Adult Bible Class, 8/25/2013

Notes and Surveys:  classnotes.leanderchurch.org

9:38 –

· John Wycliffe – First English Bible, 1380’s  (44 years after he died, his bones were dug up, crushed, and scattered)

· John Huss – People should be permitted to read the Bible in their own language.  Burned at the stake in 1415, using Wycliffe’s Bible as kindling.

· Printing Press -- 1450

· October 31, 1517 – Martin Luther published his 95 Theses

· Part of a letter written to Pope Jules the Third, of Rome, in 1550, by his Cardinals. It is found in the National Bibliotheque in Paris, France.  (Catholic church says this is a hoax, that they were trying VERY hard to get the Bible into the vernacular…?)

o "Holiness, we reserve the more important of it to the last. The reading of the Gospel must be permitted as little as possible. The very little that is read generally at the Mass should be enough and it should be prohibited for anyone to read more. Here is the book that more than any other provoked rebellions against us, storms that have been risky in bringing us loss. In fact, if anyone reads accurately the teaching of the Bible and compares what occurs in our churches, he will soon find out the contradictions and will see that our teaching is far removed from that of the Bible and more often yet is in opposition to it.  If the people realized this, they will provoke us without rest until all become unveiled and then we will become the object of ridicule and universal hate. It is necessary that the Bible be taken away and snatched from the hands of the people, however with much wisdom in order to not provoke trouble."

· Thomas Linacer, the respected Oxford professor, and the personal physician to both King Henry the 7th and 8th of England, on reading the New Testament for the first time in Greek (1524 – he decided to learn GREEK so he could read it), said “Either this is not the gospel, or we are not Christians!”

· Even the school of theology in Paris told the French parliament, “There is an end of religion if the study of Hebrew and Greek is permitted”. 

9:42 –

àWillie Tollison, WeCare AfterCare Mentoring

· With apologies to Virginia Nicks

· Sister Nicks and Willie Tollison, 3.5 minutes

Extract_SisterNicksFalseDoctrine_WeCare_AfterCare_Part02_WillieTollison_050313_080223.mpg

· What did Sister Nicks believe was false doctrine?

· Why did she believe that?

· Is it [false doctrine]?

What saves us?

· Faith, Baptism, Grace, Blood, Gospel, others?

· Is that even the right question?

· What is a deeper, even the FINAL, answer to WHAT SAVES US?  (see Eph 2.4-5)

9:52 –

Ephesians 2 --  As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, ² in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. ³ All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh^[a] and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. ⁴ But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, ⁵ made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. ⁶ And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, ⁷ in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. ⁸ For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— ⁹ not by works, so that no one can boast. ¹⁰ For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Heb 11:1

NIV -- Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.

KJV -- Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

What does that mean??

Mark Twain:  “Faith is believing what you know ain’t so!”

OK, we’re going to take a path through Middle East culture and economic systems, and come back out at Ephesians chapter 2 in a while.  Don’t give up before we get there!

HONOR/SHAME

9:56 –

1^st Century Palestine was an Honor/Shame culture.  Does anyone know what that means?

Here are some Modern Examples of an Honor/Shame culture at work:

“Honor” is a concept that the West rarely speaks of. The military talks about honor quite a lot. Some schools have honor codes. Southerners used to speak of honor, I think, but it’s not a common word today. Nowadays, it’s taken on a somewhat old, musty feel.

That’s because Western culture is a “guilt culture” rather than the East’s “honor culture.”

IF TIME:  Divergence, Plato, Greek/Roman individual responsibility right/wrong, Paul, Romans

To get a very rough sense of an honor culture, think of the Japanese. The Japanese famously are horrified at the thought of “losing face.” It’s so important there that many have committed suicide rather than live a dishonored life. To Americans, this is incomprehensible.

In an honor culture, the important thing is how you’re perceived by others. Honor is everything. In a guilt culture, the important thing is who you are. That is, guilt is about your individual conscience; honor is about the group’s perception.

It’s therefore no surprise that individualistic cultures tend to also be guilt cultures and that collectivist cultures tend to be honor cultures.

