Scripture-ish

In what is perhaps the most famous speech in American history, maybe the greatest speech in American history, the sixteenth president of these United States envisioned “a new birth of freedom.” Let’s consider what he meant, and how it has turned out. George Whitefield (1714–1770)—who died younger than did Abraham Lincoln, by the way—liked to tell people that they needed new birth. Whitefield was an Anglican clergyman, a Calvinist, a preacher of revivals during the Great Awakening. One story I’ve heard about him is that when asked why he so frequently preached that people had to be born again, he replied, “Because ye must be born again!” There’s a documentary about him that you can find on YouTube under the title Born AgainWhitefield was right: people do need to be born again—if we take Jesus as any kind of authority. Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. (John 3:3)This is what Jesus told Nicodemus. Of course, this Jewish leader, this Pharisee, had trouble understanding what Jesus meant, and often readers—rather unsympathetically—are confused at Nicodemus’ confusion; we are astonished at his astonishment. Nicodemus himself knew that Jesus could not be talking about physical birth, and he himself rules out such an interpretation in the very next verse (John 3:4), but he can’t grasp what Jesus what getting at. Jesus used the bulk of the rest of the chapter to explain. For us, often the new birth seems so easy. Especially in light of Jesus’ explanation a couple verses later, that the new birth involves “water and spirit,” many readers think of baptism. And baptism is a piece of cake. Just get dunked under water—or, in many Christian traditions, you don’t even need to do that; just a little water on the forehead will do—and it’s all over. Voilà, new birth! Nothing could be easier. We should pause and reflect. What about normal birth, or physical birth, or what we might call the first birth? Is physical birth easy? I can report that for a father, it’s pretty easy. But I hear that for the other parties involved, it’s somewhat taxing. For both the baby and the mother, there’s a lot of yelling involved. And even for a father, after the birth, life gets somewhat difficult, no matter how much practice you have. As Jim Gaffigan said, if you want to know what it’s like to have a fourth kid, just imagine you’re drowning, and then someone hands you a baby. But back to the new birth. Is it as hard as a first birth? Well, there’s usually a lot less screaming involved. Sometimes we tell people how easy the new birth is. Just give your life over to God, apply some water, baddabing, baddaboom, and you’re done. Simple! Is it that simple? That’s not the impression made by every (any?) passage in the New Testament when describing the process of becoming a Christian. Ephesians 4 talks about taking off “the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts,” and putting on “the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness” (4:22–24). I think what Paul is talking about here is becoming a Christian, which he likens to changing clothes, stripping yourself of a former manner of life and clothing your self with some new behaviors. I guess you could look at that as another description of an easy process, just like we don’t give much thought to taking off our pajamas and putting on some daytime clothes. But Paul seems to have more in mind; he seems to think this is more difficult than just changing clothes, or that this process of changing clothes is going to necessitate our sustained attention, it’s going to require time and effort. After all, he is writing this letter to people who have already committed themselves to Jesus, people who are baptized, people who are Christians. But he’s telling these Christians to continue putting off the old man and putting on the new man. And he explains further what this looks like in practice. Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another. Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath: Neither give place to the devil. Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth. Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers. And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. (Ephesians 4:25–30)And that’s not all; Paul keeps going, describing the behaviors that the Ephesian Christians need to adopt, the new man that they need to continually put on. Consider another biblical passage about becoming a Christian, as described, again, by the apostle Paul. Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection: Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. (Romans 6:3–6)Easy enough, right? Just get baptized and you’re dead to sin. Here the old man is not just taken off but crucified. Baddabing, baddaboom, new birth! Hmm, not quite. To these Roman Christians whom he has never met, Paul writes about the new birth as a continual process of dying to sin and becoming enslaved to righteousness. It doesn’t sound very easy. Now, don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean to say that it takes a lot of work on our part to get God to save us. Nope, we don’t get God to save us. He’s eager to do so. Remember the prodigal son’s father. But the new birth is not merely about salvation. That is the easy part. The harder part is becoming conformed to Christ, putting on the new man. It turns out that the new man is Christ (Gal 3:27), and the process of putting him on is a lifetime project. The new birth is not so easy after all. Now let’s return to that famous American speech. I’m not sure if the Gettysburg Address really is the most famous American speech; that honor might go to the “I Have a Dream” speech by Martin Luther King Jr. (pdf, wikipedia), but that speech by MLK, delivered in 1963 on the steps of the Lincoln memorial, began with a reference to the Gettysburg Address, given in 1863. The first few words of King’s speech are “Five score years ago…,” and then he mentions the Emancipation Proclamation. It’s Lincoln’s speech (wikipedia) that I want to consider for a moment. It is a short speech, much shorter than the I Have a Dream speech. The entire thing is carved into the left wall of the Lincoln Memorial. Here’s an image. At the dedication of a cemetery at the location of an extraordinarily bloody battle, part of an extraordinarily bloody war, Lincoln guessed, hoped, “that these dead shall not have died in vain,” but rather “that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom.” Given that context, it seems that this new birth of freedom was about as difficult as the new birth that Jesus mentioned to Nicodemus. Lincoln was not the only person who thought they saw in the American Civil War the hand of God. Check out these familiar words, written by Julia Ward Howe in 1861 (wikipedia). Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the LordHe is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are storedHe has loosed the fateful lightening of His terrible swift swordHis truth is marching on. Glory, glory, hallelujah! Julia Ward Howe, a fervent abolitionist, witnessed the bloodletting of the Civil War and thought she was seeing the work of God. “Glory, glory, hallelujah!” Perhaps she was right. Lincoln thought so, anyway. The Gettysburg Address is a wonderful speech, deservedly famous and revered and often memorized—I hope, still. But it is not my favorite speech by Lincoln. That would be the other one carved in granite in the Lincoln Memorial, the one on the right as you climb the steps, Lincoln’s Second Inaugural (text, wikipedia), delivered March 4, 1865, forty-two days before his assassination. In this theologically profound speech, I want ponder one passage. Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether” (Psalm 19:9).Here Lincoln imagines that the American Civil War will last until atonement is made for the sins of the past. Was he right?Sometimes later generations pay for the sins of the past. Think about the fiscal situation of the United States. The current US debt is close to $40 trillion, and the annual budget deficit is in the neighborhood of a trillion dollars. I don’t know what’s going to happen to all that money, but some people think that a later generation is eventually going to have to pay for it. Saddling our children and grandchildren with enormous debt has been a great American tradition for more than a generation, and we’re not about to stop now. We imitate Hezekiah, who responded to Isaiah’s prophecy of doom in a future generation: “Is it not good, if peace and truth be in my days?” (2 Kings 20:19). (Not that we’re enjoying much peace and truth in 2026, but you can’t have everything!)Or think about climate change. Some people think climate change is real and is caused by humans, other people deny certain elements of that statement. The people that think humans have caused climate change essentially say that later generations are going to pay for the misdeeds of the past and present.Now, take a look at the Third Commandment. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I YHWH thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments. (Exodus 20:4–6)“Visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children.” I don’t know exactly what God means by this. I’d like to interpret it in harmony with that statement from Ezekiel, “The soul that sinneth, it shall die” (Ezek 18:20). Perhaps God meant more than what I’m about to suggest, but I think at least he meant that the misdeeds of the fathers create problems for the children. If you have any experience with foster care, you’ve got examples out the wahzoo of one way that this concept plays out. The national debt might be another, and climate change another. Abraham Lincoln thought the American Civil War might cause so much death and destruction that it would atone for America’s history of slavery. He was wrong. That atonement continues, as recent years have so clearly demonstrated. The sins of the fathers are visited upon their children, and it’s been longer than the third or fourth generation specified in Scripture. Of course, in part the sin continues. I wonder if it will ever end. The new birth of freedom wasn’t so easy as Lincoln had hoped. That is the way of new birth. I’m not disagreeing with Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. I’m affirming it, and explaining it. New Birth is never an easy process, one and done. Whether or not birth is painful, new birth is always painful, and new birth never stops, until we are finally delivered unto God.Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. 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And Jesus said, For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see might be made blind. And some of the Pharisees which were with him heard these words, and said unto him, Are we blind also? Jesus said unto them, If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth. (John 9:39–41)Old Isaac in Genesis 27 was fortunate to be blind. Let me explain. But first I want to tell you why I read Dracula every year. Well, actually, I don’t read it, I listen to it. Come October, it starts to feel like Dracula season, and I take a break from podcasts and listen once again to the classic vampire novel. It’s because Dracula is, on the one hand captivating, enthralling, exciting, and on the other hand, a deeply Christian novel. One of the ways the novel provides an escape into fantasy land is that, for the most part, the novel presents clear moral choices; there are bright lines between right and wrong. That kind of clearly demarcated morality does happen in our world, the real world, but there is also a lot of gray here. There’s not much gray in Dracula, and that is, in some ways, a relief. The character for whom the novel is named is clearly evil, pursuing an evil plan, and stopping him is a good thing. There are some heroes in the book, mostly the men who, about halfway through the novel, have committed themselves to destroying the Count. There are five men, led by Abraham Van Helsing, and one woman, Mina Harker, and they are all brave and virtuous, ready to offer their lives in pursuit of their just goal. There is no ambiguity about whom to root for.(The novel does not completely lack nuance. In ch. 23, Mina Harker told the assembled men that killing Dracula would be good even for Dracula, and so they should not pursue him out of hate but rather out of love. “That poor soul who has wrought all this misery is the saddest case of all. Just think what will be his joy when he, too, is destroyed in his worser part that his better part may have spiritual immortality. You must be pitiful to him, too, though it may not hold your hands from his destruction.”)My favorite character is Quincey Morris, and not just because he’s the only American in the novel. He is, in fact, the bravest of all. When he becomes convinced that he knows the right thing to do, he does not hesitate. This characteristic of Mr. Morris is represented well near the end of chapter 24, when the group is discussing what they will do when they find Count Dracula resting in his coffin. Van Helsing says that they will wait for an opportunity when no one is looking, because they need to drive a stake through Dracula’s heart, and that’s not the kind of thing you want people to witness. You don’t want to be accused of murder. But to this counsel of caution from Van Helsing, Quincey Morris responds, in his Texas accent:I shall not wait for any opportunity. When I see the box I shall open it and destroy the monster, though there were a thousand men looking on, and if I am to be wiped out for it the next moment!I love that attitude: I am ready to do what is right, come what may! That attitude contrasts so sharply with my own, because I find myself pursuing peace and comfort and avoiding risk. I need to be inspired to lay down my life in the work of God, just as Christ demands.What Can I Offer?What is the point of life? There are different ways of saying it, and I myself—in my teaching and preaching—say it in different ways, just as the New Testament does. Sometimes I say that the point of our lives is to be conformed to the image of Jesus (Romans 8:29), and I think that’s a good way of putting it. Or, we could say that, since Jesus calls us to die (Mark 8:35; cf. Gal 2:20), then our entire life is about figuring out how to die for Jesus. Both of those ways of articulating the point of our lives are true and biblical and could be restated like this: we dedicate ourselves to God.In the past few years we’ve started singing a song at church that I now learn through google was popularized by Brandon Lake, a song called “Gratitude.” It’s got a section that resonates with me.I know it’s not muchbut I’ve nothing else fit for a king,except for a heart singing hallelujah.I definitely feel that. I don’t have anything to give to God, nothing worthy of what he has done for me. All I’ve got is this heart singing hallelujah.But here’s the thing: the saints have always longed to give more to God than just a worship song; they’ve given their entire lives. The saints have longed for a chance to sacrifice themselves on behalf of Christ, and many of them were granted that opportunity.For example, in her classic of spirituality called The Story of a Soul, St. Thérèse of Lisieux recalls a trip to Rome that included a visit to the Coliseum, where she kissed the ground. My heart beat violently as I pressed my lips to the dust once reddened with the blood of the early Christians, and I asked the grace to be a martyr too for Jesus. At the bottom of my heart I felt that I was heard.—St. Thérèse of Lisieux, describing her visit to the Coliseum in Rome (ch. 6, p. 75)Thérèse ended up dying at age 24 of tuberculosis; but throughout her memoir she described her own life, lived entirely in dedication to God as a nun, as a type of martyrdom. Indeed, at one point she mentioned that “theologians call a martyrdom” the religious life (ch. 9, p. 123). She knew what it was that Paul meant in Philippians 1:29, when he said that the Christians in Philippi had been granted by God’s grace not only to believe Christ but also to suffer for him.IsaacAnd now we come to Isaac, the overlooked patriarch. But how could he avoid being overlooked? His own father is Abraham, the father of the faithful. We sing songs about father Abraham. The blessing awaiting the faithful who have departed, according to Jesus in Luke 16:22, is to rest in the bosom of Abraham. It’s hard for a son to live up to such a father. And then Isaac’s own son is Jacob, who is, literally, Israel (cf. Gen 32:28), the father of the twelve tribes. It’s easy for such a son to overshadow his father.What about Isaac? What did he do? The most famous thing he ever did was get born (Gen 21), finally, after Abraham waited decades for a son. Or maybe the most famous thing about Isaac was his near-death experience on Mount Moriah (Gen 22). But, in any case, the well-known stories involving Isaac aren’t really about Isaac at all. Abraham died in Genesis 25, and then it’s Isaac’s time to shine, but immediately the attention of Genesis turns toward the next generation, so that Jacob and Esau, and especially Jacob, dominates the next chapters, until we get to Joseph in the following generation.Abraham—wow!Jacob—wow!Isaac—who?There’s really just one chapter where Isaac is the star of the show, and that’s Genesis 26, the one where Isaac follows the example of his father Abraham (cf. Gen 20) by lying to Abimelech about his wife, Rebekah, claiming that she is, instead, his sister. Isaac doesn’t even have Abraham’s excuse that he’s married to his half-sister (cf. Gen 20:12). Rebekah is Isaac’s cousin. It’s also interesting that there is no indication in Genesis 26 that anyone had thought about taking Rebekah as a wife, as Pharaoh (Gen 12:15) and Abimelech (Gen 20:2) had done with Sarah. The rest of chapter 26 describes conflict between Isaac and the Philistines in regard to some wells.Isaac is a hundred years old at the end of chapter 26, which we can calculate based on the information given in the text: Isaac was sixty years old at the birth of his twin sons (25:26), and at the end of chapter 26 those twins are 40 years old (26:34).Now Isaac thinks he’s about to die. It’s not an unreasonable thought for a man who measures his life in triple digits, but it turns out to be premature. Isaac lives to be 180 years old (35:28). He’s still alive when Jacob returns from Paddan-Aram with two wives and twelve sons (Gen 33), and he seems to live for some years after that. But in Genesis 27, Isaac has already lived a century, and he’s basically blind, and so he thinks the end is near.Isaac calls his oldest boy, Esau, to offer a blessing on what he thinks is his deathbed. This blessing, according to the biblical text, is obviously very important and even fateful for the one receiving the blessing, but I’m not exactly sure why. I find the power of this blessing a little confusing. It seems to be tapping into something about the culture of the patriarchs, or the culture of ancient Israel, that is not really explained in the Bible. This is not the only time we see such a blessing in Scripture—Jacob himself does it (Gen 48–49)—but it is the first time. I don’t know how common this kind of thing was in the ancient Near East. In our own day, deathbed wishes sometimes happen. For me, about a year ago my aunt, Anna Lou, called from a hospital bed to tell me goodbye, because she knew she was about to die. She did not offer a blessing, not a formal one, but she told me she loved me and was proud of me. This blessing from Isaac to his son is something beyond that, something more potent. His wife, Rebekah, obviously thinks the blessing is important—she knows that this is a blessing “before YHWH” (27:7). It sounds like the blessing determines who is the leader in the family; maybe we could compare it to getting the majority share of the inheritance. That’s probably not quite right, because there is something else called the birthright, that Esau has already sold (25:29–34). Maybe we could think of the birthright as the money, and the blessing as control—like a family that owns a company could give one kid the majority of the savings and the other kid the majority ownership of the company.At any rate, let’s take a look at the blessing. Therefore God give thee of the dew of heaven, and the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn and wine:Let people serve thee, and nations bow down to thee:be lord over thy brethren, and let thy mother’s sons bow down to thee:cursed be every one that curseth thee, and blessed be he that blesseth thee. (Genesis 27:28–29)Isaac grants leadership of the family, rule of all the brothers. This is the blessing he thinks he’s giving Esau, but instead he’s giving the blessing to Jacob. He thinks that he’s granting the rule over the family to Esau. After all, Esau is his oldest son, by a minute or two, and he’s the son who has a better relationship with his father. It certainly makes sense that he would want Esau to rule over the family, for Esau’s brothers to serve Esau.But here’s the thing—God didn’t want Esau to be the leader; he wanted the younger son to be the leader. This is a pattern in Genesis. Isaac himself had benefited from it. His older half-brother Ishmael was not the promised child, and Ishmael, the first-born of Abraham, did not inherit Abraham’s possessions or power. The oldest son of Jacob is Reuben, but Reuben is not the most important or most powerful of Jacob’s sons; in the book of Genesis, that is clearly Joseph, one of the youngest of Jacob’s boys. Later on, the tribe of Judah, Jacob’s fourth son, would inherit the rule.God didn’t want Esau to be the leader; he wanted the younger son to be the leader.So, maybe Isaac should have expected that God would have plans for Isaac’s family that did not involve a straightforward primogeniture. But, he really should have known it because God told him, or he told his wife. And YHWH said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger. (Genesis 25:23)The biblical text presents this oracle as coming to Rebekah alone, but what are the chances that she told her husband? I bet she told him. Why wouldn’t she? It’s an oracle about their family, an oracle from God. It seems like the kind of thing a wife would tell her husband. Isaac should have known—both from his own life (he’s the younger son) and from this oracle—that God might well want Jacob to have the rule of the family. But old Isaac, seemingly on his deathbed, was about to bless Esau, not Jacob, with the rule over the family. He was about to subvert God’s will—and he would have, too, had he been able to see well enough to tell his boys apart.Good thing he was blind.John 9Do you recall the story of the blind man in John 9? This man, we are told, had been blind from birth. I don’t think we are ever told the age of the man when Jesus healed him. I often get that confused with other stories: the man healed by Jesus by the pool of water in John 5 had been sick 38 years, and the man lame from birth healed by Peter and John in Acts 3 is over 40 years old (Acts 4:22). But I’m pretty sure we are never told the age of the man blind from birth in John 9. I am interested in the question that the disciples ask upon encountering this man, and the response from Jesus.And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him. (John 9:2–3)Do you hear this? This man was born without sight “that the works of God should be made manifest in him.” Now I’m interested in his age again. How old is this guy? I don’t know, except that he’s an adult. He’s not 80, because his parents are still alive, but he’s not 10 either. Let’s say, he’s somewhere between 20–40. He has been blind for decades. He has never seen the sunset, or the faces of his parents, or even his own face. And it’s not because he did anything wrong, and it’s not because his parents did anything wrong. It was so that he might display the works of God.Jesus’ answer to his disciples reminds me of what he says two chapters later about his friend Lazarus. “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby” (John 11:4). Of course, we remember what happened. Lazarus did die, and spent four days in the tomb, while Jesus dithered. When Jesus finally arrived at the home of Lazarus, Mary and Martha seemed upset with him. But Jesus was right: the sickness that killed Lazarus did not ultimately result in death, because Jesus controls life and death. As he tells Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life.” Yes, Lazarus died, but death was not the end, and the glory of God was displayed through that sickness.I am confident that Lazarus and Mary and Martha wanted to display the glory of God in their lives. I am confident that had Jesus asked them, “would you like for the Son of God to be glorified through you,” they would have said, “Absolutely! Sign us up!” But what would they have said if Jesus had told them what it would cost to display the glory of God? I imagine it would have been something like, “Let this cup pass from me, yet not what I will, but what you will.”What I do know is that Jesus, “the author and finisher of our faith, … for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb 12:2). I know that Jesus understood what it would take for the glory of God to be manifest in him. He counted the cost. And he barreled ahead.What of the blind man? How many times had his parents prayed for him, that he would gain his sight? How many times had he prayed, or cried out, “why me?” or “how long?”What if his parents had been told when he was born, or at age 10, that his blindness was for a special purpose to bring glory to God? What would they have thought?Or what if God had made an offer to the blind man — you can have your sight now and you can live a normal life, comfortable, just like everyone else. Or you can wait years to get your sight, decades even, and you will get your sight when you meet God in the flesh—and the glory of God and of the Son of God will be manifest in you. You will meet your heart’s desire, indeed, the desire of the nations (Hag 2:7).Which do you choose?Let’s PretendLet’s imagine a soul in heaven before God has assigned it to a body. Now, listen, I’m probably teaching heresy here: I don’t know that a soul does pre-exist its entrance into a body—in fact, I would guess the opposite, given the story in Genesis 2, of how God created the man out of dirt and then breathed him into him the breath of life. But you know that verse in Jeremiah 1 where God says, “I knew you before I formed you in the womb”? That’s what I’m imagining, that God knows people before their birth. Paul was a chosen vessel picked out by God for a special purpose (Acts 9:15). I wonder if this blind man was, as well.He says, “I know it’s not much but I’ve nothing else fit for a king, except for a heart singing hallelujah.” And God says, “Nope, I want more.”So imagine with me a soul having a conversation with God. And the soul says to God that he loves God so much, when he takes on a body, when he comes to earth, he just wants to dedicate his life to God’s glory. He says, “I know it’s not much but I’ve nothing else fit for a king, except for a heart singing hallelujah.” And God says to the soul, “Nope, I want more.” Stunned, the soul stares back at God. “You want more than that? Uh, but, I’ve nothing else fit for a king.” And God says: “I want more than a heart singing hallelujah.” And the soul says: “yeah, yeah, absolutely, but I don’t know what to do. Can you tell me what to do? I want to give you everything. I want to give you my entire being. But I don’t know how. Help me, please.” And God says, “Well, I don’t need a prophet; I’ve got all the prophets I need. And I don’t need an apostle; those positions have been filled. But I tell you what I have in mind. I am planning on going to earth at some point, in the fullness of time, and when I do, I’m going to heal a blind person. Actually, I’m going to heal multiple blind people, but I’m thinking about one time when I’m going to be healing someone who has never had physical sight because he was born blind. And that story is going to be written down, and people are going to be hearing about it and reading it for generations, centuries, and people will learn a great deal about God, and about life, and about salvation, from this story.”And the soul says, “Oh, I love that idea. And you want me to be involved? Thank you. I could write the story down.”God: “No, I’ve already got someone picked out for that. But I do need someone to be the blind guy.”The Blind PatriarchThe heroes of our faith pray things like this Prayer of Abandonment. Give it a read. My Father, I abandon myself to you. Make of me what you will. Whatever you make of me,I thank you. I am ready for everythingI accept everything. Provided that your will be done in me, In all your creatures, I desire nothing else, Lord. I put my soul in your hands, I give it to you, Lord, With all the love in my heart, Because I love you, And because it is for me a need of loveTo give myself,To put myself in your hands unreservedly, With infinite trust. For you are my Father!—Charles de Foucauld, Prayer of AbandonmentBut what if there is resistance? What if someone is not going to follow through with God’s plans?Isaac was blind, and that blindness was used by God. Isaac needed to be blind. Had he recognized his son Jacob, he would not have blessed him. He would have stood in the way of God.I’m going to give Isaac the benefit of the doubt, and assume that had someone asked him whether he wanted to give glory to God with his entire life, he would have said yes. It’s just that Isaac suffered from the same condition that afflicts many of us: we think we know better than God.Isaac’s story as recorded in Genesis appears to focus on this one event, this blessing Jacob, his younger son. We might even say that it is Isaac’s major purpose in life to give this blessing to Jacob. And he almost blew it. He would have blown it had he been seeing. Good thing he was blind. And the reason he was blind—not born blind, but became blind—was that the works of God should be made manifest in him. And in this way, I trust, the greatest desire of Isaac came to fulfillment. Surely this patriarch prayed the same as Charles de Foucauld: “My Father, I abandon myself to you. Make of me what you will.” And God did.Or we might imagine Isaac praying that prayer that I have sometimes heard in church, the prayer that goes, “If we try to do something against your will, defeat us, O Lord!” If Isaac prayed that prayer, then perhaps he recognized his own good fortune in experiencing one of his prayers answered by God. It had been announced before the birth of his twins that the younger was the chosen vessel, appointed by God for leadership, but Isaac stood opposed to God’s plans. God defeated him.I won’t tell you what ended up happening with Quincey Morris—you’ll have to read the book. But I will say he proved himself noble. Thérèse of Lisieux asked for the grace to be a martyr for Jesus. She wanted to glorify God with her entire life, since it was God who had given her life and Jesus who had redeemed it. Do we wish similarly, to give our lives wholly to God? And when given the opportunity—like the blind man, or like the blind patriarch—will we embrace it, or at least trust God to defeat us?Back in November 2025, I preached a version of these thoughts at the Sherrod Ave. Church of Christ (Florence, Alabama). Here’s the video. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit edmongallagher.substack.com

Three years ago, my dad—Timothy Louis Gallagher—passed away in the hospital in Madisonville, Kentucky. This is the eulogy I delivered at his funeral a few days later (April 28, 2023). Dad was 71 years old. My dad died this past Monday, April 24. The church sent out the news of his death a little before 2pm. That was the second death announcement the church sent out that day. The first death announcement, sent out 15 minutes earlier, reported that I was the one that had died—which gives me the chance to say that the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated. Some of you are wondering why I would be telling jokes at a time like this. Others of you are probably thinking, well, that wasn’t much of a joke. But the reason I’m starting my dad’s eulogy with something close to a joke is because I am the son of Tim Gallagher, and if he were giving this speech, he would definitely start with a joke.That’s something he sometimes did: give speeches. Actually, I haven’t heard him give a speech in a long time, maybe decades. I do remember him giving a speech at the rehearsal dinner the evening before my wedding, so that was 23 years ago. I’m not sure I’ve heard him give a speech since then, but when I was young, I remember him doing it a lot. He was in a group called Toastmasters, and they would get together and give speeches, and critique each other. At least, I think that’s what would happen at their meetings. I never actually went to one. But he wanted to become a good public speaker, he wanted that challenge, and he achieved that. One time he came to my school—I can’t remember if it was West Broadway Elementary or Browning Springs Middle School, but it must have been a DARE program because he came to talk about drugs. He had the kids eating out of his hand.There are so many things I want to tell you about my dad. I’m not a funeral guy; I don’t get asked to do many funerals. I’ve done a handful over the years, but this is the first funeral I’ve done for someone that I lived with, and I lived with him for 18 years. I’ve got a lot to say about him. And I want to get this right. It’s hard to capture his life in this little speech, this eulogy. I recognize that this is one of the defining moments of my life, that decades from now I will tell people about Tim Gallagher and say that I spoke at his funeral. I will tell them how I spent most of the last week of his life sitting in his hospital room, along with my mom and my sister Elaine and other family members. I will explain how I walked into his hospital room just in time to hear his sister-in-law Anna Lou exclaim, “He’s got his eyes open,” while Elaine said, “I think this is it.” I want people to know that he was the type of father who deserved to have his children gathered around him in his last moments, the type of man whose wife wanted to—and did—spend the last night of his life next to his hospital bed, the type of man who deserves a fitting eulogy. So, yes, I want to get this right.There are a lot of angles by which to approach my dad’s life, a lot of things to say about the type of person he was, and I know each one of you had your own experiences with him, your own angles of vision on his character.A lot of you know him as a pharmacist. My dad practiced pharmacy in Madisonville since 1975, just after he graduated from Ole Miss, where he met my mom. He followed her back to her hometown, which became his adopted hometown and his children’s hometown. (Dad was a grew up in Texarkana, Texas.) My parents owned Robards Drug Store throughout most of the 1980s and 1990s, and in that capacity my dad gave some of you jobs. He gave Elaine and me jobs. Elaine eventually figured out that she wanted to follow in my parents’ footsteps and become a pharmacist herself. I pretty soon figured out that I did not want to spend my life working in a pharmacy. Let me say that if my dad was disappointed in my decision not to follow his career path, he did not let on. After my parents sold Robards, they worked at various pharmacies, but Mom mostly worked at Rite Aid and Dad mostly worked at Walmart. He managed the local Walmart pharmacy for a while, and one year he was named the national pharmacy manager of the year for Walmart.Dad loved being a pharmacist, and two aspects of his character stand out to me in relation to pharmacy. One, he enjoyed working hard. Especially when he owned Robards—well, you can imagine the long hours he kept when he owned his own business. When he bought Robards from Mr. Hatchell, the store was open from something like 8 in the morning until 10 at night. I remember as a little kid going to bed before Dad got off work. He worked hard, and he enjoyed it. Even our vacations were work: no sitting on the beach for us. We went on vacation to get things done, to explore new places and see new sights. The second thing I think about is how he enjoyed interacting with customers, providing help to them. Pharmacy gave him a way of helping people, of being generous. Those of you who were his customers know what I’m talking about. Mom and Dad have routinely given Jodi and me things; they’ve always been ready to help us in any way that they could. I don’t know how many things in our house are gifts from them. On the day he died, Mom gave me his shoes, these Sketchers that I’m wearing which he had bought because you could just slide your foot right into them. The shoes are a little smaller than I’m used to wearing; if I had bought them for myself, I would have gotten a bigger pair. I’m glad to wear them because they were my dad’s, but they’re a little small for me. On the other hand, in terms of his character, his hard work and his generosity, his shoes are much harder to fill.I said he worked a lot and that often he would come home after I was in bed. But at some point he moved the closing hours up to 6pm so he could spend more time with his family. He was devoted to us, to Elaine and me. Much of my childhood was spent in our backyard with Elaine and Dad, and we were throwing a baseball or softball. It seems like all summer long we were practicing hitting or fielding. He was Elaine’s softball coach for several years. He was devoted to us. He loved us. He wanted to teach us and shape our character. He wasn’t the disciplinarian Mom was, but sometimes he would get in on it. I especially remember that Elaine could get under his skin. I’m talking about the young Elaine. Oh, who am I kidding, I’m talking about Elaine no matter what age. Have you met her? But I especially remember a threat Dad would use on the young Elaine, when we still lived on Arrowhead Drive, and Elaine had a phone line in her room. Elaine would do something defiant, and Dad would yell, “I’m going to rip that phone out of the wall!” He yelled it a lot, but he never actually ripped it out of the wall. I don’t bring that up to talk about my dad’s empty threats, but to show you that he wanted to protect his daughter. He was deeply concerned about us kids. And I know my own kids are thinking, “what does it mean to rip a phone out of a wall? Why was the phone in the wall?” Phones used to be attached to the wall by a cord. We’ll talk about it later.I will also say that besides Elaine, I don’t remember Dad ever having any trouble out of his other children. Just sayin’.What else should I tell you about my dad? He loved cooking. Not just cooking, but learning about cooking, about different techniques or different tools or different dishes to prepare. He loved experimenting in the kitchen. In the hours before his death, when we were just waiting on it to happen, Elaine said she didn’t know who she was going to call now for cooking advice. Dad loved reading, and he has encouraged that in his kids and grandkids. He’s bought all of us, I guess, kindles. He loved the Dallas Cowboys, from his home state. He loved UK Basketball from his adopted state. He loved Alabama Football, since he claimed an inheritance in Alabama through me and my family. We’ve lived in Alabama since 2006, and he used that as an excuse to root for—let’s admit it—a superior college football team.Dad loved my mom. They were married nearly 49 years. They raised their family together, owned a business together, shared a career. They took trips together, vacations to Europe and across America that some of you joined them on. My parents were looking forward to their 70s, retirement life that would allow for more travel and visits with grandkids. Mom will still be able to do that, but without the man who devoted his life to her.Dad also passed on his faith to his children. When I was growing up, when it came to church, we were a three-times-a-week family. Mom and Dad taught Elaine and me from an early age to be devoted to the life of the church. I also remember my dad offering critiques of the day’s sermon. As he aged, Dad grew less critical of sermons, more—I don’t know—receptive, I guess. Sean, a few weeks ago he told me I had to listen to your sermon because it was one of the best he had ever heard, a sermon on the structure of the Psalter. But Dad also showed me how to live out the teachings of Scripture; the apostle Paul says that “the one who loves another has fulfilled the law” (Rom 13:8). I’ve already talked about Dad’s generosity toward others. Those are big shoes to fill.I’ve been thinking a lot, lately, about what it means to live a good life. As I was driving back and forth in recent days between Madisonville and Alabama, where I live, I listened to this great podcast, four episodes on the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Some of you may know that name. Bonhoeffer was executed by the Nazis in 1945, shortly before the end of WW II, because of his role in a conspiracy to rescue Jews from Germany and assassinate Adolf Hitler. The most amazing moment, I think, in Bonhoeffer’s life was his decision in 1939 to not take the easy way out. He was in New York City for a few weeks as a way of avoiding the suffering that would come with being in Germany, and he decided that he could not avoid suffering if he was going to do anything valuable in life. He returned to Germany to work against the Nazi regime from the inside, and he sacrificed his life in that effort. He was 39 years old when he died.Bonhoeffer, I think, lived a good life, a valuable life, a life of sacrifice and love. It’s easy to honor his memory because he faced such a dreadful evil and he made a difficult and inspiring choice. Most of us do not face such fateful decisions. Such decisions do not come in every generation. The choice that Bonhoeffer made is not a choice that we ourselves have the option of making. So when there is no Nazi regime for us to oppose, when the ethical choices that we face are not so stark, when we don’t have the option of giving our lives in the cause of opposing an obvious and terrible evil, what does a good life look like? Bonhoeffer’s life was momentous because he was in a momentous situation, but what about the rest of us who are not in such a momentous situation?We still have the choice, don’t we? We can still choose whether we will exhibit love and sacrifice in our lives. The preacher Fred Craddock once mentioned that a lot of us think that when God demands we give over to him our lives, what that means is that we write a $10,000 check to God all at once. “Here God, this is my life.” But what God usually wants from us is that $10,000 one dollar bill at a time. (I’ve inflated the numbers a bit.) We give over our lives to God in installments. Bonhoeffer gave his $10,000 check all at once. Most of us who don’t face such a choice are forced to give a dollar at a time.Will we be generous with our time and our money, as our Lord calls on us to be? Will we forgive when we are wronged, as our Lord demands? Will we be full of grace, as God has showered us with grace? Will we treat others better than they treat us? Will we treat them the way we wish they would treat us? These small decisions are what it means to give your life over to God a dollar at a time. And as I think about what that looks like, I think about my dad. He’s left some big shoes to fill.I’m going to miss a lot of things about my dad, about who he was, previous experiences that I had with him. But mostly what I’m going to miss going forward—the crater that his death creates for me now that I’m in my 40s—is that he won’t be there for my kids. On her Facebook page, my wife, Jodi, linked to my dad’s obituary and described him as my kids’ greatest encourager. Listen, my kids need discipline, they need to be tamed, and my dad wasn’t about to provide any of that. In his 50s and 60s, he was done being a parent, and he had transitioned fully into grandparent mode. When my kids did anything—whether cute or amazing or destructive or whatever—he looked on in awe, smiling and laughing and taking a picture. He thought everything they did was amazing. He accepted them fully, without holding anything back. He was their greatest encourager. And I mourn that he’s no longer there to provide that support, that confidence, that acceptance. But the memories of him, the love he shared with them, will last a lifetime. He’s left some big shoes to fill. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit edmongallagher.substack.com

