Ash Wednesday: The Prayer Appointed for the Week

Almighty and everlasting God,
you hate nothing you have made and forgive the sins of all who are penitent:

Create and make in me a new and contrite heart, that I,
worthily lamenting my sins and acknowledging my wretchedness,
may obtain of you, the God of all mercy,
perfect remission and forgiveness;

through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. †

From The Divine Hours – Prayers for Springtime.

On Truth by Harry Frankfurt

This last week I read Harry Frankfurt’s wonderful little gold book, On Truth, for this semester’s philosophy class, Writing for Publication, in the Denver Seminary MA Philosophy of Religion degree program. The book is short, only 101 pages, but it sure packs a punch.

I thought that I might include a few quotes here to give a feel for the types of issues that Frankfurt is dealing with and the approach that he takes. In this book he presents a compelling argument against the postmodern tendency to deny the reality of objective truth. I would recommend the book to anyone who would like a counterpoint to antirealist and relativistic notions of truth.

On the incoherence of denying the three classic laws of thought as applied to truth both epistemically and metaphysically:

“…even those who profess to deny the validity or the objective reality of the true-false distinction continue to maintain without apparent embaressment that this denial is a position that they do truly endorse. The statement that they reject the distinction between true and false is, they insist, an unqualifiedly true statement about their beliefs, not a false one. This prima facie incoherence in the articulation of their doctrine makes it uncertain precisely how to construe what it is that they propose to deny. It is also enough to make us wonder just how seriously we need to take their claim that there is no objectively meaningful or worthwhile distinction to be made between what is true and what is false.” (p. 9)

On the idea that normative (i.e. evaluative) judgements cannot properly be regarded is being either true or false:

“…societies cannot afford to tolerate anyone or anything that fosters a slovenly indifference to the distinction between true and false. Much less can they indulge the shabby, narcissistic pretense that being true to the facts is less important than being “true to oneself.” If there is any attitude that is inherently antithetical to a decent and orderly social life, that is it.” (p. 33)

So is the question of truth as an objective reality something that actually matters?

“Our success or failure in whatever we undertake, and therefore in life altogether, depends on whether we are guided by truth or whether we proceed in ignorance or on the basis of falsehood. It also depends critically, of course, on what we do with the truth. Without truth, however, we are out of luck before we even start…

We really cannot live without truth. We need truth not only in order to understand how to live well, but in order to know how to survive at all… truth is not a feature of belief to which we can permit ourselves to be indifferent. Indifference would be a matter not just of negligent imprudence. It would quickly prove fatal.” (pp. 36-7)

Frankfurt spends a whole chapter discussing some of Spinoza’s insights on truth and joy, and ends the chapter with this thought:

“Practically all of us do love truth, whether or not we are aware that we do so. And, to the extent that we recognize what dealing effectively with the problems of life entails, we cannot help loving truth.” (pp. 47-8)

So why do truths possess instrumental value (i.e. are useful in a pragmatic fashion for getting by in the world)?

“Insofar as truths possess instrumental value, they do so because they capture and convey the nature of these realities. Truths have practical utility because they consist of, and because they can therefore provide us with, accurate accounts of the properties (including, especially, the causal powers and potentialities) of the real objects and events with which we must deal when we act.” (p. 52)

On the nature of factuality:

“Now, the relevant facts are what they are regardless of what we may happen to believe about them, and regardless of what we may wish them to be. This is, indeed, the essence and the defining character of factuality, of being real: the properties of reality, and accordingly the truths about its properties, are what they are, independent of any direct or immediate control of our will…

The facts – the true nature of reality – are the final and incontrovertible recourse of inquiry. They dictate and support an ultimately decisive resolution and rebuttal of all uncertainties and doubts.” (pp. 54-55)

And, to end this with an obligatory SG-1 reference…

Waiting for the World to Fall

I heard the Jars of Clay song “Waiting for the World to Fall” from the album Music Inspired by The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe on Pandora a few times this week, and it moved me so much that I thought that I would mention it here.

For those that have not heard the song, here is an excellent fan-video that overlays the song with clips from early parts of the movie where the Pevensie children have yet to discover what lies within the wardrobe.

