In response to John Spong’s letter this week (below):

If we want to play the Blame Game for the current economic mess, we ALL get some. The American electorate chose the government (President, Congress, etc.) over the last many decades that failed to enact the necessary regulations (according to some) and failed to enforce the regulations already in place that would have prevented this mess (according to others). But we elected ‘em—We The People. As for appointees (justices, fed chairmen, etc.)—we elected the folks who appointed them.

As for blaming Wall Street per se: these are Publicly Traded Companies: their stocks are owned by investors—investors who can vote in the stockholders meetings, and who can vote confidence by buying more shares and disagreement by selling their shares. Those investors include individuals trying to grow their personal 401Ks, to Pension Funds trying to grow money for the Teachers and Firefighters they represent. Is it really possible to draw a line between Main Street and Wall Street at all?

But it goes much farther than that. WE wanted the ARM mortgages so we could move into a house we couldn’t afford. WE were the mortgage brokers that winked at the fraudulent mortgage applications. WE loved the mortgage backed instruments that promised high yields with “virtually no risk!” (hmm). We all were perfectly happy with the state of affairs a couple years ago—we basically indulged in a Debt Binge (me too!), and now it’s the Morning After.

The bottom line: we the home-owners and we the stock-holders were perfectly happy with “Wall Street Greed” while house prices and stock prices were going up. No Moral Outrage then! All of a sudden, now that the “Wall Street Greed-Mongers” aren’t delivering the goods, NOW we’re indignant!

I’m just really bothered by “THEY’RE the bad guys and WE’RE the innocent victims”. To be sure, some hands are dirtier than others, but aren’t ALL of our hands sullied?

So now we’re clamoring for More Regulation—what else can we do? It will probably help in the short term. But in the long term, the problem with More Regulation is that there are always Loopholes. Given time, the geniuses on Wall Street will come up with yet another way of “creating wealth out of nothing” that is completely legal within the regulatory structure. It’s what We The People seem to want them to do—what we keep PAYING them to do—over and over and over.

I keep coming back to the Wisdom of Jesus. He didn’t march for change in the Roman Government. He didn’t organize Civil Disobedience against Herod. Instead, He spent His life campaigning for the Kingdom of God—and His vision of how we human beings relate to each other in that Kingdom—one constituent at a time. Then, as now, the real battle isn’t in Washington D.C., or on Wall Street—it’s in our individual Human Hearts. Until the Human Heart changes—one at a time—all the laws and all the re-re-regulation in the world are at best a stop-gap.

william zeitler

October 15, 2008

The Drama on Wall Street

President Ronald Reagan was fond of saying that the ten most frightening words in the English language are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.” However, these words sound really strange in the light of Wall Street’s panicked plea for the government to come to its rescue and to the rescue of the economy that is about to sink, perhaps has already sunk, under the pressure of the enormous greed and gross mismanagement that has occurred primarily in the housing market. This request for government help came at the initiative of free market Republican George W. Bush, working through his Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson, the former head of Goldman Sachs, which has until recently been the crown jewel in the diadem of American capitalism. The proposed plan, disastrously called a “bailout,” has the effect of nationalizing the American financial establishment in general and the American banking industry in particular. This was an almost unheard of, not yet even imagined, event in American history.

There was no time for critics to raise the question of how the economy got into this chaotic mess. The crisis was too immediate. Some things, however, were obvious. The Republicans, as the party of business, have always resented and resisted any federal regulation of business, and especially the banking industry, as “needless governmental intervention designed to strangle the entrepreneurial spirit.” On the other side of the aisle, the Democrats, as the party of the working people, have always mistrusted big business and its unwillingness to be regulated as tactics designed “to make the rich richer and to squeeze the common man or woman in a selfish pursuit of wealth.” That is the unspoken but real polarity that provides the tension in our political system. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

Human nature being what it is, business must have regulation lest self interest overwhelm morality. Excessive regulation, however, will strangle the goose that lays the golden egg. The regulatory functions are therefore generally loosened during Republication administrations and are generally tightened in Democratic regimes. That alone probably speaks to the necessity of having no party remain in power too long.

