense that it is found, either directly or by implication, in the text of Scripture, as long as it doesn’t contradict or violate the Word of God.

The problem, for me at least, comes when tips and procedures that help a person stay focused on and moving toward noble goals are presented as part of a Bible study, when they are really more suited to a self-help book. Simply grabbing a verse from the Bible (while totally ignoring the context from which it is unceremoniously ripped) and slapping it on a concept or idea doesn’t somehow sanctify it. If anything, such hermeneutical malpractice lessens the reliability of what is being taught, turning Scripture into simply a tool for supporting a point. If something is actually true, then it is true, and you don’t need to search for a Bible verse to attach to the idea to make it somehow more true or holy.

What do you think about Bible verses being used to baptize self-help teachings? Let me know int he comments.

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On one side are those who talk about “heritage Americans”—those whose family history here goes back generations. I would probably be considered a “heritage American” by proponents of that view. I’m a typical white Anglo-Saxon Protestant. On my mother’s side, I’m a McDonald, so I have Scottish ancestry. We don’t have records of when the McDonald’s from whom we descend came over from the land of castles, tartans, and mythical lake creatures, but we have records of the Scott family (my grandmother McDonald’s ancestry) tracing back to the Carolinas in the mid-1800s. On my father’s side, great-grandfather Hanning and his wife came over from the Dutch-German border region in the early 1900s. So I have a solid European heritage on both sides of the family tree that would most likely put me in the “heritage American” group.

There are others who hold that being an American is all about holding to the ideals expressed in our founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Part of the naturalization process, by which immigrants become citizens of the United States (with all the rights and privileges pertaining thereto), includes swearing an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution. A person who was born somewhere else, who does not have the “blood and soil” heritage of American ancestry, can become an American by ascribing to our governing documents (in addition to other procedural requirements).

America has never been united by blood or birth or soil. We are bound by ideals that move us beyond our backgrounds, lift us above our interests and teach us what it means to be citizens. Every child must be taught these principles. Every citizen must uphold them. And every immigrant, by embracing these ideals, makes our country more, not less, American.1

So what do we do with people whose families have been here for generations—whose ancestors served in our military and fought for the country—but who hold to political or economic ideas that many consider at odds with what has traditionally been our economic system? If being American is about lineage (and ethnicity), those progressive/liberal individuals would clearly be “real Americans” because of their bloodline.

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As Scot McKnight observes in an article about Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right, for many loud voices in American politics,

Democrats and Progressives and Social Democrats are not truly Americans. Pluralism, tolerance, and equality are not the way forward.

The issue is that many of the same people advocating for the idea of “heritage Americans” quickly shift to the framework of “America” being a set of ideas when their political opponents—who meet their standard for multi-generational American ancestry—become inconvenient for that working definition. It is no longer enough to have the pedigree; one must also ascribe to certain principles and ideas.

Yet at the same time, they would deny the possibility that immigrants who love the ideas at the core of our republic’s founding documents could ever be “true Americans” due to their ethnic background or national origin, even though a great many of them came to our shores precisely because they believe that those ideals are the best way for a nation to be governed. They left places that were less free because they dreamt of sharing in the freedoms enjoyed by native-born citizens. Yet many would deny them that opportunity, even though it is enjoyed by native-born “heritage” Americans who may not believe in and defend those ideals. (For a possible case study, see this report about the latest Presidential 1776 Award contest, a competition based on knowledge of U.S. civics, where it appears the son of Indian Sikh immigrants—and naturalized citizens—was apparently denied his rightful spot in the top 3 competitors.)

All of this seems to point to a lot of the political wrangling and maneuvering being more about whether or not someone else is “like us” in every way than it is about who truly believes in the American experiment.

Update

After this article was published, a couple of news reports came across my radar indicating that conservative Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch has also spoke out against the idea of the United States being founded centered on one religion or ethnicity. An article from The Hill reports:

“And we were never supposed to be a nation that was about one race or one religion, it was about those ideas,” he added, referring to America’s founding principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. “And those things are perfect ideas that speak to every human heart and that unite us all.”

