by Joel V Webb | Dec 16, 2024 | Orthodoxy Matters
“Monkey see, Monkey do” is a phrase that all of us have heard, and we all understand. We are always learning and imitating what is going on around us. I just became a dad, and while my baby son is too little to really imitate me, I know the things going on around him affect him and his reactions.
We also understand that the stuff that we devote our time to we become more like it. My wife and I really enjoy the show The Office, and we hardly go a day without finding some way to quote the show in our everyday life. In a way, that show has formed a bit of me, impacting how I interact and understand things.
Then we get to the concept of catechesis. This word simply means instruction, or instruction by word of mouth. As someone who grew up in a very low-liturgy protestant tradition, the only time I heard this word was in a Roman Catholic context. This word in fact has been used all throughout Church history to reference the teaching and training of new believers (often with a special title still used in some traditions, catechumens).
For most Protestants we could think of this as an extended period of intensive training, where a new follower of Christ is taught the truth of Scripture, and the practices of the worshiping community before being fully integrated as a Eucharist taking brother & sister in Christ. In many contemporary settings we use Sunday School as the primary way we teach our young ones. I believe this is a good thing! But what has arisen in many Churches is more entertainment and keeping kids busy, rather than intentional teaching of Christian truths.
Many in my generation were in some settings were just given Bible stories and memory verses, expected to content with the philosophies and arguments of a world that seeks to disprove the existence of God.
What intentional catechism provides is in many cases those same Bible stories and verses, but also imbued deeply with transmitting the core truths of the Christian faith. A young person going to college can’t contend with the philosophical argument of an atheist if all they know is Noah’s Ark and know John 3:16 by heart (these are good things still). It has to be more than just head knowledge of a few fact point. Rather, we need to be working towards holistic worldview development of our children.
This is made more poignant and important for myself with the birth of my first child. I see and know the world that they are going to grow up in. All the hundreds if not thousands of messages they will received in active and passive ways. And here’s the dirty little secret that most of us are uncomfortable with. There is no such thing as a neutral message. EVERYTHING is seeking to form and mold us into representing the message that we receive. For commercials it is trying to make us discontent with what we have so that we have to buy more to be happy. Or the education in our public schools. No matter how we put it, schooling is not neutral (despite how some may protest). The current ruling philosophy of our American public schools is materialistic agnosticism, if not antagonism to God. Nothing is neutral, everything is trying to form us.
Instead, we must work diligently to form the next generations to not just know facts about the Bible or about God. But to be fully formed in how they see the world through the eyes of the Christian faith. In many cases we unwittingly have been passive for several generations in allowing the culture around us to form our minds and how we think. Because of this we see our Christian faith just as a thing we do as apart of our lives. This is where we get phrases like “practice your faith privately”, and even Christians believe this!
Instead, Christianity explains everything. The entire reason for our existence, and what happens in the end is contained within the Christian story as seen in Scripture. And how much be believe that story impacts how we live our life. If we are not actually convinced of the truth of this story, and the life-altering reality of that story we will just continue living our lives as any other secular, materialist pagan, rather than as a person whose life has been completely transformed by the power of the message of the Gospel.
A simple place to start with this catechesis for children or adults is three simple things. The Apostle’s Creed, The Lord’s Prayer & the 10 Commandments. For much of Church history this has been the cornerstone of of teaching and forming new converts or children raised in the Church. These things, along with other spiritual disciplines of reading Scripture, prayer, corporate worship, confession, receiving Eucharist and others build us in Christ in every aspect of our lives.
The task is great, but the implications are dire. Let’s get to work.
by Joel V Webb | Jan 3, 2024 | Uncategorized
The Context of Scripture
“The proper context for interpreting the Bible is the context of the biblical writers—the context that produced the Bible. Every other context is alien or at least secondary.”
― Michael S. Heiser, The Bible Unfiltered: Approaching Scripture on Its Own Terms
How are we supposed to read Scripture? This is often hotly debated because the implication of praxis (how we live it out) are profound. Church history, systematic theology, creeds and theologians are certainly helpful means for us to understand what Scripture is saying… but they are not the be all end all.
Ultimately, if we are not looking at and understanding the historical context of the Biblical writers (for both Old and New Testaments), we are doing a disservice when we attempt to exegete what the author intended. It can at times lead to eisegesis, where we read out own meaning or cultural understanding onto what Scripture says.
I love Church history and the writings of the patristics, reformers and others who have shaped the Christian faith through the generation. But they are not the context in which Scripture was produced. Yes, they are helpful and important to the development of understanding Scripture, but they are not the context of Scripture itself.
Why is this hard…because it is not easy. It is much easier to take the “plain reading” of the version we are reading in our native tongue. IT is much harder to look into not just the language being used (Hebrew & Greek), but also the meanings, understandings and nuances that were prevalent in that day.
Don’t misunderstand me. There are many parts of Scripture that are clear. There are also other parts that may seem unclear or muddy in how it is understood across the tent of orthodox Christianity, where then the context becomes essential in understanding what was intended by what was written.
Thankfully we live in an amazing age of information and technology that can give anyone access to scholarly information that we can use to not just enrich but also to at times realign our interpretation to reflect the context in which it was written.
by Joel V Webb | Dec 22, 2023 | Uncategorized
Women in Ministry Part 3
Many have guarded the front doors of the Church from feminism, while at the same time keep the back door open to misogyny.
