Life ◈ Love ◈ Light ◈ Liberty: These are the “4-Ls” about which I wrote in my March 9 post. Today I am focusing on Life, the first of those four. Over the next few weeks, I will write about the other three.
Real
life is more than physical life. As I said in the March 9 post, the foundation of my emphasis on life
was Jesus’ words as recorded in the tenth chapter of the Gospel of John: “I
came that they may have life and have it abundantly” (v. 10, NRSV).
Having abundant life focuses on the quality
of life, not just its quantity. Physical life is something that people either
have or don’t have. That is, they are either alive or dead. But living
abundantly means living with meaning, purpose, and joy.
The
emphasis on life, real life, was prominent in the Christian Studies courses I conducted
at Seinan Gakuin University in Japan. In 1975, I taught a required course for
second-year Economics Department students. Horiuchi Akira-san was one of
the students enrolled in that class.
On
his 70th birthday in January, Horiuchi-san posted the
following comments (in Japanese) on Facebook: “When I was a second year
university student, a missionary teacher of Christian Studies said, "The
purpose of Christianity is to help people to have life and to have it
abundantly."
In a
personal exchange on Facebook Messenger, Horiuchi-san (whom I should
call sensei since he has been a Christian pastor for most of the years
since he finished his theological education in 1981) wrote, “I am who I am
today because of my encounter with you. Thanks.”
Real
life includes valuing and protecting physical life. Even though it is more
than physical life, having real life leads to more than just enjoying the
richness of one’s own life. It also seeks life for groups of people, robust
physical life as well as meaningful societal life.
This
generates opposition to war, to violence of all kinds, to capital punishment, to
ecological destruction, and to all exploitation and/or degradation of people
because of race, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or anything
else.
Conservative
Christians of the present have preserved the important emphasis of evangelicalism
on real life for individuals by faith in God through Jesus Christ, but so many have
largely failed to emphasize the equally important matter of helping marginalized
groups to have vigorous physical life also.
The
New Testament term eternal life is basically the same as what I call
real life. I have used the latter term because of the misunderstanding or
ambiguity of the word eternal, which was long expressed as everlasting
in English.
For centuries, the majority of Protestants (including most
Anglicans) read the King James Version of the Bible, which dates back to 1611.
Many of us older people memorized John 3:16 in the KJV:
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
That
was the basis for the widespread belief in unending life, which was generally understood
as life after physical death.
But
beginning with the American Standard Version, published in 1901, the Greek
words previously translated as everlasting life began to be translated
as eternal life. This became more widely the case after the Revised
Standard Version was published in 1952.
Bible
scholars increasingly began to emphasize that eternal, especially in the
Gospel of John, primarily refers to the quality of life, not its quantity.
Thus, eternal life is the type of life that we can have and enjoy now,
not just life after physical death.
Life
(real life) is the theme of Easter, which Christians around the world will
be celebrating tomorrow.
It
is because of the resurrected Jesus that all can receive new life = eternal
life through him. That is the life that Horiuchi-san received the year
after he heard about real life in my Christian Studies class in 1975.
His
kind words of gratitude were primarily for my sharing the Gospel of life with
him and his classmates, most of whom never accepted that message. He did and
that made all the difference.
So you are opposed to Euthanasia?
ReplyDeleteJune, thanks for your question that made me realize that euthanasia should not have been included in this list without explanation. I have now changed my blog post to say capital punishment, which should have been included to begin with, rather than euthanasia.
DeleteAs Wikipedia summarizes, "Euthanasia is categorized in different ways, which include voluntary, non-voluntary, and involuntary. Voluntary euthanasia is when a person wishes to have their life ended and is legal in a growing number of countries. Non-voluntary euthanasia occurs when a patient's consent is unavailable and is legal in some countries under certain limited conditions, in both active and passive forms. Involuntary euthanasia, which is done without asking for consent or against the patient's will, is illegal in all countries and is usually considered murder."
It is only involuntary euthanasia that should be categorically rejected. As you know, I am not against voluntary euthanasia, although even that I think needs to be dealt with carefully.
In my response above, I also wanted to say that euthanasia was long called "mercy killing," and farther down in the Wikipedia article there is reference to the "Nazi decree that led to 'mercy killings' of almost 300,000 mentally and physically handicapped people." It was that kind of "euthanasia" that I was thinking about--but I still agree I should not have included it in the list as I did (and have now changed).
DeleteI should have also noted yesterday that after seeing June's question, I changed "euthanasia" in the second paragraph of the second part to "capital punishment," which I should have included in the original list anyway.
