Friends,
While I will from time to time post here on Stonesfence, my main blogging site has changed. I am now a “sponsored blogger” for Asbury Theological Seminary’s Seedbed Ministry and my posts, for the most part, will be appearing there. All the articles from the site you’re reading now have been moved there, so you won’t miss anything. I hope you’ll come on by the new site!
When the Hindenburg blew in 1937, engineers accepted the reality that the rigid airship needed to be completely rethought. However great the lift gained by using Hydrogen, its explosive tendencies ruled it out as a source of lift (except for moon rockets a generation later!). Ironically, the Hindenburg was originally designed to use Helium, but since nearly all the world’s Helium was produced in the US, and the US had doubts about selling Helium to Nazi Germany, the German engineers decided to trust their own technological powess and continue the gamble on Hydrogen. And however cleverly engineered the “big gas bag” construction seemed, some means of limiting damage seemed clearly needed, even with inert gas providing the lift. The result can be seen in the familiar Goodyear Blimp. Helium, not hydrogen, provides the lift. Helium does not provide as much lift as Hydrogen, but it’s resistance to detonation trumps any disadvantage. Engineers also rigorously compartmentalized the interior of the airship so that if a leak compromised one compartment, the others would remain functional and keep the airship…well…an airship instead of a pile of scrap metal and fabric.
If Hindenburg Theology represents an obsessive, perfectionistic approach to thinking about the faith, “Goodyear Blimp Theology” is an alternative. Note we’re still talking about airships! This is not a theological model that gives up on truth or doctrinal standards. We still want to fly, and fly far with lots of folks and stuff! But we want to fly, not die! So “Goodyear Blimp” Theology has some differences from it’s incendiary tough (but devastated) big brother.
In humility, we must recognize the limits of our knowledge, even given divine revelation in scripture. We have no promise that the revelation is exhaustive on all topics, nor may we presume that all our interpretations possess the same freedom from error that the word itself possesses. With every step of inference from the text’s witness, our conclusions become just that much more provisional, and our insistence on them must be more nuanced. The humility James counseled regarding the plans of our lives (James 1:13-17) applies to our theological formulations as well. James calls us to abandon the presumption that what seems perfectly logical and possible within our immediate perspective must be the case. James reminds us that we don’t have the whole picture and summons us to subordinate all things to God’s sovereign will. It isn’t a cop-out to confess humbly, “If it is the Lord’s will…” in stating our hopes, plans and our theology. Does this lead to timidity and inaction? No, in verse 17 James reminds us that knowing what is right, and not doing it, is still sin! So humility is not a post-modern repudiation of absolute, eternal truth, nor is it doctrinal indifference. We simply recognize that the Gospel stands in judgment over all, including ourselves. We will name heresy when we see it, but we will not name everything we see heresy just because it challenges our views or deviates from our interpretations.
So Goodyear Blimp Theology won’t necessarily reject or demand the concept of biblical inerrancy, but will assess each position on its merits. I’m personally on the inerrantist side of the spectrum. As I said previously, I see little future in “errancy!” But the various positions disputing the concept of biblical inerrancy have their own kinds of hydrogen gas bags, prone to blow up as well, and need the same humility as their more conservative colleagues. While we confess that the Bible is “without error in all that it affirms” (to quote the Lausanne Declaration), we also confess humbly that we do not always know exactly or fully what it affirms, or how far those affirmations are meant to be pressed. Furthermore, our logical inferences and extensions of the word’s affirmations cannot carry the same certainty that scripture carries because biblical interpretation is an inductive process, a gathering of observations and evidence from which we try to draw conclusions. Add to the evidence, nuance the observations, and the conclusions will shift. I’m tempted to talk now about drystone fences and why shifting is good, but “drystone fence” theology will have to wait for a later post!
Goodyear Blimp Creationism will stand with other creationists in affirming that the world originated and continues to endure because of the active will and love of God, who in goodness chooses to sustain it, and not from blind forces and chance. But ironically, that does not mean there are no chance forces in creation, and that does not mean every force or event in creation is a direct expression of the will of God. The creation is a living organism, not a dead rock, a lifeless machine with God pulling ever lever. So we won’t be so quick to rule out in advance processes like natural selection, genetic mutation and speciation. We will affirm the dignity and uniqueness of human nature, but not feel like we must blind ourselves to the fact that 95% of our genetic code is identical to that of a chimpanzee. We might even be surprised that the percentage is not higher! I wonder if that shouldn’t make us treat chimps, and all of the creation differently?
