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Ed Gallagher
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Reflections on Scripture and culture. edmongallagher.substack.com

  1. 2d ago

    On Reading the Bible

    Only be thou strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law, which Moses my servant commanded thee: turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, that thou mayest prosper whithersoever thou goest. This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success. Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the LORD thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest. (Joshua 1:7–9) Should Christians read the Bible? Well, yes, of course, and they can hardly avoid it if they are pious and go to church and Bible class. But I don’t mean to ask about Christians reading the Bible in group settings: public worship or Bible class or whatever. Should individual Christians read the Bible for private devotion? Yes, and no. Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Or, actually, no and yes, and, again, no. Let’s talk about it. Ancient Believers Didn’t Read the Bible We’ll approach the question through the side door. Should individual Christians pray? Yes, that’s an easy one. The Bible talks a great deal about people of faith praying. “Pray without ceasing,” said the Apostle. Jesus gave much instruction on prayer. In the Old Testament, there’s an entire book, a long book, comprising 150 prayers. Next question, should Christians go to church? Let’s reword that: should Christians routinely gather with the saints to worship God? Yes, another easy question. The Bible has a great deal to say about corporate worship, in the Old and New Testament—or, at least, gathering and doing the activities we tend to associate with worship: singing, praying, exploring Scripture. (Maybe Tom Wadsworth would agree with that description.) Let me just remind you about the verse in Hebrews that says, “not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together.” What about Bible reading? Does the Bible tell people to read the Bible? We find instructions to listen to, or to hear, the word of God, or the message of the gospel. The prophets often call on the ancient Israelites and Judeans to pay attention, to listen, but they never tell them to read. Such a command would make no sense, because there was nothing to read, and even if there were, the common Israelite couldn’t read it. When I say there was nothing to read, I mean the Bible hadn’t been written yet. Isaiah certainly couldn’t tell people to read his book; his life was taken up with delivering the oracles that would eventually constitute the contents of the book of Isaiah. Some things were written—the Ten Commandments, for instance, but the only copy about which we know was stored in the Most Holy Place of the Tabernacle or Temple, and therefore not available for reading. We could assume that multiple copies of the Ten Commandments were made, chiseled in stone and displayed prominently in various spots of ancient Israel, just as in modern America. But then you have the problem of literacy. It is impossible to be very precise about ancient literacy, but a pretty common guess for the ancient world is that about ten percent of the population could read. It is almost precisely the reverse in modern America, with about ten percent of the population considered illiterate. How has it come about that so many people in modern America can read? It’s because for about two hundred years or more, American society has invested a great deal of money and effort on public education, with the fundamental goal of teaching people how to read. Learning to read is not easy. You don’t graduate first grade considered “literate,” even if you can read Dr. Seuss books. It takes years of training to be proficient to read complicated texts. And the Bible is most definitely a complicated text. Absent a well-funded public education program, widespread literacy is not going to just happen, not at the levels familiar to us. That’s a pretty good reason why a general requirement that Christians should read the Bible would have made no sense prior to the modern period. As Keith Stanglin (p. 159) has mentioned, at the time of the Reformation and following the invention of the printing press, early “Protestants usually stressed the obligation of all Christians to read their Bibles.” This was a new phenomenon. But there’s another reason we never find Jesus or Paul telling believers that they need to read the Bible. It’s not just that the concept of “Bible”—as in a collection of sacred books that you could hold in your hand—is an anachronism for the first century, but also because the individual books themselves were enormously expensive. Of course, everything was handmade: the leather or papyrus upon which the text was written, and the ink, and the process of writing itself, all done by hand. I have seen the plausible estimate that in the first century a scroll of the book of Isaiah would have cost about a month’s wages. Most believers did not have ready access to copies of the biblical books even if they had been trained to read them. That’s why the Bible contains no general command to believers to read the Bible as a regular habit, like prayer or the assembling of believers. Such instruction would make no sense in their world; it would have been impossible to carry out. General Bible reading is a very recent phenomenon. (For similar thoughts, see Brad East, pp. 119–20.) Christians Should Read the Bible But, yes, Christians should definitely read the Bible. I mean, Christians now, with the opportunity and the ability. The fact is, by this point, the Bible has been written down and collected together. There are a plethora of cheap Bibles available, and you can easily find an organization giving Bibles away if you need that. And we have all been trained to read at a very high level, at great expense in money and time. We are judged by God according to what we do with our opportunities, and we—Christians in twenty-first century America—have been granted the opportunity—almost unique in the history of the world—of reading the Bible for ourselves. Yes, we should read the Bible. This is especially true for church leaders: if any believers should be reading the Bible, it should be church leaders. They will be judged by God not only according to their opportunities but also in how they have led God’s people, and so they need humbly to seek the will of God through constant devotion to Scripture. Or Maybe Not? But do Christians need to read the Bible? Is that what God wants for us? Maybe not. Maybe the point is not reading but something else. Could reading the Bible be a distraction from what God wants us to do with Scripture? I’m asking these questions conscious of two influences: history and Socrates. The history we’ve already mentioned. Before the modern period, it would have made no sense to tell Christians generally that they need to read the Bible. What did such Christians do? Were they just not spiritual? Or did they do something with the Bible besides read it? That brings me to Socrates. The famous philosopher was not a big fan of writing. Yes, I get the irony that the only way I know about the opinion of Socrates is that his student Plato wrote it down. I’m sure Plato got the irony too. But still, listen to Socrates: For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem [275b] to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise. (Phaedrus 274c–275b; trans. LCL, pp. 563–65) Does Socrates have a point? I think he does, and the problem he identified 2500 years ago has in the last 20 years become exponentially worse with the proliferation of the smartphone. It has been commonly said recently that there’s no need to know anything because you can always look it up. That is precisely what Socrates was complaining about. People aren’t wise, they just appear wise. Well, I want to be wise, not just appear wise, so let’s sit with Socrates for a moment and hear what he has to say. What does Socrates think people ought to do? Not write stuff down, but store it in their heads. Now, we might say, that’s easy for Socrates, he’s a freaking genius. I think that’s a fair point, but Socrates also has a fair point, that when you come to rely on external sources of wisdom, you cease to exercise your internal faculties, and that wisdom stored on the paper—or on your phone—doesn’t really become a part of you. There is assuredly a great deal of difference between having information in your pocket and information in your head, and it’s not just about how quickly you can retrieve that information. It’s about your ability to make connections between seemingly disparate subjects. It’s about having those “aha!” moments. Those moments are something akin to growing in wisdom. What did people do with Scripture before mass literacy and cheap Bibles? They went to church and heard it proclaimed. And if they were good and pious, they reflected on those words throughout the week, until they could hear another message from God’s word. They mulled it over. Let me remind you of Jeremiah’s prophecy of the new covenant, which the writer of Hebrews says has been fulfilled through Christ and the church. Jeremiah said tha

  2. Oct 5

    What Is Scripture About?