DeleteAlong with Easter greetings, two local Thinking Friends have commented on this morning's post:
ReplyDelete"Thank you so much for this very true and very timely post." (Don Wilson)
"Thanks for the wise words about life." (David Nelson)
And now this for Thinking Friend Jerry Jumper in southwest Missouri: "Excellent Bible class, sir. Thank you. "
DeleteThen a few minutes ago, another local Thinking Friend sent these kind words:
Delete"This affirmation of eternal life ranks among the best you have blessed us with."
And just now I received these comments from Thinking Friend Eric Dollard in Chicago: "Thanks, Leroy, for your insightful comments about physical life, real life, and eternal life. I very much appreciate how you distinguish and define these terms."
DeleteYes, I too appreciate your important distinction, Leroy. Looks like John, as you say, speaks of having life abundantly (perissos, meaning "over and above"). When the synoptics Gospels speak of eternal life (as in Mark 10:30), they use aionios for what is often translated as “eternal,” though it can mean "indeterminate as to duration." But it is indeed the quality of life that we can see as most important, which is Jesus’ focus in most of his teaching. And in the lesson from his death and resurrection: a whole new life.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments, Fred, and for introducing the Greek words related to what I wrote in the blog post. Here is part of a similar explanation on a blogsite I just read this morning: "The phrase 'eternal life' in Greek is aionios zoe, literally: 'age life'—referring to the quality or calibre of life that comes from relationship with God in the immediate present. Its direct meaning and implications do not concern the hereafter, but the here-and-now. In fact, it could be best understood as fullness of life, or the God kind of life."
Delete(https://abetterfuturenow.com/what-does-aionios-aion-eternal-mean/#eternal-life )
I wonder how many theological controversies have been born in poor translations. Some, such as Augustine's complaint to Jerome about using the Hebrew text instead of the Greek for his Latin translation were based on a more reasonable disagreement (although it did make Jonah's gourd famous), but others such as the King James Version of Genesis 1:28 have been challenged as convenient mistranslations, in this case for the benefit of capitalism. Did the original text really mean "subdue it: and have dominion" or was it more like "tend and have stewardship?" I would be curious to know how you would restate that verse. (I personally know neither Greek nor Hebrew, so I am just reporting this one, not arguing it.)
ReplyDeleteHappy Easter, everyone, and a good life to all!
Thanks for your comments and questions about the translation of Bible verses/words, Craig. In the past I have studied at some length the verse from Genesis 1 that you cited. But I have long forgotten most of the Hebrew I studied in seminary and am not capable now of explaining the nuances of Hebrew words. But my understanding is that the word often translated "have dominion" does mean "rule over," but it primarily implies ruling over with the intention of protecting or nourishing the created order and certainly not exploiting it, which has been done so much through the centuries.
DeleteI like the way this is expressed in the rather new Bible translation/paraphrase called The Voice: "God blessed them and gave them this directive: “Be fruitful and multiply. Populate the earth. I make you trustees of My estate, so care for My creation and rule over the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every creature that roams across the earth.”
Here is more for you think about regarding the (mis)translation of Hebrew/Greek words into English.
ReplyDeleteToday I received the May 2024 issue of Sojourners magazine. In it I learned about a documentary movie titled "1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture." It is mainly about the use of the word "homosexual" in the1946 Revised Standard Version of the New Testament. (In my article above, I referred to the RSV as being published in 1952, the year when the complete RSV Bible was first published.)
The Sojourners article is not yet available online, so here is the link to a December article on the website of The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/dec/01/christian-homophobia-bible-mistranslation-1946-documentary.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteLet me try again, I had a problem with my computer!
ReplyDeleteWhat we now call homophobia goes way back before 1946. Think about Oscar Wilde, the author of "The Picture of Dorian Gray" and "The Importance of Being Ernest." In the same year his most famous play debuted (1895), he was arrested for gross indecency and sent to jail because he was discovered to have had an affair with another man. He died a broken man in 1900. Homosexuals were being burned at the stake in the middle ages, hence the term "faggots." I wonder if the 1946 "translation" was really a mistake, or whether it was an intentional slur.
As far as I can tell, the ancient world had no nuanced sense of gender as we use the term today. Mostly powerful men had sex with whomever they chose, and any consensual sex went largely under the radar. Consider the case of David and Bathsheba in 2 Samuel 11. The powerful king sends men to procure Bathsheba for him, and when she turns up pregnant, David sends for Uriah the Hittite to try to arrange a coverup. When that does not work, he has Uriah murdered. The Bible is hard on this kind of abuse of power. Even the case of Sodom is about misuse of power, not "sodomy." Consider how Ezekiel describes the sin of Sodom in the process of condemning Jerusalem: "Your elder sister is Samaria, who lived with her daughters to the north of you; and your younger sister, who lived to the sought of you, is Sodom with her daughters. You not only followed their ways, and acted according to their abominations; within a very little time you were more corrupt that they in all your ways. As I live, says the Lord God, your sister Sodom and her daughters have not done as you and your daughters have done. This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy." (Ezekiel 16:46-49) Not much mention of gay men there!
