Question 147, from Justin, United Kingdom

What is the biblical perspective on escapist activities, such as watching TV, going to the movies or attending theatre? Is there any point to them? If they aren’t directly glorifying God, why should we spend time and money on them?

‘Leisure time’, as something enjoyed by everyone not just the wealthy is a fairly recent phenomenon. In Biblical times, when the majority of the population lived at a ‘subsistence level’ as farmers, herdsmen, fishermen and so on, ‘leisure’ wasn’t really a problem. In fact, it has been said that the idea of a Sabbath day of rest was unique in antiquity in relieving people of the necessity and expectation of working every day.
(more…)

Question 146, from Carol, United Kingdom
Why is there such as difference in God’s attitude to mankind between the Old and New Testament? e.g. If God gave everyone a free will why did he then override this and harden Pharaoh’s heart in Exodus so that he wouldn’t release the Israelites from Egypt?

There are two big questions here based on two very big assumptions. The first is the assumption that there is a major difference between the way God is depicted as acting towards human beings in the Old Testament compared to the New. The second assumption is that human beings have free will, which God ignored when God chose to ‘harden Pharaoh’s heart’.
(more…)

Question 145, from EJ, United Kingdom
I have a friend who thinks he is gay but is worried about his beliefs with Jesus. What does the Bible say about being gay and what is your personal opinion?

There are a number of things to mention before looking at what the Bible ‘says’ or doesn’t say about homosexuality. The first important point to make is (more…)

Question 142, from Paul, United Kingdom

How can we tie together the Old Testament God who uses Israel to wipe out other tribes, with the New Testament teachings that seem to suggest Christians should be pacifists? Is it ever okay to use violence?

[Jon's note: this is a long answer, so be prepared for lots of reading!]

While mainstream Christianity has always claimed that the God ‘revealed’ in the Old Testament is the same God who is incarnate in Christ, there have always been some people who have found the difference too great to reconcile. An example would be Marcion (died c.160AD), who distinguished between Yahweh as a ‘cruel, despotic god’, and Christ as the incarnation of the ‘true god’, and was denounced as a heretic as a result.

However, the issue of whether Christians should be involved in conflict, or use violence, is often precisely an issue because of the difference between the two testaments. There are several viewpoints that justify the use of violence or combat based primarily on the Old Testament, but surprisingly there are also many based on the New Testament too.

Here are some different arguments advanced for Christians being involved in wars or employing violence:
(more…)

Question 139, from Sarah-Louise, United Kingdom

Some Christians say that it is the will of God for all believers to prosper financially, that poverty and lack is a curse and that our prosperity is contingent upon our obedience to the Word of God. Does the Bible actually say this?

I don’t think it does at all as plenty of non-believers prosper, people like Mother Theresa died poor etc but I don’t know how to back up my hunch scripturally.

This is a difficult question to definitively answer, simply because either view can be supported through referring to the Bible. Certainly in the Old Testament, key figures in Israelite history were wealthy as a result of their obedience to God. Abraham, for example, saw his wealth grow as a result of his faithfulness.

Others who were significantly blessed in material terms include Job, David and Solomon, and there are several instances of God promising blessing on the nation of Israel if the Law is kept. Interestingly, several of these ‘blessing texts’ are often used to reinforce the idea that true believers will prosper financially, often with little or no regard for the context in which God promises blessing.

Mis-using texts by ignoring contexts
A classic example of this is Malachi chapter 3, verse 10, which is often used to justify appeals for money, as ‘God will financially bless those who give their tithe’ [1]. However, the context of this verse is (more…)

Question 130, from Bob, USA

I have heard the saying a “fold in the bible” or something similar. What does that mean?

This seems to be an obscure phrase, and without knowing what context it was used in, it’s hard to know what the person who said it meant.

