Committed Critic

Fields of academic study are typically named using a Greek word related to the field combined with the Greek root logos, which means word or reason. So for example, biology is the study of life (Greek bios).

When it came to the study of words, however, whoever decides these things apparently decided against the redundant logology, opting instead for philology, which literally means love of words. Whatever the reason for the choice, I think it’s appropriate, since I can’t imagine anyone ever studying the development of words simply because they thought it was useful. To get into something that technical, I think you have to love it.

And in this sense (as well as professionally, to an extent), I consider myself a philologist, which I suppose is the only possible explanation for this post.

An English transliteration of a Latin translation of a Greek translation of a place

Because Christians are constantly dealing with texts that have been translated from other languages, words and names from Scripture are frequently misunderstood or distorted as the tradition is passed along. Here I’ll deal with one that I find interesting: Calvary.

Believe it or not, this word––used so often in Christian sermons, songs, and church names––is not in the Bible, except for the King James Version.

It had bothered me for awhile that I couldn’t think where I had seen the word in Scripture, so finally I looked in my Greek concordance (where I would expect it to look something like Kaluaria) and found that it wasn’t there. A computer search of the KJV, however, turned up the word in Luke 23:33: “And when they were come to the place, which is called Calvary, there they crucified him, and the malefactors, one on the right hand, and the other on the left.”

(Brief, important definitions: to translate something is of course to write what it means in another language. To transliterate is to just take the letters of the original word and write them, in the same order, in a different language or with a different alphabet. As an example, hallelujah is the English transliteration of a common Hebrew phrase; its translation would be Praise the Lord.)

What’s odd about the KJV reading of Calvary is that when you look at Luke 23:33 in Greek (the original language), the name of the place is Kranion, which means skull. In the three other Gospels (Matt 27:33, Mark 15:22, and John 19:17), when this same Greek word shows up at the story of Jesus’ crucifixion, the KJV translates it accordingly, as skull.

But even though they were supposed to be working from the original Greek, the KJV translators let their Latin creep into the process: it turns out that the Latin translation of Kranion is Calvaria, which is surely where the KJV translators got the name Calvary. Problem is, the original New Testament was wasn’t written in Latin, so there’s no reason a word transliterated from Latin should end up in any English translation.

There is at least a plausible explanation for why the KJV translators didn’t make this same mistake in the other Gospels, and this is where the situation gets (more) complex. In Matthew, Mark, and John, the name of the hill is identified as Golgotha, which is a Greek transliteration of the Hebrew word Gulgoleth. The transliteration into Greek at this point makes sense, since Gulgoleth is probably the actual name that native speakers called the place near Jerusalem.

The authors of Matthew, Mark, and John wanted their audiences to know both the name of the place and what it meant, so all three of them included both Golgotha (the transliteration of the name from Hebrew) and Kranion (a translation of the Hebrew word that their Greek-speaking readers/hearers would understand).

It’s easy to see why the KJV translators didn’t make the mistake of using Calvary in these three passages like they did in Luke, since it would have made little sense for the text to say, “Golgotha, which means Kranion” or “Golgotha, which means Calvary.” English readers wouldn’t have understood what Kranion or Calvary meant, so instead the KJV refers to Golgotha and place of the skull.

But Luke never gives us the name Golgotha. He only writes, “they came to the place called Kranion,” which might suggest to a Greek reader that Kranion was the actual proper name of the place. In this case, the translators from Greek to Latin were quick enough to realize (probably from knowing the parallels in the other Gospels) that Kranion was just a translation of the name, so they translated it also, to the Latin Calvaria.

But the KJV translators, who probably knew the Latin translation of the Bible quite well, seem to have let the familiar reading affect their work. And so instead of translating the name (i.e., as Skull), they inserted the Latin transliteration and passed it along.

Great, so what?

I’m actually not sure what I’m contributing here; everyone knows that Calvary refers to where Jesus was crucified, so there should be no problem with going on using it.

I do suppose that I’m potentially ruining a bunch of pretty Christian songs for some people (think: “Jesus keep me near the cross: There a precious fountain / Free to all, a healing stream / Flows from Skull’s mountain”).

What is worth considering is how religious language functions for us. The frequency with which the word Calvary is used, coupled with the fact that I’ve never heard anyone question where exactly it comes from, suggests that the root meaning of a word need not have anything to do with its meaning for real people who participate in a religious tradition.

At the very least, the word points to how useful it is to have certain words that function as shorthand. You can say to any Bible-belt Christian, “Remember Calvary,” and they’ll probably know what you’re talking about. The Cross has a similar function.