Goodyear Blimp theology has one problem: it simply doesn’t appeal to the theologian’s testosterone the way Hindenburg Theology does. It provides less basis for the Hindenburg Theologian on the right to condemn others, consigning them to deviancy or heresy, or worse. It doesn’t allow the Hindenburg Theologian on the left to castigate others for lacking critical integrity or courage, because the theologian remains acutely aware of the complexity of theological debate. We must examine all things carefully, including our own convictions, with an open mind. We recall that theology is about God controlling us, not our control of Him! A biblical discipline certainly must exist in the church. Insistence on honesty and courage in scholarship is crucial. The maintenance of doctrinal standards and intellectual rigor remain vital. But precisely these values should drive home to us that abuse of power in the name of biblical truth and church doctrinal discipline, or prideful and conceited disdain of the integrity and ability of others in the alleged service of scholarly “objectivity,” become heinous sins.
Goodyear Blimp Theology, like its namesake, has two overwhelming advantages: First, it does not crash and burn in a smoking heap when it takes a single hit. By avoiding the arrogant certitude of the Hindenburg approaches, left or right, we also avoid the danger of the fall to which pride always leads. Second, just as the Goodyear Blimp is compartmentalized, we can profit from an appropriate compartmentalization of our thinking about the faith. Whenever I hear someone argue from the “domino principle,” I always suggest that maybe they should have stacked the dominos differently! While Christian truth is a unity, and is reasonable, we have no insurance that (a) we know all the aspects of that unity and (b) that we know all the linkages that join it into the fabric that it is. But that’s just the point: Christian truth is not a single line of dominos, but is a fabric, a web, woven from many strands in many directions. Rather than pull on one thread and have the whole garment fall apart, good Christian theology should be a web that, if we touch one strand, pulls us in a connects us with even more truth until we are wrapped tightly in the life-giving truth of God.
For the Goodyear Blimp biblical or theological scholar, a single historical theory or discovery does not immediately require a revision of theolgoical convictions. Between the discernment of the “facts” of history and the formation of doctrine are many stages, drawing on numerous domains of learning. Archaeology, for example, is only one part of the study of history. History, likewise, is only one part of the task of exegesis. And exegesis is one, albeit one very important, part of theological formulation. Theology is not algebra, not a spreadsheet. It’s more like calculus, more like a massive, interlocked intellectual, spiritual and relational ecosystem, made up of truths, but also surging with the life and power of the living God. Sure, it can be attacked, but it’s much harder to rip apart than we think. There are no end-runs or hail-Mary passes that dodge or short-circuit the whole theological task. So if one area of our thinking is under the stress of fierce debate, new ideas, or cultural conflict, the rest of the fabric holds, allowing us to be honest and fearless as we investigate new questions or revisit old ones. And times do come when our faith is sorely tested, when little seems to support our belief. Then the intellectual dimension of our faith is sustained by the spiritual, ethical, and relational strands in the web. Enduring such times require enormous courage, character, wisdom and even tact. And sometimes, it’s just not pretty!
Which actually brings me to another kind of…aircraft…for another post.
I wrote the following many years ago, having used it in a segment of my Old Testament introduction lectures for seminarians for even more years. I re-post it periodically because I feel it’s still pertinent.
From my earliest youth, I have stared in awe at the famous picture of the airship LZ 129 Hindenburg as it exploded and crashed catastrophically while docking at Lakehurst, NJ on May 6, 1937 after a troubled approach to the mooring pylon. Perhaps it was seeing the picture while listening to the real-time commentary of Herbert Morrison on an old vinyl recording of the radio broadcast that locked the scene forever in my mind. Of course, You can now watch the original newsreel footage. Despite the naysayers, and despite mysteries about how the initial fire started, it’s certain that the catastrophe resulted from something blindingly simple: hydrogen explodes almost spontaneously upon contact with oxygen, and the Hindenburg ws pretty much a giant bag of hydrogen. The entire craft, over 800 feet long, had only 16 separate latex chambers filled with the volatile gas. One puncture, and down it came. You can actually see in the newsreel films the successive detonations of the fuel chambers. The big question is, why did they take the risk of using such a volatile gas? Lots of reasons can be offered, but in the end, the answer was simple: the amazing amount of lift it afforded. They traded reliability for power. The engineers thought they could “handle it” and produce a safe airship.