Three possible meanings come to mind. Firstly, the actual word ‘fold’, which is a name for a rudimentary shelter for smaller livestock (often referred to as a sheep-fold). The ‘fold’, or sheep-pen, is also used by Jesus as a metaphor for the believing community in John chapter 10, where the sheep/believers shelter in the fold, while the ‘good shepherd’ fights to protect them and sacrifices his own life in the process (chapter 10, verse 11).

Jesus also claims to have sheep ‘that are not of this fold’ (chapter 10, verse16), which has been used to justify an inclusivist, or pluralist, attitude towards adherents of other religions. However, (more…)

Question 107 – from ER and BR, United Kingdom

ER: Is there wine in heaven?
BR: If so, is it alcoholic, as some people say that ‘wine’ in the Bible was merely grape juice?

While the Bible is never fully clear on the subject of what ‘heaven’ is like, there are references to eating and drinking. In Luke chapter 22, verse 18, Jesus is reported as saying of a cup of wine that “I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” Whether this is a reference to his appearances after the resurrection, or in heaven is hard to know. However as he was (more…)

Question 104, from JV, United Kingdom

I am currently looking into the Hebrew roots of Christianity, I was wondering as to whether we need to study the Talmud (oral laws), as God gave them, as well as the commandments on Mount Sinai. Jesus is said to be the fulfilment of the law not the abolisher of it, does that include the oral laws? I find there is great wisdom in them and the fact that Jesus himself studied the oral laws and argued with them show to me that they are of value!

The Talmud (technically Talmuds, because there are two of them) are systematic commentaries on the Mishnah, which is the rabbinical law code of proper Jewish practice. The final version of the Mishnah is generally dated to the second century AD, after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem (AD70) and the ‘diaspora’ as the Jews made their home in other countries. The Talmuds are usually dated two to three centuries later.

The general consensus is that as the life of the Jewish community adjusted to the upheaval of the dislocation from Temple-centred religion, a revised law code was needed to ensure that Jews were still living according to the customs and rituals that marked them out as God’s chosen people. The Mishnah, based on the Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, also called the Pentateuch), therefore enabled Judaism to continue despite the Temple being razed to the ground on the orders of Titus Caesar.

Unlike the Hebrew Bible/Christian Old Testament, the Mishnah is arranged systematically by topic, rather than by author. It is divided into six broad parts: Agriculture (mainly farming according to the principles of Torah), Appointed Times (how to celebrate the holy days of Judaism), the role and status of Women, Damages (dealing with governmental issues and conflict resolution), Holy Things, and Purities (including lists of things that make a Jew impure).

The Palestinian Talmud and the Babylonian Talmud each develop the teaching of the Mishnah, although neither expand upon the Purities section. The Palestinian Talmud omits Holy Things, while its Babylonian counterpart does not reference Agriculture. As such the Talmuds fill in some gaps that have been left out of the Mishnah.

While the Torah, and later the rest of the Hebrew Bible, was regarded as divinely inspired before the Mishnah was compiled, it was not long before the Mishnah was regarded as being the embodiment of an oral tradition that was alleged to date back to the time of the exodus. There is no way of proving whether this belief has any truth to it, although historians tend to assume that it does not. However, the Mishnah, and the Talmuds, do contain material which probably had a long folk-history before it was ever written down. Jesus therefore was probably aware of, and may have been influenced by, this material, but chronologically he was unable to engage with the Talmud during his earthly ministry.

The Talmuds also refer to extra material not found in the Mishnah, including previous commentaries on the Torah. The two Talmuds also contain references to the Mishnah as the ‘oral Torah’ and, because of their inextricable links to the Mishnah have thus taken on a semi-canonical status in Judaism themselves. In fact, the sixth century Babylonian Talmud is regarded as the authoritative encyclopedia of Judaism.

While the Mishnah and Talmuds provide Christian theologians with valuable insights into Christianity’s Jewish roots, it is generally held that these works are not authoritative. The New Testament in its current form dates from a similar time, and it could be argued that the Talmud and the New Testament represent two diverging views. One was a retreat back into the legalistic world of the Torah; the other looking outward beyond the confines of one people group into a wider world.

Thanks for your question JV.