The present crisis seems to have had its origin in Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America” in 1994. By nationalizing the off-year congressional elections for the first time in American history with a platform of promises on which all Republican candidates ran, the Gingrich revolution swept into power and began to implement its program. Removing regulatory controls on American business was an item on its agenda. Later in 1999 Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, a former economics professor, achieved the deregulation of banks that allowed subprime mortgages with no down payments. The Democrats pushed to make capital available to the poor. The banking industry discovered that they could sell their high risk loans to other even less regulated entities around the world. So it was that the virus of greed entered the world’s economy. This plan worked for years as the housing market skyrocketed and housing inflation became the quickest path for Americans to increase their own net worth. Markets do not, however, always go up. “Irrational exuberance” finally runs its course, economies do shrink and the moment of truth inevitably arrives. The housing bubble finally exploded and its debris began to spread over all financial markets. Wall Street now refers to it as “toxic waste.”

Many factors assisted in the popping of this housing bubble. First, by deliberate government action, the dollar was allowed to decline. This lowered the price of exports and raised the price of imports, which helped America’s trade deficit. Most people did not notice unless they traveled abroad. There were, however, other unanticipated results. The price of oil was pegged to the American dollar, so as it declined the cost of a barrel of oil skyrocketed until $4 a gallon for gasoline became the norm. This increase in the cost of energy for all Americans squeezed other family expenditures and began a tightening of the belt syndrome. Credit also began to be reined in, and with it the housing market slipped more. Suddenly people recognized that the value of their homes had declined to the place that their monthly mortgage payments did nothing to increase their financial stake. Their equity disappeared. They could no longer sell their home for the price that they owed on their mortgage. So people stopped paying on their loans, and when the mortgage went into default they simply walked away.

Then the fact that the banks had sold these mortgages to other financial entities around the world came into play. Someone in India or China actually held a piece of your mortgage and they began to demand that their debt be made good. A ripple effect set in. More unsold houses were placed on the market. Prices plummeted further. Those who had regularly drawn equity from their homes to support a standard of living beyond their means discovered that not only was the cash cow gone, but the lending institutions wanted more capital. When it was not forthcoming, foreclosure set in. In time so much repossessed housing got to the market that prices sank even more and mortgages carried on the books of financial institutions as assets became liabilities. Bank profits declined and a crisis unfurled. First, Countrywide Finance, America’s largest mortgage business, went under and Bank of America picked up the pieces at fire sale prices. Next Bear Stearns went into bankruptcy and was absorbed by J. P. Morgan-Chase in a deal orchestrated by the federal government. Next Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, government subsidized mortgage lenders both had to be taken over by the government. Then Lehman Brothers, an investment banking business, was allowed to collapse, with its various pieces being cannibalized by others. AIG, the world’s largest insurance company was bailed out by government intervention and we witnessed the Secretary of the Treasury firing the CEO of a major company. In rapid succession Merrill Lynch was bought by Bank of America, Washington Mutual failed and its assets were taken over by J.P. Morgan Chase, the stock in Wachovia Bank dropped so low that Citibank swooped in, in buzzard-like fashion, to scoop up any remaining value, only to be muscled out by Wells Fargo, and finally Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs announced that they would become full service banks and allow themselves to be governed by banking regulations. That was the last straw, and so Wall Street overcame its opposition to government regulations and literally begged the government to bail them out with a $700 billion infusion of taxpayer capital. This was not the railroad industry or the telephone company that was being “nationalized,” this was the very heart of American capitalism being nationalized at its own request! Karl Marx could never have predicted so stunning a conclusion.