This essay is the text of a presentation I made on October 2, 2025, at The Light Network Conference, which convened at the Henderson Church of Christ in Henderson, Tennessee. Some of the comments here reflect that context. Other comments have been updated. You ever go to a grocery store for just an item or two, maybe a place like Aldi, where they don’t have a self-checkout lane, and you just have to wait in the back behind a bunch of people with full carts—and then, oh glory of glories, what happens, but another cashier walks up from the back and opens a register, and we see with the eyes of flesh that the last shall be first? What had been the back of the line becomes now the front of the line, as you move over to another register. If 30 seconds earlier someone had walked into the Aldi with a robe and sandals, you probably would have hardly noticed, but if that person had proclaimed for all to hear, “blessed are you who wait in the back of the line,” you would probably roll your eyes. No, not blessed, cursed. This is no fun at all. I’m not fortunate to be at the back of the line. I’d rather be up closer. And yet, 30 seconds later as you move over to the new grocery line, you realize if you had been further up in the line, if you had not been in the back, you would not have been able to move over to the new line so easily, and someone in the back probably would have gotten ahead of you. Whether you knew it at the time or not, you were, indeed, fortunate to be at the back of the line.Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.This is a beatitude—or, to be more specific, I think what I have described in that Aldi check-out line is a reasonably close approximation of the kind of beatitude we have at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, and in the Sermon on the Plain in Luke. But these beatitudes that we have in the Gospels are not your typical beatitudes. There is something unexpected about them; the blessing is pronounced on the kind of person that is normally not considered fortunate. Like the person in the back of a check-out line. Often beatitudes outside the Gospels do not have this element of surprise.So, in general, a beatitude is a wisdom saying, something like a proverb, that highlights someone’s good fortune. Let me give you an example: Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly. I’ll stop there, and I’m sure some of you could finish that verse, or even that psalm. It is the first verse of the Psalter. A person is described as occupying a fortunate position, namely, the person who avoids ungodly counsel. Note two things about this beatitude: * it is not at all surprising; you would expect a person to be considered blessed if that person avoids ungodly counsel. All cultures throughout the world and throughout history would have considered that kind of person fortunate. This is like pronouncing a blessing on the person who gets in the check-out line immediately before the rush. * the point of the beatitude is to encourage people to recognize this truth, to recognize the fortunate position this person is in. The psalm goes on to describe this person who avoids ungodly counsel as akin to a firmly planted tree, whereas the ungodly themselves are like the chaff blown by the wind. Which would you rather be like, the tree or the chaff? The answer is obvious, and that means you need to avoid ungodly counsel. The function is much like the proverbs.The first verse of the Psalter is a beatitude, and then many more beatitudes appear throughout the book of Psalms. Let me give you more examples, ten of them, all from the book of Psalms. As I read over these verses, give consideration to the two points I’ve already made: the lack of surprise in these beatitudes, and their proverbial nature.Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.Blessed is the man unto whom YHWH imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile. (Psalm 32:1–2)Blessed is he that considereth the poor: YHWH will deliver him in time of trouble.YHWH will preserve him, and keep him alive; and he shall be blessed upon the earth: and thou wilt not deliver him unto the will of his enemies. (Psalm 41:1–2)Blessed is the man whom thou choosest, and causest to approach unto thee, that he may dwell in thy courts:we shall be satisfied with the goodness of thy house, even of thy holy temple. (Psalm 65:4)Blessed are they that dwell in thy house: they will be still praising thee. Selah.Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee; in whose heart are the ways of them. (Psalm 84:4–5)YHWH of hosts, blessed is the man that trusteth in thee. (Psalm 84:12)Blessed is the people that know the joyful sound: they shall walk, O YHWH, in the light of thy countenance. (Psalm 89:15)Blessed is the man that feareth YHWH, that delighteth greatly in his commandments. (Psalm 112:1)Blessed are the undefiled in the way,who walk in the law of YHWH.Blessed are they that keep his testimonies, and that seek him with the whole heart. (Psalm 119:1–2)Happy (ashrei, makarios) is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in YHWH his God:Which made heaven, and earth,the sea, and all that therein is: which keepeth truth forever:Which executeth judgment for the oppressed: which giveth food to the hungry. (Psalm 146:5–7)I have now read nine examples of beatitudes from the Psalter, and here is the tenth, somewhat longer, but still not long. This is the entirety of Psalm 128, one of the Songs of Ascents.Blessed (ashrei, makarios) is everyone that feareth YHWH; that walketh in his ways.For thou shalt eat the labour of thine hands: happy (ashrei, makarios) shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee.Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine by the sides of thine house: thy children like olive plants round about thy table.Behold, that thus shall the man be blessed (barak, eulogeō) that feareth YHWH.YHWH shall bless (barak, eulogeō) thee out of Zion: and thou shalt see the good of Jerusalemall the days of thy life.Yea, thou shalt see thy children’s children,and peace upon Israel. (Psalm 128)Hebrew WordsThis last example of a beatitude from the Psalter highlights the issue of terminology and meaning. For in this psalm there are two different words translated “blessed” in the KJV. The psalm was originally written in Hebrew, and the two Hebrew words in play are ashrei (אשרי) and barak (ברך). They mean, I think, two different things. Barak has to do with blessing someone, like when Melchizedek blessed Abram (Gen 14:19), or Jacob blessed Pharaoh (Gen 47:10). Here you are changing the status of someone, putting a blessing on a person that had not been in a blessed position, or, at least, didn’t have the blessing that you then gave them. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the person wasn’t in a fortunate position, but your action of blessing has added good fortune to them. So, for example, maybe you go to church with a rich lady. That rich woman is in a fortunate position. But maybe you send her a very sweet greeting card that touches her and feels her with joy. You have blessed her, moving her into a new position of blessing.That’s barak. In Psalm 128, “YHWH shall bless (barak) thee out of Zion.”The second Hebrew word translated “blessed” is ashrei, and it does not indicate movement into a new position, but rather acknowledges a current situation as fortunate. “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly.” That’s ashrei. That man is in a blessed position, a fortunate situation. It’s not that he is being blessed by someone else, not even by God. Well, yes, of course, he is being blessed by God, but that’s not what the verse is stressing. It is highlighting that he is in a fortunate position. The first verse of Psalm 128 says “Blessed is everyone that feareth YHWH.” That’s ashrei. Sometimes this word is translated happy, which again emphasizes the state of the person, the position that they’re in, not the position that they’re moving into.When I was a new father, I brought my 6-month-old baby to church one evening, and a middle-aged father about to be an empty-nester came up to me and made goo-goo noises at my daughter. And he said, “I miss this age.” He did not call me blessed, but that was the implication. What he was thinking was how fortunate I was to be a young man and to have a young child, to be just starting out with a family. He wasn’t able to go back to those days, and he missed them. They were fun, even if hectic. Blessed is the man who is just beginning his family, for he shall have fun, if he pays attention. This middle-aged man at church was not blessing me, but he was saying that I was blessed. He did not give me anything or change my situation at all. But he did pronounce my situation fortunate.That’s a beatitude. The word “beatitude” comes from Latin, beatitudo. It means “happiness” or “blessedness” or “a blessed condition” or “good fortune.”Familiar TruthsA lot of times a beatitude is a cliche, but sometimes we need to be reminded of a cliche. The middle-aged man at church who told me how much he missed having young kids in the house was not telling me anything shocking or even mildly surprising. A lot of people express that exact thought frequently, especially church people. But that doesn’t mean that young fathers don’t need to hear it. It is always necessary to be intentional about enjoying the time of life you’re in, rather than getting distracted by all that needs to get done or putting out all the fires that pop up. That’s true of young fathers. They need older fathers to tell them again to enjoy having those babies in the house, to recognize that that time of life comes with joys that can never be experienced again. Even if it’s a cliche, it’s necessary to hear.Think again about Psalm 1. I’ve mentioned how the opening line is not surprising, and especially in the context of the Bible, we are not surprised to read a blessing pronounced on those who avoid ungodly counsel. Coming across such a verse in the Bible is cliche. Of course the Bible is going to tell us to avoid ungodly counsel. That doesn’t mean we don’t need to hear it. Sometimes the ungodly counsel seems so fun. Sometimes you get so tired of conducting your life according to the godly counsel. You’d just like to do what the ungodly people are doing. You don’t want to be like a tree firmly planted; you’d rather be chaff. There are a lot of people who live their lives as if they are chaff, just blowing from one place to another, never firmly planted, and don’t they make it look fun? Sometimes? If you don’t look too closely? Don’t you just want, sometimes at least, to forgo your responsibilities, to not do what everybody expects? It may be cliche, but, booooy, we need that constant reminder. It is the person who does not walk in ungodly counsel who is fortunate.Or perhaps we need to hear another part of that beatitude. That verse, Psalm 1:1, has more in it than just a warning against ungodly counsel. How does it go? Let’s see, “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.” Now, listen, I think that telling Christians, telling people who are likely to read the Bible, that they should not be sitting in the seat of the scornful is anything but surprising. It’s cliche. It’s expected. It’s the kind of thing we hear a lot, so often that we’ll hardly give that advice a second thought. I say, it’s such expected advice that we’ll hardly give it a second thought. Yeah, yeah, don’t sit in the seat of the scornful. Got it! Here’s the thing: I think I know some Christians who hear this advice all the time who might need to think about it, who might need to reflect on what it means to sit in the seat of the scornful, who might need to reflect on the implicit curse in Psalm 1 on the scornful, as they are lumped in with the ungodly and compared to chaff. On the one hand, I think there are people in this world who want to be chaff, not rooted, but independent, no responsibilities. But usually that’s not church people. Church people want to be firmly planted. That’s the whole idea of joining a church. You have decided that this is where you’re going to be. Church people don’t want to be chaff. But, on the other hand, in the year 2026, we got some scornful people in this world. There is a competition for the seat of the scornful. People on the radio. Social media personalities. There are entire YouTube channels dedicated to scorn.Now, let me ask you about politicians. Is your favorite politician someone that you would describe as scornful? Do you delight in his or her scornfulness? Maybe you would tell me that you don’t have a favorite politician—to which I can only say, “Blessed are ye who have no favorite politician!” But what I want to know is, do you like the scorn that your team’s politicians heap on the other team? That’s a large part of what American politics is about these days; it’s about scorn. And church buildings in 2026 are populated by people who delight in scorn. My brethren, these things ought not to be.It may be cliche, but that doesn’t mean we don’t need to hear it, and ask ourselves, how much scorn do I generate? Are there certain topics of conversation where I almost can’t help but fall into scorn? Maybe I need to avoid talking about those topics. Because I want to avoid the seat of the scornful.Back to TerminologyBut we were talking about terminology. As I said, there are two Hebrew words often translated “blessed,” but they have different nuances. Barak is the one I have said moves someone into a new position, gives them a blessing. Ashrei, on the other hand, describes the position that the person is already in. Beatitudes use ashrei, not barak. Beatitudes describe someone’s fortunate situation. The man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, or sitteth in the seat of the scornful? That guy is blessed. He is in a fortunate position.We might think of the two different Hebrew words as corresponding to two pronunciations of our English word. When we are blessing someone else, moving them into a position of blessing, the Hebrew word is barak, and we can say we have “blessed” (blest) that person. When we are acknowledging that a person is in a fortunate situation, the Hebrew word is ashrei, and we can say that the person is “bless-ed” (two syllables). We wouldn’t say that Jacob bless-ed Pharaoh, but we might recite Psalm 1 as “Bless-ed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly.”Another way to think about beatitudes is with the #Blessed. This morning I googled #Blessed and here are some examples of what the internet gave me. Would you believe that some of them are about football? There’s a school in Louisville called LCA, that put on the Twitter this morning: “#Blessed to have these young men leading LCA into district play,” and the post had pictures of some high school football players. Somebody named Matt Peck put a gif of Homer Simpson talking about sports, and he wrote the comment “Free football on the same night the Cubs win their wild card series? We are truly #Blessed.” Another one, not about football: somebody put up a picture of a sunrise and commented: “Thank you, God, for another beautiful day! #Blessed.” These are all describing the fortunate situation that a person is in, whether fortunate to be witnessing a sunrise, or fortunate to be able to watch football. That’s what the #Blessed is for.And that’s what ashrei means. We could think about the first verse of the Psalter this way: Not walking in the counsel of the ungodly? #Blessed. It’s a comment about the situation someone is in.Acknowledgement, Not PromiseI have been stressing this meaning of the Hebrew word ashrei, and therefore the point of a beatitude, because I think some people misunderstand it. So, let me go ahead and say that I am offering my opinion, an opinion that is shared by many scholars, but not nearly all. Some people think that the point of a beatitude is to offer a promise of blessing from God. The man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly will receive blessing from God. Of course, I think it is true that this man will receive blessing from God, but I don’t think that’s what Psalm 1:1 is talking about. Other people do think so; why don’t I think so?Well, first, I just don’t think that’s what the word ashrei means. To say it again, ashrei describes a state of being. You will sometimes see it translated as “happy,” and I’m sure everyone reading this essay has encountered that translation suggestion for the beatitudes in the Gospels. It’s usually not translated as “happy” in the KJV, but we saw that it was translated that way at Psalm 146:5, “Happy (ashrei, makarios) is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help.” The scholar Ulrich Luz in the Hermeneia commentary on Matthew (2007) says: “these beatitudes are not designed to give comfort by making promises about the next life; they are an authoritative language act that pronounces people happy in the here and now” (1.190). But Luz has already said “the translation ‘happy’ sounds somewhat banal,” and I agree. I don’t like the translation “happy” because it signifies the emotions of the person, and I don’t think that’s what ashrei is doing. Again, ashrei describes a state of being, or the position that someone is in, no matter whether they’re happy about it or not. I prefer the translation “fortunate.” One group of scholars (the Jesus Seminar) has suggested the translation “Congratulations,” which I think captures the meaning well. But at any rate, even though I don’t like the translation “happy,” it does helpfully convey that the beatitude is about the present state of the person, not a promise for the future. The person right now is in a fortunate position deserving of our congratulations.I also think my understanding of beatitudes—not as a promise but as a description—makes more sense of the beatitudes that we find in Scripture. Let me remind you of Psalm 32.Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.Blessed is the man unto whom YHWH imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile. (Psalm 32:1–2)Is this a promise for the future? Does this passage mean that the person will be blessed or that the person is already blessed? Already. Now, of course, the person will be blessed in the future, too, but we know that from our knowledge of Scripture and of God’s ways, not from this particular passage. This passage, Psalm 32:1–2, tells us that a person whose transgression is forgiven is in a fortunate position. It’s a state of being.Now, it’s true that sometimes you’re in a fortunate position because of the good that will come to you because you’re in that position. Being in the back of a grocery store line is usually not fortunate, but sometimes it is. And we can imagine the people in that line, waiting on the slow check out person, and they all see the new worker clock in and put on their jacket with a name tag and take their place behind the new counter and flip the switch that turns on the light above their cash register. We can imagine the people in the line seeing this whole process and realizing that the people in the back of the line are probably going to check out before them, and they’re already jealous. “I wish I were in the back of the line.” It’s not so much that they value being in the back, but they recognize that it’s fortunate to be in the back because of the benefit about to come to those in the back. The last shall be first.Here is the beginning of Psalm 41.Blessed (ashrei) is he that considereth the poor: YHWH will deliver him in time of trouble.YHWH will preserve him, and keep him alive; and he shall be blessed (ashrei) upon the earth: and thou wilt not deliver him unto the will of his enemies. (Psalm 41:1–2)This passage looks like it might be an example of a beatitude that is a promise for the future, that the person that considereth the poor will be blessed by God. Certainly this person will be blessed, and the Psalm says it: “YHWH will deliver him in time of trouble.” But I maintain that the first clause, “Blessed is he that considereth the poor” means not that the person will be blessed but that he is already in a fortunate position. “I consider the poor. #Blessed.” Why does the psalmist think that the one who considers the poor is in a fortunate position? Because the other grocery line is about to open up. You’re in a fortunate position because you are in the position of having God on your side, and only good can result from that.Greek WordsEnough on that. You’re either convinced or you’re not. You’re probably wondering why I’m talking so much about Hebrew anyway, since we’re supposed to be talking about the Sermon on the Mount, which we have in Greek. So let’s talk about Greek. There are two Greek words for blessing. Actually, there might be a dozen Greek words for “blessing,” but there are two I’m going to talk about right now, and they happen to correspond closely to the two Hebrew words I’ve mentioned. The two Greek words are eulogeo (εὐλογέω) and makarios (μακάριος). Eulogeo corresponds to barak, to bless someone. Makarios corresponds to ashrei, to describe someone’s fortunate position. All the beatitudes in the Bible—I think this is right—all of them use makarios. In the LXX, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, makarios appears dozens of times and it is always a translation of ashrei. In the Sermon on the Mount, when Jesus says that the poor in spirit are blessed, he uses the Greek word makarios. Everything I’ve said about the Hebrew word ashrei applies to the Greek word makarios. It does not give a promise for future blessing, it describes a present fortunate position.By the way, it’s the use of the word makarios that gives an alternative title for beatitudes. Some people call them macarisms.Outside the BibleNow, of course, beatitudes or macarisms are not found only in the Bible. Apparently in Greek the oldest beatitudes go back to the mystery religions. This is according to the scholar Hans Dieter Betz in his Hermeneia commentary on the Sermon on the Mount (1995, pp. 97–105). He cites the Homeric Hymn to Demeter as containing this beatitude near the end of the poem (line 480): “Happy (ὄλβιος) is he among humans on earth who has seen these mysteries” (LCL, trans. West). Let me point out two things about this beatitude. First, like all the ones we’ve looked at so far, there is no surprise involved here. It’s not at all unexpected to say that someone who has seen these mysteries is fortunate. Of course they’re fortunate. Second, the Greek word used here is not makarios. I said that all the biblical beatitudes use that word, but not all beatitudes in Greek use it. There are a few other Greek terms that are sometimes used for beatitudes outside the Bible. The term used in the Homeric Hymn here is olbios, for instance. (For other terms used for beatitudes, see TDNT 4.362–70.)Beatitudes also show up in Second Temple Jewish literature. There’s a list of beatitudes in 2 Enoch 42:6–14 that I won’t review right now. There’s also a list in one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a scroll that modern scholars have labeled 4QBeatitudes or 4Q525. In the image below, the arrows point to appearances of the word ashrei in 4QBeatitudes. Here is a translation of a portion of 4QBeatitudes. [Blessed is the one who …] with a pure heart and does not slander with his tongue (Ps. 15:3). [first red arrow] Blessed are those who hold fast to its statutes and do not hold fast to the ways of injustice. Ble[ssed] are those who rejoice in it, and do not exult in paths of folly. [second red arrow] Blessed are those who seek it with pure hands, and do not search for it with a deceitful [hea]rt. [third red arrow] Blessed is the man who attains wisdom, and walks in the law of the Most High: establishes his heart in its ways, restrains himself by its corrections, is continually satisfied with its punishments, does not forsake it in the face of [his] trials, at the time of distress he does not abandon it, does not forget it [in the day of] terror, and in the humility of his soul he does not abhor [it.] But he meditates on it continually, and in his trial he reflects [on it, and with al]l his being [he gains understanding] in it…The term translated “blessed” is ashrei. And notice again that the beatitudes are not very surprising.It’s the same in Sirach. In the beatitudes at Sirach 14:20 or 25:7–10, there is the use of the Hebrew term ashrei or the Greek term makarios, and there is nothing surprising about the beatitudes. For example, at Sirach 14:20, we read, “Blessed is the person who meditates on wisdom.”The New TestamentFinally, in the New Testament, we have several beatitudes. The book of Revelation contains seven beatitudes scattered throughout the book (Rev 1:3; 14:13; 16:15; 19:9; 20:6; 22:7, 14). Paul reports the words of Jesus, “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35), and the word blessed here is makarios. And let’s pause here briefly to note that this dominical saying is somewhat counterintuitive. You are more fortunate to give away things than to receive things. I have been stressing that beatitudes, even in the Bible, reinforce familiar truths rather than offer any surprise. And I have been laying so much stress on that aspect of beatitudes in order to set up a contrast with the beatitudes of Jesus. His beatitudes, perhaps in Acts 20:35, certainly in the Sermon on the Mount, do not traffic in cliches, do not reinforce familiar truths. Or, for the most part. Maybe we would say that it is a familiar truth to call the peacemakers or the pure in heart fortunate. But not the persecuted. Not the mourners. Not the poor in spirit. Declaring them to be fortunate is intended to surprise, to provoke, and to teach that the values of Christ’s kingdom are often upside down in comparison to the expected values of even religious people in this world.Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit edmongallagher.substack.com

I have no experience with speaking in tongues. First of all, though I can read a few languages for academic purposes, I speak only a single language. (I’m not going to tell you which one; you’ll just have to guess.) Secondly, the phenomenon known today as “speaking in tongues” and practiced—encouraged—among charismatic Christians is something completely foreign to me. I’ve never done it and I’ve never even seen it done. I have heard reports from people who have done it, and I have read a little bit about it. This post is not about that practice except tangentially. Here, we’re talking about the first century, and specifically about the New Testament. Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.There are a few passages in the New Testament that mention speaking in tongues. * Acts 2:4–11* Acts 10:46* Acts 19:6* 1 Corinthians 12–14Is this really the entire list of New Testament passages on “speaking in tongues”? I would have thought it came up more, especially in Acts. Let’s survey the evidence. Glōssa in the New TestamentThe Greek word for tongue is glōssa (γλῶσσα), which forms in English the first part of the word glossolalia. (The second part, lalia, relates to the Greek word for “speaking,” so glossolalia basically means “tongue speaking,” but I’ll offer a more precise definition in the next section.) Glōssa appears 50x in the New Testament, and by far the most number of times is in 1 Corinthians (21x), all in chapters 12–14, mostly chapter 14. Other than that, it appears as follows:* Gospels, 4x (twice in Mark, twice in Luke)* Acts, 6x (4x in ch. 2, and then once each in ch. 10 and ch. 19)* Epistles other than 1 Corinthians* Paul, 3x (Rom 3:13; 14:11; Phil 2:11)* Catholic Epistles, 7x (mostly James, also 1 Peter 3:10; 1 John 3:18)* Revelation, 8x, always referring to the many nations and peoples and tongues (except for 16:10)There are plenty of times when glōssa means simply “tongue,” as in the body-part, the organ inside the mouth. Jesus healed a guy’s tongue (Mark 7:32–37) and Zechariah’s tongue was loosened (Luke 1:64) and Dives wanted a drop of water to cool his tongue (Luke 16:24). Sometimes glōssa means “language,” as on Pentecost when the gathered Jews marveled that they heard the apostles “telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God” (Acts 2:11), and in most of its appearances in Revelation.In the book of Acts, the word glōssa does not appear after Acts 2, except in the two verses already mentioned, 10:46 and 19:6. So, yes, confirmed! The only passages in the New Testament that mention “speaking in tongues” are the ones listed earlier: three passages in Acts and the discussion in 1 Corinthians. Except for one interesting verse in your Bible that has been judged—rightly—to be a later addition to the Gospel of Mark. Here’s the verse in the KJV: And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues (γλώσσαις λαλήσουσιν καιναῖς). (Mark 16:17)Hmm, “new” tongues. That’s interesting, and this passage—though inauthentic to Mark—should be considered as part of the reception history of the “tongues” phenomenon in the New Testament, and possibly as evidence of early Christian experience. This verse will come up again later in this post. The Four “Tongues” Passages in the New TestamentA new article in the Journal of Biblical Literature by Joshua H. M. Chan considers the interpretation of these passages and argues against the view that any of them describe glossolalia, arguing instead that some of them describe xenolalia and others naturally acquired languages. I’ll explain what this means in a minute. Let me introduce Chan: he’s affiliated with Oxford University, and I would guess he’s a doctoral student there. The first footnote of this article says that the article itself is based on his masters thesis at Dallas Theological Seminary, under the supervision of Darrell Bock and Joseph Fantin. Here’s Chan’s LinkedIn page, where you can see a picture of him. Now, to define terms. glossolalia, i.e., “speaking in tongues,” means making utterances that are unintelligible to (most) other humans. This is the charismatic practice I mentioned earlier. The person who engages in glossolalia says that he or she is speaking an angelic or heavenly language, and this person is enabled to do this by the power of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes an interpreter, also empowered by the Holy Spirit, offers a translation of the heavenly language into a language that humans speak. xenolalia, speaking in foreign languages, i.e., known human languages—but, here’s the catch: the speaker hasn’t ever studied the language before. Like if you’ve never studied Russian and then all the sudden you’re speaking Russian. So, which one is the New Testament talking about? I grew up hearing—and this view was reinforced when I was a student at FHU—that all of the “speaking in tongues” passages in the New Testament were describing xenolalia and not glossolalia, and that this interpretation is most clear from Acts 2, which provides the lens for interpreting 1 Corinthians 12–14. And this interpretation would mean that the modern phenomenon of glossolalia is not reproducing anything known from the New Testament. This view still makes most sense to me, and this article by Chan argues similarly. But apparently it’s not a very common view among biblical scholars. Scholarship on New Testament “Tongues” PassagesUsing Chan’s article for a survey of scholarship, here’s the lay of the land on the scholarly interpretation of those New Testament passages. 1 Corinthians 12–14According to Chan (at the very beginning of his article), it is pretty rare for biblical scholars to interpret the phenomenon in Corinth as xenolalia. Rather, they interpret it as some sort of glossolalia. Note these verses. For those who speak in a tongue do not speak to other people but to God; for nobody understands them, since they are speaking mysteries in the Spirit. (1 Corinthians 14:2)For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays but my mind is unproductive. (1 Corinthians 14:14)(Chan, note 85, indicates a forthcoming article in ZNW under the title “The Unintelligible Intelligibility of Tongues: The Early Reception of Glossolalia as Human Languages in 1 Corinthians 14,2.14.”) Chan divides the glossolalia interpretations into three categories and lists proponents of each. * ecstatic speech: Johannes Behm (TDNT 1.719–27); Luke Timothy Johnson (ABD 6.596–600); Dunn; Hovenden; Mills; Hiu; Choi. * angelic tongues: Poirier; Fee; Hays; Conzelmann; Martin; Quesnel. * voces magicae: Stroud; Nasrallah. But some people do interpret Paul’s statements in 1 Corinthians about tongues as implying that the phenomenon involves known human languages.* xenolalia. Tibbs; Forbes; Eurell; Tupamahu; Schottroff; Schreiner. Acts 2Here there is still a strong tradition in scholarship to interpret the “tongues” phenomenon as xenolalia, but this interpretation is not universal. Note this verse: All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. (Acts 2:4)* xenolalia. Keener is the only scholar named by Chan, but Chan no doubt intends for Keener to represent an entire tradition of scholarship and as a guide to that tradition. * glossolalia. Scippa; Lüdemann; Horn. * akolalia (i.e., a miracle of hearing rather than speaking). Hunter. Chan (pp. 139–40) argues (based on Hovenden) against this interpretation, though he can cite in its behalf Gregory of Nazianzus (Oration 41.15) and the Venerable Bede (Comm. Acts 2.6), not to mention more modern scholars besides Hunter: Everts; Dunn; Johnson. Acts 10:46 and 19:6Apparently the dominant view of these passages, concerning Cornelius and the twelve disciples in Ephesus that Paul baptized, is that they refer to glossolalia. See Johnson; Menzies; Witherington; Hiu. Chan’s ArgumentIt’s the interpretation of the phenomenon in 1 Corinthians as xenolalia that Chan considers new and groundbreaking. To Tupamahu he attributes the insight that patristic interpreters universally regarded it as xenolalia that was happening in Corinth. But he admits in the footnote (note 7) that the year before Tupamahu’s book was published, Minets published a monograph arguing the opposite, that the early patristic interpreters regarded the Corinthian phenomenon as glossolalia. Chan pushes back on Minets a bit by citing Clement of Alexandria (Stromata 1.16.78.1) and Origen (Comm. Rom. 1.13.6) as supporting Tupamahu’s argument. I quote here the statement from Origen, who is commenting on Romans 1:14, where Paul says that he is a debtor to Greeks and barbarians. At this point is must be asked in what sense the Apostle is a debtor to Greeks and barbarians, to the wise and foolish. For what had he received from them which would cause him to be indebted to them? In my opinion he has become a debtor to the various nations because, through the grace of the Holy Spirit, he had received the ability to speak in the tongues of all the nations, as he himself says, “I speak in more tongues than all of you” (1 Corinthians 14:18). Accordingly, since a person receives the knowledge of tongues not for his own sake but for the sake of those to whom he is supposed to preach, he becomes a debtor to all those, the knowledge of whose language he has received from God. (trans. Scheck 1.85)Building from Tupamahu’s analysis of 1 Corinthians, Chan argues that Acts 2 depicts xenolalia, whereas Acts 10 and 19 depict people speaking in foreign languages that they naturally know (maybe their native language as opposed to Greek). The new part of Chan’s argument is that last bit, where he’s saying that Acts 10 and 19 depict neither glossolalia nor xenolalia. (It seems, from Chan’s interaction with Tupamahu, that Tupamahu may argue this same thing for Corinthians, that the “speaking in tongues” there was non-miraculous in itself, just speaking in the speaker’s vernacular language. But I might be misreading Chan’s summary of Tupamahu.) Acts 2Chan first argues that Acts 2 describes xenolalia rather than glossolalia (pp. 136–42). The most interesting thing here is that he’s able to cite some patristic interpreters for the idea that Acts 2 reverses the curse of Babel, which is a pretty common modern idea. He cites (note 15) Augustine; John Chrysostom; and Jacob of Serugh.Acts 10 and 19Here are the relevant verses (NRSV). The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles, 46 for they heard them speaking in tongues and extolling God. Then Peter said, 47 “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” (Acts 10:45–47)When Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied. (Acts 19:6)And here’s what Chan concludes (p. 150): “… the plausible context in 10:46 and 19:6 is that the new believers praised and prophesied in languages they already knew, that is, naturally acquired languages.” Now, how does Chan get there? First, Chan argues that it is not necessary to interpret these passages as involving unintelligible utterances, i.e., glossolalia (pp. 142–45). He wants to establish that these passages could be plausibly be read as involving known human languages rather than a heavenly language—indeed, Chan regards as more plausible the interpretation that Acts 10 and 19 involve known human languages, on analogy with Acts 2, which Chan thinks more clearly involves known human languages. What Chan questions is how the speakers in Acts 10 and 19 (not Acts 2) acquired knowledge of these languages. These passages are sometimes interpreted as a “Gentile Pentecost,” but the element that makes the tongue-speaking in Acts 2 definitely Spirit-inspired—the explicit statement that it was enabled by the Spirit that had come upon the gathered community (Acts 2:4)—is missing from Acts 10 and 19 (pp. 145–46). Next, Chan argues that these two Acts passages might be plausibly read as not involving Spirit-inspired knowledge of languages but merely Spirit-inspired praise in native languages of the speakers. Acts 10He points out that Cornelius the centurion belonged to an Italian cohort (Acts 10:1), so he could have spoken Latin or another language unknown to Palestinian Jews like Peter. In other words, if Cornelius started speaking Latin, it would be “speaking in a tongue” from Peter’s perspective. Chan also points out (pp. 147–48) that some manuscripts of Acts qualify the “tongues” spoken by Cornelius and his crew as “new” or “various” or “other” or “their.” This information is not signaled in the standard hand-editions of the Greek New Testament (I checked UBS4 and UBS5 and NA26 and NA28), but it is in Metzger’s older Textual Commentary (not the newer one by Houghton). Here’s what Metzger says about Acts 10:46. Several Western witnesses qualify “tongues” with one or another adjective; thus itd (Dgr has an erasure at this point) reads praevaricatis linguis, which may presuppose an original Greek reading ποικίλαις (Hilgenfeld), or καιναῖς (Blass), or ἑτέραις (Ropes and A. C. Clark). This manuscript that Metzger is talking about is Codex Bezae, from the fifth century, a bilingual manuscript with Greek and Latin on facing pages. The Latin text (= itd) has praevaricatis linguis, which looks like it ought to mean “with sinful tongues,” but apparently it means something like “with different tongues.” Unfortunately, as Metzger says, the Greek side of the manuscript (= Dgr) has a lacuna—or, rather, an erasure—here, but assuming it originally matched the Latin text, scholars have guessed at what the Greek originally said, maybe “various” or “new” or “other.” But, and here’s an important point, we actually have no Greek manuscript evidence for this reading. Bezae would offer Greek manuscript evidence, but the reading is not extant there. And no other Greek manuscript of Acts has the reading “new” or “other” or whatever. Still, some manuscripts in other languages (as in the Latin of Bezae) do have some variation of this reading, suggesting how these scribes interpreted the phenomenon of tongues in the passage. Chan (and Metzger) point to these other versions as having something like this “new languages” reading at Acts 10:46: Coptic, Syriac (the Peshitta), and another Latin manuscript (61 = CLA 270, the Book of Armagh, which has linguis variis, as you can see in the digital images of the manuscript here, fol. 178[ie 179]r, fourth line from the bottom of the left column—or in the transcription here). I confirmed all of this evidence through the ECM of Acts, published nearly a decade ago. Moreover, Chan (and Metzger) cites the third-century Latin treatise De Rebaptismate §5 (formerly attributed to Cyprian), which you can see here (p. 50 line 7) that it says that Cornelius and company were speaking linguis suis, “in their languages.” The modifier “new,” mentioned above in relation to Bezae, is reminiscent of the same term in Mark 16:17 (mentioned earlier). Chan has a little discussion of this term (p. 148), concluding: “Therefore, ‘new tongues’ refers to languages ‘new’ to the speakers/hearers relative to their existing knowledge, not a different ontological kind of ecstatic speech.” Acts 19As for Acts 19, Chan argues that Ephesus was a multilingual environment and that the early reception of the episode understood the scene as involving naturally acquired languages. For the multilingualism of Ephesus, Chan points to the Greek and Latin inscriptions on this gate (see also Livius). He also refers to Herodotus. Now these Ionians, who possessed the Panionion … use not all the same speech (glōssa) but four different dialects. Miletus lies farthest south among them, and next to it come Myus and Priene; these are settlements in Caria, and they use a common language; Ephesus, Colophon, Lebedos, Teos, Clazomenae, Phocaea, all of them being in Lydia, have a language in common which is wholly idfferent from teh speech of the three cities aforementioned. There are yet three Ionian cities, two of them situate on the islands of Samos and Chios, and one, Erythrae, on the mainland; the Chians and Erythraeans speak alike, but the Samians have a language which is their own and none other’s. It is thus seen that there are four fashions of speech (οὗτοι χαρακτῆρες γλώσσης τέσσερες γίνονται). (Herodotus 1.142; LCL)Now, of course, Herodotus is describing a time about five centuries before Paul visited Ephesus, but still. As for the reception of Acts 19:6 (p. 150), Chan cites a few Syriac manuscripts, a manuscript of the Vetus Latina, some Vulgate manuscripts, and Ephrem. He’s relying here on the textual commentary by Metzger. (This information is omitted by Houghton, and it is not found in the standard hand-editions.) The ECM of Acts cites only a marginal reading of the seventh-century Harklean Syriac translation. Neither Metzger nor Chan are specific about which Latin manuscripts (Vetus Latina or Vulgate) they have in mind, and the standard (Stuttgart) hand-edition of the Vulgate cites no variant reading, and the major edition of the Vulgate New Testament cites only a single manuscript, labeled p, a.k.a. Codex Perpinianensis (VL54, BNF lat. 321, 12th cent.; check it here at fol. 128v, top left)—which adds at the end of the verse ita ut ipsi sibi interpretarentur, “so that they could interpret for themselves.” So I don’t know what Latin manuscripts we’re talking about (except for that 12th cent. Vulgate manuscript), though I do trust Metzger to have actually looked at the manuscript (or a facsimile) to make sure—at least as much as I trust any scholar, i.e., not very much; I always like to check for myself. Anyway, according to Metzger, the Western text of Acts has an addition after the word “tongues” in Acts 19:6, an addition attested in the sources already cited (Syriac, Latin, Ephrem). Metzger gives a translation for the addition: “other tongues, and they themselves knew them, which they also interpreted for themselves; and certain also prophesied.” After exploring Luke’s theology of languages (pp. 150–55), Chan concludes: The early church was full of cultural and linguistic differences, and the diversity of languages is certainly one major theme that Acts attempts to bring out. [See, e.g., the reference to the diverse languages at Acts 2:9–11; the Lycaonian language at Acts 14:11, and the difficulty that Paul and Barnabas had in communicating with them, Acts 14:18; and the role of languages at Acts 21:37–38; 21:40–22:2.] The fact that Cornelius’s household and the Ephesian twelve used their heart languages, which Peter and Paul did not understand, to magnify God (Acts 10:46) and prophesy (Acts 19:6), highlights the supremacy of the gospel over their language barriers. So, that’s it, an interesting exploration of an interesting issue, with an interesting proposal, that Cornelius and the Ephesian twelve were not “speaking in tongues” as we think of it (glossolalia), and they were not speaking in real human languages that they did not previously know (xenolalia), but they were speaking in their native languages praise that was inspired by the Holy Spirit. Am I convinced? That’s a strong word. I am convinced that it is a possibility.Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit edmongallagher.substack.com

