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Cameron Combs
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Midweek Bible study at Colonial Heights Church. Artwork by Scott Erickson (scottericksonart.com) cameroncombs.substack.com

  1. 4D AGO

    The (Hellish) Judgment of God

    The Joseph Story Ep. 4 This week we take a close look at Joseph’s scheme (dissembling) that he puts his brothers through. The scheme serves the purpose of forcing the brothers to experience the suffering they caused Joseph in an “eye-for-an-eye” type justice. But it also forces them to relive their original crime, which unearths their feelings of guilt. In other words, Joseph scheme causes his brothers to come to an intimate knowledge of the truth of what they did to him, but then it also opens up the possibility for forgiveness, reconciliation, and even communion. Joseph’s Scheme In Genesis 42 the brothers are forced to go down to Egypt to buy grain because of the famine. When they arrive Joseph immediately recognizes them, but they do not recognize him. After asking them where they are from, Joseph accuses them of being spies who have come to see the “nakedness” of the land. He then throws them into prison. This is an obvious doubling and reversal of what the brothers did to Joseph at the beginning of the story. Joseph’s scheme or plot echoes the brothers murderous conspiring—an eye for an eye. The brothers threw Joseph down into a pit. That pit led to Joseph being brought down to Egypt where he eventually is thrown into prison, which he associates with being in the pit. Now, the brothers are in the same place they put Joseph. And, what’s more, they have been thrown into prison after being falsely accused of a crime (with sexual overtones: i.e. “nakedness” in Scripture consistently refers to sexual misconduct). This is precisely what happened to Joseph in Potiphar’s house. He was thrown into prison after being falsely accused of sexual misconduct with Potiphar’s wife. The brothers are figuratively suffering an eye-for-an-eye punishment for what they did to Joseph. But this initiates another doubling in the story. Joseph’s next move causes the brothers to relive their original crime. Joseph says that in order for the brothers to prove they are not spies they must travel back to Canaan and bring their youngest brother Benjamin back with them. This will show him that they were telling the truth about who they are. But, of course, this is causing the brothers to relive the sins of their past: They must now bring the other son of Rachel down to Egypt, just as they did with Joseph. The narrative gives many signs of the doubling of the story, but this is the most striking: When they set off to travel back to Egypt with Benjamin we are told that they carry with them gifts of balm, honey, gum, myrrh, pistachio nuts, and almonds (Gen. 43:11). These are the very goods that Ishmaelite traders had with them when they took Joseph down to Egypt twenty years earlier (Gen. 37:25). Finally, Joseph’s plot has one last test in it. Not only are the brothers forced to experience Joseph’s suffering and relive their past sins, they are also given an opportunity to perpetrate a new crime. Joseph has his silver goblet hidden in Benjamin’s sack of grain. When it is discovered Joseph says that Benjamin must become his slave in Egypt. Will the brothers do to Benjamin what they did to Joseph all those years earlier? Will they try to be rid of another favored son? God’s (Hellish) Judgment Joseph’s scheme, has put the brothers through an eye-for-an-eye judgment. Yet, there is an obvious way that we cannot read this. Jesus says in Matt. 5:38-39 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.” Both Exodus and Leviticus spell out laws like this: * Exodus 21:23-25 But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise. * Leviticus 24:19-20 Anyone who injures their neighbor is to be injured in the same manner: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. The one who has inflicted the injury must suffer the same injury. Jesus is not overruling the laws given in the Torah, rather he is spelling out the spirit of these laws. So, Joseph’s scheme cannot be read as a how-to manual for getting even with your family. In Matthew 5 Jesus is not saying that Christians should let people take advantage of them, rather the point is that Christians must trust God to be the one to make things right. Paul says in Romans 12 that we are not to repay anyone evil for evil. Live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, but leave room for God’s wrath for it is written: “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” God is the only one who can make eye-for-an-eye judgments. But we must remember that God’s ways are not our ways. The result of Joseph’s scheme is the beginning of a process of reconciliation between brothers. Can we imagine that God’s eye-for-an-eye judgments might be up to the same thing? It hardly needs to be pointed out that justice is not served simply by repaying evil for evil. If you gouge my eye out in a fight, it does not actually repair or heal me to then have your eye gouged out. So, what’s the wisdom in eye-for-an-eye justice? It is not merely that it is punitive or retributive justice—which is not really justice at all. The glimmer of truth in this kind of justice is that it can bring some of the truth of what you have done to me to bear on you so that you reckon with the harm you’ve inflicted. So, why is the Joseph story given to us? Perhaps to gain an insight, a foretaste into how God’s judgment might work. George MacDonald captures the true spirit of God’s justice: “Annihilation itself is no death to evil. Only good where evil was, is evil dead. An evil thing must live with its evil until it chooses to be good. That alone is the slaying of evil.” Simply annihilating evil does not overcome it. Annihilation is an evil act. So to annihilate evil is to overcome evil with evil. Evil is victorious in that case. God is much better than that. He does not repay evil for evil. God overcomes evil by replacing it with his goodness. The true overcoming of evil is only with the good. This story bears a faint witness to this truth. By Joseph’s scheme the brothers live with their evil long enough that they finally choose to do good. They—figuratively—replace the evil they did to Joseph with what they do for Benjamin. This is the slaying of evil. I think that can even help us envision how God’s judgment might work. Of course I’m not claiming that this is the method by which God will put everything right, but it does help free up our imaginations to envision how a perfectly good God might bring his restorative justice to bear on the evils that have taken place in his world. Hebrews says that it is appointed unto man once to die and then comes judgment. Perhaps Joseph’s scheme gives us a foretaste of what God’s (hellish) judgment might be like. In George MacDonald’s fairytale Lilith (a story about the queen of hell!), people who have died are given the opportunity to confront what they’ve done in their lives and come to acknowledge the truth of their sins and the evils they’ve done to others. It is judgment. In fact, it’s hell. It’s terrifying. But the point is that this is a healing and restoring judgment. It is surgery. Each person has to come to see their own wrongs for themselves. They have to lay down on the operating table. This is where C.S. Lewis got his famous idea of hell: That the doors of hell are locked for the inside. This is Lewis’s idea of hell, too. The gates of hell are locked from the inside. Lewis has made a very appealing case that God does not send people to hell, but rather people choose hell for themselves. The doors are locked, but they are locked from the inside. While Lewis got his take on hell from MacDonald, they ultimately disagree. Both Lewis and MacDonald agree that God’s desire is that none should perish. Where they disagree is not in God’s desire but in God’s capacity. Lewis believed that some people will never come around. Even if hell is a never-ending repeating cycle of eye-for-an-eye justice in which sinners are being shown the truth of their sins and given the opportunity to make right what was wrong, Lewis believed that some people will choose to stay locked in that loop. As Lewis himself says, in the end love loses. God does not get what he wants. What God desire he cannot bring about because many human beings will not cooperate with what God wants. MacDonald had issues with that. For one, it makes it so that evil is actually undefeatable. It makes evil out to be an equal opposite power to God that in the end God cannot do anything about. But, of course, we have many passages in Scripture that seem to suggest that God will annihilate all evil rather than purge it. Whether you go with Lewis or MacDonald on the final issue, I think the Joseph story can at least bear a faint witness to how ultimately good the (even hellish) justice of God really is. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cameroncombs.substack.com

