Barack Obama’s Prayer to God

Arutz Sheva is reporting that the publication of the prayer Barack Obama left in the Kotel (the Jewish name given to the Western Wall in Jerusalem) was a PR stunt. The publication of the prayer has caused a furor in Israel.

Here is an excerpt of the article publish in Arutz Sheva:

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama's campaign seems to have purposely leaked the contents of the note that he placed in the Kotel, web magazine Israel Insider wrote Tuesday. While Israel's Hebrew newspaper Maariv came under fire for publishing the note, "it now appears that Maariv had collaborated with the Obama campaign in getting the 'private' prayer, with its 'modest' supplication to the Lord, out to the public, buffing his Christian credentials and showing his "humility," the web magazine said.

Last Friday, on the morrow of Obama's visit to the Kotel, Maariv published a close-up picture of the note written by Obama to G-d, supposedly after a yeshiva boy took it from the crack between the Kotel stones in which Obama deposited it. Maariv's competitor Yediot Acharonot slammed the paper for violating Obama's privacy.

In a statement issued following the public outcry over the leak, Maariv said that "Barack Obama's note was approved for publication in the international media even before he put it in the Kotel, a short time after he wrote it at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem." A third newspaper, Haaretz, quoted Maariv as saying that "Obama submitted a copy of the note to media outlets when he left his hotel in Jerusalem."

Apparently unaware that the leaking of the note was coordinated by the Obama campaign and Maariv, Kotel Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitz called the publication a "sacrilegious action" which "deserves sharp condemnation and represents a desecration of the holy site." He stated: "Notes which are placed in the Western Wall are between the person and his Maker; Heaven forbid that one should read them or use them in any way. The custom of placing notes between the stones of the Western Wall is ancient and is used as a means of expression by a person praying to his Creator."

If this report is true and Obama’s prayer was a PR stunt, then, I have to conclude that he forgot the words of Christ:

“And when you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites. For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly” (Matthew 6:5-6).

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

UPDATE:

Zvika Krieger, in a blog posted in The New Republic said that the story is false. I want to thank Iyov for calling my attention to this update. However, I have read and heard others say that the prayer was made public for political purpose. After you watch the YouTube video above, you must decide whether the release of the prayer was politically motivated.

Tags: Barack Obama, Kotel, Prayer, Wailing Wall

The Amarna Letters and A Cry for Help

Haaretz has an excellent article analyzing recent archaeological excavations being conducted at Beit Shemesh. Some of the findings relate the ruler of the city writing one of the Amarna Letters requesting help from Egypt in her struggle against the Apiru. The following are excerpts from the article:

To the king my lord and my sun: These are the words of your servant, Belit-nesheti [literally, "mistress of lions/lionesses"]. I fall at the king's feet seven times over. I must tell the king that this country is witnessing [acts of] hostility and that the land of the king, my lord, will be lost forever."
. . . . .

A Canaanite queen from one of the cities in Palestine's lowland sent this desperate request in the 14th century B.C.E. to Pharaoh, king of Egypt. The name of the city ruled by Belit-nesheti is not mentioned in this letter or in others that depict violent acts that aroused in her a justified feeling that she was facing a dire threat.

. . . . .

Belit-nesheti's letters are part of a collection of letters written in cuneiform in the Akkadian language (the lingua franca of that era) on clay tablets, that was discovered in the late 19th century in Egypt in Tel Amarna, which is located midway between Cairo and Luxor.

. . . . .

Her cries for assistance from Pharaoh, who was during this period the supreme ruler of the region and of a number of Canaanite cities, elicited no response, as indicated by the findings that have recently been discovered in Tel Beit Shemesh

. . . . .

If the Canaanite city that is slowly being uncovered at Tel Beit Shemesh is, in fact, the city ruled by Belit-nesheti, these impressive archaeological findings supply fascinating evidence of the day-to-day reality in Canaan that is depicted in the Amarna documents.

The article is very informative and provides valuable information about the conditions in Canaan at the time of the religious reforms of King Amenhotep IV, also known as Akhenaten.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Archaeology, Beit Shemesh, Tel-Amarna

Cuil: A New Search Engine

There is a new search engine that promises to become better than Google. Cuil has indexed 120 billion Web pages. According to its creator, that is at least three times the size of Google’s index.

Read the story about the new search engine here.

Visit the new search engine here.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Cuil, Google, Search Engines

An Archaeological Joke

Recently I read a joke that has to do with archaeology. I thought the joke was funny. What do you think? Here is the joke:

An archaeologist was digging in the Negev desert in Israel and came upon a casket containing a mummy. After examining it, he called the curator of a prestigious natural history museum.

“I've just discovered a 3,000 year old mummy of a man who died of heart failure!” the excited explorer exclaimed.

The curator replied, “Bring him in. We will check it out and see if your calculations are correct.”

A week later, the amazed curator called the archaeologist. “I don't know how you guessed so accurately, but you were right on target about the mummy's age and cause of death. How in the world did you know?”

