This Week in Tov Unleashed

Today’s Saturday and it follows five active days on my blog, Tov Unleashed, a Substack Newsletter.

We began the week with a look at questions to ask before using Matthew 18 in cases of reconciliation:

In all these cases one must ask other questions:

What kind of sin are we talking about? Is it a sin like an insensitive remark that caused a wound or an aggravation or a grievance? How does the one offended size up the sin?

Is there a significant power differential between sinner and sinned-against?

To whom is the sinner responsible and accountable?

Does the victim feel coerced or comfortable with a one-on-one?

Is there a safe place for the sinned-against/victim to discuss the situation and find wisdom for moving forward?

Are there other passages in the Bible that speak more directly to the situation?

Then we opened the door yet again on 1 Timothy 2’s supposed gagging of women. Here’s a clip:

The words “gagged, forbidden, and restricted” come from a statement by my professor, James D.G. Dunn, in his commentary on Pastoral Epistles, where he wonders aloud what to do with a text like this in a world like ours.

So here we go again, with the keen realization that this text triggers some women about how they’ve been treated in churches by complementarian teaching and teachers. Fully realizing also that some males gloat in power and authority and find this text to be opportunity for conquest. We need some trauma-informed teaching on this one (see Adrienne’s post).

Wednesday we looked again at the fine new book by Aaron Griffith about the law and order “turn” in evangelicalism:

Billy Graham’s earliest ministry with Youth for Christ and then as he became a national evangelist (LA, NYC) focused on communism and crime, communists, criminals, and convicts. His gospel was the solution to America’s social decline and the increasing problem of juvenile delinquency. His gospel in the 40s, 50s, and 60s then was not tied exclusively to personal redemption but to social transformation. How? Christ changed the criminals into Christians.

The law-and-order theme that emphasized incarceration was not a part of those early ventures: “for evangelicals in the early postwar era, the ideal outcome for criminals was their conversion, not their conviction.”

We return again to Aaron Griffith, God’s Law and Order. I’m finding this book mesmerizing with his capacity to keep the story of evangelicalism coherent while tied to a very particular theme: its response to crime, esp among youths.

Thursday we began looking at Brent Strawn’s fine new helpful book about how so many misread the Old Testament:

Brent Strawn, an Old Testament professor, has heard them all. Preachers, teachers, students, and lay folks say things about the Old Testament that do not square with the Old Testament or the New Testament or the Christian tradition. But what they say carries lots of weight, so he takes 10 Mistruths on in his new book: Lies My Preacher Told Me.

I must tell one I heard routinely in my Sunday School classes growing up (and elsewhere): The Old Testament is for Jews; they live by works; we are Christians; we live by grace and faith. This was tied in my world to a dispensational reading of the Bible in which Moses stood for a covenant of works.

Mistruth three: the OT is over and one, obsolete. Here is the pet verse for the claim:

In speaking of “a new covenant,” he has made the first one obsolete. And what is obsolete and growing old will soon disappear (Heb 8:13).

Pretty strong words, those. For some this means the “new” covenant completely shelves the OT into a “Don’t go there!” or “Don’t bother with that!” Jesus’ antitheses in Matthew 5 (“you have said… but I say to you”) illustrate the obsolescence of the OT.

Then a lecture outline on concept maps:

One can discuss the varieties of stories at work in Israel by focusing on the major characters (Adam/Eve, Abraham, Moses, etc), events (creation, covenant, exodus, exile), and terms used to put it all together (covenant faithfulness, divine disciplines). We discussed one such story last week, the Kingdom story of Jesus.

But within every story are also three theological themes that get re-arranged by various groups.

The three themes are:

Theology: Who is God? What is God called?
Relation of God to Humans? Covenant
How are Covenant people to live? Torah: various forms of Torah faithfulness

God —> Covenant —> Torah

Each major group in Israel’s history – Maccabees, Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Zealots, Jesus followers, rabbis – works with each of these categories and each can take on a special term that expresses that spot in their relationships.

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