Scriptural Reasoning: Education and knowledge

Education and knowledge was the theme of the text bundle used in our local Scriptural Reasoning group meeting tonight. 

This meeting was hosted by the South West Essex and Settlement Reform Synagogue (SWESRS) who have recently installed a Tree of Life in the foyer of their prayer hall. The designer who created this beautiful and original commission had, by coincidence, celebrated his Bar mitzvah at what was then SWERS. The tree is mounted on boards for ease of maintenance. Leaves can be purchased to celebrate happy family events such as births, B’nei mitzvah, marriages, anniversaries etc and also to commemorate the life of someone who has passed away.

The Tree of Life is one of the names for the Torah. In the introductions to the Jewish and Islamic texts we heard about the focus on learning within both traditions. In my introduction to the Christian text (1 Timothy 3. 13 - 17) I focused on different ways of understanding the phrased 'God-breathed' as it relates to the inspiration of scripture:    

'God-breathed has been understood as a way of saying that the scriptures have been inspired by God. The idea that the scriptures are directly inspired by God is often understood as being the basis for an understanding of the scriptures which sees them as being literally true in every detail and which requires absolute obedience to their literal meaning. However, this is by no means the exclusive understanding of this phrase with Christianity today and is a relatively recent understanding of the phrase. According to an article in Theology Today published in 1975, "There have been long periods in the history of the church when biblical inerrancy has not been a critical question. It has in fact been noted that only in the last two centuries can we legitimately speak of a formal doctrine of inerrancy."

A more helpful way of understanding this phrase may be think about it in relation to basic needs. The scriptures are described as being like food and water, as well as breath. These are all things without which we will not survive very long. We can survive without food for about two months, without water for up to 8 - 10 days but without air or breath for only about 3 minutes. At one level, then, these are metaphors about the necessity of the scriptures for life itself. They are as fundamental to life as breathing, water and food.

These metaphors are also about taking the scriptures into our lives in order to gain benefit from them. We can observe and discuss food, water and even breath but they all have to enter our bodies for us to physically and literally benefit from them. This speaks of the necessity for us not simply to talk about the scriptures but also to apply them to our lives for real learning and benefit to occur. Learning from the scriptures is not primarily an academic exercise. They have to affect our heart as well as our head if they are truly to be of benefit to us.

Breathing, however, is not simply about taking in but also about giving out. This is, perhaps, another aspect of applying the scriptures; they are for giving out i.e.  sharing both in word and deed.

Finally, this image is not firstly or primarily about us but about God. The scriptures are the very breath of God but because breathing is about inhaling and exhaling we can understand scripture in terms of an interactive responsive to and fro, exchange or dialogue between God and ourselves. God speaks into our lives through the scriptures (this is inhalation) and we then respond in prayer or worship or action which then prompts further input into our lives followed by further response.

This to and fro between God and ourselves can be thought of in terms of dialogue or conversation which can take in all forms of response including praise, worship, acceptance, argument, complaint and requests among others. Like breathing, to be effective, this needs to be constant and ongoing but for most of us, perhaps all of us, is, in reality, halting and impaired.'

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Adrian Snell & David Fitzgerald - Shema (Hear O Israel). 

Scriptural Reasoning Group: The Extra Mile

Tonight our theme at our local Scriptural Reasoning group was The Extra Mile. The text bundle can be found by clicking here. My introduction to the parable of the Good Samaritan was as follows:


The Good Samaritan is a gun. At least, it is in the Hellboy series of films. Hellboy is a comic book character created by Mike Mignola who has then appeared in two films directed by Guillermo del Toro. In these stories, Hellboy is a demon brought to Earth as an infant by Nazi occultists but is discovered and brought up by Professor Trevor Bruttenholm, who forms the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense for which Hellboy fights against dark forces of evil. In the stories, he is identified as the "World's Greatest Paranormal Investigator."


