If you would like a review copy of the print version of my new book:

Tim Bulkeley, Not Only a Father: Talk of God as Mother in the Bible & Christian Tradition (Signs) Auckland: Archer Press, 2011 ISBN: 978-1468091373

Please contact me, please say both where you expect to publish the review (blogs are quite acceptable though a full review rather than a short note would be good) and when you are expect to write it. There are no conditions and you should be as critical as you normally would.

Facebook does not seen good at giving attributions, so I don't know who produced this, if it was you write to me and I'll gladly attribute it :)

I’ve seen several peopl, including Rowland Crowcher, post this ”infographic” on Facebook. Since I’ve spoken quite a bit on “Family in the Bible”, and am due to speak to a leaders group from the NZ Christian Network on the “Theology of Marriage” really soon it makes me hopping mad!

In one sense the graphic is “true”. The Bible does present all these, and more (some arguably worse) patterns of marriage. It is also true that God chose to work in and through many of these. Just looking at Abraham (the “father” of the three monotheistic religions) or Jacob (aka “Israel”) makes it clear that God does not turn aside from some convoluted and perverse human arrangements in choosing who to use as a channel of grace.

But, do any of these represent “a biblical view of marriage”. Hell no! It is time for some stakes in the ground. In terms of the teaching of Scripture it is clear that Gen 2 is a privileged text (Jesus and Paul both cite it when discussing marriage). This passage, and the teaching of Jesus and Paul make some basics clear:

Marriage:

• was ordained by God
• is the union of a man and a woman
• produces and nurtures the next generation
• provides necessary partnership

However, in this (as in everything else) human sinfulness warps and twists God’s intent. All of the “biblical” marriages listed in the graphic reflect this.

See some of my earlier posts for background to this one:

•  What is a family?
• Does the Bible present a preferred pattern of family
• Reading the Bible: seeking teaching on family

I am aware that what I have written in the very short and angry post here will be understood by some people as endorsing particular views on the currently hot and vexed topic of “Gay marriages”. It does. Gay marriage is an oxymoron since not only is marriage the partnership of a man and a woman, but also intended to produce as well as nurture the next generation. However, the view endorsed above says nothing about either Civil Unions, or about the possibility of blessing (or even solemnising) them in churches. As far as I am concerned that seem to be separate issues, and ones on which my view of marriage does not entail any particular position. I wish that we (Christians of all stripes, marriage activists of every opinion, and especially the authorities of both states and churches) would just sit back and separate the two things and issues.

Psalm 90 makes a fine reading for a new year. Through the psalm, time (and especially the haunting disparity between short brutish human time and the timeless divine reality) is a strong theme. The psalm is peppered with time words:

• dor generation in v.1 (x2)
• b’terem before in v.2
• shanah year in vv.4, 5, 9, 10 (x3), 15
• yom day in vv.4, 9, 10, 12, 14, 15
• ashmorah night watch in v.4
• boqer morning in v.5, 6, 14
• ereb evening in v.6
• chish quickly in v.10

The psalm opens in the distant past with a heading associating it with Moses the great leader from Israel’s pre-monarchic origins.¹

The rest of the first verse forefronts the two key ideas of the psalm, time and our relationship with God. The wording of the opening stresses the persons involved. Very literally it would read: “Lord, a dwelling, you, you have been for us from generation to generation.”

This attention to time carries on through the psalm, and is straightaway extended in the next verse from a human timescale from “generation to generation” to extend from before the birth of the world into the “age”²  to come:

Before the mountains were born
or ever you had given birth to the earth and the world,
from age to age you are God.

From verse 3 to 11 the focus on time stresses time and again that the human and the divine timescales are incommensurable, and that humans suffer the divine wrath. This is not a psalm for the faint hearted, or for people living the comfortable smooth lives our TVs and magazines tell us should be ours. This psalm is not compatible with the Western dream.