    Communication is difficult. The point is proven time and again, and perhaps the people that are most familiar with the difficulty of communication are, on the one hand, parents, and on the other hand, preachers. Both groups of people, parents and preachers, frequently find themselves in the situation where they need the phrase, “no, that’s not what I meant.” There are, no doubt, several reasons why communication is difficult, but one of them is that the speaker and the hearer do not necessarily share presuppositions. Let me give you an example of this. I recall several years ago giving a sermon on the Lord’s Supper, in which I was trying to explain part of the deep significance of this meal, how it helps us conform to Christ since we are consuming his body and blood. It’s not the kind of lesson on communion that I had ever heard, certainly not in churches of Christ. To top if off, I delivered the sermon on Christmas Day, which happened to fall on a Sunday that year. I called the sermon “Incarnation and Reincarnation,” meaning just as the Word became flesh—incarnation—so also the Word takes on flesh in our lives—reincarnation—as represented in the Lord’s Supper, as our flesh and blood mingles with and is transformed by the flesh and blood of our Lord. I thought I was presenting a new and helpful way of thinking about this weekly ritual for the members of the very traditional congregation for which I was preaching. I was trying to be deep. So I was a little confused afterwards when one old man complimented my lesson by saying, “That’s what we need more of, the first principles.” Either he didn’t hear what I said, or I didn’t say what I thought I said. Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. As I have reflected on that comment over the years, I have decided that this old man, who knew me and liked me, came into the sermon expecting to like the sermon. And the kinds of sermons he liked were “first principles” kinds of sermons. He heard what he wanted to hear. His expectations did not align with what I was trying to do. I take my share of the blame here; obviously I was not clear enough in my presentation. Communication is difficult. Or, let’s talk about politics for just a moment. I have a political point of view, a fundamental understanding about the nature of the country in which I live—America—and of the direction it ought to go. And I recognize that the country is highly polarized politically at the moment. There are people I enjoy listening to because they share my fundamental beliefs about America, and there are people I do not enjoy listening to. So recently I forced myself to listen to a podcast by people who do not align with my political views, but people that I consider intelligent. And it was hard to listen to that podcast. And it was helpful. And there were multiple times in that 45-minute podcast when I simply could not make sense out of what the person was saying. I mean, I heard the words, and I could get meaning out of those words, but I was convinced that the person could not have meant what I understood those words to mean, because that would be so stupid, so obviously incorrect. And these were intelligent people I was listening to. I wasn’t hearing something that made sense to me, partly, I think, because my political expectations were different from those of the people on the podcast. What is Scripture about? It’s about a lot of things, isn’t it? What are those statistics we often hear about the Bible? 66 books written by 40 different people in multiple languages over a period of more than a millennium, in several different cultures. There’s a lot in there. There’s history and law and parables and apocalypse and poetry and prophetic oracles and letters, and each of those genres can be further subdivided, and some biblical books attest multiple genres. So the Bible has a lot of stuff in it—which is part of the reason that the Bible is so difficult to read. What is the point of Scripture? What is it about? The Bible is not about me. I think it is true to say that Christians often open the Bible hoping to find it talking about them—and it does, sometimes, and in some ways. A little later we’ll talk about how the Bible addresses Christians. But in our culture the expectation that a Christian will have is very individualistic. I have a problem, and I want the Bible to address my problem. If a therapist can address an individual person’s problems, then surely my problem can be directly addressed in Scripture by God—who is basically an all-knowing therapist, right? When Bible-readers have this expectation, they are sure to be disappointed by most of the Bible, which they simply cannot understand through this paradigm. Again, it’s sorta understandable that modern Christians would approach the Bible with this paradigm, because they have been told ad infinitum that God loves me and longs for a personal relationship with me. Seems like the Bible ought to talk about that. So what is the point of Ezekiel? Or Leviticus? Or most of the Old Testament, really? Some of the psalms are nice, and the proverbs are relatively straightforward, though they aren’t very comforting. Did Paul really say that all Scripture is profitable? Maybe he was exaggerating just a little bit? So here’s the deal: the Bible is not about me. It is not about you. If you approach Scripture with that expectation, you will most definitely be disappointed. Let me tell you what the Bible is about: it’s about God, and it’s about us. Let’s talk about both of these in turn. Not Me, But God The Bible is about God. Wow, that’s profound, isn’t it. You might need to write that one on your hand so that you’ll remember it. I’ll wait. Let me be a little more specific: The Bible is not about me, it’s about God. When I turn to the Bible, what am I looking for? What do I think I’m going to be reading? What are my expectations? If you open Ezekiel with the idea that you’re going to read something immediately relevant for your daily life—well, yes, I would argue that you can find in Ezekiel passages relevant to your daily life, but that’s because I am convinced that knowledge of God is relevant to your daily life. It might not have an obvious, straightforward application to the particular problem you’re facing right now, but it will most definitely display to you the big-picture reality in which your entire life takes place. Not just Ezekiel, of course, but the entire Bible does that, because the Bible is about God. If you turn to Ezekiel looking to get out of the doldrums, or how to be compassionate, or how to have less stress—if you turn to Ezekiel expecting it to address you right now, you probably won’t find what you’re seeking. Listen, there is a correlation between the text of Ezekiel and the Christian life today, but it’s not a direct correlation. If you imagine that what God wants to do in Scripture is talk to you about you, many books of the Bible are going to confuse you, most definitely including Ezekiel. And you may decide that Ezekiel is not profitable, after all, no matter what Paul says about all Scripture. In Scripture, God wants to talk to you not about you but about himself. One of the most basic ideas in the Christian life is that you need to take the focus off of yourself and fill your mind with God, be led by the Spirit of God, squash your own will so that you can take on God’s will, so that you can say with our Lord, “not my will but yours be done.” That is how the Bible addresses you—by not addressing you, by telling you about God. And let me tell you something: if you open Ezekiel expecting to read something about God, you will find what you seek. God is all over that book. Christians have known this all along, of course, that the Bible is about God. The early church had a reading strategy for the Bible, and they called it the Rule of Faith. I’m talking about the church of the second century and later. Actually, let me talk about the first century, and then I’ll return to the second century. Because the first-century church also had a reading strategy. For instance, Paul read Scripture in light of a fundamental truth that he knew he could always trust, just like Descartes who figured out his own fundamental truth when he declared cogito ergo sum. Even more than his own existence, Descartes felt that he could trust the fact that he had the capacity to think. That was, for Descartes, the fundamental fact. For Paul, the fundamental fact was that Jesus is Lord and the Christ promised in Scripture, and the Apostle always read Scripture through this grid. “Whatever else may be true, I know that Jesus appeared to me. He is Lord, therefore I am.” In the second century, the church developed something called the Rule of Faith to help them read Scripture. They didn’t develop it so much as inherit it, because it’s very similar to Paul’s reading strategy, just a little bit expanded, so that it mentions God the Father and the Holy Spirit and a few other basic Christian facts. One venerable form of the Rule of Faith is the Nicene Creed, and I encourage you sometime to read that creed and see what these ancient Christians saw in Scripture. (Do it now.) But I’ll go ahead and tell you: what they saw was God. They knew that the Bible is about God. It might be interesting at this point to compare this ancient reading strategy with our own reading strategy in the modern day. In the churches of Christ, has our reading strategy been focused on the five-step plan of salvation, or the five acts of worship, or the organization of the church? I think our reading strategy has largely been addressing the question, “what are we supposed to do?” That is a fine question to ask, and I think we have arrived at some sensible—even obvious—answers to that question, but that questi

  3. Oct 1

    What Is Scripture For?