In these stories this gun was given to Hellboy at a young age by the Torch of Liberty and it is named ‘The Samaritan’ after Jesus’ parable. The gun was built specially to fight evil and supernatural enemies. Its metal was formed from silver church bells, nails from the crucifixion of Jesus, various blessed chalices, and other forms of silver and copper (known elements for fighting evil) with its handle being carved from the cross to which Jesus was nailed.

Jesus’ parable challenges us to love our neighbour and, through the story he tells, Jesus specifically identifies our neighbours as being those in need; more specifically still those who have been attacked by others. Hellboy, by contrast, uses a gun called ‘The Samaritan’ made from elements of the cross and church silver to attack and to kill others. There is no love of enemies in what he does instead he is engaged in a fight to the death with the forces of evil. So, invoking the Samaritan and Christ’s death in what he is doing is a complete reversal of the parable and of the meaning of the crucifixion.Coming across this misuse and misunderstanding of the parable led me to question whether there are other ways in which we misunderstand and misuse this parable. One way in which I think we can do this is that we overlook the extent to which Jews and Samaritans seem to have been enemies at this time, partly because they were people of different faiths.

Samaritans claimed that they were the true Israel who were descendants of the "lost" tribes taken into Assyrian captivity. They had their own temple on Mount Gerizim and claimed that it was the original sanctuary. They also claimed that their version of the Pentateuch was the original and that the Jews had a falsified text produced by Ezra during the Babylonian exile. Both Jewish and Samaritan religious leaders seem to have taught that it was wrong to have any contact with the opposite group, and neither was to enter each other's territories or even to speak to one another.

DinahRoe Kendall has painted a version of the Good Samaritan which sets the story in South Africa at the time of apartheid. Doing so seems an accurate parallel with the kinds of emotions and cultural practices that were at place in the relationship between Jews and Samaritans and it shows up clearly the sting in the denouement of Jesus’ story. Jesus didn’t illustrate his point - that people of every race, colour, class, creed, faith, sexuality, and level of ability are our neighbours – by telling a story in which a Jew was kind to someone else. Instead, he told a story in which a Jew receives help from a person who was perceived to be his enemy. The equivalent in Kendall’s painting is of the black man helping the white man who represents the people that have oppressed him and his people.    

So Kendall’s version of the story brings out part of the sting in the tail that Jesus gives this story; the sense of receiving help from the person who is your enemy. What her version doesn’t deal with, however, is the idea that the enemy who helps is someone of another faith. The Jews were God’s chosen people and a light to the other nations and faith, so what would have been expected from this story would have been for the Jew in the story to bring the light of faith to the Samaritan. But that is not how Jesus’ story unfolds. Instead, the person who is one of God’s chosen people receives from the person of another faith.

To find a contemporary equivalent for this aspect of the story, we have to think about relationships in this country between Christians and those of other faiths, and within these relationships, recognise that relationships between Christians and Muslims are those which are currently most conflicted with some Christians believing that Islam represents a threat to the Church and Western civilization. Within this context, the parable of the Good Samaritan challenges Christians as to what we can receive from those of other faiths and, particularly, those who we might view as enemies. Jesus says to us through this parable that loving our neighbours is not simply about what we can give to others but also about what we receive from others.

If our focus is just on what we can give then we are in a paternalistic relationship with our neighbours or enemies. If our focus is just on what we can give then we are saying we hold all the aces and we will generously share some of them with you. In other words, we remain in a position of power and influence. Immediately we acknowledge that we can receive from our neighbours or enemies, then the balance of power shifts and we make ourselves vulnerable. In this parable, Jesus says that that is where true love is to be found and it is something that he went on to demonstrate by making himself vulnerable through death on the cross.     

So, where have we got to with all this? We began with Hellboy and the idea of blowing our enemies out of the water using the Samaritan in order to see that that is the absolute reverse of Jesus’ teaching in this parable. From there we thought about the aspect of the story that is to do with our neighbour as being those in need.