Two questions on a similar theme:

The first is from RM, Ireland

Is the Old Testament an account of actual people and events, which took place in reality, or a late literary construct designed to give a community a sense of self-identity?

The second (and longer question) is from TD, USA

I don’t understand why so many people base their lives, thoughts and values on every word in the Bible, when it’s origins as ‘the word of God’ appear quite dubious. How do we know that all the authors were writing the word of God? I don’t mean to be flippant but what if some of them were drinking when they received their inspiration, or were on hallucinogens, or simply over zealous and thought they were getting “divine messages” as many people since then also claim to have had?

Where does this leave us? How can we treat this book as the be-all-end-all word of God with so many people quoting it as though its words are indisputable truths, when it appears to be a patchwork quilt of unclear origin? Can you help me?

It is fairly clear that, in the case of the Old Testament as we have it today, there has been some later editing (often called redaction) of earlier writings, within the context of an ongoing process whereby unreliable writings were weeded out of the collection. This is one way of describing the process of canonisation. The New Testament does not display much blatant evidence of redaction, although this may have occurred in the gospels as various stories were chosen for inclusion. Far more very early manuscripts exist for the New Testament than the Old Testament and so it can be quite clearly sent hat there was little variation in the written tradition – once stuff was written down!

The fact that these stories may have been transmitted orally at first, or have been translated, do not necessarily mean that they are less reliable. In fact, modern historians will go to great lengths to track don survivors of historical events in order to gain first-hand oral testimony. Within the culture of the Middle East at the time, there was great emphasis on accurately telling and retelling stories. Of course, they may have ‘grown in the telling’, but that does not mean that they are completely untrue. Then, as now, translators took great pains to translate accurately, hence the ancient tradition that earned the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old testament the moniker ‘The Septuagint’ – so called because allegedly seventy translators combined to produce the translation.

The Old Testament does seem to carry some marks of later redaction, particularly in the Pentateuch. The classic expression of this is the JEDP source criticism hypothesis. This seeks to unravel the various strands of the Pentateuch according to both the language used and the emphasis of the particular passage. J and E refer to strands that use different names for God, either ‘Yahweh’ (Jehovah) or ‘Elohim’. D is the hypothetical ‘Deuteronomist’, who was concerned with matters pertaining to the Law, while P represents the Priestly redactors, who wanted to explain and defend the cultic practices of ancient Israel.

Outside the Pentateuch, the various history books bear the marks of religious redaction as well. Chronicles, in particular, is written solely from a religious point of view, judging the various kings of Israel and Judah as good or bad, depending on how faithful they were to the worship of Yahweh. The Chronicler (although the author may have been more than one person) refers to the, now lost, Annals of the Kings of Israel or Judah and presumably, these were his sources. Within the prophetic writings, as well, the historical foundation myths of the Israelite nation were often reiterated to demonstrate God’s covenant favour with his people. The fact is that the Old Testament is both a record of events and a later interpretation of those events from a religious point of view, both inside and outside the mainstream cult.

Such redaction does not necessarily diminish the authority of Scripture. Similarly the long drawn-out process of canonisation can actually be seen as enhancing the authoritativeness and reliability of the Bible. The fact that these various writings, which stretch over a long period of history, have been weighed and accepted many years later by intelligent and, sometimes, critical people implies they have a certain resonance and strength. Many other books, ‘Gnostic gospels’, creation myths, prophecies, philosophies and apocalyptic visions of the end were disregarded during this process. These rejected, non-canonical books are usually weird in the extreme.

There is, of course, the question of uncritically accepting what the Bible says as ‘The Word of god’. It is a logical fallacy to insist that all your doctrines be based on the Bible, as that dogma itself is not Biblical. It is also recommended that Biblical writings are not always read and applied at face value, without in-depth study of those writings. Many of the errors found in modern spin-off semi-Christian movements (e.g. the Mormon practice of ‘baptising for the dead’) stem from literal applications of Scripture, without any background study.

