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Ed Gallagher

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Reflections on Scripture and culture. edmongallagher.substack.com

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The Gender of the Holy Spirit, Part 1

Let me tell you what’s going to happen here. We’re going to talk about the gender of the Holy Spirit, and I’m going to use Guy N. Woods as a foil, and so I’m going to go on a long tangent about Brother Woods. But this essay—part 1 of 2—is basically about the Holy Spirit and gender. Here we go. The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. That important verse is Romans 8:16, and I have presented it from the ESV. Here we are not going to delve into the meaning of the verse; I just want to highlight one particular aspect of it. The apostle Paul refers to “the Spirit himself.” But it’s different in the KJV, where the same verse reads “The Spirit itself.” Which is it? Should it be “himself” with the ESV or “itself” in the KJV? Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Where can we turn for an answer? How about Guy N. Woods! It’s always exciting to look at a volume of Questions and Answers from Guy N. Woods, because you never know what you’re going to find. Guy N. Woods spent three or four decades as the Answer Man at the Freed-Hardeman Lectures in Henderson, Tennessee, and he also spent many decades as a writer—and, eventually, editor—of a magazine called Gospel Advocate, published in Nashville. In the mid-1970s, he published a collection of answers he had provided to the audience at the Freed-Hardeman lectures over the years, and a decade later, he published a second volume of answers, that come again from the Freed-Hardeman lectures and, maybe, also from the Gospel Advocate. My favorite question in these volumes is: Can a Christian participate in body development contests such as Mr. Universe?” (2.196) That’s a question Woods addresses in volume 2. I wonder who was struggling with whether or not to enter the Mr. Universe contest and decided to seek the guidance of Brother Woods. Here are some more questions printed in these volumes that I found worthy of note. * Is it okay to say Gee Whiz and Gosh (1.180–81) * Do angels have wings? (2.179) * What is the shortest prayer recorded in the Bible? (2.322) * What are Hedge’s Rules of Controversy? Please list them. (1.271) Remember, this is before google. And then there are the double or triple questions, the ones that come up multiple times. “What is the Rapture?,” a question repeated in volume 2 (2.176, 216). Why would they print this twice in the same volume, with two different answers? There are three questions that basically say, “what do you think of the Hardeman-Bogard Debate,” once in volume 1 (1.287) and twice in volume two (one of them is at 2.348, the other is earlier in the same volume). There are two questions about how Woods knows that Judas was not present at the Last Supper (one at 2.352, the other earlier in the same volume). The question “What is death” (1.226, and some other place I’ve seen), comes up more than once. A few of the questions deal with the history of the Bible, a topic of my own expertise. There’s a question about the Apocrypha (1.58), another on canon, and chapter and verses (1.183–88), one on the Dead Sea Scrolls (1.224), and one on the “masorites” (1.299). I have not read the response to these questions, but it might be worth perusing how an influential leader in the Churches of Christ dealt with such matters in a previous generation. Another inquirer asked Brother Woods “Why do you believe the Bible?” and Woods begins his answer: “Because I want to believe it!” (1.174). I love that. That’s a great answer. The second volume of these Questions and Answers is less organized than the first. The first volume, but not the second, has a table of contents, and the first volume has a much better index. Whereas volume 1 basically arranges its questions according to the order of the Bible, volume 2 has no discernible order, and quite a bit of repetition. Before I continue, let me make sure everyone recognizes who I’m talking about. Do you know who Guy N. Woods is? When I was a student at Freed-Hardeman in the late 1990s, it was Guy N. Woods who was most frequently cited as the authority on Bible issues. As I mentioned, he had for decades been the moderator of the Open Forum at the FHU lectureship. The open forum, by the way, is when a Bible answer man is on stage and people get to pepper him with questions. As we have already seen, some of these questions can be very random. “What is the shortest prayer in the Bible?” “Can a Christian compete in the Mr. Universe contest?” Woods was the Bible answer man, during most of the second half of the twentieth century, and so when I was at Freed-Hardeman, people would still talk about what Brother Woods had said on an issue. I recognize that Woods has been dead for more than thirty years now, and some