A piece at Huffpost also reports on the Gorsuch interview.

Recommendation Roundup

Things that grabbed my attention and made me think.

Just a friendly reminder (which seems to be required these days) that my referring to something someone else has written does not entail wholesale endorsement of everything that individual may think, say, or write. It simply means that I found the particular thought of theirs I am sharing to be helpful or thought-provoking.

How to Know What the Bible Means

Joel B. Green writes about how, while the formal hermeneutical process is helpful, it is not guaranteed to give us the meaning of the text.

Historical study can illumine the world within which a biblical text was produced. It can help us see how a text spoke out of and/or against its cultural moment. It can help us resist the temptation to domesticate Scripture by reading our own assumptions into it. These are genuine goods.

But historical study alone cannot tell us whether Jesus of Nazareth is Lord and Christ. It cannot tell us whether “Christ died for our sins.” It cannot adjudicate whether the resurrection inaugurated a new era in the purposes of God. It cannot speak to the truth-claims that are most central to the biblical witness. And this means that the meaning, truth, and authority of Scripture cannot be reduced to their dependence on—and they cannot be held hostage to—modernist notions of historical verifiability.

As I have often told people, while a good hermeneutical process and knowledge of the historic, cultural, and other contexts can help us to eliminate bad interpretations, they do not guarantee arrival at the “one correct” interpretation.

A Polyglot Kingdom

Heather Weber, who teaches students for whom English is a second language, writes:

If you’ve only ever spoken one language in your whole life, the language you speak is the language of home and heart, primally secured to your identity in the world. Such is often true for a “first” language, the one that is learned in infancy and at a breast, in growing attachment to (with some exceptions) our mother. The first language is the language of our roots, our origin, identity, family, and name.

God, in God’s infinite wisdom, desires to meet each one of us there, in the language of heart and home. And so God preserves multilingualism, never requiring anyone to learn a new language in order to respond to the good news that God the Son came down to us in the particularity of the Aramaic-speaking Jesus of Nazareth—who shared Godself with Jewish tax collectors, Roman officials, and a Samaritan woman with five husbands to her name.

Calling and Vocation

Nancy Raatz looks at some of the confusion around “calling” in the Evangelical church, and how many times we have overcomplicated the simple invitation of Jesus to follow Him:

The command is simple. “Come, follow me.” The example we see in Scripture is to leave the life we know and follow Jesus. That is his call to us. It doesn’t necessarily mean going abroad or becoming a pastor. How we do that varies, and it may change throughout our lives.

When “Literal” Isn’t a Compliment

New Testament scholar Joel B. Green discusses why a “literal” translation isn’t necessarily a good thing.

Let’s start with a single Greek word: σάρξ (sarx), usually “Englished” (as we used to say) as “flesh.” Suppose we took seriously the intuition that a faithful translation renders a word the same way wherever it appears—one word, one gloss, no slipping around. That’s because (we assume) a word “literally” means xyz. Think of this as the concordance principle. It sounds rigorous. It sounds like maintaining strict faithfulness to the text.

Well, let’s see! The same σάρξ (sarx) has to make sense of John’s “the Word became flesh” (John 1:14) and Paul’s “the mind set on the flesh is hostile to God” (Rom 8:7). That is, if we hold to the concordance principle, then we must choose one meaning for both texts. If σάρξ (sarx) refers to the sphere of rebellion against God—as in Romans 8—then John 1:14 announces that the Word became the sphere of rebellion against God. Or, if we start with John, then we learn that the mind set on the incarnate Word is hostile to God. Either way, the so-called literal translation, the so-called faithful rendering, doesn’t really work.

Nationalism and Supremacy

Matthew D. Taylor looks at the relationship between Christian nationalists and Christian supremacists, and how they are easy prey for would-be tyrants.

Politically today, Christian supremacists are the shock troops detonating democracy for the sake of building new authoritarian states. They are magnetized to dictatorial leaders because they need a path to power and they know their agenda is unpopular and would almost certainly never be voted in freely by a majority in a functioning democracy. Christian supremacists are closely tied to Christian nationalists—those who believe that their nation is especially Christian—and often work shoulder to shoulder with them. But Christian supremacy is a global domination scheme. It aims for nothing less than a whole-world conquest by Christianity.