For the punch line, click here.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary


Tags: Archaeology, Joke, Mummy

The Jewish Temple at Elephantine

The Jewish Settlement at Elephantine

Stephen Gabriel Rosenberg, a fellow of the W.F. Albright Institute of Archeological Research in Jerusalem, has written an excellent article on the Jewish Temple at Elephantine. The article was published recently in The Jerusalem Post. The following is an excerpt from the article:

t is not well known that there were two Jewish temples in ancient Egypt. They do not form part of our traditional history, which concentrates on the going down into Egypt and the coming out of it, as based on the Torah accounts, for which there is little or no contemporary corroboration. But the two temples, though well attested by contemporary sources, have received little attention from our tradition.

One of these temples has been known about for nearly 2,000 years from Josephus Flavius and the Talmud, and its site was claimed to have been found just 100 years ago, but it has now been lost again. The other was never known of till just a hundred years ago and its site has only recently been discovered. The first is the Temple of Onias at Leontopolis dating to about 200 BCE, and the second is the Temple of Elephantine dating to 300 years earlier, to about 500 BCE.

******

Two major questions remain. Where had the Jews come from in the sixth century and where did they go after 400 BCE? The simple answer to the first question is that they would have come after the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BCE and gone down to Egypt with Jeremiah after the murder of the governor Gedaliah. But Porten thinks they must have come much earlier, at the time when King Manasseh defiled the Jerusalem temple, to be able to find the resources to settle and build a temple well before 525 BCE. We know the shrine existed before the invasion by Cambyses, as the papyri claim that he destroyed many Egyptian temples but not the Jewish one.

I think the Jews came from the Northern Kingdom after the fall of Samaria in 722 BCE. They were first deported to Assyria and then to Babylon, where they were used as mercenaries and later deployed to Egypt. This is supported by the fact that the shrine at Elephantine has strong similarities in layout and dimensions to the Tabernacle that may have stood at Shiloh, and which would have been retained in the folk memory of the Northern Israelites more than the image of the Temple of Jerusalem.

The article is very informative. Read the article by clicking here.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Elephantine, Jewish Temple

The Mezuzah and the Law

Can an observant Jew post the mezuzah on the outside door of a condo if building regulations prohibit signs and objects on outside doors?

Read the decision of the Court of Appeals here.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tag: Mezuzah

A Plea for Help

The General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church in New York is facing a major financial challenge. The seminary has a $30 million debt and declining denominational support, increased fixed costs, maintenance needs, and decreasing numbers of students.

According to a letter written by the president of the seminary, General Theological Seminary spends about $8 million a year, and brings in about $5 million. The difference is drawn from the institution's dwindling $20 million endowment.

The president has sent a letter to alumni and parishioners saying: "The time to help the General Seminary is now."

The problem faced by General Seminary is the same problem faced by Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, another seminary of the Episcopal Church, this one located in Chicago. On February 20, 2008, the administration of Seabury-Western Seminary decided that it would no longer admit students into their program.

It is sad that the Episcopal Church in the USA is struggling to recruit students to attend their seminaries and that the denomination is not supporting their theological schools with enough funds for them to carry out their mission of preparing men and women for the ministry. In the end, it is the cause of Christ that suffers.

I hope the General Theological Seminary will find the help it needs.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tag: Episcopal Church, General Seminary

The "Third Day" and Gabriel's Revelation

Much is being written about Gabriel’s Revelation and the mention of resurrection on the third day. I have not written on this controversial tablet yet, but may do so in the future.

James Carroll has a very good perspective on this controversy in a column he wrote for The Boston Globe. The following is an excerpt from his column:

A staple of pulp fiction is the archeological discovery that blows traditional Christian faith out of the water. The mummified corpse of Jesus will do, as will, say, some of kind DNA proof that he had children. It is as if the war between science and religion can be resolved (against religion, natch) by scientific breakthrough.

This conceit trivializes both belief and rationality, but it is based on one of the astounding developments of the modern era: the way in which age-old notions of religious faith have indeed been transformed by inventions of the mind - not only archeology, but also scientific historical criticism.

Today's believers, especially Christians, know more about the authentic origins of their faith than people who lived close to the time of those origins. The latest example of such challenging discovery hit The New York Times front page last week, under the headline "Ancient Tablet Ignites Debate On Messiah and Resurrection."

Read Carroll’s column by clicking here.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tag: Archaeology, Gabriel’s Revelation, James Carroll

The City of Jericho and Tuberculosis

Archaeologists and medical researchers are examining human bones found by Kathleen Kenyon at the site of the ancient city of Jericho in order to develop treatments for tuberculosis.

According to a news report published in the Guardian, a group of Israeli, Palestinian, and German researchers, will be using the results of the work of British archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon in the old city of Jericho to conduct their research. In her excavations, Kenyon found bones from thousands of humans; some of these bones are 8,000 years old.

When researchers studied these bones, they discovered many of them had lesions, indicating that many of the inhabitants of Jericho suffered from tuberculosis.

In jest, the writer of the news report wrote that the walls of Jericho may have come down, not with a trumpet blast, but with an epidemic of coughing.

Tuberculosis can be a very infectious disease. People become infected with prolonged contact with people who are infected with the disease. The disease can also be transmitted by eating meat if the cattle is infected with TB. In the case of Jericho, one wonders how the disease originated among the city’s population.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Archaeology, Jericho, Tuberculosis

A Sex Curse

Archaeologists have discovered a lead tablet containing a sex curse. The tablet was found in the old city kingdom of Amathus in Cyprus.

