This week’s church write-up, followed by a review post of a book, followed by another book write-up:
A. Church this morning revolved primarily around Genesis 22, the akedah, the story in which God commands Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. The pastor noted that God prohibited child sacrifice later in the Torah. In Abraham’s day, by contrast, Abraham might not have considered it to be immoral but rather something that a god, by right, could command worshipers to do. That does not mean that Abraham ever did it before, or that God ever commanded anyone to do it before. But it does obviate the ethical problems that people today have with the akedah story: Kant saying that Abraham should have said “no” to God’s immoral command, Kierkegaard’s talk about the divine suspension of the ethical, or people of faith who killed their kids because they felt God told them to do so. In Abraham’s cultural context, such a command was not deemed to be immoral. God did not let Abraham go through with it, though, thereby implying his rejection of such an act of worship, and God would later explicitly prohibit child sacrifice in the Torah.
B. Hebrews 11:17-18 treats the akedah as an act of faith. God had promised Abraham that he would have offspring through Isaac. Later, God commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on the altar. The two are in conflict, for how can Isaac have offspring if he is dead? Abraham’s conclusion, according to Hebrews, is not that God changed his mind about the promise but that God would fulfill his promise concerning Isaac in some way, perhaps by raising Isaac from the dead. Such an interpretation appears to obviate the notion that the akedah was a sacrifice on Abraham’s part, for Abraham technically did not believe that he was giving up his son permanently to death, as he envisioned that God could give him his son back. It is, however, an act of trust in God. And trust implies risk, since Abraham may not have fully known what God would do.
C. The pastor commented on how Hebrews 11:17-18 contradicts the scholarly view that the ancient Hebrews lacked a belief in bodily resurrection. I would not go that far, for Elijah and Elisha raised people from the dead. Abraham could have envisioned the possibility of God raising Isaac without necessarily thinking that God would raise everyone from the dead in the last days; the ancient Israelites could have seen some people as exceptions to the rule. Still, the pastor raises a good point, one that challenges my Christian faith, sometimes severely, and sometimes not. Can one accept the New Testament’s interpretation of the Old Testament while still believing that the Old Testament lacks a concept of eschatological bodily resurrection? Hebrews 11:13-16 appears to maintain that the Old Testament patriarchs envisioned an afterlife, for they saw themselves as strangers on earth and looked for a heavenly city. Jesus interprets Psalm 110:1 as David calling the Messiah “Lord.” As the pastor said, this presumes the eschatological resurrection, after which Jesus would reign as lord of David and everyone else.
D. Someone in class asked, had God let Abraham go through with the sacrifice, what would have been the point? The pastor responded that it would have set a jarring precedent in which God commands and accepts human sacrifice. The pastor believes that the precedent that Genesis 22 sets, though, is substitutionary atonement, for a ram is substituted for Isaac. And the akedah foreshadows God sending his only Son Christ to die and to rise again. Two additional points can be made. First, the akedah is an example of Abraham’s piety, for God affirms it as such and on the basis of it reaffirms his intention to bless Abraham’s offspring. The akedah story would exhort Israelites to value God above all else in recognition of God’s majesty and to trust in God’s promise and benevolence. The akedah would also convey a message of grace in that the Israelites could approach God not on the basis of their own merits but rather on the merits of their father Abraham. Second, the akedah reaffirms that God has a right to the firstborn. Since God does not demand that the Israelites literally sacrifice their firstborn child, a substitute for the firstborn must be made. In Abraham’s case, that substitute was a ram. Throughout the Torah, there are other substitutes for the firstborn, be it a sheep, money, the firstborn serving as priests in the sanctuary, or the entire tribe of Levi (Exodus 13:12-15; 22:29; 34:19-20; Numbers 3:12-13; 18:15-16; I Samuel 1:11). Figuratively giving God the first highlights theological points, including God’s majesty and thus his right to the first and the best, trust that God would provide after the Israelites give to him the first of their crops and herds, and God’s historical deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt after slaying the Egyptian firstborn. From a Christian perspective, it foreshadows that God would offer his own firstborn Son.
E. Muriel I. Elmer and Duane H. Elmer. The Learning Cycle: Insights for Faithful Teaching from Neuroscience and the Social Sciences. IVP Academic, 2020. Go here to purchase the book.
The Elders have doctorates from Michigan State University and a background in education, teaching at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and in South Africa. This book is about how teachers can teach effectively. Effective teaching enables students to remember the material and to apply it to their own lives; in the case of religious education, it entails character formation and development.
Many educators today lecture, have the students take notes, and quiz the students on the material. The Elmers argue on the basis of psychological studies that such an approach fails to ensure that they will remember the material in the long term. Many students will tune out the lecture sometime in the middle. In reading this book, I thought about a story that someone told me about when he took a final exam in Arabic. He took the exam then forgot the Arabic; he made a “flushing” noise, as if whatever Arabic he knew got flushed down the toilet after the stress of the exam.