Programming NotesVoiceover. I suppose you have noticed that I have started recording voiceovers for these Substack essays. I’ve been doing it for a while now—months. You can find the voiceover at the top of the page. It’s not AI voice reading to you; it’s my own voice. I’m doing it myself. Podcast. The voiceovers for these Substacks essays are now also hosted on their own podcast, called Scripture-ish. You can find the Scripture-ish podcast at Apple or Spotify or maybe a few other places. This is probably the way I would consume this content if I were you. It may also be the case that I record episodes for the podcast that don’t overlap with material here at the Substack page—but I might not, and I haven’t ever done it yet. Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.Berean Series. For about a decade now, Heritage Christian University Press has published an annual Bible study curriculum called the Berean Study Series. It’s designed to provide Bible class material for one quarter (i.e., 13 chapters), and it comes out usually in the late spring or early summer. It’s always written by several people affiliated with HCU. This year, the topic is the seven Ones of Ephesians 4. I previously posted my two chapters on the Holy Spirit for this edition (here and here). Look for the book to be published in a couple months. I won’t publish here any more of the chapters from this year’s Berean, because I didn’t write any of the others. But I did write the introduction, and that is what I reproduce below. ChurchThe New Testament is about the church. Now, don’t get me wrong: it’s about some other things, too. If you said that the New Testament is about Christ, I wouldn’t argue with you. The Apostle Paul once said, “I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2). And if you said that God is the main theme of the New Testament, I could defend the point. Or maybe you think it would be best to identify the main topic of the New Testament as not God or Christ exactly but something about them—perhaps the Atonement or the grace of God. All of this makes sense to me. But I still say the New Testament is about the church.Christ died to form the church. “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me” (John 12:32). So said our Lord, and the Evangelist offers this interpretation: “This he said, signifying what death he should die” (12:33). The death of Jesus drew people to him, and these people are the church, the community who enjoys the blessings of Atonement, upon whom God pours out his grace. Saying that the New Testament is about Christ’s crucifixion or about God’s grace does not mean that it’s not about the church; it’s a matter of emphasis. But certainly the New Testament emphasizes the church. Think about this: every single one of the writings of the New Testament were written for the church, the people of God, to edify Christians in their faith. Many of the New Testament writings were originally directed to specific churches (mostly Paul’s letters, also Revelation). Moreover, the message of Jesus, in summary, was this: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel” (Mark 1:15). Who are those people who have repented and believed the gospel? What is the group of people called over whom Christ reigns as king, who are, therefore, a part of the kingdom of God? The New Testament applies to these people the Greek term ekklesia, often translated “church.” Jesus himself—at least in Greek translation (assuming Jesus actually taught in Aramaic)—applied this very term to the community of his followers (Matthew 16:18; 18:17). I say it again: the New Testament is about the church.And what does the New Testament say to the church? Yes, it has much to say about the grace of God, and the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, and the good news that Christ now sits at the right hand of God, interceding on behalf of his people. “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth,” exclaims Jesus following his Passion (Matthew 28:18). The church needs to know all of this; these are things the church should believe, teachings that should shape Christian identity. But what is it that the church should do? What are the responsibilities of the church?Here, again, there could be several answers. Some people will want to emphasize evangelism, perhaps in reliance on the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19). Others will nominate worship as a primary task of God’s people, citing it as our destiny in the hereafter, as the book of Revelation suggests (Revelation 4–5). Some will want to talk about the church as the “hands and feet” of Jesus, in reliance on Paul’s image of the church as the body of Christ (especially in 1 Corinthians 12), and so the church should do good in the world (cf. Matthew 25:31–46) as Jesus did (Acts 10:38). Yes, yes yes! But, in the New Testament, even greater stress—greater than any of these aforementioned points—is laid on another aspect of church responsibility.Unity.Church UnityWhat is the church supposed to do? It’s supposed to be united. Christians are supposed to love one another. I think it would be fair to say that this is the main theme of all of Paul’s letters. I mean, he definitely wants to talk about Christ crucified, because the crucifixion is important to us individually, and we rejoice that God was willing to send his son for that purpose, because he loved us, and we marvel that Jesus was willing to endure that suffering on our behalf. And yet, why did Paul want to emphasize Christ crucified to the Corinthians? It’s because the Corinthian church was divided into different factions (1 Corinthians 1:11), and Paul thought that people who acclaim as Lord one who suffered death for others could not possibly get into arguments with each other about who’s faction is better or who best represents Jesus, as the Twelve had earlier (Luke 22:24). If you’re willing to exalt yourself over your brother, then you clearly haven’t reflected enough on the crucifixion of Jesus. That’s why Paul determined to know nothing but Christ crucified. It was for the purpose of church unity.Or think about that famous Christ Hymn passage in Philippians 2, the one that shows Jesus emptying himself as he dispensed with his divine prerogatives and submitted to a slave’s death (Phil 2:6–11). Why did Paul bring up this account of Jesus? Why mention it here to the Philippians? Paul tells us: he wants the Philippian Christians to “let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.” He wants the Philippian church to imitate Jesus in self-emptying. Why? Church unity. “If there be therefore any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any bowels and mercies, Fulfil ye my joy, that ye be likeminded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind” (Philippians 2:1–2). The Philippian church, like the church in Corinth, was experiencing some strife, associated with two leading women (4:2), and it was of the utmost importance that the situation not split the church. It was imperative that the body of Christ remain one.Ephesians 4Paul addresses the same subject in Ephesians. The point of the church is to represent Christ in the world, which means that the church needs to grow into the image of Christ. Lord knows—and Paul knows—that this will take growth, because we ain’t there yet. But he lays out the goal this way.But speaking the truth in love, [we] may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ: From whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love. (Ephesians 4:15–16)We, the church, are the body of Christ, and we are growing into our role as the body of Christ. This image of the church as Christ’s body is itself an illustration of the unity that needs to pertain within the church, as Paul expounds in 1 Corinthians 12, leading to the programmatic declaration, “Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular” (1 Corinthians 12:27). What Paul means in 1 Corinthians is that our role as the body of Christ has very definite implications about how we treat one another, how we love one another, how we rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. Again, church unity.And he means the same thing in Ephesians 4 by the image of God’s people as the body of Christ. It is for the purpose of church unity that God distributed different gifts to different people (Ephesians 4:7–12), “Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ (4:13). Paul starts this passage by highlighting the humility that Christians should display toward one another, so that they may “keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (4:3). In Ephesians 4, Paul is on his constant theme, the topic he never leaves, the unity of the church.The hope for the world is a church united, loving one another, representing Christ.The greatest threat to the world is a divided church.Paul is on his constant theme in Ephesians 4, but that’s not to say that he doesn’t have new ways of addressing the familiar topic. In this passage, the apostle mentions seven aspects of Christian faith and practice that bind believers together (Ephesians 4:4–6).There is one body.There is one Spirit.There is one hope.There is one faith.There is one Lord.There is one baptism.There is one God.In Ephesians, Paul lists these seven Ones so quickly that he spends no time exploring them. Perhaps he had preached on these topics many times before in the hearing of the recipients of this letter. But those expositions are not preserved for us. And yet these seven Ones that are supposed to ground the church’s unity deserve our thoughtful attention.We try to supply some thoughtful attention to these topics in the 2026 edition of the Berean Study Series. Let me explain the structure of the book, which is similar to previous installments of the Berean Series but with a little tweak. We asked each author to write a pair of chapters on the assigned topic, the first chapter addressing the topic in general (whether body or Spirit or hope, etc.) and the second chapter addressing how “oneness” relates to the subject. Why does Paul say that there is “one” body? Or “one” Spirit? What is he denying? What is he affirming? How does—or ought—the “oneness” of the body or the Spirit or the faith (etc.) contribute to Christian unity? We hope this approach to the seven Ones of Ephesians 4 proves stimulating and helpful to you in your personal Bible study and for the people to whom you minister.And we hope that this series of studies contributes to the building up of the body of Christ so that it may keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. 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Alexei Navalny died on February 16, 2024, and a few days later (Feb 21) I spoke briefly about him in a chapel service at Heritage Christian University. If you listen to that speech (see the video here), you’ll find that I really didn’t know much about Navalny at the time, just what had been widely reported. His memoir, Patriot, was published a few months later, and I eagerly read it. By the way, while in prison, Navalny mentioned that one of the reasons he was writing the memoir was for the royalties that would come to his family in case of his own death. “Let’s face it, if a murky assassination attempt using a chemical weapon, followed by a tragic demise in prison, can’t move a book, it is hard to imagine what would. The book’s author has been murdered by a villainous president; what more could the marketing department ask for?” (p. 406). He nailed that. That’s why I read his book. The essay below is a heavily edited version of that chapel speech from two years ago, with material added from my reading of his memoir.On January 17, 2021, Alexei Navalny boarded a plane in Germany and returned to his home country of Russia. This seemingly simple action required great bravery and—according to some people, even people who knew and loved Navalny—great folly. For the last time Navalny had been in Russia, he had been poisoned and thought he was going to die. This poisoning—about which there is an entire Wikipedia article—happened on a Russian plane on August 20, 2020. A passenger on the flight used his phone to capture video of Navalny’s moaning. Here is a 60 Minutes story about Navalny that covers the poisoning and plays a brief clip of that passenger’s video. He was in safety in Germany. He chose to go to Russia. He was immediately detained in the Russian airport and never left Russian state custody. He died in a Russian prison on February 16, 2024. He was 47 years old. While in prison, in 2021, Navalny recalled that his publisher, who had already contracted his memoir, was concerned that he wouldn’t be able to finish the book if he returned to Russia. He remembers the publisher saying, “Of course, we admire your courage, but anything can happen in that country of yours, and then what would become of the book?” To this remembered statement Navalny replied, “I understand that you are saying ‘courage’ because you are polite, but you are thinking ‘stupidity’” (p. 405). Navalny’s decision to return to Russia despite the risks is reminiscent of similar decisions. My daily Bible reading has Acts 21 fresh in my mind, where friends of the apostle Paul were urging him to avoid Jerusalem, assured by unimpeachable authority that his entrance into the city would bring him great suffering. While we were staying there [= Caesarea] for several days, a prophet named Agabus came down from Judea. He came to us and took Paul’s belt, bound his own feet and hands with it, and said, “Thus says the Holy Spirit, ‘This is the way the Jews in Jerusalem will bind the man who owns this belt and will hand him over to the Gentiles.’” When we heard this, we and the people there urged him not to go up to Jerusalem. Then Paul answered, “What are you doing, weeping and breaking my heart? For I am ready not only to be bound but even to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus. (Acts 21:10–13)Paul’s response to his friends sounds remarkably like Navalny’s response to those urging him to stay in safety. And if we recall the courageous entrance into Jerusalem of the apostle of Jesus, we surely must also think of Jesus himself, who knew what awaited him in the city and that it must take place (see, e.g., Mark 8:31). Closer to our time, Navalny’s decision echoes that of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In June 1939, Bonhoeffer was in New York City, having come there specifically to avoid the sufferings that the Nazi regime was visiting upon German society. After a weeklong layover in Britain, he boarded the Bremen for a five-day voyage to NY. He had been there before, a decade earlier, to study at Union Theological Seminary, and it was the friendships he had forged at that time that paved the way for this return visit. His friends, particularly his former teacher Reinhold Niebuhr, urged Bonhoeffer to flee to safety, and Bonhoeffer acquiesced. Bonhoeffer arrived on June 2. His hosts were out of pocket, on summer holiday. In his journal he mentions that he went to the movies, saw Juarez, enjoyable and diverting. But the movie was no match for the anguish Bonhoeffer felt inside. “I would have liked to take the next ship. This inactivity, or rather activity spent on trivialities, is simply no longer bearable for us, thinking of the brothers and the precious time. The full force of self-reproaches about a wrong decision comes back up and is almost suffocating. I was filled with despair.” (This journal entry is dated June 15, 1939 and is printed in DBWE 15, #137, p. 222.) Bonhoeffer’s recent(-ish) biographer, Charles Marsh (who quotes this journal entry), comments: “The situation at home, it was now clear, had depleted his lifelong love of idle pleasures to a remarkable degree. Dietrich had become consumingly serious” (p. 280). He left New York on July 8, returning to Germany. In Germany, Bonhoeffer became an agent for the Abwehr, but he was working against the Nazis. He had some involvement in the July 20 Plot, which led to his arrest in 1943 and eventually his execution on April 9, 1945, a few weeks before the end of the war. Why did he return to Germany? As Bonhoeffer scholar Victoria Barnett writes in the introduction to DBWE 15 (p. 9), “Bonhoeffer came to New York because of his uncertainty about what would happen to him in Germany and his fears of military conscription. From the moment he arrived, however, he was haunted by the sense that he had abandoned his students and fled to safety while they confronted a precarious future.” In late June, he tried to explain himself by letter to Niebuhr, and the relevant passage is quoted at Wikipedia, but I quote below the entirety of the excerpt as printed in DBWE 15 (2005), #129, p. 210.… Sitting here in Dr. Coffin’s garden I have had the time to think and to pray about my situation and that of my nation and to have God’s will for me clarified. I have come to the conclusion that I made a mistake in coming to America. I must live through this difficult period in our national history with the Christian people of Germany. I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people. My brothers in the Confessional Synod wanted me to go. They may have been right in urging me to do so; but I was wrong in going. Such a decision each man must make for himself. Christians in Germany will face the terrible alternative of either willing the defeat of their nation in order that Christian civilization may survive or willing the victory of their nation and thereby destroying our civilization. I know which of these alternatives I must choose but I cannot make that choice from security. … (The original of this letter does not survive. This quotation was provided by Niebuhr himself in an article he wrote about Bonhoeffer’s death.) Bonhoeffer returned, though he knew that this decision would cost him dearly. And yet, what would be the point of his life if he avoided suffering? Some people might be fine with a life of easy pleasure; as Charles Marsh argues, Bonhoeffer himself was content with such a life earlier, but things had changed—German society and Bonhoeffer himself. He chose suffering. Likewise Navalny. Back to NavalnyNavalny died after three years in a Russian prison. Was it an assassination? Well, whatever you call it, it was certainly ordered by Russian president Vladimir Putin. How do I know? Uhhh. You can’t be seriously asking that question, can you? How about you watch that 60 Minutes piece above, and then reflect on Navalny’s last three years of life in a Russian prison, and Putin’s control of the situation in Russia, and if you’re still wondering whether Putin ordered Navalny’s death, I don’t know what to tell you. But I guess you could consider also this European report that came out a few weeks ago. When the news of Navalny’s death broke a couple years ago, Tucker Carlson was also in the news because he had recently returned from Russia. Let’s talk about Tucker Carlson for a moment. As I recall he used to be a sane, level-headed, Republican pundit. It’s been a while since that description could be applied to Carlson. He became most famous and influential as a nightly Fox News commentator, having replaced Bill O’Reilly. Carlson himself was fired from Fox in 2023, at least in part for his role in promoting falsehoods regarding the 2020 Presidential election. For a while now, it seems that Carlson has endeavored to say the most outlandish, provocative nonsense; he seems uninterested in informing people—quite the opposite, he apparently revels in his ability to get people to believe the most patently ridiculous opinions.That is how one should understand Carlson’s recent trip to Russia, which included an interview with the Russian president (which also has its own Wikipedia page) and a trip to the grocery store and the Moscow subway. Carlson effused about the beautiful Moscow subway. There’s a video that he posted online of his time in the grocery store, praising the low prices of Russian food, as if Russians are so much better off than Americans. Carlson seemed unaware that salaries in Russia are so low that the average Russian can barely those so-called cheap groceries. There are other silly things Carlson says in the video, especially about the grocery carts that use a coin-release mechanism that he had never seen before, though they are all over America (like at our local Aldi). In his interview with Putin, the name Navalny never came up. In Dubai on the Monday following, Carlson was asked why he hadn’t questioned Putin about Navalny, and Carlson said, “leadership requires killing people.” By Carlson’s standard, Putin is a great leader. A few days later, Putin killed Navalny.To be fair to Carlson, he did follow up that last comment by saying, “that’s why I wouldn’t want to be a leader.” He seems to be saying that in the world in which we live, practically speaking (not ideally), leadership requires killing people. Carlson is, perhaps, regretful that this is the case. Still, he is too flippant in addressing the issue. Just because leaders often do terrible things does not mean that they don’t deserve condemnation for those terrible things—and the leaders who do more terrible things (more in quantity and quality) deserve more condemnation. It is disheartening—though, unfortunately, not surprising—to hear Carlson so callously toss aside Putin’s murders as irrelevant to an evaluation of the man. What I want to point out in this context is the bravery of Navalny and the cowardice of Putin. Vladimir Putin is no leader—certainly not according to the standards of Jesus (remember Mark 10:41–45), and not even according to the much less noble standards of American history and society. Putin’s cowardice so defines him that he could not stand for Alexei Navalny to run against him in a presidential election. Putin was not concerned, I imagine, that he would actually lose the election, just that Navalny might get enough of the vote that Putin would somewhat lose face. He could not allow that to happen. But Putin’s cowardice, as cowardice tends to do, has only grown in recent years.Let me point this out about cowardice, and all sin. It increases. Last night I was reading, once again, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe to my kids. And we were in chapter 4, titled “Turkish Delight.” Do you remember about this Turkish Delight? The White Witch created it for Edmund, pounds of it, and Edmund ate it all up, and then he was not satisfied, but only wanted more. Because it was enchanted Turkish Delight. Edmund’s lust for that Turkish Delight determined his actions over the coming days, his own betrayals, his own sin, all for more of the false enjoyment that could never offer lasting pleasure.Such is sin. Such is cowardice. And Putin’s cowardice has now grown to the extent that he could not even allow Navalny to live in the same country.Notice the contrast between the two men. Putin has been indicted by the international court in the Hague, which means that if he travels to a nation that is a partner in the International Criminal Court, they are obligated to arrest him—so, he has not traveled to such a country. He’s reduced to traveling to places like China. On the other hand, Navalny knew full well that if he entered Russia again, he would likely be arrested and killed. And he went, in order to provide an example of bravery, and to give people hope.At the time of Navalny’s death I did not know whether he was a Christian, but his memoir makes plain that he was. What I did recognize at the time, what was, indeed, blindingly obvious, was that Navalny’s actions—at least, the actions that I have been praising here—are entirely consistent with Christian principles.It was at this point, in that chapel speech from two years ago, that I transitioned to talking about the book of Daniel, specifically chapter 6, the lion’s den story, which was ostensibly the topic for the day. I omit that brief portion of the speech here, and, if you want to learn my thoughts on this, I point you instead to my book on Daniel—except to say that Daniel’s response to the foolish decree of King Darius is another example of courage in the face of death, so well illustrated by Navalny in our own time. Why Did Navalny Return to Russia in 2021?This section is entirely dependent on my reading of Navalny’s memoir, which deals quite a bit with his motivations for returning to Russia after he recovered in Germany from his 2020 poisoning. (My comments here basically regurgitate a blog post from late 2024.) Many people advised him to stay away from Russia. Navalny recalls a visit to his hospital from Angela Merkel, who—when she heard about his plans to return to Russia—responded, “There’s no need to hurry” (p. 23). The chapter in the memoir that to my mind is the best in the book, the most engrossing, is the out-of-chronological-order ch. 8, written from prison shortly after he was arrested in the Russian airport in January 2021. This chapter reveals that he and his team did not necessarily think he would get arrested straightaway; they gamed out several scenarios for how Putin might greet Navalny’s return to Russia (pp. 137–41). Before he left Germany, the bevy of questions from reporters about whether he intended to return to his home country annoyed him.How do you like that, I thought irascibly…. You work for twenty years in the full glare of publicity, you write hundreds of articles, every day you back up your words with actions, and they still imagine I might be too scared to go back. (p. 131)This response suggests that part of the reason for his return was—to put it cynically—to make a show of his bravery. I think a better and truer way of putting it: to provide an example for others, to provide hope. This interpretation is supported by an incident narrated later in the same chapter. Outside of a police station waiting to be transported to prison, he encountered some supporters.They took me outside and people started yelling. Unexpectedly for me, I yelled back to them, “Don’t be afraid of anything!” That was an important moment, the kind when you feel at one with your supporters. They are thinking about you and want to show they are with you. You are thinking about them, and that the regime needs this arrest to frighten them, and you do your utmost to help them not to be afraid. You keep your back straight and shout, “Don’t be afraid of anything.” (p. 162)In a sense, bravery is the point. When the regime lives on fear, courage is resistance.A later chapter (ch. 15) prints Navalny’s speech at the Yves Rocher trial. Now, this Yves Rocher case—in which Navalny and his brother, Oleg, were accused of, I think, embezzling funds—dragged on for years. I think this particular speech was delivered in court probably in 2015 or thereabouts. He repeatedly mentions how the judges and the prosecutors stare down at the table, which he interprets as an attempt to ignore all the evidence of corruption in the system, to render the verdict that the Kremlin expects. Toward the end of the speech (p. 240), he divides Russian society into a few categories. The whole system is a junta, controlled by about twenty billionaires. There are about a thousand people, but no more, “who are feeding at this junta’s trough,” and these people are “state deputies and crooks.” “There’s a small percentage of people who don’t agree with this system. And then there are the millions who are simply staring at the table. I’ll never stop my fight with this junta. I’m going to continue fighting this junta, by campaigning and doing whatever it takes to shake up these people who are staring at the table. You included. I’m never going to stop.”About halfway through the speech, he says:Why do you put up with these lies? Why do you just stare at the table? I’m sorry if I’m dragging you into a philosophical discussion, but life’s too short to simply stare down at the table. I blinked and I’m almost forty years old. I’ll blink again and I’ll already have grandchildren. And then we all will blink again and we’ll be on our deathbeds, with our relatives all around us, and all they’ll be thinking about is, It’s about time they died and freed up this apartment. And at some point we’ll realize that nothing we did had any meaning at all, so why did we just stare at the table and say nothing? The only moments in our lives that count for anything are those when we do the right thing, when we don’t have to look down at the table but can raise our heads and look each other in the eye. Nothing else matters. (p. 239)This reminds me so of Bonhoeffer, whose flight to New York in 1939 was a flight away from doing something meaningful, a flight toward staring at the table. He quickly realized that just staring was not for him. In the last chapter before the memoir becomes a prison diary (ch. 18), Navalny reflects on why he doesn’t protect himself more.I have always tried to ignore the idea that I could be attacked, arrested, or even killed. I have no control over what might happen, and it would be self-destructive to dwell on it. Should I think, What are the chances that I’ll survive this morning? I don’t know; six out of ten? Eight out of ten? Maybe even ten out of ten? It’s not that I’m trying not think about it, closing my eyes and pretending the danger doesn’t exist. But one day I simply made the decision not to be afraid. I weighed everything up, understood where I stand—and let it go. I’m an opposition politician and understand perfectly who my enemies are, but if I were to worry constantly about them killing me, then it’s not worth my while living in Russia. I should emigrate or change what I do. (p. 271)So, why doesn’t he emigrate or change what he does? Navalny doesn’t say so explicitly, but I believe the one action implies the other: emigrating entails changing what he does. What he did could only be done in Russia, because part of what got attention was the audacity of the bravery. Another way of saying it is that exile is a good way to make yourself irrelevant. (Again, echoes of Bonhoeffer in NYC.) While I don’t remember Navalny in this memoir framing his return in that way, various things he says touch on the same idea, as we’ve seen. Living in safety while others (specifically, one’s fellow countrymen) suffered was not something that Navalny (or Bonhoeffer) was willing to do. (This theme of being implicated in the lives of others is one we have noticed before, with a nod to MLK.)In an Instagram post from prison on Navalny’s 47th (and last) birthday (June 4, 2023), he wrote:But life works in such a way that social progress and a better future can only be achieved if a certain number of people are willing to pay the price for their right to have their own beliefs. The more of them there are, the less everyone has to pay. …But until that day comes, I see my situation not as a heavy burden or a yoke but as a job that needs to be done. Every job has its unpleasant aspects, right? So I’m going through the unpleasant part of my favorite job right now.My plan for the previous year was not to become brutalized and bitter and lose my laid-back demeanor that would mean the beginning of my defeat. (p. 459)He saw it as a personal defeat if the regime cowered him or embittered him—and in that way controlled him. No doubt Navalny faltered at times, but he provides a compelling example.The final item in the book, before the epilogue (written by Navalny in March 2022), is an Instagram post from Jan 17, 2024. One month later, he would be dead. This final Instagram post once again addresses the question: “Why did you come back?”I have my country and my convictions. I don’t want to give up my country or betray it. If your convictions mean something, you must be prepared to stand up for them and make sacrifices if necessary.And if you’re not prepared to do that, you have no convictions. You just think you do. But those are not convictions and principles; they’re only thoughts in your head.Of course, this doesn’t mean that everyone who’s not currently in prison lacks convictions. Everyone pays their price. For many people, the price is high even without being imprisoned.I took part in elections and vied for leadership positions. The call for me is different. I traveled the length and breadth of the country, declaring everywhere from the stage, “I promise that I won’t let you down, I won’t deceive you, and I won’t abandon you.” By coming back to Russia, I fulfilled my promise to the voters. There need to be some people in Russia who don’t lie to them. (p. 470)That is merely an excerpt from the Instagram post as printed in the memoir. The last line of that post, written a month before Navalny’s death: But for now, we must not give up, and we must stand by our beliefs. This is a public episode. 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At the Resurrection, when our bodies come out of the ground and are reconstituted and transformed into whatever a spiritual body is so that they are fit to inhabit whatever that new reality is that we sometimes call heaven or the new heavens and new earth—when that happens, will we still maintain the sex distinctions common to our bodies now? In other words, in the Resurrection, will I be male?This is a question that people have asked. And answered. We will review some of the answers in just a moment. But let’s think together about what sort of evidence we could have for such a question. Well, there’s Jesus. He died, and rose from the dead, a model for our own resurrections, and after he did so, he was still male. That’s one data point. Thanks for reading Gallagher! This post is public so feel free to share it.Maybe also the Bible says something specific about our resurrection bodies and the potential for sex distinctions?Does the Bible say something? Hmm, maybe Jesus did in his conversation with the Sadducees. Now, you remember that the Sadducees were sad, you see, because they denied the resurrection. As part of his response to their question about the one bride for seven brothers, Jesus says that those accounted worthy of the resurrection “neither marry nor are given in marriage, for neither are they able to die anymore, for they are angel-like and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection” (Luke 20:35–36). Well, if they can’t marry, does that mean that the sons of the Resurrection are not distinguished by sex—no male and female? After all, Paul said that in Christ there is no male and female (Gal 3:28), which does not exactly describe life as we experience it now, but maybe that vision will be fulfilled in the Resurrection. But, in reference to what Jesus says to the Sadducees, let me point out that even now, in this life, some people don’t get married and yet they are—usually—specifically one sex or the other.So, I am not clear on whether the Bible addresses the question. Does the great tradition of Christianity have an answer? No, I don’t think so. There does not seem to be a unified answer when you look back at the great thinkers in the history of the church. Well, I will say, I have not put in much work on this question. I don’t know whether Thomas Aquinas provided an answer; that would be interesting. But I have relied on a few scholarly discussions written in the last few decades, and these discussions have served as my guide to the history of interpretation.One sorta recent answer from an authoritative source comes from Pope John Paul II. Now, when I say the pope is authoritative, I mean that he’s authoritative for a lot of Christians, and that he’s almost always (these days, at least) brilliant, and that, by virtue of his office, he’s sorta obligated to say things that are in harmony with traditional Christian teaching, as he understands it. So I think of popes, at least modern popes, as authoritative voices in regard to what the Christian tradition is. And in his book Theology of the Body, JPII affirmed that human bodies, which are recovered and also renewed in the resurrection, will preserve their specific masculine or feminine character and the meaning of being male or female in the body will be constituted and understood differently in the ‘other world’ than it had been ‘from the beginning’ and then in its whole earthly dimension. (§66.4, p. 388)The pope is reflecting on Christ’s reply to the Sadducees, and in particular his assertion that in the resurrection people will “take neither wife nor husband.” According to this papal statement, humans will continue to be distinguished by sex in the Resurrection, though those sex distinctions will function differently in that realm of existence.Does the pope’s statement accurately represent the tradition? Yes, sorta; depends on whom you ask. If you ask scholar Taylor Petrey (pp. 666–69), he would say yes, citing Tertullian (Resurrection 60) and Ps-Justin (Resurrection 2–3), but he would also tell us that this is a question that did not receive much attention in the history of the church. If you asked Nonna Harrison, she would say, no, the pope does not accurately represent the Christian tradition, or at least the early Christian tradition, and she can cite more patristic authors, and more famous ones: Clement of Alexandria, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, John Chrysostom, Maximus the Confessor, not to mention Gregory of Nyssa (discussed by Marc Cortez, ch. 1). I myself haven’t checked all of these sources, but according to Harrison and other scholars, these early Christian writers said that in the Resurrection, our bodies will be glorified and will reflect the true essence of humanity—not the trueness of a man or a woman, but of a human. There is an argument hidden in here also about what it means to be created in the image of God and its relation to sex distinctions, but we will not explore that line of thinking here. I simply note that the Christian tradition is divided regarding whether the resurrection body will maintain sex distinctions.The best argument, it seems to me, for the idea that sex distinctions are maintained in our resurrected state is the experience of Jesus. As Marc Cortez (pp. 198–202) has recently written, echoing Nonna Harrison: “we also need to account for the fact that Jesus retains his identity as Jesus in the resurrection, an identity that is unavoidably linked to the fact that he is male. Although the resurrection narratives present Jesus’s body as transformed in some way, nothing about those narratives suggests a transformation of identity such that he is no longer the same male individual the disciples knew him to be” (p. 199). There are other arguments that could be put forward, and have been, but tied up in the whole question is a lot of speculation. And that’s where we will leave the matter of sex distinctions. The Flesh ResurrectedThe Christian tradition is divided on whether the resurrection body will reflect our maleness or femaleness. The Christian tradition is not divided on whether there is a resurrection body, and whether it is the same as our current body. On that point, there is unanimous affirmation. Yes, our current bodies will be raised and transformed. The only way it makes sense to wonder about whether sex distinctions continue in the hereafter is if we have our current bodies in the hereafter. And that is certainly the dominant Christian tradition: our souls will be reunited with our bodies. Listen to the Westminster Confession of Faith. At the last day, such as are found alive shall not die, but be changed: and all the dead shall be raised up, with the selfsame bodies, and none other (although with different qualities), which shall be united again to their souls for ever. (32.2)Again, this is the Westminster Confession of Faith, written in 1646, which was—I’m sure you remember—the confession of faith that at one time expressed the theology of Barton Stone and Thomas Campbell and his son Alexander. Of course, they left behind this confession of faith in the first decade of the nineteenth century, and they repudiated it and other Protestant creeds, but I am unaware that they ever expressed any disagreement with this particular point, that—to quote it again—“the dead shall be raised up, with the selfsame bodies, and none other.”Is it just Presbyterians who think this? No, it’s not. Here is the Catechism of the Catholic Church. In death, the separation of the soul from the body, the human body decays and the soul goes to meet God, while awaiting its reunion with its glorified body. God, in his almighty power, will definitively grant incorruptible life to our bodies by reuniting them with our souls, through the power of Jesus’ Resurrection. (§997)Early ChristianityThe revised Nicene Creed of the year 381 has a line near the end about our anticipation of the resurrection of the dead—that’s the language it uses, “resurrection of the dead” (ἀνάστασιν νεκρῶν)—whereas the Apostle’s Creed, recited each Sunday in many churches, contains a distinct version of that line expressing hope in the resurrection of the flesh (carnis resurrectionem).Among early Christian writers, pretty much everyone agreed with a bodily resurrection, except for maybe Origen. We’re talking about Origen, so of course his views are complex, but it may be that he thought in terms of something like a spiritual resurrection that will not involve our mortal bodies. (For discussion, see Crouzel, here and here; and Heine, 118–22.) See the following passages. * Selections on the Psalms 1:5* Commentary on Matthew 17.29–30* On First Principles 2.10–11 * Against Celsus 5.18–23 Despite Origen’s enormous influence in many areas of theology, not many people followed Origen in his ideas of a spiritual resurrection. Indeed, this is one of the points of contention leading to the condemnation of Origen at the Second Council of Constantinople in 553. For example, that council’s Anathema #11 says, “If anyone says that the coming judgment means the total destruction of bodies and that the end of the story will be an immaterial nature, and that thereafter nothing that is material will exist but only pure mind, let him be anathema” (trans. Price, 2.286). Most patristic authors, even fans of Origen’s—such as Gregory of Nyssa and Rufinus of Aquileia—departed from the great theologian on this score (see Bynum), including: * Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5.7–14* Tertullian, On the Resurrection of the Flesh 48–57* Methodius, From the Discourse on the Resurrection 1.13–14; 3.5–6* Gregory of Nyssa, On the Soul and Resurrection; On the Holy and Saving Pascha * Rufinus of Aquileia, Commentary on the Apostle’s Creed 41–47* Jerome, Epistle 108.23–24* Augustine, City of God 20.20; 22.21–24. These authors insisted on a resurrection of the flesh.Early JudaismSuch a belief reflects the Jewish background of Christianity. I have already mentioned our Lord’s interaction with the Sadducees, who denied the resurrection. This denial of the resurrection was becoming in first-century Judaism one of those beliefs that was out-of-bounds. A little after the time of the New Testament, the rabbinic document called the Mishnah explains that all Israelites have a share in the world to come (tractate Sanhedrin 10.1), and then it specifies some groups of people who have no share in the world to come, and the first group so specified is those who deny the resurrection of the dead (האומר אין תחית המתים)—or, perhaps specifically, who deny that the doctrine of resurrection can be proved from the Torah (מן התורה). Much earlier, 2 Maccabees, from perhaps the late second century BC, contains the wonderful story of the mother and her seven sons who suffer martyrdom rather than betray their God. Part of the reason they so joyfully and defiantly suffer death for their faith is because of their hope of resurrection. Listen to the testimony of the third of these brothers, who is willing that his tongue be cut off and his hands severed.When it was demanded, he quickly put out his tongue and courageously stretched forth his hands, and said bravely, “I received these from heaven, and because of His laws I disregard them, and from Him I hope to get them back again.” (2 Macc 7:10–11)These Maccabean martyrs help to show us what the hope of resurrection meant in ancient Judaism, and it was something similar to what was expressed many centuries later in the Westminster Confession of Faith, that “the dead shall be raised up, with the selfsame bodies, and none other.”Jesus’ BodyFrom a Christian perspective, it is much more important what we observe regarding Jesus. Did the resurrected Jesus appear in the same physical body that had been nailed to the cross? Was it the same body? Yes, obviously, the Gospels show us this. How? Well, why else would they stress the empty tomb? The point was that the body wasn’t there in the tomb because Jesus had been raised. And you remember that the nail holes were still there, right? Life was returned to the body. He demonstrated that it was a real body, that he was no ghost, when he showed them his hands and feet and ate a piece of fish (Luke 24:36–43). As Peter told Cornelius, “We ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead” (Acts 10:41). On the other hand, this was no resuscitation, as in the case of Lazarus or Jairus’ daughter, who would both die again. In the case of Jesus, as Peter said, God “loosed the pains of death: because it was not possible that he should be holden of it” (2:24). Paul specifies that Jesus is “no more to return to corruption” (13:34). Death was defeated.Yes, the body of Jesus was transformed, as we seem to see especially in the accounts of the Resurrection in the Third and Fourth Gospels. And in that speech to Cornelius, when Peter says (in the ESV) that “God made him to appear, not to all the people but to us” (Acts 10:40–41), does he mean that Jesus’ body was invisible to most people but not to the preselected witnesses, or does he mean that after the Resurrection Jesus didn’t mingle with the people as he did earlier in his life? Paul on the Resurrected BodyAt any rate, his body was in some ways transformed, and so shall ours be. Note that transformed does not mean replaced. It will be this body that is raised up and glorified. I know someone’s going to ask, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come? Look, there are no stupid questions, except that one. That’s a stupid question. The best answer to such a question is, you fool! (See 1 Corinthians 15:35–36.) I’ve already mentioned that I don’t even know whether I will be male in the Resurrection, whether sex distinctions are maintained in that state of existence. I will have this body, but my body will be transformed, and I don’t know how much, or in what ways. It’s like if you plant a seed, which is a kind of body, and then a plant comes up from the ground, from that seed—the plant is the seed, but transformed. Think about a tomato seed and a tomato plant. By looking at the seed, you could not guess at all how the plant would appear. It’s the same with the resurrection, or so says the apostle Paul.Now, of course, Paul also says that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 15:50). Again, we anticipate a transformation of our bodies. By the way, the term “flesh and blood” does not appear very often in ancient Greek literature. James P. Ware searched for all the occurrences, and the phrase appears only six times, all in Jewish literature, if you count the New Testament as Jewish literature. Here is the list of all the appearances. * Sirach 14:18* Sirach 17:31* 1 Enoch 15:4* Testament of Abraham 13.7* Matthew 16:17* Galatians 1:16. It turns out that the phrase always is negative, always referring to weakness and perishability, which fairly describes our current bodies. That is entirely Paul’s point, that this corruptible—not some other corruptible, but this corruptible—must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality (1 Corinthians 15:53).Look, it is very popular these days, and it has been for a century and a half, to propose that Paul actually wasn’t talking about the resurrection of our current bodies, but he meant some sort of spiritual resurrection. Certainly there were people in antiquity who held to such views. In this context, Paul is often compared to Stoics or to Platonists, and the claim is often made that the apostle is reflecting ancient Greek philosophical categories in terms of a spiritual, not physical resurrection. And taking 1 Corinthians 15 by itself, it would be hard to argue definitively against that position. Still, if you find that position appealing, take a look at the recent monograph by James P. Ware called The Final Triumph of God. Ware argues from 1 Corinthians 15 for a physical resurrection. As Ware puts it in an earlier study: “in 1 Cor 15:36–54, resurrection is understood as the miraculous reconstitution of the mortal body of flesh and bones and its transformation so as to be imperishable.”You might disagree, and you might say that Paul did not think that our mortal bodies would be raised, and you might say that Jesus was a unique example and one of the ways he was unique is that his body was raised, and so the tomb was found empty, but our bodies won’t be raised. You might think this, but you should recognize that you are disagreeing with nearly two millennia of Christian interpretation of this issue.In the early centuries of the church, the belief in the destruction of the body and the immortality of the soul was a distinctively gnostic belief, as Irenaeus shows (Against Heresies 2.29). The late second-century bishop of Lyon said in regard to the Marcosians: “Even though they do not wish to, they will surely rise again in the flesh in order to acknowledge the power of Him who raises them from the dead; they will, however, not be numbered with the righteous, because of their unbelief” (Against Heresies 1.22.1).Where Will Those Bodies Exist?Now, the idea of a physical resurrection raises the question of what kind of existence our future will be. Will we be in heaven, or will it be something like the new heavens and new earth described in Scripture? Fortunately, these issues are not controversial at all, which makes sense because none of us can possibly know what the future is like, outside of special revelation, and it turns out that the Bible presents divergent images of that future state. But the trend to talk about a transformed earth rather than a destroyed-forever earth is no recent phenomenon. A thousand years ago, Anselm of Canterbury wrote in his most famous work, “We believe that the present physical mass of the universe is to be changed anew into something better” (Cur Deus Homo 1.18).A few centuries later, John Milton, in his great epic, wrote about the time when “earth be changed to heaven, and heaven to earth” (Paradise Lost 7.160), and elsewhere in Paradise Lost he includes this description.MeanwhileThe world shall burn, and from her ashes springNew heaven and earth, wherein the just shall dwell,And after all their tribulations longSee golden days, fruitful of golden deeds,With joy and love triumphing, and fair truth.(Paradise Lost 3.333–38)At the end of the epic, Michael the archangel reveals the future to Adam, even describing the time when…[Jesus will] receive them into bliss,Whether in heaven or earth, for then the earthShall all be paradise, far happier placeThan this of Eden, and far happier days.(Paradise Lost 12.462–65)In the mid-twentieth century, Dietrich Bonhoeffer reflected on the third Beatitude, “blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” Bonhoeffer wrote: “what it means is that when the kingdom of heaven descends, the face of the earth will be renewed, and it will belong to the flock of Jesus” (Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, ch. 6).But if we live in glorified bodies on a glorified earth, what will we actually do? What kinds of activities will occupy our time? How am I supposed to know that? I can cite a nice Talmudic passage on the question: “In the world to come, there is neither eating nor drinking nor sexual relations nor business transactions nor jealousy nor hatred nor rivalry. Rather, the righteous sit with their crowns on their heads and enjoy the radiance of the Divine Presence” (b. Ber. 17a §12; see Levenson, p. 189).But my favorite description of that phase of existence comes, perhaps inevitably, in a children’s story, and if you don’t know what I’m quoting, I’m certainly not going to tell you.Then Aslan turned to them and said:“You do not yet look so happy as I mean you to be.”Lucy said, “We’re so afraid of being sent away, Aslan. And you have sent us back into our own world so often.”“No fear of that,” said Aslan. “Have you not guessed?”Their hearts leaped and a wild hope rose within them.“There was a real railway accident,” said Aslan softly [referring to something narrated in ch. 13]. “Your father and mother and all of you are—as you used to call it in the Shadowlands—dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.”And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth had read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit edmongallagher.substack.com