But it “works” in a world full of natural disaster: earthquakes (still going on in Christchurch after over a year), floods (and even the minor ones in the Bay of Plenty yesterday cause pain and disruption), and all of man’s inhumanity to man (although 2011 was a year with more glimpses of hope for Burma that anyone expected as 2012 begins the Army is still attacking ethnic villages and destroying their crops, the political prisoners kept in inhuman conditions in the jails can still be counted as over a thousand).

Ps 90:10 is often quoted in something approximating to the fairly literal KJV: “The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years” this with its mention of strength suggests (or in the last few generations reminds us) that we might even live longer. However, in the psalm the effect is quite different, to quote the whole verse:

The days of our years are threescore years and ten;
and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years,
yet is their strength labour and sorrow;
for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.

The whole point of the verse is that even if our life is long it is marked (sooner or later) by toil and trouble, and in any case (by any measure but our own pitifully brief one) are so short. Anyone who has reached “a certain age”³ will recognise how the years begin to fly away faster and faster.

So far, if I have presented it as I think it should be read, Psalm 90 is as far from contemporary cheery upbeat “worship songs” as it is possible to be ;)

Yet, it was my grandmother’s favourite psalm. Perhaps because the hymn based on it “Our God, our help in ages past…” used to be sung every “Remembrance Sunday”, and she had cause to remember. Her groom, my father’s father, was killed in the first world war leaving his new wife and toddler. Psalm 90 is a good new year reading in such circumstances. For as well as human mortality it reminds us of the divine author and finisher of our lives. “…our hope for years to come!”

There are two more reasons why this psalm is a favourite of mine. It is one of the few passages in Scripture to deal seriously and in any depth with human aging. And it contains one of the Bible’s few descriptions of creation as birthing:

Before the mountains were born
or ever you had given birth to the earth and the world,
from age to age you are God. (Ps 90:2)

As a result it gets a brief appearance in my new book Not Only a Father,⁴ and will deserve much fuller treatment in the one on human aging, if I ever write it ;)

1. Although there is considerable evidence that the headings may have been added to psalms after they were first written and used, there is no textual evidence for them being absent from the psalms that have them in most modern translations. Rather the reverse the early Greek  translation and the Qumran psalms scrolls seem to have more of these headings, suggesting that they were later additions.
2. Whatever exactly ‘olam means.
3. 50, 40, 30…?
4. I will add a link to the print version soon, for now the text is already available online in discussable format.

It’s the silly season, I’ve nearly finished the marking, but only “nearly”. So I needed some silliness. In an effort to demonstrate “scientifically” that Ruth was written by women I submitted the first chapter in various translations to the Gender Analyser. The results were uninspiring, it reckons with varying degrees of confidence that the chapter was written by a man. But then I guess all that proves is that the translators were (almost) all men. So to cap off the silliness I asked about this blog. Aparently my previous post (like my entire Repentant Carnivores site) was written by a woman.

Results

We have strong indicators that http://bigbible.org/sansblogue/spirituality/the-everyday-spirituality-of-marking/ is written by a woman (93%).

So, what I want to know is, who has been writing guest posts without telling me!?

Photo by sean dreilinger

See also: Jesus and talk of God as father (part one)

When thinking about Jesus’ talk of God as father it is useful to examine how, in fact, he pictured God the Father. What did he mean by calling God ‘father’? To set this question in context it is helpful to consider the cultural stereotypes of father that were common in the ancient Eastern Mediterranean and the Roman Empire. Authority and discipline (especially the disciplining of male children) were strong and frequent overtones of father-language in the ancient world. Pilch explained the cultural stereotypes of parents in the biblical world like this:

Clearly, the father is viewed as severe, stern and authoritarian; the mother is viewed as loving and compassionate. Children respect and fear the father but love the mother affectionately even after they are married.¹

Such an understanding of the stern authoritarianism is almost absent² from father-talk in the Gospels. Rather, in Jesus’ speech, fathers feed and clothe their children (Matt 6:26-32; Luke 11:1-2, 13; 12:30; John 6:32 cf. Luke 24:49; John 6:27); give gifts to both good and bad children (Matt 5:45); are forgiving rather than punishing (Matt 6:14-15; 18:35; Mark 11:25; Luke 6:36 though the father does judge, in John 5:45; 8:16 but cf. 5:22); God as father deals with “infants” and “little ones” (Matt 11:25; 18:14; Luke 10:21). This divine “father” acts in ways which often fit the ancient world’s cultural stereotype of the mother more closely than they do the expectations of fatherly behaviour.

