I just ran a lap around the school’s track. How’d I do? I’m fat and pathetic, and Jabba the Hut passed me (which was surprising, because Princess Leia was putting up a fight and being dragged like dead weight). BUT . . . I didn’t stop running until I finished the lap. Rafael = 1; naysayers = 0 — Rafael Rodriguez

Dick Cheney spent his time in the Bush Administration running roughshod over the Constitution and personally breaking the law by suborning perjury and undermining the role of Congress and it’s time for him to pay the price.

The Associated Press tells us

Government sources say Vice President Dick Cheney directed the CIA not to inform Congress about a nascent counterterrorism program eight years ago that CIA Director Leon Panetta terminated in June. Government officials with direct knowledge of Panetta’s June 24 briefing to congressional intelligence committees confirmed that Cheney had told the CIA not to discuss the program with Congress yet.  Subsequent CIA directors did not inform Congress because the intelligence-gathering effort had not developed to the point that they believed merited a congressional briefing. That from a former intelligence official and another government official.

Evidently Cheney thought the oversight function of Congress wasn’t as important as his own manipulative and deceitful control.  Cheney should be in prison.  For the rest of his life.

I’ve just finished reading Robert Cargill’s essay in the current edition of Near Eastern Archaeology and cannot recommend it highly enough.  It’s well written and quite engaging.

The essay appears, as I said, in the current edition of NEA, vol 71, number 1, pp. 28-47 and includes therein a response by Jodi Magness and a counter-response by Cargill, followed by a final word from Magness.

If you don’t subscribe, do get a copy somewhere and read it.

Initially when one cracks open this particular volume one is nearly overwhelmed by the sheer amount of material.

Seven major issues find a place here:  The Christology of Hebrews; The Problem of Hebrews’ Cosmology; The Problem of Hebrews’ Supersessionism; The Soteriology of Hebrews; Hebrews and the Modern World; Hebrews’ Theology of Scripture; and The Call to Faith in Hebrews.

My particular interest when it comes to the Epistle to the Hebrews is the problem of supersessionism.  Naturally, then, my attention was drawn immediately to that part of the tome, and Richard B. Hays contribution (which is then followed up by and responded to by Oskar Skarsaune and Mark Nanos).

Richard B. Hays: “Here We Have No Lasting City”:  New Covenantalism in Hebrews

In his essay Hays attempts to undermine the long held opinion that Hebrews is supersessionist.  He prefers to describe the tone of Hebrews instead as ‘New Covenantalism’.  And though I wish he had convinced me that he is correct, I could not escape the sensation that he is simply using another term for the same old thing.

He first argues with his own previous opinion and then launches into a rebuttal and attempt to redefine the tone of Hebrews.  He offers 8 exegetical reasons for his theory.  But this is where it gets a bit strange.

For instance, Hays writes ‘… the people’s failure to continue in the covenant is itself a symptom of the covenant’s shortcoming, and God’s solution to this problem is the creation of a new covenant in which the Law will be effectually written on the hearts and minds of people’ (p. 160).   Isn’t that supersessionism?  Call it New Covenantalism if you like, but the end result is that the Old is replaced, superceded, by the New.  The very use of the words ‘old’ and ‘new’ imply replacement, after all.  And replacement is, by definition, supersession.

After offering his 8 exegetical reasons to replace the theory of supersessionism with New Covenantalism (which, I confess, bolstered the case for supersessionism rather than undermining it), Hays observes ‘… Hebrews is no more supersessionist than Jeremiah’ (p. 165).  But Jeremiah was supersessionist!  It was he who urged Judah to surrender because God had abandoned them.  And their hardness of heart made it utterly inescapable that a New Covenant be made which replaced, superseded, the Old.  That’s supersessionism, whatever other name you might use to describe it.

Hays concludes his essay with an appeal to the work of Stanley Fish- to the effect that Hebrews ‘consumes itself’ in its forward-looking-ness.  This appeal doesn’t really bolster Hays’ central thesis and seems almost a secondary section, an afterthought simply intended to lengthen the essay and offer the reader more to ponder.

The  essay written in response to Hays by Mark D. Nanos has much merit in it.

New or Renewed Covenantalism? A Response to Richard Hays

Writes Nanos-

Is it better to read renewed rather than replaced, and come closer to what Hays otherwise wishes to achieve?  After all, Scripture described a new agency that renews the covenant partners’ capability to be loyal to the teaching, Torah written on the heart … rather than a New Torah (p. 185).