    56 min

  2. APR 9

    Trauma and Re-membering the Dismembered

    The Joseph Story Ep. 3 A preliminary remark: One of the gifts of Scripture is that its stories allow us to process our deep-seated personal pain in a safe way. I can talk about my own pain a lot easier by talking about Joseph’s pain. The topic of trauma is a sensitive one, but perhaps the Joseph narrative can give us enough distance from our own circumstances—even for a moment—to think about the nature of trauma, God’s promises in the midst of trauma, and especially to begin to pray. Family Trauma Old Testament scholar James Ackerman points out that the main theme of the Joseph story is the providential care of the family of Israel through Joseph’s career. But, he says, a very strong and related sub-theme is the reconciliation of family. We’ve been referring to this theme as “family wounds.” The wounds in the Joseph story are deep. Joseph’s father, Jacob, loves him more than any of his brothers. This not only creates arrogance in Joseph, but it also has the unintended consequence of cutting him off from his brothers. His brothers hate him for this and it leads to their plot to “cast him into the pit” and be rid of him for good. Avivah Zornberg observes that this is a traumatic experience for Joseph—one that will mark him the rest of his life. In other words, family trauma and the healing of that trauma is right at the heart of the story of Joseph. Dismembered Zornberg points out that the themes of remembering and forgetting play a crucial role in the entire drama. Or as she has it: “Re-membering the Dismembered.” Joseph himself is dismembered by his brothers. They rip the coat of many colors from him, dip it in goat’s blood, send it to their father, and ask him to identify it: “Is this not Joseph’s coat we found?” Jacob cries out: “It is my son’s robe! A wild animal has devoured him; Joseph has surely been torn to pieces” (Gen. 37:33). In Hebrew that last line is only three eerily rhyming words: Tarof toraf Yosef. Joseph is torn apart. Jacob is wrong, but he’s also right. The brothers were the wild animals that “flayed” and “dismembered” Joseph so that he would not be a threat to them ever again. They were Cain and he was Abel. The rest of the story is about re-membering what was dismembered. Putting the broken, fragmented pieces of Joseph (and his brothers) back together through the act of remembering. Re-membered Zornberg asks: What happened at the pit that day? It seems straightforward. We tell the story to children and we reprise Genesis 37. But is it so simple? Perhaps not. At the beginning of Genesis 37 the 10 brothers decide all together to kill Joseph. They are of one mind on the issue. But Reuben speaks up. He’s the oldest. Reuben saves Joseph by saying, “Let us not commit murder.” Zornberg says that in Hebrew it’s the coldest, most legal way of stating the matter. In other words he is saying, “Let us not commit the crime of murder.” His plea is not filled with compassion for Joseph’s sake. It’s not an appeal for Joseph’s life but an appeal that they not become guilty of the crime of murder. But the narrator says that Reuben said this so that he might rescue him from the pit later. Twenty-two years pass. Joseph has been a slave in Potiphar’s house, accused of attempting to rape Potiphar’s wife, and thrown into prison (the pit, again!). But he rises out of prison to the right hand of Pharaoh. He is the most powerful person in Egypt. The famine hits the land and the brothers journey to Egypt to find grain. In Gen. 42 the brothers are all standing together again but the circumstances have been completely reversed. Joseph knows who they are but they do not recognize him. He accuses them of being spies that have come to check out the land. He begins his masquerade—pulling them this way and then that way. He says that in order from them to prove they are not spies they must go get their youngest brother, Benjamin, and bring him back to Egypt. While they do this he will keep one of the other brothers in prison. It is at this moment that we get the first confession of what they had done to Joseph twenty-two years earlier. As far as we know, they have never once spoken about it with each other until this moment. This is the first re-membering of what they dismembered. What do they remember? They re-member their cruelty. Not just the fact that they are guilty of a crime, but that they were overly cruel in a completely callous way. They say: “Alas, we are paying the penalty for what we did to our brother; we watched him in the anguish of his being when he begged us for his life and we did not hear it. That is why this anguish has come upon us.” (Gen. 42:21) Joseph was crying for his life but they didn’t hear it. It did not affect them in the moment. Immediately Reuben starts justifying