The curse was written in Greek and it reads:

"May your penis hurt when you make love."

I wonder what this guy did to deserved such a curse.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Archaeology, Curse, Sex

The Lambeth Conference: A Division in the Anglican Church?

On July 16, the leaders of the Anglican community will meet in England for their once-a-decade meeting. One of the main topics to be discussed at the Lambeth Conference will be the issue of homosexuality. It is an issue that may divide the Anglican community. Today, more than half of all Anglicans live in Africa and the African church will play an important role at the Conference.

According to an article published in Newsweek, the African Anglican community sees the issues confronting the Anglican Church from an Old Testament perspective:

Worldwide, more than half of all Anglicans now live in Africa. And in sharp contrast to the relatively liberal Church of England (and its U.S. counterpart, the Episcopal Church) the African Anglicans preach a fervent fundamentalist line steeped in the Old Testament message of a stern, unbending deity.

Such strict orthodoxy plays well in modern Africa. In a time of AIDS, political turmoil, genocidal wars and economic chaos, believers may be seeking not just the comfort of religion but also the certainty that goes with unambiguous moral precepts, according to some religious scholars. If the constant woes of the Israelites as described in the Old Testament are remote to the Anglicans of North America and Britain, they may be grimly familiar to their co-religionists in Rwanda and Nigeria.

The Anglican African community has taken a firm position against the issue of homosexuality. Will their position divide the Anglican community? I do know what will happen at the Lambeth Conference but we must hope for the best. Christians everywhere need to pray for our brothers and sister in the Anglican community as they make important decisions that will affect their work and mission in the world.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tag: Anglican Church

Protection Against the Evil Eye

The Israel Antiquities Authority has announced that a rare marble discus was found in the antiquities site of Yavne-Yam, next to Palmahim beach. The 2,500 year old marble discus is dated to the fifth-fourth century BCE. This ancient discus was used by sailors to protect ancient ships from the Evil Eye.

Visit the web page of the Israel Antiquities Authority to read the news release and see a picture of the discus and an ancient painting which depicts how such object was used.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tag: Archaeology, Evil Eye

Another Archaeological Fake

The Phaistos Disk

The picture above, known as the Phaistos Disk (or Phaistos Disc) is a clay disk that, according to some scholars, comes from the Minoan palace of Phaistos. The Phaistos Disk has been dated to the middle or late Minoan Bronze Age (2nd millennium BC). For years, archaeologists have debated the purpose and meaning of the Phaistos Disk.

According to an article published in Times Online, American scholars have declared that the Phaistos Disk is a hoax:

Some say that its 45 mysterious symbols are the words of a 4,000-year-old poem, or perhaps a sacred text. Others contest that they are a magical inscription, a piece of ancient music or the world's oldest example of punctuation.

But now an American scholar believes that the markings on the Phaistos Disc, one of archaeology's most famous unsolved mysteries, mean nothing at all — because the disc is a hoax.

The existence of archaeological fakes is a problem that the scholarly world must deal with from time to time. A thermoluminescence test, a way of dating clay objects, would solve the problem of authenticity. However, Greek authorities have refused to give permission to American scholars to examine the disk.

So, the mystery will continue.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tag: Archaeology, Phaistos Disk

The Serenity Prayer

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

For many years, this beautiful prayer above, known as “The Serenity Prayer,” was thought to be the work of Reinhold Niebuhr, Professor of Practical Theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York.

According to Niebuhr’s daughter, Elisabeth Sifton, her father first used this prayer in 1943 in a sermon during a Sunday service at a church in Heath, Massachusetts.

In an article to be published in the Yale Alumni Magazine, Fred R. Shapiro, associate library director and lecturer at Yale Law School, says that forms of the prayer have been used as far back as 1936 and were always used by women.

To read the details of the controversy, click here.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Reinhold Niebuhr, Serenity Prayer

Evangelicals and God

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life has published a major survey on religious life in America. The survey, U. S. Religious Landscape Survey, was an attempt at understanding the beliefs and practices of religious and non-religious people in the USA. The Pew Forum surveyed 35,000 Americans and compiled the results. A Summary of Key Findings is available free online in PDF format.

In a previous post I looked at a section of the survey and commented on how atheists, agnostics, and secular people responded to the questions about God. In the present post I will discuss evangelicals and their views about God. The survey also deals with the beliefs of mainline churches, black churches, Catholics, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Orthodox churches. In this post I will only discuss the evangelical churches because of my interest in the evangelical movement in the USA.

The survey provides the following information about evangelicals:

1. Evangelicals view other religions

57% believe that many religions can lead to eternal life
53% believe that there is more than one true way to interpret the teachings of their religion

2. Evangelicals and God

99% believe in God. Of these:
79% believe in a personal God
13% believe in an impersonal God
7% don’t know

3. Certainty about believing in God

99% believe in God. Of these:
90% absolutely certain
9% less certain

4. Belief in Heaven and Hell

86% believe in heaven
82% believe in hell

5. Prayer and Meditation

92% pray at least weekly
46% meditate at least weekly

The results of the Pew survey deserve careful consideration. Any committed evangelical will look at these numbers and conclude that something is wrong with the conclusions of the survey. As I mentioned in my previous post, these numbers may indicate that the survey was poorly designed and that the results are distorted and do not really reflect the views of those surveyed. It is also possible that questions, methodology in polling, and the sample size of those surveyed also skewed the results. It is even possible that many people misunderstood the intent of the questions.

