Hoping and Praying for the Best May 27
Like many other people, I am hoping and praying that the "top kill" in the Gulf works. My dad's first job was on an oil rig.
Like many other people, I am hoping and praying that the "top kill" in the Gulf works. My dad's first job was on an oil rig.
What is happening in Louisiana is tragic (and they have had a hard few years). So we are praying that the well can be capped and that we can learn from this experience that short cuts in working at these difficult depths is not good stewardship of our resources. It is all too easy to assume everything will go smoothly in these difficult engineering efforts. We need to be able to work at these depths but we need to do so with extra care and backup. The cost is too great for too many to fail at this. We do have a calling to be responsible for the creation God gives us and the delicate balance in our creation. I often pause and think how unique the earth is in having life as it does with so many other parts of the universe uninhabited. It is an example of how God gifts us. We need to appreciate and take care of what God gives us to sustain life. That is part of what it means to be pro-life in my view.
4 Comments
Greg Baxter
Luke 16:22
Dr. Bock, what is your view of 'Abraham's bosom' in this text? And do you hold to the two compartment view of hades? BLESSINGS! Greg Baxter, Pastor Faith Journey Church, Lawton, OK
Darrell L. Bock
Luke 16:22
Not sure what this has tot do with the Louisiana oil spill, unless we think the spill is becoming like Hades for us! Nonetheless, here goes. Abraham's bosom is a Jewish way of referring to paradise or what we call heaven. Its relationship to Hades is discussed. The parable shows there is a canyon between the place of the unrighteous and righteous, the problem is that in some Jewish texts Hades is divided in a similar manner. So it is hard to be sure of the exact conceptualization here. So it is a fun discussion but not worth a debate.
Here is what I say about it in my Luke commentary:
16:22 The story switches settings. Time passes and Lazarus dies. His death is stated matter of factly in typical Lucan style [egeneto de, and it came to pass] and the infinitive occurs twenty-two times in Luke–Acts, only once in Mark, and not at all in Matthew; Fitzmyer 1981: 118). But death is not the end, and so the story continues. Lazarus is borne up immediately to Abraham’s bosom by the angels (other direct-presence texts are Luke 23:43; Acts 7:55; Schweizer, TDNT 9:647 n. 182). An angelic escort is a common Jewish image. In the Christian apocrypha, such imagery took on great detail, with pictures of angels doing battle over the souls of people who had passed away (Apocalypse of Paul 14 [Schneemelcher 1991–92: 2.720–21]), imagery that recalls Jude 9.
16:24: The rich man is in torment in Hades, the place in the OT (Sheol) and in Judaism where the dead were gathered (Ps. 16:10; 86:13). The righteous (2 Macc. 6:23; 1 Enoch 102.4–5) and unrighteous (Ps. Sol. 14:6, 9–10; 15:10) both reside there, though they are separated from one other (1 Enoch 22). However, 1 Enoch 39 seems to place the righteous in a separate locale called heaven (Creed 1930: 212). Thus, within Judaism there is some dispute about who inhabits Hades (SB 4:1017–19; 2:228; Josephus, Antiquities 18.1.3 §14; Jewish War 2.8.14 §163; 3.8.5 §375).
The NT shares this ambiguity, for Acts 2:27, 31 (cf. Matt. 12:40) states that Jesus was not abandoned or left in Hades after his resurrection, which implies that he went there. But Hades generally has negative connotations in the NT, since other parts of Jesus’ teaching suggest that only the power of death and judgment is associated with Hades (Matt. 16:18; 11:23 = Luke 10:15). If so, Hades comes close to equaling Gehenna, although technically Gehenna is the place where the final judgment of the unrighteous occurs (Creed 1930: 212). In the NT, Hades is where the dead are, while Gehenna is where they experience final judgment (Jeremias, TDNT 1:148–49, 658; Jeremias 1963a: 185). It is clear that the righteous do not end up in Gehenna. Wherever the rich man is, Lazarus is not there (16:26). As a righteous man, Lazarus does not seem to be in Hades in its negative sense, but it is not clear that he is not in a compartment of Hades (so Plummer 1896: 394; Arndt 1956: 365). Marshall (1978: 637) suggests that the distinction between the rich man’s locale and Lazarus’s is real but states it with some reservation (so also Fitzmyer 1985: 1132 and Grensted 1914–15). The point is that the rich man is suffering from judgment, while Lazarus is enjoying blessing at Abraham’s side. Their roles have reversed as a result of their journey into the afterlife.
Ivan Karel
Dr Bock. The form of this
Dr Bock. The form of this story is just parable, so we cannot find the exact conceptualization therein as you mentioned above. So to find the exact meaning of Hades is not necessary in this story. Could pls comment this. Best Regards Ivan
Darrell L. Bock
Form of Luke 16
Ivan:
The story as parable is figurative in spots (one cannot talk to heaven from hell, for example). However, the point made in the account: that (1) judgment is fixed and (2) that Hades is a place of torment and so place one does not want to go to is built on what Hades is seen to be, not from the form of the story. So we can tell some things about the afterlife from what is here in Luke 16, even if the account is a parable.