The free market wing of the Republican Party turned down the bailout proposal on the first vote. In response, the Dow sank 777 points in one day. The free market mentality blinked. A few cosmetic, but insignificant, things were added to the defeated bill to give the free market champions cover and it finally passed. Wall Street cheered the fact that the financial future of this nation had been saved by a government takeover! Other shoes then began to drop as new revelations showed levels of greed and market manipulation beyond anyone’s imagination. Capitalism had been deeply wounded, but the culprit was not some left wing conspiracy, it was the greed of the capitalists themselves. After a drop in the Dow of 40% the bottom has not yet been found. Some results, however, are clear, among them are the following:

1. The party is over, at least for a while, for Wall Street greed. CEO contracts that allowed them to drive their companies into bankruptcy while escaping with golden parachutes and enormous year end bonuses will be a thing of the past. Year end bonuses and golden parachutes will in the future be harder to get and will be subjected to increased tax rates.
2. Regulation of banking and financial institutions is now back in vogue, driven by public demand, and it will be tighter than usual.
3. This crisis will probably elect Barack Obama president. Senator McCain has looked particularly inept during the crisis. Announcing that the economy was fundamentally strong just days before the financial collapse, he looked like Herbert Hoover. Trying to cover that mistake he claimed that what he meant was that the “American workers are fundamentally sound.” Even when this mantra got repeated by surrogates like Governor Mitt Romney and Mayor Rudy Giuliani, this spin stretched credibility beyond the breaking point. Then Senator McCain “suspended” his campaign to fly into Washington to “rescue” the plan that was then actually voted down by two thirds of the members of his own party. Later attempts to spin that were about as believable as his “soundness of the American workers” idea. All Senator Obama had to do was to appear competent and he became a winner by comparison. He managed that quite well.

The potential collapse of Wall Street was suddenly high drama on Main Street. It was also scary economics. It proved, if ever there was much doubt, that the real issue in politics is not ideology, but power. People will do anything and promise anything to be elected. As disillusioning as it is, Republicans are now the party of big deficits, big government spending projects, no balanced budget in sight for at least half a century and now business bailouts by the federal government. If one lives long enough, one sees everything.

William McKinley, where are you now that we need you?

–John Shelby Spong

I have to confess that Dr. Spong’s article this week (a copy below) bothered me mightily. It bothered me because, although I agree with the basic thrust of it (and ‘Progressive Christianity’ in general), in my opinion it very much resorts to demonizing folks by innuendo and “facts that ain’t necessarily so”. Aren’t those precisely some of the practices of Extreme Right Christianity against which we so firmly take a stand?

For example, Spong’s discussion of Matt 1:23 quoting Is.7:14 “behold a virgin shall conceive”:

>Matthew clearly misused this text, whether by design or by mistake we will never know. First, he did not quote Isaiah accurately. [bold mine]

Oops! The author of Matthew wasn’t quoting the Hebrew Scriptures, he is in fact quoting the Septuagint WORD FOR WORD. (That’s quoting Isaiah pretty darn accurately.)

The Septuagint is a translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek done about 300 BCE, in common use and generally well regarded in the 1st century. (Tradition holds that it was translated by seventy scholars, so ‘Septuagint’ is frequently abbreviated as ‘LXX’ in the literature). Many (but not all) quotes from the Hebrew Scriptures in the Greek New Testament are from the Septuagint. It is not at all clear from the historical data that every Jew—or even every devout Jew—in Palestine necessarily knew Hebrew. In Biblical Studies, the Septuagint is an essential document for anyone relating the Greek New Testament to the Hebrew Scriptures. And they’re easy to come by: I got mine on amazon.com! (check it out)

So if you want to ‘blame’ someone, it really would have to be the Septuagint translators. Are they ‘blameworthy’? Holladay ‘A Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the O.T.‘ (check it out) is a current standard, it is informed by the Dead Sea scrolls and the Ugaritic discoveries of the 20th century that have so dramatically expanded our understanding of ancient Hebrew. It gives the meaning of the Hebrew word here עלם (”-aLMaH” using Israeli transliteration, pronounced roughly “all-MAH”) as: “girl (of marriageable age), young woman (until the birth of first child).” Hmm. Is ‘virgin’ such a big leap?