    I have previously proposed the use of the so-called “steps of salvation” as an avenue for spiritual growth. The first step is “hear,” and this essay is a first reflection on how to go about doing that. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, the Evangelist Matthew records a story told by Jesus about two builders. You probably remember singing a song about them. The wise man built his house upon the rock, and when the rains came tumbling down, the house stood firm; but the foolish man built his house upon the sand, and the torrential rains caused his house to go splat. The point of this story, according to the song, is to encourage us to build our house on the Lord Jesus Christ, and what does that mean? Jesus himself explained the difference between the two builders: the wise builder exemplifies, according to Matthew 7, “whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them”; whereas the foolish builder illustrates “every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not.” The common element between both builders is hearing. If I may extend our Lord’s metaphor, they both receive the blueprints for the house, and they both study those blueprints, but only one of them builds his house according to the blueprints. To change images, only one of them follows the recipe. Only one of them executes the instructions of Jesus that they both hear. Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Hearing is not the problem. The problem is doing. What distinguishes these two men is action. And no wonder, for the words that they are being asked to perform are, as Jesus says, “these sayings of mine.” Which sayings exactly? Why, the Sermon on the Mount, of course, of which the conclusion is this very parable about the two builders. Hearing the Sermon on the Mount is fine, necessary, essential, but ultimately insufficient. Doing the Sermon on the Mount, now that’s what matters. And that’s hard. I completely understand the guy who wants to build his house not up to code, because building your house according to the code of Jesus is difficult, time-consuming, and expensive. The code of Jesus, the Sermon on the Mount, is filled with stuff I don’t want to do. And I don’t mean avoiding anxiety. Yes, naturally, it would be nice to do such a thing, to avoid anxiety, but, as Jesus knew, that’s easier said than done. At least we all want to try that one. But what about the Golden Rule? or the prohibition on judging others? or the instructions on fasting? or the command to store up treasures in heaven and not on earth? or the command to turn the other check or to go the second mile or to pray for one’s enemies? I don’t really even want to try to follow that recipe, and the way my fellow church-goers talk makes me suspect that they have no interest in trying it either. Which means that we are the fools in Jesus’ parable, building our house without a foundation, counting on good weather. What is Scripture for? It’s for doing. Later in the Gospel of Matthew (16:24), we read these words, also in red: “For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works.” Doing is important. How does this concept relate to the grace of God? And is doing really all that important? Doesn’t the grace of God mean that doing is not important? Yes, I see the tension. Take it up with Jesus. He’s the one that said that the son of man “shall reward every man according to his works.” The point I’m trying to make is that hearing is not the problem. Doing is the problem. Both builders heard, the wise builder and the foolish builder. Only one of them executed what they heard. Hearing is not the problem. Hearing is sometimes the problem. In the Gospel of Luke (8:18), Jesus says, “Take heed therefore how ye hear.” There are better and worse ways of hearing. This concept is illustrated for us in the Parable of the Sower, which is the immediate prelude to this saying of Jesus in the Third Gospel. When Jesus says “take heed how ye hear,” he is thinking about the Parable of the Sower. Remember that the seed represents the word of God that is distributed liberally, but people respond to that message in different ways, some better than others. Different kinds of people hear in different ways. “Take heed therefore how ye hear.” We might also think about the disciples of Jesus and how they struggled to hear Jesus. At one point, a group of Jesus’ disciples actually said about one of Jesus’ messages, “this is a hard saying, who can hear it?” (John 6:60). Even Jesus’ closest disciples routinely misunderstood him. One time he warned them about the leaven of the Pharisees, and the disciples thought Jesus was reprimanding them for not bringing bread (Mark 8:14–21). Their years spent with Jesus could be understood as training for how to hear. I want to talk to you about hearing, but I need to tell you that the point of Scripture is not hearing but doing. Scripture calls on its readers or hearers to respond to the message. There are some literary works that are, I guess, merely for reading or hearing—maybe a John Grisham book or something. I enjoy the TV show Monk, and part of what I enjoy is that it is empty calories; it’s fun, but there’s not much there that I take with me once the TV is off. Of course, many great works of art, whether literature or movies or whatever, do stick with a person and even encourage a particular behavior. I would say the movie It’s a Wonderful Life has a very clear message about how we the viewer ought to live. Same for Groundhog Day. Same for To Kill a Mockingbird. It’s maybe less true for many Shakespeare plays, that is, less true that these plays have a clear message about how people ought to live, but certainly the plays do force the audience who hears well to reflect on various aspects of life. These examples of great works of art get close to what Scripture is doing in calling for a response. A John Grisham novel is for reading and enjoying. Groundhog Day is for watching and enjoying but also for reflecting on life and perhaps encouraging better behavior. Scripture is for reading or hearing and enjoying and for reflecting on life and for repenting and for enacting in life. The point of a John Grisham novel has been achieved when you read it and enjoy it. That is not true of Scripture. Scripture is for doing. Just think for a moment about the premier passage on Scripture in the Christian Scriptures, Paul’s description of Scripture in his second letter to Timothy. “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God”—or, we might say the person of God, anthrōpos—“may be perfect, throughly”—or completely—“furnished unto all good works.” Where does the profit of Scripture lie? Wherein is its usefulness? The Apostle supplies the answer: Scripture is profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness. Scripture is for doing, not just hearing. Think back to the greatness that was Christian America, before the culture turned away from traditional values announced from America’s pulpits: before abortion on demand, before the sexual revolution, before prayer was removed from public schools. Think back to America in the 1950s, when placing the Ten Commandments in public spaces was uncontroversial. This was the decade when the words “under God” were added to the Pledge of Allegiance by an act of Congress, and when “In God We Trust” became the official national motto. Was America a more Christian nation in the 1950s? This was the decade when the Little Rock Nine walked to school amid a howling mob of Christians. I have no doubt that people heard the word of God, but the point of Scripture is not hearing but doing. May we avoid sharing the guilt of our ancestors. As Thomas à Kempis wrote six centuries ago, “On the day of judgment we will not be asked what we have read, but what we have done; not how well we have discoursed, but how religiously we have lived” (Imitation of Christ 1.3). Doing presupposes hearing. Hearing is not the point, but zeal without knowledge won’t get the job done. Knowledge is important, and that requires hearing. In the parable of the two builders at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus presupposes the element of hearing, because he is wrapping up a sermon; now that his audience has “heard,” he needs to encourage them to “do.” The hearing comes first. And so we return to Jesus’ admonition to take heed how we hear. How shall we take heed? I have two suggestions for you. First, be committed to the principle that you haven’t heard everything God wants to tell you in Scripture. Second, what you need to be hearing in Scripture is instruction in spirituality. We will explore briefly both of these points. Before the Puritans sailed for America on the Mayflower, one of their leaders, John Robinson, preached a sermon that contained this line: “I am verily persuaded the Lord hath more truth and light yet to break forth from His holy word.” You can find that line quoted at the Wikipedia page for “John Robinson (pastor).” The point Robinson was making is that he did not know all the truth contained in Scripture, and neither did anybody else, but believers should also be ready to see new truth therein. The Epistle to the Hebrews gets at the same point by asserting that the word of God is living and active. It is no dead letter. There is a common temptation to imagine that we have exhausted the meaning of Scripture. I have observed this temptation among people who know next to nothing about Scripture, and among biblical scholars. It seems to have no particular relation to how much one actually knows about the Bible. I remember hearing a

  4. Sep 28

    Was Paul Ever Married?

