Book Write-Up: Against the Tide, by Elizabeth Camden

Elizabeth Camden.  Against the Tide.  Minneapolis: Bethany House Publishers, 2012.  See here to buy the book.

I said after reading Until the Dawn that I wanted to read more Elizabeth Camden novels.  I just read Elizabeth Camden’s Against the Tide, and my conclusion is that this was a good decision that I made.
Against the Tide is set in the late 1800s.  In 1876, Lydia Pallas’ father and mother brought her to America from Greece.  The father was Greek, and the mother was Turkish, so they were ostracized in Greece.  Soon after arriving in America, Lydia’s parents were deported back to Greece.  Lydia stayed behind in America and was sent to an orphanage.  While there, the supervisors gave the kids doses of Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup to calm them down.  Lydia has been taking that syrup for years, particularly for her headaches.

(UPDATE: I may have misunderstood what happened to Lydia's parents.  It appears that they were lost at sea.  That part of the book was difficult for me to understand, since it was from the perspective of Lydia, who did not know English and was piecing things together.)

Lydia learned English and grew up to work as a translator for the Office of Naval Intelligence.  She works for the dignified Admiral Eric Fontaine.  A man comes regularly to see Admiral Fontaine.  He is attractive and confident, and he flirts with Lydia and rearranges the stuff on her desk when she is not around (which annoys the orderly Lydia!).  His name is Alexander Banebridge, but he goes by “Bane.”

Bane hires Lydia for some independent translation projects.  She does not know what the point of these projects is, and she wonders if Bane is giving her busy work simply to get closer to her.  She goes along with the projects, however, because she needs the money so she can buy her apartment.  Plus, she is falling in love with Bane.  She believes that she can be herself around him.

It turns out that Bane has his own personal crusade against opium.  Bane recruits politicians who could be sympathetic to his cause.  He even recommends that the widowed Admiral Fontaine marry Lydia and run for office, since Lydia could get Fontaine the immigrant vote!  Bane also searches for suppliers of opium.  He has recruited Lydia to help him in this task.

The reason that Bane is crusading against opium is that, years earlier, he worked for a Professor who was the leader of an underground opium ring.  Due to the influence of some Christian women, Bane became a Christian and left the Professor’s service.  Bane feels guilty for his part in the opium ring, particularly when he considers the damage that opium has done to people, including children.  Bane loves Lydia, but he feels that he cannot get involved with a woman because the Professor will kidnap anyone who matters to Bane, just to get Bane working for him again.

The first third of the book was rather slow, and (paradoxically) I thought that Lydia was falling in love with Bane too quickly.  The book picked up, however, when Lydia lost her job after helping Bane on one of his shady (yet legal) projects.  Lydia struggled thereafter to find employment.  One of her friends and coworkers suggested that she work at the local bakery, and she did that, for a while.  But she encounters Bane again, and Bane recruits her for another project.  The Professor has kidnapped Admiral Fontaine’s son Jack.  Lydia is to work for the Professor to translate an ancient Greek text, as part of a plan to free Jack.

Lydia’s time with the Professor had lots of suspense.  Because the professor was in a hurry for Lydia to translate that Greek text, Lydia did not have time to return to her apartment and get the transliteration manual that would enable her to translate it.  On account of that, Lydia had to stall and come up with excuses, and the Professor was getting impatient!  Would Lydia blow her cover?  I was worried for Lydia!

Lydia was also dealing with withdrawal.  You see, that Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup that she has taken for years contains opium.  Lydia had to learn to find her security amidst stressful times from spirituality, not by falling back on Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup.

In a sense, Lydia was already a spiritual seeker.  She talked to the moon at night because that made her feel closer to her father.  She was hoping that somebody out there was listening.  That would serve as a foundation for her spiritual development.

The book was an enjoyable read.  I am not surprised that it won a Christy Award.  The romance was a little rushed, however, plus I was not entirely clear about the legal status of opium back then.  Some of the characters suggested that opium was legal, and yet it had to be smuggled.

Elizabeth Camden has written another book about Bane.  This book is entitled The Lady of Bolton Hill.  Bane in this book is still working for the Professor, but he leaves the Professor’s service.  I actually want to read it!