himself: “Then Reuben answered them, “Did I not tell you not to sin against the child? But you would not hear it.” (Gen. 42:22) But in Genesis 37 he didn’t say anything like that. Then it was a cold statement that did not show any compassion towards Joseph: “Do not commit the crime of murder.” But now he remembers himself as being compassionate for Joseph. He remembers telling them: “Do not sin against the child!” But, he says, you would not hear it. So, what really happened by the pit? Zornberg then asks: Is Reuben editing the past to make himself look better? Is he trying to justify his own cruel actions? It’s possible. Memories often do work in the vein of wish-fulfillment. But, Zornberg observes, we do know that it was in his heart to save the child in some way—the text told us he said that calloused thing in order to save him. The 12th century Rabbi Maimonides says that Reuben did actually say, “Do not sin against the child,” but the brothers wouldn’t hear it. That’s why he shifted to talking about not committing the crime of murder. Genesis 37 does not record it because they did not hear it. It was as if he did not say that at all. This seems odd until we remember this little detail: “You would not hear it.” There was something else the brothers would not hear on that day. Did Joseph cry out from the pit? In Genesis 37 we are not told anything about Joseph crying out, begging for his life. We are only told that the brothers went and celebrated with a meal while Joseph was stuck in the pit. But now, twenty-two years later, we are finding out that he did cry. The brothers re-member. But before this moment it was as if it didn’t really happen. By not hearing Joseph’s cries they dismembered him. They tore him apart. Broke him into pieces. Zornberg then observes that it is only when someone hears you, acknowledges you, re-members the truth of what has happened to you, that the wound—the trauma—can start to heal. Joseph has been living a dismembered, broken life ever since that day at the pit. The only way for something that’s been dismembered to be healed is for it to be re-membered. When Joseph overhears them telling the story of the pit and all that they did to him, he is beginning to be re-membered. They did hear him cry. Reuben did see him as the little child that he was. Joseph is remembered and he begins to weep. Joseph has been in the world of the pit this whole time. His identity has been lost. He is fragmented and dismembered. He himself celebrates the fact that he has forgotten the trauma of the pit. He names his firstborn son Manasseh for “God has made me forget completely my hardship and my parental home” (Gen. 41:51). He’s grateful that God has made him forget. He’s thankful he is not haunted by the memory of what they did to him. But the irony of the name is clear: If you name your son “amnesia” have you really forgotten? Something in Joseph wants to remember that he has suffered a wound. Eventually in the story Joseph cannot continue the masquerade. He has to reveal his true identity to his brothers. He begins to weep again and orders all his Egyptian servants out of the room. He turns to his brothers and says: “I am Joseph.” He is re-membered. How? By hearing his brothers re-member him. He was in the pit, out of eyesight. Forgotten. Dismembered. But their re-membering begins to restore him. The work is not done, but he’s made the first few steps of climbing out of the pit of trauma. The broken fragments of himself are being re-membered. Jesus: Dismembered and Re-membered At the last supper Jesus gathers his disciples and breaks the bread to give it to them: “This is my body, broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” When Christ died on the cross his body was fragmented, broken, dismembered. But in his dismemberment for us in his death he has united himself to all deaths. He is broken into the pieces of every death in order to bring resurrection to all who have died. Christ is dismembered into the fragments of our lives, our traumas, our wounds—and by taking our deaths upon himself he re-members us—he puts us back together. Christ commands us to eat the meal in remembrance of him. We are to remember him. But when we do this it is actually him who is re-membering us—making us members of his body and bringing healing and restoration. The request of the thief on the cross to Jesus is Joseph’s request to the cup-bearer in the Egyptian prison: they both ask to be remembered. The cup-bearer forgets Joseph, but Jesus does not forget anyone. The thief said to Jesus: “Remember me when you come into your kingdom” (Luke 23:42). Jesus heard his cry. He hears all our cries to re-member and as we eat the bread and drink the cup he makes good on his promise. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cameroncombs.substack.com