    Some people think the apostle Paul might have been married at one point in his life. In fact, there was an early Christian tradition about it. Eusebius the church historian in the early fourth century quoted Clement of Alexandria, who wrote at the turn of the third century. Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Clement, whose words we cited recently in the context of the previous quotation, enumerates, on account of those who reject marriage, those of the Apostles who were married, saying, “Or will they disapprove even of the Apostles? For Peter and Philip begat children, and Philip even gave his daughters to husbands, while Paul himself does not hesitate in one of his letters to address his wife whom he did not take about with him in order to facilitate his mission.” (Eusebius, Church History 3.30.1 [Loeb], quoting Clement, Stromata 3.52–53; see here, p. 289) What is Clement talking about? Paul addressed his wife in one of his letters? He is referring to the “true yokefellow” of Philippians 4:3. For some reason, Clement thinks this is Paul’s wife. Origen knows this same tradition about Paul’s marriage. Paul, then, if certain traditions are true, was called while in possession of a wife, concerning whom he speaks when writing to the Philippians, “I ask you also, my loyal mate, help these women.” Since he had become free by mutual consent with her, he calls himself a slave of Christ. But if, as others think, he had no wife, nonetheless he who was free when he was called is yet a slave of Christ. (Commentary on Romans 1:1(3), trans. Scheck, p. 62) If Paul had a wife at one time, what happened to her? Well, we can think of the options: death and divorce. Maybe the apostle was a widower, as some people think based on the Greek of 1 Corinthians 7:8, as we will discuss in a moment. Or maybe there was a divorce. We could imagine a couple scenarios. The Pharisee Saul of Tarsus might have divorced his wife for any number of reasons, assuming he adhered to the views of R. Hillel, who was pretty lenient on such matters. Or, maybe after the up-and-coming Jewish leader became an adherent to the way of Jesus, his wife left him. What sort of evidence might suggest that Paul was at one time married? It may also be that Paul was married prior to the time that he wrote 1 Corinthians in the mid-50s. In that letter, he indicates he was not married (7:7, 9, 38, 40; 9:4). Some scholars have noted, however, that Paul employs the term agamoi, which may be rendered “widowers,” in 1 Cor 7:8 and suggest that the apostle included himself among that group. If Paul were at one time married, this would coincide with Jewish traditions that praised and even stipulated marriage. Such an expectation was probably present among Pharisaic Jews in the first century. As a result, Paul might well have thought it both appropriate and prudent to marry. (Longenecker and Still, 2014, p. 27) So, possibly Paul called himself a “widower” in 1 Corinthians 7:8. Here’s the verse in the ESV: “To the unmarried (agamos) and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single, as I am.” Some interpreters think Paul included himself in the categories of “agamos and widows,” and since he cannot be calling himself a widow, he must be calling himself an agamos—but what does this word mean? According to Danker, it means “an unmarried man/woman,” but some people think that in the context of 1 Corinthians it must mean widower, since it is contrasted with the widow. So, if the word suggests “widower” and if Paul is including himself in the categories mentioned at 1 Corinthians 7:8, then Paul would be self-identifying as a widower. I think this argument fairly weak. But maybe there’s another rout to a married Paul. What if it was expected of Jews in the first century? Here’s F. F. Bruce: It may be pointed out that marriage was normal and, indeed, expected in pious Jews when they came of age. [He cites Avot 5.21.] True, Jesus had spoken of certain exceptions – those who, as he said, had “made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:12) – among whom he may have included John the Baptist himself. But Paul was not presumably influenced by considerations of this kind in his pre-Christian days. What then? Was he a widower? Perhaps he was: the question has received a positive answer from Joachim Jeremias, for example. Rather more probable is the view that his wife left him when he became a Christian: that when he “suffered the loss of all things” [Philippians 3:8] for the sake of Christ he lost his wife too. This cannot be proved, of course, but if something like this did happen it might explain Paul’s specially sympathetic understanding of the domestic situation in which the unconverted partner walks out on the husband or wife who has become a Christian: “in such a case the brother or sister is not bound” (1 Corinthians 7:15). Paul, for his part, was not “bound” either way: he knew that he could fulfil his commission more wholeheartedly if he remained free from the marriage bond. (Bruce, 1977, pp. 269–70) (For another argument for a married Paul, see Jerome Murphy-O’Connor (1996). I don’t see that E. P. Sanders (2015) mentions it.) The idea that Jews in the first-century—pious, Torah-observant Jews—were generally expected to marry was argued a century ago by Joachim Jeremias in two very brief articles in the journal Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft. Here are the references. Jeremias, “War Paulus Witwer,” ZNW 25 (1926): 310–12; “Nochmals: War Paulus Witwer?” ZNW 28 (1929): 321–22. Jeremias is pretty confident in his interpretation. He says that a unanimous rabbinic teaching regarded marriage as a religious obligation. Here’s the evidence as he cites it. The Mishnah (Yevamot 6.6) states that Jewish men—and, maybe, Jewish women—are under obligation to fulfill the commandment of Genesis 1:28 to “be fruitful and multiply” (on the history of interpretation of this verse, see Jeremy Cohen’s 1989 monograph), and the sages suggest that a person can consider himself to have performed the mitzvah if he has produced two children, at least one of whom is male. Indeed, so important is the mitzvah that after ten years of marriage with no children, a man needs to seek a different wife. This mishnah is quoted in the Babylonian Talmud at Yevamot 61b §15, which then leads to a long discussion, but at the very beginning of the discussion it becomes clear that some Rabbis thought that a Jewish man was obligated to have a wife irrespective of children—in other words, even if he already had children, he still needed a wife. Being married was a separate obligation. In another part of the Talmud, at Pesachim 113b §14, there is a list of seven categories of people who are “ostracized by Heaven,” and first on the list is a Jew without a wife. This all seems pretty clear, but there are two problems with the argument of Jeremias that I want to mention. First, we’re using the Talmud for evidence for a first century Jew (Paul). The Talmud is not first century, it’s from some centuries later, maybe around AD 600. It definitely contains traditions from the first century, but the trick is knowing how to identify them, and I cannot do it. Scholars these days are much more reticent than in the days of Jeremias to use the Talmud to establish something in the first century. The same basic issue applies also to the Mishnah, though to a smaller degree, since the Mishnah is much closer to the New Testament (around AD 200). Second, there is another lifestyle that some faithful Jews pursued: they avoided marriage to devote themselves to God. Philo (Hypothetica 11.14) and Josephus (War 2.120; Antiquities 18.21) both mention celibacy in regard to the Essenes. (The extracts of Philo’s Hypothetica are preserved in the Preparation of the Gospel by Eusebius, book 8, but also printed in the Loeb edition of Philo, vol. 9, p. 443.) Even if they are not exactly accurate in their descriptions of the Essenes (see Crawford, pp. 299–302), the fact that they imagined Jewish celibacy and even presented it as an ideal is suggestive. The Talmud likewise presents such a case, at least with reference to one scholar, Ben Azzai. His example is presented in the Talmud at Yevamot 63b §18. (See also the Tosefta, Yevamot 8.5.) Why didn’t Ben Azzai get married? He explains: נפשי חשקה בתורה, “my soul yearns for Torah.” He acknowledges that procreation is a universal command, binding on him as well as others, but his love of Torah takes precedence. His attitude was: let others keep the human race going, I’m devoted to Torah. According to scholar of rabbinics Michael Satlow, Everyone agrees that procreation is good, but, Ben Azzai says, there can be a conflict between this good and the (better) good of Torah study. Ben Azzai feels that he can have only one erotic attachment, and “lusts” for Torah rather than women. (p. 30) As Satlow goes on to discuss, another passage in the Talmud, Kiddushin 29b §§14–15, centers on the same dynamic. Which takes precedence: marriage or study of Torah? The first (anonymous) advice is to study Torah first and then marry, and only reverse that order if … ahem … you need a wife. This all sounds strangely familiar to the reader of Christian Scripture. Isn’t there someone in the New Testament who also talks about forgoing marriage so that you can devote yourself to God? Who was that? To shift gears for just a moment, I want to acknowledge that this take on marriage as a hindrance to spirituality is not the only view that there is, and is not the only view expressed in the New Testament. Certainly it is in the New Testament. As we saw earlier, Jesus mentioned people who had become eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, an

