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Faith in, Faith of, Faithfulness of ...

Doing our weekly men's study in Romans this morning, we arrive at the end of chapter 3.  Translators don't agree, and there are some hot-button issues at hand.

King James says Romans 3:22    Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference:

ESV says Romans 3:22    the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction:

So is it "by faith of Jesus" or "through faith in Jesus"?   If you go with ESV, the idea is that God's righteousness is manifested and witnessed when we put our faith in Jesus.  But if you go with KJV, the idea is that God's righteousness is manifested and witnessed by the faith, or better, by the faithfulness of Jesus.  In that case, the point in this verse would not be that we have faith in Jesus, but that Jesus acted faithfully in doing all that the Father gave him to do.

Paul's phrase is διὰ πίστεως Ἰησοῦ  (dia pistews Ihsou in case that Greek font gets scrambled) which is pretty straighforwardly "through/by faith ofJesus".  The word "pistis" can mean either faith (heart trust-and-believe) or faithfulness (reliable performance), so the dictionary alone cannot tell us which way to read it.

This is a big question, and Pauline scholars write thick books in small print about such things.  But one of the first things I do is to look at the way the word was used in Paul's copy of the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint).   Typical of its currency there is a verse like 2 Kings 12:15 "Moreover they reckoned not with the men, into whose hand they delivered the money to be bestowed on workmen: for they dealt faithfully."  You want workmen who deal "en pistei" in faithfulness.  The faithfulness can be on man's side or God's.  Thus, you also get a verse like Psalm 33:4 For the word of the LORD is right; and all his works are done in truth."  God speaks straight and his work is done "en pistei," faithfully.

I'm still listening to the discussion here, but as of today, I think I think that Paul's argument is that God has demonstrated his righteousness all along: as he promises so he delivers, all the way through all the law and prophets.  And now, ultimately and finally, his promise and his deliverance is manifested by Jesus' faithful work.

Some people get all worried here that this view takes away the idea of having faith IN Jesus.  But that's not the question.  You can find the faith IN Jesus idea elsewhere.  I just think that the faithfulness OF Jesus is the idea here.

9 to 3, it's the Word

In my view, this is disappointing.  The principle assumptions of translation these men hold are different than mine.  The argument that carries the day seems to be that modern English readers are too stupid to understand that "slave" as used in the Bible is different than the shameful experience of slavery in more recent cultural history. It takes exactly 30 seconds for a pastor or teacher to explain the difference, but no, it is easier just to change the word.

One of my buddies who has experience with the Wycliff Translators argues the other way.  He leans towards carrying the sense into the target language while avoiding cultural landmines.  Thus in some middle-eastern contexts they puzzle over what to do with the term "son of God" because that phrase immediately implies to first-time hearers that God had sex to engender a son.  Not what anyone wants to communicate, to be sure.

However, there is a difference between frontier/pioneer translation and translation for the more mature church.  If you are talking to people with no context and no understanding, yes, you have a harder task, and accommodations are necessary.  But translating for a more mature church, I still say that it takes the pastor or teacher all of 30 seconds to remove the possible stumbling block.  And again, this is the ESV, for cryin' out loud.  If there is one strong English translation that we want to trust to carry the difficult load without trying to protect everyone from every misapprehension, its the ESV.

A new piece

Daughter Bess has been reading the poet Richard Wilbur, whose work includes some clever short poems for children explaining opposites.  Bess adds this of her own:

The opposite of piece is peace,
At least for one way they're defined,
For one would say you say your piece
If you speak aloud what's on your mind.
But hold your peace means keeping quiet,
And there are times when you should try it!

For all the grain of ... Africa

The Roman Empire depended on Africa for its supply of grain. When there was trouble in Africa, the price of bread went up. Whoever held the African game token, always held the threat of a power play. And when the empire began to really fall apart in the late 4th and early 5th century, things really went into panic mode when the African provinces went to war. Africa was the breadbasket of the empire.

 This comes up again and again in Gibbon's history. I shake my head every time. What? Really? You can't grow wheat in Italy? This seems completely counter-intuitive. I thought you could grow wheat almost anywhere.

 Well, during the African war, about 400, in the days of the Roman General Stilicho, they hit on a brilliant solution to replace the grain from Africa: import it from Gaul. Float it down the Rhone to the Mediterranean, then down the coast to the Tyber. Which, of course, will work only until there's trouble in Gaul. And it seems you never have to wait long for that.

You Can Be Bishop ... oh wait ...

Within a long generation after Constantine's elevation of Christianity in the Roman empire, church offices were widely corrupted.  The office of Bishop was in many cases a plum handed out to the politically deserving.  As when Gregory of Nazianzus, orthodox hero of the Council of Constantinople in 381, later resigned his position as bishop of Constantinople, his replacement was a Senator, Nectarius, who couldn't take office right away, well, because ... he hadn't been *baptized* yet.