IF TIME:

· Largest city in Turkey?  Istanbul

· Byzantium à Constantinople in 330 AD.  Moved the capital of Rome.

· Mohammed appeared on the scene when?  ~600 AD

· Crusades when?  1100-1200

· Constantinople fell to Islam in 1453 (150,000 vs 10,000 for 50 days!)

· Sultan Mehmet II had visions of consolidating, then proceeding to Rome

· Over the next few centuries up into Central and Eastern Europe, and toward Western Europe.

· The beginning of the end was when Islam was turned back from entering Vienna, in 1683.  Does anyone know the DATE?  September 11

10:00 –

You see, honor drives people to kill innocents by the thousands on the anniversary of the Battle of Vienna, where the Western armies turned the tide against Muslim forces bent on conquering Europe, eventually driving them almost entirely out of Eastern Europe — on September 11, 1683.

The Middle Eastern attackers were trying to send a message on 9/11/2001 — that the defeat of Islam on an earlier September 11 was about to be reversed —

Educated, fundamentalist Muslims feel the sting of the defeat hundreds of years later. In their view, they are the recipients of Allah’s final revelation and it is humiliating to them that their “perfect” Islamic culture has declined relative to Western culture. They seek to reverse the trend and September 11 was carefully chosen to try and reverse the course of history and create a new September 11 that the Islamic world could celebrate.

10:01 –

In shame cultures, people are more likely to choose right behavior on the basis of what society expects from them. It is not a matter of guilt, nor an inner voice of direction, but outer pressures and opinions that direct a person to behave a certain way.’ Rules and laws are less a deterrent for bad behavior than the risk of bringing shame on oneself or one’s family. … “When a person performs any act in the interest of the community, he is not concerned about the wrongness or rightness of the acts.”‘ If a person commits violence that is approved by the community, then he has no reason to feel shame (and certainly not guilt).

In this context, “guilt” is an internal feeling of wrongness. It’s a person punishing himself for doing what he knows to be wrong. We Westerners have a guilt culture — and that’s why we tend to see the gospel in terms of expunging individual guilt. (Which is a true thing, of course.)

“Shame,” however, is how your village, family, or community see you. You “lose face” when you’ve been discovered to not meet with societal expectations.

If a person from a shame [or honor] culture commits a “sin,” he will not likely feel guilty about it if no one else knows, for it is the community (not the individual) that determines whether one has lost face. This may seem unbelievable to many of us. You may think, Is that even right? Surely, the person “deep down inside” feels at least a twinge of guilt. (In our experience, no, they do not.)

ONLY IF TIME:

[S]hame is not negative in honor/shame cultures; shaming is. Technically, in these cultures, shame is a good thing: it indicates that you and your community know the proper way to behave.” You have a sense of shame; if you didn’t, you would have no shame. You would be shameless. This is different from being shamed. When an older American asks, “Have you no shame?” they mean, “Don’t you know the proper thing to do?” When one is censured for not having a sense of shame, for being shameless, then one is shamed.

All this can be confusing. But remember that languages tend not to have words for ideas that are not considered important. Since honor/shame isn’t important in English, we are lacking in the words we need.

10:03 –

When the missions experts say that a missionary must learn the local culture, we may think that means “taste in music.” But we now see that cultural differences can be profound — and far more challenging than song selection and order of worship.

We begin to understand why we have so little missionary success in Islamic and other Eastern lands, such as Japan and China. It’s not just that they have little Christian heritage. The fact is that our missionaries often go utterly unprepared to live in a collectivist, honor culture. They preach the gospel in terms that are incomprehensible to their listeners.

Remember the examples of men murdering their sisters?  Incomprehensible to us.  In the same way that individual guilt is incomprehensible to Islam, or to anyone immersed in an honor culture.

10:04 –

WHAT SYSTEM DO WE SEE IN WESTERN EUROPE during the Middle Ages, before the Renaissance, that governed how wealthy families interacted with families tied to the land?

o FEUDAL SYSTEM, or MANORIAL SYSTEM

The ORIGEN of that system was Patron-Client Relationships

So, how did that system work in First Century Palestine?