    49 min

  3. APR 4

    The Lance of His Compassion (Good Friday 2026)

    A Sermon for Good Friday 2026 A Good Friday sermon on Psalm 22 9 Yet it was you who took me from the womb; you kept me safe on my mother’s breast.10 On you I was cast from my birth, and since my mother bore me you have been my God. Johannes Tauler (1300-1361) on Mary at the foot of Jesus’ cross: “For if any creature could have brought comfort to our Lord as He hung upon the Cross, none would have been so fitted for this as His most blessed Mother…[But] His Mother’s presence brought no comfort with it, but rather added to His pain, for her pains were thereby joined to His… “For Thou alone by the lance of Thy compassion, hast searched into the weight and the grievousness of her woes, which to all men are simply beyond all understanding. And this, indeed, so greatly added to the pain of Thy passion, because not only in Thy body, but also in Thy Mother’s Heart Thou wert crucified, for her cross was Thy Cross, and Thine was hers.” (Meditations on the Life and Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, chapter 44) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cameroncombs.substack.com

    20 min

  4. APR 2

    Family Wounds

    The Joseph Story Ep. 2 Because of the additional “duties” that Holy Week brings, I was unable to write up an overview of this week’s class. I’m sure that with Easter Sunday on the horizon you will all find it in your hearts to forgive me. Here is the diagram of Joseph’s family tree that I drew in class: And here is the quote from Bonhoeffer: “So people called by Jesus learn that they had lived an illusion in their relationship to the world. The illusion is immediacy. It has blocked faith and obedience. Now they know that there can be no unmediated relationships, even in the most intimate ties of their lives, in the blood ties to father and mother, to children, brothers and sisters in marital love, in historical responsibilities. Ever since Jesus called, there are no longer natural, historical, or experiential unmediated relationships for his disciples. Christ the mediator stands between son and father, between husband and wife, between individual and nation, whether they can recognize him or not. There is no way from us to others than the path through Christ, his word, and our following him. Immediacy is a delusion…any time a [relationship] lays claim to immediacy, it must be hated for Christ’s sake.” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, p. 94–95.) Finally, I was drawing heavily in this class from an incredible teaching from Chris Green on “Family Matters.” You can (and should!) listen to that here: The Ties That Bind. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cameroncombs.substack.com