people might not know the name. You’d be in the same boat as I was when I got to college and heard people talking about him. For a while I had no idea who he was, and I didn’t realize that “Guy” was his first name. I don’t think I had ever heard that word as a name before. And it made it worse that his middle initial happened to be the letter “n.” I remember, when I was a freshman, thinking about a man in a forest discussing Bible questions. I finally asked who these fellow students were talking about, and they explained who he was. I have recently learned that that the middle initial stands for the name “Napoleon”: Guy Napoleon Woods. I think if I had been him, I would have gone by my middle name. I tell you all this to establish the idea that among conservative Churches of Christ in the twentieth century, and still today for some churches and preachers, Guy N. Woods was a major authority figure, and therefore it is worthwhile for us to see what he said on an issue. And so, when I disagree with him in a moment, he is someone worth disagreeing with. He’s not a random schmuck; he’s a respected, even revered, Bible answer man from the not-too-distant past, and he helped shape the theology of many people in Churches of Christ. Now, back to the Questions and Answers. From volume 2 (1986): “In Romans 8:16 the Holy Spirit is referred to as ‘itself.’” Let me just pause there to say that the question is based on the KJV. In case you’re curious, the ASV from 1901 says “the Spirit himself,” like the ESV and most modern English versions. Back to the question. “In Romans 8:16 the Holy Spirit is referred to as ‘itself.’ Does this lend support to the view that the Holy Spirit is simply and solely an influence and not a distinct Person?” (p. 134) First of all, the correct answer to this question is “no,” and the reason that is the correct answer is because the word spirit in Greek is grammatically neuter—the Greek word is pneuma—and the grammatical gender of the word has very little to do with the actual gender of the thing named by the word. Just because we in English refer to a ship as “she” does not mean that a ship is female—only grammatically. So also for the Spirit in the New Testament. As a further example, note that the Greek word meaning “male” as opposed to female is arsen (ἄρσεν), and it can be grammatically masculine, or feminine, or neuter. Seriously. The Greek word in the Septuagint at Exodus 1:16, 22, translated “female” (thēlus, θῆλυς), is grammtically neuter. Grammtical gender can have little or no connection to actual gender. Back to the Holy Spirit. Let’s explore the gender of the Holy Spirit a bit more, and that will help us understand the answer that Woods provides. What are the Holy Spirit’s pronouns? (If you want help thinking about pronouns in a modern context: McWhorter.) That’s a modern-sounding way of asking the question, what gender is the Holy Spirit? Should we refer to the Holy Spirit as he or as it, or perhaps as she? Does it matter? Should we—or can we—alternate pronouns, choosing the one that feels appropriate in the moment? Or maybe we should just eschew pronouns altogether when it comes to the Holy Spirit, so that instead of saying “The Spirit does what he wants to do, or it wants to do,” we say rather, “The Spirit does what the Spirit wants to do.” (For a 2001 evangelical response to—and rejection of—such concerns about the gender/sexuality of God, see this book.) I say the question of pronouns is modern-sounding, rather than modern, because, of course, ancient people also had to figure out what pronouns to use in reference to the Holy Spirit, and that choice was usually tied to the gender of the word “Spirit” itself, in whatever language was being used. As Jerome noted in his early fifth-century commentary on Isaiah (on Isa 40:9–11), the word for “spirit” has a different gender in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. * The Latin word for “spirit” is the masculine word spiritus. * The Greek word for “spirit” is the neuter word pneuma. * The Hebrew word for “spirit” is the feminine word ruaḥ. In fact, it is more accurate to say that the Hebrew word, ruaḥ, is gender fluid, mostly feminine, sometimes masculine. Let’s focus on Greek, the language of the New Testament, where the Spirit of God takes on some definition and emerges as personal and an independent hypostasis or persona of the deity. I recognize that what I just said is confusing and controversial, but it is also traditional Christian theology going back to the early centuries of the church, and, indeed, going back to the New Testament, at least according to most people who have ever called themselves Christians, so let’s just go with it for now. What pronouns are used for the Spirit in the New Testament? Well, since the Greek word pneuma is neuter, neuter pronouns are used for the Spirit. And that is why in Romans 8:16 the KJV says “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.” That openin
20 juil.