Here are the lyrics (Copyright: ©2005 Bridge Building):

I'm afraid it's been too long
to try to find the reasons why
I let my world close in around
a smaller patch of fading sky
But now I've grown beyond the walls
to where I've never been
And it's still winter in my wonderland

Chorus

I'm waiting for the world to fall
I'm waiting for the scene to change
I'm waiting when the colors come
I'm waiting to let my world come undone
I close my eyes and try to see
the world unbroken underneath
The farther off and already
it just might make the life I lead
A little more than make-believe
when all my skies are painted blue
And the clouds don't ever change
the shape of who I am to You

Chorus

I'm waiting for the world to fall
I'm waiting for the scene to change
I'm waiting when the colors come
I'm waiting to let my world come undone
When I catch the light of falling stars my view is changing me
My view is changing me
I'm waiting

The lyrics and tone of the song capture and evoke the deep longing that we all feel for transcendence. As Marc Newman points out in his review of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe:

There is no way to completely describe the feeling you get when you experience a moving passage of music, tremble beneath the array of stars on a dark and moonless mountain night, or even when you bask in the afterglow of a particularly wonderful day. C.S. Lewis, the author of The Chronicles of Narnia, called this feeling sehnsucht, which, roughly translated, means longing.

The longing of sehnsucht is not a thing to be grasped. It is always in passing, like an image that strikes upon the senses and is gone. … It is a kind of desire that knows it cannot be fulfilled here, yet is worth desiring and seeking after nonetheless.

Wonder

Lewis argued that humans long “to see with other eyes, to imagine with other imaginations, to feel with other hearts, as well as with our own.” We were made for awe. Unfortunately, the modern privileging of scientific fact as the “only” reliable type of truth often tries to push aside the competing truth claims of intuition and revelation. But the longing for transcendence -- the desire of human nature to move beyond that nature into something beyond – will not be denied.

As I reflected on this, it also reminded me of N.T. Wright’s idea of our quest for the transcendent and the spiritual as the “echoes of a voice” in his book Simply Christian:

“If anything like the Christian story is in fact true (in other words, if there is a God whom we can know most clearly in Jesus), this interest is exactly what we should expect; because in Jesus we glimpse a God who loves people and wants them to know and respond to that love. (p. 24)

James Sire, in his excellent review of Wright’s book, notes that: 

Wright identifies four main "echoes of a voice" (recalling Peter Berger's "signals of transcendence"): "the longing for justice, the quest for spirituality, the hunger for relationships, and the delight in beauty."

Each points to a realm beyond the material. Ultimately, Wright argues, these voices join the more direct revelation of God to become "the voice of Jesus, calling us to follow him into God's new world—the world in which the hints, signposts, and echoes of the present world turn into the reality of the next one."

Dan Haseltine points out in his comments on the song that Narnia embodies that sense of longing, but as a fantasy is able to capture our imaginations and provide a glimpse into the discovery of the transcendent reality that lies behind our oft mundane lives:

The song is really a song about discovery.

It's kind of being in a world where things maybe aren't as they should be or kind of living a mundane existence and wanting something more and then getting a glimpse of what that really is like and having your world kind of shift, your paradigm change, and that's what we loved about this story, was just the way there was this great movement and discovery of a whole new world.

As the writer of Ecclesiastes states:

⁹ What do workers gain from their toil? ¹⁰ I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. ¹¹ He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

I’m waiting…

Eternal Timefullness

Some poignant thoughts on the ‘eternal timefullness’ of unleashing creativity in our artistic endeavors (in which I would certainly include coding) from Refractions (pp. 15-16), the amazing new book by Makoto Fujimura:

The process of creating renews my spirit, and I find myself attuned to the details of life rather than being stressed by being overwhelmed. I find myself listening rather than shouting into the void. Creating art opens my heart to see and listen to the world around me, opening a new vista of experience. This is the gift of the “second wind.” Such a state taps into what I now call eternal timefullness.

A timeful experience is given when our minds are allowed to fully respond to the senses, to tap into the eternal reality that God opens for us via creativity. It’s what William Blake, the eighteenth-century poet, meant when he wrote,

“To see a world in a grain of sand, / And a heaven in a wild lower, / hold ininity in the palm of your hand, / And eternity in an hour.” 

In order to “see a world in a grain of sand,” we must pause to pay attention to the details of life, to let our eyes wander into the crevices of the earth below, to observe the shadows as well as the light, to perhaps even see how the light is refracted in the fragmental remains of sands. And such observational skills must be cultivated as a form of discipline, even in the midst of the hectic lives we lead.

An Exegetical Essay on Genesis 15:1-6

This was a very interesting intellectual and devotional exercise for me that I submitted as part of the requirements for my Early Israel and Its Wisdom Literature three-week Winter intensive class at Denver Seminary.