Take the case of universalism. The survey reports that 57% of evangelicals believe that many religions can lead to eternal life. But, as the Baptist Press reports, many American Protestants believe that the word “religion” can also mean “denominational affiliation.” Thus, Scott McConnell, in the new release published by Baptist Press, said: “But the way they worded their question may have had some impact; many people think of ‘denomination’ when they hear ‘religion,’ so it isn’t that surprising that a Lutheran could think a Methodist would also go to heaven or a Catholic could think that a Protestant would go to heaven.”

The numbers of evangelicals who don’t believe in heaven or hell or in a personal God or who have a tendency toward universalism may reflect a problem in the evangelical movement in the United States: the problem of identity.

Northern Seminary’s Mission Statement says: “Northern Baptist Theological Seminary affirms its evangelical heritage through its commitments to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and the authority of Scripture.” So, several years ago, Northern Baptist Seminary adopted a slogan to place the seminary within the evangelical community. Northern Seminary adopted the “Boldly Evangelical” slogan to position the seminary theologically. However, the slogan raised a number of questions. What does it mean to be “boldly evangelical”? Who is an evangelical?

The last question generated a lot of discussion. The late Bob Webber, my colleague here a Northern Seminary, conducted a study to discover what is meant by the word “evangelical.” In what follows, I quote a portion of Bob Webber’s observation on evangelicalism. Webber wrote:

Evangelicalism is characterized by unity and diversity. All evangelicals are unified in their commitment to the Lordship of Christ and to the authority of scripture. But within evangelicalism there is a great diversity. Dallas [Seminary] is dispensational, Calvin [Seminary] is Reformed, Asbury [Seminary] is Wesleyan, Fuller [Seminary] is Church Growth, Associates Biblical Seminary is Mennonite and so on. Then, beyond this denominational diversity, we can identify different streams of evangelicals – the intellectual stream, the mega-church stream, the emergent church stream, the Pentecostal stream and so on.

That is the problem the Pew survey probably never addressed. Who were these evangelicals Pew surveyed? Evangelicals can be Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Pentecostals, Church of Christ, Reformed, and so on. I even know some Catholics who identify themselves as evangelicals.

Within this diversity of denominational affiliation many people can call themselves evangelicals without standing for basic evangelical principles.

The members of the Evangelical Theological Society is a group which calls themselves evangelicals. To join the society, members must subscribe annually to the Doctrinal Basis of the Society. Among the doctrinal statements members must accept, one deals with the Bible and another with the doctrine of God:

The Bible alone, and the Bible in its entirety, is the Word of God written and is therefore inerrant in the autographs.

God is a Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each an uncreated person, one in essence, equal in power and glory.

Members also must accept the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. I doubt that anyone who signs this doctrinal statement or accepts the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy would deny the existence of God or deny that God is a personal being.

The variety of denominational affiliations within the evangelical movement will certainly skew the results of the survey. Members of the Church of Christ and of the Baptist, Lutheran, and Pentecostal churches may classify themselves as evangelicals but they believe different things and these differences in beliefs probably influenced how the questions in the survey were answered.

One thing about the survey deserves close consideration. According to the survey, 99% of evangelicals believe in God. Although the report emphasizes that the numbers may not add up to 100% due to rounding, the survey says that 1% of evangelical do not believe in God. This means that 1% of evangelicals are atheists. This is alarming. Who are these wolves in sheep’s clothing who call themselves evangelicals and yet do not believe in God?

Can an evangelical be an atheist? According to U. S. Religious Landscape Survey, the answer is yes. Amazing!

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Evangelicals, God, Pew Survey

A God Who Suffers - Part 2

To read Part 1 of this post click here.

All these references (the ones mentioned at the end of Part 1) which indicate that God enters into the sufferings of his people are affirmed by the statement of a prophet who spoke out of the experience of exile: “In all their distress he too was distressed. . . . In his love and mercy he redeemed them” (Isaiah 63:9 NIV). An implication of the prophetic words is that Yahweh can and does participate in the suffering of the world, not only as one who causes it, but also as one who is affected by it.

The suffering of God in the Old Testament finds its finest expression in Hosea’s description of God’s heartbroken fatherly anguish over his prodigal child, Israel: “How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel? How can I treat you like Admah? How can I make you like Zeboiim? My heart is changed within me; all my compassion is aroused” (Hosea 11:8 NIV).

The suffering of God is also expressed in the compassionate longing of a husband who desires reconciliation with his unfaithful wife.

Yahweh feels abandoned by Israel like a husband who is abandoned by his wife. The text reveals God as the one who was injured and offended by his unfaithful wife: “The Lord said to me, ‘Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another and is an adulteress. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites’” (Hosea 3:1 NIV).

It is this picture of a suffering God who is intimately bound to his people which is the central focus of the Old Testament. This view of a God who suffers with, for, and because of his people is expressed throughout the Old Testament, especially in the messages of Isaiah, Hosea, and Jeremiah.