Perhaps we like Calvary because it is a pretty word that fits well in names like Calvary Baptist Church, whereas the darker Golgotha, or the morbid Skull, might put people off. Of course, I suppose that if we can make crosses of gold, we could also knock the rough edges off the word skull if we wanted to.

When we talk about spiritual growth, a key point to learn is the distinction between motive and action. God, it seems, wants us not only to do what is right, but also to do it for the right reason.

Looking to straighten out their motives, Christians might turn to Matthew 6:1-4, where Jesus teaches,

Take care not to perform your righteousness in the sight of humans, to be seen by them; if you do, you will receive no wage from your father who is in heaven. Instead, when you perform your righteousness, don’t blast a trumpet in front of you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they will be honored by humans. Truly I tell you, they already receive their wage in full.

But as for you, when you give alms, your left hand should not know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms are given in secret. And your father, who sees what is done in secret, will pay you back.

I’m not sure this passage tells us exactly what we want to hear, if we’re approaching it with normal ideas about Christian spirituality. Though we want Jesus to send us into our own hearts looking for good motives, Jesus appears more concerned with how alms are given than with why alms are given. In the case of the hypocrite, it appears that the two are the same: he wants to be seen giving alms, so he does it publicly.

But for the disciple, Jesus never really gets at why she should give. He doesn’t seem to insist here that the giver have pure motives, or that she even care about the people she’s helping. In fact, the use of the word “wages” sort of sets up the whole thing as a trade-off. It seems that Jesus uses our hope for reward as motivation to do good.

The question, as he presents it, is not whether we have pure motives, or whether we would give if no one were looking at all. All Jesus talks about is who will see us––God or humans.

If we don’t pay attention, we can be tempted to out-spiritualize Jesus. When it comes to caring for the poor, Christians naturally want to make sure we have right motives and to put our hearts into the help we give others. Some good-natured folks who wish to avoid works righteousness might even say something like, “It’s really not about what we do; what God really wants is our hearts.” And I think this reflects something important for Christians.

However, while God does want our hearts, for us to act as if our own spirituality should be our focus in things like helping the poor surely leads us away from what God really wants. As my friend Matt has written before on his blog (or maybe mine), when God tells us to feed the poor, God may hope to win our hearts over so that we give cheerfully (thus 2 Corinthians 8–9), but we should probably assume that what God really wants is something a lot simpler: for the poor to have food to eat, houses to live in, and jobs to work at.

I think it is instructive that the prophets call the people of Israel to stop offering sacrifices because they aren’t taking care of the poor, not the other way around.

I bring all this up because of a blog post I read this week by Larry James, who runs a major food pantry and community development center in Texas called Central Dallas Ministries.

He suggests that a lot of people, when they say they want to “really make a difference,” rather than “just throw money at a problem,” actually mean they want to make a difference in their own life. In other words, their spirituality is turned inwards, so that they don’t feel they’re doing anything good if they can’t really put their heart into it and get involved.

James, however, suggests that often, the best way to make a genuine difference in the life of someone who struggles with poverty is indeed to throw money — lots of it — at organizations that help people in need. Heart-warming experiences are great, but money puts a lot more food on people’s plates.

Last week I bought lunch for a panhandler in Boston. We had a nice conversation, and I think it was absolutely worth my time and money to share that meal with a nice fellow who frankly seemed more lonely than poor. But I shouldn’t kid myself that I was somehow fighting poverty by the $6 is spent on him. I’m sure it was a nice change for him, and of course I get to feel sort of virtuous about the whole thing. But in the end, that kind of experience is no substitute for giving a substantial portion of my income to people like Larry James who know how to work within poor communities to improve people’s lives.

Maybe at some point in my life I’ll make the time to really participate in an organization like that, but in the meantime it would be a tragedy if I used my failure to give time as an excuse not to give money either.

So if you have the time, please read Larry James’ post, because I think it will help you grow. In fact, subscribe to his daily blog on your rss feeder: larryjamesurbandaily.blogspot.com.

But once you’re done reading it, please give to his organization, and then keep giving regularly every month. I really doubt in this case that God is as concerned with what you learn from Larry James as God is with whether people have jobs, homes, and food.

One of the more apparently out-of-place exchanges in Luke, it seems to me, occurs at the last supper. Jesus, preparing to give himself up to the authorites for crucifixion, tells his disciples to arm themselves with swords:

And Jesus said to them, “When I sent you out without purse or bag or sandals, you didn’t want for anything, did you?”And they said, “No, nothing.”

Then he said to them, “But now, whoever does have a purse should pick it up––and likewise whoever has a bag––and whoever doesn’t have a sword should sell his cloak and buy one. For I tell you, this writing must be fulfilled in me: ‘Indeed, he was considered one of the lawless.’ For indeed, it has its fulfillment in me.”