Patriot or Nationalist?

If you’re wondering what the difference is, you should listen to this episode of the Saving Elephants podcast with guest John Wilsey.

Early in the interview, Wilsey points out that nationalism as we know it today is basically a result of the Napoleonic wars.

Wilsey is the author of the recent book God and Country: Upholding Faith, History, and National Identity, which I plan on adding to my library.

Whom to Follow

There are lots of Substacks you can follow. Too many to keep up with, honestly. So feel free to take or leave my recommendations (which, admittedly, will be more on the Bible nerd side most of the time). And thanks again for following me!

Check out the work of Rodolfo Galvan Estrada III. Rudy is a fellow A/G Pentecostal scholar, teaching New Testament at Vanguard University.

Dr. Estrada is also the author of The Spirit and Race in John’s Gospel: Belonging and the People of God.

Quote of the Week

Memewhile

Are you sure you meant to use this?

I don’t have the time to do the research and the math based on population levels over the history of the human race on the earth. But 99.9% of the billions of people who lived on earth prior to 2001 did not hold to the philosophies and ideologies that are associated with the far right today (especially when you look at some of the major events of the 20th century).

This is nothing but an appeal to populism in an attempt to excuse and legitimate far-right ideologies that would actually be rejected by the ancient Hebrews, Christians in the Early Church, and people in the European Enlightenment/Renaissance. It’s a deflection that refuses to look at specific views and policy proposals and evaluate them on their merits (and whether they are compatible with Christian ethics).

Holy Out of Context, Batman!

When Paul said what he did in Galatians 1, he wasn’t addressing people of the pagan Greco-Roman religions that surrounded the Galatian believers. Paul was dealing with Jewish believers in Jesus as the Messiah who wanted to insist that gentile Christians needed to fully convert to Judaism as formal proselytes (including men being circumcised) in order to receive the full benefits of salvation, because in their minds, one had to be Jewish to be saved.

If we actually look at the life and preaching of Paul, we see that when he was sharing the good news of Jesus with people who lacked a Jewish background and understanding of things (a Jewish worldview, one might say), he respectfully looked for points of connection and commonality where the followers of other religions understood a kernel of truth (based on general revelation discernible in the created order) that he could use to open up the story of Jesus to them. It wasn’t his custom to ride into town and set up a protest in front of the temple of Athena or Aphrodite.

Paul actually told the church in Rome, which was surrounded by idolatry and emperor worship, to “give everyone what you owe them…if respect, then respect” (Rom. 13:7). And the Apostle Peter told Christians to show proper respect to everyone (even pagan rulers, 1 Pet. 2:17), and admonished his readers to be respectful when answering non-believers (1 Pet. 3:15).

Context, context, context.

And the whole counsel of Scripture.

At the risk of being accused of “both-sidesism”

Why are conservative Christians so quick to point out the principalities and powers behind some Democrat politicians and their policies, while refusing to admit that they have embraced politicians who follow the ways of the serpent/dragon themselves?

Mission Drift

Where is it in the Bible that the church needs to protect “the American way of life”?

This is a classic case of getting priorities mixed up, and losing sight of what we’re here for: making disciples of all nations. And the Church was doing that all over the world long before 1776. And if we’re honest, believers in Iran and China are doing a better job of forming true believers who have been forged in the fires of adversity.

See Previous Comments Above

There is a difference between respectfully discussing (and even critiquing) another religion or system of belief, in an attempt to establish a conversation where the gospel of Christ can be shared, and embracing that religion and worshiping its deities.

And based on my experience and observation, some of the people sharing this meme online should take a minute and check their own hearts for idols. They’re definitely there, but instead of being named Ba’al or Ashtoreth, they are known as Political Dominance, Greed, and Moral Superiority. And people have them on just as high a shelf as Jesus, it seems at times.

Everyone should read Greg Beale’s We Become What We Worship: A Biblical Theology of Idolatry.