The idea of a suffering God is especially true in the life and ministry of Jeremiah. Jeremiah’s personal pain and his compassion for the people find their source in the love of God for Israel. Jeremiah experienced God's pain because of the rebellion of Israel and he tried to convey that reality to the people through his own grief and pain.

The God of the Old Testament is not absent from the world and is not detached from human affairs. God is intimately involved in the world and he chooses to enter into human history. God wills to be with humanity in bad as well as good times: “The Lord said, ‘I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey’” (Exodus 3:7-8 NIV).

As a result of his involvement with his creation, God participates in the misery of humanity. His pain for the world is never the sympathetic view of the uninvolved onlooker, but it is the genuine pain of one who is directly affected by the suffering of those who suffer and who takes upon himself the burden of the people. As Fretheim wrote (p. 39): “God is affected in many ways by what happens on earth.”

The opening speech in the book of Isaiah (Isaiah 1:2-9) deals not with the anger of God, but with the sorrow of God; it deals with the plight of a father who has been abandoned by his children. Isaiah 5:1-7 provides an additional example of the pain of God because of the rebellion of Israel. The “Song of the Vineyard,” reveals the wonderment of God whose care for the vineyard has been of no avail: “What more could have been done for my vineyard than I have done for it?” (Isaiah 5:4). Here, God himself says that he is at a loss trying to explain the rebellion of his people. God’s sorrow rather than the people's tragedy is the theme of this song. God's grief and disappointment are revealed in his being hurt at the thought of having to abandon his vineyard in which he had labored and placed so much hope for good things.

Thus, divine suffering is seen throughout the writings of the prophets and in many other passages of the Old Testament. God’s suffering is seen in his disappointment with Israel:

“What wrong did your fathers find in me that they went far from me, and went after worthlessness, and became worthless?” (Jeremiah 2:5 RSV).

“What shall I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah?” (Hosea 6:4 RSV).

“My people, what have I done to you? How have I burdened you? Answer me” (Micah 6:3 NIV).

“Why do these people keep going along their self-destructive path, refusing to turn back, even though I have warned them?” (Jeremiah 8:5).

In trying to explain God’s questions, Fretheim wrote (p. 56): “These questions seem to imply a genuine loss on God’s part as to what might explain the faithlessness of the people.” God’s disappointment with his people gives occasion to these divine laments and expresses his pain at the rebellion of Israel.

God suffers because of his love for Israel. He experiences pain because of their unfaithfulness. God’s suffering teaches us an important lesson about God. Because God loves his people and desires their well-being, God identifies himself with their suffering. This identification of God with his people makes God vulnerable to being hurt, but it is this divine suffering that will motivate Israel to repent and turn to God.

To be continued.

Reference:

Fretheim, Terence. The Suffering of God: An Old Testament Perspective. Overtures to Biblical Theology. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: God, Suffering

A God Who Suffers - Part 1

In my previous post on the suffering of God, I wrote that the God of the Old Testament is a God who chooses to identify himself with his people in their suffering. The view that God chooses to identify with Israel and enter their history raises an important question: does God suffer with his people? According to the Old Testament perspective, God cannot do otherwise. Yahweh is related to Israel through the covenant established at Sinai. Therefore, he is directly involved with Israel in their misfortunes and their failures.

In his book, What Are They Saying About the Theology of Suffering (New York: Paulist Press, 1992), Lucien Richard summarizes what biblical scholars and theologians have written on the biblical view of suffering. In his summary of Walter Brueggemann’s view on the theology of the pain of God, Lucien wrote: “From within the covenantal relationship with God, Israel senses that its God is not only an enforcer and a legitimator of existing structures, but is also one who embraces Israel’s pain” (p. 16).

By embracing the pain of his people, God’s own self is transformed. God takes on the pain of Israel in his own person because of his compassion for them. E. S. Gerstenberger wrote: “In the Old Testament . . . suffering can be regarded as a means of expiation. A deity has been injured through human misconduct. He becomes angry, strikes back, and brings disaster upon the culprit and his community. But because the deity in principle stands in a friendly, and even familiar, relationship to the sufferer, the suffering will soften the wrath of God. God cannot bear to see his own people in misery; his justifiable indignation is transformed into compassion” (p. 107).

The God of the Old Testament saves and blesses Israel because of this covenantal relationship that is guaranteed by God’s hesed, his faithful love for Israel. Because of this special relationship established with the nation, God is united with his people and participates in their life and their misery. This special relationship is affirmed in the Old Testament in the emotional language of human suffering. As a partner in this relationship, God assumes the function of not only Israel’s God, but also her closest friend, a friend who takes upon himself part of the burden of his suffering friends (cf. John 15:13).

The Old Testament writers describe God’s response to Israel’s sins and rebellions in words that already express within themselves an element of divine suffering. One example is the rebellion of Israel at the occasion of the building of the golden calf in Exodus 32. At Sinai, Israel rebelled against God by being unfaithful to God and by violating the demands of the covenant which required exclusive allegiance to him.

