Readers Reply

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Tilted Issue

Have I been overlooking something? It seemed to me that your June issue had several articles with a more theological slant than usual. If so, be prepared to take some hits. As for me, I loved it!

Judge It by the Cover

Just when I decide I will discontinue my subscription to BR, you once again produce an issue with outstanding artwork. The cover (above) showing the dome from Santa Maria della Pace in Rome, the ivory of Peter and Mark from the Victoria & Albert, and the Last Supper painted by Stanley Spencer—all in the June issue—are a delight for the eye, and food for reflection and contemplation. There is so much in art that speaks of the Christian faith, yet no other publication I get consistently uses art to enhance knowledge of the Bible and faith and to stimulate our thinking like BR.

Can God Read Minds?

Blind to BR

Can God read minds? What a question! (asked by Michael Carasik in the June 2002 issue, see “Can God Read Minds?” BR 18:03). Just because God chooses not to act or express his actions in human terms doesn’t mean he doesn’t know what a man is thinking.

This much questioning of the veracity of the Word is more than I can tolerate. Cancel my subscription. I want to pretend that you do not exist.

God’s Shrink

Michael Carasik writes: “But in truth, God’s mind-reading abilities are not always as absolute or indubitable as we might suppose.” I guess that he is God’s personal “shrink.” To me, he is just another so-called theologian who tries to elevate himself by demeaning the awesomeness of God. I care to get no more of your magazine. There are enough lies said about God in the secular world without those found in your “supposedly” Godly magazine.

Makes Him Think

I love your magazine because its articles are written by the very best theologians and they make me think deeply about the teachings of my Lord. I especially enjoyed “Can God Read Minds?” BR 18:03, by Dr. Michael Carasik.

Why God Tests Man

Does God need to test people to know what they are thinking? Absolutely not!

God tests people for their benefit, not His. When Abraham chose to obey God to the point of slaying his son, Abraham solidified his commitment to God. And God proved to Abraham that He was faithful and could be trusted even when it didn’t seem logical.

When Job was confronted by the infinite wisdom and power of a holy God, he fell on his face before the Almighty and said:

“Behold, I know that thou canst do everything, and that no thought can be withholden from thee…I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear; but 006now mine eye seeth thee” (Job 42:2, 5). How foolish to question the omniscience of God.

When I was a child we used to sing a little chorus: “God said it, and I believe it, and that’s good enough for me. Though some may doubt that His Word is true, I’ve chosen to believe it.”

Knowing God

Pointing to God

Regarding Joseph C. Hough’s article “Ways of Knowing God,” BR 18:03: I think we could all agree there are many paths pointing to God. There are many sublime teachings in many religions, and they seem to lead to God. However, the question must be posed, Do they reach God?

Embrace and affirm any of these other religions you care to; they all point to God. But for the Christian, Jesus doesn’t just point to god, He is God. He sits at the Father’s right hand and will welcome all who belong to Him at the end of this life.

Right Time, Wrong Place

I read with interest Joseph Hough’s article (see “Ways of Knowing God,” BR 18:03), all the while predicting a spate of letters protesting the article. The problem is not that the article fails to meet BR’s scholarly standard. It does, and the article has much to contribute to contemporary discussion on the subject it addresses. The primary complaint is going to be that BR is the wrong platform for it. I subscribe to BR for illumination on what scholars have come to understand about the biblical text in its origin, context and textual development—and to enjoy the feast of artwork with which these scholarly discussions are illustrated. I don’t subscribe to BR for calls to reconsider theology.

What the Gospels Say

Joseph Hough offers a detailed overview of church history and quotes many theologians, but he never addresses the biblical passages germane to his thesis.

Mr. Hough wrote that the exclusivity of believing in Jesus as the only way to eternal life is a “barrier to genuine peace-making” and is “inherently divisive.” Exactly right. Indeed, that is the whole point of the Gospel. Jesus said, “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Matthew 10:34). The sword Jesus brought is a sword that divides. He even warned us earlier in the same chapter that all men—because of His name—would hate us. Sounds like division to me. Again, in Matthew 25 we have an image of Jesus dividing the sheep from the goats, not uniting them and welcoming them all into His kingdom.