    58 min

  5. MAR 26

    Joseph the Dreamer

    The Joseph Story Ep. 1 The Jewish scholar Jon Levenson has said that the Joseph story in Genesis “is arguably the most sophisticated narrative in the Jewish or the Christian Bibles.” Chris Green writes that it is “deceptively simple” and that it becomes “more mysterious with every good re-reading.” Taking these two thoughts together we see that the sophistication of the Joseph story is the reason why it becomes more mysterious the more you read it. For many of us this will sound like an odd claim. The Joseph story, as most of us have been taught, is very simple and straightforward. It’s the story of a faithful man who is hated by his brothers, sold into slavery in Egypt, but no matter what misfortune happens to him he remains faithful and God prospers him. While this is not wholly wrong, it also betrays a very simplistic, flattened reading of this “sophisticated” and “mysterious” story. Our simplistic readings are fall into one of two types: (1) practical readings and (2) typological readings. Practical Readings If something is practical you can sell it. The greatest sin of any church or teacher today is to be impractical. We are enslaved to the practical. This means that we expect that every truth should make immediate and easy sense to us and that it should improve our lives. So it is unsurprising that practical readings on the Joseph story abound today. Here are just a few examples that Green gives of popular practical readings of the Joseph story: * “If they think like Joseph, believers can survive ‘in the lean times’ and ‘advance into the season ahead.’” (Shawn Akers) * “You may feel that God is leading you further and further and further away from your dream until the moment it happens. Look at Joseph.” (Mark Rutland) * “Joseph’s faith leads to prosperity. During a worldwide famine, Joseph was in charge of all the food. Now that’s prosperity! God was able to reveal the spiritual secrets that would open the door of success for him. That’s what makes God’s method of prospering so exciting. It works anywhere and everywhere. It will work in the poorest countries on the face of this earth just like it works here in the United States. And you can be sure that it will work for you!” (Kenneth Copeland) You can see how practical readings want to package Joseph and sell the story as something you can use to your benefit. Besides the fact that this is a less than faithful way to read and preach Scripture, none of this is in the text. Typological Readings Typological readings of Joseph want to read him as a “type” of Christ. Many throughout church history have noticed the unmistakable likeness of Jesus’s and Joseph’s stories: he is the favored son, he is betrayed by his brothers, he is innocent when he is tempted, he is delivered from prison to a position of power, and he accomplishes a sort of salvation for his family. Joseph is often seen to be one of the “cleanest” and “purest” types of Christ in the Old Testament. Many have said that he is presented to us as “sinless/faultless.” Now, these are vastly superior readings to the practical readings, but we still have a problem. We still aren’t reading the texts of the story closely or carefully. If we think Joseph has no faults, or that he is cleanest and most perfect type of Christ we aren’t reading the actual story very closely. In fact, the New Testament never makes the connection between Jesus and Joseph. That doesn’t mean Joseph isn’t a type, but it does help to remind us to read more carefully. In our eagerness to see Jesus in the text, we fail to actually read the story of Joseph. We rush to impose a lifeless image of Christ on him. With these readings Joseph becomes a mannequin who is only there to model clothes that really belong to Jesus. To quote Green yet again, “Our typological readings often amount to us stamping dead images of Jesus” onto Old Testament texts, narratives, characters rather than discovering his “living likeness” there. A Closer Reading… In the class we tried to do a number of close readings of a few of the texts from the Joseph story. I’ll list them here, but to hear the full explanation you can listen to the podcast. * Joseph is presented at the beginning of the story as “a spoiled younger child who is a tattletale.” His reporting on his own dreams to his brothers reveals an “adolescent narcissism.” * Most surprising and easiest to miss is the fact that Joseph’s dreams are never said to come from God. “This is the first dream recorded in Genesis in which the voice of God does not speak…The absence of any specific divine speech or revelation in the dream accentuates its ambiguity.” This is a significant departure from the way that Genesis relates others who dream earlier in the story. For example: * Genesis 20:3, “God came to Abimelech in a dream and said to him…” * Genesis 28:13, “There above the ladder stood the LORD, and he said, ‘I am the LORD, the God of Abraham and Isaac…’” * Genesis 31:24, “God came to Laban the Aramean in a dream of the night.” * Joseph never prays within the narrative. Even when he interprets the dreams of the cupbearer, the baker, or Pharaoh we are not told that he speaks to God regarding the interpretations. Samuel Draper writes, “Joseph rhetorically says, ‘do not all interpretations (of dreams) belong to God?’ Yet he then proceeds to interpret them with no further reference to the divine. This same pattern occurs with Pharaoh’s dreams in chapter 41 where Joseph attributes the interpretations to God, but God is not seen to act himself in inspiring Joseph’s interpretations.” * Joseph’s plan for the 7 years of famine has the effect of centralizing all of Egypt’s wealth and power to Pharaoh and enslaving all the people to Pharaoh. But it is Joseph’s own policies that will end up being forced onto his own children generations later. Joseph’s enslaving of Egypt has the consequence of enslaving his own people generations later. * Gen. 47:21-22: “So Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh. All the Egyptians sold their fields, because the famine was severe upon them, and the land became Pharaoh’s. As for the people, he made slaves of them from one end of Egypt to the other.” Rabbi Arthur Waskow provides an alternative reading which points most of this out. Waskow observes that when Joseph is given the chance to interpret Pharaoh’s dreams, he does not pause to ask God for guidance. What if Joseph had asked God for wisdom? Waskow writes: “What might have happened if Joseph had asked God for guidance, and God had answered. How might God have told him to deal with the danger of famine? We have a hint: God’s command of how to prevent famine in the Land of Israel. Each year, every landholding family must let the poor gather grain from the corners of the field. In the seventh year, the land must lie fallow and all debts must be forgiven. The seventh year? How instructive! Perhaps Pharaoh’s dream should have been interpreted to say: There will be seven years of plenty. If you reap all seven years, there will follow seven years of famine. If you reset in the seventh year, you will have enough to eat. What Joseph hears and what he creates is almost precisely the reverse of the process that God later commands for the Land of Israel. Could that command have come earlier? Would God have made the Teaching available as soon as anyone asked?” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cameroncombs.substack.com