God’s response to Israel’s apostasy was one of indignation. God told Moses: “Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation” (Exodus 32:10). Israel had entered into a relationship with Yahweh and now that relationship had been broken. God was affected by Israel’s disloyalty. God’s words to Moses, “Let me alone,” represents God’s desire to suffer grief in isolation.

This language of divine suffering is designed to describe a faith which views God in terms of historical involvement and relatedness with his people. To Israel, God was not an impersonal being nor was he a God that was above and beyond the world. To the contrary, he was a God who was with them (Isaiah 7:14), the Holy One who lived among the people (Hosea 11:9). “For what great nation has a god as near to them as the Lord our God is near to us whenever we call on him?” (Deuteronomy 4:7). This is the reason Israel ascribed personal characteristics to God, such as love, anger, anguish, patience, jealousy, and joy.

In addition, many other characteristics attributed to God reflect the fact that when God responds to human sin and rebellion, his response also contains the element of divine suffering. When God deals with humanity, God expresses a variety of reactions:

God is jealous: “Do not worship any other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God” (Exodus 34:14 NIV).

When God punishes, punishment is sometimes done out of a sense of injured honor: “Then my anger will cease and my wrath against them will subside, and I will be avenged. And when I have spent my wrath upon them, they will know that I the Lord have spoken in my zeal” (Ezekiel 5:13 NIV).

God becomes angry and enraged: “How long, O Lord? Will you be angry forever? How long will your jealousy burn like fire?” ( Psalm 79:5 NIV).

God is grieved by human sins: “The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain” (Genesis 6:6 NIV).

God changes his mind: “And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people” (Exodus 32:14 NRSV).

God is affected by the suffering of his people: “Whenever the Lord raised up judges for them, the Lord was with the judge, and he saved them from the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge; for the Lord was moved to pity by their groaning because of those who afflicted and oppressed them” (Judges 2:18 RSV).

God cries out like a person in pain: “The Lord goes forth like a soldier, like a warrior he stirs up his fury; he cries out, he shouts aloud, he shows himself mighty against his foes. For a long time I have held my peace, I have kept still and restrained myself; now I will cry out like a woman in labor, I will gasp and pant” (Isaiah 42:13-14 NRSV).

Gerstenberger wrote: “All such affirmations in the Old Testament are deeply rooted in the emotional language of human suffering. ‘Pity’ (e.g., Hos. 2:23) is a new turning toward a beloved person that is rooted in keen anxiety; ‘regret’ (e.g., Gen. 6:6) is the painful concession to have failed in one’s plan. Thus for the Israelite God’s suffering is, strange as it may sound, precisely like human suffering, a bitter experience that injures body and spirit . . . God’s suffering results from the coinciding of human and divine action . . . His pain is the consequence of human misconduct” (p. 100).

To be continued in Part 2

References:

Gerstenberger, E. S. and W. Schrage, Suffering. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1977.

Richard, Lucien. What Are They Saying About the Theology of Suffering. New York: Paulist Press, 1992.


Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: God, Suffering

Atheists and God

I was finally able to read the summary of key findings of the U. S. Religious Landscape Survey published by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. My sabbatical research has not allowed me to do much blogging nor extra reading outside my area of research.

The survey conducted by the Pew Forum is a major study on how Americans view religion and how they approach their faith. The survey was taken among 35,000 Americans of all faiths and ideologies in order to ascertain the beliefs and practices of religious and non-religious people.

Both Duane Smith and Iyov have already commented on this survey. I invite you to visit their blogs and read what they have written about the survey. What I want to do here is give my perspective on the survey. My post will be divided into two sections. In the present post I want to comment on what the survey has to say about atheists and God. In an upcoming post I will discuss what the survey has to say about evangelicals and God.

The U. S. Religious Landscape Survey reports the following results:

1. Do you believe in the existence of God?

Atheists:
21% believe in God. Of these:
6% believe in a personal God
12% believe in an impersonal force
3% don’t know

Agnostics:
55% believe in God. Of these:
14% believe in a personal God
36% believe in an impersonal force
5% don’t know

Secular people not affiliated with a religious group
66% believe in God. Of these:
20% believe in a personal God
40% believe in an impersonal God
7% don’t know

2. Certainty of Belief in God or Universal Spirit

Atheists:
21% believe in God
8% absolutely certain
13% less certain

Agnostics
55% believe in God
17% absolutely certain
38% less certain

Secular people not affiliated with a religious group
66% believe in God
24% absolutely certain
42% less certain

3. Belief in Heaven and Hell

Atheists:
12% believe in Heaven
10% believe in Hell

Agnostics
18% believe in Heaven
12% believe in Hell

Secular people not affiliated with a religious group
32% believe in Heaven
23% believe in Hell

4. Prayer and Meditation

Atheists:
10% pray at least weekly
18% meditate at least weekly

Agnostics
18% pray at least weekly
25% meditate at least weekly

Secular people not affiliated with a religious group
19% believe in Heaven
22% believe in Hell

These numbers are very revealing. Granted, there may be different ways of understanding these numbers. However these numbers are interpreted, the information they provide is still very revealing. How do we interpret these numbers? In what follows I offer several ways of understanding what the Pew survey says about atheists and God. I believe the same could be said about agnostics and secular people.