So they said, “Lord, we have two swords here.”

And he said to them, “That’s enough.” (Luke 22:35-38)

According to messianic expectations, it would make perfect sense for Jesus to tell his followers to get swords. He was about to be ambushed, and weapons could come in useful. Perhaps, the disciples may have reasoned, Jesus had finally decided to set aside his non-violent ways and take his throne by force.

But there’s a problem: What use are two swords to twelve men? They’re about to face an angry mob, and two swords are enough? What are Jesus and the other nine disciples supposed to do?

The story soon overturns the disciples’ expectations anyway:

While he was still talking, suddenly a crowd came, with the one called Judas, one of the Twelve, leading them. He walked up to Jesus to kiss him, but Jesus said, “Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?”Then, when those with Jesus saw what was happening, they said, “Lord, should we strike them with the swords?” And one of them struck the slave of the Chief Priest and cut off his right ear.

But Jesus responded, “No more of this!”, and he touched the ear and healed it. Then Jesus said to those before him––the Chief Priest and the captain of the temple, and the elders––“Have you come out as if you were after a bandit, with swords and clubs? Every day when I was with you in the temple, you didn’t stretch out your hands against me, but this is your hour––the authority of darkness. (Luke 22:47-53)

This second story seems to explain why the apostles didn’t need more swords, but the problem remains: Why did Jesus tell the disciples to bring swords at all if he didn’t want them to use them? Presumably he didn’t simply change his mind in the middle of the story.

I would argue that the two swords at the last supper were “enough” precisely because they weren’t meant to be used. Jesus isn’t intending the swords to serve as weapons, but rather as props. The two swords aren’t enough to fight with, but they are enough to fulfill the scripture: “Indeed, he was considered one of the lawless.” The swords, then, create a sort of miniature drama whereby a rabbi and his disciples are transformed into a band of criminals, just in time for an angry mob to come hunting them down.

The important point, though, is that they’re a rather pathetic band of criminals, with no chance of fighting off the mob. When one of the disciples does try to defend himself, he manages only to cut off a servant’s ear. Jesus, of course, heals the ear and again says, “That is enough.” One swing accomplished what the swords were for.

It is precisely the disciples’ inability to defend themselves that allows Jesus to confront the Chief Priest and his mob the way he does: they show their own weakness and injustice by arranging for a clandestine, violent confrontation with a man who poses them no physical threat but whom they have been too afraid to arrest in daylight.

Thus the arrest on the Mount of Olives is loaded with an irony that is not lost on Jesus. The two swords Jesus’ disciples hold highlight the absurdity of the situation by portraying Jesus’ disiples as the very thing the Chief Priest’s response suggests they are. In the end, Jesus manages to use the entire scene to mock the most important Jews in Jerusalm for gathering late at night and pulling together a gang of ruffians in order to subdue the Rabbi Jesus and his mismatched, and only nominally armed, band of disciples.

In Luke’s portrayal, Jesus is above all innocent, and the arrest of a band of disciples as if they were a gang of bandits emphasizes the injustice of the crucifixion.

Irony in the Divine Drama

In addition to its place in Luke-Acts, I think this episode works as a commentary on the nature of evil and injustice as they are confronted by the kingdom of God.

In Christ, God engages the world with truth rather than with force; but because the world is no match for Christ’s truth, it uses violence to take advange of his refusal to use force. This is something we witness (and some of us experience) every day, and it can be excruciating for those who suffer––believers or otherwise.

What makes Christians different is that we get the irony of the story. Take away the irony from Luke’s Gospel, and all you have is a horrible injustice perpetrated against an innocent man. But careful readers have two key advantages: (1) recognition that the kingdom of God is present even if invisible, and (2) knowledge that resurrection will follow death. This fundamentally changes the meaning of Jesus’ death in Luke’s Gospel, and it fundamentally changes the meaning of the life and death we experience.

If there is no kingdom and no resurrection, then we (humans) are indeed to be pitied. But knowing the reality behind the appearances, even if it still can’t make suffering meaningful, does remind us that our world––which comes at night with swords and clubs to attack the truth it cannot defeat in daylight––may yet be redeemed.

In the previous post, I suggested the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7) as an example of a transparent text, meaning that although Jesus delivers the sermon to the other characters in the story, it’s actually intended primarily for the reader, so that we can see through the story to a message intended for us (or, originally, for Matthew’s first-century readers).