In today’s time we see reminders again and again of the power of economics.  We see people sacrificing honor to achieve more wealth.  In 1st century Palestine (Israel) the more valuable commodity was honor. A man would expend vast sums of money to get honor.  Conversely, he would do almost anything in order to avoid losing honor.  If a man were shamed, he would lose honor.  Not understanding this societal norm prevents us from fully understanding the depth of many statements in scripture.   For now, know that one of the ways that a man could achieve honor was by having more Clients.

In 1st century Israel 2% of the population owned virtually 100% of the goods.  They would hire 5% – 7% of the rest of the population to be their service providers – doctors, artists, builders, virtually anyone with marketable skills.  The lowest 15% of the population were treated as expendable – prostitutes, the homeless, mentally retarded individuals, etc.  The remaining 75% or so of the population were day laborers – they worked each day for the money it would take to eat that day – and there were a lot of days where they did not eat.

So, in order to survive, the 75% could see no higher possibility for their existence than to try to get into the good graces of the 2% who owned everything.  If a person had a skill that was needed by a wealthy PATRON, that wealthy person would take on the poorer person as a CLIENT.  What did that mean?

As a Patron, I want as many Clients as I can afford.  I’ll provide them health care, a house, jobs, clothes, a wife, i.e., all their daily needs.  And what will my Clients do for me?  They’ll come to my house every day and give me honor!  They’ll praise me, they’ll tell anyone that walks by what a honorable man I am, they’ll tell about the time I sent my physician to heal their child, they’ll tell them about the year that the crops failed and I provided food for them, they’ll say “Look at this wonderful coat my Patron gave me!”, and so forth.

The Patron would supply all the needs of the Client, and the Client in turn would honor his Patron.  The Patron gave gifts to his Client that were FREE.  And the job of the Client was to make the Patron FAMOUS.

And the Patron was NEVER to mention the gifts he gave his Client; it would be RUDE for him ever to bring it up again.  HE WOULD LOSE HONOR.  But the job of the Client was to NEVER STOP praising his Patron.

10:11 –

Now we get to the Good Part!

The word that described the gifts which the Patron gave his Clients, for free, with no expectation of recompense was:  CHARIS.  This word is translated in our English Bibles as… GRACE!

And the word which described the job of the patron’s Clients, their service which they were honor-bound to provide to their Patron, was:  PISTIS.

Can you guess (or do you know) what word that is translated to in English?  FAITH!

When Paul says “by grace, through faith…” he was describing exactly this Patron-Client relationship that all of his readers were intimately familiar with.  They were so familiar with it that they didn’t even have a name for it.  It was just LIFE for them; it was “the way it was.”  They knew no other way to live.

So, OF COURSE “works” are involved in the Client’s job!  When the Patron gives you gifts, you will praise his name to all you meet, you’ll vote for him if he runs for office, you’ll provide any sort of service that the Patron asks for, you’ll follow him to the marketplace and tell the crowds what a magnificent honorable Patron he is… YOUR JOBS AS A CLIENT IS TO MAKE YOUR PATRON FAMOUS!

Does this relate to the “Faith vs. Works” argument?  Of course!  That is an argument that would not have even made sense to the 1^st century reader.  We get tied up in English, or in whatever language we read the Word, and we have little to no understanding of the sociological issues of the 1^st century.  The average 1^st century “man in the street” would likely ask us, “What is your point?  Faith vs. Works?  How can they be different?  It’s the same word!”  Because they knew the job of a Client.  They knew how the whole socioeconomic system worked.  A Client would not be a Client for long if all he did was to receive the gifts of the Patron, and never fulfilled his responsibilities!

“For it is by GRACE you have been saved, through FAITH…

God has given us free gifts… but salvation is not by grace alone.  Look at the verse again:  “For it is by grace you have been saved, through FAITH…”

Our response to GOD, as a Client to his Patron, MUST be “through faith!”  We fulfill a Client’s responsibilities.  We are to make Him famous.  We are to direct all glory and honor and praise to Him.  We are to be about our Father’s business.

So, are we saved by FAITH… or by WORKS?

The question has no meaning; it is all the same.

10:15 –