First, it is possible, as Iyov has suggested, that the survey was poorly designed and that the results are distorted and do not really reflect the views of those surveyed. Second, it is also possible, as Duane has suggested, that questions, methodology in polling, and the sample size of those surveyed also skewed the results. It is even possible, as Iyov also suggested, that many people “have problems with polysyllabic words.”

All of these possibilities could have influenced the answers of those polled by the Pew Forum. However, I have a different perspective on the results of the survey.

Let us for the moment accept the view that the survey presents reliable information, that the numbers truly confirm the beliefs and practices of those people who were surveyed. If the survey presents reliable information about what Americans believe about religious issues, then, what the survey says about atheists should be taken seriously. This is how I view the answers:

1. It is possible that many atheists pray or meditate regularly. Their prayers would be addressed to some impersonal force considered to be the giver of life, the ground of being, or some manifestation of eastern religious or philosophical idea.

2. Some atheists believe in heaven or hell but not the kind of heaven or hell that is taught by Christianity. One good example is provided by a reader of my blog who is an atheist who said he believed in heaven. He wrote: “I am comfortable with the fact that there is nothing after this, but I do believe in Heaven. Only my heaven is what I'm living everyday I wake up, and when it ends, it was worth it.”

3. It is possible that some atheists and agnostics when confronted with their mortality or when dealing with the issue of death look at the possibility of the existence of God and life after death with more realistic eyes. This is what I believe happened with Robert Ingersoll, “the Great Atheist.” In a speech at the time of the death of his brother, Ingersoll’s eulogy was a wish for the existence of a God, a request for someone who could answer prayer and provide hope after death.

4. The fact that 21% of atheists and 55% of agnostics believe in the existence of God may reflect the different levels in the spectrum of probabilities about the existence of God that Richard Dawkins developed. In this spectrum, there are seven levels of probability concerning the issue whether God exists. At one extreme is Level 1, where strong theists are. Those who are on Level 1 believe 100% that God exists. On the other extreme, Level 7 is where the strong atheists are. A strong atheist is the one who says for a fact that there is no God. Dawkins places himself at Level 6. Those who are on Level 6 say that there is a very low probability that God exists. Those on Level 6 are the people who say they cannot know for sure but think that maybe God does not exist. It is possible that many atheists are at level 5, 4, or even 3. Thus, as the Pew Survey reveals, deep down in their inner being, many atheists believe in God, primarily those who are at different levels in the spectrum of probability.

Finally, what the U. S. Religious Landscape Survey published by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life truly reveals is that there is still hope for atheists.

Next: Evangelicals and God

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Agnostics, Atheists, Pew Survey

The Suffering of God

Few people today truly know the God of the Old Testament. Most Christians focus their study of Scriptures almost exclusively on the New Testament. For many, the God of the Old Testament is a violent God, a God of wrath, and an evil deity. Consequently, the view of a God who suffers with and because of his people is foreign to many Christians.

One book that has changed the way I perceive the God of the Old Testament is Terence Fretheim’s book, The Suffering of God: An Old Testament Perspective (Overtures to Biblical Theology; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984). Fretheim’s book shows how much Christians have been influenced by Greek philosophy, a philosophy that led the leaders of the early church to adopt the doctrine of the impassibility of God.

The doctrine of the impassibility of God teaches that the God of the Bible is a perfect being and as such he cannot suffer. Since God is a perfect being, he cannot be affected by outside events and thus cannot suffer, for suffering is a sign of imperfection. Today I begin a series of studies that will summarize some of the issues Fretheim raises in his book. Those who have read The Suffering of God will notice how much Fretheim’s views have affected my own views.

The God of the Old Testament is a God who chooses to identify himself with his people in their suffering. There are several passages in the Bible that reveal the pain of God for the sins and disobedience of his people.

The God who in the New Testament suffered in the person of Christ is the same God who in the Old Testament suffered because of the sins of his people. Several Old Testament texts give strong evidence that God experiences suffering. The suffering of God is portrayed in his words and actions. God’s suffering for his people is consistent with his nature as a God who chooses to enter into the history of Israel and establish a genuine relationship with his people.

The God of the Old Testament is known primarily by his role as creator and redeemer. In these two roles, God voluntarily limits himself to a gradual process of creation from the chaos of nothingness to the world in which we live. He is also the God who chooses to be patient with people who are arrogant, stubborn, and disobedient.

The stubbornness and rebellion of Israel are summarized in the words of the Levite prayer: “You warned them in order to turn them back to your law. Yet they acted presumptuously and did not obey your commandments, but sinned against your ordinances, by the observance of which a person shall live. They turned a stubborn shoulder and stiffened their neck and would not obey” (Nehemiah 9:29).

It is this voluntary limiting of God that sets the framework for the concept of God’s suffering. Since the God of the Bible reveals himself to his people in human form (Genesis 18:1-2) and communicates directly with human beings, the people of Israel assumed that God had thought and will, and that he was capable of emotions, anger, and love.

Throughout the Old Testament one can see that the moral evil of the world, the rebellion of human beings, and the disobedience of his people provoke God to anger (Deuteronomy 4:25; Judges 2:12) in the same way his love for them also moves him toward costly sacrifice (Joel 2:13; Hosea 11:1-9). The God of the Bible is a God who carries the burden of his people, who knows the failure of his purpose for them, who sorrows over them with a love that prevails over wrath, and who suffers because of their affliction.