Biblical Authorization for Celebrating Christmas

Okay, so we know that it’s sinful, displeasing to God, to celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday, but we saw last time that by the turn of the twentieth century, most Christians who had traditionally opposed Christmas had come around to the by-now traditional trappings of the day: feasting, gift-giving, time with family, and even Christmas trees and Santa Claus. I say most Christians had come around to this notion, not all. In the Churches of Christ, discomfort with Christmas—or even outright rejection—continued to the mid-point of the twentieth century, or even later. But when I was growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, I was completely unaware that some people thought that Christmas should not be celebrated at all, not even as a family holiday. That view was—and is—still around, but it’s pretty fringe. But where do some people get off actually talking about the birth of Jesus on Christmas? How could they do such an ungodly thing? Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Come to think of it, how do we know that observing Christmas as a religious holiday is sinful or ungodly? Last time we encountered the argument that we’ve got to avoid anything that makes us look like one of the denominations, and celebrating Christmas is, apparently, what the denominations do. Then again, last time we also learned that it was Protestant denominations like the Presbyterians who spearheaded the Christian opposition to Christmas, so it might be that refusing to celebrate Christmas is an imitation of the denominations. Hmm. Let’s go back to the 1976 essay by John Waddey published in the Firm Foundation (“Christians and Christmas,” December 14, 1976, p. 792). But no New Testament writing instructs us to observe a holy day for Christ’s birth. To so observe the day is to go beyond what is written. According to Christ such religious practices are vain worship for they are the precepts of men (Matt. 15:9). God gave his church only one special day, the first day of the week. Wait a second; is that the reasoning? Let’s go over that again: “no New Testament writing instructs us to observe a holy day for Christ’s birth.” Um, okaaay. What in the world does that matter? Well, Waddey thinks that to observe this holy day in the absence of New Testament instruction would entail going beyond what is written, an allusion to 1 Corinthians 4:6. And he thinks Christ characterized such a departure from the written word as vain worship, citing Matthew 15:9. That’s the same argument you’ll find in other authors. The early Protestants often opposed Christmas because it couldn’t be found in the Bible. Let me quote again an essay from The Oxford Handbook of Christmas (2020): “Those opposed to Christmas [in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries] objected to any religious observance that was not explicitly commanded in the Bible (the so-called regulative principle) and which was seen as a vestige of popery” (p. 168). And just to be clear about the argument, let me quote one of the most authoritative voices in Churches of Christ in the second half of the twentieth century. In the first volume of his Questions and Answers, Guy N. Woods had this to say about Christmas. The observance of Christmas, as a religious holiday, did not originate in the apostolic age, and is thus without divine sanction. As a matter of fact, it is not possible to determine in what month, or on what day the Saviour… and I pause just to note that the word “Saviour” is spelled in the British fashion, with a ‘u.’ I just think that’s weird. Anyway, back to the quotation: …or on what day the Saviour was born and inasmuch as there is neither precept nor example for its observance, faithful Christians do not keep it as a religious festival. (p. 203) Okay, “neither precept nor example for its observance.” That sounds similar to what Waddey had said. Honestly, I can’t make any sense out of this. To go over it again, the idea is that it would be vain worship to observe a holy day in honor of Christ’s birth because such a holy day is not mentioned in the New Testament. I think part of my difficulty is this term “holy day.” That’s Waddey’s term; Woods used the term “religious festival,” and I assume that in this context “holy day” and “religious festival” are basically synonymous; whatever Waddey meant, Woods meant the same thing with his term. I’m not sure what these terms are supposed to mean, or what opponents of holy days think that they are opposing. Isn’t “holy day” and “holiday,” like, the same thing? It’s just a day set aside to observe a particular thing, right? I mean, everyone would agree that it’s okay for Christians to observe Mothers Day, wouldn’t they? Have you ever heard of a church preaching against Mothers Day? I don’t remember Mothers Day being mentioned in the New Testament, but it doesn’t seem like Christians have usually thought about a special day for mothers as going beyond what is written, as vain worship. In fact, for my entire life, every single time the second Sunday of May rolls around, the sermon has revolved around mothers, and the mothers in the audience are specially singled out for greetings and warm wishes, and maybe even given a flower or some other present. Oftentimes the children’s Bible class that day focuses on mothers, and the children make a craft designed for their mothers. In a similar way, the churches I have been a part of have observed Fathers Day, and Veterans Day, and Thanksgiving Day, and the Fourth of July, and other special days. Is this going beyond what is written? Is this vain worship? These special days are certainly not mentioned in the New Testament. But the excuse for observing Mothers Day that I have heard and that I have made is that Romans 13:7 tells us to honor those who deserve honor, and mothers—most mothers—deserve honor. It is not going beyond what is written; it is doing what is written. Now, I’ve never heard anyone say that Mothers Day is being observed as a holy day for mothers, or as a religious festival, but I have heard people talk about the holiday called Mothers Day. I’m not sure what the term “holy day” is supposed to communicate, and I’m not sure that people that oppose holy days do either. Let’s go back to the reasoning for opposing the religious observance of Christmas. Nope, actually, before we do that, let’s think about that phrase: “religious observance.” Do churches typically oppose or embrace the religious observance of Mothers Day? I don’t know how you could get any more religious than centering your worship service around the reason for the season in the second week of May. Yes, of course, most American churches observe Mothers Day religiously. Again, it’s the same for Fathers Day and Thanksgiving Day and even the Fourth of July. Now, let’s go back to the reasoning for opposing the religious observance of Christmas. As Waddey put it, “No New Testament writing instructs us to observe a holy day for Christ’s birth.” I have suggested that “holy day” is a term without clear meaning, and is basically in this discussion a red herring, a distraction. Let’s omit it. “No New Testament writing instructs us to observe Christ’s birth.” Or, as Woods said, there is “neither precept nor example for its observance.” As I see it, that claim is the nub of the argument against the religious observance of Christmas. We will have to consider whether the claim is true. Does the New Testament instruct us to observe Christ’s birth? What Is There to Celebrate? Does God want us to celebrate the birth of Jesus? Celebrate it in our churches and in our homes? Does God want us to religiously observe the birth of Jesus? Does Woods correctly evaluate the New Testament when he says that “there is neither precept nor example” for the observance, the religious observance, of the birth of Jesus? Or are there examples in the New Testament? Does the New Testament instruct Christians to celebrate Jesus’s birth? Yes! Yes! Yes! It is the most significant event in the history of the universe, and Christians should celebrate it. Religiously. As a holy day, whatever that means. The New Testament instructs Christians to celebrate the birth of Jesus. Let’s probe why the birth of Jesus is so important, and here I want to go back to what I said last time, that “celebrating the birth of Jesus is not really the right way of saying it.” To my mind, the phrase “birth of Jesus” gives the wrong impression about what we’re doing. If a friend has a baby and we go to the hospital to celebrate with her the birth of her child, we will be holding the child and making goo-goo noises at the child—or, at least, my wife Jodi will do that. I myself will simply observe the infant from a safe distance. But I’m not a normal person. Most people will talk about how cute the baby is, how much fun infants are, the little noises they make, their silly little outfits. This has little correspondence to what we celebrate about Jesus at Christmas. It’s not so much the birth of a baby but the incarnation of God that we are celebrating. “Incarnation” comes from a Latin term that means something like en-flesh-ment. (The root carn* in Latin means “flesh.”) Think about John 1. “And the Word became flesh” (John 1:14). This is the Word that John has already told us was with God in the beginning, and was itself—or himself—God. This word, this God, became flesh. The human being Jesus of Nazareth was God. There is much to discuss here, and much mystery. There were many early Christian debates, lasting centuries (or, actually, still ongoing), about how exactly to understand the identity of Jesus. One influential statement from the Council of Nicaea in the year 325 said that the Lord Jesus Christ is of one essence with the Fat
13 juil.