Scattered Ramblings on New Year's Day

Many people see New Year’s Day as a time of hope and new beginnings.  We may have had a bad year, and we hope for a better one.  Or we may simply hope for a better year, even if the previous year was not particularly horrible.

But we do this every year, year after year after year.  That can easily lead some to ask questions: “Are our hopes for the new year truly justified?  How do we know that this coming year will not be like the previous year?”

I suppose that having a good year, or a year of turnaround or breakthrough, is not unheard of.  I can envision people saying, for instance: “Last year, I did not have a job; now I do.”  “Last year, I was not a published author; now I am.”  That new job or new book may not bring a person paradise.  It may present challenges of its own.  And the challenges of day-to-day life will remain.  Still, it is a step up.

I think that it is good to hope.  We cannot make demands of God, but we can share with God our dreams.  I think of a scene in Lynn Austin’s  A Candle in the Darkness.  The novel is set during the American Civil War.  The protagonist, Caroline, is having Christmas dinner with some slaves.  Each person takes a turn sharing his or her dream, so that they can know what to pray for each other about.  Caroline wants to be a teacher.  Eli wants to be a pastor.  Another slave wants to work in shipping with his master, see the world, and get married.  Eli then prays that their dreams might be God’s will.  That is my hope, for myself and others: “May your dream be God’s will.”

Maybe this year will be just another year.  Whatever it brings, it can be a time of growth, even for those whose dreams are not fulfilled.  Life presents us with opportunities to do things better, even if what goes on in our lives is not better.  I am not necessarily talking about making New Year’s resolutions that one will likely break.  I myself do not make New Year’s resolutions.  Still, I respect that many people do so as part of their vision for a new beginning.  New Year’s Day is a good day for that.

The concept of newness appears often in the Bible: receiving a new start after being forgiven, becoming a new person after being born again, a new creation, receiving a new way of looking at the world, God making a new heavens and a new earth.  Many of us desire what is new.  Maybe we are bored with the old, or look to the new to spice up our lives, or desire a change of scene.  One could say that the new can become old, and what then?  Will we become bored with the new?  That often happens.  In the case of the Christian life, however, there is always room for improvement.  There are always areas in which the new can replace the old.  And I believe, with John Wesley, that, even when we arrive at perfection, we will continually grow and learn new ways to love God and neighbor, new dimensions and insights into what that means and entails.

Why hope, when we do not really know if there is a basis for hope?  I like what Romans 4:18 says: Abraham hoped against hope that his barren wife Sarah would have a son.  Abraham is not entirely in the same position that many of us are.  Abraham had a direct and an explicit promise from God.  Many of us do not quite have that.  Still, we have a God who loves us.  Should that not give us hope?

Happy New Year!

Forgiveness for Things That One Cannot Entirely Help

I write a lot on this blog about forgiveness and unforgiveness.  A lot of the posts say basically the same thing: God is unfair and unloving to condition his forgiveness of me on my forgiveness of others; I am only human; what exactly counts as forgiveness, anyway?  Blah, blah, blah.  Occasionally, some light breaks through, and I make progress in arriving at a fruitful understanding of forgiveness and unforgiveness, or what the Bible says about these concepts.

A topic that has been on my mind lately has been forgiveness of people for things that they cannot entirely help.  In the past, I have been reluctant to apologize to God for things that I cannot entirely help.  I cannot always turn off an angry or a bad mood, for example, or thoughts of hatred for specific people.  In these cases, I have said to God: “Lord, I am not necessarily asking for forgiveness for these angry thoughts, for they are not exactly thoughts that I chose; rather, I ask that you spiritually cleanse me of them. Replace my anger with your joy.”

Nowadays, though, I do tend to ask for God’s forgiveness when I am in a hateful, bitter, resentful mood.  Why?  Well, my mind goes back to those Bible verses about forgiveness that have given me problems: the verses that say that God will not forgive us if we do not forgive others (Matthew 6:15; Mark 11:26).  As much of a problem as I may have with those verses, I think that God allowed them to be in the Bible for a reason.  I believe that God wants us to think both about God’s forgiveness of us and our forgiveness of others, and to see those things as somehow in parallel.