Mr. Hough conjectures that Christians must affirm that God has revealed redemptive knowledge in other religions. Perhaps he ought to reacquaint himself with Jesus’ statement “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). Sounds exclusive to me. This is not to say that there is no truth in other religions, only 008that the truth regarding salvation is absent from all other religions.

Finally, Mr. Hough claims that by being exclusive we are “barriers to…the unconditional and universal love of God.” Since when is it loving to assure others they will see heaven when they are clearly on the path to destruction? Love requires we tell the truth, even if it costs us peace. The Gospel tells us that God sent His Son to die and be raised again so that through Him we might be saved. Sounds like love to me. He freely chose to make the greatest sacrifice for us. How dare we say “no” and presume to lecture God on what love requires.

Yes the gospel is divisive, yes it is exclusive and yes it is loving. If Mr. Hough doesn’t believe it, then he ought to stop calling himself a “Christian” theologian.

Joseph C. Hough, Jr., responds:

Mr. Thorne expresses his consternation that I do not interpret the Bible the same way that he does. That is not surprising. I am not a literalist, and that is certainly not the only option available to Christians for biblical interpretation. There are very few Christians who really hold to a strict literalist interpretation of the Bible. If they did, they would find themselves worshiping a God who commanded the killing of children in the most brutal way, the rape of female captives and other forms of lurid, cruel and immoral behavior. We understand that human beings are the ones who are passing along the oral traditions that emerge in the writings, and their own prejudices and biases enter into their reports.

I did indicate that the exclusivist interpretations in the Gospel of John, in particular, were part of the rhetoric of intra-Jewish conflict over the future of Judaism after the fall of the Temple. To build an entire theology on inflated rhetoric and to justify excluding people and even murdering them on the basis of that rhetoric (as Christians did to the Jews and Muslims for centuries) seems to me not to reflect a real acquaintance with the Bible, but rather a fear that any interpretation but a literal one will not sustain a faith that cannot bear moral scrutiny.

I grew up in a Southern Baptist parsonage. We lived with the Bible daily and directly. I suspect that I study and read the Bible as much as does Mr. Thorne. I just do not accept his dogmatic view that his own interpretation of this book that I love is either accurate or controlling for all Christians. And I am certainly not impressed with his tendency to remove me from the circle of those who have faith in Jesus Christ. Self-righteousness and dogmatism may present far more serious problems for a believer in Jesus Christ than openness to the possibility that God works in ways that we do not know to bring redemption to the world—and to the possibility that God’s actions could well reach beyond anything we can imagine, including revealing himself to faithful persons who embrace other traditions.

I appreciate Mr. Thorne’s reference to Matthew 25. It is interesting that in this passage, it is the people who do not claim to know God, but who live righteous and compassionate lives, who are the sheep. They are the ones who will inherit the kingdom.

What About the Cannibals?

If other religions are equally “saving faiths,” then for what possible reason would God have subjected Jesus to such 010a horrific death? He wouldn’t have—unless it were absolutely necessary. Did Jesus have to die for some people, but not others? Are only those people in certain cultures so sinful that they need a savior, whereas others can reach God on their own?

If all faiths are equally valid, does Hough mean to include religions that require female circumcision or prostitution, that treat women as slaves or property? What about religions that involve sacrifice of children or virgins? What about religions where cannibalism is part of the religious experience? Where does one draw the line?

Joseph C. Hough, Jr., responds:

With respect to S.A. Stephens’s fear that I have no recourse but to approve cannibalism and a host of other reprehensible practices in the name of religion, he can be reassured. The God I know is the God revealed in Jesus Christ, and I, therefore, believe that God is known only where I see evidence of God’s self-disclosure that meets the criteria of forgiveness, compassion, love for the neighbor and humble acceptance of human sin and limitation in one’s own life. Any religious practice that is cruel, discriminatory, barbaric or murderous simply does not fall into the range of the knowledge of God made known to me in Jesus Christ.

That is also the reason why I reject fanatical fundamentalism, scriptural literalism, and self-justifying exclusive claims from any religion. They do not reflect the spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ I have come to know by faith—and this is just as true of arrogant and self-righteous Christian fanaticism and fundamentalism as it is of any other religion. Yes, I do have strong criteria for making judgments about where and when I see revealed God’s redemptive and reconciling power, and those criteria arise from my own experience of God’s presence in Jesus Christ.