Christians against Christmas

When I was young, Christmas happened the night before. We were a Christmas Eve family. Christmas Day—after the rush of discovering what Santa Claus had left us—was pretty boring, until the year that my dad realized, probably when I was an adolescent, that the local movie theater was open on the day. A new Gallagher tradition was born! We did not go to church on Christmas Day. That would be silly; Christmas had nothing to do with church. Christmas was a time for overeating and overspending—or, to put a more positive spin on it, Christmas was for families and for generosity. Back to Christmas Eve. When my parents got off work on December 24, we would load up the car with presents and head over to my Granny’s house, bustling with family and food. Granny had cooked her chili with spaghetti noodles—no, not like Cincinnati chili, not that many noodles. It was still soup, to be eaten in a bowl. And it was wonderful. There were various other treats, the usual suspects, I’m sure, but the only thing I remember is Granny’s chili. After supper, we would open presents. Participants included my parents with me and my sister, and my aunt Lea with her three kids, and my aunt Anna Lou, and Granny. Sometimes perhaps a cousin’s boyfriend or girlfriend would come around. Afterwards, we went home and prepared for Santa’s visit, who would deliver the final presents of the season. This traditional Christmas at Granny’s house continued, I think, until she moved into an apartment that couldn’t fit everyone. Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. I married into a Christmas Day family, and Jodi and I have done a pretty good job of combining our respective traditions, of making Christmas Eve and Christmas Day special. Having a lot of kids helps. But Jodi refuses to go to the movies on a holiday. One of the big things that’s different from my youth is that we are much more explicit about celebrating the birth of Jesus. That’s not really the right way of saying it, but it’ll do for now. We even go to church on Christmas Eve. Indeed, we attend a Christmas Eve service at the Sherrod Ave. Church of Christ in Florence, Alabama. Just let that sink in for a moment. There’s a Church of Christ in Alabama—a very traditional Church of Christ, an acapella Church of Christ with all-male leadership—that hosts a Christmas Eve service. Times have changed. I grew up in a Church of Christ in western Kentucky that did not say much about Christmas. This was a congregation that was not hardcore traditional; this congregation did not get a steady diet of preaching against the sins of the denominations, and we didn’t hear about the evils of Christmas. But, as far as I recall, we didn’t hear about the birth of Jesus either, not in December, anyway. Maybe in April or October. There was an understanding that Christmas was a good holiday for families; there was no need to tell people that Christmas should not be celebrated religiously because no one in the congregation had any thought of making Christmas a religious holiday. Coming around to Christmas In this way, the church where I grew up shared a tradition common to many people in Churches of Christ, though things were beginning to change even then. In the year I was born, there was an article printed in the Gospel Advocate called “What about Christmas?” (December 20, 1979, p. 780) by a fellow named Ross W. Dye, who at the time lived in Anaheim, California. Dye said he was grateful that people around the world honored Jesus at Christmas time, and he thought churches ought to teach about the birth of Jesus, even in December. But a few weeks later, the Gospel Advocate printed a response to Dye’s article by a Collinsville, Virginia preacher named A. Lowell Altizer (“What About ‘What About Christmas’?” January 21, 1980, p. 109), who expressed concern that talking about the birth of Jesus in December would confuse people about the intentions of the Churches of Christ, with the result that outsiders would lump Churches of Christ in with the denominations. “Why not teach and sing about the birth of Christ in mid-summer instead of December?” Altizer asked. “I am persuaded,” said Altizer, “that any action that makes us look like a denomination or a partaker of their error ought to be avoided.” But it seems that Altizer was fighting a losing battle. The next Christmas, the Firm Foundation ran an editorial by Reuel Lemmons (“Christmas,” December 23, 1980, p. 818), largely positive toward Christmas, even as a religious holiday. “Personally, we are glad that the world, bent on carnage and drunk on hedonism takes time out to acknowledge that God has sent his Son into the world.” This viewpoint was becoming common in the Firm Foundation. In 1977, Cecil Hook wrote “In Defense of Christmas,” (January 25, p. 56) a remarkable article, arguing that imperfect Christianity is much better than secularism, and that Christmas (and Bible teaching in public schools) does a great service in preparing people to receive undenominational Christianity. In protesting the religious over-emphasis centering around the alleged birth date of Jesus, many disciples have been crusading to “keep Christ out of Christmas.” And the crusade is becoming effective. Christmas is becoming increasingly secular. Religious sentiment in the songs of Christmas is being heard less. “Santa Claus is coming to town” is replacing “Joy to the world, the Lord is come!” I regret this change even though I recognize no religious observance of Christmas. I regret it because we are losing something. Something is better than nothing. Secularism is nothing. The year prior to Hook’s article, the Firm Foundation ran an article by John Waddey (“Christians and Christmas,” December 14, 1976, p. 792) that was less positive about the religious observance of Christmas—which is, Waddey says, unbiblical—but recognized quite a bit of the Christmas celebration that was perfectly acceptable for Christians. But no New Testament writing instructs us to observe a holy day for Christ’s birth. To so observe the day is to go beyond what is written. According to Christ such religious practices are vain worship for they are the precepts of men (Matt. 15:9). God gave his church only one special day, the first day of the week. … What shall we do? We live in a world that makes December 25 a national holiday. We obviously cannot participate in the religious observances connected with this day. But neither can we “go out of the world” (1 Cor. 5:9, 10). It is the author’s view that we can observe the legal, civil, social holiday as such, just as we would any other; for example, Labor Day, Independence Day or Thanksgiving Day. It appears to him that Christians could: * Take the day off with pay; * Accept a Christmas bonus; * Receive a Christmas gift; * Eat a Christmas feast of turkey and cranberries; * Give presents to his family and friends; * And enjoy the holiday festivities without sin or compromise so long as he did not make it a special religious observance. Waddey ends his article by stressing that if participation in the celebration of Christmas makes you feel guilty, then you should not do it. But then he warns: “Do not, however, try to force your scruples on other brethren.” He then points to Romans 14. Also in 1976, the same year as Waddey’s article, Guy N. Woods published a collection of Questions and Answers (Henderson: Freed-Hardeman College) that he had addressed over the years at the Freed-Hardeman lectureship. (A decade later, he would publish a second volume.) One of the questions concerns Christmas. What does the word ‘Christmas’ mean? When did the observance of the birthday of Christ on December 25, begin? Is it wrong for Christians to engage in any of the usual activities associated with Christmas such as putting up Christmas trees, decorating lights, and exchanging gifts? (p. 203) The answer Woods provides is the same as what Waddey had said. Christians should not observe Christmas as a religious holiday, but it is fine to celebrate it as a family holiday. …many people consider it as no more than a holiday around which many family, social and national traditions have gathered, and there is in it for them no religious implications. I grew up in a home where these views prevailed and though the season contributed much to my happiness and enjoyment, I was never under the impression that we were observing Christ’s birthday. Christmas, when thus regarded, is simply an occasion when gifts are exchanged, families get together, and hearts are warmed by the happy festivities. I have always felt that children, not privileged to experience the innocent joys of the holiday season, are being deprived of rich blessings rightfully theirs. (p. 203) Woods grew up in a home apparently much like my own, at least in terms of the celebration of Christmas. I am glad to know that in 1976—or before then—he publicly declared that there is no problem with a faithful Christian participating in the usual aspects of the family celebration of Christmas. Then again, the question was asked. What was this questioner thinking? Why would he need to be reassured by Guy N. Woods that it’s okay to put up a tree in your house in December and to hang lights from your gutters? Christian Opposition to Christmas The positive evaluation of Christmas given by Woods may have proven controversial in his own time and certainly so in the previous generation, even for the paper that Woods eventually came to edit. In 1938, the Gospel Advocate published a sermon outline by Clarence C. Morgan of Odessa, Texas (“Should We Observe Christmas?” December 15, 1938, p. 1168). The text of the sermon was Galatians 4:10–11, “Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years. I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain.
30 juin