In the case of forgiving things that people cannot entirely help, I reflect that there are attitudes that people have towards me that I resent.  A person may dislike me, or find me annoying, or look at me with contempt.  I resent that.  At the same time, can these people really help what they feel towards me?  I want God to cut me some slack about my feelings.  Shouldn’t I do the same for others?

One can then ask if the logical conclusion of what I am saying is that people should not have to apologize for what they feel.  I would not go that far.  If a person treats me with contempt, I would like an apology from that person, even if the person cannot help his or her feelings.  If a person is boiling with anger and lashes out at someone, that person should apologize.  I place that in parallel with my own negative feelings, which is why I apologize to God for them.

Maybe these things are apples and oranges.  Feelings, after all, are different from actions that proceed from those feelings.  If a person regards me with contempt but does not manifestly show it, do I expect an apology from that person?  Not really.  Actually, I would be offended if a person did apologize to me for that, for her doing so would inform me of her contempt for me.  My point is that this approach (i.e., repenting about and forgiving things that cannot entirely be helped) has helped me somewhat in terms of my attitude towards God and other people: it has helped me to be more merciful.

I think of two ideas from the history of Christian thought.  First, there is Jonathan Edwards’ defense of the doctrine of original sin.  Jonathan Edwards believed that human beings were born with a sinful nature, a propensity towards sin.  Edwards dealt with an excellent question from detractors: How can God send people to hell over something that they cannot help, a sinful condition that they did not ask for?  Edwards’ response was that we, as human beings, tend to demonize people whose bad deeds proceed from their corrupt nature.  If we know of a person who has a corrupt nature, that makes us think less of that person, not more.  We ourselves do not excuse a corrupt person by saying that he cannot help his corruption and is simply being who he is.  For Edwards, the same is true of God: God judges people for their corrupt natures.

Second, there is something that E.W. Bullinger said in a book that I read in high school: The Great Cloud of Witnesses.  Bullinger said that sin is not so much about what we do, but about what we are.  We should repent about what we are.  We are sinners, people with a sinful nature.

I do not exactly choose to dwell on the punitive nature of these ideas, for I doubt that can lead anywhere productive, for me.  But these ideas are relevant, maybe indirectly relevant, to the importance of showing mercy to others in their imperfections, as we would like for God to be merciful to us in our imperfections.  These ideas also relate to asking forgiveness and being responsible for things that we cannot entirely help.

I would have an extreme amount of difficulty, however, with forgiving something that someone can help.  If I had a wife or a girlfriend, for example, and some Don Juan slept with her just to show that he could, I would not be able to forgive that person.  That person did not have to do that.  He had a choice.  Sure, he may have had a propensity to do things like that, but he could have controlled his actions.  I would need extra strength from God to forgive, in that case, and, even then, it would be a daily internal battle.

Some of my thoughts in this post can be taken in negative directions.  For example, an abused woman should not shrug off abuse from her husband or boyfriend because she thinks that he cannot help being as he is.  She needs to protect herself.  There are situations in which justice is necessary.  At the same time, I do believe in cutting people some slack when it comes to their baggage, for we all have baggage.  And yet, people are responsible for how they deal with their baggage.

Book Write-Up: The Stone of Ebenezer

Susan Van Volkenburgh.  The Stone of Ebenezer.  Bloomington: Westbow Press, 2015.  See here to buy the book.

The Stone of Ebenezer is a novelization of the biblical story in I Samuel 4-7.  In that story, Israel’s priesthood is corrupt, and the Philistines are waging war against Israel.  The Israelites bring the Ark of the Covenant into battle in the hope that this will make them victorious against the Philistines.  What happens instead is that the Philistines defeat Israel and take the Ark for themselves.  This does not exactly help the Philistines, however, for the Ark (or God’s presence with the Ark) knocks over the Philistine god Dagon and smites the Philistines with a plague.  The Philistines find a way to return the Ark to Israel.  Under the leadership of Samuel, Israel repudiates idolatry.  God then smites the Philistines, and the Israelites pursue them.