Thanks for your comments, Craig. Certainly, homophobia goes back much farther than 1946, but it was exacerbated by the RSV Bible translation that year, as the documentary movie I mentioned above apparently emphasizes.
DeleteThere is much more that I could write about this issue here--but I wrote at some length about the "The Issue of Homosexuality" in my book "Fed Up with Fundamentalism" (2020 edition, pp. 271~290). I don't think I referred to Sodom, though, and I appreciate you posting comments about that.
Bro. Leroy, in light of your thoughts from previous blogs, I can understand why you did not include the unborn as a group that deserves more protection. So I'll just put in my plug and say I feel that is one group that deserves more protection than it is getting in our world today. Human life begins at conception from my perspective. Breathing or eating on your own is irrelevant today as a test of humanity as I know anyone who has sat by hospital beds can attest. That fertilized cell will not develop into anything but a human being. Otherwise I agree with all you said. To live abundantly is so much more than to live long even though that was a part of OT blessings. Who is eager to go to Sheol? We should be using material and brain resources to make life abundant now for every human being. I would much rather see the development of effective and easily available contraception than developing better abortion techniques.
ReplyDeleteLike you my Hebrew is a bit rusty, but that verse, Gen. 1:28, containing those two key words has been abused or simply ignored denying God's plan for man to work with him in finishing creation. To have dominion is much better interpreted as ruling in a stewardship capacity. The next word "subdue" throws a wrench in our whole idea of initial creation. In the Hebrew "subdue" means to..."subdue". For a perfect creation that sounds like a strange command for the Creator to give his steward.
Tom, thanks for your comments, and I will respond only to your first paragraph, which is most directly related to the blog post—and I apologize for not responding sooner. It’s not that I didn’t know what to say but that I had so much I wanted to say I knew I would need a fairly long block of time to make an adequate response.
DeleteI expected you to raise the issue of abortion since we had talked about that before—and there are perhaps a few other Thinking Friends who would agree with you more than with me. Anticipating you or someone raising the issue of being “pro-life,” I considered including that matter in the blog post, but decided I couldn’t do it without the post being too long. Had I broached the issue, I possibly would have posted a large, blank text box labeled “What Jesus and Paul said/wrote about abortion.”
Of course, there is always a problem of an “argument from silence,” but in light of the fact that abortion was practiced in the time of Jesus and Paul, and in cruder and less safe ways than now, we have no record of Jesus saying anything at all or Paul writing anything at all about abortion. If it is really the moral evil that you and most “pro-life” Christians aver, why is the New Testament silent on the matter?
And before I go on, let me state that I am definitely pro life, but not “pro-life.” With the hyphen, the term means “opposed to abortion” and opposes the position called “pro-choice.” Actually, I am both pro-life and pro-choice. I am not for abortion, and have never suggested to any pregnant woman that she get one. But as I believe that before viability, the embryo is only potential human life, I certainly do not agree with the “pro-life” position that condemns all abortion as murder. Thus, I believe that pregnant women in consultation with their medical doctor, their spouse or partner, and their spiritual advisor should have the freedom to choose what to do because of health, emotional, financial, or other legitimate reasons.
When I was a seminary student, I don’t remember discussions of abortion in my courses in Christian Ethics, or any other course. And at the annual meetings of the Southern Baptist Convention from 1971 through 1979, resolutions on abortion affirmed the sanctity of life, rejecting abortion on demand, but also basically affirmed the “pro-choice” position. That changed with the movement toward fundamentalism in 1980, which also was the year Reagan was elected President.
I mention the latter, for abortion was the issue that conservative Republicans used as a means to court the vote of conservative Christians—and it was successful as Reagan won the election over the” born-again” Baptist, Pres. Carter. Actually, though, the Republican emphasis on anti-abortion began ten years earlier. In her 2023 book “Democracy Awakening,” Heather Cox Richardson noted that concerned about his re-election, in 1971 “Nixon turned the issue of abortion into [a] political wedge” (p. 46).
[to be continued}
[continued from above]
DeleteI am now reading selected parts of the new (2024) book “The Power to Destroy: How the Antitax Movement Hijacked America” by Michael J. Graetz, a professor emeritus at Columbia Law School and Yale Law School. Two sub-sections relevant to this discussion are “Republican Recruitment of the Christian Right” (pp. 42~45) and Ronald Reagan’s Enticement of Christian Evangelicals” (pp. 45~47). In the former Graetz introduces Paul Weyrich, cofounder of the Heritage Foundation (in 1973) and its first president.