Well, this week seems to have produced more social media writings and videos about the film than there were obstacles faced by Odysseus himself.

I’m not really going to get into any more commentary here, or even necessarily sharing key quotes from the articles I’m posting links to. I just wanted to make a sort of index page to help others find some of the articles and videos I found insightful.

Rodolfo Galván Estrada III

Dr. Estrada looks at the encounter with the cyclops through the eyes of migrants seeking shelter and provisions.

Rodolfo’s Substack

I Live Among the Cyclopes

Nothing is more memorable from Homer’s Odyssey than the scene when Odysseus and his companions arrive on an island inhabited by the Cyclops. When I watched this episode unfold in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey (2026), I eagerly anticipated the action, conniving wittiness, and violent bloodshed that would follow. I was curious to see how Nolan would rei…

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a month ago · 1 like · Rodolfo Galvan Estrada III

Russell Moore

Moore writes on why Nolan’s adaption haunts us at our moment in history.

Also at Christianity Today, Paul Marchbanks writes about how Nolan’s film blesses the peacemakers.

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Nijay Gupta and Joseph Dodson

In my earlier article about reactions to the film I shared separate reflections from these two scholars. Here, they join forces in a couple of video discussions about aspects of both the film and Homer’s original work. It’s a dynamic duo of two guys who study the Greco-Roman context of the New Testament.

Part 1

Engaging Scripture (with Dr. Nijay K. Gupta)

Nolan's Odyssey: Nijay and Joey Go to the Movies!

This was so fun! Dr. Joseph Dodson (Denver Seminary) and I (Nijay, Northern Seminary) break down Nolan’s film as two Nolan fans, biblical scholars, and lovers of Classical Greek literature. I still h…

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a month ago · 13 likes · 1 comment · Nijay K. Gupta

Part 2

Engaging Scripture (with Dr. Nijay K. Gupta)

Nolan Can't Find His Way Home(r)

*This is PART 2…

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a month ago · 4 likes · Nijay K. Gupta

Nijay also has an article on his Substack published after the one I linked to on Monday.

Engaging Scripture (with Dr. Nijay K. Gupta)

The Odyssey and the World of the New Testament (PART 1)

PART 1 Confession: before last week, I hadn’t read Homer’s Odyssey for over 30 years. But to prepare for watching Nolan’s film, I spent a few days reading the Wilson translation and I thoroughly enjoy…

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a month ago · 41 likes · 14 comments · Nijay K. Gupta

And here is Nijay’s review of the film.

Engaging Scripture (with Dr. Nijay K. Gupta)

My Review of Nolan's The Odyssey

Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey Lives Up to the Hype and Is a Cinematic Masterpiece, But This Adaptation Fails to Capture the Essence of Homer’s Epic…

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a month ago · 2 likes · Nijay K. Gupta

Dr. Gupta also makes an appearance on Skye Jethani’s SkyePod discussing the epic, particularly the religion of the Greeks, multiple deities, and how that relates to understanding the context of the early church in the first century.

Holy Post Media

The Odyssey & the Bible with Nijay Gupta

Christopher Nolan’s take on Homer’s epic “The Odyssey” is the biggest film in the world right now. Holy Post Pundit and New Testament scholar, Nijay Gupta, joins Skye to talk about what it tells us about pagan religion in the ancient world. He explains how the faith taught by the Apostles contradicted the kind of idolatry and superstition described in …

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a month ago · 2 likes · Holy Post Media and Skye Jethani

And Joey published this piece on his Substack.

Surprised by *JOeY*

Jesus, The Odyssey, Homer and Heracles (Hercules)

Several years ago, I got to walk around Ancient Troy. Although I'm a Bible student, I have always been a “wannabe” classicist. So, that day was a red-letter day for me. I have been interested in the Iliad and the Odyssey ever since Mr. Gilmer, my 9th-grade history teacher, made a passing comment that “Homer was the Old Testament of the Greeks.” Of the t…

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a month ago · 2 likes · Surprised by *JOeY*

Esau McCaulley

Dr. McCaulley and crew discussed the movie on his podcast.