The Apostle Who Lived

But now the time has come to go away. I go to die, and you to live; but which of us goes to the better lot, is known to none but God. —Socrates To live is Christ and to die is gain. —Paul One time Peter got put in prison in Jerusalem during the time of Passover. The story is told in Acts 12. The year was probably AD 44. The text says that it was King Herod who put him in prison. Now, there are various Herods mentioned in the New Testament. This Herod in Acts 12 is not the most famous Herod, the one who killed the babies of Bethlehem (Matt 2:16). That was Herod the Great, the first in the line of Herods. Our Herod in Acts 12 is called Herod Agrippa, and he is the grandson of Herod the Great. Later on in Acts, Paul will meet another king whom the biblical text calls Agrippa (Acts 25–26), who is the son of the Herod Agrippa in Acts 12. Historians call the father Herod Agrippa I and the son Herod Agrippa II. Herod Agrippa I put Peter in prison with the plan to execute him after Passover and the days of unleavened bread (Acts 12:4). But on the night before the scheduled execution, an angel showed up in the prison and set Peter free. God sent an angel to save Peter’s life, to rescue him from certain death. Our God can do things like that. Once Peter was out of the prison, he went to the house of Mary, mother of John Mark, where the church had gathered to pray on Peter’s behalf. You remember what happened next. Peter knocked on the door and announced that he had been released. Rhoda the servant was so excited to tell everyone that she forgot to let Peter in. Nobody believed Rhoda; they thought it must have been his angel (Acts 12:15), whatever that means. When Peter finally got into the house, he reported about his escape and left. Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. We know what year all this happened because of the next event narrated in the chapter: Herod Agrippa I died. According to Josephus, Agrippa I died in the year AD 44. (Of course, Josephus does not use our dating system; see the report of Agrippa’s reign at Antiquities 19.351–52.) The story Luke tells about this death contains the memorable and potentially confusing wording that the king “was eaten by worms and breathed his last” (Acts 12:23). We sometimes say that once a person has died, he becomes worm food, but Acts says that the worms were eating Agrippa before he died. Of course, that sometimes happens. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus described something similar about Queen Pheretima in Libya in the sixth century BC: “she died a horrible death, her body seething with worms while she was still alive” (4.205). According to Luke, the judgment of God came upon this King Herod for his arrogance, illustrated in his futile attempt to kill one of the Lord’s apostles. Acts 12 is a story of liberation. It shows us the power of God, who is able to rescue from death. This story encourages us as readers to recognize that a hopeless situation is brimming with hope as long as we trust in the God who loves us and can cause everything to work out for our benefit (Rom 8:28). This story is not the only time that Peter had seen the Lord rescue someone from death. During his ministry in Galilee, Jesus sometimes raised up people who had already died. One time there was a synagogue leader named Jairus who approached Jesus asking for help for his sick daughter. By the time Jesus got to Jairus’ house, the report was already circulating about the girl’s death. Jesus’ response to this report? “Do not fear, only believe” (Mark 5:36). Jesus went into the girl’s room and simply said, “Talitha cum” (5:41)—and she got up! Peter was there, he heard those words from Jesus’ mouth, he saw the girl rise and eat. Do you remember who else was in that room at the time? Aside from the girl’s parents, it was only Peter, James, and John. We sometimes see this trio of apostles granted special privileges, not enjoyed by the other apostles. These were the three on the mount of transfiguration, who witnessed Jesus glowing and talking with Moses and Elijah (Mark 9:2–8). Later, in what seems like the moment of Jesus’ greatest need, it was Peter and James and John with him in the garden of Gethsemane (Mark 15:32–42). While all twelve apostles had their mission from Jesus, it seems like the Big Three were an especially important group with an unusually intimate relationship with Jesus. Peter, the rock (John 1:42). James and John, the sons of thunder (Mark 3:17). No doubt Jesus had big plans for these three special apostles, some sort of special project. The Gospels record some stories that involve just James and John without Peter. It was these two brothers who suggested to Jesus that they could call fire down from heaven against some rude Samaritans. Sons of thunder. Jesus rolled his eyes (Luke 9:51–55). It was also James and John (Mark 10:35–40)—or, actually, their mother (Matt 20:20–28)—who asked for the best seats in the kingdom of God, on the right and left of the Messiah. This time, Jesus did not roll his eyes but asked a question: “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” (Mark 10:38). James and John answered confidently, “yes, we can do that!” Did they know what they were talking about? We can be sure that they did not know the full import of their words. Jesus actually told them, “You do not know what you are asking” (10:38). But did they realize that the cup Jesus mentioned, and the baptism, had to do with suffering? I’m not sure, maybe. They may have thought that they were proclaiming their readiness to serve on the front lines in the coming war, to put themselves in dangerous situations for the kingdom of God. They probably did not realize that there would be no battle against Rome or any earthly foe. But they may have thought that they had signed up for some degree of suffering. And Jesus told them that they were right about that. “The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized” (10:39). Jesus would endure suffering, and so would James and John. Acts 12 does not start with King Herod putting Peter in prison. It starts with Herod imprisoning James, the brother of John. In prison is one of the sons of thunder, one of the Big Three apostles. There is no rescue plan from God, no miraculous escape. Instead, Herod “had James, the brother of John, killed with the sword” (Acts 12:2). Peter would be saved by a miracle, but not James. Why the one and not the other? Luke does not tell us. When Peter was imprisoned, Christians gathered to pray in the house of one of their members. They asked God to spare the life of this beloved leader. Do you think that the church did the same for James? When James was taken by the authorities, do you think the Christians prayed for him, too? What did they pray? Of course, we don’t know the words of their prayer, but let me offer a suggestion by reminding you about an incident that James witnessed. One of those occasions when the Big Three were alone with Jesus was in Gethsemane. The way Mark tells the story (perhaps based on the memories of Peter; see Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 2.15.1–2), the apostles were having trouble staying awake. It was late at night. Even if they hadn’t fallen asleep, I’m not sure they were close enough to overhear what Jesus prayed, but somehow people found out what the Lord prayed in the garden, because it’s reported in all three of the Synoptic Gospels (Matt 26:39; Mark 14:36; Luke 22:42): “Let this cup pass from me; yet not what I will, but your will be done.” Do you think it’s possible that—assuming the church gathered to pray for James after his arrest—they reflected on Jesus’ prayer in the garden? James had probably told them many times about what he witnessed that night, about his shame at falling asleep in that hour, about how he wished he had realized at the time the significance of the events he was experiencing, and about Jesus’ prayer. James had probably said that when it came to his own hour of death, he hoped he would face death in the same way Jesus did. Do you think it’s possible that the church prayed for James just as Jesus prayed in the garden, so that they asked God to let this cup pass from the apostle, if it be God’s will—and if it be not God’s will, but if rather God will that James should drink the cup to the dregs, perhaps the church prayed that James would show himself worthy of imitating Jesus through a brave and noble death. We usually recoil from death, try to prevent it by every means possible, even though we all know that it’s coming. Sometimes we encounter people who seem to stare at death and—far from recoiling at it—endeavor to die in a particular fashion. There’s a moment in the novel Dracula when Arthur Holmwood (by now, Lord Godalming) is asked to give his beloved Lucy Westenra a transfusion of blood (ch. 10). Poor Lucy has been experiencing a repeated and mysterious loss of blood. Only Abraham Van Helsing seems to have any idea of how the blood was leaving her body, and what those two tiny pinprick holes on the side of her neck might have to do with it. At any rate, she needs blood immediately, and Van Helsing asks Arthur to supply the blood. Arthur answers, “If you only knew how gladly I would die for her.” We can think of other examples. I believe that not every state has a designated state hero, but the state hero of Connecticut is a man named Nathan Hale. At age 21, he was arrested by the British as an American spy during the early period of the Revolutionary War. When he was hanged on September 22, 1776, his last words were reported as, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.” There are plenty of examples of noble deaths in religion as well. Near the end of
19 juin