Weyrich soon tried to recruit southern Protestants to join the growing Republican anti-abortion movement after the Supreme Court’s 1973 “Roe v. Wade” decision. But, Graetz says that most southern evangelical Protestants were not very interested, for they viewed abortion as a “Catholic issue.” Weyrich and his associates “met with Jerry Falwell and urged him to create an organization to mobilize the Christian evangelical community politically. Falwell refused” (p. 43). Several years later, in 1979, Weyrich and others met with Falwell again and told him how he might play an important role in Republican politics. This time, Falwell agreed to create an organization called the Moral Majority, and turning to issues on which a Christian organization should focus, “abortion was at the top of the list” (p. 44).
My point is that it was not Christians that led the pro-life movement and influenced politicians to do the same; rather it was the politicians who used the abortion issue as a means to get an ever-increasing number of votes from conservative Christians.
Well, this is already much too long, and I didn’t even get to the three links I have pasted below, but if you want to read/think more about these issues, highlight the links and you can then click on them to open them on the internet.
Below is the link to an important article from 1993. As you will guess, I agree with the first part of the article and especially with my good friend Paul Simmons (1936~2019), who you probably knew when you were a student at SBTS.
https://theconversation.com/the-history-of-southern-baptists-shows-they-have-not-always-opposed-abortion-183712
https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/1993/january-11/why-is-new-testament-silent-about-abortion.html
https://baptistnews.com/article/paul-simmons-outspoken-baptist-ethicist-dead-at-82/
Bro. Leroy, thanks a bunch for the reply. At this point I have not read the links, but will soon. As for Dr. Simmons, I never had a class under him, but thought he, Dr. Stasson (?), and Dr. Barnette (whom I did have) deserved the great reputations they held. As medical "miracles" advance, we will face the ongoing discussion of viability of a fetus. I cannot escape the conviction a human being comes into existence at conception. Nothing else will develop from that cell. However, abortion is not the unforgivable sin. I would never hesitate to support my wife having an abortion if the choice was she or the baby. In the cases of rape and incest, the other two notorious test cases, a woman should not have to carry the results of a sin against her. In my sight these truly are cases of a woman's emotional health. If we did what we should in terms of feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, housing the homeless, all in all providing every human being with a sense of divinely ordained dignity, then no one except those who find human life inconvenient would consider an abortion. As a side question quickly considered, what moral questions have not been politicized?
DeleteThanks again for the articles you sent. I found them valuable though unfortunately I could not read the entire Christianity Today article as I am not a subscriber. I have to admit I am not a 1970 Baptist, but neither am I a 1980's Baptist, a man without a country. I found an interesting point in one of the articles, on Dr. Simmons, I believe. The distinction was made between being "human" and being a "person". Is this where we get into the question of viability? I admit I have trouble seeing this as little more than a question of semantics. I would enjoy hearing your take on the issue. The other point is how do we incorporate the perspective of the father of the baby. After all he is half the reason there was a conception in the first place. No, he doesn't have to carry the baby, but he was a willing participant unless it was criminal action. Rape can occur in more circumstances than just those that involve a knife to the throat. I call those instances "consensual rape". She consents to sex to save what she considered a valuable relationship. Boy, is she mistaken! An abortion in that case might also be considered a logical answer to mental health.
DeleteNow that I have my new post ready to make early tomorrow morning, I will try to respond briefly to your later comments, which I appreciate you sharing.
DeleteI had high regard for the three ethics professors at Southern Seminary whose names you mentioned. Dr. Barnette was one of my professors, Dr. Simmons was a personal friend whom I first met in 1955 when I was a freshman in college and he was a sophomore, and through the years I had the opportunity to meet and talk with Dr. Stassen on several occasions, including the last time I was on the campus of SBTS.
In response to your question at the end of your April 6 comments, for starters consider this: neither the Republican Party nor conservative Christians have ever, to my knowledge, politicized adultery, divorce--or greed. The New Testament considers those matters as moral issues of importance--but says nothing at all about abortion.
It seems to me that the distinction made between being "human" and being a "person" is a significant one and is much more than just a question of semantics. From what I read, "During the first eight weeks, a human fetus is called an embryo. The embryo develops rapidly and by the end of the first trimester, it becomes a fetus that is fully formed, weighing approximately 0.5 to 1 ounce and measuring, on average, 3 to 4 inches in length." While it is certainly true that an embryo or even a fetus at the end of the first trimester is "human" in the sense that it will normally develop into a human being, or a person, and not something else. But is an embryo really a person? Potentially, yes; but actually, I would have to say no. That is why I think the "personhood laws" that have been proposed by some anti-abortion advocates are wrongheaded. -- Well, there is much more that could be said about this matter, but I will not write more at this point.
Note: I failed to say that the next to last comments posted above (today at 4:06 p.m.) were received in an email from NCTom on April 7.
Delete