An Open Letter
"The more I learn about the incarnation of a Jewish Jesus, the more I begin to understand how He wants to live incarnationally through me." - MeAn Open Letter To Cincinnati Christian University (formerly Cincinnati Bible College, aka: CBC)
June 4, 2009
Dear CBC,
I last walked your hallowed hallways as a wide-eyed graduate in 1987. My experience there atop Price Hill in Cincy was a good one. More than just experiencing a holy Skyline Three-Way, I was able to make great strides in gaining a Biblical, collegiate foundation, securing an initial preparation for full-time ministry, and finding my smokin'-hot wife. For this, I am very, very grateful (especially the hot wife thing).
I would hope, however, that young graduates leaving your spiritual institution today might gain something beyond what I was able to lasso. For example...
It has not been until the past 6-8 years that I've been exposed to the wonderment of the Hebrew/Jewish ways and culture of Jesus. Learning from people like Ray Vander Laan, Rob Bell, and Lois Tverberg has brought new insight and hunger into the Bible... which, by the way, is almost completely a Hebrew/Jewish book. As I preach these days, I love to hear people say things like: "I never knew that," "This makes the Bible really come life," "I never knew all of this was in the Bible." Of course, I'm slow to tell them I never knew much of this was in the Bible until recently either.
I'm really not saying all of this with a vehement sarcasm as much as I am bemoaning the lack of almost anything pointing to the richness of a Hebraic or Jewish culture during my tenure at CBC.
I do remember passing all my classes, but being somewhat sleepy through many. This is comparative and tantamount to a medical student snoozing through a cardio class. You just don't want someone with a plaque on the wall that says "doctor" or "pastor" sleeping through some of the very basics. Am I right?
My book of Acts class could have really come to life if, for instance, the study of Pentecost in Acts 2 would have been dynamically tied to the Old Testament, Hebrew-Jewish festival of Pentecost. My gospels class would have really popped if the final week of Jesus was laid side-by-side with the seven image-laden festivals celebrated by the Hebrew-Jewish people for hundreds of years.
I'm just saying... so many CBC graduates have gone through a lot of information, but the truly transformational stuff of a Jewish Jesus was just missed. Theology of the incarnation was covered, but the reality and authenticity and Jewish-ness of Jesus' incarnation was not something I can recall grabbing me before being handed my Bachelor's of English Bible diploma.
Here's why this matters... and Henry Blackaby says it best: "If your heart is like the shallow soil on top of a rock, you will accept God's word in your mind, but the truth will not penetrate your heart to make a difference in your actions."
As I made my way through "Old Testament Survey," I needed to see the rich soil of the Jewish faith that would have shaped and influenced Jesus. Trudging through "History of Christianity" was hard because HIS Jewish story... the Christ of Christianity... just wasn't there. "Revelation" was informative and a tough class to get through, but I'm not sure I ever saw a revealing of Jesus. There was a lot of good stuff for my mind, but the real penetrating stuff of Jesus born in the richness of a Hebrew culture... the stuff that is heart-grabbing, eye-opening, life-changing, and penetrates your heart to make a difference in your actions... just wasn't there.
Here's why this matters... in my words: The more I learn about the incarnation of a Jewish Jesus, the more I begin to understand how He wants to live incarnationally through me. As my Christology has evolved over the past several years, my missiology has begun to change, and that is affecting my ecclesiology (and all of these "ology" words I learned at CBC!).
Does anything I'm saying make any sense to you? Could any of this Jewish Christology talk I'm talkin' be a possible application of Paul's inspiring words to Timothy... a young, fresh, Bible-college-grad-like pastor: "...be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus" (II Timothy 2:1)?
You taught me good stuff; really you did. I'm just not sure it was the best. You placed me in rooms full of desks facing the front so I could listen to the professors expound Bible truths (which now seems like training for how you wanted me to do church as well). You DID give me good stuff to think about. However, as I've learned, right thinking does not necessarily translate into right living. All these years of right thinking has created an inside church that is no different from the outside. Coming out of Bible college, my Christology was limited, so my missiology tended to be somewhat status quo. This, in turn, placed my ecclesiology inside a box that just doesn't play as we move into a post-modern, post-Christian world and still try to do church the way we've always done it.
Couldn't we have bantered the scriptures around with the professors like Jewish Rabbi's did with their students? Couldn't we have embraced all aspects of life like a Jewish, incarnate Jesus did? Maybe THAT would have settled issues stemming from guitars and jeans tainting our mandatory chapel services. Couldn't we have asked questions about the life and culture of Jesus and how deeper insights of the holy scriptures might surface? Why didn't we fully understand an incarnate Jewish Jesus, and then let that same Jesus live through us incarnationally to, at least, change Price Hill if not all Cincinnati. Sure, I know we had missions week and were encouraged to take on weekend ministries... but it was all so minimalistic. Our burgeoning but weak Christology gave us a somewhat anemic missiology, and then we graduated and bought into an ecclesiology of church that just doesn't effectively produce disciples of Rabbi Yeshua.