The Eastern Orthodox Churches regularly baptize infants by immersion—three immersions, to be precise. Why do they do this? Why not sprinkle? And why do it to babies? What do they hope to accomplish by immersing babies? And do the babies like it? That last question is easy enough to answer just be watching a few videos of the rite; I’ve included examples below. But the babies aren’t harmed, just momentarily shocked, it seems. And, I know, there’s a lot that shocks babies; they haven’t experienced much in the world. At least they don’t fully submerge the babies in water and make them chase a dollar bill—but nevermind. Thanks for reading Gallagher! This post is public so feel free to share it.Some of the interesting features of Orthodox baptism are discussed in the recent book by Radu Bordeianu, Icon of the Kingdom of God: An Orthodox Ecclesiology (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 2023). Bordeianu is a professor of theology at Duquesne, a Catholic university in Pittsburgh, and he is Romanian Orthodox (I believe). The second, long chapter (pp. 26–89) of his book treats baptism. Here are some notes. Infant baptismBordeianu asks whether baptism, which is a cleansing of sin, also cleanses from original sin. After all, the Orthodox baptize babies, and babies do not have personal sin, so it must be original sin that is cleansed. Indeed, Bordeianu doesn’t mention this, but this line of reasoning is what convinced Augustine (or, so he rhetorically explained) that babies must harbor original sin—otherwise, why would we baptize them! Now, inasmuch as infants are not held bound by any sins of their own actual life, it is the guilt of original sin which is healed in them by the grace of Him who saves them by the laver of regeneration. (here, ch. 24; for discussion see Fairweather, pp. 897–903 here)But Augustine was a Western theologian, and Bordeianu represents the Eastern Church. First, Bordeianu defends the practice of infant baptism. The practice of infant baptism has existed since the beginning of the Church’s history. While it cannot be proven beyond any doubt on biblical grounds, the New Testament offers some important indications that the early Church practiced infant baptism. (p. 30)What is that evidence? Why, the household baptisms in Acts, of course. See Acts 16 for two instances, and see also 1 Corinthians 1:16. Noteworthy in all these instances is that baptisms were not limited to adults (which was clearly the norm in those times), but comprised the entire household, which included the family as well as its servants. A household most likely included children and infants…. (p. 31)(I hope I need not explain that I myself, dear reader, do not accept such an argument for infant baptism in the New Testament. But I’m trying to understand the Orthodox view.)But Bordeianu rejects the notion of original sin, which he says is a western idea only recently adopted in the east by some theologians. Rather, for Bordeianu, baptizing infants aims to add them to the Church, not to cleanse their sins. But the rite of baptism has all kinds of references to cleansing sin, in dependence on the New Testament (see Acts 22:16, etc.), which—Bordeianu says—doesn’t really work in the case of infant baptism. So Bordeianu suggests that the Orthodox rite of baptism should be revised to reduce the references to exorcism and sin—appropriate for an adult baptism, but not for an infant—and increase the number of “references to Baptism as entry into the Church.” He continues: “Such a multitude of references to sin that were initially intended in reference to adults, when applied to infants, risks further propagating the rather recent Orthodox insistence on Baptism as forgiveness of original sin, based on an unhealthy Western influence” (p. 31). In other words, Bordeianu is criticizing Eastern theologians for following Augustine’s path. What is original sin? Well, Bordeianu says that the Orthodox disagree on how to think about it, and he himself is uncomfortable with the speculative Western definition (original sin = actual sin) that has influenced the East. He says that Orthodox theologians nowadays (he cites specifically Kallistos Ware) consider original sin as merely a propensity to sin. “And since this is a predisposition and not an actual sin, therefore, we are not born guilty, and later in life we can learn to resist this sinful inclination” (p. 33). So (and he italicizes the following), “infant baptism should not be regarded as forgiveness of original sin, but as entry into the Church—a return to the lost communion with God” (p. 33). The Orthodox Rite of BaptismBordeianu goes through each element of the Orthodox rite and explains (what he thinks ought to be) its meaning. * catechumenate (period of teaching)* procession (moving toward the baptismal font)* prayers over the water exorcizing from it evil spirits, and blessing the water* the anointing with the oil of gladness* immersion in the baptismal font* chrismationAbout the actual baptism, the Orthodox practice what they call immersion. You can judge whether you think the term immersion should apply. Here’s an example (start at the 21 min mark).Here’s another. Okay, this next one is definitely an immersion (at 4 min mark).Anyway, Bordeianu does describe Orthodox baptism as involving immersion “entirely under water” (p. 42). Baptism without Water?I won’t spend much time on this, just as Bordeianu does not (pp. 46–52), but traditionally those who have died unbaptized have been regarded as members of the Church in two cases: if they are martyrs or if they have previously expressed the desire to receive baptism. In the first case, their martyrdom is regarded as “baptism of blood,” and in the second case, usually meaning that they are catechumens who have not yet completed their period of training, they are considered to have received “baptism of desire.” Bordeianu argues for expanding the concept of “baptism of desire” to the case of miscarriages, in which the desire is that of the parents, who would have had their infant baptized. Adult ConvertsDo they need to get baptized? Depends. In cases where a person who desires to join the Orthodox Church but has not been previously baptized with water and in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, entrance into Orthodoxy happens through Baptism. The typical convert to Orthodoxy, however, has already been baptized with water in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit in another church. Most of the Orthodox world recognizes the baptisms of other churches and receives their faithful into Orthodoxy most commonly through Confirmation and, in some cases, through Confession. (pp. 52–53)There are complications. Those who baptize but reject the Trinity, such as some Pentecostal groups, or those who otherwise do not use the Matthean baptismal formula (Matt 28:19) by, for instance, substituting gender-inclusive language, perhaps referring to a divine parent rather than to the Father (p. 56). Clearly, the Orthodox Church does not indiscriminately accept all baptisms. But at the same time, there are some Orthodox who reject absolutely all baptisms outside the Orthodox Church, ignoring longstanding practices to recognize the baptisms of those who are in schism. (p. 56)Bordeianu eventually turns to consider those who leave Orthodoxy to join a Baptist church. The person who has previously been baptized Orthodox as an infant is re-baptized when they convert into a Baptist church. While from an Orthodox perspective this practice is offensive, for Baptists it takes a different meaning. Some Baptist churches permit the repetition of the rite of Baptism if it is deemed that it was not preceded by a sincere acceptance of Christ, even when the rituals take place in the same parish. Such is the case when a person accepts Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior and is baptized, but then falls into a grievous sin thus revealing that their initial acceptance of Jesus was not heartfelt, rendering their prior Baptism invalid. Consequently, such a person would again accept Jesus and be baptized, in practice showing Baptism as a repeatable ritual. The tension stems not only from differing views regarding infant Baptism, but also from differences regarding Baptism itself; if for the Orthodox Baptism represents entry into the Church and is thus unrepeatable, for Baptists it represents the rite that seals one’s salvation understood as the acceptance of Jesus Christ as personal Lord and Savior. (p. 58)Assuming that Bordeianu correctly characterizes Baptist thought, it seems to me that Churches of Christ are more Orthodox than Baptist in our theology of baptism, while of course being more Baptist than Orthodox on our administration of baptism. ConsecrationBaptism is linked to consecration in two senses: death to sin (Romans 6) and priesthood. On the first point, death to sin, Romans 6:3–11 is read at the Orthodox baptismal ceremony (p. 84). That’s a good practice, I think. On the other hand, Bordeianu says that “Baptism does not bring a measurable ethical change” (p. 82), and I agree, it does not, not immediately, but it should over the long term. While it is true that “sometimes people who are baptized are less moral than those who are not,” that is because we all start in different places and are worked on by different influences. A random Muslim or atheist might be morally more upright than a random Christian, especially a new Christian. But our baptisms ought to mark the beginning of sanctification in our lives. Whether or not we become very much like Jesus before we die, we ought to be more like him at the point of our death than we were at the point of our baptism. On the second point, priesthood, Bordeianu wants to correct a misapprehension that the laity are not consecrated to a type of priesthood. He affirms the priesthood of all believers, all baptized Christians. Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit edmongallagher.substack.com

What is your favorite scene from the classic 1986-film The Three Amigos? It’s an impossible question, because there is a plethora of great scenes. There’s the scene where the Amigos in their underwear receive a telegram about the infamous El Guapo—excuse me, the in-famous El Guapo—there’s the scene just a moment later when Lucky Day is on top of what turns out to be a not-very-high wall and he’s trying to get the attention of his fellow amigos, with imitation bird calls that get increasingly loud and verbal until he finally resorts to shouting. There’s the scene in that Mexican cantina, where someone had been with the ugly stick. There’s the initial confrontation with the Mexican gangsters, and later with El Guapo himself. There’s the search for El Guapo’s lair, including the attempted conversation with a bush that just won’t stop singing, and the unfortunate demise of the Invisible Swordsman. I’ve listed here just a sampling.I assume I’m reminding you of scenes you’ve watched many times, as I have. But just in case you’ve not seen it or can’t remember the plot, think A Bug’s Life. Three silent movie stars who play heroes on the big screen are confused for actual heroes by Carmen, the woman sent to find help for the village of Santo Poco. In turn, the Three Amigos imagine that they are being invited to Santo Poco not to drive out a villain but to perform alongside the biggest star in Mexico. They realize their mistake only when one of them falls off a horse in mid-performance and discovers blood on his arm. It turns out that the Mexican bandits are using real bullets! The Amigos start weeping because of the predicament they’re in, but lucky for them El Guapo only kills men, not crying women. They slink out of town, and El Guapo burns the village and kidnaps Carmen. Eventually the Amigos do return and they do save the day, with the help of the villagers.I don’t know for sure that I saw the movie in the theater when it came out, but I bet I did—the family I grew up in was a family that went to the movies. I do recall that in eighth grade—this would have been 1993—for an assignment in English class I spliced together some clips of Chevy Chase movies, including the scene where the Amigos are looking for El Guapo’s out in the desert, desperate for water and Dusty Bottoms is the only one with a full canteen, but he’s too dim-witted to realize that his companions need the water that is spilling on the cracked earth and not the lip balm.If forced to pick a single favorite scene, I’d probably go back to that Mexican cantina. No, I’m not thinking about My Little Buttercup—although, yes, of course, My Little Buttercup. But I’m thinking about something before that song and dance, when the Amigos first approach the bar, and there begins to be a case of mistaken identity. The bartender gives the three Amigos a knowing look and says, “You are the… wink, wink?” And they reply with laughter and false modesty, “yes,” unsurprised to encounter fans of theirs even in this sleepy Mexican town. Then the bartender says with his voice low: “I have a message for you. The German says to wait here.” The audience knows exactly what the bartender means, but none of the Amigos has a clue, though they don’t want to let on. I love how Lucky Day, with squinted eyes, draws out the word “yeeaah.” That’s it; that’s my favorite part of the move, that confused and elongated “yeeaah.”The Three Amigos turns forty this year. Is it worth remembering so fondly? The critics in 1986 would surely be surprised that anyone would remember it on its 40th anniversary. It holds a 45% rating on the tomatometer, and Roger Ebert—my go-to critic—awarded the film one star out of four. It is certainly dumb comedy, and it doesn’t deliver the insight into the human condition that is achieved by the likes of Groundhog Day, but what can I say? It makes me laugh, and I have seen it so many times by now that there is a nostalgia element. And I think there are even points worthy of reflection for Christians in the year 2026.The movie itself gestures toward some life lessons in an inspiring speech by Lucky Day in the village of Santo Poco while standing on the wing of a Tubman 601. First, he warns that El Guapo is on his way, an announcement that elicits gasps from the crowd. But Carmen wisely declares that “Someday the people of this village will have to face El Guapo. We might as well do it now.” What the villagers need is a motivational speech, and it’s a lucky day that witnesses Steve Martin provide it.In a way, all of us have an El Guapo to face someday. For some, shyness might be their El Guapo. For others, a lack of education might be their El Guapo. For us, El Guapo is a big dangerous guy who wants to kill us. But as sure as my name is Lucky Day, the people of Santa Poco can conquer their own personal El Guapo, who also happens to be the actual El Guapo.Man, this speech sounds like every youth devotional ever. But it also mocks the absurd comparisons we sometimes make among completely different situations: you have cancer and I have acne, which just shows that we all have trials to bear. But, then again, the idea that we all must face our personal El Guapos is, um, sorta true. If you imagine Three Amigos has nothing to teach about life, the movie encourages you to think a little more seriously.So let’s get serious. I find poignance in the depiction of Santo Poco’s desperation. It is their desperation in the face of evil that initially led them to send Carmen to a bigger city for help, but unfortunately she’s never seen a movie before and doesn’t realize that the cinematic heroics of the Three Amigos are all scripted. When the Amigos flee before El Guapo, themselves desperate to stay alive, the villagers are all the more hopeless and wretched. It’s a familiar tale in this world of woe. How many psalms include the question, “how long, O Lord?” The answer is ten, in the KJV.O YHWH God, to whom vengeance belongeth; O God, to whom vengeance belongeth, shew thyself.Lift up thyself, thou judge of the earth: render a reward to the proud.YHWH, how long shall the wicked, how long shall the wicked triumph?How long shall they utter and speak hard things? and all the workers of iniquity boast themselves?They break in pieces thy people, O YHWH, and afflict thine heritage.They slay the widow and the stranger, and murder the fatherless.Yet they say, YHWH shall not see, neither shall the God of Jacob regard it. (Psalm 94:1–7)Or there’s this from Psalm 6:My soul is also sore vexed:but thou, O YHWH, how long? (Psa 6:3)And this from Psalm 13How long wilt thou forget me, O YHWH? for ever?How long wilt thou hide thy face from me?How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily?how long shall my enemy be exalted over me? (Psa 13:1–2)The Bible is full of desperation, just like the village of Santo Poco, and often for roughly the same causes. Lucky Day is right: El Guapo is not unique. We all have our own El Guapo, and many times it is actually a big dangerous guy who wants to kill us. We also remember this prayer in a garden: “Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee: take away this cup from me.” And we remember the answer to this prayer, that the one who prayed it was not liberated from the cup of suffering but he drank it all. Certainly a desperate situation, and yet this Man of Sorrows seemed somehow not desperate, but in control, even as he faced unarmed a detachment of soldiers led by a traitor. His self-command and ultimately his hope is the blueprint for his followers in their own desperate situations. Do you remember what Paul and Silas were doing in that Philippian jail in Acts 16:25? They experienced mistreatment, injustice, a desperate situation, and they neither fought back in conventional terms, nor did they despair, but rejoiced that they could suffer shame for the name.That’s not to say that fighting back is necessarily wrong. While Jesus does forbid resisting him who is evil and he commands turning the other cheek—and not only that but he modeled that behavior—Christians have traditionally allowed that self-defense and especially defense of the poor and oppressed is warranted and even necessary according to Christian ethics. While there has always been disagreement on the question of whether Christians are ever justified in using violence, the predominant ethical view throughout church history would not condemn Santo Poco for seeking deliverance from El Guapo even through force. (CCC 2263–65.)Like in Santo Poco, the problems presented in this life seem insurmountable, and I guess they are—unless God chooses to act. And as we all know, God often chooses not to act in the way we desire. As Lucky says, we all face an El Guapo, and often El Guapo prevails, at least temporarily. But the Christian hope guaranteed by the one who could not be held in death’s power allows us even in those desperate situations to sing praises.But the lesson I appreciate most from the Three Amigos is that the Amigos recognize themselves as implicated in the fate of Santo Poco. As they tell El Guapo on their first meeting, “We’re not gunfighters, we’re movie stars.” Their pathetic abandonment of Santo Poco allows the Mexican outlaws to wreak havoc on the village, terrorize the villagers, and kidnap Carmen. But the Amigos return, at first, apparently, only to see how much damage the village endured at the hands of El Guapo’s men. But then Ned starts to load his gun—with real bullets!—and he issues a challenge to Dusty and Lucky: “I’m drawing a line. Men or Mice? What’ll it be?” After some hesitation, they all three decide to be, in Ned’s words, “the Three Amigos for real,” and retrieve Carmen from El Guapo’s fortress.Why do the Amigos do this? Why do they try to help Santo Poco? Because they recognize themselves as implicated in the plight of this little village. They had been brought to Santo Poco by a silly mistake. They had no intention of misrepresenting themselves as vigilantes; they just wanted to come perform, and to get paid. But they could not ignore—or, at least, Ned could not ignore—that they had been brought to Santo Poco. False pretenses or not, they had met these people, they knew their plight, and they had witnessed the terror caused by El Guapo. They were now involved with the lives of the people of Santo Poco, and they were implicated in the fate of this tiny Mexican village. They did not want to be, but they were. It was their cowardice that led to the village’s destruction, and—whether they like it or not—it was ethically incumbent upon them to do what they could to help its residents.The point is that we are implicated in the lives of other people, by virtue of the fact that we live near them, that we go to school with them, that we go to church together. We may not want to be bound up in their lives, but that choice is not afforded to us. Two hours southeast of where I live, Martin Luther King, Jr., sat in jail in 1963 and wrote a letter featuring these words near its opening.Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.Those are lofty sentiments, difficult to fulfill. But sometimes their truth hits close to home. In the case of the Amigos, when a town in desperate need has called on you for help, and you have accepted their offer, under mistaken identity or not, you find yourself implicated in their lives, and it’s time to decide whether you’re a mouse or a man.And when you find yourself implicated, the Amigos also teach us that you can do more than you think. The Amigos are not heroes, they just play them for the movies. If we were talking about spiritual gifts, the Amigos would tell you that their gift is entertainment, not bravery, not rescuing captives, but they step into the role because … well, ya know, somebody needed to. If we don’t perceive ourselves as gifted in a particular area, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t put ourselves out there and do something. The Amigos are scarred they might get killed, but they go for it, so that the mottos they have been reciting for years could finally become sorta true.Wherever there is injustice, you will find us.Wherever there is suffering, we’ll be there.Wherever liberty is threatened, you will find... The Three Amigos.I think we could say that the Amigos discovered that they were, indeed, not talented at being gunfighters, but they accomplished more than they anticipated.So too the town. It turns out that the villagers of Santo Poco are talented at almost nothing—certainly nothing that could be helpful in a gunfight. The only thing they can do is sew. But with a little creativity, even that random skill becomes a weapon leading to the downfall of evil and the establishment of justice.Seeing the Amigos rally the town to stand up to El Guapo and defeat his gang will provide a model for you as you face your own personal El Guapo, be it shyness, lack of education, or something much more serious. And we Christians know that with Jesus on our side, El Guapo doesn’t stand a chance.Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit edmongallagher.substack.com

According to the Gospel of Luke, while hanging on the cross, Jesus prayed for the people participating in his execution. Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. (Luke 23:34)Or did he? This prayer—which appears only in the Third Gospel—is absent from some important Greek manuscripts of Luke. Anyone who has studied the New Testament at a serious level understands that our English versions are translated from Greek, and that the Greek text used by translators is itself edited from the thousands of Greek manuscripts that preserve portions of the New Testament. But all of these manuscripts differ from each other in some ways, often very small but sometimes significant. These differences are called textual variants, passages in which the texts vary. So, again, with regard to Luke 23:34, some Greek manuscripts contain the prayer and others don’t; here there is a textual variant. This is not one of the small differences among the manuscripts but one of major importance. The New Testament scholar Dirk Jongkind has said that this “may be the single most important textual variant in the Greek New Testament” (Introduction, p. 85). In a way, that statement shows how insignificant most textual variants are. Even if a variant is longer than this one, contains more words, it does not really affect Christian theology. Does this variant affect Christian theology? Maybe somewhat. Our understanding of Jesus is affected somewhat by whether he prayed for the people who were executing him while they were executing him. We might expect that Jesus would do that kind of thing, especially in light of his own teaching, such as Luke 6:28, where he told his followers to “pray for them which despitefully use you.” Praying for his enemies from the cross seems like something Jesus might do, but it would be nice to have the explicit statement confirming it.So did he say it? Unfortunately, the evidence is rather difficult to parse, but most scholars say no. Most scholars consider this prayer a later addition to the Third Gospel, not something that the Gospel writer included but something a scribe inserted later, in the second century. It couldn’t have been added later than the second century, for Irenaeus of Lyon, at the end of the second century, already knows about it (though he doesn’t say explicitly that it’s found in Luke’s Gospel). Now, by the fact that the Lord said on the cross, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do, Christ’s long-suffering, patience, compassion, and goodness are shown forth, inasmuch as He Himself who suffered also excused those who had treated Him wickedly. For the Word of God who told us, love your enemies and pray for those who hate you, did just that on the cross, loving the human race so much that He prayed even for those who put Him to death. (Against Heresies 3.18.5; trans. Unger, p. 90)Many scholars hold the view that the prayer was added in the second century, but not all. There are good reasons for considering the prayer a genuine part of Luke’s original composition. This post surveys the evidence. The easiest place to examine the evidence is in a recent edition of the Greek New Testament. The edition I am going to use here is the United Bible Socities’ edition (UBS), and the reason I am using this edition is because of an interesting feature unique to it. The UBS edition has a ranking system for the level of confidence of the modern editors. That is, it tells us how confident the editors are that they got the right answer, that they figured out which reading among the manuscripts is the better reading, which variant is right. The ranking system is quadripartite, A being the highest (very confident), and D the lowest (not at all confident), and B and C in the middle. Here is the relevant page from the UBS fourth edition. There is a fifth edition (2014), which presents the exact same evidence. The first half of the page presents a portion of the New Testament text, and the bottom part of the page displays the critical apparatus. It’s the apparatus that is the real star of the show here, detailing which manuscripts say what. But before we get to the apparatus, notice that in the top half of the page this edition puts double brackets around the prayer of Jesus at Luke 23:34.Now to the apparatus. Here’s an image of what the apparatus says about this variant. Note that the very first thing said, after the verse number (34), is an A in curly brackets. That is the confidence ranking. As the introduction to this edition tells us: “The letter A indicates that the text is certain.” We have an A here, so the editors are confident that they got the right answer here. But what is the answer that they decided upon? The next portion of the apparatus says: “omit verse 34a.” That’s the answer. The editors are completely confident that Luke did not include this prayer from Jesus in his Gospel; it must have been added later by a scribe—according to these editors. Next, there are a few Greek words, just giving the beginning and ending of the variant unit. And then there is the citation of Greek manuscripts. Here are the Greek manuscripts that omit the prayer: P75 א B D* W Θ 070 579 597* 1241. All of these numbers and letters refer to particular Greek manuscripts. They are listed more-or-less in order of age, so P75 is the earliest (papyrus 75, early third century), and 1241 is something like the latest (12th cent.). After the number 1241 in the apparatus, there are a few more items listed that omit Jesus’ prayer: ita, d syrs copsa, bo pt. These aren’t numbers, so they aren’t Greek manuscripts. Instead, they are ancient translations: it = itala (i.e., an early Latin translation), syr = Syriac, cop = Coptic. The next thing in the apparatus is a double slash mark introducing the next group of manuscripts, those which “include verse 34a.” Here are the manuscripts that do contain the prayer of Jesus, and the first one listed (after the parentheses) is א. This symbol is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, aleph, and it refers to a famous Greek manuscript called Codex Sinaiticus (fourth century). You’ll notice that there is an asterisk by א, and then also a 2. The asterisk refers to the original reading of this manuscript, so it is telling us that this manuscript originally contained the prayer of Jesus. The 2 refers to a corrector, a later scribe who changed the manuscript. Let me explain: these ancient manuscripts were often used for centuries, and the users would sometimes write in the manuscript. I do the same thing with my Bible, sometimes writing in the margin, sometimes even crossing out something in the text and marking down what I think is a better translation. These scribes using the manuscripts sometimes did that kind of thing. The apparatus also presents the evidence of these later users of the manuscript. The 2 by א refers to the “second corrector” of Sinaiticus; this second corrector also thought the prayer should be included. But why would we know that, since the original text of Sinaiticus already had the prayer? Because someone had tried to remove the prayer from Sinaiticus. If you look in the apparatus back on the manuscripts that “omit verse 34a,” you’ll see that the second manuscript listed is א with a 1 beside it, the first corrector. The apparatus is telling us that א originally contained the prayer, and then the first corrector tried to delete it, and then a second corrector reinserted it. Or something like that. Actually, there was no erasing and insertion. Here is Codex Sinaiticus with the prayer of Jesus from the cross. The beginning of the variant is near top left, where you see the Greek letters ΟΔ. You can see that Sinaiticus includes the prayer. But the manuscript also preserves the attempt to delete it. Right beside that ΟΔ, to the top left of the Ο, there is a faint mark that looks like a C or maybe like a parenthesis. This is a deletion sign or a cancellation mark. The original scribe included the prayer, and then a later scribe (the first corrector) added these deletion signs to signal to users of the manuscript that there was a textual problem with this passage. The corrector added these deletion signs at the beginning and end of each line of text that he wanted to warn readers about. The image below highlights these deletion signs. The deletion signs are very faint, apparently because (and here I am guessing, based on the apparatus) a later scribe (the second corrector) either tried to erase the marks or, maybe, when he was re-inking the manuscript he did not re-ink the deletion signs. If you look closely at the apparatus, you’ll see that the number of manuscripts that include Jesus’ prayer in Luke 23:34 is way more than the number of manuscripts that omit it. So why are scholars so convinced that it is not original? It’s because of which manuscripts omit it. The papyrus manuscript #75 (early third century) is very early, and so is B, which is another very famous manuscript called Codex Vaticanus (fourth century). Other early manuscripts that omit the prayer: * D = Codex Bezae = 05 (fifth century)* W = Codex Washingtonianus = 032 (fifth century)* Θ = Codex Koridethi = 038 (ninth century)* 070 (sixth century)The other manuscripts listed in the apparatus (579 597 1241) are all in the second millennium. Let’s take a look at some of these manuscripts that omit the prayer. The following image is P75, and the arrow shows you where the prayer would go if it were there, but it’s not. Next, we have Codex Vaticanus, and again the arrow shows where the missing prayer would go. This next image is more interesting. Codex Bezae does contain the prayer, but only in the lower margin, added by a later scribe. The red arrow in the image below shows where the prayer would go if it were included in the text of the Gospel, and the blue arrow shows the addition of the prayer in the lower margin of the manuscript. The addition of the prayer can be dated to the sixth century (see Gurry, p. 202 n. 40, relying on Parker, pp. 41–43).By the way, this manuscript, Codex Bezae, is a bilingual manuscript, Greek and Latin on facing pages. Only the Greek has the prayer added. The Latin is also missing the prayer in the text of the Gospel, and there is no scribal correction on the Latin side. The last image we’ll look at is from manuscript 597, a 13th-century Gospels manuscript now in Venice. If you look in the apparatus, you’ll see that 597 has an asterisk by it, meaning that the original text omits the prayer, but the asterisk also tells you that there must be a later scribal change, and this image below shows what happened. A later scribe added the prayer in the margin, and then signaled with a symbol where the prayer should be inserted into the text of the Gospel. When scholars (textual critics) judge among competing variants, they pay a lot of attention to the Greek manuscripts, as we have done above, but they also pay attention to other things. One thing to point out is that the prayer of Jesus is very similar to the prayer of Stephen, the martyr stoned in Acts 7. And he kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. And when he had said this, he fell asleep. (Acts 7:60)Acts is part two of the 2-vol. work by Luke. One might wonder whether Luke would want to represent Jesus and Stephen both praying for their persecutors, or whether a later scribe is the one who made the connection by inserting the prayer into the mouth of Jesus on the cross. (By the way, there is no textual problem for Stephen’s prayer.) Let’s also note that this textual variant cannot be explained as an accident. Very many textual variants are accidents: a scribe messed up because he wasn’t paying attention. But this textual variant cannot be explained that way. Either a scribe intentionally inserted this prayer into the text of Luke (if the prayer is not original), or a scribe intentionally omitted it (if the prayer is original). In any case, it wasn’t an accident. So, a basic question is: would a scribe be more likely to take the prayer out or to put the prayer in? This is the question that Bruce Metzger asked three decades ago when discussing this variant in his important work A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (2d ed., 1994). The absence of these words from such early and diverse witnesses [he lists the manuscripts] is most impressive and can scarcely be explained as a deliberate excision by copyists who, considering the fall of Jerusalem to be proof that God had not forgiven the Jews, could not allow it to appear that the prayer of Jesus had remained unanswered. At the same time, the logion, though probably not a part of the original Gospel of Luke, bears self-evident tokens of its dominical origin, and was retained, within double square brackets, in its traditional place where it had been incorporated by unknown copyists relatively early in the transmission of the Third Gospel. (p. 154)Notice that Metzger suggests that the prayer is not original to Luke but it is original to Jesus, that is, it “bears self-evident tokens of its dominical origin.” Metzger thinks Jesus said the prayer, and Christians transmitted the prayer orally, and then it was finally inserted into Luke’s Gospel (but not by Luke). The more recent textual commentary by Hugh Houghton (2025) updates the discussion. The first half of this verse is present in most Greek manuscripts but missing from many of the earliest witnesses [he lists them] and is indicated with asterisks in Codex Basiliensis (07 …). A full list of the forms it takes in Greek continuous-text manuscripts is given in TuT Luke (TS49). Although a similar sentiment is expressed by Stephen in Acts 7:60, the wording is entirely different so assimilation is unlikely. The SBLGNT and THGNT consider the longer text to be original, but in the absence of any obvious reason for omission or deletion, the UBS4 committee decided it was an early tradition which was incorporated at an early point into the Lukan crucifixion narrative. (pp. 182–83)Ah, that’s interesting, about Codex Basiliensis. Let’s take a look at those asterisks in this eighth-century manuscript of the Gospels now in Basel. Actually, I see only one asterisk, in the left margin in the image below. Notice also that Houghton alerts us to the fact that the last time the evidence for this variant was evaluated was for the fourth edition of the UBS text. Houghton says there’s no good reason for the prayer, if original, to have been removed by later scribes. But some suggestions have been made. Could early Christians have taken the prayer out of Luke’s Gospel because they were being antisemitic and they didn’t like having their Scripture offer forgiveness to the Jews from Jesus himself—and even while the Jews were murdering him no less? (I am speaking here as one of these second century Christians; I myself do not think it is correct to say that “the Jews were murdering” Jesus without caveat.) This is Ehrman’s argument (pp. 190–93), who regards the prayer as original to Luke and omitted by antisemitic Christian scribes. Ehrman is following here a distinguished stream of scholars, such as Adolf von Harnack, B. H. Streeter, J. Rendel Harris, and Eldon Epp. (For specific citations, see the article by Eubank.) An extensive argument along these lines is presented by Nathan Eubank in his 2010 JBL article, who adds to the discussion by exploring the interpretation of the prayer in early Christianity. We may, therefore, conclude that Harnack and others who suggested that the prayer was omitted for anti-Jewish reasons were on the right track. Note, however, that Early Christian consternation with Luke 23:34a stemmed not from anti-Judaism alone but also from the fact that Jesus’ prayer seemed to have gone unanswered [because of the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70], and from a sense that the Jews had been punished unjustly [because they acted in ignorance]. The discomfort with the prayer explains why the external evidence for both readings is early and widespread; in all likelihood, Luke 23:34a was omitted fairly early, possibly by multiple scribes, while other scribes corrupted the text by changing ἄφες [“forgive”] to συγχώρησον [“yield to”]. (Eubank, p. 536)On the other hand, Gurry (pp. 202–5) is right that usually Christians dealt with problematic texts of the Bible through interpretation (commentary) rather than changing the text. But in this case, somebody—or multiple somebodies—intentionally changed the text one way or the other, and Eubank’s argument (along with his predecessors) makes it more likely that some scribes removed the prayer rather than added it. Moreover, the prayer does fit the Lukan theme that the Jewish leaders acted from ignorance, they knew not what they did. And now, brethren, I wot that through ignorance ye did it, as did also your rulers. (Acts 3:17)For they that dwell at Jerusalem, and their rulers, because they knew him not, nor yet the voices of the prophets which are read every sabbath day, they have fulfilled them in condemning him. (Acts 13:27)I myself accept the prayer as original to Luke’s Gospel—based on its early attestation in Irenaeus and in manuscripts, and the plausible case that can be made for its intentional omission based on anti-Judaism. At least, I find this explanation more probable than any explanation for the addition of the prayer to a Gospel that lacked it. One final note here. The next edition of the UBS Greek New Testament, the sixth edition, has just been published. I have not yet seen it, but I understand that there has been a significant change made in this updated edition in relation to Jesus’ prayer in Luke 23:34. The confidence rank for omitting prayer has been downgraded from A to B. Houghton’s textual commentary, published months ago, already alerted us to this change.Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit edmongallagher.substack.com