Many of us have a theology something like the Hindenburg. We love superlatives. We love maximums. We love all-or-nothing dichotomies and ultimatums. So we not only speak of biblical inerrancy, a defensible enough idea in proper context, we operate as though any honest recognition of problems in the biblical text entails a denial of its witness to the will of God, which in turn requires us to deny that any such contradictory evidence or valid contrary views even exist. We almost dare the world to prove us wrong on a single point. It’s a high-wire act without a net. We believe the faith is reasonable, and then proceed to invoke the “domino principle” that any deviation from any one point brings down the whole edifice. We get preoccupied with “presuppositions” so that the slightest impurity in our presuppositions results in defective theology, heresy, and possibly even the forfeit of redemption. So like the engineers of the great airship, we knowingly create a structure capable of being demolished in a smoking heap if one single defect appears, all in the name of…what? While we might have some basis in St. Paul’s claim that “If Christ is not raised, we are of all men most to be pitied,” but the real reason is probably that, like the German aeronautical designers, we love the lift. We love the power, the machismo, of declaring that we have based our lives on a faith system that, if flawed on any one point, collapses like a string of dominos. We love standing up on that high-wire and daring anyone to throw us off balance. We believe, like those engineers, that we can “handle it.”
Among Hindenburg theologies, I would class several types of Christian thought, but I want to focus on my own tribe, protestant evangelicals. First, there are the Hindenburg inerrantists. Now, I confess biblical inerrancy. I just don’t see a future in biblical “errancy.” I believe that when it’s all said and done, we will not be able to charge a single biblical statement with failure to communitcate that degree of focused truth toward which it aspired. But the Hindenberg Inerrantists go much farther. More than simply stating their confidence in the ultimate trustworthiness and reliability of scripture, properly interpreted, they demand that in fact the inerrancy of the Bible be made apparent on every question. No lack of closure, no uncertainty, no periods in which contrary evidence requires a sojourn of faith seeking understanding, no acceptance of tensions and unanswered questions can mar the appearance of perfection. Such a faith is brittle, and invevitably encounters problems of evidence and argument, and often collapses. The collapse is not due to the belief in biblical inerrancy, but in the rigid and even prideful context in which it is espoused. Religious colleges and seminaries are full of professors who are burned out inerrantists. Refusing to bend the evidence to fit the ideology, they think the only other option is an erring Bible, rather than stepping back and re-thinking the whole framework in which both their faith and their learning function.
Of course, there are Hindenburg Critics as well. They have the identical all-or-nothing, dichotomized, ultimatum rich ideology as the Hindenburg Innerantists, except that they have essentially already crashed and burned. Rather than abandon their Hindenburg approach to theology, they just…get on a different Hindenburg! They stake their faith, their integrity and their future ministry and employment now on being champions of biblical criticism who confront evangelicals with their refusal to “take seriously” contemporary scholarship. The problem is that they have simply transferred their inordinate investment in one kind of certainty—a certain view of biblical inerrancy—to another kind of dogmatism, namely historical criticism. Naturally they realize that critical views change over time, but the underlying attitude remains a fundamentalism of the left, aggravated by the soul-wounds suffered as they found themselves unhappily housed in their former communities of faith and professional life. They have a hard time affirming the objectivity or honesty of scholars who have not taken the same path they have. Because their all-or-nothing approach allows no middle ground, they can alienate the very people who might agree with them on many points, but who reject the all-or-nothing attitude and cannot subscribe to the stridency of their positions. Eventually, their confidence in modern biblical historical criticism gets shattered, whereupon they board the Hindenburg of… post-modernity!
I also put certain types of creationists in the Hindenburg Theology category. Taking the Genesis creation narratives to be a documentary description of God’s first week at work, they make the entire edifice of Christianity depend not on the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but on the earth being less than 10,000 years old, on there being no new species since the creation and on a whole chain of increasingly questionable exegetical moves. Anyone departing from this absolute ideological orthodoxy is not simply mistaken, but a betrayer of the faith. But eventually, ideas like God creating the earth with the appearance of age to fool the scientists appear for they are: utter nonsense, and usually the result is to abandon evangelical conviction and in bitter cynicism abandon any confidence in the trustworthiness and reliability of the biblical witness.