Same with Ambrose.  Here is Gibbon:

He was descended from a noble family of Romans; his father had exercised the important office of Praetorian praefect of Gaul; and the son, after passing through the studies of a liberal education, attained, in the regular gradation of civil honors, the station of consular of Liguria, a province which included the Imperial residence of Milan. At the age of thirty–four, and before he had received the sacrament of baptism, Ambrose, to his own surprise, and to that of the world, was suddenly transformed from a governor to an archbishop. Without the least mixture, as it is said, of art or intrigue, the whole body of the people unanimously saluted him with the episcopal title; the concord and perseverance of their acclamations were ascribed to a praeternatural impulse; and the reluctant magistrate was compelled to undertake a spiritual office, for which he was not prepared by the habits and occupations of his former life.

Crazy times.  I have a hard time believing the RC and EO claims that pure Apostolic Tradition was being faithfully passed on from bishop to bishop in times when such gross irregularities were common practice.

Raiders of the Lost Menorah

In 455, Genseric, leader of the Vandals who had overrun northern Africa, mounted an invasion of Rome.  Absent any other effective leadership or defense, it fell to Pope Leo to meet the invader at the gates of the city.  Geneseric agreed not to burn the city to the ground and destroy everything, but his army did get to pillage and loot for a couple of weeks.

Among the spoils, according to Gibbon, were some of the spoils brought to Rome way back in 70 A.D. after the fall of Jerusalem:  "The holy instruments of the Jewish worship, the gold table, and the gold candlestick with seven branches, originally framed according to the particular instructions of God himself, and which were placed in the sanctuary of his temple, had been ostentatiously displayed to the Roman people in the triumph of Titus. They were afterwards deposited in the temple of Peace; and at the end of four hundred years, the spoils of Jerusalem were transferred from Rome to Carthage, by a Barbarian who derived his origin from the shores of the Baltic."

And from Carthage they eventually went to ...?  ... ? an enormous warehouse in Washington D.C.?

Bishop Avitus?

The more I read of early church history, the more it puzzles me when apologists for Rome or Eastern Orthodoxy urge people, "if you would only read church history, you would see that Rome (or Constantinople) is the only clear and obvious choice."

I'm missing something, I guess, because the first centuries of the church are pretty crazy; full of the odd and grotesque.  Those who say "look to the early centuries" argue on one side that these were times of strong and pure apostolic tradition, and on the other side, well, don't worry about all the embarrassing  silly stuff.  With one part of our brains we are supposed to believe that these guys received and preserved a faithful apostolic tradition, while with the other part of our brains we are supposed to shrug off their teaching that the horns of the unicorn are nature's testimony of the cross, and that Jesus must have been much older than 50 when he died.

In 456, Rome was subject to a weak and ineffective emperor named Avitus.  Gibbon reports that "Avitus, at a time when the Imperial dignity was reduced to a preeminence of toil and danger, indulged himself in the pleasures of Italian luxury: age had not extinguished his amorous inclinations; and he is accused of insulting, with indiscreet and ungenerous raillery, the husbands whose wives he had seduced or violated."   Avitus was so unpopular and so bad, Ricimer, one of his generals finally informed him that his term was up.  But fear not, Avitus, we have another job for you: you can be bishop of Placentia.

I wonder, had Ricimer been reading 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 concerning the qualifications for bishops?  And Pope Leo in Rome: he was okay with this?

And to be fair, Avitus didn't take the job.

But crazy times.  Christology at Council of Chalcedon, 451: good.  Ecclesiology in Rome, 456: not so good.

Psalms for Singing

My Grandfather was an Elder in the United Presbyterian Church and was there when the assembly (Synod? GA?) debated whether or not to allow churches to sing non-Psalms in Sunday morning worship.  Up until that time (early 20th century), the rule had been that only Psalms were appropriate for Sunday morning congregational singing.  The progressives wanted to allow churches to include other hymns and gospel songs.  The conservatives said "no, only Psalms."

Today, there a few diehard Presbyterian and Reformed groups that still hold to exclusive Psalmody.  But for the vast majority, they say, "exclusive Psalmo-whuh?"

I'm of the mind that the church ought to be singing all the Psalms all the time.  Like the feller said, it's God's hymnbook and he put it right in the middle of the Bible.  I'm not convinced that everything non-Psalmic is forbidden, but it is worth noting that when my Grandfather's generation decided to put non-Psalms in the line-up, then it wasn't long until Psalms were virtually eliminated from the order of worship.

Is there any way to recover?  Many churches today never sing any Psalms.  Some will have a worship chorus that contains a verse or two from a Psalm.  But who sings whole Psalms?

I've been thinking about how to make progress towards the goal of full Psalmody in the church.  I don't think we can change everything over night, but surely something is possible.  Many of my theological pals advocate Psalm chanting, which provides a way to use whole-Psalm, actual text (not paraphrases).  That may be the only way to proceed, ultimately, especially with longer Psalms.

But I have also had some fun fitting non-chant melodies to some of the shorter Psalms.  They work well with the kids at church, and they are good for memorization.  The curious may see the first eleven here:
http://www.zionpca.com/teaching/downloads/psalms-for-singing/

What is a Sect?

A sect is a group that has its own peculiar doctrines not accepted by the rest of the Christian world, and views those peculiar doctrines as essential to the True Church.

("I know you are, but what am I?")