Susan Van Volkenburgh’s prose in this book is beautiful.  It is deep, yet it still manages to convey a realistic view of the characters and a clear, vivid picture of the events.  She intersperses Hebrew words throughout the book and provides a glossary of those terms in the back.  She portrays the Philistines as real people: not as sympathetic as the Israelites, mind you, but still as people with hopes, friends, and loved ones.  She did historical research in writing this novel, particularly on Canaanite religion and mythology. The scenes in which the Philistines are worshiping their gods and attempting to account theologically for their misfortunes are powerful.

There are some things that could be nitpicked, in terms of her research. She draws a lot from the 1915 International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, when she should have used the more recent one.  Yet, to her credit, she also draws from research from the last two decades.  In giving the pronunciation of Hebrew words, she is not very consistent.  For some words, she tells us how they sound in Hebrew.  For other words, she gives us the conventional English pronunciation.

My main problem is not with this book’s research, however.  The research is rather impressive.  My struggle is trying to identify what makes this book different from other works of biblical fiction I have read, particularly the works of Lynn Austin and Roberta Kells Dorr.  The novels of Austin and Dorr are superior to Volkenburgh’s novel, in certain respects.  I think that the difference is that Austin and Dorr focus a lot on characterization and the story that they themselves created (apart from the biblical story).  Yes, the biblical story is there, but there is also a focus on other things: the characters’ thoughts, feelings, motivations, and relationships.  In Volkenburgh’s novel, by contrast, the biblical story loomed much larger; Volkenburgh’s story was filler for the biblical story.  Reviewers who criticize Dorr for straying too far from the Bible would probably prefer Volkenburgh’s book.  One can legitimately respond that Volkenburgh did talk about the thoughts, feelings, and histories of her characters.  She did, but the characters in the works by Austin and Dorr are more rounded, more complex, more dynamic.

I am vacillating between giving this book a 3 and a 4.  I will give it a 4 because I did enjoy reading it.

I received a complimentary review copy of this book through BookLook Bloggers, in exchange for an honest review.

Scattered Ramblings on God's Glory for Our Benefit

I was reading a comment about a debate this morning.  The debate was between biblical scholars Douglas Moo and Douglas Campbell.  It was about the definition of Pauline justification.

I have not watched the debate yet.  The commenter, though, was highlighting what she believed was an area of difference between the two debaters: one was presenting God’s glory as God’s main goal, whereas the other was saying that God’s goal is a relationship with human beings.

These are not necessarily mutually exclusive.  Moo and Campbell themselves may not believe that they are mutually exclusive.  What I often heard in an evangelical Bible study group that I was in years ago was that God glorifies himself for our benefit.  We get the privilege of worshiping God.  It satisfies us to admire God’s beauty.  In short, God glorifies Godself in pursuit of a relationship with human beings.  The group was drawing this insight from some of C.S. Lewis’ reflections, particularly Lewis’ Reflections on the Psalms.

This needs to be developed further.  In the Bible, God does act in the world as a way to make Godself known, in God’s justice, power, and mercy.  In many cases, part of God’s goal is to exalt Godself against God’s earthly enemies.  The question would then be, “Why?”  Is God pursuing a relationship with those enemies?  Is God exalting Godself over God’s enemies in order to encourage Israel to worship and find strength in God?  Is God trying to attract a third party to the worship of God?

Some prophets in the Hebrew Bible are more inclusive of Gentiles than other prophets.  But there are inclusive prophets who forecast Gentiles coming to Jerusalem or Israel to worship God.  Again, the question I would ask is “Why?”  Is that out of love for these Gentiles?  Is that God’s way of feeling superior to the Gentiles and manifesting final dominance over them?  Is it God’s way of encouraging Israel that her god is the best, and now everyone sees (and acknowledges, perhaps grudgingly) that her god is the best?

There is also the question of whether the Bible has a concept of a “relationship with God,” at least in terms of how many evangelical Christians may understand it.  Granted, the biblical writings do present a relationship with God.  In the Hebrew Bible, a person offers a sacrifice of thanksgiving to God.  A person gives God what is God’s due.  But do the biblical writings manifest a concept of people adoring God, and God filling them and meeting their deepest psychological needs?  I do not rule that out.  Perhaps the case can be made that such a concept is there, at least implicitly.  I just wonder, though: When we read the biblical prophets and see Gentiles coming to worship God, are they necessarily enjoying God, in a John Piper sense?  Maybe they are simply giving God God’s due.