I had the privilege of leading a brilliant young Japanese man to Christ while I was at Yale. He was a PhD student in genetics, and in his residence hall, a group of Hindenburg Creationists students convinced him that if any macro-evolutionary theory was true, then Christianity was false. He knew that the rudiments of evolutionary science were true because he was working with them every day in the laboratory. After a year of vibrant growth, his own intellectual integrity demanded that he abaondon the Christian faith. Hindenburg Theology is not only wrong, it’s damaging!
Then we have Hindenburg Apologetics. As a young Christian, I remember being thrilled to hear a dynamic campus speaker declare that he had come to Christ because he was compelled by “the evidence” and was “overwhelmingly intellectually convinced” that Christianity was true, and therefore he put his faith in Christ. I remember being nagged by the thought that maybe the Holy Spirit also had something to do with this guy’s conversion, and maybe his intellect had help in the form of compelling Christian behavior that the speaker observed…but the triumphalist claims of the speaker soundly drowned out that quiet nagging. But over the years, I’ve watched the intellectual pendulum swing back and forth, and I noticed this man’s faith has not swung with the pendulum. He continues to follow Christ even when some of his rational arguments don’t seem as all-powerful any more. Apparently even for him, faith in Christ is more than merely assent to an intellectual argument but involves a weave, a fabric of devotion and trust to the Person of Jesus Christ even when the chips are down, the evidence is ambiguous and the arguments inconclusive. Sadly, every one of my friends from that era who proudly claimed they had been converted by the “weight of evidence” are no long following Christ. Hindenburg Apologetics set them up for disaster. One refutation, one unanswerable question, one successful challenge, and the whole thing goes up on flames and down in a devastating crash.
Hindenburg Theology is a lot like hemophilia. Hemophilia is a disease of royal bloodlines. Intent on preserving the absolute purity of the royal bloodline, royals marry relatives, pooling recessive genes and bearing children increasingly frail, prone to insanity, and most notably, hemophilia. The hemophiliac has blood that cannot clot. In extreme cases, cut him once, even superficially, and he bleeds to death. All in the quest for absolute purity.
Hindenburg Theologians are spiritual and theological hemophiliacs.
What’s the answer? For starters, it involves…other kinds of aircraft! Stay tuned.
With the Christmas season here, and our minds and hearts full of thoughts about the “King of Kings” arriving in our world, I thought I’d share the final paragraphs of my commentary on Judges, which reflect on the brutal, depraved stories at the end of the book in light of the final verse, which combines a terse characterization of that depravity with a glance foreword toward the coming of Israel’s king. ”In those days, there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in their own eyes.” (Judges 17:6; 21:25).
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Kings in Israel were not called to exercise power, create opulent palaces, temples, and capital cities, but to stand as guardians of Yahweh’s covenant, upholding the spirit and letter of his moral law. Just as Adam was to tend and guard the garden, the king was to tend and protect the covenant people. The king was to uphold the case of the helpless and vulnerable in society. Deuteronomy 17:14-20 clearly sets this standard for kingship. The king is not to accumulate all the trappings of power that mark the rulers of other nations: military resources (horses), sexual excess (multiplied wives), and wealth. The king’s first obligation is to be a student of the law of Yahweh, to live in the fear of Yahweh, and lead as a humble servant of Yahweh with a heart not exalted above his brothers and sisters. Such a king thus has a task distinct from the one confronted by Israel’s judges. The judges delivered Israel from its enemies, but the king’s highest calling might have been to deliver Israel from itself.
As Israel’s history progressed, king after king failed to deliver on the hope of sinful, arrogant human hearts bowing to divine rule. The king was supposed to embody the divine word in the Scriptures, which he was commissioned to copy and study. Surely Israel began to ask whether such a king would ever, in fact, sit on the throne in Jerusalem. Indeed, Israel’s story had far to go before the day a King would come who was, in fact, the embodiment in flesh of Yahweh’s total word to humanity. This King would do what none of his predecessors could. He would enter the citadel of human arrogance and self-imploded sinfulness and break its power, restoring humans, as individuals and as transformed communities, to righteousness, integrity, and holiness. This King, Jesus Christ, would accomplish his work not by applying escalating levels of coercion, as the men in this final story of Judges did, but by assuming the place occupied by the victims in these final chapters, most of whom were women. He would be tortured, beaten, mocked, and abused through a long night of agony culminating in his death. Unlike the victims of chapters 19–21, this king would have the power to resist, but he would choose the place of the victim, the servant. In his suffering and death (over which he would be victorious by entrusting himself to his Father), he would shatter the bondage of sinful arrogance that grips the human heart. From the radiant center of redeemed human nature, true community, justice, peace, and redemption could extend to all of creation.