  5. Sep 21

    Grace and the Steps of Salvation

    “There were two subjects we never heard about in church,” Joy Winn told me one evening. She was referring to her childhood and young adulthood, decades earlier (roughly, the 1960s), in a church of Christ in Alabama. I’m pretty sure this conversation took place on a Wednesday evening because we were at church, which narrows down the possibilities. For my entire life, I have gone to church every Sunday and Wednesday and no other day of the week (except for special events). I think I spoke to Joy on a Wednesday evening because what prompted her comment to me was the talk I had just delivered on the Holy Spirit, and I seem to recall making that presentation in the middle of the week in about the year 2017. I asked her which two subjects the church of her youth failed to cover, and she replied: “The Holy Spirit and grace.” Readers with a deep association with conservative churches in America (or, maybe, elsewhere) will understand Joy’s comment. I don’t think its application is limited to churches of Christ, but it definitely includes them, as she intended. I myself am a lifelong member of churches of Christ in the (mostly southern) United States—Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, and Alabama. My experience in churches confirms the truth of Joy’s comment: many churches have had little to say about the Holy Spirit or grace. Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Ignoring the Holy Spirit Why these two topics? I think the Holy Spirit is perceived by some conservative Christians as too mysterious—maybe too nebulous—to provide anything firm or concrete to say, so they mostly avoid the subject. I understand this concern; I feel the same pressure. My experience of churches is among those who emphasize the Christian Bible over Christian tradition—or, rather, who emphasize the Bible against tradition. The idea is that Christian tradition largely went off the rails in the centuries after the New Testament, adding all kinds of extraneous doctrines and practices to the simple message of the gospel as attested in the Scriptures. And it is true, I think, that whereas there are well developed doctrines regarding the Holy Spirit among some Christian groups, these are in many ways add-ons, later developments, not clearly articulated in the New Testament. If we’re going to stick with the Bible rather than later traditions developing from it, that’s going to limit what we can say with confidence about the Holy Spirit. You may have noticed some problems with this explanation for Christian reticence regarding the Holy Spirit. Surely there are all kinds of ways in which even very conservative, sola-Scriptura-kinds of Christians accept as true things that are not directly said in Scripture—not to mention denying or downplaying things that are directly said in Scripture. Yes, guilty. Just think about the doctrine of the Trinity for a moment. Or whatever other doctrine you want to know. There’s what the Bible says, and then there’s your way of explaining those biblical statements, putting them together into a coherent system. With regard to the Holy Spirit, what I can say is that church leaders I have known have tended to take a rather high view of the status or person of the Holy Spirit, and they will even occasionally address their worship toward the Holy Spirit (“Spirit, we love you, we worship and adore you…”), but they get cagey when you ask them what the Holy Spirit actually does now. They do think he—and they often insist on the “he,” not “it”—dwells in Christians, but they’re not sure how he does this, or what he does in us or for us. And that is because they want their thoughts on divine matters to be based on a biblical prooftext, and while the Bible (especially the New Testament) is very interested in talking about the Holy Spirit, many non-charismatic conservative Christians are dubious that the things the Holy Spirit does in the New Testament (prophecy, speaking in tongues, healings, etc.) are still happening. If he’s not doing those things, what is he doing? The Bible says some things, but not much, so some churches prefer to talk about other things. I know, the Holy Spirit seems like an awfully important element of Christianity to be ignored by Christians. I’m just trying to explain the thought process. Ignoring Grace And grace? That one is a little different. The New Testament (and especially Paul) talks a lot about grace in such a way that it’s obvious that it’s supposed to apply to all believers for all time. Grace is the basis of human salvation from sin. Humans could not achieve that salvation through any of their own activity or brilliance, so God simply gave it to them. That gift is grace. “For by grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not of works, lest any man should boast” (Ephesians 2:8–9). How could a Christian ignore grace? Grace is everything; it is the entirety of Christianity! I’ll try to explain. Even in that verse I just quoted from Ephesians, written in the name of the apostle Paul, the gift of salvation comes not to everyone in the world but to certain people based on a condition—the condition of faith. It’s believers who receive grace. What does it mean to believe? Let’s bring in the testimony from another well-known passage in the New Testament, this one attributed to a certain James, who may be (and traditionally has been taken to be) the brother of Jesus mentioned in the Gospels (e.g., Mark 6:3) and by Paul (e.g., 1 Corinthians 15:7). “You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder” (James 2:19). Okay, wait: the demons believe? But they are obviously not recipients of God’s grace. Is mere “belief” enough to enjoy salvation from God? Uh, big issues. For now I offer this suggestion: though the demons know about God and Jesus and they are perfectly confident in the basic facts of the gospel, they refuse to submit to the authority of God. When Paul in Ephesians says that grace comes to believers, he means by “believers” people who accept Jesus as their Lord, who love God and submit to him. That means that “believing” is not just about something happening in a person’s head, like whether they believe in evolution or whatever, or in UFOs, or Bigfoot. It’s more like whether you believe in spending time with your kids; if you do, then prove it—spend time with your kids. There’s a behavioral element here. If you believe that Jesus is Lord, then do what he says. “If you love me,” Jesus says in the Gospel of John, “then you will keep my commandments” (14:15). If you’ve got to prove your faith or love through your actions, then what does that entail? It turns out that there is a significant tension between faith and works—or between grace and works—in the New Testament, which has led to longstanding debates within Christian history among and within various churches. While all churches would affirm Paul’s statement of the situation in Ephesians 2:8, all would say humans are saved only by grace, not works, most churches would also want to set alongside that verse other New Testament statements affirming the value of works, or, rather, the necessity of ethics. What Joy meant on that Wednesday evening a decade ago was that the churches of her youth had spent more time talking about human responsibility and less time rejoicing in God’s mercy. I understand that impulse, though I think it has often gone too far and most certainly needs balance. The Churches of Christ What are the churches that I’ve been talking about, the churches of Christ? Let’s start with terminology. Some people in these churches self-identify as members of “the churches of Christ,” others of “the Churches of Christ,” and others of “the Church of Christ.” In that sense, there is no official name (“denomination”) for a collection of congregations sharing the peculiar set of beliefs and practices that I’ll describe later. However, the individual congregations are almost always known as Such-and-Such Church of Christ. For instance, I’m a member of the Pine Hill Church of Christ in Florence, Alabama. I grew up at the Pennyrile Church of Christ in Madisonville, Kentucky. When my wife and I moved to Ohio, we became members of the Northeast Church of Christ in Cincinnati. The idea is that these names identify not a group of churches but merely the congregation; it is a church of Christ. There is, in fact, no denominational hierarchy or structure, no organization to regulate doctrine and practice. Each congregation is autonomous. Of course, the congregations do keep tabs on one another, so it is generally known which congregations are staying true to the traditions of the churches of Christ, and which are not. Sometimes this kind of information crosses state lines. In Alabama, I know about some churches of Christ—usually the ones who have abandoned certain traditional practices—in Texas and Arkansas and Tennessee and Georgia. Such news sometimes comes through the grapevine. Colleges and publishing companies and large retreats (especially youth retreats) also bind the various congregations together. There is no official denominational hierarchy but there is a loose affiliation. As for the origins of the churches of Christ, a traditional in-group response to this topic has been that the churches of Christ had their origin in the New Testament, established by Jesus two thousand years ago. Sometimes a congregation will have on its church sign, “Such-and Such Church of Christ, established AD 30,” even though the congregation was actually established in 1947 or whatever. The theory is that these modern congregations are basing their doctrine and practice solely on the New Testament, and if you do only what the New Testament requires, then you should be the kind of church described in the N