The Septuagint translators (300 years before Christ or Matthew, and thus with no ‘virgin birth’ doctrine to defend or deny) translated this Hebrew word “-aLMaH” (’young woman’) with the Greek word παρθενος (PARTHENOS) which also means ‘young woman’ and/or ‘virgin’ specifically. In three heavyweight Greek Lexicons we have for PARTHENOS:

“a young woman of marriageable age, w. or without focus on virginity…” (BDAG, check it out)

“a person who has not as yet married (and possibly implying virginity)—‘unmarried person’…” (Louw-Nida, 34:77, check it out)

“1. maiden, girl, … virgin, … 2. of unmarried women who are not virgins …” (Liddell-Scott, check it out)

My point is that there is STILL ambiguity here—according to scholars to have devoted their lives full-time to these questions. Perhaps ‘maiden’ is a better English gloss (’translation’) for PARTHENOS since ‘maiden’ denotes ‘young girl’ but also has the connotation of ‘virginity’. In any event, PARTHENOS was a reasonable choice on the part of the Septuagint translators.

So one might say that technically a girl would be a “PARTHENOS” until she was married, and an “-aLMaH” until her first child was born. In the culture of that day, that gap would have been as short as could be managed. How could the Septuagint translators possibly foresee that FOUR HUNDRED YEARS LATER the subtle difference between “-aLMaH” and “PARTHENOS” would turn out to be a Big Thing?

Add to this the cultural context for the author of Matthew that—of course important people like Caesar and Alexander the Great (and the Christ) were ‘virgin born’—and it’s easier to see how he might have been predisposed to see ‘virginity’ in PARTHENOS.

The author of Matthew apparently used what was an authoritative translation available to him, and reading this passage through his own Cultural Lens, read ‘virgin’ as the intent of PARTHENOS (after all, “secondary” meanings are sometimes what the author of a text really intends!), which would have been entirely natural given his cultural context.

All of this is a far cry from “Matthew clearly misused this text, whether by design or by mistake we will never know. First, he did not quote Isaiah accurately.” More like: given his cultural context and the Septuagint before him, perhaps his was not so unreasonable a reading.

Pressing on…

>The facts are that neither Paul, who wrote between 51–64, nor Mark, written in the early 70s, had ever heard of this virgin birth tradition.

How can we know for “a “fact” what Paul or Mark “had ever heard of“? Heck, I don’t even know what my own wife has ‘ever heard of‘, much less some stranger 2000 years ago! The argument that “nothing has survived in which Paul mentions Jesus’ virgin birth, therefore we know for ‘a fact’ that Paul never even heard of the concept”—hmm, call me skeptical about that logic! (Actually, this seems to me to be an example of the “argument from silence” fallacy.)

>the Christian Church has known of this mistake since the middle years of the second century, when Trypho the Jew pointed it out to Justin Martyr

Once again, remember their historical context! Communication and travel weren’t easy. And just because Trypho the Jew discussed something with Justin Martyr hardly means that “The Christian Church” everywhere and for all the ages knew about it. And Justin Martyr’s “books” would have been hand-copied and distributed on donkey back—hardly a situation guaranteeing universal distribution throughout Christendom. Justyn Martyr (100–165) was Just Another Church Father—not the Pope or über-Church-person at all! In fact, a far larger debate about the Septuagint was going on between Jews and Christians by this point:

“The Christians justifiably maintained that this rendering [PARTHENOS in Matt 1:23] originated from the old Jewish translators themselves, whereas the Jews with equal justification rejected it as being inaccurate. The points at issue were, however, in part, a mere matter of Christian additions, introduced into the LXX [the Septuagint] merely by the naive lack of discrimination shown by the early Christians, as was, for instance, the case with regard to Ps. XCV:10, in which hO KURIOS EBASILEUSEN ['the Lord reigns'] was supplemented by APO XULOU ['from the cross']. These words “From the Cross” were regarded by Justin Martyr as so evidently belonging to the original text of the Bible, that he was able, in all sincerity, to accuse the Jews of having maliciously expunged them.” (Septuaginta, Rahlfs, I:xxiii ff.)