I’d like to propose here that the kind of Christian reader Matthew wrote for (i.e., having the appropriate cultural background, knowledge of the Jewish scriptures, etc.), if they started at the beginning of Matthew’s Gospel and read through its first seven chapters, would most naturally experience the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount less as an historical account of Jesus’ words and more as teachings intended specifically for her and any other believer. I’ll do my best to show how the beginning of the Gospel sets up this expectation.

The beginning of Matthew leads the reader to expect Jesus to be, above all, a king. Jesus is introduced in 1:1 to be the Messiah (i.e., the anointed king; compare 2:2 with 2:4) and the Son of David (from a kingly line). The Magi come from afar to worship one who is born King of the Jews (2:2), and Herod (the king of the Jews at the time) views him as a threat (2:3). And then at Jesus’ baptism, a voice from heaven announces, “This is my Son,” a phrase quite similar to Psalm 2:7, where “You are my Son” is God’s way of designating the anointed king whom God will set up in Zion (= Jerusalem, Ps 2:6) to rule over all the nations (Ps 2:8).

Jesus also is presented in categories that are more reflective of Christian theology as most of us know it. Jesus, then, is one who will save his people from their sins (1:21), and he is one who will represent the presence of God with God’s people (1:23).

But there is still another side to Jesus’ character that Matthew presents in his opening chapters, and we must recognize it in order to understand the rhetoric of Matthew’s story––in particular, why the Sermon on the Mount is placed where it is, and what it’s supposed to mean for the reader.

When Herod starts killing children (2:16), an angel of the Lord tells Joseph to flee with his family to Egypt; after Herod dies, the family returns and settles in Nazareth (2:23). This might seem merely like a piece of the plot, but the passage quoted in explanation of the journey, “Out of Egypt I called my son,” is a reference to Hosea 11 that refers to Israel’s exodus from Egypt. Just as Israel (God’s son) left Canaan (in the days off Joseph) to go down to Egypt, and then later returned, so did Jesus.

When we soon find Jesus spending forty days in the wilderness being tempted/tested (4:2), the parallel between Jesus and Israel becomes unmistakeable. The point is not that Jesus’ story is exactly like that of Israel, but that these certain motifs keep coming up that give the sense that Jesus is being compared with Israel. In response to the devil’s temptations in the wilderness, Jesus quotes passages from Deuteronomy that were originally instructions to Israel regarding what God wanted them to learn during their own forty (years) in the wilderness. The upshot is that where Israel failed to remain faithful, Jesus succeeds.

Coming back into Galilee, Jesus resumes his role as expected king, proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near” (4:17). The reader who has understood what came before knows that Jesus’ kingdom means far more than a new political arrangement. Not only has he come to fill the throne of his father David, but he has come to transform Israel’s relationship to its God, bringing about repentance, forgiveness, obedience, and the presence of God.

The story of Israel’s exodus is not the only literary connection Matthew creates, and here is where we arrive at the key point for understanding the Sermon. Jesus’ fast of forty days and forty nights exactly matches that of Moses when he received the Ten Commandments on Sinai (Ex 34:28). It seems that Jesus is serving not only as a new Israel, but also as a new Moses. And when Jesus walks up to a mountainside and begins to teach (similar to Moses, who ascended a mountain to receive the law), the connection is complete.

All this leads into the Sermon on the Mount, which the rhetoric of the narrative has prepared the reader to listen to, not as an historical account of something Jesus once said, but as the New Law given by a new Moses to a renewed Israel. Matthew is essentially retelling the story of the people of God for the new age, and Jesus’ teachings transcend the narrative in which they are located to address everyone who considers herself a disciple of Christ.

Jesus’ words are both related to and different than Moses’. Moses received tablets written upon by God, but Jesus is able simply to speak from his own mouth: “You have heard . . . but I say to you” (5:21f, 27f, 33f, 38f, 43f). Also, Jesus describes his own relationship to Moses by claiming to fulfill the law that Moses gave (5:17). Although Jesus isn’t replacing the law here (as some folks would claim), he is presenting an interpretation of the law that lays claim on its hearers and readers. Immediately after the Sermon we are told that Jesus spoke to the crowds as one with authority, and I am arguing that his words hold that same authority for any reader who would be a disciple.

If any doubt lingers for the reader as to the authority or application of Jesus’ words, Matthew closes the Sermon with three teachings to pound home his point: only a few will find the narrow road leading to life (7:14), the true disciples of Jesus are only the ones who do the will of the Father (7:21) and bear good fruit (7:17), and the wise person who hears the words of this sermon will put them into practice (7:24). Much as the law in Deuteronomy 28 included blessings and curses for those who obeyed or disobeyed, Matthew also includes blessings (5:3-12) and curses (7:13-27), the latter explicitly according to obedience.