Bookends (photo by Kevin Grocki, and in honour of Jim West)

In previous posts in this series I have been critical of Wayne Grudem’s interpretations of Gen 1-3:

• Biblical understandings of human gender: Part One: Beginnings
• Biblical understandings of human gender: How to read the Bible: Larger passages trump verses
• Biblical understandings of human gender: Part Two: The creation of human gender
• Biblical understandings of human gender: Part Four: Grudem on Adam and Eve
• Biblical understandings of human gender: Part Five: Grudem on Adam and Eve ii

It is pleasant therefore to write a post in which we largely agree.

The KJV rendered the last word in  Gen 2:18 knegdo as “meet for him” giving rise to the neologism “helpmeet” to describe women and their role with respect to men. The KJV translators did not create this neologism, they merely placed together the two words “help” and “meet” meaning “appropriate”, thus (as we’ll see) accurately rendering the Hebrew. The new conjoint word “helpmeet” was however in use before the end of the 17th century, and rewritten as “helpmate” in the next century.¹

The misappropriation of the KJV’s “help meet” to present a subservient role for women has led to a backlash, which Grudem’s book presents as typified by Aída Besançon Spencer’s claims in her 1989 work Beyond the Curse: Women Called to Ministry. Spenser (a New Testament scholar who ought therefore to have known better) translated “I will make for him a helper as if in front of him“. Then she leaped from this over-literal monstrosity to claim that “[f]ront or visible seems to suggest superiority or equality” the second is clearly true of any sensible rendering of the phrase, the first is evidently false, as Grudem notes.²

But on the other hand, and again as Grudem recognises knegdo does mean “corresponding to” and so implies equality and complementarity (i.e. mutuality) rather than some hierachy. In the second half of this sentence Grudem and I begin to part company, but since the reasons concern our understanding of “helper” ‘ezer rather than “meet” I’ll save that discussion for another post.

While it is true that knegdo is a rare construction found only in this chapter the core of the expression neged meaning beside or in front of, so here over-literally something like “as beside him” the implication of “corresponding to him” or “fitting for him” is fairly clear and the choice of all commonly accepted Bible translations in English.

The conclusion of this post is that knegdo means corresponding and implies that men and women are both equal and complementary (in the sense that we can fill out what the other lacks). It is in how these two truths can be held together without one in practice denying the other that the complexity of our topic lies. My next post on “helper” ‘ezer will begin to explore some aspects of this.

1. See Oxford Dictionaries Online.
2. Her appeal to nagid prince or leader to support her claims is disingenuous from a NT scholar, as Grudem notes. 

Herd of goats (photo by AlMare)

On Facebook yesterday I was prompted to reflect on the oddities that our herd mentality imposes on humans. We often signal words that name these “herds” linguistically (rightly or wrongly)¹ by giving nouns that name human herds capital letters. Thus I am catholic but not Catholic in my tastes.²

Capitalisation to indicate herd membership is a handy tool. But it can make life complex.

Am I egalitarian or am I complementarian? Surely the answer has to be yes. As a Congolese student replied when my American colleague (who liked things to be precise) asked if he spelled his name with or without a hyphen – he did, he spelled it either way! I am egalitarian, I believe that God created men and women equally and of equal worth and with equal “inalienable rights”. I am also a complementarian, I am delighted that God made men and women different, to return to teaching classes comprised (as they were 20 years ago) almost entirely of men would be horrible!