The suffering of God in the Old Testament anticipates the pain and the agony of the Suffering Servant of the New Testament: “It is as if there were a cross unseen, standing on its undiscovered hill, far back in the ages, out of which were sounding always, just the same deep voice of suffering love and patience, that was heard by mortal ears from the sacred hill of Calvary” (H. Wheeler Robinson, Suffering: Human and Divine [New York: The Macmillan Company, 1939] 145).

These words express the nature of the God believers find in the Old Testament, the very same loving, caring, hurting God who reveals himself in the person of Jesus Christ.

Israel believed that God was present with the people in their suffering, that their God was a God who understood what the people were going through. Although Israel believed that God was the cause of their suffering, they also believed that God understood their suffering. Divine understanding for them presupposes suffering with them. The God who revealed himself to Israel could not be the personal God of his people without experiencing suffering. Those who do not experience suffering cannot sympathize with the pain and suffering of others (Hebrews 4:15; 5:8). God is a loving and compassionate God and it pains him to see humanity suffer.

According to Fretheim (p. 35), there are two poles for understanding God in the Old Testament. One is that God is a radically transcendent Lord who stands outside the world without acting in the world. This is what he calls the traditional view of God.

The second is the organismic view, a view in which a greater continuity, that is, a greater intimacy between God and the world is discerned. In the organismic view there is a relationship of reciprocity. In other words, the world is not only affected by God, God is also affected by the world, both positively and negatively. God has chosen to be involved in the history of the world and to be limited by it. Therefore, although God is unchangeable in his steadfast love and his salvific will for all creation, God does change in response to the interaction between himself and his creation.

For Israel to have understood God in any other light would have been incompatible with the revelation of God’s character in their history. The people of Israel could not have understood a God who had complete freedom to act in the realm of history but who refused to do so because of a lack of compassion or desire. After all, they had experienced just the opposite in the Exodus.

The belief in the genuine love of God for Israel necessitated, for them, a God who sympathized with his people, not merely superficially recognizing their condition, but actually participating with them in their sufferings. This is how Israel experienced God in Egypt: Exodus 2:24-25.

For God to have seen the affliction of his people, to have heard their cry, and to have known their suffering (Exodus 3:7) required God taking their sorrows into his very being and allowing those sorrows to arouse feelings of compassion and to affect his being in his interactions with them.

Thus, the suffering of God is basic for the proper understanding of the concept of relatedness or relationship which in the Old Testament derives from the concept of the covenant and the understanding of Israel as the chosen people of God. As Israel understood God, the idea of the suffering of God to some extent limited the concept of God’s power. For the relationship between God and Israel to have integrity required God giving up some of his own power and freedom for the sake of the relationship.

To be continued.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: God, Suffering

A New Use for the Biblical Archaeology Review

In Australia, drug squad detectives found sachets of the drug speed hidden in hollowed out pages of the Biblical Archaeology Review magazine.

According to the news report, a couple was importing drugs by hiding them in the Biblical Archeology Review, which had its pages cut to form a hollow.

You have to wonder who these people are. Since many bloggers are very critical of BAR, maybe these drug traffickers were bloggers who found a better use for BAR.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tag: BAR

Resurrection: The Power of God for Christians and Jews

In the latest issue of The Christian Century, Walter Brueggemann, the emeritus professor of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia, has an excellent review of the book Resurrection: The Power of God for Christians and Jews by Kevin J. Madigan and Jon D. Levenson (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008).

The following is an excerpt from Brueggemann’s review:

In the present volume, Levenson reiterates much of the argument of that earlier book, only now the matter interfaces with Madigan's insistence that resurrection faith is central and nonnegotiable in the Christian tradition as well. The book opens with a recognition of resurrection as a key affirmation of the New Testament, then probes the Old Testament to find the sources of New Testament faith.

The focus in this discussion is on Sheol as a kind of quiet, gray warehouse where the dead go. Contrary to the common scholarly judgment that Sheol is a common destiny for all human persons, Madigan and Levenson make the case that not all the dead go there. Sheol smacks of punishment and is the continuation of an unfulfilled life. The righteous do not go to Sheol but are "enveloped in the blessing of God." Thus this study identifies two theologies in tension, one that sees Sheol as a common human destiny and one that makes an important distinction about the future for those attuned to God:

What happened with the biblical Sheol, it seems to us, is that the affirmation of faith in the omnipotent and rescuing God of Israel, against whom not even the most formidable enemies can ultimately stand, has collided with the brute fact of death. . . . Something had to give. What gave was not the faith in the limitless power of the Rock of Israel and their redeemer. What gave was death. . . . Death would remain universal, but not everyone who died would experience it as a plague. Sheol would remain pestilential, but not everyone who died would go there.

What gave was death! This is the burden of the book. Death had to yield, so say the texts, to the vigorous power of God, who wills life and who gives life marked by justice.

Brueggemann did such a great job in his review that he convinced me that I should buy this book and read it. Visit The Christian Century online and read Brueggemann’s review.

Click here to by the book from Amazon.com.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tag: Resurrection