Juneteenth, A Holiday for White Americans, Obviously

The iniquities of the wicked ensnare them,and they are caught in the toils of their sin. (Proverbs 5:22) I have actually heard people say that Juneteenth is a holiday for only one segment of the population. But what I can’t figure out is why we would not expect Black people to celebrate? Obviously it’s a holiday for white people—or, let’s put it this way: it must be a time of celebration for those people who look back on the nineteenth-century American South and, because of their skin color, wonder whether, had they lived then and there, they would have been slave owners. Thank God we are no longer confronted with such sin! With all the potential for moral corruption around us in the 21st century, thank God he has removed that particular cause of depravity! Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. When we think about American slavery one of the things we should think about is how the slave society dulled the moral sense of the slavemasters. Slavery exerted a corrupting influence on the slavemasters. I know that the slavemaster is not the first victim of slavery to which our mind turns, and you might think it’s silly—or worse than silly—to reflect on the evils of slavery for the enslaver. I get that. There’s an episode of Little House on the Prairie in which a boy is being abused by his alcoholic father. The men of Walnut Grove get together to talk about how to help the boy, and someone says (I think it’s Doc Baker) that they should probably try to help the father. Charles Ingles responds: “I don’t care about the father, I care only about the boy.” Do you understand why Charles feels that way? That’s the way a lot of people are going to feel about slavery: Who cares about the travails of the slavemaster?! We only care about the slaves! There are a couple of reasons I want to think about the slavemasters. * Had I been born 200 years ago, I would not have been one of the slaves. * There were a lot of opponents of slavery in nineteenth-century America who wrote about the problems of slavery for slaveowners. In his first autobiography (1845), Frederick Douglass wrote about his master’s wife: “Slavery proved as injurious to her as it did to me” (ch. 7). Sin hurts the sinner As Augustine wrote in the Confessions (3.8.16) at the end of the fourth century, talking about people who know not God: “even when they sin against you, they act wickedly against their own souls. Their iniquity speaks falsehoods to them, whether by corrupting or perverting their own nature, which you created and ordained, or by making immoderate use of licit things, or by so burning with desire for illicit things that they use them contrary to nature” (trans. Williams 2019: 39). “They act wickedly against their own souls.” That’s the theme I want to highlight in this essay, and mostly I’m going to do that by lining up quotations that demonstrate the point, quotations about the general idea—sin hurts the sinner—and then also about the specific instance under consideration here, slaveholding. First, the general idea, and it’s one that Socrates mentioned in his final speech—before being sentenced to drink the hemlock—in reference to his accuser, Meletus (and Anytus): “I think he does himself a much greater injury by doing what he is doing now—killing a man unjustly” (Plato, Apology 30d; see the discussion by Emily Wilson, pp. 46–51). The Proverbs are filled with this sort of reflection. yet they lie in wait—to kill themselves!and set an ambush—for their own lives! (Proverbs 1:18) Those who are kind reward themselves,but the cruel do themselves harm.The wicked earn no real gain,but those who sow righteousness get a true reward. (Proverbs 11:17–18) As righteousness tendeth to life:so he that pursueth evil pursueth it to his own death. (Proverbs 11:19) The deuterocanoical book of Wisdom, written just before the time of Jesus, mentions that “One is punished by the very things by which one sins” (Wisdom 11:16), and the other deuterocanonical wisdom book, this one called Sirach, says similarly: “One who sins does wrong to himself” (Sirach 19:4). It was not just Jews and Christians who saw this truth; the pre-classical Greek poet Hesiod asserted: “A man contrives evil for himself when he contrives evil for someone else, and an evil plan is most evil for the planner” (Works and Days 265–66; trans. Most, pp. 108–9). One more example, much more recent, written in America about 15 years before slavery was federally prohibited, but this example is not about slavery. It’s from the novel The Scarlet Letter (1850, ch. 14), in which a man named Roger Chillingworth has been wronged, and so he plots his revenge, and it turns out that the biggest victim of his revenge is himself. “In a word, old Roger Chillingworth was a striking evidence of man’s faculty of transforming himself into a devil, if he will only, for a reasonable space of time, undertake a devil’s office.” A devil’s office Slaveowning in the nineteenth-century American South was a devil’s office, and it turned humans into devils. Living in a slave society himself, Augustine recognized the dangers of sin, and the madness of ignoring the perils of, for instance, hating an enemy. “As if there were any greater danger from a human enemy than from the very hatred that one feels toward him! As if one did more serious harm to someone else by persecuting him than to one’s own heart by stoking one’s hostility!” (Confessions 1.18.29). In a work written after the American Revolutionary War but before the drafting of the US Constitution, Thomas Jefferson had diagnosed this problem. There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of our people [i.e., white Americans] produced by the existence of slavery among us. The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative animal. (Notes on the State of Virginia, 1785, Query 18) Jefferson goes on to continue describing how easy it is for the slavemaster to abuse his slave and thus train his child to do the same. The child who is thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances. And with what execration should the statesman be loaded, who permitting one half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other, transforms those into despots, and these into enemies, destroys the morals of the one part, and the amor patriae of the other. These are amazing sentences from Jefferson in 1785, and with the benefit of hindsight of another nearly two and half centuries of American history, they are tragic. Jefferson’s discussion continues for a few more sentences, and those sentences are well worth reading in this book—his only published book—easily accessible online. But note in the last sentence quoted above that he imagines that with all the harm to the slave entailed in the practice of American slavery, he observes that it is the slavemasters who are turned into immoral despots. You might imagine what the author of the Declaration of Independence thought about immoral despots. In an 1847 letter, Francis Wayland, an opponent of slavery, quotes this passage from Jefferson and adds the comment a bit later: “It is in accordance with the general law, that those who enslave the bodies of others, become in turn the slaves of their own passions” (see here, pp. 119–20). The English writer Charles Dickens, visiting America in 1842, published a series of Notes, near the end of which he describes the logical outcome of the training of a slavemaster (text here, near the end of ch. 17): Do we not know that the man who has been born and bred among its [= slavery’s] wrongs; who has seen in his childhood husbands obliged at the word of command to flog their wives; women, indecently compelled to hold up their own garments that men might lay the heavier stripes on their legs, driven and harried by brutal overseers in their time of travail, and becoming mothers on the field of toil, under the very lash itself; who has read in youth, and seen his virgin sisters read, descriptions of runaway men and women, and their disfigured persons [as Dickens had quoted earlier in his chapter], which could not be published elsewhere, of so much stock upon a farm, or at a show of beasts;—do we not know that that man, whenever his wrath is kindled up, will be a brutal savage? According to Jefferson, enslaving another person renders you an immoral despot. Yes, I know, he himself was a slavemaster, and among his slaves were some of his own biological children. That does not make his observation wrong; I think it gives a powerful illustration of it. According to Dickens, the slavemaster trains himself to become a brutal savage. According to the historian Douglas Foster (p. 55), it is for this reason that Alexander Campbell, the nineteenth-century religious reformer in Virginia, opposed slavery. What I’m saying is, I’m glad I won’t have to stand before God and answer questions about my record as a slavemaster. But we can continue. We have heard from some white people, including a slaveowner, Jefferson, but now we turn to some slaves, or some former (runaway) slaves. (Douglass was still legally a slave when he published his autobiography, as his freedom was not purchased until 1846.) Going back to the first autobiography of Frederick Douglass, who escaped from bondage when he was about age 20, he includes some descriptions of the moral corruption that enslavement wrought on his enslavers. When he was a young boy, he met with a kind woman, the wife o
17 juin

