Three Unrelated Things to Ponder

Here are three unrelated things to ponder.

A Slave Girl ... Reading Against the Grain

One day, as we were going to the place of prayer, we met a slave girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners a great deal of money by fortune-telling.While she followed Paul and us, she would cry out, “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.” She kept doing this for many days. But Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And it came out that very hour.But when her owners saw that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the authorities.

Over the years, I have tried to learn from +Jane and from the feminist theologians who read the scriptures against the grain. To read against the grain is to find the women in the text (or the absence of women) and to ask questions of the text in the light of the women in or outside the text. +Jane is very creative, and most of the readings against the grain that she shares with the Lindisfarne Community are her own readings. I find them very insightful and I have tried to learn from her. I am not very good at it and I am often surprised when Jane brings her readings of the text. Today I have tried, and to read against the grain is to find in the Acts passage a slave girl.

As so many of the women in the scriptures, she is unnamed. To be unnamed is to be inconsequential, of no account. She is a mere prop in the story. And she is a prop for the main characters who are men.

She is used by:

a) The spirits who afflict her

b) The slave owner who profits from her gift of fortune telling

c) Paul who casts out the spirit, not for her sake, but because he is annoyed that the girl is disruptive.

Once the spirit is cast out we hear no more of the girl and the story returns to the main theme of men bickering over making money, civil disturbance issues and squabbles over religion.

What happens to her? Does she place trust in God? Does she become Paul’s friend? Is she still a slave? How does her owner treat her? How does she feel? All is passed by in silence.

To read against the grain is not to arrive at conclusions: it is to ask questions and so I leave you with the questions to ponder.

The Household and the Individual

The man said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” Paul answered answered, “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” Paul and Silas spoke the word of God to him and to all who were in his house. At the same hour of the night he took them and washed their wounds; then he and his entire family were baptized without delay. He brought them up into the house and set food before them; and he and his entire household rejoiced that he had become a believer in God.

This passage is a favorite for baptists and non-baptists alike. The debatable issues are “household salvation” and “infant baptism.” The text suggests that if the jailer believes then not only he will be saved but his household as well. It also suggests suggests that as a result of his new faith his entire family is baptized. Presumably, that included the children.

Many years ago, when I was animated about such things and thought they mattered, with other Baptists I argued that the text should be read as “Believe on the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your household [all of you believe on the Lord Jesus, if some of you do not you will not be saved.]” If it is read the other way, that because of the jailer’s belief the whole family is saved, oh my! It undermines the whole evangelical scheme of salvation! That would never do, so it could never be a correct reading.

The second part was even more difficult to deal with (if you are convinced that Christian baptism is for believers after a conversion experience). The baptist take is that the whole family must have become believers based on the jailer’s testimony. When it says “family” is does not mean children, only those who could make "a decision for Christ"! The infant baptizers at this point merely raise their eyebrows.

What do I make of it now? Well, I think the baptist reading is a fairly clear case of having a conclusion at hand before evidence is presented. On the evidence of the story it would seem reasonable to conclude that when the passage was written, when a household patriarch believed (changed religion) that all in the family changed religion. To become a Christian meant to be baptized, so everyone in the family was baptized.

It is difficult for us to grasp because of our understanding of autonomy (that each person has a right to make their own decisions about such things as religion), but less difficult in societies and cultures that have not been influenced by the Enlightenment of the west and its understanding of the individual. Of course, it is still there in our rights of passage, be they infant baptism or blessing, or male circumcision: the parents are introducing their child to religion without the child’s say so. When the child is “old enough” the child makes its own decisions about religion. Yet, based on the passage it would seem reasonable that should a father in a patriarchal family change religion, all in the family do, or even further that in a patriarchal village, when the chief changes faith, the village does too. When the leader of a nation changes faith, does the nation follow suit? Does a Christian king or president mean the country isChristian?

I think we would struggle with that. But perhaps the seeds of the western understanding of individualism were sown by early Christian theologians who struggled with the ideas of social solidarity and personal faith decisions.

Christ Mysticism

I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

My third unrelated thing to ponder is the Christ mysticism of the Johannine community. Here there is the interdwelling of divine and human and the encompassing of the believers into this divine oneness. “I in you, you in me, they in us.” The first part of this was taken up in the nascent understanding of Trinity. The passage has been used as a basis for a Holy Trinity of perfect interdwelling of Father and Son (the Spirit being added at a later date, an afterthought perhaps). In the discussion of Holy Trinity and what is orthodox and what is not the other side of the passage was lost: that all of us are to be taken into that mutual interdwelling of God and Christ.

Of course, the mystics were not slow to see this and you will find it becomes the bedrock of their understanding of the spiritual life: that human beings can be taken up into the life of the divine. But the mystics in their time were more often than not considered heterodox. Only after their deaths (like most great artists) were they revered for their creativity.

So what do we have here? A remembrance of Jesus who had such a relationship with the divine that it was perceived as a oneness. Yet, a oneness of divine and human that it was not for the one alone but for all. And the promise remains for us: “I in you, you in me, they in us” the interbeing of all that is.

+Ab. Andy