But rewrite the question: Am I a Complementarian? and I have to answer “no”. For to answer “yes” to that question would imply agreeing with the lunatic posturings of those insecure human males who seem to think that if women are allowed to be really equal they will outperform them. On the other hand, I am not too keen to label myself as Egalitarian. For then I’d be tarred with the brush of those stupid enough to pretend that there are no consistent gender differences, and while Barbara can and did bear and birth babies I cannot, and I like to respect such brute facts.

So, on this issue am I a E/egalitarian and/or C/complementarian? Yes I am if you wish to label me and my views on issues of gender please refer to me as an E/egalitarian and/or C/complementarian !

1. All you orthographic pedants can have a field-day discussing which ;)
2. Though actually this statement, made by way of example, may not be true, I suspect in many things I’d be both, though I am not at all a member of the Catholic “herd”.

At present I’m thinking and talking a lot about Jesus’ talk of God as father, and whether this naming of God means that Christians cannot think of God as (also) motherly.

The Old Testament used both father and mother-language to speak about God, but it used both seldom. Language such as shepherd, kinsman-redeemer, king, rock, lion and other pictures were preferred, perhaps because they were less likely to require that God had a partner. A father can only be a father if someone else is a mother, and the reverse. Such language therefore presented a greater danger of a descent into polytheism. Neither rocks, kings or lions need some other being to define them as such. While shepherds need a flock, the relationship is not reciprocal, as it would be for mothers and fathers. Sometimes therefore the Bible uses language which describes an undefined parental caring (like in Hos 11:1ff.) without naming either parent, and on other occasions imagery which mentions both parents provides a balance (like in Job 38:28f. cf. Jer 2:27) also helps avoid this danger. As we have seen there was also explicitly motherly language most notably in Isaiah 40ff. (Is 42:14; 43:1ff.; 42:2, 21ff.; 45:8ff.; 46:3f.; 49:13-21; 50:1-3; 66:7ff.) The New Testament, from the gospels onward, seems to contrast with both this reticence and balance. Father-language becomes common, and indeed ‘Father’ becomes a name for God.

This use of father as a name for God, first in the New Testament and then in Christian tradition until today, presents perhaps the most significant barrier to wide acceptance of the thesis of this book. For, the claim that the Christian God is as much like a mother as a father, sits uncomfortably with this New Testament use of “father” as a name for God. This discomfort is heightened if we recognise that Jesus own talk of God stands as the basis for the later naming of God as “father”. It is therefore important to examine this New Testament usage carefully.

Some German scholarship from the middle of the last century represented the father-language of the New Testament as a unique contribution made by Jesus. It was, they said, unlike both his Jewish forebears and his Early Church followers, because it was more frequent, personal and intimate than either. Much was made of Jesus’ use of ἀββα abba(Mark 14:36 cf. Gal 4:6; Rom 8:15),which was presented as being a baby-talk (and so more intimate and personal) version of ‘father’. They claimed in the light of this that there was a link between Jesus’ special intimacy with God and his and then the church’s subsequent use of father-language.¹

A more careful look at the evidence has questioned these claims. More recent scholarship asks whether Jesus himself was as clearly the beginning and driver of this father language as had been argued. Jeremias himself was aware of a striking feature of the Gospels’ father-talk for God on the lips of Jesus.²This usage seems to show a clear pattern (as argued by Hofius in New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology)³ suggesting that talk of God as father in the gospels increased as the distance of the memory from Jesus himself increased.

To put this claim in context before examining it further, father-language is used commonly across the New Testament to speak of God. In his response to an earlier publication of mine making these arguments Keown cited twenty three such references “in the undisputed Paulines”⁴ and a further eighteen in letters of disputed authorship,⁵ father language is especially common in the Johannine writings (1, 2 & 3 John and Rev)⁶ and in 1 Peter, but is also found in Acts, Hebrews, 2 Peter and Jude.⁷ The phrase “the God and Father of our lord Jesus” (Rom 15:6; 1 Cor 1:3; 2 Cor 1:3; 11:31; Eph 1:3, 17; Col 1:3; 1 Thess 1:1; 1 Peter 1:3) and the fact that God the father and Christ as son are correlated (by mention together) very frequently.⁸ Indicate clearly that the earliest Christians found the pairing of thought of God as father and Jesus as the son of God to be productive. For one of the key concerns of the New Testament writers was to make sense of, and to explore ways to talk about, who Jesus was and what his life, death, and resurrection mean.