  6. Sep 17

    Humans vs. Machines

    Is Artificial Intelligence going to kill us all in just a few years? That is a question making the news now, because some bigwigs in the AI world have claimed that the apocalypse is coming and it’s almost here. These are people working at the companies making AI, not the mom-and-pop AI companies, but companies like Anthropic and OpenAI. And these are bigwigs at these companies, like, the biggest of wigs, like the CEOs of the company, saying that what they are doing is going to end humanity, kill us all. Of course, we shouldn’t worry about this because our politicians are going to do something about it. What should a Christian think about such news? The end of humanity by the end of the decade? Let’s talk about it. Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. First, we need to understand something about AI. Let me explain the technology to you. It has something to do with computers, I think. I believe the internet might come into play somehow. There are microchips, maybe in the computers, or in the internet, or something. You mix them all together and you get robot armies. I think that’s how it works. What if these companies make some sort of superintelligence that we cannot control, which is, I think, their explicit aim? There are a few ways that might play out. I’ve heard some people say that if AI takes over the world, humans will be free, liberated from the tyranny of work, and able to pursue our passions and hobbies. In that scenario, I think that some people will probably be on a space ship, and they’ll have a mission to explore strange new worlds, and to seek out new life and new civilizations, and to boldly split infinitives. Of course, another possibility, less positive, is that the AI will try to turn us into robots or some sort of cyborgs, that is, they’ll try to assimilate us, and it may be that resistance is futile. Maybe the AI will try to harvest our bodies’ energy while we live in a dreamlike state in some sort of pod, or maybe humans and machines will fight an apocalyptic war. I think that covers the main possibilities. Let’s assume it’s the Terminator scenario: robots versus humans, and robots win. I figure that it’s not actually going to be a shooting war, but that the robots will get us in some other way: affecting the food supply, or tampering with medicine, but whatever—death comes; maybe very painful death, maybe quick death, but definitely death. My first thought is: what’s the problem? Robots or not, death is coming; we can’t stop that. Of course, I wouldn’t want to be someone who is designing technology that would result in massive death or perhaps human extinction, but I’m not that person. I am someone who is potentially facing death as a part of human extinction, and it just doesn’t strike me as all that big of a deal. I guess I find it implausible that it’s going to happen, but not that troublesome if it does happen. I would find it much more problematic if the technology were being designed to annihilate a selection of humans, like poor people, or disabled people, or Asians, or something. In that case, we should definitely work to stop it, and we should probably put some people in prison. But the annihilation of all humans? Ok. There are worse things. How plausible is this doomsday scenario? I don’t know. I have described to you the technology as I understand it, which should alert you to my complete ignorance in this realm. Some people very much involved in the AI world consider it plausible that machines will destroy humans during our lifetimes. Is that plausible from a Christian point of view? I don’t see why not. Now I know some Christians would push back on that statement; they would insist that it cannot happen, that machines cannot destroy humanity. I have not heard people say this, but I’m guessing from analogous situations. I recall some years ago hearing Christians talk about global warming and the doomsday scenarios associated with it. As an aside, I note that we have been under a heat advisory all week as temperatures in the third week of September hover close to triple digits. But anyway I would hear Christians declare that global warming cannot result in human extinction because the Bible says so, and they would make this comment: “I’ve read the end and that’s not how it goes.” This is silliness. We do not know how the world will come to an end. There is a description in 2 Peter 3 of a coming conflagration that will dissolve heaven and earth, but I’m not sure why that would invalidate global warming—it would seem to confirm it, in fact, since Peter says that the globe will warm—or the destruction of humanity through a robot army. There’s also a description of the return of Jesus in 1 Thessalonians 4, where we read about a trumpet and a shout and such like—but, again, I myself have enough imagination to conceive of how Paul’s description could be fulfilled literally, word for word, after humans make the planet uninhabitable, at least for human life, whether through carbon emissions or designing deadly AI. There are other biblical passages that could be considered, such as at the end of the book of Revelation, but it is difficult to know how far to press the details of passages that might well be symbolic. And there’s the problem for any biblical interpretation addressing events or ideas about which we have no knowledge outside Scripture: how literally do we take the descriptions? Because the Bible likes to speak in symbolic language. That should be clear enough from the Gospels, where Jesus enjoyed teaching in parables, and we should remember that these parables gave his listeners fits, including his disciples, and that was entirely the point. Jesus adopted Isaiah’s mission as his own, when he explained to his disciples: “The reason I speak to them in parables is that seeing they do not perceive, and hearing they do not listen, nor do they understand” (Matt 13:13). We should also remember how common it was for very religious Jews who encountered Jesus to insist that he, Jesus, could not be the fulfillment of the prophecies because they interpreted those prophecies in a way that excluded someone like Jesus. Obviously the Messiah would not die on a Roman cross because the Messiah was a warrior. How do we know the Messiah is a warrior? Because the prophecies say it. Psalm 2: “You shall break [the nations] with a rod of iron, and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.” Isaiah 11: “he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.” Daniel 2: “And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall crush all these kingdoms and bring them to an end.” And then think about all the times in the Jewish Scriptures that the Messiah, the coming king, is said to be the son of David or even the new David, and if we know anything about David it’s that he was a warrior. Now you’re going to tell me that I’m misinterpreting these passages, but that is exactly the point. Everyone misinterpreted them until they saw their fulfillment. They were unable to interpret them correctly until they saw Jesus. And he completely blew a hole through the way they thought it was going to go. Too often we are like Amelia Bedelia insisting on a literal interpretation of things that we cannot possibly know about—things like heaven and hell. What will these realities be like? Who knows?! But I am pretty sure that God has little interest in making sure we, right now, understand the details of heaven and hell. And so also for the end of the world. If every religious leader completely whiffed on their interpretation of the first advent of the Messiah, what would make us confident in our interpretation of the second advent of the Messiah? Should we not take the lesson and be more open and uncertain about how it will go? Back to robot armies. Let’s look on the bright side. If the human race is extinct in a few years, that would solve some problems. For all of my life—and I remember hearing about this problem in middle school—I have been concerned about the national debt, which now exceeds $40T. If the richest man in the history of the world gave his entire fortune to pay down the debt, that would take care of around 1/40 of the debt, and we would owe $39T. If the ten richest people in human history gave all all their fortune to pay the debate, that would take care of around 3/40 of the debt, and we would owe $37T. It seems to me that this is a problem, but I recognize that I’m old-school in thinking about such things. One way the debt seems to me problematic is morally: racking up debt that cannot possibly be repaid is a moral problem, but our decadent society doesn’t want to think about such things; we just want our shiny toys. And, yes, I see that I am fully implicated in this lust of the flesh that our debt represents. But besides the moral problem, it also seems like a catastrophe waiting to happen. Nations that accumulate massive and unpayable debt always experience very real problems, and I wonder when those problems will start for America. Maybe the robot army will make sure that the bill never comes due. For many years I have also been concerned about the direction of the country and what kind of world my children will inherit. But the AI apocalypse makes such concerns obsolete. As I said, I have a hard time getting worked up over the possibility that machines will kill us all in a few years. I have a hard time getting worked up over death at all. I guess that’s in part because, as I said, death is guaranteed to all of us, but also because I’ve tried to convince myself to believe that the apostle Paul was right: To live is Christ and to die is gain. I know, I know, death is an enemy, a