The point of all this is, even though Jesus surely said many of the things that are in the Sermon on the Mount, the more important point for the church should be that God put them in Scripture for us. So if we want to understand the Sermon historically, it may be more worth our time to figure out what it meant for Matthew’s readers in roughly A.D. 85 than what it meant for Jesus’ hearers in A.D. 30.

Based on what I’ve been studying, I want to start with this post and challenge how the church often reads the Gospels.

To begin with, it’s important to recognize that a story or letter can work on more than one level at the same time, and the Four Gospels are a good example. In contrast to the letters of Paul, which speak directly to their respective audiences (and thus are intended to work primarily on just one level), the gospels speak to their reading audiences through words that Jesus speaks to other characters in the story. That means Jesus’ words “work” both on the level of the other characters who hear them and on the level of the readers who read them. Some commentators call this “transparency,” meaning that we the readers see through the characters’ words to a message intended for us.

I should note that this idea is quite offensive to a lot of people, because its implication is that Matthew describes Jesus as saying things that are really only meant for us, and that therefore Jesus didn’t actually say. Many people would call this inaccuracy or lying on God’s part. That feeling is justifiable.

But I want to argue that the idea of the Gospel writers fudging the facts is not so offensive if we understand them according to the purpose for which they were written.

To use movie terms, I think we should compare the gospels not to documentaries (which record events more or less exactly) but rather to movies (which use a combination of fact and fiction to make a point). When we watch Dead Man Walking, which tells a true story, we don’t describe its scenes as dishonest simply because they didn’t happen exactly as depicted; rather, we recognize that the story can be essentially true even if details are changed to teach particular lessons more clearly. I haven’t seen United 93, but I’m sure it includes dialogue and events that didn’t really happen; that, again, doesn’t make the story untrue.

There are some historical movies or biopics that change so many facts that we’d describe them as dishonest or inadequate, but most of us would acknowledge that a writer can take some artistic license and still tell a true story.

Why should we insist that God could not allow the authors of the gospels to do the same? Many people simply say, “Well, God wouldn’t do that.” But what if God did? Is it our job to describe what God is allowed to put in Scripture?

To give an example of Matthew’s transparency, the Sermon on the Mount may be addressed to Jesus’ disciples on the level of the story, but the way Matthew sets up his story implies that really, the sermon is intended for us, the readers. Well, actually it’s intended for Matthew’s first-century audience, but we share with them a certain distance from the historical life of Jesus that creates a commonality in our reading experience. (I deal with the Sermon on the Mount in this post.)

A natural tendency among Christians has been to treat the Gospels primarily as history (i.e., like a documentary), since they clearly do recount historical events carried out by real people.

Taken to its extreme, this understanding has led to some counter-intuitive interpretations; for instance, some Church of Christ folks have claimed that Christians are not to pray the Lord’s Prayer because Jesus taught it to his disciples (as Jews) before the kingdom had come. These interpreters, understanding the cross (or perhaps Pentecost; I can’t remember which) to have been the event where Jesus’ kingdom did indeed arrive, feel that the Prayer is no longer appropriate for believers today. We can read it and appreciate it as instruction to Jesus’ disiples at the time, but we are not to recite it today.

This is certainly a possible reading, but it seems odd for Matthew to have passed along a beautiful, memorable prayer if he specifically did not intend it for Christian use. In any event, I would argue that we should make our decisions about questions like this based on Matthew’s text as a whole, and so I want to look at how Matthew tells his story and what it suggests for how we should read his story.

Specifically, I think there are good reasons to see at least some of the words of Jesus in Matthew as being addressed less to the disciples in the story and more to the readers of Matthew’s gospel. If so, how do we determine which words are meant for whom? How exactly does Matthew’s transparency work?

One key point of interpretation for any narrative involves the impact that the story has on the reader. While some might take the Gospels as documentary history, careful reading reveals four powerful pieces of rhetoric. In much the same way as a movie such as Dead Poets Society (see my earlier post), they not only tell a story but also try to persuade their readers of their point of view on Jesus, the church, the End Times, and any number of other points.

In future posts, I’ll take up specific passages and trace how Matthew seems to use his story rhetorically to persuade and instruct the reader rather than give strict modern history. In the meantime, some questions:

• What are we to make of this?
• Would it be dishonest for God to have allowed Matthew to adjust or even invent words or deeds of Jesus that ended up in Scripture?
• Should we be upset if Matthew really did invent things?
• What does it mean for our understanding of Scripture if the different Gospels disagree on key points of who Jesus is?