I am no expert on slavery. I am not an ethicist. I consider myself a reasonably intelligent person with an interest in how Christians should think through particular issues. Here I am not trying to talk Christians out of enslaving others; I don’t reckon there’s much danger there—not now, thank God. But from a biblical perspective, slavery is a potentially tricky issue, and there have been many arguments made favoring slavery—or, at least, anti-anti-slavery—based on the Bible. Giving consideration to slavery might provide some guidance to other issues, but, here, I am not talking about those other issues, just slavery. Can we make an argument against slavery from biblical grounds?Notice the assignment as I have described it? I have not asked the question, “what does the Bible say about slavery?” Nor have I asked, “Is the Bible opposed to slavery?” These distinct questions are not our concern at the moment, though they are both interesting and overlap with the present task. I want to assume that slavery is wrong, and I want to know how a case against slavery could be based on the Bible?Assuming that Slavery Is WrongLet’s pause. Are we justified in making the assumption that slavery is wrong? The problem with this assumption, as I see it, is twofold: first, our Scripture does not explicitly talk about slavery as being wrong or sinful; and second, most human societies throughout history have countenanced some form of slavery. It is only relatively recently, since the end of the seventeenth century, that the idea gained traction that slavery might be morally problematic. And yet, in general, we do not and ought not to take our cues from society when it comes to morality. Usually we should be wary, dubious, about what society has to teach us about morality. So, if our Scripture does not explicitly condemn slavery, and most human societies have been fine with slavery, why should we consider slavery wrong?Listen, the answer is yes, we are justified in assuming that slavery is wrong. And we base that belief not so much on Scripture or on society but because we feel it in our bones that slavery is wrong. Okay, right, most people have not felt its wrongness in their bones, I presume; they have been fine with the peculiar institution; and we feel its wrongness because we were raised to feel this way. We have been conditioned against slavery—and people a few hundred years ago were not so conditioned. I recognize this fact of historical situatedness, but that does not mean I think that slavery’s wickedness is conditional on society. (It does seem that Gregory of Nyssa overcame his own historical situatedness and promoted a proto-abolitionism; see, e.g., Tom Holland, ch. 5, pp. 142–43.)I am trying to put all my philosophical presuppositions—at least the ones I recognize as important here—out on the table so you can recognize them and examine them.I happen to think that our society has led us in the right direction here, but of course our society has been indelibly marked by Christianity, and while Christians played a part in defending the institution of slavery, there were also plenty of abolitionists motivated by their devotion to Christ.The apostle Paul says that the works of the flesh are evident, and it is evident to me that enslaving another human being is a work of the flesh.So, yes, we are justified, at least for the moment, in assuming that slavery is wrong. But there are two reasons that it doesn’t really matter whether this is a correct assumption, and briefly stated, those reasons are the following: (1) we have a habit of constantly examining Scripture, which informs and refines all of our presuppositions, just as our interpretations of Scripture are refined by our life experiences, including the societies in which we live; this is the hermeneutical spiral. (2) For the purposes of this presentation, we can just assume the wickedness of slavery for the sake of argument.But let me make one more point about this assumption: we should assume the wickedness of slavery until persuaded otherwise. Our default position as human beings, and certainly as Christians, ought to be that owning someone is morally wrong. The burden of proof should be on the one who says that it is not morally wrong. The Old Testament on SlaveryNeither does this essay concern what the Bible has to say about slavery or whether the Bible is opposed to slavery. Again, let’s pause and consider these points before getting to the main point. The Bible’s depiction of slavery is complicated. As I have said, the Bible never explicitly condemns slavery, though it does mention slavery a number of times. Note, however, that the Bible does not promote slavery. I think you would be hard-pressed to find in the Bible instructions on how to enslave people, or when people deserve slavery, or how best to exploit your slave labor. While the Bible contains a verse instructing Christian disciples to go into the world making disciples of all nations, there is no verse about making slaves of all nations. On the pro-slavery side, the Bible is at best neutral, not promoting it but not explicitly condemning it.The Bible does mention slavery several times, in the Old Testament and the New—and the essential teaching here in these passages that reference slavery is the regulation of a social reality. The Bible does not say what I wish it said about this issue. (I have mentioned that before.) In the Old Testament, there are instructions for masters, some not altogether pleasant.​​When you buy a male Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, but in the seventh he shall go out a free person, without debt. If he comes in single, he shall go out single; if he comes in married, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master’s and he shall go out alone. But if the slave declares, “I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out a free person,” then his master shall bring him before God. He shall be brought to the door or the doorpost; and his master shall pierce his ear with an awl; and he shall serve him for life. (Exod 21:2–6; cf. Lev 25:39–55; Deut 15:12–18)This passage raises for me several questions for which I have no answers. Mostly here the master is addressed. The thoughts of the slave are considered, if he is a male slave, and it is considered possible that he might want to continue his slavery rather than be emancipated. This regulation seems to envision a type of slavery that might not be altogether unwelcome to the slave—or, preferable to some other likely life situations. But that’s as far down that path as I am inclined to go.On SlaveryMaybe this is a good time to problematize the very notion of slavery. When I say the word “slavery,” what comes to mind? For me, it’s the nineteenth century American South, and the slavery practiced there was chattel slavery, in which people were enslaved for life with no legal recourse, and their children also automatically became life slaves. Slave owners did sometimes emancipate their slaves, but that was at the whim of the slaveowner, and some states had laws in place to discourage or prohibit emancipation. There are stories of slaveowners wanting to emancipate their slaves but being legally prohibited, so they would move to a different state where emancipation was permitted.As I understand it, the slaves that populated the antebellum southern United States came from Africa, having been kidnapped there and sold to Europeans for transportation across the Atlantic Ocean. The 1789 memoir of Olaudah Equiano describes his own experience of having lived in Africa—probably modern Nigeria—and as a young adolescent being attacked by a neighboring tribe and bopped on the head and shoved in a bag. He grew up free until he was eleven or twelve, and then he was kidnapped. I wonder how often pro-slavery apologists in the nineteenth century American South allowed themselves to be curious about the origins of these slaves. Yes, they knew they came from Africa, which contributed to an ideology about their fitness for slavery, the idea that they had been savages and that slavery was good for them, domesticated them, or the idea that they were under the curse of God as spelled out in the Bible, the illusory Curse of Ham, supposedly from the end of Genesis 9 but which actually does not exist; there is, however, in Genesis 9, a curse on Canaan, a curse which engenders its own ethical problems, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with Black Africans. But when I ask about whether pro-slavery apologists were curious about the origins of their slaves, I mean not their African descent but how they became slaves, the kidnapping that had to happen for this person to be sold on an auction block in Savannah or New Orleans. My guess is, they refused to think about it. Probably the prohibition of the Atlantic Slave Trade in America in 1808 helped nineteenth century slaveowners ignore how slaves became slaves; from then on, in America, slaves were born slaves—though slaves continued to be imported illegally even until 1873.I recently read the 1855 defense of slavery by James Shannon, at the time the president of the University of Missouri and a preacher in the Stone-Campbell Movement and sometime associate of Alexander Campbell. In the tract, Shannon never wonders about how the slaves became slaves. I will say that I have had a conversation with a preacher in the Churches of Christ about slavery and racism, and he told me, very confidently, that African slaves in America were the rejects from Africa, the people that the Africans didn’t want anymore, so they expelled them, and sent them to America. This justification for slavery is … um … not accurate. At any rate, whether you come up with an idiotic theory about the curse of Ham or about African rejects, or you just don’t allow yourselves to question the origins of the slaves, it’s certainly easier, on Christian principles, to accept slavery as an existing institution if you don’t connect it to kidnapping. It’s interesting that in one of Paul’s lists of sins, in 1 Timothy 1:10, “menstealing” appears. Of course, the slaveholders in the American South were not doing the actual stealing, just aiding and abetting the stealing, and so they found it easy to justify themselves, like the lawyer who asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbour?”I’m trying to get to the different types of slavery. I am talking about chattel slavery, which I have described. Other kinds of slavery include debt slavery or slavery created during warfare, perhaps other forms. I have thought much less about these other forms of slavery, and I want to exempt them from my comments today. My comments might apply to them, but I’m not sure. I don’t know about the rules often practiced with those forms of slavery: how to become a slave, how to get out of it, the legal recourse a slave might have. But I will say that all the types of slavery currently practiced, though illegal, such as human trafficking and child slave armies and other types of forced labor, all these types of slavery seem to me clearly immoral and contrary to Christianity as articulated in Christian Scripture.The New Testament on SlaveryBut, like I said, I’m addressing chattel enslavement particularly, the dominant type of slavery in the nineteenth century American South as also in the ancient Greco-Roman world. I’ve briefly mentioned the Old Testament laws on slavery. In the New Testament, the instructions address the slave more than the master. Does this mean that the slave was more likely to be a Christian than was the master? The slave is told to serve his master well. He is not told to seek his freedom. “Were you a slave when called,” Paul asks in 1 Corinthians 7:21. “Do not be concerned about it.” The best way to translate the next phrase in the verse is difficult and debated. The ESV says: “If you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity.” In other words, in this interpretation, Paul is acknowledging that freedom is better than slavery, and while the slave should not be overly concerned about his enslavement, he should become free if the opportunity presents itself. But the NRSV doesn’t say “avail yourself of the opportunity,” but rather “make use of your present condition now more than ever.” This seems to mean that you shouldn’t seek your freedom even if you can, but you should serve your master all the more, presumably using the opportunity of living with someone else to testify to the grace of God through Jesus. The KJV represents the Greek most literally: “use it rather,” but what are you supposed to use? The Greek expression is confusing and I’m not sure what it means or how best to translate it. I don’t know what counsel Paul was giving slaves in situations where they might become free.We do, however, have an entire letter—rather brief by New Testament standards—from Paul to a slavemaster, and the major topic of the letter is an enslaved person. That person’s name is Onesimus, and Philemon is his owner. Again, the correct interpretation of Paul’s intentions in this letter are debated; was Paul subtly telling Philemon to emancipate Onesimus? That seems to me the most likely interpretation, but at any rate what Paul says out in the open in the letter is that Philemon should not treat Onesimus like a runaway slave—though he is that—but like a brother in Christ. And there are the household codes (e.g. Col 3:18–4:1; Eph 5:21–6:9; 1 Pet 2:17–3:7), which routinely encourage slaves to obey their masters. And yet, the slave is accorded a rare dignity, as the biblical scholar Larry Hurtado pointed out in reference to 1 Peter 2:18–25……where the author likens any unjust sufferings that they may bear, likely as Christian slaves of pagan masters, to the sufferings of Christ (vv. 21–25). This linkage of the suffering of slaves with Christ effectively ennobles the situation of slaves, at least at the level of the discourse, a striking step in a world in which slaves typically counted for little as to dignity. Of course, this did not amount to the abolition of slavery or even securing the freedom of slaves, at least at that point. But this sort of compassionate rhetoric addressed to slaves was unusual, if not unique, in the Roman world. (p. 177)The biblical passages on slavery are not utterly unhelpful from a modern perspective, but clearly they do not go as far as we wish they had.So, when we turn our attention to biblical passages that mention slavery, we easily see the difficulty with the moral question: the passages mentioning slavery regulate the institution rather than prohibiting it—or, I hasten to add, promoting it. We can see how a pro-slavery apologist could use the Bible, and many of them did. Moreover, the triumph of Christianity within the Roman Empire, the cultural and political triumph, did not lead to the abolition of slavery, and for many centuries it was a fairly common practice for Christians to own slaves. These are the rudiments of the pro-slavery position from the Bible.A Biblical Argument against SlaveryBut let us recall that our question is whether an anti-slavery argument can be made from the Bible. And it’s time that I give this a shot. Enough throat-clearing. To make such an argument my mind gravitates toward an obscure verse in the middle of Leviticus 19 that goes like this: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”And that’s it, that’s the argument, the biblical argument against slavery. That didn’t take long.Well, perhaps there is more to say. First, it’s hard for me to see how Leviticus 19:18, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” can stand in harmony with the practice of holding someone in bondage against their will and not as punishment for some crime. I don’t even mention the other practices that often accompany enslavement, the beatings, the rapings, the selling of children, the breaking up of families, the things that Frederick Douglass so forcefully disparaged in the appendix to his first memoir. And then there’s the racism that formed a necessary component of American slavery. These things are so obviously contradictory to Christianity that we need not mention them, and no defender of slavery would defend such practices, not on Christian principles, anyway. Well, they might try to defend racism on Christian principles, even though racism is explicitly condemned in Scripture (see, e.g., Ephesians 2). As for the other things I mentioned, the beatings and rapings and such like, the nineteenth-century Christian defenders of slavery that I have read did not even mention such practices, except to deny their existence, or at least their prominence. Again, I am focused solely on the economic, political, and social reality of owning a human being, holding them against their will. Whatever the practice of slavery, it is the mere fact of enslavement that I cannot harmonize with loving one’s neighbor.But we have all these biblical regulations about slavery to balance out Leviticus 19:18. On the one hand, we have laws about slavery. On the other hand, we have a law about loving one’s neighbor. Which should take precedence? If we find that they are in tension, these two sets of laws, should one outweigh the other? Is one of these laws more important? If only the Bible answered that question!Fortunately for us, the Bible does answer that question. You might recall that Jesus responded to an inquiry about the most important commandment by highlighting first the Shema, from Deuteronomy, about loving God, and then pointing to Leviticus 19:18, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” identifying this as the second most important commandment. The slave laws did not come up. But Jesus did say that the entire law and prophets depend on these two commandments. Which commandment should take precedence? Jesus has told us. If we find a practice difficult to harmonize with love of neighbor, we better dump the practice and love our neighbor.But that’s not all. You might also remember that Paul, on more than one occasion, identified Leviticus 19:18 as the fulfillment of the law (Rom 13:9; Gal 5:14), and James called it the royal law (James 2:8). And I’ll add one more related biblical injunction here; the Golden Rule of Matthew 7:12, which Jesus says is equivalent to the entire law and prophets. It is very helpful for the Bible to so explicitly and repeatedly tell us what to concentrate on if we would be disciples of the Rabbi from Nazareth.The Implications of the GospelIs this an argument that Christians in the nineteenth century American South should have recognized? Yes, yes, they should have recognized it. I mean, for goodness sake, there were people making that exact argument, loudly. The way some Christian ministers swatted away what I would consider such a powerful argument from the Bible is disconcerting to me, and makes me wonder about my own blindness, but I can say that they were blind, willfully so.Is this an argument that earlier Christians should have recognized? In the centuries before the abolitionist movement, when slavery was taken for granted by apparently everyone, those Christians bear, I think, less blame. But should they have recognized Leviticus 19:18 as the second most important commandment? Yes, of course. Should that have led them to emancipation? Certainly it should have led them to love their neighbor as themselves, to do unto others as they would have those others do unto them.It seems to me that this is a situation in which we today recognize the implications of the gospel more clearly than earlier generations, specifically the implication that the second greatest commandment will not permit the enslavement of others. That seems to me a clear implication; we might want to call it a necessary inference. But apparently it wasn’t so clear five centuries ago, or a millennium ago. Apparently it wasn’t even clear in the first century. I don’t say we understand the implications of the gospel better than the New Testament, just better than first century Christians, but not better than Jesus and Paul. As Jesus has taught us, there are some biblical commands that are less important than others, and there are some biblical commands that are in place specifically because of the hardness of human hearts.My larger question is whether Christianity is good for us, morally good for us? Does it make us better people? Christianity was seen to be consistent with enslaving others for a distressingly long time, and up until distressingly recently. But, as I have argued here, I don’t see how this practice coheres with what Jesus identifies as the most important parts of Scripture. To defend slavery from the Bible, you have to concentrate on the passages that mention slavery and ignore the most important parts of the Bible. A lot of Christians have been willing to do that, also distressing.Is Christianity good for us? Does it make us more morally upright? Yes, it ought to, if we will attend to the parts of our Scripture that Jesus told us to stress, and let everything else hang from there.Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit edmongallagher.substack.com

I return now to Eugene Boring’s book Disciples and the Bible (1997), which I recently read and wrote about here. There was so much of interest in this book that I need a second post on it. But go back to the first post for an introduction to the book and my basic—rather lengthy—take on it. Alexander CampbellThere were several things I learned about Alexander Campbell. Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.Campbell’s Canon within the CanonOne new thing for me was Campbell’s canon within the canon. Of course, I knew that this would be the New Testament, and more specifically Acts and the Epistles. I knew this not only through having read about the history of the Stone-Campbell Movement, but from personal experience of Campbell’s intellectual descendants—that is, growing up in Churches of Christ. But what was new was that Campbell’s own canon within the canon was less Acts and more Epistles. Indeed, I would have assumed the opposite. Before reading Boring, if you had asked me to identify the one book of the Bible that has been most important to Churches of Christ, without hesitation I would have said the book of Acts. Indeed, I have said such a thing, and I remain convinced that it is true. I have experienced it. More than any other book, it is the book of Acts that has been cited to justify different practices in the churches and schools I have known—how to become a Christian, how to worship, how often to take the Lord’s Supper. There are other Christian groups that are known more for their emphasis on, let’s say, Paul’s epistle to the Romans. I would not locate Churches of Christ among them. So it is interesting to me that for Campbell, the Epistles were more influential than Acts. From Boring’s description, it seems that Acts was not in the first rank, but probably ahead of the Gospels in terms of importance. It was the evangelist Walter Scott—and later J. W. McGarvey (see below)—who bequeathed to us our emphasis on Acts.I certainly would not have picked Hebrews as the most influential biblical book (p. 75), though I would have ranked Hebrews ahead of Romans. According to Boring, Hebrews was the canon within the canon for Alexander Campbell, a surprise for me just as Boring says that it surprised him. When Boring said that there was one particular section of the Epistles that was especially important to Campbell, I had no idea what section he meant. It was Hebrews. Boring does say that Romans was very important to Campbell, close to Hebrews in Campbell’s thought (p. 75 n. 23). And again: “one could say that Romans and Hebrews were central to Campbell’s thought. But this would be misleading….”Also new to me: the implications that Boring draws from this favoritism of the Epistles. Campbell’s christology was Pauline, meaning propositional with little reflection on the actual life of Jesus as narrated in the Gospels (p. 74). “This Pauline christological perspective carried with it as its corollary that Christian life would be conceived not as ‘following Jesus’ but as response in faith to the exalted Christ within the church” (p. 75).Of course it wasn’t new to me that Revelation has played a limited role in the Restoration Movement (pp. 77–79), but it was new that one corollary is that Disciples do not anticipate the imminent return of Jesus (bottom of p. 79), just as Campbell did not.Campbell and RestorationWhat about the claim that “Alexander Campbell was not as ‘restorationist’ oriented as either his father or his contemporary Walter Scott, but he did use the language of restorationism, which was inherent in the Protestant tradition from which he sprang” (82)?I wonder if this is right. Compare what Richard Hughes says in the first edition of Reviving the Ancient Faith, 22–23, where he shows that the early Campbell was much more ready to talk about a restoration of Christianity than the later Campbell. Campbell explicitly magnified his restoration movement over Luther’s reformation. Campbell wrote the following in 1825. Celebrated as the era of Reformation is, we doubt not but that the era of Restoration will as far transcend it in importance and fame, through the long and blissful Millenium [sic], as the New Testament transcends in simplicity, beauty, excellency and majesty, the dogmas and notions of the creed of Westminster and the canons of the Assembly’s Digest. Just in so far as the ancient order of things, or the religion of the New Testament, is restored, just so far has the Millenium commenced. This is the early Campbell; the above quotation is from the end of his first article titled “A Restoration of the Ancient Order of Things,” which appeared in his first journal, The Christian Baptist (see here, and the quotation appears in the second volume [1824] on p. 156 of the version available online). The later Campbell, according to Hughes, was less interested in restoration, a change recognized (Hughes says, p. 390 n. 47) already by Jeremiah Jeter, in Campbellism Examined (1855), 338–53, 357–58. So Boring’s assessment, quoted earlier, reflects the mature Campbell more than the young firebrand. That quotation from Boring comes in a section (pp. 80–84) in which he argues that Campbell wasn’t as committed to pattern restorationism as his followers. Here’s another quotation from that section: “Once the ‘movement’ had become a denomination of considerable size, a denomination for which he rightly felt some responsibility, he settled matters of the life and practice of churches not by an appeal to a New Testament pattern, but by appealing to common sense and practicality.” I think Hughes and, more recently, Douglas Foster (Campbell’s recent biographer) would basically agree. Campbell Leads a DenominationSpeaking of Campbell’s leadership of a denomination, I was intrigued that Boring was able to cite (p. 84 n. 32) a statement from Campbell himself using this term, denomination, for his movement. In the lead-up to the Campbell-Rice debate of 1843, Campbell wrote to a fellow: “You represent a denomination; so do I.” Here I quote a little more:Other Stuff I Learned about CampbellI appreciated Boring’s comments on how Campbell treated Acts 8:37 (p. 88). Campbell published his own translation of the New Testament called The Living Oracles. In this translation, he had to decide what to do with verses that were in the KJV but—as the further study of Greek manuscripts was showing—were not well attested in the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. One of these problematic verses is Acts 8:37, which records the confession of faith of the Ethiopian eunuch immediately before his baptism. Because this verse records a pre-baptismal confession, it has become influential in Churches of Christ, even though it is not well-attested in Greek manuscripts. Whatever influence this verse has exerted on Churches of Christ, apparently it is not owing to Campbell’s influence. In the first edition of his translation, Campbell printed the verse in italics, and in subsequent editions he omitted the verse entirely. On the other hand (p. 88 n. 35), Campbell retained the long ending of Mark and provided no note indicating any textual problem. Campbell accepted the silly interpretation about the camel through the eye of a needle (cf. Mark 10:25), and even put it as a note in his Bible translation (Boring, 104).I appreciated the discussion as to whether Alexander Campbell was a scholar (57–60). Boring does conclude that “Campbell was a scholar” (p. 59), even though he acknowledges that “Campbell was not only not a member of, he was utterly unknown to, the scholarly community of his own generation” (pp. 58–59). Boring justifies his evaluation of Campbell by providing a three-part definition of a scholar: (1) one who studies; (2) who bases his conclusions on evidence rather than tradition and publishes these conclusions; and (3) uses the prevailing methods of scholarship. “Alexander Campbell qualifies on all points.” It might be worth reflecting together on the three points of emphasis in the section on Alexander Campbell, “Holistic but Discriminating” (pp. 62–69), that is, dispensationalism, mighty acts of God, and soteriology, and to what extent in our experience Churches of Christ have maintained these emphases and whether we should.Restorationism and Biblical CriticismBoring sees restorationism and biblical criticism as incompatible. It has not always been so clearly seen that the affirmation of biblical criticism, though compatible with unity, cannot be harmonized with restorationism. The First Generation did not see this, because their advocacy of biblical criticism had not yet led to the insight that neither the Bible nor the early church were what the restorationist ideology had conceived them to be. (Boring, p. 112; repeated at the bottom of p. 209; again pp. 363–64)I disagree. Restoration coheres necessarily with biblical criticism. I have taught this for years to my ministry students. If the Bible and the early church are different from what restorationist ideology has conceived them to be (as Boring maintained), then the ideology must bow to the truth. That doesn’t make the restoration impulse wrong; it is an expression of the restoration impulse.Boring again:It is biblical criticism that lets us see both the early church and the Bible in a light that is no longer compatible with restorationism. Historical criticism of the Bible lets us see both that there is no single ‘pattern’ in ‘the’ New Testament church that can be restored, and that the Bible is not the kind of book that can be interpreted legalistically as the ‘constitution’ that authorizes some practices and not others. (364, where see also his comments on Churches of Christ) What I think Boring is really arguing, though he doesn’t say it this way, is that we have done restoration poorly. I don’t see that he provides a compelling argument that we should abandon restorationism altogether. But then Boring says that we need not repudiation of restorationism but reinterpretation, and he points to a book chapter by Mark Toulouse and an essay by Clark Williamson (in this book).J. W. McGarveyThe middle chapter of Boring’s book (ch. 6) compares J. W. McGarvey with H. L. Willett. Before reading this book, I was not familiar with the name Herbert Lockwood Willett, who died in 1944 after a long career at the University of Chicago. He does not have a wikipedia page. I was familiar with J. W. McGarvey. He was much adored at Freed-Hardeman when I was a student there in the late 1990s and early 2000s. During those years, I acquired his Short Essays in Biblical Criticism and his original commentary on Acts and his commentary on Matthew and Mark and his little book on Deuteronomy—or was it on Jonah? Or both? I also purchased his Gospel harmony. The FHU professors adored McGarvey.Actually, as I open my copy of the commentary on Acts, I am reminded of how I acquired it. On the first page, I wrote my name and then the note, “inherited from Dad.” And now I recall that my father had acquired a fairly impressive biblical studies library, especially in books by authors within Churches of Christ, and he gave all of these books to me upon my graduation from FHU.I recall hearing at FHU two stories about McGarvey. First, McGarvey, who died in 1911, left a congregation in Lexington over the use of instrumental music, and when he first arrived at the his new church home, an acapella congregation, one of the elders greeted McGarvey with the comment, “We’ve been expecting you,” or something like that. And the second story, not much of a story, is that when McGarvey died, there appeared in the London Times an obituary that referred to McGarvey as “the ripest Bible scholar in America.” I now have serious doubts about the point of this story. I do believe that probably an obituary ran in a prominent newspaper, perhaps the London Times, and I’m sure the obituary referred to McGarvey as “the ripest Bible scholar in America.” That word, “ripest,” is too odd to have no connection to an actual obituary. But I am convinced that the obituary was not written by a Times editor but was printed after being submitted by a fan of McGarvey’s—just as local newspapers today print obituaries written by family members of the deceased. I have never run across McGarvey’s name cited in any work of biblical scholarship, and I would imagine that among the group of scholars meeting at the Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting in, let’s say, 1905, no one had ever heard of him. I wonder if any of his books found an audience outside his own church circles. What does Boring not like about McGarvey? He attributes to McGarvey this viewpoint: “Those of false or perverted faith are seen as morally reprobate, not merely doctrinally mistaken; they are deceivers and hypocrites whose motives are impure” (p. 212).In response, I can say first of all that this viewpoint is very familiar today in American politics: people who do not share your viewpoint are wicked.Second, I am not sure to what extent this is an accurate description of McGarvey, but I wouldn’t argue against it. Third, a question: to what extent is the sentence quoted from Boring a true depiction of reality? Or this sentence on the same page: “Heresy is not merely an intellectual misstep, but an expression of sin; false faith is inevitably bound up with a false heart” (p. 212). Is there not some truth in this? Or, at least, people have long thought so. Indeed, these comments from Boring describe McGarvey, but Boring himself also says they reflect views found in the early church. On the other hand, as to whether people who hold false beliefs really are wicked—that is a question that is easier and more safely considered in the abstract, not tied to any particular “false” Christian. When we disagree with people, we should keep the discussion at the level of ideas and not descend to personal attacks. To the extent that McGarvey did that, he damaged the church. McGarvey on ActsMcGarvey wrote two Acts commentaries, an Original Commentary published in 1863, and a New Commentary published in 1892. The new commentary is available on archive.org: vol. 1, vol. 2. The original commentary is also available online (here).Boring makes it clear that the new commentary (1892) became significant in the history of the Disciples, and Boring assumes the same to be the case in Churches of Christ. In fact, Boring claims “The co-editor of the Churches of Christ journal Gospel Advocate once pronounced [the New Commentary on Acts] ‘the greatest uninspired book ever written’” (p. 248). Boring provides no citation and does not identify the “co-editor” in question. Before reading this comment from Boring, I had already been thinking about what Guy N. Woods—no doubt Boring’s “co-editor of the … Gospel Advocate”—had said about McGarvey’s commentary, but I was positive that Woods had made the comment about the original commentary and not the new commentary. So I did some digging. I thought I must have read Woods’ comment (probably 25 years ago) in one of his volumes of Questions and Answers that he compiled from questions he received as the Answer Man at the Freed-Hardeman Lectureship back in the 1960s and 1970s. I went down to our library and pulled the two volumes off the shelf. I started with the second volume, on a hunch, which proved to be wrong. I flipped through both volumes for almost 2 hours—I cannot say the time was wasted, there is much of interest in these volumes—and near the end of volume 1, I finally found the question: What books have you found to be most helpful to you in your work as a preacher of the gospel? The first book Woods lists is: “McGarvey’s Original Commentary on Acts.” Woods offers this comment: Any work of man will exhibit imperfections, and there are views (not many) in this work which I do not follow; yet, I regard it as the greatest uninspired work ever written. Mastery of this matchless work will equip one better to preach the gospel than all the knowledge contained in a hundred works of theology often seen on the shelves of preachers today. The Gospel Advocate, in making this work available again (it was long out of print), made a contribution of inestimable value to the cause of Christ. (1.313)A few more points on McGarveyMy search through these volumes by Woods also led to another interesting discovery: Woods says that “the London Times once said, [that McGarvey] had the most thorough and profound knowledge of the English Bible of any man on earth” (vol. 1, p. 255). Interesting that Woods specifies, “the English Bible,” a statement that agrees with Boring’s depiction of McGarvey as professor of English Bible.Boring starts his discussion of McGarvey by warning his readers that we should not make fun of McGarvey or think him completely unworthy of our attention. These comments show that Boring assumes an audience that has heard negative things about McGarvey, which I never have. But his discussion of McGarvey does show the weakness of the man, and an approach to the Bible different from my own. According to Boring in reference to McGarvey, “what he had was a rationalist system that feared critical biblical study because it messed up his system” (230).Everyone who would know firsthand something of the history of Disciples theology/biblical interpretation must read McGarvey’s New Commentary on Acts of Apostles, at least the Introduction and his commentary on chapters one and two. McGarvey’s commentary on Acts is one of the classic documents of Disciples history…. (p. 248)And about McGarvey’s instruction of students at the College of the Bible in Lexington. In actual practice, during the student’s first three years at Lexington, McGarvey restricted biblical study to the content of the biblical text filtered through his own unconscious hermeneutic and tradition, while, in his judgment, the students’ ears were too tender for criticism. He then introduced critical issues, filtered through his own perspective, only in the fourth year. (p. 239)This is exactly what I experienced at FHU in the late twentieth century.The Five-Finger ExerciseThe phrase “five-finger exercise” refers to a formula for becoming a Christian, originally developed by the early nineteenth century evangelist Walter Scott and universally known in Churches of Christ (and Disciples, I think) in an altered form, as follows: hear, believe, repent, confess, be baptized. These points, counted off on the fingers, explain a person’s responsibility for accepting God’s offer of salvation. It is often called the plan of salvation. It has been extraordinarily influential. The “plan of salvation” became the one overarching framework for the interpretation of the Bible. This represents the triumph of Scott over Campbell and Stone in this aspect of the Second Generation’s developing hermeneutic. In the First Generation, Thomas and Alexander Campbell’s themes were “unity and restoration,” and focused on the problem of a divided church and human creeds that caused division. Walter Scott comes into the mix late, with a different agenda: evangelism, conversion, Acts. In the Second Generation, when there was a separate movement concerned with its own growth, Scott’s “plan of salvation” became a hermeneutical focus for Disciples theology in a way it had not been previously. (p. 202)Boring doesn’t like this influence of the five-finger exercise, and I don’t either. I mean, it’s a fine formula when it stays in its lane, but it shouldn’t be considered the hermeneutical key to any part of the Bible, much less the entire Bible. But Boring wants to replace it. This comes up in the final chapter, when Boring proposes a new five-finger exercise. I don’t really like Boring’s proposal. Don’t get me wrong: his new five-finger exercise, summarizing the story of Scripture, is fine; I just don’t see why it would need to be called a five-finger exercise, or why it should replace the traditional one based on Scott’s model. The traditional five-finger exercise addresses a different issue—not the meaning of the Bible but the response of the individual to God’s offer of grace. That seems to me still necessary, and I don’t get Boring’s idea that it is no longer relevant (p. 441; but he later says that it might be, p. 444). Boring even implies at one point (p. 400) that his new five-finger exercise is designed to address the question, “What must I do?” but it clearly does not address that question. It summarizes the entire story of the Bible, and the Bible—as Boring says at various points in this book (e.g., p. 131)—is not all about what an individual should do to respond to God’s offer of grace.Insular Reading StrategyThere is a common view today especially in very conservative Churches of Christ that one should read material, especially Bible class material, only from people in Churches of Christ. Boring spends some time emphasizing that early Disciples writers typically do not follow this strategy. They do not cite Disciples writings, not even the writings of Alexander Campbell. Boring discusses this point in respect to Isaac Errett (p. 126); Robert Milligan’s Scheme of Redemption (1868; pp. 142–43, with note 28; see also the bottom of p. 125); and B. W. Johnson (pp. 173–74): “He mentions no Disciples scholars. Even his brief discussion of Acts 2:38, linchpin text in the Disciples schema since Scott’s Gospel Restored and Campbell’s Christian System, does not refer to Scott or Campbell but cites the German scholar Meyer. Thus, his volume is not Disciples propaganda” (173).So, the insular reading strategy with which I am familiar—“read only our authors!”—does not characterize our nineteenth-century forerunners. If I were to make an argument for the more recent insular reading strategy, I guess I would say the following: Church Bible class teachers, who are almost always theologically uneducated, might not recognize the problematic doctrines put forward by a Presbyterian or Catholic or atheist, but they are perhaps familiar with the issues that they would consider problematic that might be broached by a member of the Churches of Christ. I myself, in my role as Bible class coordinator at church, do not follow this line of thinking, but I suppose that it might be the way others reason it out. Of course, as everybody knows, a reader will encounter all sorts of dangerous nonsense in books published by authors in Churches of Christ, so the insular reading strategy won’t protect you there. But maybe a member of the Churches of Christ would be more likely to recognize the dangerous nonsense from our own folks? More NotesI conclude with some random notes that I want to preserve. Most of the early restorers kept a diary in Latin, including Barton Stone (p. 11), Walter Scott, and Alexander Campbell (pp. 56, 57). I was surprised that Stone also picked up Greek and French (p. 11) and later some Hebrew. He used the KJV but sometimes criticized it. Stone exhibited no awareness of modern critical scholarship in relation to the authorship of biblical books or other matters.According to Boring, historical criticism is necessary for the unity of the church, and thus for theology (414, 427). I wonder what Brad East would say to this.We should lean into our own tradition, our historical situatedness (418).At the same time, we should recognize the whole history of the church for 2000 years as our history, our tradition (412). Boring discusses the meaning of belonging to the church (424). We trust our ancestors in this matter; we are humble, not insisting that we could do a better job.The second paragraph of chapter 3 is important. Especially: “The First Generation Disciples had been aware of philosophy and the categories of philosophical thought. It was the second and following generations that had grown up only in the American Disciples tradition that was oblivious to philosophy, and they supposed they were devoid of it. The Second Generation thus had a naiveté the First Generation did not have” (p. 115).Robert Milligan in Scheme of Redemption…proceeds a step further and declares the Jews never understood their revelation, that it was exclusively for Christians. In this he follows the early Christian Epistle of Barnabas, which he considers an authentic letter written about 72 C.E. by the companion of Paul. (SR 421)Wow, that’s crazy. Milligan doesn’t spend much time on it, but he does indeed attribute the Epistle of Barnabas to the companion of Paul. I wonder how common that opinion was in the late nineteenth century. Here’s the image from p. 421 of Milligan’s book.Milligan is quoting there Barnabas 15.8–9. ConclusionVery much worth reading and taking copious notes, Eugene Boring’s Disciples and the Bible offers a great education on one angle of the reception of the Bible in the Stone-Campbell Movement. Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit edmongallagher.substack.com