But that aspect of the parable does not get to the heart of the parable because our neighbour is also portrayed here as being our enemy, and more than that an enemy of another faith. But even Jesus’ teachings about love for enemies don’t get us to the heart of what he is portraying in this story because, if love for enemies just means our giving to others, then we remain in the moral ascendency towards them.

In the parable of the Good Samaritan, where the twist in the tail, the deepest point is that one of God’s chosen people receives help from his enemy who is of another faith. Jesus is taking us deep into the heart of love and saying that we will not truly love our neighbour until we understand and accept that we have much to receive from those that we perceive to be our enemies. In other words, true love of our neighbour means that we receive as well as give.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Eric Bibb - Jericho Road.

Tree and Fruit

Our local Scriptural Reasoning group had another fascinating and wide ranging discussion tonight as we used a text bundle on the theme of Tree and Fruit.

Here is what I said by way of introduction to the Christian text (John 15. 16):

The imagery of tree and fruit was regularly used by Jesus in his teaching. As stated here, his followers are chosen and appointed to bear fruit. Fruitfulness is the overall aim and lack of fruitfulness is to be challenged and is ultimately destructive. So he tells and enacts parables of fig trees which don’t bear fruit being given final opportunities to become fruitful before being destroyed if not (Luke 13):

6 "A man had a fig tree growing in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it but did not find any. 7 So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, ‘For three years now I’ve been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven’t found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?’

8 "‘Sir,’ the man replied, ‘leave it alone for one more year, and I’ll dig around it and fertilize it. 9 If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.’"

Fruitfulness is a consequence of being ‘in’ Christ (John 15):

5 "I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.

Branches can only bud and grow because they are part of the vine as a whole receiving the sustenance that flows up into the vine from the roots. A vine roots in the soil but has most of its leaves in the brighter, exposed area, getting the best of both worlds. So, being rooted in Jesus is the way in which Christians can open to the light and bear fruit. Rootedness could mean commitment to Christ or being embedded in Christ’s life and ministry or both.

What is fruitfulness? What is it that Jesus is aiming to see in his followers? One way of answering that question for Christians, because Christianity has been a missionary faith, has been to see fruit as souls saved but when Paul writes in Galatians 5 about the fruit of the Spirit he is writing about the character and actions of Christians as fruit, rather than the outcome of our actions:

22 the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control.

The Spirit is the Spirit of Jesus and the fruit which is grown in Christian’s lives is Christlikeness. Being rooted in Jesus enables the Spirit of Jesus to flow in and through a Christian enabling them to begin to become Christlike.

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13 that such actions as faith, hope and love remain. The word he used for remain hints that such actions continue beyond the grave into eternity i.e. that we can take something with us when we die, that the fruit or acts of faith, hope and love grown in this life continue into, and continue to bear fruit in, the next. This brings us back to where we began, with Jesus' statement that "I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit — fruit that will last."

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gravy Train - Think Of Life.

Scriptural Reasoning: Introduction to Christian Text on Beginnings

We had a fascinating discussion this evening at the second meeting of our local Scriptural Reasoning group which touched on creation, creativity, rest, the nature of God, Trinity, incarnation, omniscience and debate.

Here is my introduction to the Christian Text on Beginnings (John 1. 1-5) from the Text Bundle we were using:

These words of beginning come from the Prologue or overture to the gospel according to John.  Gospels are ‘good messages’ or ‘good news’ connected with the word ‘angel’ or messenger. “In the Hebrew Scriptures this means the ‘good news’ of God’s peace and salvation, brought to poor and hurting people trapped in pain or oppression. In the Graeco-Roman world, it was used for the latest proclamation from the local government or the emperor.” The good news here comes in the form of a Graeco-Roman biography telling stories about Jesus and the things he said in order to interpret his significance as ‘the Christ, the Son of God’.