There are traces in the New Testament of what is likely to be an earlier attempt to understand who Jesus was by likening him to divine personified Wisdom who in the Old Testament was pictured as the first-born of creation (Pr 8:22), existing before the earth (Pr 8:23ff.), with God at creation (Pr 8:27ff.) and who could say: “whoever finds me finds life and obtains favour from the LORD” (Pr 8:35). The earliest strands of the New Testament, and in particular Paul (and what are sometimes claimed to be pre-Pauline hymns) make the most use of the figure of Wisdom to understand Jesus in relation to God. ‘What pre-Christian Judaism said of Wisdom, and Philo also of the Logos, Paul and the others say of Jesus. The role that Proverbs, ben Sira, etc. ascribe to Wisdom, these earliest Christians ascribe to Jesus.’⁹ However, Wisdom Christology was not adequate to their understanding of Christ and his work, for Wisdom was neither human, nor truly divine. Talking of Father and Son enabled these things to be protected, especially when it took place in the context of Jesus’ designation as also “Son of Man”.

Considering the memories of Jesus’ use of father language to speak of God, Hofius’ quotes these figures for the use of such language in Jesus’ remembered words

In an earlier work I used this evidence to claim “The further removed from the historical Jesus the more likely a writer is to talk about God as father.”¹¹ Those figures and my interpretation of them have been questioned by Mark Keown, though his presentation of the evidence seems to show an even more pronounced pattern:

Interestingly as well as the high usage in John, and in the material particular to Matthew, Keown notes that Matthew five times adds the term “father” to material which is also found in Luke but where this term was missing there (Matt 5:45 cf. Lk 6:35; Matt 6:26 cf. Lk 12:24; Matt 7:21 cf. Lk 6:46-7; Matt 10:29 cf. Lk 12:6; Matt 18:14 cf. Lk 15:7). Whichever the order of composition of these two gospels this suggests that Matthew’s tradition was significantly more likely than Luke’s to remember Jesus as having used this name for God. This suggests the question: Is it more likely that Matthew remembers this name, which became typical Christian usage, where it had not in fact been present, or that Luke forgot it? In both the gospels and in the rest of the New Testament “father” is used of God most often in John and the Johannine writings (11 times in 1 John; 3 in 2 John; and 5 in Revelation).¹² So there is clear evidence for differential preferences for father-god language, with the Johannine writings, Matthew and 1 Peter showing the strongest tendency to use such langauge and Mark and Luke among those who use it least.

These usages suggest that: (a) Jesus did call God father, but that (b) he may have done so less than he was remembered as doing, and less himself than the early Christians did. Mark and Luke have only a few examples each, while Matthew remember him as doing so in sayings were he may well have used “God” or the “Most High” as Luke suggests. John develops a strong theology of the Father/Son relationship. In general this father-God language is more frequent in the New Testament in general than it is in quoted speech of Jesus (except in John, and it is often suggested that John reconstructs Jesus’ speeches theologically more than the Synoptics did).

If Jesus called God father (as indeed Jewish usage in his time sometimes did)¹³ and early Christians made significant use of both the image of Christ as the “son of God” and of Christians being invited into sharing such sonship “in Christ”. The fairly frequent usage of “father” of God in Paul also fits with this a picture of father language about God being more common in the early church than it was on Jesus’ own lips.¹⁴

The expression ‘Father in heaven’, and other use of father-language to speak of God was becoming more common (than the sparse Old Testament usage) in Palestinian Judaism by Jesus’ time. In the Old Testament such language was almost exclusively used in relation to the nation or community as a whole, while by the First Century the use had begun to extend to individuals having God as father as well.¹⁵So it would seem that the earliest witnesses to Jesus’ speech remember him as using language about God as father in ways which would not have seemed abnormal in a Jewish teacher of his time and place, while in the Early Church such language becomes a distinctive practice.