It is the testimony of the historical and catholic Christian tradition that the Bible preserves the only reliable account of God’s involvement in the world that culminated in the Incarnation. In the light of that tradition, the fact that the books of the Bible each had to earn their place in the canon of Scripture and prove their worth within the context of a living faith, adds authority to the Bible. It does not, however, mean that Christians should read the Bible uncritically and apply it ignorantly.

Thanks for your questions RM and TD.

Question from DM, United Kingdom

As an individual believer the Holy Spirit acts as a guide to make the Scriptures clear and help me to know and understand the truth of Jesus. So how is it that the Holy Spirit can apparently reveal one interpretation of Scripture to one believer and what would seem to be a contradictory interpretation to another believer?

The idea that every believer has the same ability to apprehend and understand what the Bible is saying is a simplification of one of the chief principles of the reformation – namely that every person could read and interpret Scripture for themselves, because the Holy Spirit dwelt in them. This concept was partly a reaction to the established, papal Church, which held (and still does hold) that it is only through the ordained ministers of the Church that the truth of Scripture could be received. The Church therefore acted as a filter of correct doctrine and whatever it said a particular Bible passage meant had to be accepted.

Of course this led to some passages of scripture being interpreted in a way that benefited the Church and justified whatever the Church was doing, hence the reaction in the Reformation. The Reformers were also heavily influenced by renaissance proto-humanism, which sought to get back to the original meaning of the text, stripping away the many interpretations that had accreted over the centuries. Saying that the Holy Spirit acts as an interpretive guide, was the Reformers’ way of justifying their interpretations as equally valid to those given by the papal Church.

However, most of the Reformers soon found themselves in conflict with other reforming groups who differed from them in their interpretations of scripture, leading to an almost comical situation where the breakaway churches in Germany and Switzerland were excluding people over disagreements in what the Bible said. This was despite emphasising the ‘right’ of the ordinary man to read the Bible in his own language, in his own home (apologies for the gender-based language, but that was the case in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries).

Five hundred years later and the Protestant church is riven by disagreements among Christians, many of which start out from differences in opinion about what the Bible says on any given issue. Not that this is a new issue – Soren Kierkegaard, regarded as the formative influence on existentialism, wrote in his journal in 1848 that: “Fundamentally a reformation that did away with the Bible would now be just as valid as Luther’s doing away with the Pope… Christendom has long been in need of a hero who, in fear and trembling before God, had the courage to forbid people to read the Bible.” [The Journals of Kierkegaard, Alexander Dru (ed.), Fontana, 1958, p.150] What Kierkegaard means is that by assuming that everybody can use the Bible properly, Protestantism has caused two basic problems: firstly no one can agree on anything; secondly ‘studying’ the Bible and trying to find out what it really means becomes a substitute for genuine personal faith in God. Human intellect has replaced divine revelation and debates over interpretation have sapped the world-changing energy out of the Christian community of faith.

But most modern believers are in a situation where they can access the Bible and read it themselves. In this situation, it is perhaps wise to have some pointers towards what is correct interpretation.

First: Beware the ‘one-size, fits-all’ mentality.
This may seem unpalatable to those who have been raised in fundamentalist or evangelical circles where Biblical ‘literalism’ has been emphasised, but the Bible is not one book, written at one time, by one author. It is a collection of writings, spanning at least a thousand years of human history, written by many different people, transmitted orally, or copied many times, and, crucially, written in very different situations and for different purposes. It covers a number of genres, beginning with a complex legal code, including foundational myths (‘myth’ in the technical sense, not meaning made up story), historical accounts, prophetic oracles, songs, poetry, ‘gospels’, apocalyptic visions, letters, and some bits that don’t fit into any easy classification at all.

The problem with asserting that every bit of the Bible can be read in the same way is that a ‘one-size, fits-all’ methodology is inappropriate. It is unwise to assign the same level of accuracy to a historical account and a poem. People would not do that with twenty-first century writings, but they are happy to do it with the Bible. A common misuse of the Bible these days is ‘proof-texting’, stacking up Bible verse after Bible verse, to prove the point. Small phrases are torn out of context and applied literally, regardless of where they originally came from.