The Elmers advocate an alternative approach. It retains some lecturing while offering advice as to how professors can retain their students’ attention through voice modulation, case studies, and breaks in which interpersonal sharing can occur. Skits in which people simulate a principle and discussion that revolves around open-ended questions are also prominent in their approach. The Elmers believe that classrooms should be safe places in which students can share without fear of ridicule. Relationships are significant in their approach, as the Elmers talk about the importance of professors getting to know their students. Cognitive dissonance also plays a role in education, for people learn when they seek to resolve contradictions between what they are doing and what they are supposed to do.
The Elmers at least acknowledge potential roadblocks in their own approach. Like what about the shy students? Or what about cultures that see education in terms of the teacher imparting information to their students? Or how can a teacher allow for open-ended discussion, without the discussion going off-course? Whether they address those concerns adequately is up to the reader, but they are to be commended for wrestling with them on some level. Other challenges can be posited: how can teachers challenge students without embarrassing them? Did Jesus make a safe place for the Pharisees when he used ridicule in challenging their religious presuppositions in his attempt to foster cognitive dissonance?
An issue that gets tangentially addressed in this book is the role of the Spirit in the Christian’s character formation. Duane talks about his own struggle with unforgiveness and how prayer helped him to retrain his synapses. The Spirit, in this book, seems to be a guide rather than one who magically changes people’s dispositions. This book is relevant to the usual struggles between Christianity and psychology and the question of whether the two can coexist and even reinforce each other, or if psychology implies that humans can find healing apart from the Holy Spirit.
I cannot say that reading this book made me feel good, the Elmers’ winsome writing notwithstanding. As a shy introvert, I love the “lecture and taking notes” approach. I dread adding an interpersonal element to education. And, as one who falls dramatically short of what many would say a Christian should be, I recoiled from the Elmers’ religious emphasis on obedience to God and refraining from “hypocrisy.” Still, the Elmers do make valid points about how people retain information and influenced me to think about what I have retained, what I have not, and why.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher. My review is honest.
F. Patrick J. Buchanan. A Republic, Not an Empire: Reclaiming America’s Destiny. Regnery, 2002.
This book was originally released in 1999, before September 11, 2001. It was prescient about the sorts of discussions that would emerge after 9/11, as 9/11 inspired President George W. Bush’s wars in the Middle East, along with the accusation that Bush was seeking to impose a U.S. empire throughout the world. This particular version of the book is a 2002 update, so it includes an introduction that reflects on 9/11 and Buchanan’s criticism of the influence of neoconservatives on Bush’s foreign policy.
Buchanan’s story starts with America’s early days and extends to 2002. While George Washington wisely advised Americans to avoid entanglements in European alliances, Buchanan argues that the U.S. in its early days was far from isolationist. The U.S. interacted with foreign powers and even went to war with them, both when the U.S. was expanding its own territory and also to expel European powers from the Western Hemisphere. Buchanan still believes that Woodrow Wilson marked a downturn in American foreign policy, as Wilson brought America into World War I. Wilson sought to create a democratic world yet contradicted that very vision after World War I when he punished Germany. Wilson sought to create a League of Nations, yet that idea met with resistance, even from American politicians who were not isolationists, because it would require America to participate in even more European wars.
Controversial, even in 1999, was Buchanan’s treatment of World War II. For Buchanan, World War II was unnecessary, for Hitler’s primary ambition was to invade what was east of him, not the entire world. Britain, however, unwisely pledged to defend the dictatorship in Poland after Hitler took more of Czechoslovakia than he agreed to take, arousing British fear that he indeed had expansionist ambitions. President Franklin Roosevelt provoked the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor by cutting off Japanese access to vital supplies. Japan then decided to take those supplies from the Philippines and attacked the American base on Pearl Harbor so that the U.S. would not be able to stop it.
Buchanan is more interventionist with respect to the Cold War, as Buchanan endorses a more aggressive posture by the U.S. during the Vietnam War.
Buchanan is critical of the “new world order,” and a legitimate question is what he means by that. Does he mean what the Birchers mean: a one-world government? In a sense, yes, even though he may not go as far as the Birchers. He dislikes the growing tendency to undermine nations and to see people as citizens of the world. This includes participation in global organizations that undermine national sovereignty and the push during the Clinton Administration for American troops to fight under the auspices of the U.N. For Buchanan, globalism is unfounded, for people would rather fight for and support their own nation, people, and family rather than a nebulous “world body.”
Buchanan also opposes America’s pledge to defend other countries and to get involved in their conflicts because, for him, those conflicts are irrelevant to America’s well-being. Instead, Buchanan believes that other countries should be armed in their own right and that would create a deterrent against invasion and war.
This book has advantages and disadvantages. An advantage is that I understood Buchanan’s thesis on World War II better after reading this book than I did after reading Buchanan’s Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War. Both complemented each other, but A Republic, Not an Empire concisely laid out Buchanan’s thesis and connected the dots in describing people’s motivations.
The book could be plodding though, especially as Buchanan laid out historical facts, and it tended to romanticize early American expansionism.
The book also may disappoint those who like books with clear heroes and villains, especially Bircher books that like to bash Wilson and Colonel House as hyper-globalists. Buchanan himself has strong opinions, yet his portrayal of Wilson and House is more nuanced than that, and some may prefer his treatment of them.