Here is part 1. Several Christian groups in America before the Civil War separated the races into different congregations, white congregations and black congregations. But the Stone-Campbell Movement aimed at Christian unity, and this emphasis for the most part ensured that they refused to separate based on race, but rather they encouraged masters and slaves to be members of the same congregation. The Cane Ridge congregation, in 1838, seems amazingly integrated: 222 total members, 72 of whom were Black. But these Black members sat in the balcony. Sometimes congregations would serve the Lord’s Supper to the black members only after the white members had been served. Perhaps ironically, the Civil War and the abolition of slavery contributed to institutionalized segregation based on race in churches of Christ.Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.[A]fter the Civil War, white and black Churches of Christ went their separate ways, forming two distinct fellowships. Racism evidently overpowered and overshadowed the bonds of full Christian unity even as doctrinal unity remained firm. Although some black Christians in Mississippi chose to stay with white believers after the demise of chattel enslavement, African Americans in Texas and Alabama voluntarily and cordially severed ties with their former owners and charted their own paths—even though often relying on white monetary support for a variety of projects. (Robinson)David Lipscomb stood opposed to this trend, condemning in no uncertain terms the idea that whites and Blacks should not worship together. Already in 1878, he wrote in the Gospel Advocate, “We believe it sinful to have two congregations in the same community for persons of separate and distinct races now.” In 1907, in response to the situation in which the church in Bellwood, Tennessee wanted a Black girl to attend a Black congregation (mentioned at the beginning of the previous post), Lipscomb basically asserted that such a congregation cannot be a true church of Christ: “I would expect the Master to refuse to meet with or accept the service of such a church.” Nevertheless, Black churches of Christ did form when Black Christians were not welcome in white churches. One of the earliest Black churches of Christ was established by George Ricks, who had been an enslaved African and learned to read due to his master’s wife, Charlotte Ricks, “who violated the slaveowner’s code,” according to Edward Robinson. George Ricks became the first Black property owner in Alabama, and he became a preacher at the Christian Home Church of Christ, near Muscle Shoals.Members of white churches of Christ were sometimes members of the KKK (though H. Leo Boles basically said that a KKK member couldn’t be a Christian; Gospel Advocate [March 10, 1927]: 232). Both white and Black church members) often favored segregation. The Black leader S. R. Cassius (1853–1931) tried to illuminate the racism in churches of Christ to which white leaders seemed blind.Cassius understood something that most white Stone-Campbell leaders failed to comprehend: namely, that centuries of chattel enslavement had tainted their view of black people, causing them to underestimate “our intelligence” and overestimate ‘their ability to give us what we needed then and still—a pure gospel.” White decision makers, explained Cassius, “forgot that four hundred years of slavery had bred a prejudice that even zeal for the cause of Christ could not overcome, and that in the mind of every white man lurked the thought the Negro was, in some way, inferior and that the Negro himself had been taught to suspect and fear the white man.” (Robinson)But the ideology of churches of Christ—specifically that this movement represented the one true church and was distinct from every other religious body in the world—contributed to a distinctive approach to issues of race, fostering relationships among whites and Blacks while also compelling preachers to focus more on eternal matters than on civil rights.These sources illustrate the divergent experiences and perspectives among white Churches of Christ in the years preceding the 1960s. Admonitions against racial prejudice could serve as the basis for a Sunday school lesson, but jokes that depended on crude racial stereotypes might appear in church bulletins or sermon outlines. Black preachers could preach to predominantly white audiences, and white preachers could speak in black churches. But most communities, in the South and elsewhere, maintained separate facilities for blacks and whites. Even in these paradoxical contexts, personal and interracial relationships were sometimes established. And all along, most white members of Churches of Christ would affirm without equivocation that all people were equal in Christ and that God was “no respecter of persons.” The primary objective, however, for both black and white Churches of Christ was practicing their conception of New Testament Christianity. Maintaining their identity as restorers of the primitive church took precedence above all temporal concerns, including race relations. (Key)There were certainly moments of head-shaking racial prejudice, which prompted varying reactions among Black Christian leaders. Marshall Keeble is well-known for his practice of putting up with much racist nonsense in order to not distract from spreading the gospel, while other Black leaders were often more vocal in pushing back. (For these two approaches among Black preachers outside churches of Christ, see David G. Holmes in Allen.) In 1920, A. M. Burton and white Christians in Nashville organized the Southern Practical Institute for African American students. C. E. W. Dorris, a white minister and superintendent of the new school, demanded that students, all of them black, enter the building through the back door. [G. P.] Bowser, principal of the fledgling institution, vehemently denounced the practice since the school was only for African Americans. [Marshall] Keeble exhorted Bowser to accept the back-door policy, as long as students obtained the “Christian education they so much desired.” Unrepentant, Bowser abruptly resigned his post as principal, left the school, and urged other black parents to withdraw their children, resulting in the school’s hasty demise. Keeble passively accepted racism as long as he achieved his evangelistic or educational goals; Bowser adamantly repudiated racism even when it eliminated opportunities for himself or other African Americans. (Robinson)As it was for everyone, the Civil Rights movement was difficult for churches of Christ. Black leaders continued to call out racism as they saw it. Norman Anderson’s 1965 essay in the journal Christian Echo described racism as a “stench in the nostrils of God, and therefore subjects them [= racists, specifically “white Christians”] to eternal damnation.” In 1963, R. N. Hogan railed against segregated Christian colleges “headed by so-called gospel preachers and they are living in rebellion against God.” Andrew J. Hairston, preacher for the Simpson Street Church of Christ in Atlanta, suggested that white churches of Christ stop calling themselves Church of Christ and instead use the name “Church of the White Man.”Most of the colleges affiliated with churches of Christ continued to prohibit Black students through the early 1960s, and the students at these all-white colleges sometimes engaged in what is today considered clearly racist activities. “Students at all of the aforementioned colleges enjoyed minstrel shows that caricatured blacks, but they seemed to be most popular at Freed-Hardeman, where they received prominent coverage in the Skyrocket [the student newspaper] and remained annual events through the spring of 1964, just before the first black students arrived on camps” (Key). For example, this advertisement appeared in the February 1963 issue of the Skyrocket (available online here).Here is one from Harding, 1958, as reported in the student newspaper, The Bison (here).It was this kind of activity, and the barring of Black students, that led some Black church members to insist that the church of Christ had not yet been restored. In 1959, the Black preacher and editor R. N. Hogan wrote about segregated Christian schools: “The fact that Negroes are not allowed in these churches and schools is proof that God is not there; for where God is, no man is barred because of the color of his skin.” In 1963, Hogan urged black readers “to love all white people, for you will go to hell if you hate them, like some of them are going to hell for hating you.”For the most part, the magazines Gospel Advocate and Firm Foundation ignored the Civil Rights movement. In 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. died as well as Marshall Keeble. The Gospel Advocate devoted an issue to Keeble (July 18, 1968), and Reuel Lemmons wrote in the Firm Foundation an editorial that Richard Hughes described as “infamous,” in which he attributed to Keeble’s work the fact that “there has been an infinitesimally small amount of racial prejudice in the Church of Christ.”Not everyone in churches of Christ in the 1960s seemed so out-of-touch with the events going on around them. Lemmons’ editorial generated critical responses. Lemmons printed an article written to challenge his own position, but he also printed responses to the article. Mission journal was founded in part to address issues of contemporary concern such as race, and the position of the journal toward race was one sympathetic to the Civil Rights movement. At the Abilene Christian College Lectures in 1960, Carl Spain challenged the college on the issue of the enrollment of Black students. (Listen to the speech here. There is now a Carl Spain Center at ACU.) And earlier, in Spring 1953, Everett Ferguson, an undergraduate student, gave a chapel speech at the all-white Abilene Christian University in which he condemned racism and looked forward to the admission of Black students. (Listen to this speech here, read by a 72-year-old Ferguson.)John Allen Chalk, the speaker for the Herald of Truth television program (who later became an attorney; he blurbs Allen’s new book on Marshall Keeble), encouraged Lemmons in private communication to be more favorable toward the Civil Rights movement, to condemn more openly the sin of racism within churches of Christ, but Chalk found little success with Lemmons. In 1968, Chalk wrote to Lemmons on the issue of race, and Lemmons replied that racial prejudice is a sin no different from others, and so deserving of no more attention. (Here is Chalk’s letter, and here is the reply from Lemmons.) It seems, however, that Lemmons (at least, in the 1960s) was himself much more concerned about sins such as gambling and drinking than about racial prejudice, which he mostly mentioned to deny that it was a problem. According to Hughes, “By the 1960s, most mainstream Churches of Christ were far more concerned to win acceptance into the dominant ‘Christian’ culture of white America than to battle for social justice, racial or otherwise.”But the times, they were a’changin. A new generation of scholars and leaders were willing to challenge the status quo in churches of Christ in accordance with what they felt were first principles of the gospel. They were more willing to be socially engaged. Whereas the conservatives in the 1960s accused the activists of changing the gospel into the social gospel, the activists accused the conservatives of simply not being Christian. This new generation founded Mission journal (already mentioned), that provided a platform to discuss the Civil Rights movement and other social issues from a more sympathetic vantage point than was typically allowed in the Gospel Advocate and Firm Foundation. In 1968, “race relations workshops” started to take place in churches of Christ. While the independence of each congregation in churches of Christ meant that different congregations would respond to issues of race in their own way, many leaders and congregations were recognizing not only that racism was sinful but that the churches of Christ were not immune to the sin.ConclusionSeveral things are important for us to understand about racism and the churches of Christ.(1) Racism is contrary to the gospel. The New Testament is explicit about this.(2) Churches of Christ have not been immune from the sin of racism. Certainly our churches have not been unique: America has struggled with racial problems for centuries, and all Christian groups have struggled in this area. Here I am thinking exclusively of American churches of Christ. I wonder whether similar struggles concerning racial issues have characterized churches of Christ in other areas of the world.(3) Inasmuch as our movement began as a call for Christian unity, we should work against those forces that divide us. As Thomas Campbell said in the Declaration and Address:Ministers of Jesus, we can neither be ignorant of, nor unaffected with, the divisions and corruptions of his church. His dying commands, his last and ardent prayers, for the visible unity of his professing people, will not suffer you to be indifferent in this matter. You will not, you cannot, therefore, be silent, upon a subject of such vast importance to his personal glory and the happiness of his people—consistently you cannot; for silence gives consent. You will rather lift up your voice like a trumpet to expose the heinous nature, and dreadful consequences of those unnatural and anti-christian divisions, which have so rent and ruined the church of God.As positive as the Black church has been, its existence in some ways stands as a constant rebuke of the sin of racism that has characterized American Christianity for centuries. We now live with that legacy. One of Martin Luther King’s famous lines remains true today: the most segregated hour in America is Sunday at 11am. We look forward to the fulfillment of the prophetic vision for God’s church: not segregation but all nations uniting in praise (Rev 7:9).For DiscussionRead Ephesians 2:11–18. Why do you think it was so hard for Jews and Gentiles to see themselves as the same people of God?If someone objected to a person’s attendance at a church worship service based on that person’s appearance, such as their skin color, how should the church respond to such an objection? Is there any responsibility for the person “causing a disturbance” to make peace by going where they are more accepted?What experiences of racism have shocked you in your lifetime? In what ways have your own views on race evolved over the years? Do you think this is an area in which the church has led the culture toward a better path, or the culture has led the church, or neither?What do you think Christians should have done—or should do—on the race issue in America in the 1850s? The 1960s? The 2020s? Has the issue become more complicated or simpler?Do you think racism is an issue on which God would want people to “disturb the peace” in order to bring about change in society? Do you admire Marshall Keeble’s tendency to focus on evangelism rather than social issues? Is racism a “gospel issue”?Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit edmongallagher.substack.com

A few years ago, while writing a series of lessons for Bible classes at the Sherrod Ave. Church of Christ, I drafted an essay on race relations within the Restoration Movement. This is not my area of expertise, and I have relied heavily on some of the recent scholarship on this issue, which continues to expand. I found especially helpful the published dissertation of Barclay Key and the survey history by Edward Robinson. There’s also a chapter on the topic in the wonderful history of churches of Christ by Richard Hughes, and in its updated form by James Gorman. The essay I wrote has a lot of footnotes, which I don’t want to reproduce here. Maybe someday I’ll publish it in full in some other form. But for now, this is the most public that I have made it. But the typical length of a Substack post requires that I break up the essay into two parts. Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.By the way, about a year before I wrote this essay, I preached a sermon on race relations. (Here’s the video of that day’s worship service; the sermon starts at about the 21 min. mark). It was early June 2020, and you may remember what was happening at that time. If you click the link to the video, you’ll notice that I’m not preaching to a live audience but in a studio; such were the times. I had not planned on preaching on race relations, but events overtook me, and I thought I needed to say something on the topic. I’m sure that sermon could be improved in all kinds of ways, but the one comment I made that sticks in my mind as completely stupid is when I said—more-or-less off the cuff (and that was the problem)—that the Bible doesn’t really address this issue head on. That statement is wrong, comically wrong, absurdly wrong. Like Whoopi Goldberg, I was thinking about racism based on skin color, and I think it is fair to say that the Bible doesn’t address that particular topic head on. (There might be a hint in that direction; see below.) But the Bible has a great deal to say about racial prejudice (or something close to racial prejudice), and much of the New Testament is taken up with this issue in terms of Jews and Gentiles. This essay is part of my penance. From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth. (Acts 17:26)In 1907, a young Black girl attended the (mostly white) church of Christ in Bellwood, Tennessee, near Lebanon. Not all of the members were happy about her presence, particularly since there was a Black congregation that met not far away. Why doesn’t she just meet with her own kind, they wondered? One of the members (S. E. Harris), ostensibly concerned about the division resulting from this situation, wrote to E. A. Elam (biographical sketch), a teacher at the Nashville Bible School and the girl’s guardian, encouraging Elam to send the girl to the Black congregation rather than the white one. Elam was not having it. Against Harris’ suggestion that the girl’s presence was causing division, Elam retorted: “Those members who have taken up this matter and keep it agitated are doing a very great wrong in that they are dividing the church and sinning against the innocent and helpless. Instead of keeping this matter continually stirred up, all should endeavor to quiet it and to preserve the peace of the church” (Gospel Advocate, July 4, 1907). Harris did not help his case, certainly not from a twenty-first century perspective, when he replied that those objecting to the girl’s presence want her to worship God, but just to do so somewhere else, because “they just do not want their children associating with her in the capacity of worshiping God.”Churches of Christ have had their share of racial prejudice, their share of people like S.E. Harris wanting to preserve “unity” by instituting division, their share of the “white moderate” that Martin Luther King complained about so bitterly in his iconic Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963; wikipedia; text of the letter; pdf). Churches of Christ have also had their share of leaders like E. A. Elam, willing to stand against the dominant culture of their time in insisting on the principles of the gospel, in regard to the basic equality of all human beings, regardless of race. If the Restoration Movement has encouraged this insight into the unity in Christ brought about by the gospel (Gal 3:28), it probably is related both to the origins of the movement as a unity movement and to the call for Christians to abandon their human opinions and stand on the Bible alone. On the other hand, the history of churches of Christ seems to reveal that the twentieth century saw a hardening of racial divisions in the movement, so that by the time that the Civil Rights movement made constant headlines in the 1960s, the dominant strain of churches of Christ typically ignored the issue altogether. The twentieth century also saw Black members of the churches of Christ finding various ways to do the work of God in a society and in a religious context that often provided them limited opportunities. While some of them focused more on eternal matters than civil rights (e.g., Marshall Keeble), others saw the two as indistinguishable and pushed back on what they considered the racism around them (e.g., S. R. Cassius, R. N. Hogan).When it comes to race issues, our history is not all bad, but it’s not all good, either. Looking back at what we’ve done right and wrong might help us move forward with open minds and hearts on this issue that continues to cause so much turmoil.The Bible against RacismThe Bible is not a fan of racism. That statement will come as some surprise to overt racists, who often use the Bible to undergird their ideology. Particularly popular in American history as a defense for institutionalized racism and even the enslavement of Africans has been the so-called “Curse of Ham” passage (Gen 9:20–27), a passage that supposedly shows that God curses black Africans (the descendants of Ham) to eternal slavery. According to historian Barclay Key, George Benson (wikipedia), president of Harding College, “taught that blacks were ‘under the curse of Ham’” in classes on the Pentateuch in the 1950s. But, of course, the passage in Genesis says no such thing; in fact, there is no “curse of Ham” passage known to the Bible. The cited passage is, in fact, a “curse of Canaan” passage, and Canaan has nothing to do with black Africans. The passage was intentionally misrepresented by pro-slavery apologists as a justification for their own cruelty.The Bible’s presentation of the issue of slavery is actually quite complicated. It is true that there is no outright biblical condemnation of slavery, just as there was no abolitionist movement at all until the early eighteenth century in America and Europe. (For a brief introduction to the difficulties of the study of slavery in the Bible, see my chapter here; pdf here.) At any rate, whatever the Bible says about slavery, it certainly does not justify racism—far from it. (Slavery in the ancient world was not based on race, as it became in America.)While the Bible says very little about anti-Black racism, one of the major themes of the New Testament is the overcoming of racism (or, at least, prejudice) between Jews and others. That must be at least part of the point of the Good Samaritan parable (Luke 10:25–37). It’s a big part of the Cornelius story (Acts 10). And it’s the main thing Paul wants to stress in Ephesians 2.But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. (Eph 2:13–14)In fact, a big part of Paul’s ministry is trying to convince people from different races that they are one in Christ, that they are brothers and sisters, a part of God’s family, and any distinctions that used to separate them are at best irrelevant, and at worst contrary to Christianity. Isn’t that why he’s so adamant in his letter to the Galatians that Gentile Christians should feel no need to receive circumcision, as if being in Christ is not good enough? It’s not only that they doubt the efficacy of Christ, but that they doubt Christ’s efficacy specifically toward people who are not Jews—so becoming a Jew by circumcision is the way to approach God. Nonsense! declares Paul.There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. (Gal 3:28)For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. (1 Cor 12:13).In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all! (Col 3:11)A large part of Paul’s argument in Romans is that Jews and Gentiles are all in the same boat—the sin boat—and all, when saved by Jesus, become a part of the same tree, whether they are grafted in or are natural branches (Rom 11:17–24).The Bible does not say much about anti-Black racism, but maybe it doesn’t say nothing, either. One verse of the New Testament mentions Ethiopia (Acts 8:27), the Greek term used in the ancient world most commonly to designate the area where Black Africans lived. Acts mentions the eunuch from Ethiopia not to highlight his race but to highlight his faithful response to the gospel. Apparently his race was not a concern of Philip the evangelist or of the story Luke wanted to tell.From the beginning of the Bible to its end, the Bible stands opposed to racism. In the very first chapter, humanity is presented as made in the image of God (Gen 1:26–27), all of humanity, “red and yellow, black and white.” From one ancestor, all nations descend (cf. Acts 17:26)—a verse often quoted in these discussions, including in one of the earliest anti-slavery tracts published in America, The Selling of Joseph: A Memorial, by Samuel Sewall (1700, here). And John’s vision in Revelation includes the scene in heaven when all nations and tribes and peoples and tongues worship together (Rev 7:9).The Stone-Campbell Movement and SlaveryFor a short time (less than a year), Barton Stone owned two slaves, Ned and Lucy. He inherited them from his mother, but in January 1801, he filed the paperwork for their manumission. In his biography, Stone wrote: “I had emancipated my slaves from a sense of right, choosing poverty with a good conscience, in preference to all the treasures of the world. This revival [the Second Great Awakening] cut the bonds of many poor slaves; and this argument speaks volumes in favor of the work. For of what avail is a religion of decency and order, without righteousness?” Stone was not the only member of his movement that considered emancipation of slaves to be an element of basic righteousness. Around 1810, Joseph Thomas visited the Stone churches of Kentucky and was impressed by their stance on slavery.The christian companies in this settlement and about Cane Ridge have been large; but within a few years, many of them, who held black people as slaves, emancipated them, and have moved to the state of Ohio.I will observe that the christians of these parts abhor the idea of slavery, and some of them have almost tho’t that they who hold to slavery cannot be a christian.Stone was a committed abolitionist, though he did not—at least in 1808—want to bar slaveholders from church membership, and he supported the effort for slave colonization in Liberia. He thought slavery clearly sinful—whether specifically American slavery or, perhaps, every form of slavery. It was the failure of the American government to abolish slavery that played a major role in Stone’s renouncing political involvement in the last decade of his life.Alexander Campbell also owned slaves as a result of an inheritance from his wife’s family, and he also emancipated them. Campbell’s views on slavery were, perhaps, somewhat more complicated than those of Stone. To interpret Campbell’s position sympathetically, we could say that he was more involved in politics than Stone, and he had a concern not simply to criticize slaveholders but to convince them, to persuade them to favor manumission, and that in order to achieve this goal Campbell presented himself as what he thought would appear to them as reasonable (not what slaveholders would consider a radical abolitionist) and he emphasized how holding people in slavery was bad for the slaveholder and his family and was economically disadvantageous. He was not the only one to make such arguments, that slavery was bad for the slaveholder. The escaped slave Harriet Jacobs wrote: “I can testify, from my own experience and observation, that slavery is a curse to the whites as well as to the blacks.”In 1829, Alexander Campbell was selected as a delegate from Brooke County, Virginia to the state’s constitutional convention (wikipedia), where he proposed an article calling for the gradual elimination of slavery. The article was defeated. “The one concession Campbell and his fellow backcountry citizens achieved was that slavery would not be mentioned in the Virginia Constitution at all, making it possible for future state legislatures to deal with it by law rather than by constitutional amendment” (Foster).The next year, Campbell started publishing the Millennial Harbinger. On the front page of the first issue, he announced the main goals of the new paper, among which was: “5. Disquisitions upon the treatment of African slaves, as preparatory to their emancipation, and exaltation from their present degraded condition.”And Campbell routinely denounced state laws prohibiting the teaching of slaves to read. “What! dare not enlighten their minds! How fearful of the influence of knowledge! This point is conceded without debate, that to the safety and advantage of the whites the ignorance of the blacks is essential. And yet we blame them for being stupid!” This attitude Alexander learned from his father. In early years, Thomas Campbell made himself the object of a reprimand when he broke Kentucky’s laws against teaching slaves. At that time, the elder Campbell responded to the uproar: “Can the Word of God be thus bound and the proclamation of the gospel be thus fettered in a Christian land? Is it possible for me to remain in a place, where, under any circumstances, I am forbidden to preach a crucified Savior to my perishing fellow beings?”In 1849, Kentucky was planning their own constitutional convention (wikipedia), and Alexander Campbell decided to try once again to persuade a state to prohibit slavery. He issued “A Tract for the People of Kentucky” aimed at convincing slaveholders of “the importance of seizing the present opportunity of ridding Kentucky of this great political misfortune,” i.e., slavery. To that end, Campbell argued that slavery was bad for the slaveholder.The law that binds the slave binds the master, as the law that binds the husband binds the wife. The Christian master has duties to perform to his slave for which he is held bound to the State; but higher duties than these, for the performance of which, he is held more firmly bound to him who sits upon the throne of eternal judgment; before, whom the master and the slave stand upon a perfect level.Now, the great question is, what are those duties which Christianity enjoins? Good and comfortable food and raiment, and necessary medicine! This is due to your ox and your ass,—and if you defraud them God will hear their cry and punish you. But is this all? Does the law of Christ demand no more from a Christian master, for his slave, than food, raiment and medicine, comfortable lodgings, reasonable labor,—no more?—! Yes. He is “to render to him whatever is just and equal” [Col. 4:1]. He is to teach, instruct and evangelize him by all the means in his power. He is just to do for him as his slave what he would have his slave do for him, were he himself to become the slave and his servant the master.Such a change would open his eyes more than a volume. He would now no longer “see visions and dream dreams.” He would commune with realities. He would think ten times about the soul and once about the body. He would now no longer look upon the slave and his mule as consubstantial, co-equal and co-eternal. He would ask more than green corn and dry—in their season. He would ask more than a blanket and a bed, a cabin and a fire. He would ask for more than calomel, a lancet and a skillful doctor, when sick. He would ask for the bread and water of life, and for the physician of souls, and not to give him these he would regard as an unpardonable sin. But this is not all. His mind must be cultivated and elevated to the conception of things spiritual, divine and eternal. This calls for much teaching, either on the part of the masters or some one else. And the law, wherever it exists, that inhibits the slave from going to a common school, only obliges his Chrisitan master to open for him a private school in his own house or on his own premises. He must then become school master himself or find a substitute on the peril of renounced allegiance to Jesus Christ. It was such reasoning as this, and not the absolute scriptural unlawfulness of Slavery, that constrained me to emancipate and set free from Slavery, not my slaves only, but myself. I hesitate not to add that emancipation was much more enjoyed by me than by them; and hence, from that day till now the emancipation of masters is full as much an object near to my heart as the emancipation of slaves. But, alas! masters sometimes, as well as slaves, hug the chains that enslave them. (pp. 248–49)There are elements of this discourse that would be faulted from a twenty-first century perspective, but I find it remarkable that in 1849, writing from Virginia, Campbell was willing to say that a master should treat the slave as he would be treated by the slave (the Golden Rule, Matt 7:12), that the master should imagine the situation that the slave and master switch places, and that if the master did not provide education for his slave, even in states where such education was illegal, that the master had thereby “renounced allegiance to Jesus Christ.” This was a matter of salvation, according to Campbell.Contrast this attitude articulated by Campbell with the one attributed by Harriet Jacobs to her former master’s wife: “My mistress had taught me the precepts of God’s Word: ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.’ ‘Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them.’ But I was her slave, and I suppose she did not recognize me as her neighbor.”That is not to say that the views of Stone and Campbell were representative of those of the movement as a whole. According to scholar Edward Robinson, “Members of the Stone-Campbell Movement owned 101,000 black people.” One early Stone-Campbell scholar, James Shannon, one-time professor of ancient languages and university president, was an ardent defender of slavery (see his 1849 speech and his 1855 speech). He even worked against Campbell to enshrine protections for slaveholders in the Kentucky constitution. Moreover, Alexander Campbell urged slaves to obey their masters and encouraged his readers to comply with the Fugitive Slave Law, probably feeling bound by the New Testament in these areas. Soon bloodshed would erupt, making all such arguments moot and forging a society presenting new opportunities to display the character of Christ toward people made in God’s image. How did churches of Christ respond to this new environment and these new opportunities? Next time. Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. 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I recently read the book called Disciples and the Bible (1997) by Eugene Boring, owing to my interest in biblical interpretation within the Stone-Campbell Movement. Boring, who died a couple years ago, was a part of the Disciples of Christ all his life. I myself am a lifelong member of the Churches of Christ. It is obvious from reading this book that Boring was glad he was not within the Churches of Christ, and I myself am glad I’m not in the Disciples of Christ. We’re both content with our own location. Still, we’re both heirs of the Stone-Campbell Movement, and so in the comments below I sometimes use the first-person plural pronoun “we” to signal the heritage that Boring and I share. The “official” date when the two groups parted ways (i.e., the split in the Stone-Campbell Movement) is 1906. Review of Eugene Boring, Disciples and the Bible (1997)First things first: I love this book. I love Eugene Boring’s approach to the role of Scripture in the church. I love his respect for historical criticism, and his point that historical criticism is ecumenical. I want to think about that point, and I want to think about it in light of the criticisms leveled against historical criticism from the church, from those who are concerned historical criticism is insufficiently theological to be a Christian reading strategy (for examples from within Churches of Christ, see Brad East and Keith Stanglin). I think I agree that it is insufficiently theological, but the location from which I agree with that point is from Team Boring. I love other things about the book, not least his historical approach—that is, the conviction that to figure out where we are and where we need to go, we need to understand how we got here—and as a part of that historical approach I love his account of the development of the Five-Finger Exercise. I love the view of the biblical canon that he explicates in the final chapter (pp. 423–26).Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.My favorite part of the book may be his fourth prescription in the final chapter, on the meaning of our pre-baptismal confession, and my least favorite part of the book may be his fifth prescription, his suggestion for a new five-finger exercise. But before continuing in this vein, let me tell you about the book.Author and Book BasicsFirst, the author: M. Eugene Boring died as an old man on June 27, 2024. He retired as a New Testament professor from Brite Divinity School at Texas Christian University. He earned his PhD from Vanderbilt. The book, published by Chalice Press—a denominational publishing house connected to the Disciples of Christ—covers biblical interpretation in the Stone-Campbell Movement, from the days of Stone and Campbell, until Boring’s own day (so, about 200 years), with some hopes and direction for the future. I’ve owned Boring’s book for 15 years, and it has languished on my shelf. Finally I can say that I’ve read it, and I’m glad I did. I learned a lot.The Main Point of the BookThis is a different book than what I expected, but I should have expected what it is. I thought Boring’s book would be something like the more recent book by John Mark Hicks on biblical interpretation. I guess they are somewhat alike, but the two scholars certainly care about different aspects of the history of interpretation. Hicks is a historical theologian with expertise in the post-Reformation period, and he is great at tracing the intellectual currents influencing Alexander Campbell and others and especially their hermeneutical approaches. More to the point, Hicks is a lifelong member of the Churches of Christ and—not to put words in his mouth, but I imagine he might say—a recovering legalist. He is interested in how a movement aimed at church unity and renewal based on a fresh reading of Scripture became bogged down in legalism.Boring is a biblical scholar, and more to the point, a lifelong member of the Disciples of Christ, which is self-consciously a mainstream Christian denomination. and thus a much more liberal group than the Churches of Christ. As you know if you’re at all familiar with the Disciples of Christ, and as Boring documents, for a century now the Disciples have essentially been fully integrated into the Academy and have played the game as well as anyone. The game is critical biblical scholarship, and the only rule is that you should not allow your faith to influence your reasoning. Boring didn’t grow up in a legalistic church; he grew up in a church—I imagine—that barely believed in Scripture, that openly expressed disagreement with the Bible, that harbored, and vocally expressed, serious misgivings about the resurrection of Jesus. Boring set himself the task of trying to figure out how a movement aimed at church unity and renewal based on a fresh reading of Scripture gave birth to a denomination whose leaders sometimes seem more committed to a historical reading of the Bible than to a theological appropriation of life-giving Scripture.That this framing accurately describes Boring’s project becomes clear late in the book, starting especially in chapters 9 and 10, when he describes the Fourth Generation of Disciples in the middle of the twentieth century, the time when critical biblical scholarship fully dominated biblical interpretation in the denomination. In chapter 9, Boring describes—among others—the New Testament scholar S. Vernon McCasland as someone who had a genuine faith that could not be detected from his writings on the Bible. His faith and his biblical scholarship are in separate categories, and never the twain did meet. In the same chapter, he briefly describes Jack Finegan, another New Testament scholar. Boring says about Finegan: He fits the McCasland type that threatened to become the dominant paradigm in the Fourth Generation. Whether it will continue to prevail remains to be seen. (347)In chapter 10, Boring describes a mid-century committee of denominational scholars called The Panel of Scholars, that published a significant trilogy of books in 1963, charting a course for the Disciples of Christ. Again, this was 1963. Boring was ordained as a Disciples pastor in 1957, and he began teaching New Testament at Phillips University in Tulsa in 1967, so this Panel of Scholars was happening right at the time that Boring was launching his career. According to Boring, the Panel of Scholars affirmed the authority of the Bible, “not in terms of propositional revelation or verbal inspiration, but in terms of personal encounter with the God who speaks through the Bible” (357). Most of these scholars adopted a neo-orthodox view of Scripture, whereas, says Boring, “most of the denomination remained locked in the false alternatives of the older liberalism (many of the denomination’s leaders) and the older conservatism (many laypeople and pastors)” (358). He continues:The authority of the Bible is genuinely affirmed [by The Panel of Scholars] but no longer functions in the same central manner as it had in previous generations. Though the Bible is quoted relatively often, there is remarkably little exegesis, and no exegetical essays as such. Symptomatic of the Disciples mind is the phenomenon that there is a fairly complete index to the three volumes of names and topics, but there is no scripture index. (358)This is the situation Boring sought to explain. And it is the situation he sought to correct. Boring is not a fan of doing historical criticism of the Bible without reference to faith. He parenthetically and snarkily comments that the believing church is positioned to do historical criticism better than Christian “insiders who pretend to be ‘objective’ outsiders” (358). In the final chapter of the book, the following sentences appear all in italics, to emphasize “the centrality of the Bible.”This is the central issue. Disciples have always assumed or affirmed that the content of the faith is identical with or inseparable from the message of the Bible. This centrality of the Bible for articulating the meaning of the faith is especially crucial for a denomination that has distanced itself from creeds and tradition. (p. 417)This is not a book about command, example, and necessary inference (mentioned briefly a few times, e.g., pp. 229, 243). If that’s the book you want, you’ve got options. I’d probably recommend starting with the book by Hicks mentioned earlier. Boring’s book is about how historical criticism came to be the dominant mode of biblical interpretation in the denomination called the Christian Church.Structure of the BookBoring chronicles five generations of Disciples interpreters, and he gives an overview in the brief introduction. The first generation is a double-generation, lasting 60 years, from the Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery (1804) to the death of Alexander Campbell (1866). I find it interesting that Barton Stone goes unmentioned in the introduction, though the whole movement is dated from the demise of the Springfield Presbytery. Stone’s name is the first one in the title of the first major chapter.Anyway, the fifth generation started in 1968, so this book came out at the tail end of that generation, and Boring wonders whether there would be a sixth. Well, we’re in the sixth.The generations that would be most interesting to people in Churches of Christ would of course be the first, second, and third.Historical Criticism in the Stone-Campbell MovementAs I said, our author is a biblical scholar and his concern is with comparing biblical interpretation in his faith tradition over the past two centuries to the approach taken by biblical scholars, which is (in his mind) the right approach. According to Boring, Alexander Campbell was fully on board with biblical scholarship to the extent that he understood it. Boring takes a somewhat teleological perspective in tracing the evolution of the Disciples’ appropriation of the Bible in terms of resistance or embrace of higher criticism. In other words, we have now gotten interpretation right (= historical criticism), and we can trace the history of how we came to this correct view. It reminds me of the saying I heard somewhere, “The arc of history is long but it bends toward us.” Aside from teleology, Boring is also engaged in a project of restoration: making the Stone-Campbell Movement great again. The first generation of restorers was the best, especially Alexander Campbell; the second generation a step removed, and the third generation inferior still. You might recall Hesiod’s generations in Works and Days, first gold, then silver, then bronze. It is in the third generation, the bronze generation, the worst generation, where we get J. W. McGarvey, the great villain of Boring’s account. As in Hesiod, so also in Boring’s account, the fourth generation represents an improvement, a return to Campbell’s principles of critical biblical interpretation, and Boring himself is in the fifth generation, which represents a further restoring of Campbell’s ideals. Boring ends the book by looking forward to the sixth generation, the one in which we are now living.I cannot comment on what all Boring might have misinterpreted about the history of the Disciples. It is outside my field. It is also outside his field, so I suspect that he got some things wrong, or, let us say, that the way he framed some issues would not be how the majority of Stone-Campbell historians today would frame those same issues. But that’s my guess. I can say that I found his discussion of McGarvey to be interesting, mostly because of how negative it was. When I was a student at Freed-Hardeman, McGarvey was a hero, and I acquired several of his books at that time. Boring even accuses McGarvey of anti-German xenophobia (235 n. 14), which is a charge not borne out by the citations provided by Boring. And I can correct one comment Boring made about the reception of McGarvey’s commentaries on Acts, but I’ll save that for a later post. I found it interesting that Boring had an altogether more positive interpretation of Alexander Campbell than did Richard Hughes in the original edition of his magisterial history of Churches of Christ, called Reviving the Ancient Faith, that was published nearly simultaneously with Boring’s book. Boring the liberal Bible scholar and member of the liberal denomination Disciples of Christ seems to represent Alexander Campbell as the forerunner of liberalism, whereas Richard Hughes the American historian and a progressive member of the traditionalist Churches of Christ seems to represent Alexander Campbell as an ornery conservative and the fountainhead of all that is wrong with Churches of Christ.This distinction between different ways of receiving Campbell’s legacy arises explicitly at the end of the chapter on the Churches of Christ (p. 303), where Boring says that Tom Olbricht misinterpreted Campbell’s “facts” as something that Olbricht himself was abandoning. According to Boring: “Actually, Olbricht’s emphasis is something of a recovery of Campbell’s ‘facts’ understood not merely as objective data that can be used as grist for a rationalistic mill, but the ‘mighty acts of God in history’ as the content of faith rather than theories and doctrines.”Boring on the Churches of ChristThe chapter on biblical interpretation in Churches of Christ (ch. 8) is about 35 pages long. It is the last chapter of the section dealing with the so-called Third Generation of Disciples scholars. Let me tell you what Boring does in this chapter. He divides the nineteenth and twentieth century into four periods, or, actually, he divides the twentieth century into three periods and sets it alongside the nineteenth century. Since the nineteenth century of the Churches of Christ is shared with the Disciples of Christ, he spends little time on it in this chapter, discussing only David Lipscomb for a few pages. Lipscomb cannot be dismissed as an ignorant bigot, but his approach to the Bible does represent that sectarian mentality that will not enter into discussion with denominational and academic outsiders, looks only at the Bible as though its meaning were transparent, unaware of his own hermeneutical lenses through which he interprets, and tends to regard the Bible as a book of law by which every Christian act must be “authorized.” (277) This shows where Boring’s interest lies when he examines biblical interpretation in Churches of Christ. Even here he barely mentions command, example, and inference. What he wants to know is whether a particular person, such as Lipscomb, is insular, in the sense of talking only to members of his own group, or whether he writes for a wider world. Boring wants to know whether an interpreter perceives the problems in the text of the Bible that have become obvious with the rise of historical biblical criticism. In other words, Boring views publications through two sets of lenses: the historical-critical lens, and the Stone-Campbell lens. He asks: does a particular specimen of biblical interpretation address only a Stone-Campbell context, or is it speaking competently to the wider world, whether people of faith or not?After the 1906 split, the next forty years for the Churches of Christ are labeled by Boring “Isolation,” and the period is addressed in merely two pages, attempting to show that the concerns addressed in the period were specific to Churches of Christ, concerns such as the use of instrumental music in worship. Then we have seven pages covering the quarter century leading up to 1970, which Boring labels the “Beginnings of a Renaissance.” At the beginning of this period, Lemoine Lewis, with Harvard PhD in hand, took up a post at Abilene Christian University and started encouraging his students to pursue graduate studies at elite universities. “This development, which had occurred a long generation earlier among the Disciples, and was one of the contributing factors to the split, now occurred among the Churches of Christ on a grander scale than had been the case among Disciples of the 1890s” (282).But it’s only the beginnings of a renaissance, and the major example chosen by Boring for this period is J. D. Thomas, another ACU faculty member with a PhD from an elite university—the University of Chicago—who comes off as fully committed to the traditional style of interpretation with which he grew up, as if his graduate education merely conferred a credential without shaping his approach to the Bible.Finally, the last thirty years of the twentieth century are labeled “Entering the Mainstream,” and Boring takes fourteen pages summarizing and critiquing the work of such scholars as Everett Ferguson, John Willis, Tom Olbricht, and Allen Black. Again, he wants to know how Church-of-Christ-y they are, or how open they are in accepting the dominant critical views that would seem problematic to a fundamentalist. For each of the named writers, Boring finds that they disguise their Church-of-Christ-iness but they are often insufficiently critical for Boring’s taste.We’re now thirty years on from Boring’s evaluation of scholarship in Churches of Christ, and I wonder what he would make of the situation today. I wonder how he would evaluate my own writing. I’m not sure that I would come off any differently than the great names of the previous generation, but I think a difference might be that I am comfortable mentioning difficulties in the biblical text for which I have no solution. It seems to me that people in the pew, at least the ones who might read my books, accept that such difficulties exist. The scholarship of the generation of Ferguson and Willis and Olbricht has filtered down, I suspect.In 1997, Boring began his “Concluding Observations” in ch. 8 with the comment:While it is unclear to what extent the theological renaissance among scholars has permeated or will permeate the bulk of pastoral leadership and local congregations, the intellectual leadership of the Churches of Christ have rediscovered and reaffirmed theology, tradition, and a critical approach to biblical interpretation. (p. 303)Yes, and the process continues.Tracking Down Thomas Campbell’s Self-Identification as CalvinistOne interesting quotation of Thomas Campbell appears on p. 241. Unfortunately Boring does not provide a citation of a writing of Campbell himself, but of a secondary source, the 1954 book by Lester G. McAllister called Thomas Campbell: Man of the Book (St. Louis: Bethany). That is disappointing of Boring because the quotation from Campbell is inherently interesting to any reader of Boring’s book, and it would have been helpful to have a direct citation of Campbell to facilitate checking the original context. For this is the quotation where, in 1828, Thomas Campbell says: “I am a Calvinist,” and he disavows being a “restorationist” (on this latter word, see Boring’s note). A trip to the library showed that McAllister himself did not directly cite Thomas Campbell but another book, one published by A. S. Hayden in 1876 and called History of the Disciples in the Western Reserve, Ohio (p. 168). Actually it is mis-cited by Mcallister; the book was published in 1875 and it is called Early History of the Disciples in the Western Reserve, Ohio. There I see that the original source of this quotation by Campbell seems to be a letter, dated April 6, 1868, written by Aylett Raines to the book’s author, A.S. Hayden, to describe his participation in the 1828 meeting of the Mahoning Baptist Association in Warren, Ohio. So, not a direct source for Campbell, but a report of an 1828 conversation between Aylett Raines and Thomas Campbell, and the report is from Raines in a letter written forty years later. I’m not saying that Aylett Raines misrepresented Campbell, but it’s possible. Concluding ChapterI love Boring’s last chapter, 50 pages diagnosing the ills of biblical interpretation within his denomination and prescribing some remedies. Boring has uncovered aspects in the Disciples tradition of Bible reading that he thinks have rightfully been abandoned in his denomination (pp. 412–13), other aspects of the tradition that are in good health among the Disciples (pp. 413–16), and some things that are struggling for survival (pp. 416–17)—and then he writes some prescriptions, which takes up the final 30 pages. These would all be good conversation starters for believing Bible students.Rightfully abandoned:* uncritical views of the Bible* the particular brand of restorationism dependent on uncritical views of the Bible. Here, Boring cites somebody named Colbert S. Cartwright, who in 1987 wrote about the, in Boring’s phrasing, “liberating effect of abandoning restoration that now opened the door to the history of the whole church as our own history and tradition.” Yes, I love that, and this resonates a great deal with Leonard Allen, In the Great Stream (2021). I myself don’t want to abandon restorationism, and Boring himself not only critiques the concept of restorationism but also gestures toward a helpful way of appropriating the impulse, for which he cites Mark Toulouse.* Church = Kingdom* Imprisonment of the Holy Spirit within Scripture* the traditional Disciples “plan of salvation” as the key to reading ScripturePreserved in Good Health:* Unity, ecumenism* populism* love of God* critical* historical emphasis. Here he sees a recent emphasis (Leander Keck, et al.) on the historical Jesus rather than simply the Gospels* “Disciples canon”Struggling for Survival:* churchly orientation of biblical study (as opposed to purely academic)* holistic view of Scripture* centrality of the Bible in the churchEach of these points deserves much more thought and discussion, which will be—Lord willing—never-ending. We can be grateful to have Boring’s own contribution to that conversation in such a helpful, well-presented, and provocative volume. I have more to say about this book, so expect another dispatch on it. (Part 2 is now here.) Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit edmongallagher.substack.com