    53 min

  6. MAR 19

    C.S. Lewis: Magic vs. Miracles

    Paul pens both his letters to Timothy to encourage him to continue his struggle against the false teachers in the congregation at Ephesus. Paul planted this church years earlier. Luke records this in Acts 19—20. As Paul was leaving Ephesus he warned the church that false teachers would creep in and even arise out of their own number. There was something about the church in Ephesus that made it especially susceptible to a certain form of false teaching. I think at least part of that reason for this susceptibility was Ephesus’s culture of magic. It was a city steeped in magic. By “magic” I don’t mean sleight of hand, Penn and Teller, or Branson, Missouri—I mean incantations, hexes, or what the KJV calls “witchcraft.” But it was precisely that culture of magic that also led to Paul’s success. Luke tells us in Acts 19 that God was doing many great miracles through Paul. Handkerchiefs that touched his skin were being brought to the sick and they were being restored. It was Paul’s spiritual power—his spiritual street cred—that had the Ephesians intrigued by his gospel proclamation. The obsession with magic was a sort of double-edged sword cutting both ways. And I think Paul knew it would continue to be a problem, which was why he left Timothy in Ephesus to pastor this church. It is easy for us modern people to think that the issue of “magic” is something of the past—not something we need to be concerned about. After all, we live in what the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor called the “age of disenchantment.” We live in a world that is drained of magic. It would be fairly difficult to find someone who believes in witchcraft or incantations. We live in the age of scientific enlightenment. But I don’t think the truth is quite that simple. While it is true that magic is not practiced in our corner of the world like it was in former times, I think we still live in a world that is steeped in what Chris Green calls magical thinking. I learned this first from C.S. Lewis. Lewis often made the case that modern, western people are actually some of the most magically minded people in the world–even if it looks a bit different than it did in first century Ephesus. Magic vs. Miracles What has to be disentangled in Ephesus (and for us today) is the difference between magic and miracles. There is a marked contrast between the miracles God was doing through Paul and the magic practiced by the Ephesians. I spell this out in the podcast, but here is the short of it: * Magic is about bending nature/reality to my will; Miracles are nature/reality coming to align with the will of God. * Magic is a technique and is marked by mechanical thinking; Miracles give birth to relational thinking. * Magic violates nature; Miracles fulfill nature. C.S. Lewis, in his book Miracles, puts it like this: I contend that in all these miracles alike the incarnate God does suddenly and locally something that God has done or will do in general. Each miracle writes for us in small letters something that God has already written, or will write, in letters almost too large to be noticed, across the whole canvas of Nature. So, let’s take his first miracle as an example: turning water into wine. Is that magic? Is he violating the nature of water to turn it into wine? No, Lewis says, in that miracle Jesus is doing something suddenly in one moment that is already written in the canvas of nature. “Every year, as part of the Natural order, God makes wine. He does so by creating a vegetable organism that can turn water, soil and sunlight into a juice which will, under proper conditions, become wine. Thus, in a certain sense, He constantly turns water into wine, for wine, like all drinks, is but water modified…God, now incarnate, short circuits the process: makes wine in a moment: uses earthenware jars instead of vegetable fibres to hold the water. But uses them to do what He is always doing. The miracle consists in the short cut; but the event to which it leads is the usual one.” And it is for this very reason that Jesus refused when he was tempted by the Devil to turn stones to bread. That’s magic! Lewis says that Jesus refused because “The Son does nothing except what he sees the Father do.” And that father made that stone a stone. Lewis is picking this up directly from the Scottish preacher and author George MacDonald. Lewis referred to MacDonald as his “master.” Here is how George MacDonald puts it in a sermon on the wilderness temptations: “The Father said, That is a stone. The Son would not say, That is a loaf. No one creative fiat shall contradict another. The Father and the Son are of one mind. The Lord could hunger, could starve, but would not change into another thing what His Father had made one thing. There was no such change in the feeding of the multitudes. The fish and the bread were fish and bread before… There was in these miracles, I think in all, only a hastening of appearances: the doing of that in a day, which may ordinarily take a thousand years, for with God time is not what it is with us.” Is it even possible for Jesus to make stones into bread? I think MacDonald is suggesting that it is not possible for Jesus to do this and remain who he is. Jesus cannot turn stones into bread without ceasing to be who he is. Why? Because he is the Father’s Word that makes the stone a stone. For him to do magic and turn a stone into a loaf of bread would be for him to contradict himself and to contradict himself would be to contradict the Father. Jesus will not—indeed cannot!—violate or deform anyone or anything in its integrity. Magic mutilates in order to gain power. God creates, fills, and fulfills all things to make them what they are. All this is grounded, of course, in the incarnation—what Lewis calls “the grand miracle.” When the Word becomes flesh it does not violate the nature of humanity, it fulfills it, and makes it what it was intended to be. The Magician’s Twin Are we still magical? This is where Lewis is most insightful, I think. In an essay entitled “The Abolition of Man,” published in 1944, Lewis was concerned with the way the world was going. World War 2, technology, the atomic bomb—science was producing new technologies at rapid speed. What worried him was that as we were technology was making massive advances we were losing our moral formation. We knew how to make a nuclear bomb, but the question was not whether or not we knew how, but whether or not we should. At the end of the essay Lewis compares our scientific thinking with magical thinking. In fact, he thinks they are twins. (We discuss this in class, but I’ll leave you with his words.) “I have described as a ‘magician’s bargain’ that process whereby man surrenders object after object, and finally himself, to Nature in return for power. And I meant what I said. The fact that the scientist has succeeded where the magician failed has put such a wide contrast between them in popular thought that the real story of the birth of Science is misunderstood. You will even find people who write about the sixteenth century as if Magic were a medieval survival and Science the new thing that came in to sweep it away. Those who have studied the period know better. There was very little magic in the Middle Ages: the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are the high noon of magic. The serious magical endeavour and the serious scientific endeavour are twins: one was sickly and died, the other strong and throve. But they were twins. They were born of the same impulse. I allow that some (certainly not all) of the early scientists were actuated by a pure love of knowledge. But if we consider the temper of that age as a whole we can discern the impulse of which I speak. “There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the ‘wisdom’ of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique; and both, in the practice of this technique, are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious–such as digging up and mutilating the dead. “[Francis Bacon] rejects magic because it does not work; but his goal is that of the magician. “It might be going too far to say that the modern scientific movement was tainted from its birth: but I think it would be true to say that it was born in an unhealthy neighborhood and at an inauspicious hour.” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cameroncombs.substack.com

    56 min

  7. MAR 12

    Women in Ministry?