Do you see why any of this matters?
Here's why this matters: The evolution of church from traditional to contemporary to missional in a blossoming post-Christian America is now calling for revolutionary tactics. You... my beloved alma mater... have the capability to train up a new generation of revolutionary leaders that can take our churches beyond attendance, propositions, buildings, and finances.
And just to show there are no hard feelings, I'm hoping some or all of my kids will attend CBC for at least one year. If this happens, I hope they are exposed to and challenged with more than what I was. Additionally, I'm not even asking for a refund on my incomplete education. I'm merely asking you to create a new breed of church leaders, and be revolutionary by espousing and teaching and following the greatest Revolutionist ever. And He, by the way, was Jewish.
Sincerely,
Alan
posted by Alan's Blog @ 8:46 PM
3 Comments
3 Comments:
Alan, I would advise you to NOT stand by the mailbox waiting for your alma maters invitation to be a key note speaker. :)
I also attended a gentile-Jesus university. There were some incredible teachers in those years who cracked the door or the jewishness of the scriptures for me (Zola Levitt, Moishe Rosen, et al), but they were always written off as "Missionaries to the Jews" who had a recruitment agenda. It was not made clear in all of our bible classes that the heart and context of the redemption message and the Redeemer himself was a Jewish one. But, oh the power, when it was!!!
Thanks for getting back to basics personally, and ecclesiastically. The Word, rightly divided, is powerfully transformative. Incompletely divided it is just another book.
Um, I have this horrible habit of proof reading . . (sorry) but did you mean to say "now bad feelings", or "no bad feelings" in the last paragraph? (I am guessing the later.) Thanks for sharing this! I loved the quote about the heart being like a rock underneath a bit of soil.
Alan, I'm pleased to meet you through this post, which came to my attention via a Google blog alert. We don't know each other, as you left CCU about three years before I arrived as a faculty member in 1990.
For what it's worth, there have been a number of changes at your alma mater. Like any river, you can't step into the the same CCU twice.
Commitments to Scripture and ministry are firm with us, but there's no reason to think that we're teaching things exactly as we did some 22 years ago.
I've taught the core gospels course in the college continuously since 1990. You'll be glad to know that the course incorporates what I find to be the best insights of what is widely termed the Third Quest for the Historical Jesus, i.e. the recent movement of scholarship to understand Jesus as a Jew in the Hellenistic-Roman era. As any of dozens of students in that class can attest, a catchphrase of this class is, "Now imagine yourself a good first-century Jew."
Similar remarks can be made for all of our courses in New Testament studies, I might add. Drs. James Smith, Tom Thatcher and Bill Baker remain very current in their understanding of cultural backgrounds and their relevance to exegesis.
In fact, for all of us, this was the focus of our doctoral research. Dr. Thatcher's PhD thesis was on the "riddles" of Jesus in John, thoroughly informed by the Jewish genre of the mashal. Dr. Baker wrote on the book of James against the background of Jewish speech ethics, his exhaustive analysis of rabbinic sources making for one of the longest theses submitted to the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Aberdeen. Dr. Smith's thesis was on the book of Philippians, thoroughly informed by what is sometimes termed the "New Perspective" on Paul--the approach to Paul that sees him in the context of Judaism. My own research was in Luke-Acts, addressing the question of Jewish-Christian relations in that book and concluding that the book was considerably more Jewish in orientation than many of its modern critics have allowed.
For a recent example of the way that this approach to biblical scholarship informs our work, I refer you to my recent article in the Christian Standard on the well-worn topic of baptism. In it you'll note that I suggest that the meaning of baptism in the New Testament becomes clear when we see it against the background of the mikvah, the ritual bath of Second Temple Judaism.
I invite you to come to campus and see for yourself what's going on. By the way, when you do, we might introduce you to some people who articulate these matters more accurately than some you name. I admire Rob Bell as a communicator, but for those of us who actually work with the primary-source documents, his imprecision in their citation and characterization is rather frustrating. Have you read N. T. Wright?
As to your observations about your experiences as a student, I want to note and applaud that as a student you obviously learned how to learn, the primary task of an undergraduate education. Being sleepy in class is common for late adolescents, but what they learn in college ought to be the foundation for what they continue to learn after they graduate. Kudos for doing just that.
And if we could have students like you back in the classroom when you've realized all that, then we could do exactly what you describe. That happens to be more the style of graduate education and of our adult undergraduate program, precisely because it's developmentally appropriate for people with life experience that sharpens their perspective on issues. Might I suggest a graduate class sometime?
So do come back and see us sometime. I don't schedule chapel speakers, but from my point of view you'd be welcome to say anything to anyone at any time.
Jon Weatherly
Vice President for Academic Affairs
Professor of New Testament
Cincinnati Christian University
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