Some of my favorite theological texts are those that exhibit a phenomenon called “intertextuality”: the use of one story or text within another, often with the result of tweaking (or outright changing) the older text’s meaning to make a theological point. Intertextuality can consist of quotations, allusions, or both.

The interesting task, as Richard B. Hays argues, is digging into how the one text uses the other as a part of a sort of stream of ideas, which often includes so-called “echoes” of meaning that lie in the interation between the two (or more) texts. The world’s best literature, in my opinion, uses intertextual references to other stories or ideas that are obvious enough for us to recognize but subtle enough to delight us when we unravel all their implications.

A good example of intertextuality in Scripture is Romans 7, which I described under my previous post (10/18/06). Paul seems to use the story of the temptation of the man and the woman in the garden to demonstrate how Sin uses the Law to lead us to death. That interpretation is rather subtle as these things go, and in fact we may even have conjured up a meaning for it not intended by Paul. However, there are far more obvious passages, especially those that include direct quotes from OT texts. In the case of Romans 7, my argument has in its favor that Paul has already brought up the story of Adam’s transgression (in Romans 5), which makes it far more likely that he had that story in mind in Romans 7 as well.

In any event, some of the scriptural and theological texts that I find most striking are those that refer intertextually to the creation story in Genesis 1, especially to the creative proclamation “Let there be light.” Today I want to begin a series of posts reflecting on some of these, how they fit together, and why I find them interesting or even moving.

I’ll begin with the best-known example of Christian theological reflection on the creation story. The allusion is almost unmistakable because the book begins with same two words (3 words in English) as the Greek Old Testament:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the word was god. He was with God in the beginning. Through him, everything came about––indeed, without him not one thing which has come about came about. In him was life, and the life was the light of humanity. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has no hold of it.There was a human, sent from God, named John. He came for testimony, in order to testify about the light, so that all would believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify about the light.

The true light, which enlightens all humanity, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world had come about through him, and yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and yet his own did not receive him. But for whoever did receive him, he gave to them––to those who believed in his name––authority to become children of God: those born not of blood or of the will of flesh or of the will of a man, but born of God.

And the word became flesh and dwelled among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of the only son of a Father, full of grace and truth. (John testifies concerning him, and he has cried out saying, “This was the one of whom I said, ‘The one coming after me is ahead of me, because he existed before me.’”) Indeed, all of us have received from his fullness, grace upon grace. Because while the law was given through Moses, grace and truth have come about through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, but God the Only Son, who is at the side of the Father, has made him known.

[A note in explanation of my translation “the Word was god” (with a little “g”) in light of Greek grammar: I know most translations read, “the Word was God” (with a capital “G”), but that’s a little misleading with respect to the syntax of the Greek sentence. The placement of the word “god” does not reflect the proper name “God,” but rather what is usually called a “qualitative” sense of the word. It’s like saying, “Abraham was father to a great multitude;” calling him “a father” or “the father” wouldn’t mean quite the same thing. Some have suggested translating the phrase in John 1 as, “the Word was divine;” that would be accurate but would miss out on the repetition of the word “god,” which I think is important for the rhythm of the sentence. This grammatical subtlety of the passage is actually an excellent parallel to the subtlety of Christian reflection on what it means for Jesus to be divine.]

John turns the prologue to his story of Jesus into a retelling of the creation of the world by playing off the ambiguity of the Greek word logos. Among its many meanings, logos can mean both “word” and “reason” (i.e., logic); Greek philosophers often used it with the latter meaning. Philo of Alexandria (20 B.C. – A.D. 40), a Jew who was heavily influenced by Greek thought, portrayed the logos in personified form as an angel of wisdom who was responsible for directing humanity toward paths of righteous reason, lest they incur the wrath of God through their unreasoned wickedness. The OT book of Proverbs personifies “Wisdom” (closely related to the logos in Philo’s hellenistic Jewish thought world) as a (female) figure who participated in creation (Prov 8:27f).

It wouldn’t have been much of a stretch for early Christians to identify this apparently divine figure with Christ, and John 1 is a great example of just such an identification.

The beauty of the word “Word” as employed in John’s retelling of creation is that a spoken word, “Let there be light” (actually two words in both Hebrew and Greek), was the very means by which God created the world. God did not need to use a tool or an assistant or even his hand to bring light to the darkness, but only a word. For John, that word was the Word, Christ.

As beautiful as that reference is on its own, John weaves it into a far more complex picture by playing on the dual meaning of logos as both “word” and “reason.” While it is obvious that darkness and light in John 1:5 function figuratively (referring to the proclamation of righteous knowledge in a world of wicked ignorance), the passage is far richer when we bear in mind that the creation imagery is still in view. In the incarnation, God has repeated his first act of creation, brining light into darkness once again through his Word.