There is what the Bible says.  And there are the things that people read into the Bible.  What people believe are God’s motivations, in my opinion, often fall into the latter category.  I am reading John Frame’s A History of Western Philosophy and Theology.  Frame essentially believes that autonomous human reasoning ultimately leads nowhere, and that philosophical and theological problems can be solved if people believe in the Bible.  I do not rule that out entirely, but I also doubt that believing the Bible resolves everything.  Texts can be ambiguous.  Not only is there the struggle to understand what specific words mean, but there is also the struggle to understand what God’s motivations were.

Many Christians may say that we should look to Jesus as the revelation of God, and interpret the rest of the Bible in light of that, or at least prioritize Jesus’ revelation.  Perhaps that can work.  We can look at Jesus’ act of love in sacrificing himself on the cross, and allow that to inform our understanding of God’s motivations.  I am not necessarily against that.  I am against looking down on people who have a different understanding, however.

Book Write-Up: Milestones to Emmaus

Warren Austin Gage and Leah Grace Gage.  Milestones to Emmaus: The Third Day Resurrection in the Old Testament.  Fort Lauderdale: St. Andrews House, 2015.  See here to buy the book.

The title of this book alludes to a story in Luke 24.  Two disciples of Jesus are walking to Emmaus three days after Jesus’ death.  A stranger joins them, and they all three talk about Jesus.  The two disciples express disappointment that Jesus, the one they had hoped would redeem Israel, had been put to death.  The stranger then shows them from the Scriptures that this was supposed to happen.  The stranger turns out to be Jesus.

According to that story in Luke 24, Jesus’ death and resurrection were predicted in the Hebrew Bible.  Similarly, the apostle Paul in I Corinthians 15:3-4 states that he received the tradition that Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection on the third day were in accordance with the Scriptures.

Are they, though?  Is there any place in the Hebrew Bible that explicitly says that a coming Messiah would die for people’s sins and rise from the dead on the third day?  Not really.  Many critical scholars, including evangelical critical scholars, would answer “no” to that question.  Why, then, is there a belief within the New Testament that Christ’s death and resurrection on the third day were in accordance with the Scriptures?  On what basis would the New Testament authors make such a claim?  Did they have specific passages of the Hebrew Bible in mind?

Warren Austin Gage and Leah Grace Gage tackle this question by exploring the use of the third day and three days within the Hebrew Bible.  They also consider passages in which “three days ago” is an idiom for “ago.”  The Gages find that something significant often happens on the third day: exaltation, the completion of the Temple, punishment, satisfaction of one’s needs, deliverance from impending death, etc.  Not only is this the case in the Hebrew Bible, but such usage of the three-days motif is also present in the New Testament (in addition to the passages about Jesus’ resurrection on the third day).

The Gages’ approach to the Hebrew Bible is largely typological.  That means that they believe that stories in the Hebrew Bible foreshadow the ministry, death, resurrection, and exaltation of Jesus Christ.  These Hebrew Bible stories contain themes that resemble Christian themes about Jesus.  For example, many Christians believe that Abraham’s near sacrifice of his son Isaac in Genesis 22 foreshadows God sending his Son Jesus Christ to die for our sins.

There is not always a perfect fit between type and antetype.  Sometimes, the Gages believe that the antetype has a more positive outcome than the type.  In some cases, common themes may exist between the type and the antetype, but there are also differences.  Jonah is thrown overboard so that God will preserve the people on his ship, and King David offers to die in place of Jerusalem.  That resembles Jesus dying to save others.  The difference, as the Gages note, is that Jonah and David were sinners, whereas Jesus was not.  In Genesis 40, Joseph predicts (under divine inspiration) that Pharaoh’s baker will be hanged in three days, whereas the butler will be restored to his previous position.  For the Gages, this foreshadows the crucifixion of Jesus, and Jesus’ exaltation after his resurrection.

