16 It happened that as we were going to the place of prayer, a slave-girl having a spirit of divination met us, who was bringing her masters much profit by fortune-telling.
17 Following after Paul and us, she kept crying out, saying, "These men are bond-servants of the Most High God, who are proclaiming to you the way of salvation."
18 She continued doing this for many days. But Paul was greatly annoyed, and turned and said to the spirit, "I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her!" And it came out at that very moment.
Acts 16.16-18
Last May the Most Reverend Katharine Jefferts Schori, who is the Presiding Bishop and Primate of The Episcopal Church, preached a sermon in Venezuela in which she mentioned this scene from Acts 16. Here is the relevant section:
We live with the continuing tension between holier impulses that encourage us to see the image of God in all human beings and the reality that some of us choose not to see that glimpse of the divine, and instead use other people as means to an end. We’re seeing something similar right now in the changing attitudes and laws about same-sex relationships, as many people come to recognize that different is not the same thing as wrong. For many people, it can be difficult to see God at work in the world around us, particularly if God is doing something unexpected.
There are some remarkable examples of that kind of blindness in the readings we heard this morning, and slavery is wrapped up in a lot of it. Paul is annoyed at the slave girl who keeps pursuing him, telling the world that he and his companions are slaves of God. She is quite right. She’s telling the same truth Paul and others claim for themselves. But Paul is annoyed, perhaps for being put in his place, and he responds by depriving her of her gift of spiritual awareness. Paul can’t abide something he won’t see as beautiful or holy, so he tries to destroy it. It gets him thrown in prison. That’s pretty much where he’s put himself by his own refusal to recognize that she, too, shares in God’s nature, just as much as he does – maybe more so! The amazing thing is that during that long night in jail he remembers that he might find God there – so he and his cellmates spend the night praying and singing hymns.
How bad does it have to be when the promoters of "same-sex relationships" have to not only debase the apostle Paul but also to praise evil spirits of divination! Paul's problem, according to Jefferts Schori, is that he "can't abide something he won't see as beautiful or holy"-- namely the spirit of divination. Paul is a bad guy--an abuser--because he "responds by depriving her of her gift of spiritual awareness." This is not only sickening exegesis but also a little ironic. As a woman Jefferts Schori might have been in a position to especially draw attention to the plight of this unnamed woman in Acts 16. Here is a woman possessed by an evil spirit and, to add to the misery, is being pimped out for profit by men. This tragic reality of women caught in miserable circumstances and then taken advantage of by greedy, unscrupulous men is repeated all over the world today. There might have been some good applications to draw from Acts 16 for our contemporary needs. Instead, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church chooses to castigate Paul, praise demon-inspired statements, and promote the cause of homosexuality. No wonder that Michael Bird argues that this is a Good Candidate for Worst Sermon Ever.
Also, be sure to see Timothy George's commentary and evaluation of this sermon in his First Things article entitled A Tale of Two Demons.
Here it comes again--just in time for Easter--the latest attempt to push a "new" version of Christianity under the guise of Gnostic texts. A New New Testament is the brain-child of Hal Taussig who is a professor at Union Theological Seminary and a pastor in the United Methodist Church. A New New Testament (ANNT) contains the 27 canonical New Testament books as well as an additional 10 more books. Here is the promotional video for ANNT:
With scholars like Karen King (of the Gospel of Jesus' Wife fame--see here for details) and John Dominic Crossan you know this is not going to be any where near orthodox nor historically credible.
As can be seen from the video this newer grouping of books was put together by a "council of spiritual leaders"--a full 19 of them. Sixteen of them are self-confessed Christians and three are non-Christians, according to an interview with Taussig over at Amazon. One can be a little skeptical that a group of 19 "spiritual leaders" should really be considered a "council." Michael Bird has these appropriate words to say:
Okay, I’m all for encouraging the study of extra-biblical texts, esp. early Christian literature from the second and third centuries. But you CAN”T just gather a council of nineteen buddies and decide to put new books in the New Testament. It’s a great marketing ploy, but these folks don’t seem to have a grain of catholic or canonical respect.
So what is included in this new version of the New Testament? Of course, the Gospel of Thomas is included--it's placed first in the whole package. So for one's daily devotions one can read saying 114:
Simon Peter said to them, "Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life." Jesus said, "I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven."
And these are supposed to be the "more inclusive" texts?
There is also ThePrayer of the Apostle Paul. I went looking in my copy of The Nag Hammadi Library (edited by James M. Robinson) and found the following words by Dieter Mueller introducing The Prayer of the Apostle Paul:
The short text is of unknown provenance. Its general gnostic affinities are clear. Details such as the reference to the "psychic God" (A,31) may indicate Valentinian connections. That association in turn suggests a date of origin between the second half of the second century and the end of the third century. (p. 27)
I'm thinking that Paul didn't write this or pray this prayer.
There is The Thunder: Perfect Mind which doesn't even mention Christ and may be a pre-Christian text.