Esau also published an article looking at the epic.

Holy Post Media

Odysseus Couldn't Outrun His Conscience. Neither Should We.

I saw Christopher Nolan’s newest blockbuster, The Odyssey, twice in its opening weekend. I didn’t expect the classic tale of gods, monsters, and battles to confront me with the long-term implications of the Trump presidency, immigration policies, and the realities of Black parenting, but Homer’s epic stands the test of time for a reason. As he navigates…

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a month ago · 93 likes · 13 comments · Holy Post Media and Esau McCaulley

John Dickson

The Australian professor who teaches at Wheaton College in the U.S. shared some thoughts on his Facebook page.

Caleb Louden

Caleb, writing at Firebrand, looks at the film’s take on societal sin and longing for home.

Mere Orthodoxy

Jake Adkins writes on “Remythologizing the Myths: Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey and the Fractures in a Secular Age.”

And more?

Feel free to leave a comment with a link to any other good theological/philosophical takes on The Odyssey, whether Nolan’s cinematic version of Homer’s original epic.

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They say that those who fail to learn from history are destined to repeat it. This passage I read the other day is a great example of that maxim at work.

1 Kings 11:29-33 says:

About that time Jeroboam was going out of Jerusalem, and Ahijah the prophet of Shiloh met him on the way, wearing a new cloak. The two of them were alone out in the country, and Ahijah took hold of the new cloak he was wearing and tore it into twelve pieces. Then he said to Jeroboam, “Take ten pieces for yourself, for this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘See, I am going to tear the kingdom out of Solomon’s hand and give you ten tribes. But for the sake of my servant David and the city of Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, he will have one tribe. I will do this because they have forsaken me and worshiped Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, Chemosh the god of the Moabites, and Molek the god of the Ammonites, and have not walked in obedience to me, nor done what is right in my eyes, nor kept my decrees and laws as David, Solomon’s father, did.’”

—‭‭1 Kings‬ ‭11‬:‭29‬-‭33‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Any time there’s a prophet and a torn cloak, you know it can’t be good (see 1 Samuel 15, particularly verses 27-28).

Ahijah tells Jeroboam in very specific terms why the kingdom is being divided and the bulk of it taken away from David’s descendants: idolatry and unfaithfulness to YHWH, the Lord God of Israel.

But just a half-chapter later, we see that Jeroboam chose to ignore a key part of Ahijah’s message. One of the very first things Jeroboam does after the ten tribes break away from Solomon’s son Rehoboam is — you guessed it — set up idolatrous shrines at Bethel and Dan, erecting statues of a golden calf and saying of these graven images, “Here are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt” (the echoes of Exodus 32 couldn’t be any louder).

[Ironic side note: While searching for an image of a golden calf to use for this article, I came across an Etsy account selling Giclee art prints of the Israelites worshiping the golden calf at the base of Mt. Sinai. Which raises the question as to why someone would want to hang an art print of that scene in their home, office, or classroom.]

Now, it wasn’t as if Jeroboam was failing to remember the lessons of some obscure event in the nation’s history, buried in the distant past. When Ahijah told Jeroboam he would be king of the northern tribes, the prophet from Shiloh specifically gave the reasons why God was taking the united kingdom away from Solomon’s offspring: “I will do this because they have forsaken me and worshiped Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, Chemosh the god of the Moabites, and Molek the god of the Ammonites, and have not walked in obedience to me.”

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Maybe Jeroboam thought what he was doing wasn’t the same thing Solomon was guilty of. After all, he doesn’t directly lead the people of the northern tribes to worship the foreign deities Ashtoreth, Chemosh, and Molek. Rather, like Aaron in Exodus, he says that his golden calves represent YHWH, who brought Israel out of Egypt. So while he was violating the commandment against graven images, he wasn’t technically violating the commandment against worshiping other gods because, as he saw it, these calves were just representations of — visible stand-ins for — the one who had rescued Israel from slavery.