Gospel of Life, Chapter 6, The Old Testament

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13 juin

Gospel of Life, Chapter 5, The Samaritan Woman

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12 juin

Language and Theology

God said it, I believe, that settles it. But what does it settle? Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Accepting Christian Scripture as true does not determine its meaning. Interpretation is always necessary, and the more important the theological claim, the more important it is to interpret the claim in a sensible or true way. By the way, this song is just too good not to watch, since I mentioned its title. For instance, Christians affirm that Jesus is the Son of God, but what does this mean? And, crucially, should we understand this affirmation “literally”? Is it traditional Christian theology to claim that Jesus is literally the Son of God, or is that a departure from Christian theology? What does it mean to say that Jesus is literally the Son of God? Or what about the claim that the church is the body of Christ? Does that make sense literally or only in some other way? Such questions invite reflection on the meaning of words, the meaning of meaning, and the possibilities of communication. That’s where I start, before turning to some examples of theological assertions and querying whether they should be interpreted literally. By the way, I first presented this essay in a meeting of fellow Christians, all members of the Churches of Christ, and I gave myself the task of investigating whether the claim “Jesus is literally the Son of God” makes sense—or what sense it is supposed to make. That setting intrudes itself in some of my sentences below. Words and Meaning I do believe words have meaning, and communication is possible. I have some hope that this brief essay can communicate a meaning, and that readers will be able to discern something close to the concepts that exist in the head of the author of this text—if they want to. Postmodern literary theories have taught us that texts can communicate in multiple ways and readers are involved in the business of constructing meaning with texts, but at least some times—and, I think, almost all the time—the meaning readers aim at constructing with the text is the meaning that the author intended. Authors feel justified at times in complaining that readers have misconstrued their intentions, that is, that the texts have been misinterpreted. Such complaining happens frequently when authors respond to reviews of their books: “That’s not what I meant!” Or, let me quote Pope Pius XII, who wrote in a famous encyclical in 1943, “There is no one indeed but knows that the supreme rule of interpretation is to discover and define what the writer intended to express” (Divino Afflante Spiritu 34). The good bishop then immediately undergirds his assertion by quoting Athanasius (Against the Arians 1.54). He could have quoted a number of other early Christian writers, including Augustine: “The aim of its [= divine scripture’s] readers is simply to find out the thoughts and wishes of those by whom it was written down and, through them, the will of God, which we believe these men followed as they spoke” (On Christian Doctrine 2.5.6). Let me say it again: I do believe that texts can communicate meanings, though I also recognize some of the difficulties in making such a claim. And because texts can communicate meanings, I also believe that it is possible to translate a text from one language to another. An English translation of the Bible, for instance, can communicate the same meaning as what is communicated by the biblical texts in their original languages. No, that is saying too much for translation. Let me put it this way: an English Bible can communicate an approximation of the meaning communicated by the texts in their original language—an approximation, not the same meaning, just an approximation. Greek words do not correspond perfectly with English words, just as English words do not correspond perfectly with English words. Agape means something very similar to “love,” but not exactly the same thing, just as the English word “adore” means something very similar to “love” but not exactly the same thing. Of course, the word “love” itself has various shades of meaning, depending on whether we’re talking about loving our spouse or loving God or loving ice cream. And then there’s development in language: the phrase “making love” in a movie from the 1940s was intended to communicate something different from the way the same phrase was employed in movies from the 1970s. Such variables in language have led some people to declare translation to be impossible—an overstatement, to be sure, but one that captures a significant truth. We can, with more precision, say that translation is challenging and always imprecise. And so we commonly give the Bible-study advice that you need to check your Scriptural passage in more than one translation so that you can discern different nuances of the meaning of the original language text. All of the foregoing is prolegomena. Now for the main item. Son of God Is Jesus the Son of God? Yes, of course. I am a Christian talking to Christians, and the assertion that Jesus is the Son of God is a basic Christian affirmation. According to the traditional English wording of the most well-known verse of the Bible, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. Ask the Pope or the President, Barton Stone or Alexander Campbell, and they’ll all tell you that Jesus is the Son of God. Now, if you ask what they mean by that, or in what way Jesus is the Son of God, or what implications people should derive from that status, the similarities among them will quickly evaporate. Arius believed that Jesus was the Son of God. So did Marcion. And Irenaeus and Athanasius believed it. I assume the demons believe it, just as the Epistle of James says that the demons believe other basic elements of Christian theology. Churches of Christ have traditionally followed a course of strategic ambiguity regarding the exact signification of Jesus’ divine sonship. Let me be more specific: churches of Christ have often not followed the path of mainstream Christianity in regard to some aspects of the doctrine of God. Many Christians throughout the past couple millennia have thought it very important to specify with some precision the way in which Jesus is the Son of God, to define in some detail the relationship between Jesus and the Father, to bring more exactitude to this discussion than the bare phrase “Son of God” could do. If the declaration of Jesus’ divine sonship unites followers of Athanasius with followers of Arius and followers of Marcion, then it is not a very useful declaration, it has often been thought. We need to define God as the creator of heaven and earth—thus excluding the beliefs of Marcion—and we need to draw out the implications of divine sonship as entailing that Jesus is (for example) “light of light, true God of true God, begotten, not made”—and this next bit is crucial, so I will cite the Greek of the Nicene Creed—homoousios with the Father, not homoiousios but homoousios, of the same substance—not similar, same. Many Christian groups have historically been so concerned to declare Jesus to be very God that they have recited some version of the creed every single week. Churches of Christ have traditionally not followed this practice, and have indeed left the matter open as to what exactly people mean when they declare Jesus to be Son of God. In the past few decades, however, there has been among some leaders in churches of Christ an effort to elevate a traditional doctrine of the Trinity to a fellowship issue (see Mark Powell, Brad East, Keith Stanglin; and relatedly Leonard Allen). I wonder, though, if we could ask Athanasius, or Arius, or Marcion—or whoever, the Pope or Barton Stone or Mark Powell—whether Jesus was literally the Son of God, what they would say. What does it mean for someone to be literally the son of someone else? I have two sons, and I think we would all agree that both of them are literally my sons, though one of them has inherited genetic material from me and the other one hasn’t. One of them is my biological son and the other is my adopted son, and this latter son therefore has another father who is his biological father. Is my adopted son’s biological father the literal father of my adopted son? Hmm, maybe, but I also am his literal father, and now I’m not sure what “literal” means in this context. The New Testament gives me the assurance that I myself am a son of God. According to the apostle Paul, all who are led by the Spirit are sons of God (Rom 8:14). Am I literally a son of God? Oh, man, I don’t know. If you’re making me answer, I guess I’d say “yes, I am literally a son of God.” What about Jesus? Well, if I am literally a son of God, surely Jesus also is. But, again, I’m not sure what the word “literally” accomplishes in this context. At any rate, Christians who have thought about this issue of the relationship between Jesus and the Father have succeeded in offering some substance to the phrase “Son of God” as applied to Jesus. The first thing to note is that Jesus did not become the Son of God at any time, and certainly not at the time of his birth from Mary, as if the phrase “Son of God” can apply to the Second Person of the Trinity only from two thousand years ago, but not before then. No, that is ridiculous, absurd—indeed, heretical. The Father did not become the Father at some point in history, and the Son did not become the Son. These terms—Father and Son—are clues to their eternal relationship. So, the phrase “Son of God” does not refer to his birth from Mary by the Holy Spirit. Rather, it refers to his essence, as begotten of the Father before all ages; before time, the Son was begotten of the Father, so that there was no time when the Son was not. Here, note well, we have left Arianism behind. There is, of course, no

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