In this post—the last in the series—we cover the ancient evidence that some ancient people did, indeed, consider Psalm 2 (as we call it) the first psalm. How could they do such a thing? Either because Psalm 1 (as we call it) was considered a preface, or because Psalm 2 was considered the second half of Psalm 1. Get caught up on the series with Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4. Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.Rabbinic and Hebrew evidence for variability in psalm numberingThe Midrash on the Psalms 3.2 (sefaria) briefly discusses the reason that the psalms are not in their proper order. In other words, there is a recognition in this text that the Psalms are ordered strangely. The text gives a simple answer for this issue: that’s the way God wants it. Among the sayings attributed to R. Joshua b. Levi, is this one that assumes that there are 147 psalms in the Psalter. This paragraph is from the Jerusalem Talmud (y. Shabb 16:1, Neusner’s translation, but see also sefaria at §7).The hundred and forty-seven psalms included in the book of Psalms correspond to the number of years of the life of Jacob, our father [Gen 47:28]. This teaches that all the praises which Israel offer to the Holy One, blessed be he, correspond to the number of years of the life of Jacob, our father. What is the scriptural basis for this view? ‘Yet you are holy, O you that are enthroned upon the praises of Israel’ (Psa 22:3). So, 147 psalms? In our Bibles, there are 150 psalms, and our English Bibles are translations of the Hebrew book of Psalms, so there should be (one would think) 150 psalms in the Hebrew Psalter. But, according to scholar William Yarchin, medieval Hebrew manuscripts present quite a bit of variation in the presentation of the psalms, even though the actual content is the same across all the medieval manuscripts. In the quotation below, Yarchin uses the term “TR” for textus receptus, that is, the received text, or the traditional text of the Psalms (traditional for us). The number refers to the psalm number in what we regard as the traditional Psalter, i.e., TR 78 = the psalm we call Psalm 78 (according to the Hebrew, not the LXX). This observation extends well beyond the commonplace that, for example, the occasional medieval Hebrew manuscript will show TR 1 and 2 as a single psalm, or that some manuscripts divide TR 78 into two psalms. There is much more here. The total body of evidence reveals at least twenty-five different attested conjoinments of what TR presents as two or more discrete psalms and at least thirteen different attested divisions of what TR presents as complete psalms. Moreover, these various conjoinments and divisions appear in a great variety of configurations. The result is that sēper tәhillîm [i.e., the book of Psalms] comes to us comprised of varying psalms totals ranging from 144 to 156, depending on which manuscript is in question. (Yarchin, p. 781)Yarchin hints at something that we will examine more closely in a moment: that the first two psalms are sometimes treated as a single psalm. In the previous post (part 4 of the series), I mentioned that the Church Fathers occasionally attest to this aspect of the Hebrew Psalter. Before getting to the Hebrew biblical manuscripts, let’s look at one more example from rabbinic literature in regard to different psalm numbers, and this passage is longer. It’s from the Babylonian Talmud, tractate Berakhot, and it argues from several angles for the combination of Psalms 1–2. The translation below is taken from the Soncino edition, but you can check out the text and translation at sefaria.org, where the passage begins at Berakhot 9b §25. The point of the passage is that the end of Psalm 19 (“let the words of my mouth…”) should be considered the conclusion of the eighteenth psalm, because in that way there would be a parallel with a famous Jewish prayer called the Amidah, a.k.a., the Eighteen Benedictions, a.k.a. the Tefillah. The importance of this passage is shown by its repetition in a briefer version in the Jerusalem Talmud (y. Taanit 2:2; in the Neusner translation at vol. 18, p. 185; or §3 at sefaria).Here is the Soncino translation of the long passage from the Babylonian Talmud. See that this verse ‘Let the words of my mouth be acceptable etc..’ [Psa 19:14, English version] is suitable for recital either at the end or the beginning [of the tefillah], why did the Rabbis institute it at the end of the eighteen benedictions? Let it be recited at the beginning?—R. Judah the son of Simeon b. Pazzi said: Since David said it only after eighteen chapters [of the Psalms], the Rabbis too enacted that it should be said after eighteen blessings. But those eighteen Psalms are really nineteen?Let me pause here just to make sure everyone is following along. Again, the point of the passage is that the words “Let the words of my mouth…” should be considered the conclusion of Psalm 18, even though in our Psalter those words come at the conclusion of Psalm 19. So in the excerpt above, the rabbinic passage raises that objection. It’s “really nineteen” psalms, right? Not eighteen. Here’s the answer: —‘Happy is the man’ [Psa 1:1] and ‘Why are the nations in an uproar’ [Psa 2:1] form one chapter. So, the answer is that the first two psalms are combined. Now the text cites an authority as making the same point in a different way, some Rabbi called R. Judah the son of R. Simeon b. Pazzi. For R. Judah the son of R. Simeon b. Pazzi said: David composed a hundred and three chapters [of Psalms], and he did not say ‘Hallelujah‘ until he saw the downfall of the wicked, as it says, Let sinners cease out of the earth, and let the wicked be no more. Bless the Lord, O my soul. Hallelujah. [Psa 104:35] Now are these a hundred and three? Are they not a hundred and four? You must assume that ‘Happy is the man’ and ‘Why are the nations in an uproar’ form one chapter. So, again, the only way R. Judah son of R. Simeon b. Pazzi could have been correct in his statement is if he thought that the first two psalms were combined. Now, here is the conclusion of the passage, presenting one further argument for their combination. For R. Samuel b. Naḥmani said in the name of R. Joḥanan: Every chapter that was particularly dear to David he commenced with ‘Happy’ and terminated with ‘Happy’. He began with ‘Happy’, as it is written, ‘Happy is the man’, and he terminated with ‘Happy’, as it is written ‘happy are all they that take refuge in Him’.That is, Psalm 1 begins with the word “happy” (or “blessed”) and Psalm 2 ends with a verse beginning with the word “happy,” and so actually Psalms 1–2 must be a single psalm. Do I think those are good arguments? Um, no. But the passage does show that some Rabbis considered Psalms 1–2 to be a single psalm. And that explains what is going on with those manuscripts of Acts—and, more importantly (because more of them), the Church Fathers—that cite Psalm 2:7 as coming from “the first psalm.” Psalm 1 as a preface to the PsalterThis is a pretty common idea in scholarship today: Psalm 1 forms a preface to the Psalter. Scholars usually don’t tie this idea to the psalm numbering, just to the interpretation of the book of Psalms. Gillingham’s 2018 study has an extensive discussion in this vein—or, actually, she argues that Psalms 1–2 both serve as a preface to the Psalter. If we’re looking for evidence that Psalm 2 counted as Psalm 1, Gillingham’s idea (which is not unique to her) wouldn’t work. Willgren’s 2016 study pushes back against the “preface” idea. At any rate, there is a common thought in modern scholarship on the Psalms that Psalm 1, and maybe Psalms 1–2, serve as an introduction or preface. Wenham (2012: 78) says matter-of-factly: “Psalm 1 is the introduction not only to the Psalter but also to the third section of the Hebrew canon, the Writings.” That doesn’t necessarily mean that Psalm 1 shouldn’t be numbered.But that is what we find in some medieval Hebrew manuscripts: an unnumbered Psalm 1, and the psalm numbering starting at Psalm 2, assigning to it the number 1 (or aleph, א, the first letter of the Hebrew alephbet). Apparently, then, these manuscripts treat Psalm 1 as a kind of preface, and when users of these manuscripts wanted to find Psalm 1, apparently they would find the psalm beginning, “Why do the heathen rage?” Which medieval manuscripts? Well, I haven’t actually seen any myself. The evidence that is cited comes from two scholarly works produced near the turn of the nineteenth century. They are both basically multi-volume collections of variant readings in Masoretic manuscripts. One of them was produced by the Englishman Benjamin Kenicott, and the other by the Italian Giovanni Bernardo de Rossi. They are still standard reference works. Fortunately, (at least some of) these volumes have been placed online. Unfortunately, they have their own citation methods, so I’m not always sure about the identity of the manuscripts they reference. But I do know that all of these manuscripts are medieval Masoretic manuscripts. Kennicott provides notes for many medieval manuscripts, and on at least two of them—the ones he calls codex 157 and codex 168—he says that the numbering of the psalms starts with our Psalm 2, where there is an aleph (א), indicating that it is considered the first psalm. (You can see Kennicott’s notes on these manuscripts, in Latin, here.) As for de Rossi, I paste here an image from his notes on the beginning of the Psalter (here, p. 1). He has two notes, and the first concerns the prefatorial function of Psalm 1, while the second will concern us in our next section. The first note says: “Psalm 1 is not numbered, as if a prologue, as in some Greek codices, and number 1 begins from Psalm 2, in my codices 234, 879.”There are some relevant patristic comments (surveyed by Willgren, cited earlier). For instance, in his commentary on the Inscriptions of the Psalms, Gregory of Nyssa discusses why some psalms (such as Psalms 1–2, but also others) do not have superscriptions. He suggests that “in a sense, the first Psalm is an inscription of the second” (2.8.75; translation by Heine, p. 144). But this statement should not be pressed too far, and it is improbable that Gregory thought that Psalm 1 should be unnumbered. Psalm 2 as the second part of Psalm 1John T. Willis begins his 1979 article “Psalm 1—An Entity” by reminding readers that several scholars had a few years earlier argued that the first two psalms (as we consider them) were originally one. Willis names Lipinski, Brownlee, and Bardtke. The point of Willis’ article is to establish the opposite position. But the idea that Psalms 1–2 might be one has precedent long before the twentieth century. Indeed, some medieval Hebrew manuscripts present them as a single psalm. We have just seen that a lot of different numbering schemes and combinations were happening in medieval manuscripts of the Psalms, and even though the Rabbis had the same Psalter as we do in terms of content, they didn’t take it for granted (as we might) that there were 150 psalms in the book. We shouldn’t be surprised if Psalms 1–2 occasionally get combined, as they did. The combinations in the medieval manuscripts are reported, again, by Kenicott and de Rossi. I have not actually seen these medieval manuscripts themselves, just the reports about them by Kenicott and de Rossi. First, Kennicott. Here is his note (the first note on the left): “This psalm is written as part of the preceding one: 17, 37, 216, 409, 505.” That’s the first part of the note, and the only part that interests me at the moment. But I am not an expert in medieval Hebrew manuscripts, and I’m not sure of the best way to track down these manuscripts. Kennicott does describe them in the first volume of his work, so at least you can learn where (in what city) they are located, but I’m not sure of the library always. The first two of these manuscripts are in the Bodleian, but they are not digitized yet, as you can see here. Anyway, I haven’t seen images of any of these manuscripts. (See also Kennicott’s description of manuscript 164, which also combined Psalms 1–2.) Now for de Rossi. Earlier I pasted an image from de Rossi’s volume, and now we focus on the second part of that image (the part numbered II, signaling that the discussion now concerns Psalm 2). De Rossi says about Psalm 2 that it is considered a part of Psalm 1 in Kenicott’s manuscripts (already named, except that de Rossi omits 409) and de Rossi adds a few more: “my 554, 596, 782.” He also says that there was such a manuscript known to Origen (see my previous post), and some more in the time of Kimchi. (Wilson, 204–5 n. 8, also says that de Rossi, in his volume 5, pointed to some additional Hebrew manuscripts that combined the first two psalms. I have not been able to locate de Rossi’s fifth volume online. According to Wilson’s translation of de Rossi, there are four further manuscripts that mark our Psalm 2 with an aleph: codex 1117, Erfurtensi 5, Haalens Bible, MS. I Erfurtensi Jarchiani Commentarii) Willis also adds a further manuscript (based on Bardtke): Wiener Nationalbibliothek ms no. 4 (12th cent.). ConclusionLet’s draw our thoughts to a close. I do think the correct reading of Acts 13:33 is “second psalm,” and I do not think it is best to read Psalm 1 and Psalm 2 as a single psalm—they are best read as separate compositions—and while I do think that Psalm 1 (and maybe Psalm 2) forms some sort of preface to the Psalter, that does not mean that it is not itself a psalm that deserves its own psalm number. I am not arguing that we should renumber the psalms in the book of Psalms. In that sense, perhaps this 5-part series has been a giant nothingburger. But the matter is worth pursuing because it shows us how certain things we considered settled about the Bible—simple things, like psalm numbering, and manuscript readings in the book of Acts—are somewhat more complicated than often considered. Things like this are part of what makes biblical studies so much fun, discovering that what you thought you knew, might end up being true, or probably true, but not as obvious as it had seemed. Learning to live with uncertainty is important for someone entering into biblical studies, or probably any academic field. Studying such small details as the numbering schemes of the psalms helps us understand what can be known and how we can know it. Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit edmongallagher.substack.com

Near the end of her 1971 biographical book, The Hiding Place, Corrie ten Boom describes her time in the Ravensbrück concentration camp (northeast Germany, at the red bubble in the map below) with her sister Betsie, who was growing physically weaker by the day, though her Christian faith seemed to only grow stronger. Though Betsie was now spared heavy outdoor labor, she still had to stand the twice-daily roll call. As December temperatures fell, the roll calls became true endurance tests and many did not survive. One dark morning when ice was forming a halo around each street lamp, a feeble-minded girl two rows ahead of us suddenly soiled herself. A guard rushed at her, swinging her thick leather crop while the girls shrieked in pain and terror. It was always more terrible when one of these innocent ones was beaten. Still the Aufseherin continued to whip her. It was the guard we had nicknamed “The Snake” because of the shiny dress she wore. I could see it now beneath her long wool cape, glittering in the light of the lamp as she raised her arm. I was grateful when the screaming girl at last lay still on the cinder street. “Betsie,” I whispered when The Snake was far enough away, “what can we do for these people? Afterward I mean. Can’t we make a home for them and care for them and love them?” “Corrie, I pray every day that we will be allowed to do this! To show them that love is greater!” And it wasn’t until I was gathering twigs later in the morning that I realized that I had been thinking of the feeble-minded, and Betsie of their persecutors. (ch. 14)I read this passage aloud to my daughter last night, and I paused for several seconds at the comma of that last line, because I saw the next five words and they slapped me across the face. I should have been expecting it. Throughout the last several chapters of Corrie’s book, describing her time in Nazi prisons with Betsie, Corrie has consistently represented herself as the less pious of the ten Boom sisters, the more selfish one, weaker in faith. Betsie ten Boom was ever selfless, the embodiment of Christ. Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.(Is this how it really was? Was Betsie really so much more Christ-like than Corrie? Or is this Corrie’s own piety on display, self-deprecatingly representing her older sister—long deceased by the time this book was published—as always more saintly? Who knows? But it is certainly a selfless thing to do to represent yourself as more selfish than another.) Corrie’s idea laid out in the excerpt above is itself noble and a lofty example for Christians: to create a residence for people with cognitive challenges, especially those who had suffered under the Nazis. Corrie displays the wonderful impulse to bless victims of abuse. Betsie’s idea is something else. It is more noble, more selfless, even than Corrie’s idea. I don’t know whether Corrie ever created a residence for abuse victims [update (12 Feb 26): she did, as described in the last chapter of The Hiding Place], but I know that Betsie did not; she died at Ravensbrück. Her death is recounted at the end of the same chapter that includes the passage quoted above.I know that some people today, reflecting on the events that happened at Ravensbrück and similar camps, would say that Betsie’s idea was, perhaps, a sweet thought but impractical and even dangerous. Abusers should not get more sympathy and more help than their victims. I agree with this, I think. Betsie’s idea is impractical and dangerous and abusers should not receive more sympathy than their victims. It is a dangerous idea in part because help extended to abusers often enables further abuse. There are too many examples that have come to light in recent years for me to need to demonstrate it here. Betsie’s idea is impractical because in many cases violent abusers don’t want to be helped, they don’t want to learn, in Betsie’s words, “that love is greater.” Abuse victims often will accept help, and I know of houses set up specifically for them to get back on their feet and learn life skills and maybe encounter Jesus. I suppose there are similar houses for convicted criminals. The security concerns must be intense, both for fellow residents and for neighbors.In any case, from a Christian perspective (and, no doubt, other perspectives), Betsie’s instincts are right, that the abusers are worse off than the victims. Betsie had developed the eyes of God, who “seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart.” Betsie saw The Snake’s heart, that it was sick and twisted, that it was causing her misery. Betsie understood the truth of Augustine’s prayer, that “our heart is restless until it comes to rest in you,” and Betsie perceived that The Snake and her fellow guards were the most desperate for that rest. What Betsie did was to pray, frequently, for her persecutors. There are ways in which helping perpetrators of abuse is dangerous and impractical, but prayer is never dangerous or impractical. While one who sought to create some sort of halfway house for former Nazis would need to mirror their love with truckloads of wisdom, lest disaster ensue, prayer avoids these problems, trusting in God the all-wise to do what is best. Moreover, Corrie comes to understand that when standing before God she cannot claim moral superiority to her captors. Immediately after relating the story quoted above, Corrie tells of her own increasing selfishness (as she calls it), wanting to hoard extra supplies for her sick sister, not wanting to share a blanket with a fellow prisoner. And even if it wasn’t right—it wasn’t so very wrong, was it? Not wrong like sadism and murder and the other monstrous evils we saw in Ravensbrück every day. Oh, this was the great ploy of Satan in that kingdom of his: to display such blatant evil that one could almost believe one’s own secret sins didn’t matter. (ch. 14)Yes, victims should receive more help than abusers, but not because abusers don’t deserve help. If we’re talking about what we deserve, Corrie comes to recognize that, unfortunately, we are not so dissimilar from one another, whether we end up as a victim or a perpetrator. As a further example, read about the life of Irma Grese, the “Beast of Belsen,” and ask yourself what you would have done in her shoes. Just as Peter Bailey felt sorry for his nemesis Henry F. Potter (and “nemesis” is my word, not Peter Bailey’s), so Betsie felt sorrow for her prison guards, who were ignorantly hurting themselves and wandering so far from Christ, the only place of rest. As I said, I should have expected as much from Betsie, because it’s not the first time Corrie mentions this characteristic of her sister. Earlier, when Corrie and Betsie arrived at a prison at Vught in the Netherlands in June 1944, Corrie became frustrated with the length of their confinement, having lasted months by now.“Betsie!” I wailed, “how long will it take?”“Perhaps a long, long time. Perhaps many years. But what better way could there be to spend our lives?”I turned to stare at her. “Whatever are you talking about?”“These young women. That girl back at the bunkers. Corrie, if people can be taught to hate, they can be taught to love! We must find the way, you and I, no matter how long it takes….”She went on, almost forgetting in her excitement to keep her voice to a whisper, while I slowly took in the fact that she was talking about our guards. I glanced at the matron seated at the desk ahead of us. I saw a gray uniform and visored hat; Betsie saw a wounded human being.And I wondered, not for the first time, what sort of a person she was, this sister of mine … what kind of road she followed while I trudged beside her on the all-too-solid earth. (ch. 12)“I wondered … what sort of a person she was”—have you encountered such people, ones who display the character of Christ so clearly that you cannot look straight at them but must squint, or hide your eyes? In fact, Betsie had learned this way of being from her father; earlier in the book (ch. 5), Corrie told a similar story about Casper ten Boom, fully trusting in God’s justice and feeling pity for the German soldiers. Of course, Betsie’s attitude reminds us of Christ, hanging on the cross. “Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” Yes, I know about the textual difficulty for this prayer from the cross. The new textual commentary by Houghton indicates, by the way, that the forthcoming UBS6 Greek New Testament has downgraded the confidence in the unoriginality of the passage, from A to B. For a helpful argument that the prayer is original to the Third Gospel, see Ehrman.Even without Luke 23:34, we still have Matthew 5:44, and we still need examples of people, like Stephen in Acts 7, praying for their enemies. I’m grateful that Betsie ten Boom supplies such an example. Betsie saw in her prison guards, including the one nicknamed The Snake, a remnant of humanity, something worthy of love. More than that, she perceived that if she had any hope of calling on God to extend mercy to her, that she ought to extend mercy to others, to those who most needed it. Betsie understood that she could take greater joy in the grace of God the more she imitated it. “Betsie saw a wounded human being”—of course, Betsie was right. Even The Snake, try as she might, had not managed to rid herself of all human feeling, as the same chapter goes on to demonstrate. But I’ll let you, dear reader, discover that episode for yourself. Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit edmongallagher.substack.com