But the aberrant worship instituted by Jeroboam wasn’t restricted to the altars in front of the calves at Bethel and Dan. The king also built shrines on high places for people to worship at. He was fearful that if his subjects went to Jerusalem in the kingdom of Judah to worship YHWH at the temple, they might decide they wanted to go back to being ruled by Solomon’s son Rehoboam (1 Kings 12:27). He made it easy for the people to worship on their own terms, instead of following God’s instructions for proper worship.

In 1 Kings 14, the prophet Ahijah tells Jeroboam’s wife that the king’s son, who is ill, will not recover, but die. Speaking for YHWH, the man of God gives Jeroboam’s wife this message for the king:

I raised you up from among the people and appointed you ruler over my people Israel. I tore the kingdom away from the house of David and gave it to you, but you have not been like my servant David, who kept my commands and followed me with all his heart, doing only what was right in my eyes. You have done more evil than all who lived before you. You have made for yourself other gods, idols made of metal; you have aroused my anger and turned your back on me. (1 Kings 14: 7-9)

What Jeroboam may have thought of as not really a big deal, God saw as very serious. And it cost him the life of his son, as well as the future of his kingdom. While Jeroboam’s son, Nadab, did ascend to the northern throne upon Jeroboam’s death, he didn’t last long. After just one year on the throne, Nadab was struck down by Baasha during a military operation, and Baasha took control of the kingdom (1 Kings 15:27-28). The line of Jeroboam came to an end. [Maybe Jeroboam naming his kid Nadab wasn’t such a bright idea, considering what happened to an earlier Nadab in Leviticus 10.]

The rest of the tale of the northern kingdom of Israel goes from bad to worse. Not only are the people worshiping the golden calves at Bethel and Dan, and offering sacrifices on the high places, they begin to worship Ba’al and other foreign deities as well.

If only Jeroboam had paid better attention to the history lesson Ahijah had given him. Things might have gone a whole different direction.

I’m not really going to write my own review here, but rather provide links to videos and articles that hit my radar this weekend in the aftermath of the theatrical release.

My biggest gripe has nothing to do with the main feature, but with the previews. Normally previews/trailers for upcoming films are “approved for all audiences” and are careful to avoid the stronger profanities that often come in R-rated movies. There was a trailer for a forthcoming Tom Cruise feature that had more curse words in three minutes than I detected in the whole three hours of the Odyssey.

Cinemark, you can do better than that.

New Testament Theologist

My friend Nick Quient gives a brief late-night review of the film he recorded after getting home from a showing last Friday night. When Nick talks about the film being well-written, he know whereof he speaks, as his undergrad work at Biola was in screenwriting.

Nick mentions the theme of fate and free will, and I picked up on that as well, especially in the scene with the witch Circe, who turns Odysseus’ men into pigs as a reflection of the brute beast nature they have been exhibiting.

Odysseus tells Circe he will not let the gods determine what happens to his men, and Circe says it is not the will of the gods that is a problem, but what is inside his men themselves. That touches on the idea that "character is destiny." Of course, discussion of this topic can get into the debate over the idea of compatibilism (the idea that people are not libertarianly free and able to choose between many options, but free only to choose in alignment with their own nature and its desires). Is the character of a person itself a result of the person's free choices, or predetermined because the person was either chosen by God as part of the elect, or passed over/reprobated (and thus never able to freely choose the good)?

Dr. Joseph Dodson

Joey Dodson of Denver Theological Seminary is well-versed in studying parallel themes between the New Testament and the popular culture and philosophy of the Greco-Roman world at the time the New Testament was being written. In this piece, Joey examines how Homer’s description of Odysseus as “a man of twists and turns” can also be used to describe the Apostle Paul, who spent a lot of time at sea and was not unfamiliar with severe storms and shipwrecks himself. Just as Odysseus has to deal with the massive whirlpool Charybdis and the six-headed monster Scylla who lives in the rocky cliffs near the whirlpool, Paul faces a personified force of nature in Euroclydon (the “Northeaster” storm wind in Acts 27:14). When shipwrecked on Malta, Paul and his companions are treated with hospitality, a recurring theme in Nolan’s film.