I have not always been a fan of typology.  It strikes me as rather arbitrary.  The smug attitude of some Christians who use it has long been a turn-off to me: “Oh, why can’t those Jews see these clear references to Jesus in the Old Testament?”  (The Gages do not say that, but I have heard Christians say that.)  I prefer the historical-critical method of reading the Bible: interpret a passage in light of what it meant to its original audience.

At the same time, I did find the Gages’ use of typology to be impressive and somewhat compelling.  Can one account for these parallels between Old Testament and New Testament stories from a non-Christian perspective?  Perhaps.  One can say that New Testament authors modeled their stories after Old Testament stories and themes.  One can say that such themes are present in all sorts of literature—-suffering, exaltation, powerful enemies, dying to save others, injustice, etc.—-so it is not particularly remarkable that they appear in both the Old and the New Testaments.  Even if typology does increase the likelihood that the Hebrew Bible is a divinely-inspired document that foreshadows Christ, there are still compelling arguments to the contrary.  And yet, one can ask: Did the New Testament authors interpret the Hebrew Bible as the Gages do, particularly when the New Testament authors claimed that Jesus’ resurrection on the third day fulfilled the Scriptures?  Quite possibly.

The Gages also have sections about other topics, such as the good and bad trees in the Hebrew Bible.  In one place in the book, they make connections between the Passover and biblical Flood chronology, which I found particularly interesting.  The Gages also make the interesting point that Jesus escaped corruption (a la Psalm 16:10 and Acts 2:27, 31) by rising on the third day, since corruption of corpses occurred on the fourth day (John 11:39).

In terms of criticisms, I was hoping that the book would be more scholarly.  Warren Gage has a Ph.D. in philosophy and literature from the University of Dallas, and he teaches Old Testament at Knox Theological Seminary.  Leah Grace Gage has an M.T.S. in Hebrew Bible-Old Testament from Harvard.  Bruce Waltke, a renowned Hebrew Bible scholar, recommends this book.  In light of all that, it would have been nice to have seen more references to secondary literature, more discussion of Second Temple biblical exegesis, more interaction with contrary ideas.  The book is a helpful encyclopedia of the use of the three-days motif in Scripture, but I could have heard a lot of its ideas in an evangelical Bible study.

I received a complimentary review copy of this book through Bookcrash, in exchange for an honest review.

Ramblings on the Firstborn

At church this morning, the pastor preached about Luke 2:25-38.  Simeon and Anna are at the Temple, and they bless the child Jesus.  They believe that Jesus will bring about the consolation of Israel and the redemption of Jerusalem.

In Luke 2, Mary and Joseph pay the redemption of the firstborn at the Temple.  The pastor was saying that ancient Judaism associated the firstborn male with the redemption of Israel.  The firstborn male was educated to be literate and studied God’s laws.  If the Levites could not minister at the Temple, the Israelite firstborn males would do so.  Families that had a firstborn male considered themselves blessed.

According to the pastor, Simeon recognized when he saw Jesus that he was not just dealing with any firstborn male.  Rather, he was seeing the Messiah, the one who would console oppressed Israel.  The pastor taught us the lesson of desiring the well-being of communities, not just ourselves and our families.

Is my pastor correct on the significance of the firstborn in ancient Judaism?  In the Torah, the Israelite firstborn male was supposed to belong to God, but Israelite firstborn males were supplanted by the tribe of Levi for the priestly role after the Golden Calf incident (Numbers 3:12).  Interestingly, wikipedia cites Sefer Or Torah, Parashas Mikaitz and Sefer Halikutim Beis (page 305), which state that the firstborn would resume the priestly role in the future Messianic Temple.  Were Israelite firstborn males educated in God’s laws?  Josephus in Against Apion 1.60 and 2.204 says that Israelite children were taught God’s laws, and he may mean children in general.  Other than inheritance rights, I do not know in what respect the Israelite male firstborn was considered significant: if he was believed to bring blessing on the family, or to fulfill some spiritual role.  I remember reading Martin Luther’s commentaries on Genesis, and Luther seemed to regard the firstborn in the Genesis stories as the priest of the family.  Where Luther was drawing that idea, I do not know.