In previous posts in this series (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3), I have looked at the history of numbering the psalms. The jumping off point has been Acts 13:33, where Psalm 2:7 (as we call it) was cited as coming from “the second psalm.” I have also looked at the few manuscripts that say in Acts 13:33 “the first psalm.” In this post, I expand that latter point, not looking at manuscripts of Acts but early Christian statements about Acts or about the psalms. So let’s return to the reading of Acts 13:33, “first psalm” or “second psalm.” We have seen that almost all extant manuscripts of Acts have “second psalm,” but one of the standard editions of the Greek New Testament indicates some doubt that “second psalm” is the correct text. (It prints “second psalm” in the text, but it assigns this a “B” rating, indicating some doubt as to the correct reading. An “A” rating would indicate full confidence.) Actually, this is true of previous editions of this Greek New Testament, up through the fifth edition (2014); I’m not sure what the about-to-be-released sixth edition will show. But I do note that there is no discussion of this textual difficulty in Houghton’s textual commentary (2025), though its predecessor by Metzger (1994) had an extensive and helpful discussion (pp. 363–65). Moreover, Ropes (1926: 263–65) argues that “first psalm” is original in Acts 13:33. Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.(Since Houghton’s commentary “covers all of the 1,008 variation units selected for UBS6,” I take it that UBS6 will not contain any reference to the ancient evidence for the reading “first psalm” at Acts 13:33.) If almost all manuscripts of Acts—and early ones!—have “second psalm,” why would there be any doubt that “second psalm” is the correct reading? As Metzger says, the patristic evidence for “first psalm” is “very impressive.” What he means is that some early Christian writers in the second through fourth centuries talk about Psalm 2:7 as coming from the first psalm, and they say that Paul in Acts says that the verse comes from the first psalm. In other words, these early Christian writers must have had manuscripts of Acts with the reading “first psalm,” though these manuscripts—most of them, at least—have been lost to time. What is this patristic evidence? Patristic evidence for “first psalm” at Acts 13:33This evidence is surveyed in several places: the works by Metzger and Ropes already cited, and Willgren (2016: 163–67), whose main concern is whether Psalms 1–2 function as a preface to the Psalter (on which see also Gillingham 2018: 11–43) and, an old article by John Willis (pp. 387–91) on whether Psalms 1–2 should be considered a single psalm or two separate psalms. Willis himself regarded Psalm 1 as a composition separate from Psalm 2, and he also provided patristic testimony to the same effect. So, the early Christians who report traditions about the two psalms being combined in Hebrew manuscripts, or who otherwise indicate that Acts 13:33 says “first psalm,” do not represent the totality of the patristic evidence bearing on this question. For the patristic evidence for “second psalm” in Acts 13:33, see Willis, and take a look at Gillingham (2013). Since “second psalm” is the expected reading (at least, for us) in Acts 13:33, I will not cover it here. Now I survey the patristic evidence for “first psalm” in Acts 13:33, or patristic evidence that could be cited in support of this reading. Justin Martyr, First Apology 40 quotes the first two psalms without any break. Did he consider them a single psalm? In that case, what we think of as the second psalm would count for Justin as part of the first psalm. Tertullian, Against Marcion 4.22.8, introduces the words of Psalm 2:7 as “in the first psalm.” The manuscripts of Tertullian seem to be consistent on this point, though the printed editions differ. Evans (OUP, 1972) prints “first psalm,” while Kroymann’s older edition (p. 494, line 4) prints “second psalm.” (But on Kroymann’s edition, see this note from Kilpatrick.)Origen has an interesting comment in his Selecta in Psalmos 2:1 “Why do the heathen rage, the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and against his anointed,” etc. Reading two Hebrew manuscripts, in one we found these [words] as the beginning of Psalm 2, in the other they were combined with Psalm 1. And in the Acts of the Apostles, the saying “You are my son, today I have begotten you” is said to belong to the first psalm. “For as it is written,” it says, “in the first psalm: you are my son, today I have begotten you.” Now, Greek manuscripts indicate that it is the second psalm. But this should be understood, that in the Hebrew, a number is placed beside none of the psalms, whether first, or second, or third. (PG 12.1100c–d; on Origen, see also this work, pp. 9–10)Cyprian, Ad Quirinum 1.13; 2.8; 2.29; 3.20; 3.56; 3.112; 3.119—at these passages (according to Willis, p. 388) some Latin manuscripts of this work have the reading “first psalm” for citations of our Psalm 2, whereas other manuscripts read “second psalm.” Willis cites an article by C. H. Turner in JTS 6 (pp. 264–65).Eusebius of Caesarea (Comm. Psal., PG 23.73b) and Athanasius (Argumentum in Psal., PG 27.56) both say that the first and second psalm are combined in Hebrew (κατὰ τὸ Ἑβραϊκόν). Jerome, Commentarioli in Psalmos, comments on Psalm 1 as follows. (1a) Blessed is the man who did not depart in the counsel of the ungodly. Some say this psalm is a kind of preface of the Holy Spirit and therefore has no superscription; others that, because it is the first of its order, it has the first place and that it is an error of superfluity to say it is the first before which there is nothing. Otherwise: among the Hebrews both the first and the second are one psalm, which is proved in the Acts of the Apostles. In fact, because it began with a blessing, it closes with a blessing, saying, “Blessed are all who put their trust in him” [Psa 2:12]. (translated from Risse 2005; Latin also at PL 26.823)What is clear from the patristic testimony is the widespread nature of the reading “first psalm” in Acts 13:33, or at least the idea that our Psalm 2 may be regarded as, in some way, the first psalm. Indeed, some of these church fathers who mention the reading “first psalm” in Acts 13:33 seem unaware of any textual problem with the passage, under the assumption that the reading “in the first psalm” is undisputed. This is true of Tertullian, Origen, and Jerome, and also Hilary, as we observe next.Hilary of PoitiersBecause his discussion is long, I allot to Hilary of Poitiers (Latin writer, fourth century) a section of his own. In his Commentary on the Psalms Hilary goes to great lengths to explain the meaning of Paul’s comment in Acts 13:33, specifically, how the apostle could have attributed to “the first psalm” the statement “You are my son, today I have begotten you.” The problem, for Hilary, is that in the Greek and Latin manuscripts of the Psalter that he has seen, this statement is in the second psalm. Why would Paul say it was in the first? He develops an elaborate theory to explain this problem, but it never occurs to Hilary to question the accuracy of his copy of Acts. He never thinks that maybe Paul actually did say “second psalm”; apparently he has never seen a copy of Acts with any other reading than “first psalm.” He thinks it more likely that the book of Psalms is mis-ordered than that his copy of Acts has suffered textual corruption. Hilary also is familiar with evidence among the Jews that the second psalm was considered the first—and, Hilary reasons, the apostle Paul was a Jew. Hilary of Poitiers discusses the issue in his Commentary on the Psalms 2.1 (pp. 37–38):Apostolic authority makes many of us unsure whether they should consider this psalm to belong to the first as if the last part of the first, or whether it comes later and they should count it rather as the second. For in the Acts of the Apostles we are taught in the oration by the blessed Paul that this psalm was considered to be first: “and we proclaim to you that promise which was made to the fathers, God has accomplished for our sons, raising our Lord Jesus, as also it is written in the first psalm [sicut et in psalmo scriptum est primo], ‘You are my son, today I have begotten you,’ when he raised him from the dead never to return to destruction.” So, because of this apostolic authority, it is believed to have been a scribal error that that psalm is enumerated as second in order, since it is known by the testimony of the teacher of the gentiles that it is first. Therefore that reason should be recognized why it should be understood by us to be second and it is shown by the apostle to be first.The next part of the passage is a rather complicated bit on the authority of the LXX, a section of Hilary’s commentary that has formed the basis of an excellent article by my teacher Adam Kamesar. Hilary returns to the main point halfway through §3, where he is talking about the Seventy translators who (are reputed to have) produced the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint:Thus, these men, in the course of translating the Psalms among the other books, also numbered them, set them in order, and set divisions within them with diapsalmata; whereas all of the Psalms were and are in a confused state in the Hebrew text. (Kamesar’s translation, p. 272)Before summarizing Hilary’s argument, let me explain the term diapsalmata. It’s a Greek word (adopted into Latin), a plural term, and the singular is diapsalma. It is a mysterious term translating a mysterious Hebrew term. The Hebrew term is selah (סֶלָה), and you’ve probably seen this term while reading the book of Psalms in English. It appears 71x in the Hebrew book of Psalms, the first time at Psalm 3:2, which is translated in the KJV as “Many there be which say of my soul, There is no help for him in God. Selah.” Translators of the English Bible usually don’t translate selah, they just give the Hebrew word, becomes no one knows what the word means. Prominent guesses are that it marks places where the singer is supposed to sing louder, or maybe it marks a “rest.” But one of the standard ancient Hebrew dictionaries says about this word only “perhaps a musical term.” At any rate, the ancient Greek translators apparently didn’t know what it meant either, and they rendered it by the term diapsalma, which has something to do with the word “psalm,” a stringed instrument. (Muraoka gives “musical interlude”; NETS has “interlude on strings.”)Anyway, Hilary says that the LXX translators inserted these diapsalmata into the Psalter, apparently unaware that the word selah appears in the Hebrew Psalter. But Hilary is right that there are more passages in the LXX Psalter with diapsalmata than there are passages with selah in the Hebrew Psalter—the Hebrew Psalter does not have selah at the end of Psalm 2:2, but the LXX Psalter (at least, Rahlfs-Hanhart edition) does have diapsalma there. Maybe Hilary means that the LXX translators added in some extra appearances of diapsalma. (At any rate, those early Christians who paid some attention to the Hebrew text—such as Origen (pp. 11–12) and Jerome (Epist. 28)—were aware that the Hebrew text had an equivalent for diapsalma.) Back to Hilary’s argument. The implication of Hilary’s view is that in Acts 13 Paul cited a Hebrew manuscript that was out-of-order, so that’s why he gives the label Psalm 1 to what for us is Psalm 2 (as the Seventy have correctly ordered the psalms). He goes on to say (§4):So then the blessed apostle Paul, according to his own confession a Hebrew of Hebrews, also according to his Hebrew knowledge and faith said that this psalm was the first, he did not use the division of the translators; he had a great deal of enthusiasm in preaching to the leaders of the synagogue, to show from the teaching of the law that our Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, born, suffered, rising, reigns forever. So he preserved this manner, when preaching to Hebrews, to follow the custom of the Hebrews. But we need to follow the authority of the translators, who rendered the law not by the ambiguity of the letter but by the understanding of the doctrine.So Paul cited the disordered psalm number, because he was a Jew talking to Jews, and the Jewish manuscripts of the Psalter are disordered, whereas the Seventy translators brought order to the Psalter. (For further comments on Hilary’s theory of psalm ordering, see Kamesar, pp. 281–84.)Hilary had already introduced this idea in the introduction to his commentary (Instructio Psalmorum 8). Here he comments on the lack of any numbers at all in the Hebrew manuscripts of the Psalms. We should not be ignorant that the number of the psalms is indistinct among the Hebrews, but they are written without the indication of order. For there, no first or second or third or fiftieth or hundredth is prefixed, but they are mixed together without any mark of order or number. For Ezra, as ancient traditions relate, collected and restored them in one volume, though they were disorganized and dispersed because of the diversity of authors and times. But the Seventy elders, remaining in the synagogue for the supervision of the teaching of the law in accord with the tradition of Moses, after the concern for translating the entire law from Hebrew to Greek was commanded them by king Ptolemy, understanding the significance of the psalms by their spiritual and heavenly knowledge, they rendered them in number and order, arranging the order of the perfect and effective psalms, all the individual numbers having been accomplished in accord with their own efficiency and completeness.Hilary refers to a tradition, first attested in 4 Ezra 14, that the Old Testament Scriptures were collected and organized by Ezra after the exile. (Because of the exile, the Scriptures were scattered and in some cases destroyed.) But when Ezra collected the psalms, he did not set them in order. It was, again, the Seventy translators that brought order to the psalms, which means that only the Greek Psalter has the proper order. ConclusionWith all this patristic evidence for the reading “first psalm” in Acts 13:33, we can understand why there might be at least a little doubt about the reading among modern textual critics, even if almost all of the early manuscripts Acts with “first psalm” have by now been lost. Were there, indeed, Hebrew manuscripts displaying what is for us Psalm 2 as the first psalm? There are some, not many and not easily accessed. Besides that there is some rabbinic testimony to be considered. Next time. Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit edmongallagher.substack.com

Phil Connors started February 2 as a jerk, despised by everyone who knew him, and he ended the day universally beloved, a town hero. What lessons can we learn from the transformation of this local weatherman? 1. AttitudeOne of the ideas illustrated clearly in the movie Groundhog Day is that nothing is inevitable about your day. You have decisions to make. You take the same day over and over … and the only difference is your attitude … and that day can turn out any number of ways.Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.The only difference is your attitude. It is otherwise precisely the same day. The only difference is your attitude. And that day turns out completely differently. The only difference is your attitude. You wake at the same time, in the same spot, after the same night of sleep. The only difference is your attitude. You encounter all the same people throughout the day. The only difference is your attitude. Today might be monumentally craptastic or unbelievably wonderful. The only difference is your attitude. That lesson might take a while to learn. Practice makes perfect, and sometimes we need a lot of practice. 2. PurposeWhat would you do if you were stuck in one place, and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?One thing you would probably do is stop trying to climb the corporate ladder. In Groundhog Day, there is no corporate ladder. Near the beginning of the movie, Phil announces in his studio in Pittsburgh that “there is a major network interested in me.” He considers himself already a celebrity approaching a career breakthrough when people finally recognize his immense talent. But all of that is out when you’re stuck in Punxsutawney repeating the same day. It makes little sense to focus on your career when there is no opportunity for advancement. Groundhog Day is an ambition-killer. Without a viable career path, what is the point of life? Eventually Phil figures out that he is able to make his life matter, even in this endless cycle of the same day, by pouring himself out into other people. The only difference is attitude, and one aspect of that attitude is our focus: career vs. others. The option that comports with the Greatest Commands as articulated by Jesus is the one that we should pursue. That’s not to say that vocation is unimportant. It can and should be very important, since it is what we spend most of our time doing. And, to be sure, the local weatherman performs an important function in helping people live with joy and security. While your job is certainly about providing income to yourself and your family, it should not be about self-aggrandizement but about fulfilling the Abrahamic commission to bring blessing to the world. A Christian in whatever profession should see his or her employment as a means of serving others and so fulfilling the law of Christ. This is the second lesson: love your neighbor as yourself. 3. Gratefulness It is in Punxsutawney that Phil Connors discovers gratefulness. The place on earth that made him the most miserable, he now realizes is the place that could make him the most happy. He has come to know these people, and he loves them. He is grateful for their presence in his life.The only difference is attitude, and one aspect of that attitude is whether we are miserable or grateful for the events and personalities in our life. We can choose. This is the third lesson.4. KindnessIn her book Where Goodness Still Grows, Amy Peterson opens her chapter on kindness (ch. 2) by talking about how she doesn’t like the word, because it seems weak, unobtrusive. It takes her a while to come to the point of finding value in this fruit of the Spirit. A major turning point in Groundhog Day comes in Phase 4 when Phil whispers to Rita that she is the kindest person he’s ever known, and he is in awe of her kindness, as if he is only realizing now that it is a quality to be admired rather than despised.The only difference is attitude, and one aspect of that attitude is whether we cultivate a basic posture of kindness toward others. Am I repeating myself? As Groundhog Day teaches us, some things need to be repeated. This is the fourth lesson: cultivate a posture of kindness. 5. ServiceWe must not overlook that the day in which he befriends Rita is not the day that ends the cycle. Romance is not the goal of this time-warp, though romance does happen. The perfect day is the one in which he focuses neither on himself nor on Rita. That is the day in which he receives everything: the whole town becomes his. At the beginning of the movie, he wants to be adored. At the end of the movie, he no longer seeks adoration, and everyone adores him. He empties himself, taking the form of a servant, and it is for this reason that he is highly exalted. Seeking to be the slave of all, he finds himself in first place. He decides to invest in other people without knowing whether he will derive any benefit. He does not know what will break the cycle. He doesn’t know if it can be broken. So, he reasons, if he is going to be stuck in a single day for all of eternity, he would enjoy not focusing on himself for all of eternity, but trying something new. This is most clear in his interactions with the homeless man. Without Phil’s help, this man is dead by the end of the day—but, like everything else that happens on that day, the death of this man is not permanent. He will be back the next day, and every day, begging for funds as Phil walks to Gobbler’s Knob. If ever a death did not matter, this man’ s death does not matter. It will last for only a few hours. But Phil makes it his mission to keep this man alive. In one of the early sequences in which Phil pays attention to this man, the man dies in a hospital bed, and the nurse tells him that there was no particular cause of death; sometimes people just die. Phil refuses to accept that fact: “Not today.”This aspect of the film suggests that, instead of looking for the greener pastures elsewhere, what we might need to say is, “This place where I am is my place. These people that I see daily are the people I will continue seeing everyday.” For Phil Connors, no amount of ambition could take him out of Punxsutawney. (I almost said Bedford Falls.) He had always been looking for bigger and better opportunities, but those opportunities are now definitively denied him. Eventually, in Phase 5, he determined that he would invest in this community, which he came to accept as his community, his people. Let me pause just a moment to reflect on the culture of church hopping. In many cases—and probably in your case, and in mine—changing churches without changing the city we inhabit constitutes a betrayal of Christ and his body. I know: people are annoying and stupid, and they’re hypocrites, and they are so very sinful. It’s obvious, isn’t it, that I’m describing all of us. But even if not, even if somehow in this instance I’ve got merely a speck in my eye and the plank really is in my brother’s eye, what should I do? What would Jesus do? Or, to come at it another way: in Paul’s first letter to the Christians in Corinth, what did the Apostle say were the signs that it was the right time to find another congregation? Again, church hopping is often—not always—a betrayal of Christ and his body. Fortunately for us, there is repentance and the promise of forgiveness. The only difference is attitude, and one aspect of that attitude is whether our desires or the needs of others carry the most weight in our minds. “Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves. Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.”This is the fifth lesson: let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus. 6. GraceWhat about God?Is there any mention of God? Well, there is, yes. It’s in Phase 4, when Phil—for at least one day—imagines himself a god. He guesses that he is not the chief God, just a lower deity. It’s not an altogether unreasonable hypothesis. The way we define a god usually has something to do with immortality, and Phil through hard experience has proven to himself that he is not subject to death. In this conclusion, he is wrong, and I believe my evaluation coheres with the rules of the movie. Phil Connors has, for some reason, been granted a temporary reprieve from death while he endures a seemingly endless loop of Groundhog Day, which turns out to be for his moral improvement. Phil Connors is not, in fact, the God or a god or even immortal. He is just a man, granted the immense grace of repeating a day that he repeatedly refuses to get right. I reiterate: this is grace. The best thing that could have happened to Phil Connors is that he be stuck in Punxsutawney, forced to experience the same 24-hour period until he stops screwing it up. How many times do we go through a day and completely mess it up? I don’t mean that the events that occur that day make it difficult or bad—a car wreck or a diagnosis or whatever. Usually our bad days do not involve anything nearly so catastrophic as a wreck or a diagnosis; they’re more like what Phil Connors endures in Punxsutawney. Rather, we botch our response to these events, mishandle our interactions with people—our kids, or spouses, or friends, or coworkers—and we wish we had a do-over. Of course, there’s no guarantee that we’d get the day right on the second try. We might need to repeat it again and again. What a blessing it would be for the mistakes we made that day, the people we insulted or ignored, the anger and resentment we caused—what a blessing it would be for all of that to have no permanent effect, to be completely forgotten the next day. Wouldn’t it be great if our sin didn’t follow us?I’ve got good news and bad news. The bad news first: we don’t get second chances like that. When I make a flippant comment at someone else’s expense, they remember it. I can and should apologize, but there are no take-backs. The things we do each day have consequences.Now the good news: what is impossible with men is possible with God. Wouldn’t it be great if our sin didn’t follow us? Hear the words of the prophet: “I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jeremiah 31:34). This is the sixth lesson: grace. 7. BeautyPhil Connors’ life becomes beautiful as he recognizes the beauty around him. Great storytelling helps to make the beauty of the spiritual life vibrant and stark. Think about Narnia, and how much we readers long to walk through that wardrobe—and much more than that, how much we long to behold that beautiful, fiercesome, good lion, to hear his voice, to wrap our arms around his neck so that our face is buried in his mane. Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead provides a striking example; the entire novel is beautiful, but near the end there is a scene of such overwhelming beauty that it makes my eyes water each time I read it. Groundhog Day accomplishes something similar, depicting the blessed life as so obviously superior to the selfish life that it inspires us to be better ourselves. In a world in which teens overwhelmingly affirm that they’d rather be famous than happy, we need more depictions of people who flip that script. Phil Connors went from miserably pursuing fame to happily unconcerned about it. And it was only then that his eyes were opened and he could see the beauty around him. One of the last lines of the movie is when Phil looks out at the snow-covered streets of this despised town of Punxsutawney and proclaims, “Isn’t it beautiful!” Phil has learned to see beauty, and we see in him a beautiful life. Beauty—this is lesson #7, and our lessons are complete. Phil Connors teaches us about Attitude, Purpose, Gratefulness, Kindness, Service, Grace, and Beauty. Phil has now taken on the character of Jesus, interested only in self-emptying, ambitious to invest in others. When he realizes that the cycle has been broken, he does not return to his selfish ways. Instead he asks Rita: “what can I do for you today?” And he has never experienced more joy. We could do worse than learn spirituality from Phil Connors.Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit edmongallagher.substack.com

This post is the second and final essay (for the moment) on the Holy Spirit. The prior post has a brief preface explaining the origins of these essays. IntroductionA person without God’s Spirit is not a Christian. The New Testament is clear on this point, particularly the apostle Paul. “Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him” (Rom 8:9). In his rebuke of the Christians in Galatia, he used the expression “received the Spirit” to mean “became a Christian.” “Did you receive the Spirit by doing the works of the law or by believing what you heard?” (Gal 3:2). Paul (1 Cor 12:13) agrees with Peter (Acts 2:38) that believers receive the divine Spirit at baptism. When Paul encountered a dozen disciples in Ephesus, he asked them about their experience of the Spirit. When he learned that they didn’t have the Spirit, he knew something had gone wrong; it turned out that these people had not even been baptized into Christ (Acts 19:1–7).Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.A follower of Jesus must be one who honors and cultivates—does not quench (1 Thess 5:19) or grieve (Eph 4:30)—the Spirit’s work in his or her life. After all, that’s what Jesus did. The Spirit descended upon Jesus at his baptism (Mark 1:10), and Jesus began his ministry by proclaiming himself anointed by God’s Spirit (Luke 4:16–20; cf. 4:1). It was the Spirit of God that empowered Jesus’ ministry of exorcism (Matt 12:28). Jesus rejoiced in the Spirit (Luke 10:21). The Spirit was involved in the resurrection of Jesus (Rom 1:4), just as he will be in ours (8:11). Jesus had no comforting words for someone who would blaspheme the divine Spirit (Mark 3:29).Jesus told his disciples that they would be better off once he was no longer physically present among them. Can you imagine that? If we didn’t know that Jesus himself said it, we would declare such an idea undiluted hogwash. But Jesus said that his departure would be accompanied by the outpouring of the Spirit. “I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Paraclete will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you” (John 16:7).Going DeeperThe Holy Spirit makes intermittent appearances in the Old Testament. The particular term “Holy Spirit,” in fact, shows up in only two passages (Psalm 51:11; Isaiah 63:10–11), but God’s Spirit is mentioned several dozen times. Not only is the divine Spirit mentioned relatively infrequently in the Old Testament (compared with the New Testament), but there are indications that only select individuals benefited from the Spirit’s presence, not the people of God generally. In one particularly telling passage, Moses expresses the wish that “all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the LORD would put his spirit on them” (Num 11:29). As the scholar Mark Boda has written, “The dominant feature of OT pneumatology is that the Spirit of God appears to be restricted to covenantal leaders, whether leader (Deut. 34:9), elder (Num. 11:25), judge (Judg. 3:10), king (1 Sam. 10:6), or prophet (Zech. 7:12), but does not appear to indwell the community as a whole (Num. 11:29).”The Hebrew prophets—particularly Joel 2:28–32—envision a future moment when this would all change, when God would “pour out my Spirit on all flesh.” John the Baptist told the crowds of a coming one who would perform baptism in the Holy Spirit (Mark 1:8). In Acts 2, the apostle Peter announced that the promised outpouring of the divine Spirit had finally come to pass (Acts 2:16). And on the same day, he assured every baptized believer of the gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38).As you know, dear reader, there are different ways of understanding these biblical statements about the Spirit. I think the easiest, most obvious interpretation is that every believer—every follower of Christ—from the time of Peter’s proclamation and forever after—enjoys the presence of God in their lives through the Spirit that indwells them. Christians are God’s temple (e.g., 1 Cor 3:16; 6:19), inhabited by God’s Spirit. Are we talking about the personal presence of God’s Spirit within the believer’s body? That does seem to me the simplest understanding. If you think it best to understand these promises in a different way, fine—as long as we all affirm that “anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him” (Rom 8:9).ApplicationHow do you know that a believer has the Spirit of Christ? One way of answering the question is to say simply, “The Bible says it. I believe it. That settles it.” I like that answer, because I trust Scripture. But perhaps we can say more about the Spirit’s work in our lives.Here we encounter disagreements. The promise in Joel that we quoted earlier entails that “your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions” (Joel 2:28). Indeed, we find something close to this in the New Testament descriptions of the spiritual gifts distributed to believers. To be sure, there are visions and prophetic dreams described in the New Testament (e.g., Acts 9:10; 10:3; 16:9; 18:9), but these are not listed among the spiritual gifts enjoyed generally by believers (cf. 1 Cor 12:4–10). Instead, other gifts are mentioned: wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, tongues, and more. In fact, Acts 2:17 is the only verse in the New Testament containing the word “dream” (ἐνύπνιον, enypnion). My point is that we should not press the language of Joel 2:28 too far; even in the earliest days of the church, when it was obvious that Joel’s vision had—at least, partially—come to fulfillment, the details of that vision did not strictly apply. The Spirit was at work in a new way, just as Joel had promised, and the Spirit’s activities exceeded Joel’s imaginings.What about supernatural gifts? A first-century Christian could say that they knew they had the Spirit of Christ, in part, because of the spiritual gifts they enjoyed. In Galatians 3:5, Paul essentially equated the reception of the Spirit with the working of miracles. And today the fastest growing segment of Christianity is charismatic, claiming to have received the empowering from God’s Spirit to perform the same spiritual gifts that we read about in the New Testament. (The Greek word for “gifts” in 1 Cor 12:4 is χαρίσματα, charismata, whence the description “charismatic.”) Some of these groups declare that the gift of tongues is the initial sign that one has been accepted by God.I myself have not experienced these gifts, and neither have most of the Christians I know. Are we missing something? We should remember that when it comes to the spiritual gifts, it is the Spirit “who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses” (1 Cor 12:11). According to Paul’s primary account of the spiritual gifts, not everyone receives the same gift (1 Cor 12:4–10, 27–31), and no particular charismatic gift is the sine qua non of the Spirit-filled Christian.In the same context, Paul does name a sine qua non of the Spirit-filled Christian. “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal” (1 Cor 13:1). Without love, I am nothing (v. 2) and I gain nothing (v. 3). Love of God and of neighbor are the greatest commandments (Matt 22:34–40), the fulfillment of the law (Rom 13:9–10), and the first of the fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22).Let me point out that the fruit of the Spirit is unlike the charismata (the spiritual gifts). The fruit of the Spirit are not “allotted to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.” The fruit are not gifts given to different believers. While Christians sometimes wonder about which gifts the Spirit has given them, and sometimes they take a spiritual gifts inventory, there is no need to wonder which fruit the Spirit is developing in me. The answer is: all of them. It’s not that my fruit is peace and yours is self-control. No! When the Spirit indwells someone, the Spirit of Christ cultivates the fruit of the Spirit—the character of Christ—in that person. The Spirit cultivates love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and self-control in that individual believer.This is the primary, the fundamental, sign of the Spirit’s presence. How do you know you have the Spirit of Christ? Spiritual growth, that’s how. You become like Christ, which is the whole point of Christianity (Rom 8:29; Eph 4:15). The Spirit’s work in you—always, for everyone—is the development of the Spirit’s fruit. Are you more loving today than when you were baptized, or than a few years ago? Joyful? Patient? If not, you are quenching the Spirit, grieving him. It’s time to dedicate yourself to prayer and meditating on Scripture and service to others and corporate worship and other spiritual disciplines by which you can develop the soil of your heart (cf. Mark 4:1–9). The Spirit, an excellent gardener, can grow his fruit in a prepared heart.ConclusionWithout Christ’s Spirit, you do not belong to Christ. Without the Spirit of adoption, you are not God’s child (Rom 8:15–16). The primary work of the Spirit in the life of the believer is to accomplish the primary goal of the Christian: to become like Christ. This entails exhibiting love (just like Jesus), and joy (just like Jesus), and peace (just like Jesus), and patience (just like Jesus), and all the other fruit of the Spirit (just like Jesus). Your job is to open yourself to the Spirit’s work by engaging in the spiritual disciplines of, among others, prayer and meditation on Scripture and Christian community. In this way, the One Spirit indwelling Christians binds us to Christ and to each other. This is how we “keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph 4:3).Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit edmongallagher.substack.com

I recently wrote this brief lesson on the Holy Spirit, for a church Bible class book that will appear later this spring or summer. That book will be the 2026 edition of the Berean Series, published by HCU Press, so look for it in a few months. The theme this year is the Seven Ones of Ephesias 4:4–6, and my topic was “One Spirit.” Each author wrote two chapters, one on the overall concept (be it “faith” or “baptism” or “Lord” or, in my case, “Spirit”) and the other on Paul’s emphasis in the passage on the singular nature of the concept (i.e., “one faith” or “one baptism” or “one Lord”). Below is my first chapter, and later I’ll post my second one. But this is just the main text; you’ll have to get the book if you want the footnotes and discussion questions. IntroductionThe Holy Spirit is mysterious. I think it’s supposed to be that way. His purpose is not to tell us about Himself. Jesus told his disciples: “But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you” (John 14:26). And again: “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf” (15:26). Rather than testifying about himself, the Spirit testifies about Jesus. He reminds the disciples of Jesus about what Jesus has said. When the Spirit has done his work, the disciples of Jesus might not have a great understanding of the Spirit, but they will have a better understanding of Jesus.In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis suggests another reason that the Spirit might be less distinct than are the Father and Son. “Do not be worried or surprised if you find it (or Him) rather vaguer or more shadowy in your mind than the other two. I think there is a reason why that must be so. In the Christian life you are not usually looking at Him: He is always acting through you.” As Lewis says, we might think of the Father as in front of us and the Son as beside us while the Spirit is within us or behind us.Though much of the life and work of the Holy Spirit is unclear to me, we can grasp some things from the evidence of Scripture. One of those things is what we just read from Lewis: the Spirit dwells within us. Paul’s letters are especially insistent on this point, and especially Romans 8, the chapter in the New Testament with the most number of occurrences of the word “spirit.” One example: “But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him” (Rom 8:9). More on this later.For now, what is this Spirit that dwells within Christian believers?Going DeeperThe Greek word translated “spirit” is pneuma (πνεῦμα), appearing 379 times in the New Testament, including every book except 2–3 John. It mostly refers to God’s Spirit (275x), but can also refer to the human spirit (e.g., Luke 8:55) or a demonic spirit (e.g., Luke 8:2, 29). The standard dictionary for the Greek New Testament discusses this word across four and a half pages, supplying eight different major definitions, starting with “air in movement.” The word sometimes means “breath” or “wind” (cf. Heb 1:7), which allows for the different nuances of the word in Jesus’ speech to Nicodemus: “The pneuma (wind) blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the pneuma (Spirit)” (John 3:8).The relevant Hebrew word is similarly broad in meaning, but references to the divine Spirit are much less frequent in the Old Testament. Our word is ruaḥ (רוּחַ), and it appears 389 times in the Hebrew Bible, but a rather low percentage of these appearances are in reference to God’s Spirit (only about 75x). One of the standard dictionaries of ancient Hebrew uses thirteen pages to define this word, but there are only three major definitions: wind, breath, and the divine Spirit.While the Old Testament supplies crucial information about God’s Spirit, especially its work of empowering people—Bezalel in his artistry (Exod 31:1–5) or Samson in his feats of strength (e.g., Judg 14:6)—it is the New Testament that depicts the Spirit with greater clarity. According to the New Testament, the Spirit belongs in company with the Father and the Son. For example, Jesus commanded his apostles to baptize people “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt 28:19). Peter addressed his first letter to believers “who have been chosen and destined by God the Father and sanctified by the Spirit to be obedient to Jesus Christ and to be sprinkled with his blood” (1 Pet 1:2). Paul ended his second letter to the Corinthians with this blessing: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you” (2 Cor 13:14). And, of course, among the seven Ones mentioned by Paul in Ephesians 4 are One God, One Lord, and One Spirit (Eph 4:4–6).These passages show that when one speaks of the Christian God, one should speak of not only Father and Son but also Spirit. Traditional Christian theology has pressed further, describing the Christian God as one essence in three persons. While the Apostle’s Creed and the original Nicene Creed (325 AD) included belief in the Holy Spirit as a fundamental doctrine, the expanded Nicene Creed (381 AD) elaborated somewhat on the Spirit’s being and activities and the responsibility of believers to “worship and glorify” him together with the Father and the Son. The New Testament does not provide examples of Christians worshiping the Holy Spirit, but it does provide evidence—beyond the threefold descriptions of God reviewed above—that the apostles conceived of the Holy Spirit as God. A classic example is the twin statements from Peter in Acts 5, who first accuses Ananias of lying to the Holy Spirit (5:3), and then of lying to God (5:4). The divinity of the Spirit would also explain why Jesus regarded blasphemy of the Holy Spirit as such a serious offense (Mark 3:29). Christians in the early centuries considered it appropriate—necessary—to offer worship to the Spirit since he is God. I myself have sung few songs directly addressed to the Spirit, but one such song I have sung many times in my life: “Spirit, we love you, we worship and adore you, glorify thy name in all the earth!”There are also indications in Scripture that the Spirit is personal, that he has thoughts and desires and agency. Paul and Barnabas undertook the first missionary journey in the book of Acts because the Holy Spirit called them to that work and spoke about his choice (Acts 13:2). Larry Hurtado points especially to the Farewell Discourse in John’s Gospel as offering such testimony about the Spirit. In this passage, the Spirit is depicted as an Advocate or Counselor (paraklētos; John 14:26; 15:26; 16:7), a personal representative of Jesus (14:16–20), who will remind the disciples of Jesus’ teaching (14:25–26; 15:26; 16:12–13), bring glory to Jesus (16:14), and rebuke the world for sin (16:7–11). “This frequent use of verbs of agency has the effect of giving the Spirit a considerably more personal character than we find in the OT and the Jewish tradition of the time, in which the Spirit is often referred to in ways that can connote more simply a divine power/force (e.g. 1 Sam 10:9–13).”What about the Spirit’s pronouns? If the Spirit is personal, does that mean we should refer to the Spirit as “he” and not as “it”? Many Christians insist on using the masculine pronoun for this reason. Others use the feminine pronoun, “she,” which does, in fact, correspond to the grammatical gender of the word “spirit” in Hebrew (ruaḥ is usually feminine). Look, gender is such a controversial topic in the twenty-first century that we run the risk of inserting modern categories and concepts into ancient and timeless texts by bringing up the issue. Without advocating for a particular approach, I will note a few facts. The Greek word for “spirit” is neuter, and neuter pronouns (i.e., “it”) are sometimes used in the Greek New Testament in reference to the Spirit (John 14:17; Rom 8:16). Some modern believers think that masculine (or feminine) pronouns are too “human” for the Deity, who is beyond gender. And some believers do not use pronouns at all in reference to God, instead repeating the word “God” where others would use a pronoun. I myself tend to speak about the Spirit as “he,” sometimes “it.”Application“Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God” (1 Cor 6:19). Other New Testament passages describe the believing community as God’s temple (1 Cor 3:16–17; Eph 2:21–22; 1 Pet 2:5), but at the end of 1 Corinthians 6, Paul applied the image to the bodies of individual Christians. Perhaps Paul stole the idea from Jesus, who once referred to his own body as God’s temple (John 2:21). Just as God’s presence filled the tabernacle (Exod 40:34–35) and Solomon’s temple (1 Kings 8:10–11), the same is true for the body of Jesus (Col 2:9) and the Christian believer. The Holy Spirit—the presence of God—dwells within our bodies. God has marked us with his seal (2 Cor 1:22; Eph 1:13; 4:30), designating us as his territory. (A different image: he has planted his flag in us.) This is exactly the point Paul was making in 1 Corinthians 6. Because my body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, I do not belong to myself, but I have been “bought for a price,” and as God’s temple I should be bringing glory to God in my body (1 Cor 6:20). Since “no one will see the Lord” without sanctification (Heb 12:14), I should allow God’s Holy Spirit within me to guide me toward holiness. That is what it means for God to be at work within me (Phil 2:13).ConclusionWe might not know as much about the Holy Spirit as we would like–or as much as we know about the Father and the Son—but this we can know, both from the New Testament and from early interpretations of the New Testament: the Holy Spirit is God. Moreover, the Holy Spirit dwells within us, so that we are temples for God, individually and collectively. This is both an incredible privilege and an incredible responsibility. God has claimed us as his territory; we should act like it. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit edmongallagher.substack.com