This is not just incidental or sentimental for John. Rather, his entire portrait of Christ is based on the notion that Jesus is the revelation of God. All of his words and all of his deeds reveal God to the world (thus John 1:18, he “has made him known”). What better way for humanity to learn true reason than for Reason (= Light = Truth = Only Son) himself to become a human and meet them in person? To find out what is true about the father, one must watch and listen for what the Son (who is at the Side of the Father) reveals.

We can probably take this one step further, if we push a bit. Gnostics (whose ideology many argue grew up alongside Christianity) tended to separate knowledge from the created world, arguing that the former was good and the latter bad. As a result, they tended to play off the God of Jesus Christ (who revealed knowledge) against the God of Israel (who created the world), thus turning the Creator into a wicked sub-deity who defied what Wisdom, the supreme deity, wanted.

The way John describes Christ in chapter 1, however, undermines what the Gnostics claimed by refusing to see two forces at work. John will not allow his reader to assume that the “Truth” which Jesus reveals is something one must break free from the created world to see. Instead, the logos is the very word God used to create the world––which means the world has to be a good thing. You can’t set up reason in opposition to the created world if the world was created through reason.

So, to put it in modern theological terms, in case anyone wanted to misinterpret Jesus as belonging to another world and somehow condemning created matter, John insists that both “special revelation” (what God tells us in words) and “natural revelation” (what we can learn by looking at creation) come from the same source: the logos who brought light into darkness both in the creation of Genesis 1 and in the incarnation described by John.

Well, I’ve decided to start posting some of my more provocative class papers. This is a new one I’ve wanted to write for a long time. I should note that this essay is based only on the theology of Luke/Acts, but feel free to egage it at whatever level you wish.

He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose. -Jim Elliot, reflecting on Luke 16:9.

The parable of the “unjust steward” (Lk 16:1-9) has fascinated me for some time. I want to propose a reading here of which I actually am not yet convinced myself. But even though Luke may not have intended the interpretation I’ll present, I feel it does reflect the message of Luke/Acts. At any event, this is how I wish I could exegete the parable. The parable and its “moral” (Luke 16:1-9) are grouped with several teachings on money at the start of Luke 9, concluding with the Pharisees’ reaction and Jesus’ response to them.

The story is clear. A house manager is accused of squandering his employer’s things, so the employer informs the manager that he will soon lose his job. Realizing he will lose his livelihood, the manager covertly reduces the debts of some of his employer’s clients, hoping they will offer him shelter when he loses his job and home. The employer learns of the deed and, surprisingly, praises the manager for acting shrewdly.

The interpretation of the parable is more confusing. Luke’s explains, “for the children of this age are more shrewd in their generation than the children of light.” Luke then indicates (16:9) that his readers can learn a specific lesson from the present age: “And I say to you, make friends for yourselves by means of wicked wealth, so that when you pass away, you will be welcomed into eternal shelters.”

The problem with Luke’s explanation is that it doesn’t make clear which points of the parable are intended to relate to the reader. This is a typical dilemma in interpreting parables. Some are to be interpreted allegorically (e.g., the parable of the vineyard, Lk 20:9-19), while others are meant to find only one or two important points of connection (e.g., the parable of the persistent widow, Lk 18:1-8; note that an allegorical interpretation would make God the wicked judge). So in 16:1-9, Luke may wish for his readers to act only on the “moral” of the story, as found in 16:9; if so, the entire lesson is to use wealth to “make friends” (=please God?). My better sensibilities, exegetically speaking, urge me to limit the parable’s lesson to this point.

However, I’m not satisfied. If you look at all of Jesus’ teachings in Luke, surely he means something more. I want to suggest a reading in which the reader’s connection to the steward goes a level deeper, so that the parable is allegorical. To do so, I need to describe how Luke views the various elements of the story (the manager, the kyrios, the possessions being managed, and the relationship among the three).

Within the parable, Luke associates the manager and Wealth with one another by describing both as wicked (or, perhaps, “unjust” or “sordid”). This is the reason the house manager has valuable insight into the use of Wealth; they belong to the same world. Therefore, when Luke includes the manager among the “sons of this age” (16:8b), it would seem he characterizes Wealth as a member of “this age” as well. Perhaps the manager and Wealth are not entirely evil, but neither are they trustworthy. They belong to a different realm than Luke’s readers.

The next point to determine is the identity of the owner. At this point the metaphor either breaks down or becomes very interesting. Within the parable, the owner is a sympathetic character for Luke in that he recognizes that the manager’s behavior is shrewd, an assessment Luke would agree with. So we may wish to conclude that the manager corresponds to God, the true owner of all wealth.