As mentioned above, if Paul’s audience missed the Isaiah quote, an allusion to Sardanapalus’s tombstone or Homer’s lotus eaters might have struck them. But, if they somehow missed both, Paul left no stone unturned by quoting this slogan from Menander. To borrow from the Odysseus motif, it is as though the apostle reaches for all that’s part of him – Greek, Roman, and Jew – to take his audience beyond the bounds of human thought to knock sense into his congregation for living for fleshly pleasures rather than leaning into the hope of bodily resurrection. Knowing these sources also buttresses Paul’s larger argument, demonstrating how the chief pursuit of food, drink, and pleasure was not a pagan problem or a Jewish problem. Instead, it’s a people problem: transcending titles, tongues, and tribes.

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Geoff Holsclaw

Dr. Geoff Holsclaw wrote the following on Facebook:

The Odyssey: Civilization’s End and the Return of the Beasts; Or, Christianized but not yet Christian. Some have asked for my thoughts, so here they are (as a theologian-pastor).

Here are the preliminaries:

1) Yes, you should go see it. It is an excellent adaptation of Homer’s “The Odyssey”, well worth your time and money.

2) We must remember that “The Odyssey” is a foundational story of Western Civilization, but it is not a *product* of Western Civilization. The first epic of Western Civilization would probably be Dante’s trilogy (but I’m not going to fight about that). Nolan’s adaptation is a product within Western Civilization, which, yes, means it is Christianized. I will get to that below.

3) Regarding the actors, Robert Pattinson was delightful as a villain. Matt Damon and Anne Hathaway probably gave the performance of a lifetime. And Tom Holland held his own among the stars.

4) The shots and setting were majestic, along with the monsters, accomplishing the “elevated style” that befits an epic (give no mind to those who think “elevated style” is primarily about the words in a dialogue making it grandiose [Yes, Telemachus can call Odysseus “dad” without it being a violation because Homer wrote using the ordinary language of the time.]) What makes an epic an epic is the sweeping, if not cosmic, sense gathering all the experiences of “humanity” together. Nolan’s “Interstellar” is also an epic in this sense.

The Question of Nolan’s “The Odyssey”: Are we still civilized, or have we become beasts?

There are multiple moral tales (moralities) at play in Nolan’s The Odyssey (from here on, just “The Odyssey”, I’ll make reference to Homer’s version when comparisons are needed). There is the morality of respecting the gods and giving them the honor due them. Also connected to the gods, there is the morality of Zeus’s law of hospitality, that one should always give guests food, drink, and shelter.

The one that I’m most concerned with, because I think the movie is, is the anxiety over the end of a civilization and humans returning to beasts.

A pivotal moment for this theme is when Odysseus’s men encounter Circe, a sorceress, who turns them into pigs after they eat her meat (which means she has violated Zeus’s law). She justifies her actions as preemptive self-defense for the violence of the men (which previous and future events would seem to make quite justifiable).

But Odysseus forces Circe to return the men to their human forms. As she does, she gently whispers, “Back to your disguises, back to your disguises.” Her haunting insight is that the men as beasts were revealing their true nature, but while in their human form they are hiding their true nature. The question throughout The Odyssey is who are the real monsters, who are the real beasts? Circe has given you one answer.

Near the end of the movie, but recalling the sack of Troy, which sets in motion all his misfortunes, Odysseus says that the violence changed from a FIGHT to a HUNT.

Why is this important? Through several previous episodes, we learn that Odysseus always snaps his bow while hunting. When asked about it, he replies that he wants to give fair warning to the prey. But the Greeks did not give fair warning to their prey when they tricked them using the Trojan Horse. Odysseus confesses that it was no longer men fighting men; it was beasts hunting beasts when they were sacking Troy.

In his disguised confession to his wife, Odysseus laments the cutting of the social contract that Zeus’s law of hospitality had held together.

The tension (and repetition) of the movie is that Odysseus must again violate the law of hospitality (as he did outside of Troy) to rid his house of the suitors in his house (which he does with every bit of vengeance required by the narrative).

In both accounts, Odysseus wins by losing (wins the short-term battle but loses the cornerstones of the civilization as he knows it).