– Sandra Glahn
In our day and age, it is very difficult to walk in tension because of the mass polarization we see in the culture. Some may see it as impossible, or even compromise. Despite what many naysayers would state, two things can be true at once.
We can empower and open ministry roles to women, as the gospel allows and mandates, without giving into radical liberal theology and compromise. These two are not tied together, nor deterministic. In the same breath, many arguing against women in ministry, whether intending to or not (and I will always argue they do so with the best intentions for both men and women), continue to perpetuate actual misogyny and in some cases abuse in Church culture.
There is no ontological difference between man and women. Both are equally made in the image of God.
The gospel is the enabling of humanity through the power of the Holy Spirit because of Christ’s redemption on the cross to return to the Edenic ideal of both men and women being the stewards of creation, and priests to God.
Be it in the Gospels, letters of Paul, patristic fathers, even early church councils, and the wives of many of the reformers we see women who participate and are voices in public ministry as a benefit to the body of Christ.
You can read PART 1 and PART 2 of this series
by Joel V Webb | Dec 20, 2023 | Uncategorized
1 Timothy 2:11-15, 11 Women should learn quietly and submissively. 12 I do not let women teach men or have authority over them.* Let them listen quietly. 13 For God made Adam first, and afterward he made Eve. 14 And it was not Adam who was deceived by Satan. The woman was deceived, and sin was the result. 15 But women will be saved through childbearing,* assuming they continue to live in faith, love, holiness, and modesty.
* 2:12 Or teach men or usurp their authority.
* 2:15 Or will be saved by accepting their role as mothers, or will be saved by the birth of the Child.
1 Timothy 2:11-15 stirs up a lot of emotions on whichever side of the discussion you are on. To some it seems like a clear and direct command, HOW COULD YOU DISAGREE WITH GODS WORD!?!? I don’t. And that is why I know it does not give a general ban of women in ministry.
Anyone who has done any amount of serious Biblical interpretation knows before you can understand what a passage is saying you have to go below what the English rendering is and understand what and why it is being said (the textual and historical context). Unlike other books written by Paul, the book of 1 Timothy is a specific letter written to a specific person (Timothy). Unlike books like Romans, Galatians or Corinthians which are written to the general audiences of the churches in those cities.
The most likely exegesis done on this text demonstrates that what Paul is talking about in this passage is specific instruction for a specific issue that Timothy is dealing with at the time of writing with the church in Ephesus.
The word that Paul uses for ‘permit’, in every other passage it is used in does not give us an understanding of a permeant ban of something. So why would that change here? Not to mention that we know from the rest of the New Testament that Priscilla instructed Apollos, Phoebe was a deacon and Paul’s emissary to Rome, and Lydia oversaw the church at Philippi. Junia is called an apostle and was imprisoned for her witness. It seems unlikely that these things could have been accomplished while being quiet in church or without any church authority.
Another interesting thing of note is that the Greek word Paul uses for authority (authentein) is not found ANYWHERE ELSE in the NT Canon. So there is not a clarity provided elsewhere in Scripture as to the use of this word. The best meaning that has been found for this word is the thought as said above is in usurping authority wrongly. So what is being said is not that women cannot have authority, but that they cannot wrongly usurp it, which really would apply to anyone. But it must be assumed that Timothy was dealing with a specific issue at the time of writing that Paul is addressing.
As well, many on the complementarian side argue about the argument from creation when Paul goes back to the beginning. The interesting thing with this argument is the immediate forgetting of 2 things. Firstly, while yes Eve was deceived, it was Adam who WILLINGLY sinned against God, then tried to blame it on Eve right after. Secondly, the command concerning the fruit of the tree was only given from God to Adam directly. So it would have been Adam who transmitted the command to Eve. When the serpent is conversing with Eve and he asks her what God commanded; Eve adds the statement about not just eating the fruit but also not to touch the fruit. That was not in the command that God gave to Adam. He only told him not to each the fruit but had nothing to say about touching it. So, the onus if we track from there is on Adam for incorrectly transmitting God’s command to Eve by adding to what God commanded, adding to the likelihood of her being deceived. Interesting, right? So ultimately this argument doesn’t track.
Finally, what about salvation through childbirth? From 1 Timothy 4:3, we know that some people in the Ephesian church were forbidding marriage and were probably teaching that celibacy was a moral, and even a necessary, virtue. In more than a few early Christian texts, virginity and celibacy were associated with salvation and the resurrection in some way. 1 Timothy was written because of false teachings. 1 Timothy 2:15 addresses one of these false teachings. This verse does not represent Paul’s or Jesus’s general views on salvation or on having children. Jesus didn’t have children, and it’s possible that neither did Paul. If having children was actually necessary for women to be saved, wouldn’t they have helped a woman this way?
With all that said and done where are we? Scripture does not prescribe a general ban on women in ministry. Paul was addressing specific issues, that yes could have application and be of help in our day, but they in no way say that women cannot minister in the Church. Everything else the New Testament has to say provides an allowance and basis that women too can be minster of the gospel. We are all a part of the priesthood of all believers; and there is neither Jew, nor Greek, free nor slave, man nor women in Christ Jesus.
You can read PART 1 and PART 3 of this series