This is quite correct, and points out the need for a terminology-shift.  Indeed, N. later observes

Much more work must be done on defining terms and concepts to conclude for or against supersessionism in Hebrews (p. 187).

The other essays in the volume too are very much worth a gander- though of course some are weaker than others, or just plain not-as-interesting.  But as is always the case, what interests one reader may well not interest another and what one finds uninteresting may be right up someone else’s alley.

For example, the section ‘Hebrews and the Modern World’ holds little of interest to me.  Especially off-putting is the essay by Edison Kalengyo, The Sacrifice of Christ and Ganda Sacrifice: A Contextual Interpretation in Relation to the Eucharist.  I’ve never been able to see such efforts as anything but eisegesis.  The supposed connection of the one to the other is  tenuous at best and depends utterly in the investigator’s imagination.  Modern practice can tell us absolutely nothing about ancient practice or belief.  Nothing.

That said, others may well be intrigued by K.’s ideas.

Other essays can only be described as quite stirring.  For instance, R. Moberly’s  Exemplars of Faith in Hebrews 11: Abel, is simply brilliant.  As is Harold Attridge’s God in Hebrews.

I too enjoyed Ken Schenck’s God Has Spoken: Hebrews’ Theology of the Scriptures (though I disagree with him that Hebrews was written as a Sermon.  No, it is much too complex for that.  And I disagree too with his eschatological emphasis.  I hear in it echoes of the old ghost of Schweitzer, now long gone from the library of Biblical Studies).

Overall, then, this is a remarkable collection and it deserves a place on every New Testament student’s bookshelf (in spite of the very few weaker members of its happy throng).

Thanks to Bob Cargill for the word.  You can read the transcript of the interview here.

And it’s good to chuckle early on a Saturday.  Believe me, there’s plenty to chuckle about too.

There’s no doubt that Calvin was the greatest systematic theologian of the 16th century.  He was, truth be told, aside from Melanchthon, the only one of note.  The other Reformers were too busy fighting the good fight against Rome to have time to systematize their theology in any extensive way.  Luther and Zwingli, the Reformers before the Reformer Calvin, wrote occassional pieces aimed at responding to immediate concerns.  Calvin, on the other hand, had the luxury of leisure (so to speak).

Calvin, as I’ve already said, was also the finest exegete of the lot.

But he wasn’t the finest person.  He lacked what both Luther and Zwingli had in abundance: a sense of their own smallness.  Calvin was, it seems, the sort of person, even moreso than Luther, who had to have his own way.  This made him difficult to be around and in many respects unpleasant.

Further, the Servetus episode blackened his character more than a little.  For while Zwingli sided with the Magistrates of Zurich when they saw fit to remove the Trouble-Makers, Calvin provoked the government of Geneva to carry out his personal vendetta.

But since no one’s perfect, Calvin can be forgiven his idiosyncracies.  He did more good than harm.  And he even did the world a favor by ridding it of that vile heretic anyway.

Calvin deserves our remembrance and our respect.  And dare I say it, even our love.

First, let every one in professing to pray turn thither all his thoughts and feelings, and be not (as is usual) distracted by wandering thoughts; because nothing is more contrary to the reverence due to God than that levity which bespeaks a mind too much given to license and devoid of fear.

Which is to say- Calvin’s sense of humor is as difficult to uncover as an honest politician in Washington, DC. Of course I realize that some suggest Calvin made wise-cracks and such in his various works- but one really has to impute humor to him where he was deadly serious.

How far sin has seized both on the mind and heart, we shall shortly see. Here I only wished briefly to observe, that the whole man, from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot, is so deluged, as it were, that no part remains exempt from sin, and, therefore, everything which proceeds from him is imputed as sin. Thus Paul says, that all carnal thoughts and affections are enmity against God, and consequently death (Rom. 8:7).

God, whose eye nothing escapes, and who regards not the outward appearance so much as purity of heart, under the prohibition of murder, adultery, and thefts includes wrath, hatred, lust, covetousness, and all other things of a similar nature. Being a spiritual Lawgiver, he speaks to the soul not less than the body. The murder which the soul commits is wrath and hatred; the theft, covetousness and avarice; and the adultery, lust.

Thus, for Calvin, hatred is itself murder, and just as serious as the taking of a human life.