And certainly, these days, I would love if many conservative Christians would be more introspective about whether they are “losing by winning” these days when it comes to politics.

The Christian Winning by Losing

While Nolan’s “The Odyssey” is the product of Western Civilization, and in that sense, it is already Christianized, it is not yet Christian. A properly Christian view of the world, of civilization, is not an anxiety about “losing by winning” because Christians follow the crucified and risen Lord who “wins by losing.”

Christianized but not Christian:

1) In Greek and Roman culture, the majestic predators were always venerated as the heroic ideal. But Nolan’s Odysseus sounds more in line with the prophet Daniel in contrasting the nature of beasts and the nature of humanity. But it can’t quite arrive at the Book of Revelation’s claim that hearing a lion means seeing a lamb (Rev. 5). In this sense, it is Christianized, but not yet Christian.

2) Let’s remember that the gods of Homer are not the somber oracles of insight and righteous dispensers of justice. They are as fickle and whiny as the wealthy and elite of any society, believing themselves entitled to power. They are not objective observers of human affairs, just trying to keep everyone in line. They actively meddle, often for only their own enjoyment.

So, when Calypso calls Odysseus to hand over himself, as a leap of faith/trust, to the mercy/judgment of the gods as a kind of lesson in humility, it is quite Christian.

But Christians can humbly submit themselves to God because God is loving, and not just as an idea, but that “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8).

Time requires that I end here. But the question of whether we are becoming more and more like beasts and less and less like image bearers is a very Biblical question, one that Nolan’s “The Odyssey” places squarely before us.

Here are a couple of my thoughts in response to Geoff’s observations.

The tension (and repetition) of the movie is that Odysseus must again violate the law of hospitality (as he did outside of Troy) to rid his house of the suitors in his house (which he does with every bit of vengeance required by the narrative).

And we also see that Odysseus is willing to live with the consequences of breaking Zeus’ law of hospitality (exile to the west, following the fleeing sun), and keeps his son from breaking that law (thus protecting him from the same fate, or even death by revenge killing), unlike many who want to break the rules “because it is necessary” while also being granted a free pass from any punishment. As the textbook we used in a class on on ministerial ethics pointed out, if it comes to the point that civil disobedience is warranted, those participating in such actions must be willing to face any legal ramifications of those actions.

But the question of whether we are becoming more and more like beasts and less and less like image bearers is a very Biblical question, one that Nolan’s “The Odyssey” places squarely before us.

I am reminded of New Testament scholar G. K. Beale’s oft-quoted observation: “We become like what we worship, for reward or ruin.” Whom do I look up to? Whom am I following? What kind of people am I hanging out with the most? As the Apostle Paul warns the Corinthians, “Do not be misled: ‘Bad company corrupts good character.’”

Nijay Gupta

Northern Seminary professor of New Testament, Dr. Nijay Gupta, begins a journey looking at the Odyssey, comparing its place in the ancient world to the formative cultural stories so many of us know from our childhoods.

[Y]ou can’t spend long in the world of the New Testament — Roman roads, Greek rhetoric, wandering heroes, hospitality expectations, statues and reliefs and frescoes of the ancient gods behaving badly — without bumping into literary hero of Greece, Homer. Paul’s audiences in Corinth and Ephesus grew up on these stories (as did diaspora Paul of Tarsus himself) the way we grew up on comics and superhero movies.

Nijay provides an excellent playbill of the major characters and summary of the various “acts” in Homer’s classic poem to get us started. I look forward to seeing further installments in his analysis of both the poem itself as well as Nolan’s cinematic adaptation.

Parker Settecase

Parker looks at various aspects of both the cinematography and the story itself, and brings the topic du jour of the internet (the Nephilim) into play in discussion of the cyclops Polyphemus.

What is your take?

Have you seen Nolan’s film version of this classic story yet? Do you remember reading the epic poem in high school literature class? I’d love to have a conversation on what resonances with Christian thought exist in them, as well as contrasts between Greco-Roman philosophy and mythology and the teachings of Jesus and Paul.