  7. Sep 14

    Steps for a Spiritual Life

    Some Christians are Bible people, and others are prayer people. This classification is my invention. I am not completely sure that it’s original with me, but I did not read about it in Scripture and I have not encountered anyone else who makes the same distinction. Let me tell you what I mean by it. My impression is that some Christians gravitate more toward Bible study and others gravitate more toward prayer. There might be some Christians who enjoy both disciplines, but it seems to me that the overlap is small. There is probably a much bigger overlap for those Christians who enjoy neither prayer nor Bible study. So, which are you? If you could choose one or the other, prayer or Bible study, which would you choose? Or if you have time to do only one of these before you’ve got to take the kids to school, which one? Or, which of these comes more naturally to you, or gives you more comfort? Or, which one excites you more, or intimidates you less? They are both essential Christian acts, and we can grow in either one, but chances are one of them is going to appeal to us more. I’m a Bible person. In my experience, most Christians are prayer people. I am jealous of the prayer people. Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Let me circle back to the absence of this classification in Scripture. It would not be true to say that Jesus was a prayer person more than a Bible person. It is true that we catch him praying several times in the Gospels and hardly ever reading Scripture (cf. Luke 4:16–21), but the Evangelists depict Jesus as having a great deal of Scripture stuck in his head. Maybe he didn’t read Scripture often, but it does seem that he meditated on it routinely. His accusation that the Sadducees knew not the Scriptures (Mark 12:24) could not have been lobbed at him. So also the apostle Paul cannot be categorized as one or the other—a prayer person or a Bible person—but both. The New Testament does not present this distinction as an inevitability, certainly not as desirable. It seems to me to articulate an obvious characteristic of both myself and many of the Christians I have known most intimately, but I wonder if the distinction would make less sense in an ecclesial context different from mine. At any rate, if we find one of these practices (prayer or study/meditation) more difficult than the other, we are in good company and, as always, practice makes perfect. I want to be a prayer person because I want to be a person who gives myself wholly over to God. I want to be the kind of person who directs everything in my life to God. It seems like that’s what prayer represents. I want to be the kind of person who prays without ceasing. I want to say the words of Psalm 143:6 with full sincerity: “I stretch forth my hands unto thee: my soul thirsteth after thee, as a thirsty land.” After all, this is how my Christian life began when I was baptized. Whether I realized it at the time or not, my baptism marked the death of one lifestyle and the beginning of a new one, so that I am not a slave of sin, and certainly not a slave to myself, but, as Paul says in Romans 6:18, a slave to righteousness. I buried in those waters my selfishness, my pride, my anger, my impatience, and every other work of the flesh, and I rose up to walk in newness of life. Just as Paul was crucified with Christ (Gal 2:20), so also he says that I have been (Rom 6:6), so that I am now “alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (6:11). Which means—if we can skip forward to Romans 8—that I am not led by the flesh but by the Spirit. Since I have received the Spirit of adoption, I cry out Abba, Father (8:15). When I reflect on the significance of my baptism, I want to be a prayer person, someone in constant communication with God, someone who recognizes with Augustine, and even earlier with David, that my soul is restless until it finds rest in God. As Evagrius said in the fourth century, a theologian is one who prays, and I would like to be such a theologian. But, I’m not a prayer person, I’m a Bible person. Or does that distinction even make any sense? Like I said, I think the distinction does make sense of my experience, and the experience of other Christians I have known, Christians I’ve gone to church with. And, I will say, since I’m a Bible person, I can testify that there are a lot of prayers in the Bible—I mean, a lot. And in some religious contexts, prayer and Bible go together more intimately than I am accustomed to. I was thinking about these issues at the end of 2024 when I heard about a new podcast that would start at the beginning of the year, The Rosary in a Year. Obviously this is a Catholic podcast. I had heard about the Rosary, but I didn’t know much about it. A string of beads popped into my head. I decided to investigate. The point of the beads is to aid in counting the prayers, because there’s a lot of repetition in the Rosary, and so keeping your fingers on the appropriate bead helps you to remember, “am I on prayer #6 or #7?” I watched a video showing people praying the Rosary, and you can get the basic idea from the Wikipedia article. The whole prayer usually takes about 15 minutes. Here’s how it goes, or at least how it begins: you start by making the sign of the cross, and then you recite the Apostles’ Creed, and then you say the Lord’s Prayer, and then you say three Hail Marys, and then the Glory Be. And then you say a whole bunch more Hail Marys. (Here’s especially where you need the beads.) Anyway, I’m not going to be praying the Rosary. And I ended up not subscribing to that podcast, the Rosary in a Year. But I’m glad to see that a lot of the prayer is taken directly from Scripture. Maybe I shouldn’t make a distinction between prayer people and Bible people. Maybe a Catholic would say it’s all just one and the same. (For instance, familiarize yourself with lectio divina or the Liturgy of the Hours.) In fact, Catholics basically do say that: according to The Catechism of the Catholic Church, “The catechesis of children, young people, and adults aims at teaching them to meditate on The Word of God in personal prayer, practicing it in liturgical prayer, and internalizing it at all times in order to bear fruit in a new life” (CCC 2688). Did you hear that? “Meditate on the Word of God in personal prayer.” Prayer and Scripture go hand in hand. Jews might say that, too. I guess the most famous Jewish prayer is called the Shema, which observant Jews have been saying twice every day, morning and evening, for thousands of years by now. Do you know where that prayer comes from? It’s Scripture. Deuteronomy 6:4 (and other passages). The prayer is essentially a recitation of Scripture. The same sort of thing, Scripture and prayer combined, describes some form of prayers in monasteries. Did you know there are monks who pray through the entire Psalter—all 150 Psalms—every single week. The Rule of Saint Benedict from the sixth century says that any monk that doesn’t recite the entire Psalter every week is slothful. Think about the benefits here. Not only do you fill your mind with Scripture, and specifically with the book of Scripture that is almost entirely addressed to God, but also you fill your time with meditation on God. It doesn’t give you much time for sin. If the idle mind is the devil’s playground, a mind committed to going through the Psalter weekly, in addition to other reading and praying, gives the devil little opportunity to play. Jesus tells a story about an unclean spirit (Matt 12:43–45). A common way of getting an application out of that parable is to say that you should not just clean up your life, but you need to fill it with good things. Don’t just sweep your house and put it in order. If you’re praying through the Psalter weekly, the amount of time that you can dedicate to porn is very limited. Or to go out drinking with your friends. So if prayer is the quintessential mark of the spiritual life, and if so much of prayer is taken directly from Scripture, maybe it’s not so bad that I am a Bible guy. Maybe, in fact, if I want to grow spiritually, if I want to grow in my prayer life, I should lean in to my love of Scripture. Maybe I should imitate those monks who pray through the Psalter every week. Now, let me say, that’s a lot, and a monk’s job is basically just to pray. I mean, they have other stuff that they do, but prayer is the major task, as I understand it. I myself actually have a full-time job, and a second job, and a family, so I don’t think praying through the Psalter every week is realistic, but what I have done is gone through the Psalter in a month. That’s do-able. And what I want to do is not just mindlessly read, of course, but hear the voice of God in the text, even as I say these words addressed to God. And not just the Psalter, but the entire Bible—through my baptism I made a public declaration that I would submit my life to the God who provided us with this Scripture, and so essentially I declared that I would submit my life to Scripture. I want to read Scripture with that in mind, recognizing it as God’s communication to me. I want to open myself up to what God wants to show me in Scripture. I want to read Scripture not just as an artifact but as the living and active word of God that it is. And I want to hear God’s word as I never have before. Part of the reason I want to approach Scripture in this way is that I want to grow in faith, and I know that faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God. When I read Scripture, when I hear God’s voice, one challenge I will have is whether or not I am going to believe it. There are all sorts of difficult spots in Scripture, not just passages that are difficult to understand, but passages that present teaching that is pretty easy to understand on the surface but difficult to enact. “Tak