    As we close our study of 1 & 2 Timothy we come to the most notorious lines in either book: “11 A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12 I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet” (1 Tim. 2:11-12). Of course, the typical complementarian vs. egalitarian debates center on this passage. In class I gave both a historical and a theological argument for why I don’t think this passage prohibits all women throughout all time from teaching or holding positions of authority within the church. ****This post is not a write-up of the class, but a sort of postscript to the class. If you want to find either the historical or theological arguments I gave, you’ll have to listen to the podcast. What follows is a few extra, more technical details to the way I think history and theology should interact.**** History and Theology Historical-critical arguments function by seeking to uncover the historical background behind the text. This historical work is very important, but ultimately I don’t think it is strong enough to hold the weight we put on it. The mistake is in assuming that “historical-critical” readings have an objectivity to them—that history is a “hard science.” But the truth is that historical-critical readings are just as subjective as any other kinds of readings because you can never remove the “reading subject” from the act of reading. (This is the myth of “scientific objectivity and neutrality” and it has made its way into the heart of biblical studies. George Steiner called it the “fallacy of imitative form.” The fallacy is that we can copy and paste the “scientific method” and apply it to all fields of study and end up with cold, hard, scientific truth—even when interpreting Scripture.) If you come to my office I can show you bookshelves filled with commentaries by different historical-critical scholars—all brilliant—but they disagree (especially on the issue of women in ministry). The complementarian historical-critic can form a background history to 1 Timothy that shows that Paul clearly meant this prohibition against women teaching in the church to be universally applied to all churches in all times. On the other hand, we can pull down a commentary by an egalitarian scholar that constructs a historical background to 1 Timothy that shows that Paul clearly did not mean for this prohibition to be universally applied. And then you can pick whichever view you like best and pretend that it is “scientific truth.” But what’s more subjective than picking the commentary that says what you like best? None of this is to degrade the work of historical-critical scholars. We absolutely need that work. But it is time we recognize the limits of what historical scholarship can actually deliver. This is why I concluded the class with a theological argument for women in ministry. I think that is a much more robust grounding for women in ministry while at the same time being honest about the involvement of the “reading subject” in the interpretation of the text. To paraphrase one of my favorite lines from Ephraim Radner: We do not look to history to find the truth of Christ, we look to Christ to find the truth of history. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cameroncombs.substack.com