It is ‘the gospel according to John’, not necessarily written by John but ‘according to’ his teaching and interpretation. “It was quite common in the ancient world for the followers of a great man to write up his ideas and teachings, as Plato did for Socrates.” While John has traditionally been identified as the apostle John, it seems best to think of John as the ‘authority’ for rather than the ‘author’ of the gospel ‘according to John’.  

“Whoever was involved in writing and producing this gospel was very familiar with the multi-faith, multi-cultural world of the eastern Mediterranean in the first century. It was a real melting pot because of the Romans’ deliberate policy of bringing all peoples together in one empire of peace and easy communications.” The gospel is “steeped in the Hebrew scriptures and Jewish beliefs” but is trying to present Jesus in a culture saturated by the dualist Greek philosophical tradition, which contrasted the invisible realm of the intellect, soul and the gods with our material physical universe, Stoicism, which stressed the logical rationality behind cosmic order, and religious cults, which abounded with stories of divine figures coming from the realm of light above to save us in this dark world.  

In this overture to the Gospel, which introduces key themes and words that will recur throughout, Jesus is called ‘the Word’. In the Hebrew scriptures God’s word is seen as being alive and active (Isaiah 55. 11) from the creation (referred to here by the phrase, ‘In the beginning’), when God has only to say, ‘Let there be ...’ for things to come into being (Genesis 1. 3, 6, 9, etc.), to God’s word coming through all the prophets. In Greek philosophy from early thinkers like Heraclitus to the Stoics, the ‘word’, logos, was used for the logical rationality behind the universe. In later Jewish beliefs, this masculine principle was complemented by the feminine figure of Lady Wisdom, who was present with God at the creation (Proverbs 8. 22 – 31).

“John pulls all these threads together with the amazing idea that the Word was not only pre-existent with God but also personal.” He “carefully writes ‘the Word was God’, divine, personal, existing in the unity of the Godhead and yet somehow distinct – for ‘the Word became flesh and dwelt among us’ (John 1. 14).”

“The Word which God spoke had a reality and being of its own. Though it flowed out of the source which was God, it had life in itself, and entered into a living relation with God. God spoke the Word, and the Word spoke to God. This is the reality which is reflected in the experience of every author who writes a book, for as s/he writes the words, the words have a life of their own and enter into a dialogue with the author ... As the music of Bach expresses Bach, and the music of Mozart expresses Mozart, so we may think of God speaking a word which expresses himself. His Word expresses his own unique nature, which is Love.”

We speak about God only by means of analogies. The analogies here are of: the Creative Idea which sees the whole work of the world complete, the end in the beginning, as the image of God the Father; and the Creative Activity bringing that idea to life in time as the image of the Word, the Son of God.

The presence of the Word is the ‘light come into the darkness’. “The first act of God’s creation was in the words “Let there be light” ... and he “separated the light from the darkness” (Genesis 1. 3f). “The light does not eliminate the darkness, but it goes on shining. There is no peaceful coexistence of light and darkness. The business of light is to banish darkness” yet “darkness remains the background to the story which John will tell”. The image therefore is of “a lighthouse or beacon throwing one bar of light through the darkness.”

“The light which shone in Jesus, and which shines on in the name of Jesus is proclaimed throughout the world, is none other than the light of God himself, his first creation, the light that enlightens every human being (John 1. 9).”

(This introduction is based mainly on material from ‘John’, Richard A. Burridge, The Bible Reading Fellowiship Oxford, 1998 but also uses quotes from: ‘Water into Wine’, Stephen Verney, Fount, 1985; ‘The Mind of the Maker’, Dorothy L. Sayers, Methuen & Co London, 1942; ‘The Light Has Come’, Lesslie Newbigin, The Handsel Press Edinburgh, 1987; and ‘Readings in St John’s Gospel’, William Temple, Macmillan & Co London, 1968)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Houses - Beginnings.