There are some very particular aspects and constraints on the essay content; see below for the essay question for this exegetical essay if the choice of content seems unusual.

Historical and Cultural Context

In Genesis 15:1-6 we see childless Abram straining against the utterly impossible promise of God for a large progeny (Genesis 12), perplexed at how against all the available evidence it might be fulfilled (Cotter p. 99; Brueggemann, p. 143). There are strong parallels in the Nuzi tablets to Abram’s lament in 15:2 about a household member needing to be adopted (Kitchen, p. 154). Many recent writers argue that any supposed evidence for separate sources can be better explained in terms of Hebrew literary conventions (Skinner, p. 277; Wenham, p. 326). I would argue for dating the writing of this passage to the late Bronze age/early Iron age, with the redaction of earlier material, in which the author wants the newly formed nation of Israel to be reassured that an exclusive faith in its God is both warranted and rewarded.[1] The Israelites are being encouraged to imitate the faith of Abram in trusting the promises of God, to look back to pivotal points in Abram’s life that demonstrate God’s covenant faithfulness, and to thus remember that they themselves are God’s answer to the hopes and prayers of that old man of faith.

Exegetical Issues

The major exegetical issue that I would like to focus on is in v.1 where we read that Abram heard the word of the LORD in a vision say: “Do not be afraid Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward” (TNIV). Most translations have rendered “shield” for MT māgēn (e.g. AV, RSV, NIV), and this is also the approach taken by many commentaries (see Cotter, p. 87; Lieber, p. 82; Matthews, p. 162-3; Skinner, p. 278; Wenham p. 327). Hamilton (p. 419), however, proposes an emendation that calls for reading the word as māgān, “benefactor, suzerain” so as to make more sense of his rendering of the following line: “your reward shall be exceedingly great” since it is a benefactor, rather than a shield, who provides a reward. He points out that Abram earlier had Pharaoh as a benefactor (ch. 12), had refused the donation of the king of Sodom as a benefactor (ch. 14), but that God is a benefactor that he will pursue. Thus the first part of v.1 states a fact from the speaker’s point of view: I am a benefactor for you, and the second part states the same point, but from the addressee’s point of view: your reward shall be exceedingly great (Hamilton, p. 418).

The term māgēn is typically and commonly used metaphorically in the psalms to refer to God’s protection (c.f. Ps. 3:4; 7:11; 18:3; but also Deut. 33:29; Pr. 2:7; 30:5) for God is a divine warrior and king who defends his people. It is on the basis of God as his shield that Abram may thus overcome his fear. Lieber (p. 82) says that given the immediate context (Abram’s victory over the kings of the plain in the previous chapter), the reference to “shield” can be seen as God’s assurance to Abram that in the face of hostilities he can rest in the protection that grants him victory. Matthews (p. 162) notes that the second and third lines can be synonymous[2] in which “shield” is the cause (metonymy) for the “reward,” that is, the Lord will bring about his reward. If this is the case, then “shield” makes sense and emending the reading is therefore superfluous.

Hamilton’s proposed emendation follows M.J. Dahood, who further suggested that 12 of the 19 occurrences of m-g-n in the Psalms be translated “suzerain” rather than “shield.” (Hamilton, p. 419; Longman, 2.846-847). In the light of the connection between shield and kingship, Dahood had posited a connection with an Ugaritic word that he translated “suzerain” based on a proposed confusion between māgēn and māgān in the MT in such passages as Psalm 47:9 and 84:11. Unfortunately for Hamilton’s position, Dahood’s thesis has been persuasively criticized by Craigie in his commentary on Psalms 1-50 (Longman, 2.847). Köckert (p. 772) agrees, stating that “there is no valid reason why one should read māgēn as māgān in the Psalms. If this is the case then Hamilton’s proposal is not only superfluous but also fundamentally flawed and unsustainable. Not only that, such an “interpretation assumes the context of the oriental state ruled by a king; it does not fit in with the social reality of an existence on the fringes of nomadism” that we find in Genesis 15:1 (Ibid.).