For the Christian believer, the King has come, not to save us from our external, political enemies by acts of coercive power, but to save us from ourselves, by his sacrificial redeeming love. For the author and original readers of Judges, however, that was a hero story yet to be told.
So it’s my last day in Israel. I leave late Monday night, but Monday will be spent with sorting, organizing, giving away, packing, weighing, re-packing…obsessing and fretting over departure. So today was really my last day to “be” in Israel. So this afternoon I kept a date I’ve been meaning to keep. I went up to Hebrew University on Mt. Scopus and re-connected with an acquaintance there in the archaeology department and ended up re-connecting with some items I actually helped to excavate some years ago. By “helped excavate” what I really mean is, “I didn’t break them when I touched them!” The walk up to Mt. Scopus, from which Salahadin launched his assault on Crusader Jerusalem, was glorious, and walking down as the day faded into darkness, feeling my way in the dark down a narrow, steep alley threading down the saddle in the corner 
formed by the north end of the Mount of Olives and the east end of Mt. Scopus, I began to be…sad. Not sad to be going home! I can’t wait for the moment I see Angie, walk out onto our place, step into my house.
But I still felt wistful that this would be my last night out in the Jerusalem air. The last night I’ll talk about walking down the Mount of Olives. Walking past the southern Temple Mount excavations. The silence of the City of David. Through the Jewish quarter, alive and festive tonight because it’s the second night of Hanukkah and Jewish families are out enjoying themselves, celebrating their national integrity and freedom, made all th emore poignant by the recent conflicts, and remembering Judah “The Hammer” Maccabee, while, in my heart, the Christ child’s image is beginning to glow a little in anticipation.
I anticipate walking through the Zion gate for the last time, dodging the taxis that blow 
through that narrow, bent-axis gate, leaving little room for error, or pedestrians! I anticipate my last moment to pause, looking down a long alley at the end of which the Church of the Dormition looms, almost like looking down the Siq at the Treasury of Petra. Every time I pass it, I take a picture, hoping I’ll get it right. I never do. Tonight I’ll take the picture. But it won’t capture the moment. You can’t photograph this feeling.
Then I realize what I need to do. There is someone, or something, I need to visit one last time. I stop for some take-out, since JUC’s dining hall is closed, and with my supper in hand, I weave my way back through the festive families in the Jewish quarter to a quiet little enclave where a fence encloses a recessed little courtyard, where about 15 feet down is the “broad wall” of Hezekiah. It’s the first thing I ever saw in Israel that gave me absolute, unmitigated chill bumps of history-loving, Bible reading, pure awe. I’ve come here at least twice a week, just to look and ponder. I’ve seen old Hezekiah’s wall in lots of light, in rain, in blistering sun, with throngs of tourists gaping at something they don’t even comprehend, children giggling on swingsets in the apartment yards adjoining it; little kids running down into the wall to recover an erring plaything. With nobody around, but me, to whisper secrets to.
I’ve whispered a few back.
While pious Jews love to pray at the “wailing wall” built by that monster, Herod the “Great,” in the decades prior to Christ, I’d much rather pray at a wall built by a godly Hebrew king seven centuries prior to decadent, vicious old Herod. It still gives me goose bumps. I look down, not 15 feet, but 2700 years. It’s not the past. It’s the present, it’s just not as easy to see…except when I’m here.
So I eat my burger (kosher!) in the dark, Hezekiah’s wall silent, but alive with innuendo. Looking down, I spy a shadow nosing amongst the shadows. It’s my friend, Hezekiah! Not Hezekiah the King, but Hezekiah the Cat! It’s a little black cat who makes the wall his (or her?) home. I’ve seen Hezekiah (or, if it’s a she, “Rahab,” that other wall-dweller) many times. I stand there, hoping Hezekiah will give me a moment of poetry, pausing, looking back over his shoulder, meeting my eye in a knowing gaze. Connecting, as if to say, “Yes, I know you…”
But he doesn’t give me the poetry. He sniffs at a rock and fades into the darkness. Cats aren’t responsible for giving us poetic moments. But that’s okay. I’ve had plenty of poetry this night.
Good night, Hezekiah.
Both of you.