Can’t Include the Exclusive

Joseph Hough has entangled himself in a self-contradiction. His own pluralism is equally dismissive of certain religious traditions—ones that claim superiority and exclusive truth. He cannot have it both ways. Either his belief in pluralism is true—or it is not. If it is true, then it must necessarily exclude contrary beliefs.

34 Gospels

Stick to the Four

With regard to the article “The 34 Gospels,” BR 18:03, by Charles Hedrick, let’s get to the bottom line: What do these noncanonical texts actually reveal about the historical Jesus? Virtually nothing. The Egerton fragments, while ancient, are tiny. My Anchor Bible Dictionary says the substantial differences between the Greek and Coptic texts of the Gospel of Thomas show the Gnostic influence and “instability” of the Coptic manuscript we have. Many of the other 30 noncanonical “gospels” listed are written much later and betray still other influences. The possible original sayings of Jesus that Hedrick quotes from the Gospel of the Savior (while interesting) offer no new insight into Jesus. We all agree he was an insightful teacher. The four canonical Gospels, with their focus on the death and resurrection of Jesus, contain the best historical core that we have. Certainly the noncanonical texts are interesting and should be studied, but there is no reason to overestimate their impact on our understanding of the person and message of Jesus.

Plagiarizing Plato?

Charles W. Hedrick writes that “as early as the second century, both the reliability of the canonical gospels and their portrayals of Jesus were under fire. For example, the philosopher Celsus argued that a saying of Jesus quoted in Mark 10:25 (“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God”) was actually purloined from Plato’s Laws (743A).

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The impression is fostered that Plato actually spoke about the “eye of the needle” and the “Kingdom of God” and a “camel.” But that’s not the case, as we see when we read Origen’s Against Celsus (chapter 16). Origen writes: “In the next place, with regard to the declaration of Jesus against rich men, when He said, ‘It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God,’ Celsus alleges that this saying manifestly proceeded from Plato, and that Jesus perverted the words of the philosopher, which were, that ‘it was impossible to be distinguished for goodness, and at the same time for riches.’”

So Plato’s statement was simply that “it was impossible to be distinguished for goodness, and at the same time for riches.”

Origen himself got a chuckle out of this. He continues, “Now who is there that is capable of giving even moderate attention to affairs—not merely among the believers in Jesus, but among the rest of mankind—that would not laugh at Celsus, on hearing that Jesus, who was born and brought up among the Jews, and was supposed to be the son of Joseph the carpenter, and who had not studied literature…had read Plato, and being pleased with the opinion he expressed regarding rich men, to the effect that it was impossible to be distinguished for goodness and riches at the same time,” had perverted this, and changed it into, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God!”

Dating Thomas

I’d like to make a brief clarification to my article: The original editors of the Gospel of Thomas (Grenfell and Hunt) dated the fragments of that gospel to shortly after 200. In 1999 at the National Society of Biblical Literature meeting in Boston Søren Giversen (University of Aarhus) presented a paper entitled “The Palaeography of Oxyrhynchus 1 and 654–655.” On the basis of manuscripts that only became available to scholars after Grenfell and Hunt published their study of the Thomas fragments in 1897, Giversen argued that P. Oxyrhynchus 1 and 654 should be dated in the first half of the second century—that is, before 150. His paper has not yet been published so far as I know.

Columnist

Don’t Blame the Press

Ronald Hendel’s waffling response to the historicity debate triggered by Harper’s Magazine added little insight for the reader (“It Ain’t Necessarily So,” BR 18:03). Most regrettable was his sad attempt to blame the media for the public’s confusion over whether the Bible is history or hokum. It’s not the media’s inability to “get subtle stories right” that’s the problem. The root of the matter lies with the religious establishment—and those scholars who support it—in its lack of courage to admit that all ancient “bibles” are primarily allegorical and were never intended as history in the first place.

Potpourri

Corrections

Mark Rothko’s painting in the June 2002 issue dates to 1949. The credit should have included the following: Copyright 2002 Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko/Artists Rights Society (ARS), N.Y.

In Michael Dick’s article, “Worshiping Idols,” BR 18:02, the Akkadian term miµs piÆ should be translated as “washing of the mouth”; piµt piÆ means “opening of the mouth.”

Tilted Issue
Have I been overlooking something? It seemed to me that your June issue had several articles with a more theological slant than usual. If so, be prepared to take some hits. As for me, I loved it!