Theme and Purpose of the Passage

We see juxtaposed in the first three verses the powerful promise from God (v. 1) and the equally powerful refutation in the form of Abram’s double protest (“I remain childless…You have given me no children”, vv. 2-3). In response to his resolution that a member of his household will inherit his estate, he hears the word of God again in v. 4, “a son coming from your own body will be your heir” and sees a sign, a glance at the heavens. And then we have the result (v. 6) that “Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.” As Kaiser (p. 91) points out, there is no mere intellectual assent to God’s existence here, the object of Abram’s faith “was to be found in the content of the total promise.” This remarkable climactic statement makes it clear that the central purpose of the text is to hold up Abraham as a model of faith (Cotter, p. 100) – as an example of patient faithful trust in God’s firm promises - and to show that “this faith is not simply an embrace of the goodness which meets us in the world, but a reception of the goodness of God promised in spite of the way the world is” (Brueggermann, p. 146). Genesis 15:6 therefore becomes a particularly important text in later arguments concerning the relationship between faith and works for righteousness in Romans 4 and Galatians 2-4, and also in James 2:23.

In my work and service as a father, software developer and church member, I hope that I may also see beyond the often contrary circumstances and hold fast to God’s promises with the same type of tenacity and patience that Abram showed. I too need to trust that God is at work in my circumstances in ways that I cannot imagine to accomplish his purposes and fulfill his promises.

Bibliography

Brueggerman, Walter. Genesis (Interpretation Series). Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982.

Cotter, David W. Genesis (Berit Olam Series). Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 2003.

Hamilton, Victor P. The Book of Genesis (New International Commentary on the Old Testament Series) 1-17. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990.

Kaiser, Walter C. Toward an Old Testament Theology. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1978.

Kitchen, Kenneth A. Ancient Orient and Old Testament. Reprint edition, Newburgh: Trinity Press, 1966.

Köckert , M. “Shield of Abraham.” In Dictionary of Demons and Deities in the Bible, edited by Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, and Pieter Willem Van Der Horst. Revised Edition, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999.

Lieber, David L. Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary (Jewish Publication Society Series). Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2001.

Longman, Tremper, “#4482 māgēn,” in New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis, edited by Willem A VanGemeren. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997.

Matthews, Kenneth A. Genesis 11:27-50:26 (New American Commentary Series). Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 2005.

Skinner, John. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Genesis (International Critical Commentary). 2^nd ed. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1934.

Wenham, Gordon J. Genesis 1-15. Waco, Texas: Word Books, 1987.

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[1] Literary critical discussions have tended to focus on the unity and date of the material and to be elaborate and speculative. The considerations for an early date must be weighed carefully against possibly Deuteronomic language (“heir, possession”) and themes that typically cause critical scholars to push the date to the 7^th century or exilic/postexilic era (Matthews, 158).

[2] As translated in the NIV, given earlier.

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Essay Question

The major purpose of this essay is to encourage you to critically read and evaluate commentaries.

The student will be expected to write an exegetical essay on a Bible passage. This should be selected from Genesis 2, 4-11 (but not 11:1-4), 13-50; Exodus 1-14, 16-19, 21-40, Leviticus 1-15, 17-22, 24-27, Numbers, Deuteronomy 1-4, 7-34, Joshua 3-24, Judges, Ruth, Job, Psalms 3-45, 47-150, Proverbs 3-31, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon 2-7. The essay assignments will not exceed 1000 words or three pages each.

The Bible passage chosen should be about 3-8 verses in length. A good essay will spend one sixth (or one half page of three pages) of its length addressing the historical and cultural context in which you believe the passage was written. One half of the essay will be devoted to identifying and addressing the major exegetical issues of the passage (one or two may be all you have room for), including a summary of solutions proposed by other scholars and your own choice of one of these solutions, along with a defense of why you chose it and why you reject the others. The best summary of solutions is one where scholars who wrote the approved commentaries disagree with one another on the issue and you demonstrate how and why they disagree.

The major purpose of this essay is to encourage you to critically read and evaluate commentaries. Finally, about a sixth of the essay (or one half page of three pages) should be devoted to stating your understanding of the theme and purpose of the passage in its present context. This could include a theological, literary, and/or political emphasis. At this point, include one or two sentences relating the passage to your Mentoring ministry (or if you don't have one, to some practical aspect of Christian service). The bibliography should appear at the end of the essay. All of the items in the bibliography should be referred to in your essay, as you interact with their views. Don't include Bible translations or study Bibles.

Sabbath and Holy Time

The biblical Sabbath is connected with the sanctification of time, just as sacrifice is related to the sanctification of the world.

In each case part of the whole is given back to the Creator in recognition of his prior ownership. This is the key idea behind this law.                                (Israelite Religions, pp 166-167)

Jan 8th - Concluding Prayer of the Church

Almighty God, whose loving hand has given me all that I possess: Grant me grace that I may honor you with my substance, and, remembering the account which I must one day give, may be a faithful steward of your bounty, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

From The Divine Hours, Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime, p. 539.