There is The Gospel of Truth with its "clear affinities to the Valentinian school" and "some scholars have suggested that the Gnostic teacher [Valentinus] himself was the author" (p. 38 in The Nag Hammadi Library). So who is Valentinus? New Testament specialist Ben Witherington in his excellent book The Gospel Code: Novel Claims About Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Da Vinci (IVP, 2004) gives a brief description:
Valentinus, certainly one of the most prominent names associated with Gnosticism, began as an orthodox monk in the second century A.D. After he lost an election to be a bishop, he went in a Gnostic direction, which his contemporary Tertullian called a lapse into heresy. His real influence in terms of Gnosticism came in the last third of the second century. (Remember, there is no evidence that Gnosticism existed before the second half of the second century). So there was perhaps a couple of centuries of development before Gnosticism was officially repudiated, but it is clear enough from Tertullian and Irenaeus that it was already deemed heretical by major figures in the second century. (p. 85)
Why is it that some scholars continued to be fascinated with the Gnostic texts and alternative versions of "early" Christianity? In a previous post last year I mentioned the work of Karen King and her interest with the Gnostic texts. I wrote the following:
According to King, there were alternate versions of Christianity and over time the forces of "orthodoxy" silenced other versions of Christianity. This is nothing new for Dr. King. She has been arguing this thesis for a number of years. For example, in discussing the Nag Hammadi texts which contain a number of Gnostic "gospels" she has written:
These writings are of inestimable importance in drawing aside the curtain of later perspectives behind which Christian beginnings lie, and the exposing the vitality and diversity of early Christian life and reflection. They demonstrate that reading the story of Christian origins backward through the lens of canon and creed has given an account of the formation of only one kind of Christianity, and even that only partially. The fuller picture lets us see more clearly how the later Christianity of the New Testament and the Nicene Creed arose out of many different possibilities through experimentation, compromise, and very often conflict. From her book The Gospel of Mary Magdala (Polebridge, 2003), p. 157 as quoted in Ben Witherington The Gospel Code (IVP, 2004), p. 118.
New Testament scholar Ben Witherington effectively answers this perspective when he responds directly to Karen King:
Did you catch the sleight of hand in this analysis? Forget altogether the fourth and fifth century councils and the formation of the creeds. The essential question is, What were the earliest documents (and what do they say)? The answer is the New Testament itself. We have no documents earlier than these, and as any good historian knows, the documents closest to the source of a movement are likely to be most revealing about its origins.
The documents written by eyewitnesses or those in contact with eyewitnesses are our primary sources, and these documents happen to be in the New Testament, plus a few other likely first-century documents, such as the Didache and 1 Clement. There is no good evidence that Gnosticism was one of the dueling forms of Christianity in the first century A.D. Thus the degree of diversity that King thinks existed in the earliest churches is not historically demonstrable. There is no evidence of Gnostics or Marcionites in the first-century church.
In King's view the earliest Christians modeled wide diversity, and we are called to "emulate their struggles to make Christianity in our own day." So the agenda is laid bare: it's our job not merely to rewrite the history of ancient Christianity but to remake modern Christianity. This clarion call needs to be seen for what it is. It's not simply a rejection of the canonizing process and creedal orthodoxy but also of the limits of first-century Christian diversity in favor of a much broader and more pluralistic model. King calls us to reject our earliest historical sources, the New Testament, as the basis of defining the normative character of the Christian faith. It plays right into our culture's belief that "the new is true." Ben Witherington The Gospel Code (IVP, 2004), p. 118-119.
These ancient fragments become, for some scholars and others, vehicles for contemporary agendas.
This is agenda is also seen in the words of Hal Taussig in answering questions on Amazon:
Q. What will Christians learn from A New New Testament?
A. They’ll learn that their early roots are deeper, more diverse, and more widespread than the general story of how Christianity began is told. Perhaps most importantly for Christians, they will be able to claim a set of new resources for their 21st century life. A New New Testament opens the door to a wider set of expressions, practices, stories, and teachings than they have previously known.
Q. What will non-Christians learn from A New New Testament?
A. Non-Christians will learn that some of the narrow-minded doctrines of orthodox Christianity and the old-fashioned ideas of the traditional New Testament are not the only way that the early Christ movements expressed themselves.
Did you catch that?--"narrow-minded doctrines of orthodox Christianity and the old-fashioned ideas of the traditional New Testament"--hardly detached and "objective" analysis. This is an endeavor with an agenda.
The Jesus of the canonical gospels is too much for some people. But rather than reject Him outright they seek to re-make Jesus into something more culturally palatable. This is done under the banner of "scholarship" but the attempt to tie the historical Jesus to a Gnostic portrait continues to be overthrown in the scholarly literature. But how many Americans are aware of this thorough debunking of this Gnostic lunacy? The church needs to be ready to speak the true gospel about the true Jesus as revealed in the canonical New Testament.
You would think people would learn...setting the date for the return of Jesus Christ is not a good idea. The most recent entrant into this fool's errand is Tim Warner's The Time of the End.
On a blog promoting this book (see HERE) I posted this comment:
In reference to being able to know the time of Christ's return a great and well-authenticated Bible scholar said this:
"It is evident that, in the minds of most Christians today, Matt. 24:36 is believed to prohibit anyone from being able to see the day of our Lord's return approaching. Matt. 24:36 states that 'No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.' In looking at this statement, you can easily see that it is impossible to know the exact day and hour of the Lord Jesus' return....However, this does not preclude or prevent the faithful from knowing the year, the month, and the week of the Lord's return."
This model biblical scholar further stressed the importance of his analysis by carefully corroborating his model of prediction with many others. He wrote:
"We see many people of God coming up with the same time, some by dreams, some by visions, some by words from God, and others have calculated it out as we have. Irregardless of how the information is obtained it all agrees that Jesus is coming September 1988. Unlike the wrong date-setters of the past who were only single voices, this message has many voices."
*Edgar C. Whisenant "88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be In 1988" pp. 2-3, 49