However, there are several problems with seeing God as the owner. First, if Wealth indeed is wicked and belongs to the present age, it would seem odd to place God as its owner in the parable. Second, Luke’s explanatory statement in 16:8b makes better sense if the owner’s praise is based on worldly standards. (Verse 9 then suggests how that worldly wisdom can apply to Luke’s readers.) Third, in the parable the employer praises the manager despite the fact that the manager squandered his wealth for his own ends. It seems unlikely that Luke intends for his readers to act against God’s wishes, but in such a way that God would commend them because they were shrewd in serving their own interests. And fourth, verses 10-12 call Luke’s readers to be faithful with what they have, whereas the hero in the parable is dishonest with what has been entrusted to him. If we take the kyrios of the parable to be God, then verses 10-12 contradict the parable.

If, as I will assume, Luke intended verses 10-12 to further interpret the parable, then the implication seems to be that the faithfulness of 16:10f is to be directed not toward the money’s owner but elsewhere. Someone might manage one person’s money but owe loyalty in that management to another. One possible “real owner” of the money, from Luke’s story, is the devil. When tempting Jesus, it is he who claims that “all the authority and glory” of the world have been handed over to him (4:6). However, it is problematic to regard the devil as the character whose praise of the manager constitutes the moral of Luke’s story. I would suggest instead that we associate Wealth with the present age, such that we see the present age, personified, is its owner. The owner, then, is not the devil, but rather a sort of representative of the present age and its attitude toward Wealth. The present age regards self-preservation as of first importance, so naturally it commends the manager’s behavior.

The manager’s shrewd behavior is grounded in two key dynamics that he is aware of explicitly in the story. First, the wealth he manages is not his own. Because of this, he can influence others by cancelling debts without losing anything of his own. Second, the manager knows that he is about to lose his position as manager. If he were trying to keep his job, it would serve his interests to use the money carefully. But knowing that he cannot hold on to what he has, the next best thing he can do is consider the future. Because he is losing his job, he owes no further loyalty to his employer, and so what he can gain by his use of the money is his only concern.

The story’s great insight is that all people are just like the manager at both of these key points. The person who has accepted Jesus’ eschatalogical message realizes that the wealth he holds so dear was never his own, and soon even the job of managing it will be taken from him. As a result, he owes no further loyalty to its real owner (this world). However, he still has control of the wealth such that he can use it as he sees fit. By winning friends among those in need (helping the poor is a major theme in Luke), he wins a friend in God, and he thereby wins for himself a dwelling for the time when his work as manager has ended.

We find here Jesus calling us to a strange sort of self-preservation; but it is significant to note that it is based on faith in Jesus, because only the one who believes Jesus’ message will see that it is indeed in her best interest to give her money away.

The difficultly for the reader in accepting the parable is accepting that both of these facts are true: the money we handle is not our own, and our access to managing it will soon come to an abrupt end. Once we have accepted these two facts, Jesus in Luke presents us with a startling command through this parable: we are commanded, essentially, to squander our wealth.

This reading will offend a lot of people, for at least two different reasons. Some will protest that such a teaching will lead us to squander our wealth on self-indulgence. Their concern is legitimate, and indeed in the story just before this (the prodigal son), Jesus describes what it looks like to squander wealth inappropriately. However, there is another way to squander wealth, as modeled by the wicked manager. One could give the money away freely to those in need, recklessly distributing wealth with little regard for financial stability or prudence. This kind of squandering offends people as well, because it smacks of irresponsibility. They feel that instead, they should think of ways to use wealth wisely and still glorify God with it. The problem with their interpretation is that it assumes that wealth is good (whereas 16:9 and 16:11 say it is wicked) and that accumulation of wealth can be carried out in moderation (whereas 16:13 intentionally polarizes the issue).

But what if Wealth, as I have suggested, indeed belongs to this world and its ruler? And what if, by managing it “wisely” according to the world’s standards, we serve the world and its ruler? In this reading, serving Wealth amounts to viewing it according to worldly standards, as something to be accumulated and protected. If this is the case, Luke makes clear our choice in 16:13. We can serve either God, or Wealth, but not both. For the Lukan Jesus, I am arguing, the only real alternative to serving Wealth is to squander it, and I believe that is exactly what he indicates/commands with this parable. The only appropriate use for wealth ever described in Luke or Acts (as far as I have found) is to give it away.

Or to put it another way, taking into account the reality of the spiritual situation: the appropriate rebellion against the Wealth that masters us is to squander it for the sake of others, winning friends by giving away what the world holds so dear.