    57 min

  8. FEB 26

    The Powerlessness of God

    Suffering and Power 2 Timothy is a tender letter. It is written from a jail cell by a man who knows he is not long for this world. Paul’s heart is opened wide to Timothy throughout. The letter begins: “To my dear son, Timothy,” and concludes with: “Do your best to come quickly to me.” Paul needs his dear son by his side because most everyone else has deserted him. He’s lonely and in need… …and yet the letter is packed full of powerful statements that are meant to encourage Timothy to remain strong in the faith even amidst his fear, doubt, and shame. We get strong, quotable lines like: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day…” (2 Tim. 4:7—8). These are the two, seemingly antithetical, themes in the letter: suffering and power. Paul’s suffering is a cause for concern for those that follow his teachings. His imprisonment is shameful. It almost seems like an argument against the truth of the gospel message that he proclaims. If the man Jesus Christ is enthroned in heaven at the right hand of the Father and has been made Lord and Judge of all, then why is Paul suffering in prison? We often don’t allow these two notes to ring out very clearly in our reading of 2 Timothy, but they are the very dynamism of the letter. This dynamism is captured in back to back verses—one we like to quote and the other we often forget. In 2 Timothy 1:7 Paul writes, “...for God did not give us a Spirit of cowardice but rather a Spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.” That’s a Hallmark card if there ever was one. But we don’t let Paul finish his thought. He continues, “Do not be ashamed, then, of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel, according to the power of God…” (2 Tim. 1:8). God has given Timothy the Spirit of power and, therefore, he ought not be ashamed that Paul is in prison and about to die. In fact, precisely because Timothy has the Spirit of power, he should actually join in with Paul in suffering for the gospel. To have the Spirit of power results in suffering. The Spirit and Power? Paul is using the word “power” in a way that is almost unrecognizable to us. Typically when we hear the word “power” what comes to mind are things like domination, control, and the sword. “Power” is a term we usually associate with masculinity. The same problem we addressed last week with election and predestination is sneaking in again: the problem of abstraction. If the concept of power remains abstract it can be defined any way one likes. We think we know what power is like and then when we are told that God’s Spirit gives power, we assume we know what that means. What is needed is a concrete definition of power. What does the power of this God look like? Think of two well-known texts: Zech. 4:6 “‘Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the Lord Almighty.” God’s work in the world is not accomplished by worldly power, but by the Spirit. God’s Spirit and worldly power are not compatible. Now think of Acts 1:8 “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” The Spirit is God’s own power. But the power the Spirit brings is a power to suffer. The Greek word here for “witnesses” is “martyria.” The power the Spirit gives is a power for martyrdom. The Weakness of God Paul repeatedly makes the point that God’s power is revealed in weakness. 1 Cor. 1:18–25 18 For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God…20 Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 22 Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24 but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength. “The weakness of God” is a striking line we easily miss if we are in a hurry. What is the weakness of God? We can mishear him if we think he’s saying something like: “God is so powerful that even his weakness—if there were such a thing—would be stronger than human strength.” That is to explain the text away. Let the words Paul actually wrote shock you. The weakness of God is his power, and God’s power is mightier than worldly power. What is the weakness of God? It’s the cross. As St. Maximus says, “The one who knows the mystery of the cross and the tomb, knows the reasons of things.” The power of God is Christ suffering on the cross. And it is this power that is at the heart of creation. The death of Jesus in weakness is God’s power, but it is not controlling. It is not dominating. It is not “masculine” in the sense we discussed above. But, Paul says, to those whom God has called it is the power of God. Gregory of Nyssa explains it this way: the crucifixion is the greatest demonstration of God’s power because in dying on a cross God is showing that he can even do something that is opposite to his nature. God is so powerful that he can become weak. This truth is grasped more easily by those who are in the midst of suffering. Listen to Dietrich Bonhoeffer describing the weakness and powerlessness of God from his own prison cell: “[God] is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us. Matt. 8:17 [“he took our infirmities and bore our diseases”] makes it quite clear that Christ helps us, not by virtue of his omnipotence, but by virtue of his weakness and suffering. Here is the decisive difference between Christianity and all religions. Man’s religiosity makes him look in his distress to the power of God in the world…The Bible directs man to God’s powerlessness and suffering; only the suffering God can help. How is it that God’s suffering and God’s powerlessness help us? Is it that he pretends to be powerless or that he feigns suffering? No. Think of the striking difference between the Synoptic Gospels and the Gospel of John. The Gospel of John is vastly different from the other three Gospels in many ways, but one of the primary differences is in the way it characterizes Jesus’ suffering. In the synoptics Gospels while Jesus is praying in the Garden of Gethsemane he is in anguish and sweating great drops of blood: “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not what I will but your will be done.” (Luke 22:42, Matthew 26:39). In John’s Gospel what does Jesus pray? “Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour? No! For this reason I have come!” (John 12:27) From the cross in Matthew and Mark Jesus cries out, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?” But in John’s Gospel he says, “It is finished.” It seems that in the synoptic Gospels we get agony where in John’s Gospel we get triumph. But the point is not that Jesus was play-acting, or that his suffering was not genuine. The point is that the suffering is the triumph. His anguish is his glory. His cross is his throne. His weakness is his power! God’s power is revealed in the weakness of Jesus. And this power in weakness is shown just as much in his birth as in his death. To be born is to be totally at the mercy of life happening to you. It is to “suffer” in the technical sense. But precisely by accepting this suffering he transforms it and generates new life from inside the suffering. Jesus accepts suffering and even death precisely so that he can create resurrection life for us in the midst our sufferings. And now we can see a bit more clearly what God’s power is like. It is not dominating, controlling, or “masculine.” It is the power to give life. It is much more like the power of a womb. Many early Christian writers often compared God to a breastfeeding mother. God’s power is a power that nourishes and generates life rather than merely taking life. St. Augustine often described God’s power as “maternal love, expressing itself as weakness.” A womb is powerful. Not in a dominating or controlling way, but in a generative way. It creates new life. When we conceive of power we usually think of power as the ability to take life. But true power is found in the ability to give life. Jesus’ power is much more like the power of a womb. He accepts the suffering of this world and by accepting it into himself he brings it into the divine life and then changes it for our good. Jesus metabolizes our suffering into the life of God in order to bring his divinity to bear on our suffering. Jesus died. He allowed that happen to him. That was truly weakness. But by that weakness he transformed death from the inside out. He changed death into a way of life and love. In his weakness he is strong. The Spirit Dwelling Within Us When we think of God’s power we think of the force that can get us out of jams—a force that acts on my life and on my circumstances from the outside. But God wants something else for us. He doesn’t merely want his power to act on our lives from the outside, he wants his power to be at work in our lives. This is why Paul tells Timothy in 1:14 that he is to “guard the truth that has been entrusted to you by the Holy Spirit who dwells within us.” The Spirit of God is the power of God.

    58 min
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About

Midweek Bible study at Colonial Heights Church. Artwork by Scott Erickson (scottericksonart.com) cameroncombs.substack.com

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  • Creator
    Cameron Combs
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    114
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Cameron Combs
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