  8. Sep 7

    The Good I’ve Done

    In my lifetime, I have done only one good thing. Maybe two. Definitely not three. When I stand before God and he asks for an account of my life—interrogating me on what I have done with the tremendous resources I have enjoyed, the peace and comfort that have characterized my life—how shall I reply? I wouldn’t dream of saying that I had fun with the money and leisure that have characterized my life. I want to say that I have done something useful with these blessings. Something good. When the Lord asks me, “have you been good,” I want to be able to say yes, but I suspect he’ll ask, “how have you been good,” and then what should I respond? Let me pause right here to clarify that I am not worried about going to heaven, or—to put it another way—whether God will save me. Christian Scripture assures readers in no uncertain terms that God saves sinners, and I believe it. Christian Scripture tells me that everyone is a sinner, that no one is good, and I believe it. Christian Scripture tells me that those who accept the offer of grace through the name of Jesus need fear no condemnation, and I believe it. And Christian Scripture tells me that once I have committed to living for Jesus, I should walk in newness of life, I should become more like Christ, I should put into practice the teachings of Jesus contained in the New Testament—not for the purpose of gaining salvation, which has already been gained, but because it is the path of truth and joy, and I believe it. I don’t mean in this paragraph to solve all the problems about the relationship between faith and works in Christian theology; I just mean to say that I feel perfectly assured of my eternal salvation while at the same time recognizing that I’m not a very good person, or I haven’t done very many good deeds in my life. Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. What do I mean by “good”? I don’t know, but it entails something special. Not the normal life, I think. I’m thinking about Romans 5:7, “For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die.” Goodness is something beyond righteousness. At first blush, I’d say that a righteous person is a normal person who doesn’t cause trouble, doesn’t break the law, pays his taxes and minds his own business. The good person is a step beyond that. Hardly anyone would ever die for a normal person who doesn’t cause trouble, but we wouldn’t be too surprised, thinks Paul, if we hear about someone who gave up his life for a good man. The word “good” doesn’t appear at the end of Matthew 5, but I sorta think that Jesus encourages his listeners toward goodness when he says, “For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?” The good person is the person who goes beyond what is normally expected. How much further beyond? Well, Jesus is our example. We’ll come back to the definition, how to think about goodness. Earlier I imagined a judgment scene, with the divine interrogator questioning me about my goodness. We have a whole parable from Jesus about this moment, this Judgment Day scene. More than one parable, in fact, but I’m thinking now of the Parable of the Talents in Mathew 25. The Parable of the Pounds in Luke 19 is similar. I know there’s no need to remind you how this goes; you’ve meditated on it many times. This is one of the parables that Jesus designed to scare people, or to light a fire under them, to give them a kick in the pants. A master, about to depart on a long journey, distributes money to his slaves so that they may direct his affairs during his absence. This slave-master is a Jeff Bezos type, or a Bill Gates type. He’s not hurting for money. A talent is a measurement, something like 50-75 pounds. Let’s be conservative and say a talent is 50 lbs. Now, I used to assume that the talent was gold, the price per ounce of which is hovering between $4500 and $5000, and so the a single talent would be about $3.8M. But I have found that the word “silver” is actually in the text at Matthew 25:18, often translated “money,” but let’s go with it. The price of silver is much lower than gold, about $70/ounce now, so a talent of silver (50 lbs) would be $56,000—not a bad gift, but not the millions that I had been imagining. The master entrusts a significant amount of money to these slaves to run his affairs. One slave gets 5 talents, so something like $300K, and he doubles his money. Another slave gets 2 talents, so about $112K, and he also doubles his money. The third slave is entrusted with a single talent, a measly $56K. “He that had received one went and digged in the earth, and hid his lord’s money” (Matt 25:18). Why would he do this? Why bury the money? He’s afraid to lose it, obviously. When the master returns and settles accounts, this one-talent slave offers the following report. Lord, I knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed: And I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth: lo, there thou hast that is thine. (Matt 25:24–25) I understand this impulse, this caution, this aversion to risk. “Look before you leap” is my kind of proverb. Before I leap I tend to look, and then look again, and then I just mull over the possibility of leaping for sometime, maybe years, and then after I’ve let it percolate for a while, I look again and imagine myself leaping. It’s usually at that point that I decide to sit down. The master of this one-talent slave received from his slave the entire amount of money that had been entrusted to him. And he replied thusly: “Thou wicked and slothful servant” (Matt 25:26). The master didn’t want back what he had given. He wanted more. He wanted that talent to be used. Caution has its place. Looking before you leap has its place, but leaping is a necessary part of the equation. The master expected his slave to use that $56K he had given him; that’s why he gave it to him. The master could have buried that money himself, and some rich people do that, they stuff cash under their mattress; they hoard. Not this master. This master wanted his slave to take risks, to be courageous. But the third slave was risk-averse, a coward, or “wicked and slothful,” in the words of the master. Can you imagine being handed fifty thousand dollars by someone with instructions to make good use of it? It’s not so far-fetched, is it? If you live in America, then you’re in the most prosperous society that has ever existed on planet earth. Many of us will earn a few million dollars in annual pay over the course of our working lives. Most of us won’t ever have that much money all at one time, but there will be times when we have the equivalent of a talent of silver. And what will we do with it? We will offer a report to our master about what we did with his money, and we know that he doesn’t want merely what he gave us. He wants more. Not just money, of course. The significant blessings we enjoy, the historically unusual blessings we enjoy, that previous societies in history have not even conceived, are not limited to money, but other things like technology, air conditioning, automobiles, media, medicine, education. If only we weren’t so blessed, there wouldn’t be so much pressure to deliver. I have long considered the scariest verse in the Bible the one where Jesus says this: “unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more” (Luke 12:48). God blessed other people with different opportunities. Not time and money and technology and health—like we enjoy—but different blessings that we can only imagine. In many times and places, God has given people the blessing of martyrdom. They have been persecuted for their Christian life, and they have given their lives for their faith. We look back with admiration at the martyrs of the early church. Jesus called them to take up their cross, and they did it—usually not literally; that is, they did not die by crucifixion, but rather suffered death in other horrible ways. They obeyed the command of Jesus much more literally than I have had the opportunity to do. And in this, they were blessed. I am reminded of Acts 5:41, when the apostles, after being released by the Sanhedrin after a flogging, rejoiced “that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name.” It is a blessing to suffer for Christ, in imitation of Christ, who suffered for us. Earlier this year I learned the story of Jonathan Daniels, a seminarian who, at age 26, was murdered in August 1965 in Hayneville, Alabama, southwest of Montgomery, by Tom Coleman, a part-time sheriff’s deputy. Or, I shouldn’t say “murdered,” because Tom Coleman was acquitted of any crime in what everyone now and at the time knew to be a sham trial. Daniels was in Hayneville to participate in the Civil Rights Movement, and he felt the pressure of his Christian profession compelling him to act in this way. When Tom Coleman pointed his shotgun at Ruby Sales, Jonathan Daniels pulled her out of the way and stepped into the path of the shotgun blast. He died instantly. By the way, the teenage girl he saved, Ruby Sales, is still alive today; you can find online a Ted Talk where she recounts the incident. A few months before his death, in April, Daniels was in Selma, Alabama, and he wrote a letter to a friend (p. 73) that includes this passage: …I had realized that as a Christian, as a “soldier of the cross,” I was totally free—at least free to give my life, if that had to be, with joy and thankfulness and eagerness for the kingdom no longer hidden from my blind eyes. (quoted in the PBS doc, at the 38:3

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Reflections on Scripture and culture. edmongallagher.substack.com

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  • Creator
    Ed Gallagher
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    55
  • Rating
    Clean
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    © Ed Gallagher
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    Scripture-ish