Pointing out that use of Father as a name for God was probably remembered in Jesus’ speech more often than he in fact used such language, does not deny that Jesus spoke of God as a ‘father’ or even used Father as a name for God. However, it should caution us from making too much of the supposed origin of this language in Jesus.

A search for "Christ as a man" brought up this photo by mararie

I have just posted another short section to my online discussable book on motherly talk of God Not Only a Father which addresses the question of how The Nature of Christ as a Man interacts with my ideas of the (non)gendering of God.

Not Only a Father  is an attempt at a new way of writing a book, discussing it with people as it is written. So the text currently on the site is subject to change, but I need your comments and questions or objections to help make this work. So please visit, comment/argue with me, and/or get your friends involved :)

Many teachers argue Proverbs is not merely a collection of ethical or moral rules. We stress the role of this teaching in forming the person. We notice how often the real wisdom consists not in knowing the words but in recognising when they are applicable.

Thus, “contradictory” proverbs may both be true, and both collected, remembered and used by the same person:

4 Do not answer fools according to their folly,
or you will be a fool yourself.
5 Answer fools according to their folly,
or they will be wise in their own eyes.

That the book opens with a collection of “instructions” and “wisdom poems” strongly supports this view of its aims and goal.

Instructions, with the form of some commands followed by a motive, suggest such character formation. The form itself is rather like the priestly torah with instructions for ritual observance followed by a theological grounding:

1 My child, if you accept my words

and treasure up my commandments within you,

2 making your ear attentive to wisdom

and inclining your heart to understanding;

3 if you indeed cry out for insight,

and raise your voice for understanding;

4 if you seek it like silver,

and search for it as for hidden treasures–

5 then you will understand the fear of the LORD

 and find the knowledge of God.

 (Proverbs 2:1-5)

Yet the address to a “child”, and thus the casting of the speaker as a parent, suggest already a formational goal. When we notice the prevalence of words that describe who or what a person is, rather than what they do, this becomes even clearer.

Old Babylonian Queen of the Night (Ishtar?) Photo by seriykotik1970

However it is in the “wisdom poems” that this becomes most explicit. For example:

13 Happy are those who find wisdom,
and those who get understanding,
14 for her income is better than silver,
and her revenue better than gold.
15 She is more precious than jewels,
and nothing you desire can compare with her.
16 Long life is in her right hand;
in her left hand are riches and honor.
17 Her ways are ways of pleasantness,
and all her paths are peace.
18 A tree of life to those who lay hold of her;
those who hold her fast are called happy.
(Proverbs 3:13-18)

While it begins with language that seems “merely” to describe the benefits of a “good upbringing” gradually but progressively it seems to be describing a way of living. This language already in Proverbs begins to personify Wisdom, both as a quasi-independent attribute of God (in the long poem in 8:1ff. see especially vv.22ff.) but also as a companion for life:

1 My child, keep my words
and store up my commandments with you;
2 keep my commandments and live,
keep my teachings as the apple of your eye;
3 bind them on your fingers,
write them on the tablet of your heart.
4 Say to wisdom, “You are my sister,”
and call insight your intimate friend…
(Proverbs 7:1-4)

So, it begins with education, but ends with a life companion. This relational aspect of the imagery becomes clearer and quite explicit in the contrasting figure of the adulteress or loose woman in vv.5ff.. While taken on its own this might merely be a parental warning against sexual infidelity the contrast with Wisdom suggests otherwise. So also do the hints that associate this other woman with pagan goddesses.
This contrast of Wisdom to the adulteress and to Dame Folly and their possible connections to goddess figures leads directly to a consideration of both what Proverbs says about women and its gendered character and to a consideration of later developments of the figure of divine Wisdom in Scripture.

(See my next post.)