Second: What the Bible says isn’t always immediately relevant today.
This is another phrase that could cause offence, but divorcing the Bible from the time and place where it was written is to invite misinterpretation. Put simply, knowing the context in which a particular part of the Bible was written is crucial if a believer is going to try and apply it in a way that will actually benefit them. Biblical scholar Gordon Fee sums this up: “In speaking through real persons, in a variety of circumstances, over a 1,500 year period, God’s Word was expressed in the vocabulary and thought patterns of those persons… That is to say, God’s Word to us was first of all his Word to them… Our problem is that we are so far removed from them in time, and sometimes in thought.” [Gordon D. Fee & Douglas Stuart, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth, 3rd ed, Zondervan, 2003, p.23]

To make the Bible relevant, it’s important to study around the text and discover what it meant in its original context, before we look to apply it to a contemporary situation. Taking a fairly mundane example, the prohibitions on idol worship are not particularly relevant for most Christians in Europe or North America. It would be easy to smugly assume that by not carving statues and bowing down to them, God’s instructions are being observed. However, studying the text in depth should bring the realisation that the issue God has with idols was not based on how they were made, but on the fact that people worshipped them more than God. Not letting anything become more important to you than God is an easily applicable message, which most Christians have probably heard preached at some point. But without unpacking the text, the point can be easily missed.

Third: A unique interpretation is usually wrong.
“A text cannot mean what it never meant. Or to put it in a positive way, the true meaning of the biblical text for us is what God originally intended it to mean when it was first spoken.” [Fee & Stuart, op. cit. p.30] Many people who have unique interpretations of the Bible operate in isolation, either founding their own churches or by not being answerable. A good way to avoid this error is to check out new ideas with a circle of Bible-reading friends.

Emphasising the Holy Spirit’s role in interpretation seems to give some people carte blanche to make the Bible say anything. However, within a proper theological understanding of how the Bible is formed, the Holy Spirit who inspired Scripture is hardly going to contradict Himself with a brand-new interpretation that goes against the original intent of the verse or section in question.

Fourth and finally: Measure it against itself.
Most doctrinal errors crop up based on one verse or section of Scripture and great care should be taken about emphasising a doctrine with little, or virtually no, Scriptural support. Another way to state this is that ‘all of doctrine must be based on all of Scripture’ – so, for example, there is a good argument for the sacrament of baptism based on the many references to baptism in the New Testament. However, there is only one reference to being ‘baptised for the dead’ (1 Corinthians chapter 15, verse 29) and the meaning of that verse is far from clear. The Mormon church which practices ‘baptism for the dead’ based on this one verse could thus be regarded as introducing a doctrine with dubious Biblical provenance.

Insisting that core doctrines must be found throughout the Bible is the best way of avoiding an over-emphasis on a secondary issue. The return of Christ is another example, testified to throughout the New Testament, but the complex dispensationalist theology (or, more accurately, sensationalist theology) outlined by populist writers like Hal Lindsay or Tim Lahaye, is based mainly on a disproportionately small number of Scriptures (dispensationalist claims that their eschatology is found throughout the Bible is ‘proof-texting’ at its absolute worst). For many dispensationalists, the imminent end of the world (and spotting the signs) has become the most important thing. This over-emphasis effectively renders their faith irrelevant to the world around them.

To return to DM’s question – try and apply the above points to both interpretations. Do they both treat the Bible sensibly? Do they take the original context into account? Does anybody else agree with it (and who)? And, finally, do the interpretations match other references in the Bible? (If there are no other references, then how important can it be anyway?) It may be that even after applying these points, both interpretations are equally valid. In which case, the choice is whether to follow the example of centuries and have a divisive quarrel about the issue that will never be settled, or to agree to disagree and find something else which you can agree on, and which might be more useful in terms of discovering truths about God.

Thanks for your question, DM.