WE have the benefit of thousands of ancient manuscripts and papyri nicely collated by august boards of scholars now armed with computers, beautifully published en masse and distributed around the world economically. NOW we have the data to sort out textual questions. And what was available to Justin Martyr? Wouldn’t he be comparing a hand-copied Septuagint, a hand-copied Matthew and a hand-copied Hebrew Bible? Is it so unreasonable that Justin Martyr might doubt Trypho the Jew with so little to go on?

I’m not concerned about nit-picking details (except when it seems to me someone is trying to use ’so-called facts’ to belittle someone else); mostly I am concerned about the TONE OF DISCOURSE. Whatever the origins of the Virgin Birth narrative, it is also true that Matthew preserves numerous sayings of Jesus that are not found in the other Gospels—like THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT! We owe the author of Matthew a tremendous debt of gratitude!

So the author of Matthew read Isaiah 7:14 through his own Cultural Lens. And we don’t?!?

Why are ad hominem attacks necessary at all? Why dismiss the author of Matthew with the innuendo that he was careless or deliberately misleading? Why ‘demonize’ him at all? Or Justin Martyr? Or anyone else?

Isn’t this precisely one of the practices we abhor in Extreme Right Christianity?

Instead, isn’t it better to understand the author of Matthew in his cultural context? (Like we too aren’t constrained by our own?) Or at least keep in mind that we’ll never know all that informed his choices? Isn’t it better to understand how WE might have made the same choices had we been in his sandals? Doesn’t that make it easier to have compassion and respect for him? (And for ALL our ‘neighbors’?) To RESPECTFULLY disagree with him with some SYMPATHY for his views? (And with ALL our ‘neighbors’?) And to be grateful for the Great Gift which he bequeathed to us—warts and all? (And to honor and be grateful for ALL the blessings which our ‘neighbors’ bring to our lives?)

Isn’t this what “Progressive Christianity” is supposed to be about?

“I desired compassion and not religious observances.” (Matthew 9:13, quoting Jesus, quoting Hosea.)

william zeitler

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September 25, 2008

Bernard Baruch, a Jewish American from Camden, South Carolina, was well known in the first half of the 20th century as the unofficial advisor to Presidents. He played key roles in the think tanks of Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. As the son of a surgeon who served on the staff of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, dealing with power seemed to come naturally to him. David Gergen, a native of Durham, North Carolina, played a similar role in American history in the last half of the 20th century as an advisor to Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, George H. W. Bush and Clinton. Baruch and Gergen are representatives of that rare ability to ride a long political tide and to provide objective analysis in the midst of partisan conflict and thus to guide the ship of state through choppy waters.

The biblical figure we call “I Isaiah” played a similar role in the ancient world. His writings are found in Isaiah, chapters 1-39. His life spanned the reigns of four monarchs who ruled in Jerusalem. Kings Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, according to Old Testament scholar William F. Albright, ruled between 783-687 BCE, a total of 96 years. Isaiah was center stage for more than 50 of them, a tribute to his longevity. He emerged into public view, he says, “In the year that King Uzziah died” and he lived through one of the most difficult periods of Jewish history.

The great power abroad in those days was Assyria. This warlike nation had succeeded in conquering or reducing to vassalage status most of the nations in the Middle East. It was the Assyrians who in 721 BCE destroyed the Northern Kingdom of the Jews, known as Israel, and deported its people from their land for resettlement in the Assyrian Empire, from whence they never returned. They became known as the ten lost tribes of Israel and, despite the mythology that developed over the years with people claiming to be descendants of these “Lost Tribes,” the fact is that these Jews simply disappeared into the DNA of the Middle East. It was the same fate that had befallen the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Amalekites and the Edomites before them.

The Prophet Isaiah may himself have been a member of the royal family, all of whom were descendants of King David. He certainly shared their life style, educational background, values and perspectives. Perhaps it was this “blood relative” connection that provided the doorway through which he walked into his prophetic and perhaps priestly career in the upper echelons of political power in Jerusalem.

A number of passages in Isaiah have entered the consciousness of the western world sufficiently to be familiar to many people. Among them is his oracle about whether or not God was moved by ritualistic activity and sacrifices. In chapter 1, Isaiah writes: