In Genesis 1:2, the spirit of the LORD seems to be the breath of God (ru'ach). The breath or the wind of God hovers over the chaotic waters of pre-creation (cf. NRSV). It is not clear whether the spirit of God is personal or how it relates to God himself.
In Judges, the "breath" or "spirit of God" comes on people like Jephthah and Samson (Judg. 11:29; 14:6). These are not particularly righteous people, by Christian understanding. The spirit of the LORD comes on Jephthah right before he makes his famous vow that ends with him sacrificing his daughter. The spirit of the LORD comes on Samson enabling him to rip a lion apart as well as kill hoards of people. In each case the spirit involves empowerment to do various tasks.
In Samuel, the "moral neutrality" of the spirit is very clear when the spirit comes on Samuel as he in the process of trying to kill David (1 Sam. 19:23). The spirit of God in such cases seems to be an empowerment or, in Samuel's case, the ability to prophesy.
The connection between the Spirit of God and prophecy is also apparent in Isaiah 61, a passage that Jesus quotes in Luke 4 about himself: "The Spirit of the Lord GOD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted..." In its original context, this is a word from the prophet to the discouraged in Jerusalem after their return from captivity. They are told that God will "build up the ancient ruins" (61:4), a statement that indicates a great deal of time has passed since Jerusalem was destroyed in 586BC.
Yet what the Spirit is here is ambiguous. It is something that issues from God to be sure. In Joel 2:28-29, God promises that He will pour out His Spirit on all flesh after He restores Israel. On the Day of the LORD, the nations that have persecuted Judah will be destroyed, but those who call on the name of the LORD will be saved. Afterward all that remain will experience the Spirit and will prophesy, particularly those who escape in Zion.
The parallelism of Psalm 51:11 is helpful: "Cast me not away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me." The spirit of God is thus God's presence with the psalmist.
The picture that emerges is that the spirit of God is one of the ways in which He acts in people. He empowers through His spirit and prophesies by way of it. It is His presence in the creation. For the OT, it is not clear that the idea of God's spirit makes sense apart from the existence of a creation. Even in Genesis 1:2, it is present over the primordial waters.
In the New Testament, the nature of the Spirit is not much clearer, although the NT at points uses personal language in relation to the Spirit. Paul can speak of both the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ, but he is unclear whether these two are the same thing. My hunch is that they were slightly different for Paul.
There is the intriguing passage in 2 Corinthians 3 where Paul says, "The Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom" (2:17). I personally do not think that Paul is equating Jesus and the Spirit here. Rather, I think Paul is engaged in an allegorical comparison of Exodus 34 to the new covenant. The LORD in that story of the old covenant represents the Holy Spirit in the new covenant. Just as the LORD came to Moses with a glory that faded in the old, the Spirit of the Lord Jesus comes on believers in the new with a glory that doesn't fade.
If I were doing more research on this topic, I would look at Gordon Fee's new book on Pauline Christology and in Dunn's chapter on the Spirit in Christology in the Making.
The Spirit of course does many things in the NT, but our focus is on the "pre-existent" Spirit in this post. We have little to go on in this regard. Certainly Paul in more than one place speaks of God the Father, Christ, and the Spirit in a way that points to three distinct things (e.g., 1 Cor. 12:4-6; 2 Cor. 13:14). But if scholars debate whether Paul saw Christ as literally pre-existent, we could also debate whether he saw the Spirit as pre-existent.
One key question is whether the NT yet understands God to have created the world out of nothing, a topic we will visit next Sunday. It makes sense to suppose that as long as the material of the creation has existed, chaotic or not, Jews would have understood the Spirit of God to be present in and around it.
We have already noticed that John more than any other NT author makes the pre-existence of Christ explicit. Christ was there before the creation (John 17:5). John also is (I think) the only NT author to use masculine pronouns in relation to the Holy Spirit (e.g., 14:26). What is striking about this masculine reference is that the word for spirit itself is neuter, pneuma. We would thus expect grammatically for John to refer to the Spirit by way of neuter pronouns.
While John specifically states that the Spirit will not come until Christ ascends, this certainly does not mean that the Spirit did not yet exist at that time. We can probably infer that, for John, as long as there was "stuff" apart from Him, there was a Spirit to be His presence there.
Perhaps the dynamics of the Spirit of God being God in relation to the other can be extended in the manner of the western church to suggest that the Spirit does indeed proceed from the Father and the Son, by way of their very relationship. Such thoughts seem light years beyond the New Testament, but they do not seem to contradict it.
Showing posts with label LBT. Show all posts
Showing posts with label LBT. Show all posts
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Theology Sundays: The Pre-Existent, Divine Christ
The question of Christ's pre-existence and divinity moves us close to the heart of the question of biblical theology in relation to Christian theology. Christians believe that Christ was the pre-existent, divine, second person of the Trinity, "light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one substance with the Father."
However, there is some debate about exactly how the NT authors understood Christ's pre-existence and divinity. Although the majority of scholars believe John and Paul affirmed the literal pre-existence of Jesus, a significant minority sees this language as highly metaphorical, Christ as the embodiment of God's wisdom and his Word for the world. Further, is language of Christ's divinity an exalted expression of his royal representation of God the Father rather than an affirmation of ontological substance?
This raises the question: do we have to come to a particular conclusion regarding the original meaning of the NT on these issues in order to be orthodox Christians? Certainly this is the modernist evangelical position and, in a different way, it was the presumption of liberal scholarship of the modernist era as well. Evangelical scholars of course do not believe that the NT expresses a full blown Nicean Christology, but they would usually argue that the NT has a seminal Christology that is in continuity with later Nicene affirmations.
In theory, however, orthodox Christian beliefs about Christ could be true whether or not they were what the NT authors themselves were thinking. The biblical text itself can certainly be read in accordance with Christian beliefs. Does it matter whether this is what the NT authors actually had in mind with the words? Could God have intended more with the words than the original authors could have imagined, much as when Caiaphas said it was better for one man to die than for all the people to die? We smile because we see in these words a meaning Caiaphas himself could not have seen--that Jesus died so that God's people did not have to.
The earliest candidate in the NT for a statement of Christ's pre-existence appears in 1 Corinthians 8:6: "For us there is one God, the Father, from whom [are] all things and we for him, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom [are] all things and we through him."
Most scholars would see this comment as a reference to Christ's literal agency in creation. This conclusion of course depends on what Paul means by "through whom are all things." Jerome Murphy-O'Connor and James Dunn see this in relation to Christ as the one through whom God has reconciled all things rather than a reference to his pre-existent agency in creation. Nothing in the words themselves disproves this interpretation. The words in themselves could mean either!
It is perhaps most Christian to read these words in relation to Christ's agency in creation. Can we read the words in that way regardless of what Paul meant? The modernist evangelical tends to say no. But we can debate this claim. Certainly most Christians throughout the ages have not been a position really to ask or know how to go about answering this question. And the NT often does not read the OT in context.
The debate over the original meaning quickly gets us into a discussion of Jewish logos speculation. Philo's writings reflect a tradition of God's word or logos as the instrument through which God created the world and through which God acted in the world. We can even speak of a kind of specialized "metaphysics of prepositions" in philosophical circles where the expression "through which" was used to express the instrumental cause of something.
Since logos imagery is used elsewhere in the NT, it is as plausible as not that the places where Christ is said to be the one through whom God created the world was originally based on the idea of Jesus as God's logos. Passages other than 1 Corinthians 8:6 of this sort include
Colossians 1:15-16:
"He is the image of the invisible God,
the firstborn of all creation,
because by him all things were created ...
all things through him and for him have been created"
Hebrews 1:3
"Who is a reflection of the glory
And the stamp of his [God's] substance
And bringing all things by the word of his power"
John 1:1-3
In the beginning was the Logos
And the Logos was with God
And the Logos was God.
This one was in the beginning with God
All things through him came into existence
And apart from him not even one thing came to exist.
This imagery all seems to draw on a similar thought background. Hebrews' comment probably alludes to Wisdom 7:26, which refers to God's wisdom:
"She is a reflection of eternal light...
And the image of his goodness"
God's wisdom and God's word (logos) are closely associated in these Jewish traditions, as Wisdom 9:2 indicates:
You "made all things through your wisdom,
And by your word made humanity"
In the case of these texts in Colossians and Hebrews alone, it seems difficult to know whether the imagery is meant literally or highly figuratively--Jesus as God's wisdom in creation and as his authoritative word for the world. In the case of John, however, texts elsewhere clearly mention that Jesus existed "before the worlds began" (e.g., John 17:5). The question is whether John represents a new development in NT thinking or whether Paul thought this way much much earlier.
In discussions of Paul, the interpretation of the Philippian hymn seems determinative, and most scholars believe it speaks of Christ's literal pre-existence. We might note in passing that Christ's agency in creation is not evoked in the Philippian hymn. Passages about Christ as the one through whom God made the world imply pre-existence, but some interpret this language literally and others figuratively. Some of those who take language of pre-existence literally in Philippians still take the language of agency in creation figuratively.
The Philippian hymn states about Christ that
Although he existed in the form of God
He considered equality with God something not to exploit
But he emptied himself
Having taken the form of a servant
Having become in the likeness of humans
And having been found in shape as a human
He humbled himself
Having become obedient to the point of death
Therefore God super-exalted him
And gave him the Name above every name
That every knee should bow and tongue confess
That Jesus Christ is LORD.
There are a million breakdowns of the poetry here. I've omitted three portions of the hymn as potential Pauline additions. I remain deeply in doubt about the form of the third stanza. In my opinion, we will leave a discussion of the original meaning of the hymn with great uncertainties dispite colossal argumentation on all sides on many, many issues.
As far as pre-existence is concerned, the locus of the debate centers on what I have as the first stanza. "Form of God" is in contrast to "form of a servant," which leads me to side with those who see the issue as one of status rather than being "in very nature God" as the NIV translates the phrase. Dunn of course famously argues that form of God refers to "image of God" and thus depicts Christ as the last Adam. Most do not follow him on this interpretation. If the second line is to be translated as I translate it, Dunn's interpretation is eliminated.
Nevertheless, even going with "form of God" as a reference to Christ's royal status as Son of God might or might not imply pre-existence. "Taking the form of a servant" is something we all might reasonably do as we "have the mind that was in Christ Jesus." Shape is not evoked indisputably until the line "having been found in shape as a human." In short, the meaning of this passage seems uncertain to me in itself. The final interpretation will have a lot to do with what you bring to the text rather than the actual words of the text. And we simply do not have enough information on what Paul brought to this text to know for sure what the original meaning was.
When we as Christians affirm the pre-existence of Christ, therefore, we are affirming a belief of the church drawn most certainly on the Gospel of John as well as on the church's traditional interpretation of Paul, regardless of what he might have actually meant himself.
The question of Christ's divinity faces similar questions of pre-suppositions. As Christians we interpret a number of passages with Christian beliefs about Christ as the eternally begotten Son of the Father, begotten, not made. Again, it is not clear that it would be wrong for Christians to read such passages in this way even if the NT authors were not thinking in precisely the same ways.
Language of Jesus as Son of God, for example, evokes royal imagery from the OT. Psalm 2, 2 Samuel 7:14, Psalm 89:27, even Psalm 45:6-7 all referred originally to a human king. The language of Jesus as Son of God, Christ, and Messiah would not in itself, therefore, imply as much as we understand to be true about Christ. Acts 2:36; 13:33; Romans 10:9; Philippians 2:11; and Hebrews 1:4-5 all locate the timing of Christ most poignantly receiving these titles, including that of Lord, as the point of his exaltation to God's right hand, post-resurrection--not of the pre-existent Christ.
In itself, the use of "Lord" holds more potential implications in relation to "divinity," for Paul quotes passages about the exclusive worship of the LORD from the OT in relation to Jesus (e.g., Isaiah 45:23; Joel 2:32). Surely the "Name above all names" in the Philippian hymn is Yahweh, LORD. And John 8:38 surely indicates that Jesus is the LORD who spoke to Moses at the burning bush, "Before Abraham was, I AM."
Yet one can also argue that this is all highly metaphorical language of Jesus' cosmic kingship. The Philippian hymn ends with the qualifier that the super-exaltation of Jesus as LORD is still "to the glory of God the Father," and it occurs post-resurrection. And although Jesus is called God in Hebrews 1:8, the next verse disquishes Jesus as God from "God, your God." Even Psalm 110:1 distinguishes between the Messiah as Lord and Yahweh as LORD, and this verse is applied at the point of the resurrection (Acts 2:36; Heb. 1:4-5).
Larry Hurtado has argued vigorously that Jesus is worshipped in these hymnic passages in the NT, not to mention in Revelation. He argues for a significant break between Christianity and Jewish monotheism very early on. N. T. Wright and Richard Bauckham also argue for a kind of "christological monotheism" that we see in the earliest pages of the NT. But the usual verb to worship, proskyneo, is used of human kings as well as God. The consistent subordination of Jesus to God in the NT makes it quite possible that Hurtado's argument is overstated. And key texts from 1 Corinthians 8:6 to Ephesians 4:5-6 make a sharp distinction between the one God and the one Lord.
On these matters, the question of biblical versus Christian theology is posed most urgently. Must we demonstrate that the original meaning of these passages declares the faith of the later church in a literal way? The fact that the NT often does not interpret the OT contextually undermines to some extent this impetus of the modernist approach.
Perhaps the most important fact is that the biblical text in itself can be read in an orthodox way, regardless of the specifics that Paul and others might have had in mind. These specifics of the original meaning are uncertain to a very high degree, in my opinion. Of course both Arius and Athanasius invoked Scripture in the great trinitarian arguments of the fourth century. The Nicene Creed as it stands was forced to turn to extra-biblical categories to set the boundaries of orthodoxy.
As with the matter of Christ's pre-existence, it seems to me that regardless of what the authors of the NT themselves had in mind in the key christological texts, their original meaning, there is a "Christian" way to read these texts. This Christian way of reading understands Christ to be the eternally begotten Son of the Father, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one substance with the Father. And this reading does not clearly depend on the specifics of what Paul or the other NT authors actually had in mind when they wrote these things.
However, there is some debate about exactly how the NT authors understood Christ's pre-existence and divinity. Although the majority of scholars believe John and Paul affirmed the literal pre-existence of Jesus, a significant minority sees this language as highly metaphorical, Christ as the embodiment of God's wisdom and his Word for the world. Further, is language of Christ's divinity an exalted expression of his royal representation of God the Father rather than an affirmation of ontological substance?
This raises the question: do we have to come to a particular conclusion regarding the original meaning of the NT on these issues in order to be orthodox Christians? Certainly this is the modernist evangelical position and, in a different way, it was the presumption of liberal scholarship of the modernist era as well. Evangelical scholars of course do not believe that the NT expresses a full blown Nicean Christology, but they would usually argue that the NT has a seminal Christology that is in continuity with later Nicene affirmations.
In theory, however, orthodox Christian beliefs about Christ could be true whether or not they were what the NT authors themselves were thinking. The biblical text itself can certainly be read in accordance with Christian beliefs. Does it matter whether this is what the NT authors actually had in mind with the words? Could God have intended more with the words than the original authors could have imagined, much as when Caiaphas said it was better for one man to die than for all the people to die? We smile because we see in these words a meaning Caiaphas himself could not have seen--that Jesus died so that God's people did not have to.
The earliest candidate in the NT for a statement of Christ's pre-existence appears in 1 Corinthians 8:6: "For us there is one God, the Father, from whom [are] all things and we for him, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom [are] all things and we through him."
Most scholars would see this comment as a reference to Christ's literal agency in creation. This conclusion of course depends on what Paul means by "through whom are all things." Jerome Murphy-O'Connor and James Dunn see this in relation to Christ as the one through whom God has reconciled all things rather than a reference to his pre-existent agency in creation. Nothing in the words themselves disproves this interpretation. The words in themselves could mean either!
It is perhaps most Christian to read these words in relation to Christ's agency in creation. Can we read the words in that way regardless of what Paul meant? The modernist evangelical tends to say no. But we can debate this claim. Certainly most Christians throughout the ages have not been a position really to ask or know how to go about answering this question. And the NT often does not read the OT in context.
The debate over the original meaning quickly gets us into a discussion of Jewish logos speculation. Philo's writings reflect a tradition of God's word or logos as the instrument through which God created the world and through which God acted in the world. We can even speak of a kind of specialized "metaphysics of prepositions" in philosophical circles where the expression "through which" was used to express the instrumental cause of something.
Since logos imagery is used elsewhere in the NT, it is as plausible as not that the places where Christ is said to be the one through whom God created the world was originally based on the idea of Jesus as God's logos. Passages other than 1 Corinthians 8:6 of this sort include
Colossians 1:15-16:
"He is the image of the invisible God,
the firstborn of all creation,
because by him all things were created ...
all things through him and for him have been created"
Hebrews 1:3
"Who is a reflection of the glory
And the stamp of his [God's] substance
And bringing all things by the word of his power"
John 1:1-3
In the beginning was the Logos
And the Logos was with God
And the Logos was God.
This one was in the beginning with God
All things through him came into existence
And apart from him not even one thing came to exist.
This imagery all seems to draw on a similar thought background. Hebrews' comment probably alludes to Wisdom 7:26, which refers to God's wisdom:
"She is a reflection of eternal light...
And the image of his goodness"
God's wisdom and God's word (logos) are closely associated in these Jewish traditions, as Wisdom 9:2 indicates:
You "made all things through your wisdom,
And by your word made humanity"
In the case of these texts in Colossians and Hebrews alone, it seems difficult to know whether the imagery is meant literally or highly figuratively--Jesus as God's wisdom in creation and as his authoritative word for the world. In the case of John, however, texts elsewhere clearly mention that Jesus existed "before the worlds began" (e.g., John 17:5). The question is whether John represents a new development in NT thinking or whether Paul thought this way much much earlier.
In discussions of Paul, the interpretation of the Philippian hymn seems determinative, and most scholars believe it speaks of Christ's literal pre-existence. We might note in passing that Christ's agency in creation is not evoked in the Philippian hymn. Passages about Christ as the one through whom God made the world imply pre-existence, but some interpret this language literally and others figuratively. Some of those who take language of pre-existence literally in Philippians still take the language of agency in creation figuratively.
The Philippian hymn states about Christ that
Although he existed in the form of God
He considered equality with God something not to exploit
But he emptied himself
Having taken the form of a servant
Having become in the likeness of humans
And having been found in shape as a human
He humbled himself
Having become obedient to the point of death
Therefore God super-exalted him
And gave him the Name above every name
That every knee should bow and tongue confess
That Jesus Christ is LORD.
There are a million breakdowns of the poetry here. I've omitted three portions of the hymn as potential Pauline additions. I remain deeply in doubt about the form of the third stanza. In my opinion, we will leave a discussion of the original meaning of the hymn with great uncertainties dispite colossal argumentation on all sides on many, many issues.
As far as pre-existence is concerned, the locus of the debate centers on what I have as the first stanza. "Form of God" is in contrast to "form of a servant," which leads me to side with those who see the issue as one of status rather than being "in very nature God" as the NIV translates the phrase. Dunn of course famously argues that form of God refers to "image of God" and thus depicts Christ as the last Adam. Most do not follow him on this interpretation. If the second line is to be translated as I translate it, Dunn's interpretation is eliminated.
Nevertheless, even going with "form of God" as a reference to Christ's royal status as Son of God might or might not imply pre-existence. "Taking the form of a servant" is something we all might reasonably do as we "have the mind that was in Christ Jesus." Shape is not evoked indisputably until the line "having been found in shape as a human." In short, the meaning of this passage seems uncertain to me in itself. The final interpretation will have a lot to do with what you bring to the text rather than the actual words of the text. And we simply do not have enough information on what Paul brought to this text to know for sure what the original meaning was.
When we as Christians affirm the pre-existence of Christ, therefore, we are affirming a belief of the church drawn most certainly on the Gospel of John as well as on the church's traditional interpretation of Paul, regardless of what he might have actually meant himself.
The question of Christ's divinity faces similar questions of pre-suppositions. As Christians we interpret a number of passages with Christian beliefs about Christ as the eternally begotten Son of the Father, begotten, not made. Again, it is not clear that it would be wrong for Christians to read such passages in this way even if the NT authors were not thinking in precisely the same ways.
Language of Jesus as Son of God, for example, evokes royal imagery from the OT. Psalm 2, 2 Samuel 7:14, Psalm 89:27, even Psalm 45:6-7 all referred originally to a human king. The language of Jesus as Son of God, Christ, and Messiah would not in itself, therefore, imply as much as we understand to be true about Christ. Acts 2:36; 13:33; Romans 10:9; Philippians 2:11; and Hebrews 1:4-5 all locate the timing of Christ most poignantly receiving these titles, including that of Lord, as the point of his exaltation to God's right hand, post-resurrection--not of the pre-existent Christ.
In itself, the use of "Lord" holds more potential implications in relation to "divinity," for Paul quotes passages about the exclusive worship of the LORD from the OT in relation to Jesus (e.g., Isaiah 45:23; Joel 2:32). Surely the "Name above all names" in the Philippian hymn is Yahweh, LORD. And John 8:38 surely indicates that Jesus is the LORD who spoke to Moses at the burning bush, "Before Abraham was, I AM."
Yet one can also argue that this is all highly metaphorical language of Jesus' cosmic kingship. The Philippian hymn ends with the qualifier that the super-exaltation of Jesus as LORD is still "to the glory of God the Father," and it occurs post-resurrection. And although Jesus is called God in Hebrews 1:8, the next verse disquishes Jesus as God from "God, your God." Even Psalm 110:1 distinguishes between the Messiah as Lord and Yahweh as LORD, and this verse is applied at the point of the resurrection (Acts 2:36; Heb. 1:4-5).
Larry Hurtado has argued vigorously that Jesus is worshipped in these hymnic passages in the NT, not to mention in Revelation. He argues for a significant break between Christianity and Jewish monotheism very early on. N. T. Wright and Richard Bauckham also argue for a kind of "christological monotheism" that we see in the earliest pages of the NT. But the usual verb to worship, proskyneo, is used of human kings as well as God. The consistent subordination of Jesus to God in the NT makes it quite possible that Hurtado's argument is overstated. And key texts from 1 Corinthians 8:6 to Ephesians 4:5-6 make a sharp distinction between the one God and the one Lord.
On these matters, the question of biblical versus Christian theology is posed most urgently. Must we demonstrate that the original meaning of these passages declares the faith of the later church in a literal way? The fact that the NT often does not interpret the OT contextually undermines to some extent this impetus of the modernist approach.
Perhaps the most important fact is that the biblical text in itself can be read in an orthodox way, regardless of the specifics that Paul and others might have had in mind. These specifics of the original meaning are uncertain to a very high degree, in my opinion. Of course both Arius and Athanasius invoked Scripture in the great trinitarian arguments of the fourth century. The Nicene Creed as it stands was forced to turn to extra-biblical categories to set the boundaries of orthodoxy.
As with the matter of Christ's pre-existence, it seems to me that regardless of what the authors of the NT themselves had in mind in the key christological texts, their original meaning, there is a "Christian" way to read these texts. This Christian way of reading understands Christ to be the eternally begotten Son of the Father, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one substance with the Father. And this reading does not clearly depend on the specifics of what Paul or the other NT authors actually had in mind when they wrote these things.
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Theology Sundays: Justice of God
No full piece today, but some notes.
In the OT, I suppose the justice of God has to be judged by the covenants to which He binds himself. I'll have to think about whether I think there is any sense of universal justice to God in the OT. Frankly, God is God, El Elyon, the most powerful of the gods and the only legitimate God for Israel to worship. In such a case, justice seems to be God's vindication of Israel on those who dare aggress against her. Also God has certain items like His ark or temple or city that you don't mess with or face God's wrath.
God has also bound Himself to a specific covenant of blessing with Israel. In that sense hesed is His covenant people is blessing them when He said He would and punishing them when they don't keep their end of the deal. There are parts of the OT where punishment seems automatic. Uzzah dies apparently without divine deliberation.
But God can show mercy without anyone having to pay the price. There is no sense of penal substitution. The Day of Atonement goat takes the defilement and pollution of Israel away from them, it doesn't take on the guilt. And, in the end, God desires obedience rather than sacrifice.
In the NT, Jesus is a ransom and a sacrifice, but again, the NT has no sense of Jesus paying any mathematical equivalent of penalty. The Parable of the Prodigal Son indicates that God can forgive us on His own authority. His justice does not have to be satisfied legalistically.
Nevertheless, Jesus' death does show that God is just even though He has passed over previous sins. The desire to show God as just is therefore in the mix.
The question of eternal punishment raises the question of God's justice. Eternal punishment is infinite punishment. Is failure to accept God such a sin that justice requires eternal punishment? Perhaps it does.
In the OT, I suppose the justice of God has to be judged by the covenants to which He binds himself. I'll have to think about whether I think there is any sense of universal justice to God in the OT. Frankly, God is God, El Elyon, the most powerful of the gods and the only legitimate God for Israel to worship. In such a case, justice seems to be God's vindication of Israel on those who dare aggress against her. Also God has certain items like His ark or temple or city that you don't mess with or face God's wrath.
God has also bound Himself to a specific covenant of blessing with Israel. In that sense hesed is His covenant people is blessing them when He said He would and punishing them when they don't keep their end of the deal. There are parts of the OT where punishment seems automatic. Uzzah dies apparently without divine deliberation.
But God can show mercy without anyone having to pay the price. There is no sense of penal substitution. The Day of Atonement goat takes the defilement and pollution of Israel away from them, it doesn't take on the guilt. And, in the end, God desires obedience rather than sacrifice.
In the NT, Jesus is a ransom and a sacrifice, but again, the NT has no sense of Jesus paying any mathematical equivalent of penalty. The Parable of the Prodigal Son indicates that God can forgive us on His own authority. His justice does not have to be satisfied legalistically.
Nevertheless, Jesus' death does show that God is just even though He has passed over previous sins. The desire to show God as just is therefore in the mix.
The question of eternal punishment raises the question of God's justice. Eternal punishment is infinite punishment. Is failure to accept God such a sin that justice requires eternal punishment? Perhaps it does.
Saturday, July 07, 2007
Theology Sundays: God as Loving
It is sometimes said that God is a God of wrath in the OT but a God of love in the NT. This of course is not true, even if it is not difficult to see where the idea comes from. God is both said to be gracious and compassionate in the OT and is wrathful in the NT.
It would probably be fair to say that in the bulk of the OT, God loves Israel but is not particularly "loving" toward its enemies. Nevertheless, there are also hints of a broader view, such as we find in Jonah, Ruth, and legislation that is favorable toward the stranger in the land. And of course God's love for Israel does not keep Him from judgment either of individuals in it or of the nation as a whole. Judgment is not unloving in itself.
In Genesis, Noah found favor in God's eyes, but we find no mention of love for those who die in the Flood. God is sorry that He made humanity, which might indicate a hope to love all humanity (Gen. 6:6). God chooses and calls Abraham, and He is willing to show mercy on Sodom and Gomorrah if even ten righteous people can be found. But He does not find ten, and the cities are destroyed. His willingness to spare a large number for the sake of a few, however, seems to point toward a merciful dimension to God's character even though He has favorites.
In the rest of the OT, we find more than one perspective on those outside of Israel. On the one hand, Deuteronomy 7:7 indicates that God loves Israel and chose Israel in preference to all the other nations of the earth. God promises to defend Israel against them (7:19). Yet God also tells Israel "Do not deprive the alien or the orphan of justice... remember you were slaves in Egypt" (Deut. 24:17-18). The alien is also given from the tithe of produce collected in the third year (Deut. 26:12). These comments assume that there will be non-Israelites living with Israel, and it puts them in the category of the orphan and widow.
Other parts of the OT assume a completely hostile stance toward those outside of Israel. In Joshua, God rebukes Israel for letting the Gibeonites deceive them to get mercy, even though they apparently mean Israel no harm (Josh. 9). Conquered cities like Jericho and Ai are to be whole burnt offerings in which even infants and animals must not be spared. In Ezra, the Israelite males are forced to divorce the foreign wives they have married and put away the children of those marriages (Ezra 9-10). No regard is given for whether these women might be willing to join Israel's covenant. In these instances there seems little room for anyone outside Israel to be favored by God.
This attitude seems in significant tension with that of Ruth, where a Moabitess is free to join Israel. Also, the very point of Jonah's moral failure derives from an attitude toward Nineveh similar to that Joshua and Ezra espouse toward non-Israelities. Of course what is most striking in Jonah is that Nineveh is the nation that will destroy the northern kingdom. Its author could hardly not have known this fact. God is willing to have mercy on one of Israel's most bitter enemies.
Jonah is the point of the OT most on trajectory to the NT. It contrasts interestingly with Nahum's stance toward Nineveh: "The LORD has given a command concerning you, Ninevah: 'You will have no descendants to bear your name'" (Nahum 1:14). Psalm 137:9 similarly expresses that "blessed is the one who takes your [Babylon] babies and dashes them against the rocks." But for Jonah, "you are gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and full of mercy, and you change your mind about sending evil" (4:2). Nahum also says that God is "slow to anger" (Nahum 1:3), but does not mention the possibility that God might change his mind if Nineveh repents.
2 Maccabees 7 has a very interesting perspective on the way God deals with the sins of Israel as opposed to the sins of other nations. With the other nations, Maccabees proposes, God stores up his wrath until it has reached a certain point where He entirely consumes the foreign people. But with Israel, He punishes them as they go along and so never completely destroys them. Here God's love for Israel is shown even in the way God punishes them, in contrast to the way He punishes other nations with total annihilation.
It is of course in the NT that we get a more consistent picture of God as loving toward all humanity, not only Israel. And God's love is shown not just toward those who love Him by keeping His commandments, but also on the prodigal and on the sinner. There is mercy for the intentional sinner as well as for the unintentional one.
The OT of course has instances of forgiveness for intentional sin. David sins with Bathsheba and with numbering the children of Israel. In both cases he is able to find "atonement" and reconciliation with God. But Numbers 15 "officially" provides atonement only for unintentional sins. The sacrificial system is not meant to provide for so called "sins with a high hand."
Yet one of the hallmarks of Jesus' earthly ministry is his reclamation of the "lost sheep of Israel," those who were lost to the covenant: prostitutes, toll collectors, etc. Jesus never affirms the sins of such individuals, but he makes it clear that God wants to reclaim them. This love for the lost, for the condemned, extends in the NT beyond the lost sheep of Israel to the lost of the world.
Further, this love for the sinners of the world is cosmic in scope. "For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes on him will not perish, but have everlasting life" (John 3:16). Note that the comment is that God loved the world and sent His Son for our sake because He loved us. He is not said to send the Son because He loved Himself or for His own sake. Also, there is not sense here of Jesus coming for the elect. The impression is that Jesus truly came for all.
Romans 5:7-8 similarly points out how phenomenal God's love for His enemies is. Some might give their life for a good person, but God demonstrates His love for "us" in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for the ungodly, for His enemies. The implication is that God loves even His enemies.
Matthew 5:43-48 explicitly implies the same. There is no honor in loving only those who love you. God is "perfect," "complete" in this regard. He sends rain both on the just who love Him and on the unjust who don't. Since rain falls on everyone, it is clear that God loves even those who never respond positively to His gracious offering. We are likewise called to go the rest of the way and be complete as our Father in heaven is complete.
1 John 4:7-8 tell us that God is love and that Christians are to love one another because God is love. This is, of course, not a literal statement, as if you could put God's "cells" or "atoms" under a microscope and declare, "Hey, what do you know, God literally is love." This is a metonymy indicating that love is so associated with God and how God behaves that we can metaphorically say that God is love.
If omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipotence then tell us what God can do, love tells us what He will do. Love implies a number of other associated terms that depict how God acts. God is merciful, which means that He does not always insist that we experiences the consequences of our actions. God is gracious, which means that He is inclined to give us what we could never earn. He is slow to anger, which means that He does not necessarily administer justice to us when we deserve it--He gives us time to repent. And it is not just the elect, not just the friends of God who God treats this way. He shows His love for the whole world by treating His enemies this way as well.
It would probably be fair to say that in the bulk of the OT, God loves Israel but is not particularly "loving" toward its enemies. Nevertheless, there are also hints of a broader view, such as we find in Jonah, Ruth, and legislation that is favorable toward the stranger in the land. And of course God's love for Israel does not keep Him from judgment either of individuals in it or of the nation as a whole. Judgment is not unloving in itself.
In Genesis, Noah found favor in God's eyes, but we find no mention of love for those who die in the Flood. God is sorry that He made humanity, which might indicate a hope to love all humanity (Gen. 6:6). God chooses and calls Abraham, and He is willing to show mercy on Sodom and Gomorrah if even ten righteous people can be found. But He does not find ten, and the cities are destroyed. His willingness to spare a large number for the sake of a few, however, seems to point toward a merciful dimension to God's character even though He has favorites.
In the rest of the OT, we find more than one perspective on those outside of Israel. On the one hand, Deuteronomy 7:7 indicates that God loves Israel and chose Israel in preference to all the other nations of the earth. God promises to defend Israel against them (7:19). Yet God also tells Israel "Do not deprive the alien or the orphan of justice... remember you were slaves in Egypt" (Deut. 24:17-18). The alien is also given from the tithe of produce collected in the third year (Deut. 26:12). These comments assume that there will be non-Israelites living with Israel, and it puts them in the category of the orphan and widow.
Other parts of the OT assume a completely hostile stance toward those outside of Israel. In Joshua, God rebukes Israel for letting the Gibeonites deceive them to get mercy, even though they apparently mean Israel no harm (Josh. 9). Conquered cities like Jericho and Ai are to be whole burnt offerings in which even infants and animals must not be spared. In Ezra, the Israelite males are forced to divorce the foreign wives they have married and put away the children of those marriages (Ezra 9-10). No regard is given for whether these women might be willing to join Israel's covenant. In these instances there seems little room for anyone outside Israel to be favored by God.
This attitude seems in significant tension with that of Ruth, where a Moabitess is free to join Israel. Also, the very point of Jonah's moral failure derives from an attitude toward Nineveh similar to that Joshua and Ezra espouse toward non-Israelities. Of course what is most striking in Jonah is that Nineveh is the nation that will destroy the northern kingdom. Its author could hardly not have known this fact. God is willing to have mercy on one of Israel's most bitter enemies.
Jonah is the point of the OT most on trajectory to the NT. It contrasts interestingly with Nahum's stance toward Nineveh: "The LORD has given a command concerning you, Ninevah: 'You will have no descendants to bear your name'" (Nahum 1:14). Psalm 137:9 similarly expresses that "blessed is the one who takes your [Babylon] babies and dashes them against the rocks." But for Jonah, "you are gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and full of mercy, and you change your mind about sending evil" (4:2). Nahum also says that God is "slow to anger" (Nahum 1:3), but does not mention the possibility that God might change his mind if Nineveh repents.
2 Maccabees 7 has a very interesting perspective on the way God deals with the sins of Israel as opposed to the sins of other nations. With the other nations, Maccabees proposes, God stores up his wrath until it has reached a certain point where He entirely consumes the foreign people. But with Israel, He punishes them as they go along and so never completely destroys them. Here God's love for Israel is shown even in the way God punishes them, in contrast to the way He punishes other nations with total annihilation.
It is of course in the NT that we get a more consistent picture of God as loving toward all humanity, not only Israel. And God's love is shown not just toward those who love Him by keeping His commandments, but also on the prodigal and on the sinner. There is mercy for the intentional sinner as well as for the unintentional one.
The OT of course has instances of forgiveness for intentional sin. David sins with Bathsheba and with numbering the children of Israel. In both cases he is able to find "atonement" and reconciliation with God. But Numbers 15 "officially" provides atonement only for unintentional sins. The sacrificial system is not meant to provide for so called "sins with a high hand."
Yet one of the hallmarks of Jesus' earthly ministry is his reclamation of the "lost sheep of Israel," those who were lost to the covenant: prostitutes, toll collectors, etc. Jesus never affirms the sins of such individuals, but he makes it clear that God wants to reclaim them. This love for the lost, for the condemned, extends in the NT beyond the lost sheep of Israel to the lost of the world.
Further, this love for the sinners of the world is cosmic in scope. "For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes on him will not perish, but have everlasting life" (John 3:16). Note that the comment is that God loved the world and sent His Son for our sake because He loved us. He is not said to send the Son because He loved Himself or for His own sake. Also, there is not sense here of Jesus coming for the elect. The impression is that Jesus truly came for all.
Romans 5:7-8 similarly points out how phenomenal God's love for His enemies is. Some might give their life for a good person, but God demonstrates His love for "us" in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for the ungodly, for His enemies. The implication is that God loves even His enemies.
Matthew 5:43-48 explicitly implies the same. There is no honor in loving only those who love you. God is "perfect," "complete" in this regard. He sends rain both on the just who love Him and on the unjust who don't. Since rain falls on everyone, it is clear that God loves even those who never respond positively to His gracious offering. We are likewise called to go the rest of the way and be complete as our Father in heaven is complete.
1 John 4:7-8 tell us that God is love and that Christians are to love one another because God is love. This is, of course, not a literal statement, as if you could put God's "cells" or "atoms" under a microscope and declare, "Hey, what do you know, God literally is love." This is a metonymy indicating that love is so associated with God and how God behaves that we can metaphorically say that God is love.
If omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipotence then tell us what God can do, love tells us what He will do. Love implies a number of other associated terms that depict how God acts. God is merciful, which means that He does not always insist that we experiences the consequences of our actions. God is gracious, which means that He is inclined to give us what we could never earn. He is slow to anger, which means that He does not necessarily administer justice to us when we deserve it--He gives us time to repent. And it is not just the elect, not just the friends of God who God treats this way. He shows His love for the whole world by treating His enemies this way as well.
Sunday, July 01, 2007
Theology Sundays: Omniscience and Omnipresence
A number of passages in the Old Testament do not give us the impression that God knows everything, even if he knows a lot. Perhaps the most striking statement in this regard is when Genesis 6:6 says that God "was sorry that He had made humanity on the earth, and it grieved Him in his heart." If God knew that humanity would become evil all along, it is scarcely possible that He would regret creating them it at some later point. Although the original author probably did not, we as Christians should take this statement as an anthroporphism, the depiction of God by way of human characteristics.
Similarly, the very idea of God getting angry is difficult from any literal standpoint. Anger as an emotion implies reaction to something that has taken place. But if God knows all things at all times, then He can gain no new information when something occurs in time. At this point some individuals might turn to the very human distinction between head knowledge and experiential knowledge. Indeed, some suggest that God became human so that He could know the human condition, experience it.
But this is a preposterous suggestion. If God created the world out of nothing, then there is no potentiality of this universe that God does not know. It is not like some person in a kitchen who might coincidentally cook something good by the most outrageous ingredients and method. We did not invent the rules of chemistry whereby ingredients combine and come to have taste.
But if God made the world out of nothing, then He made all the rules, all the chemistry. He knows at the very least every possibility of this universe, including what the Devil feels when he perpetrates evil. God knows what it feels like for a serial killer to do the most heinous acts. All these things are the logical implications of creation ex nihilo. We must therefore conclude that a great deal of the biblical language about God is metaphorical rather than literal.
But how much? Recent days have seen the rise of Open Theism, an approach to God's knowledge that claims He knows every possible sequence of events in history. Further, it claims that He could also know every actual event but only at the cost of human free will. God therefore limits Himself willfully so that humanity can have free will.
On the one hand, Open Theism is much maligned, with most of it unjustly deserved. For example, Open Theism is not process theology, which believes that God is changing and evolving along with the world. Process theology does not believe that God could know every outcome the way Open Theism does. Open Theism believes He could but chooses not to so that we can have free will.
Indeed, Open Theism simply takes much of the biblical imagery straightforwardly. When the Bible speaks of God getting angry, the Open Theist can take such words largely for what they say. A "liberal" could not be an Open Theist, because the Open Theist takes the Old Testament at its word. It is the orthodox believer who must assume that these are less than literal pictures of God.
In Genesis 3, God at least "plays dumb" about what Adam and Eve have already done. Perhaps the author of Genesis even took God's inquiries literally. But the bulk of the Bible seems to assume that God at least knows everything that happens, not least because He is everywhere present and thus can observe it.
A number of Old and New Testament passages indicate that the whole world is exposed to God's observation. In Job 26:6 we are told that "Sheol is naked before God." Psalm 139:7-12 express a very similar idea when they indicate that we cannot escape God either in heaven or Sheol or in the farthest limits of the sea. Because God's spirit is everywhere, He can see anything we do and find us even if we try to escape Him.
Of course these ideas appear in the New Testament as well. Hebrews 4:13 speaks of how the creation is naked and exposed before God's word. 1 John 3:20 says that God knows everything, which in context is a reference to what is true about our hearts--even when we are unsure what is true about our own hearts.
These passages imply that God knows everything that happens in the world. Interestingly, however, in themselves they would not necessarily imply that He knows everything about the future. To be sure, the Old Testament indicates that God knows a lot about the future. He could scarcely inspire the prophets to predict the future if He did not.
On the other hand, prophecies sometimes have a conditional characteristic as well. Jonah preaches that Ninevah will be overthrown in forty days, but the repentance of the city changes God's plan. Jonah of course understood that this was the nature of the prophecy, and this is why he fled, knowing the character of God as loving and compassionate (4:2). The Old Testament does not seem to speculate whether God knew Ninevah would repent. It depicts God interacting with the world much as humans interact with each other.
In the New Testament, God's foreknowledge is heightened first off because the prophecies of Scripture are now understood to have taken place so long in the past. In the Old Testament prophets, fulfillment followed prediction fairly straight on. Now prophecies can take on the character of things God had planned from the foundation of the world. Further, there is a much heightened sense of predestination in the New Testament, which implies divine foreknowledge.
So the Old Testament is much more amenable to the idea of Open Theism than the New Testament is. The New Testament seems to have the sense not only that God is aware of everything that takes place within the creation but also that God knows everything that will take place. This is of course the orthodox position of Christendom: God knows not only everything that has taken place but also everything that will take place. To affirm this orthodox perspective, we apparently must assume that the greater part of the way the Bible presents God's interaction with the world is anthropomorphic, at least with regard to His transcendence.
We should end with a final note on Christ's omniscience. There are some passages in John that lend themselves to seeing Jesus as all knowing. The disciples affirm that Jesus "knows all things" in John 16:30. Characteristic of John, Jesus does seem to know far more than he does in the synoptic gospels.
But the synoptics do not portray the earthly Jesus as all knowing. Thus no one knows the day or the hour of the Son of Man's return, "not even the Son" (Mark 13:32). Mark thus does not understand Jesus to have been omniscient while he was on earth.
It does not seem unorthodox to suppose that Jesus did not "access" His divine omniscience while he was on earth. Once he returned to heaven, then, we can suppose that he reassumed His omniscience as the second person of the Trinity. Of course the biblical text itself knows nothing of such concerns, a reminder that an overwhelming amount of what Christians believe comes from the orthodox traditions of Christian history rather than from the Bible itself.
Similarly, the very idea of God getting angry is difficult from any literal standpoint. Anger as an emotion implies reaction to something that has taken place. But if God knows all things at all times, then He can gain no new information when something occurs in time. At this point some individuals might turn to the very human distinction between head knowledge and experiential knowledge. Indeed, some suggest that God became human so that He could know the human condition, experience it.
But this is a preposterous suggestion. If God created the world out of nothing, then there is no potentiality of this universe that God does not know. It is not like some person in a kitchen who might coincidentally cook something good by the most outrageous ingredients and method. We did not invent the rules of chemistry whereby ingredients combine and come to have taste.
But if God made the world out of nothing, then He made all the rules, all the chemistry. He knows at the very least every possibility of this universe, including what the Devil feels when he perpetrates evil. God knows what it feels like for a serial killer to do the most heinous acts. All these things are the logical implications of creation ex nihilo. We must therefore conclude that a great deal of the biblical language about God is metaphorical rather than literal.
But how much? Recent days have seen the rise of Open Theism, an approach to God's knowledge that claims He knows every possible sequence of events in history. Further, it claims that He could also know every actual event but only at the cost of human free will. God therefore limits Himself willfully so that humanity can have free will.
On the one hand, Open Theism is much maligned, with most of it unjustly deserved. For example, Open Theism is not process theology, which believes that God is changing and evolving along with the world. Process theology does not believe that God could know every outcome the way Open Theism does. Open Theism believes He could but chooses not to so that we can have free will.
Indeed, Open Theism simply takes much of the biblical imagery straightforwardly. When the Bible speaks of God getting angry, the Open Theist can take such words largely for what they say. A "liberal" could not be an Open Theist, because the Open Theist takes the Old Testament at its word. It is the orthodox believer who must assume that these are less than literal pictures of God.
In Genesis 3, God at least "plays dumb" about what Adam and Eve have already done. Perhaps the author of Genesis even took God's inquiries literally. But the bulk of the Bible seems to assume that God at least knows everything that happens, not least because He is everywhere present and thus can observe it.
A number of Old and New Testament passages indicate that the whole world is exposed to God's observation. In Job 26:6 we are told that "Sheol is naked before God." Psalm 139:7-12 express a very similar idea when they indicate that we cannot escape God either in heaven or Sheol or in the farthest limits of the sea. Because God's spirit is everywhere, He can see anything we do and find us even if we try to escape Him.
Of course these ideas appear in the New Testament as well. Hebrews 4:13 speaks of how the creation is naked and exposed before God's word. 1 John 3:20 says that God knows everything, which in context is a reference to what is true about our hearts--even when we are unsure what is true about our own hearts.
These passages imply that God knows everything that happens in the world. Interestingly, however, in themselves they would not necessarily imply that He knows everything about the future. To be sure, the Old Testament indicates that God knows a lot about the future. He could scarcely inspire the prophets to predict the future if He did not.
On the other hand, prophecies sometimes have a conditional characteristic as well. Jonah preaches that Ninevah will be overthrown in forty days, but the repentance of the city changes God's plan. Jonah of course understood that this was the nature of the prophecy, and this is why he fled, knowing the character of God as loving and compassionate (4:2). The Old Testament does not seem to speculate whether God knew Ninevah would repent. It depicts God interacting with the world much as humans interact with each other.
In the New Testament, God's foreknowledge is heightened first off because the prophecies of Scripture are now understood to have taken place so long in the past. In the Old Testament prophets, fulfillment followed prediction fairly straight on. Now prophecies can take on the character of things God had planned from the foundation of the world. Further, there is a much heightened sense of predestination in the New Testament, which implies divine foreknowledge.
So the Old Testament is much more amenable to the idea of Open Theism than the New Testament is. The New Testament seems to have the sense not only that God is aware of everything that takes place within the creation but also that God knows everything that will take place. This is of course the orthodox position of Christendom: God knows not only everything that has taken place but also everything that will take place. To affirm this orthodox perspective, we apparently must assume that the greater part of the way the Bible presents God's interaction with the world is anthropomorphic, at least with regard to His transcendence.
We should end with a final note on Christ's omniscience. There are some passages in John that lend themselves to seeing Jesus as all knowing. The disciples affirm that Jesus "knows all things" in John 16:30. Characteristic of John, Jesus does seem to know far more than he does in the synoptic gospels.
But the synoptics do not portray the earthly Jesus as all knowing. Thus no one knows the day or the hour of the Son of Man's return, "not even the Son" (Mark 13:32). Mark thus does not understand Jesus to have been omniscient while he was on earth.
It does not seem unorthodox to suppose that Jesus did not "access" His divine omniscience while he was on earth. Once he returned to heaven, then, we can suppose that he reassumed His omniscience as the second person of the Trinity. Of course the biblical text itself knows nothing of such concerns, a reminder that an overwhelming amount of what Christians believe comes from the orthodox traditions of Christian history rather than from the Bible itself.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Theology Sundays: All Powerful
The Apostle's Creed really has little to say about God the Father, except that He is "the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth." The Nicene Creed merely adds, "creator of all that is, seen and unseen." We have here no comment that God is all knowing, everywhere present, or that God is love or self-sufficient.
Divinity in the ancient world related primarily to two characteristics the gods had: power and immortality. The gods did not die, and they had a power that was much to be feared. When God tells Moses that He has made him "like a god to Pharaoh" (Exod. 7:1), God is saying that Moses has a power beyond the human that Pharaoh should fear. It is thus no surprise that the Apostle's Creed should mention that God is Almighty even though it does not mention many other attributes.
The fact that God is creator relates to His power. To say He is the creator of "all that is, seen and unseen" is to say that He holds authority and power over all things. The mention of unseen things makes it clear that it is not just the visible human domain that God rules. He rules over all spiritual powers that inhabit the space between earth and heaven, as they pictured the universe.
No one can question that God is powerful in the Old Testament. In the theology of Deuteronomy, those who serve God correctly do not suffer, although sometimes a group or family can suffer for the sins of their members. The deuteronomistic theology of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, and other parts of the Old Testament holds that loss in battle or life can only occur because of sin. The assumption is that God can defeat any other god, so if Israel loses a battle, it is because someone has sinned.
But interestingly, the question of why God doesn't simply destroy all the other gods is barely asked. It is assumed without argument that He could (Ps. 82), but the question of why He doesn't destroy them isn't asked. He clearly wins every encounter. Dagon falls before the ark. Baal's servants look foolish and eventually, dead, before Elijah's God. But God only seems to encounter these deities when they come to him in the shape of interaction with foreign peoples.
The hardships of the Babylonian captivity weighed heavily on this deuteronomistic theology. The generation that suffered did not see itself suffering for its own sins. "Our fathers ate sour grapes but our teeth are set on edge," went their saying (Jeremiah 31:29; Ezekiel 18:2). Psalm 44 records their sense of loss, "All this has come upon us though we have not forgotten you... If we had forgotten the name of our God... would not God discover this?" (44:17, 20-21).
Israel returned from Babylon with some new elements in their understanding of God's relationship with them and the world. Between 2 Samuel 24:1 and 1 Chronicles 21:1 we see the rise of the Satan as an agent of God who tests the loyalty of His subjects. Job now suffers not because of wrong he has done (as in deuteronomistic theology) but because his loyalty is being tested by the Satan in a wager with God.
The situation changes somewhat when Alexander the Great creates a world in which all peoples interpenetrate. Now Israel must take more seriously the relationship of God to the rest of the world. If there is only one God over all the world, then how is there evil in the world that resists His rule? The intertestamental period thus sees a number of new concepts emerge that will be foundational for the New Testament.
One is the proliferation of demonology. Now that the "gods" of the nations are no longer seen as gods, the language of demonology rises to take its place, grown on Greek soil. The next is the beginning of explanations of a "Fall." The community of 1 Enoch points to the offspring of the "sons of God" and the "daughters of men" in Genesis 6, from whose dead bodies the spirits of demons are born. By the time of Paul, Satan and Adam are recognized as the true culprits. Satan is no longer an agent of God but a more independent opponent.
Other circles, like that of Qumran, turn to concepts of predestination to explain God's sovereignty in the face of evil. Their small group becomes the only group that will be saved. Paul does not normally operate in the categories of the theology he expresses in Romans 9, but that chapter represents one path to explain the sovereignty of God in the face of apparent chaos and opposition in the creation. Everything that happens is orchestrated by God.
There is also the development of eschatology. The Old Testament by and large has no concept of history moving toward any particular conclusion. It looks rather to the resolution of whatever crisis Israel happens to be in at the time. To a high degree, even the Jewish writings of Jesus' day did not look for some cosmic resolution to the sin problem. They looked more to the restoration and political dominance of Israel.
However, certain apocalyptic movements such as Enochic Jews and Essenes did formulate Israel's "return from captivity" in more cosmic terms. The New Testament generally fits against the backdrop of this apocalyptic background. For Paul the resurrection will involve the liberation of an entire creation enslaved to the power of sin and elemental spirits (Rom. 8:19; Gal. 4:9). When Christ returns and all his enemies are finally put under his feet, "then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things under him so that God may be all in all" (1 Cor. 15:28). God's authority and power will then be without question. Thus although God's enemies may still be kicking, God is still almighty and only allows them their current force. The entirety of Revelation portrays in the most vivid terms that God wins.
As Christians, we believe that God is fully powerful. Satan is a joke compared to His power. Gnosticism in the second century threatened the idea of God's complete power by suggesting that there might be other powers that God did not create, as well as that the materials of the creation might exist apart from God. The Christians of the second and third centuries emphasized the doctrine of ex nihilo creation in response to such Gnostic claims.
Christians thus believe that there is nothing in the creation, seen or unseen, that God did not create, even Satan. This of course raises the problem of evil, but Christians have answers to these questions as well, questions we will consider later.
But if God created the world out of nothing, then there is nothing about this creation that God does not have power over. You cannot lift 1000 pounds unless you are 1000 pounds strong. And so to create a universe out of nothing implies that there is nothing that God cannot do in relation to this creation.
Divinity in the ancient world related primarily to two characteristics the gods had: power and immortality. The gods did not die, and they had a power that was much to be feared. When God tells Moses that He has made him "like a god to Pharaoh" (Exod. 7:1), God is saying that Moses has a power beyond the human that Pharaoh should fear. It is thus no surprise that the Apostle's Creed should mention that God is Almighty even though it does not mention many other attributes.
The fact that God is creator relates to His power. To say He is the creator of "all that is, seen and unseen" is to say that He holds authority and power over all things. The mention of unseen things makes it clear that it is not just the visible human domain that God rules. He rules over all spiritual powers that inhabit the space between earth and heaven, as they pictured the universe.
No one can question that God is powerful in the Old Testament. In the theology of Deuteronomy, those who serve God correctly do not suffer, although sometimes a group or family can suffer for the sins of their members. The deuteronomistic theology of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, and other parts of the Old Testament holds that loss in battle or life can only occur because of sin. The assumption is that God can defeat any other god, so if Israel loses a battle, it is because someone has sinned.
But interestingly, the question of why God doesn't simply destroy all the other gods is barely asked. It is assumed without argument that He could (Ps. 82), but the question of why He doesn't destroy them isn't asked. He clearly wins every encounter. Dagon falls before the ark. Baal's servants look foolish and eventually, dead, before Elijah's God. But God only seems to encounter these deities when they come to him in the shape of interaction with foreign peoples.
The hardships of the Babylonian captivity weighed heavily on this deuteronomistic theology. The generation that suffered did not see itself suffering for its own sins. "Our fathers ate sour grapes but our teeth are set on edge," went their saying (Jeremiah 31:29; Ezekiel 18:2). Psalm 44 records their sense of loss, "All this has come upon us though we have not forgotten you... If we had forgotten the name of our God... would not God discover this?" (44:17, 20-21).
Israel returned from Babylon with some new elements in their understanding of God's relationship with them and the world. Between 2 Samuel 24:1 and 1 Chronicles 21:1 we see the rise of the Satan as an agent of God who tests the loyalty of His subjects. Job now suffers not because of wrong he has done (as in deuteronomistic theology) but because his loyalty is being tested by the Satan in a wager with God.
The situation changes somewhat when Alexander the Great creates a world in which all peoples interpenetrate. Now Israel must take more seriously the relationship of God to the rest of the world. If there is only one God over all the world, then how is there evil in the world that resists His rule? The intertestamental period thus sees a number of new concepts emerge that will be foundational for the New Testament.
One is the proliferation of demonology. Now that the "gods" of the nations are no longer seen as gods, the language of demonology rises to take its place, grown on Greek soil. The next is the beginning of explanations of a "Fall." The community of 1 Enoch points to the offspring of the "sons of God" and the "daughters of men" in Genesis 6, from whose dead bodies the spirits of demons are born. By the time of Paul, Satan and Adam are recognized as the true culprits. Satan is no longer an agent of God but a more independent opponent.
Other circles, like that of Qumran, turn to concepts of predestination to explain God's sovereignty in the face of evil. Their small group becomes the only group that will be saved. Paul does not normally operate in the categories of the theology he expresses in Romans 9, but that chapter represents one path to explain the sovereignty of God in the face of apparent chaos and opposition in the creation. Everything that happens is orchestrated by God.
There is also the development of eschatology. The Old Testament by and large has no concept of history moving toward any particular conclusion. It looks rather to the resolution of whatever crisis Israel happens to be in at the time. To a high degree, even the Jewish writings of Jesus' day did not look for some cosmic resolution to the sin problem. They looked more to the restoration and political dominance of Israel.
However, certain apocalyptic movements such as Enochic Jews and Essenes did formulate Israel's "return from captivity" in more cosmic terms. The New Testament generally fits against the backdrop of this apocalyptic background. For Paul the resurrection will involve the liberation of an entire creation enslaved to the power of sin and elemental spirits (Rom. 8:19; Gal. 4:9). When Christ returns and all his enemies are finally put under his feet, "then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things under him so that God may be all in all" (1 Cor. 15:28). God's authority and power will then be without question. Thus although God's enemies may still be kicking, God is still almighty and only allows them their current force. The entirety of Revelation portrays in the most vivid terms that God wins.
As Christians, we believe that God is fully powerful. Satan is a joke compared to His power. Gnosticism in the second century threatened the idea of God's complete power by suggesting that there might be other powers that God did not create, as well as that the materials of the creation might exist apart from God. The Christians of the second and third centuries emphasized the doctrine of ex nihilo creation in response to such Gnostic claims.
Christians thus believe that there is nothing in the creation, seen or unseen, that God did not create, even Satan. This of course raises the problem of evil, but Christians have answers to these questions as well, questions we will consider later.
But if God created the world out of nothing, then there is nothing about this creation that God does not have power over. You cannot lift 1000 pounds unless you are 1000 pounds strong. And so to create a universe out of nothing implies that there is nothing that God cannot do in relation to this creation.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Theology Sundays: God in Unity
God is the unifying "character" of the Bible. From Genesis to Revelation, God is at the beginning and end of the story. Only Esther in its original form does not mention God. [1] Yet both Jews and Christians understand God to be behind its story, directing its course and vindicating His people. In the light of both canons, reading Esther as Scripture will presuppose God even though He is not mentioned.
The vast majority of the OT is henotheistic rather than properly monotheist. Henotheism is the belief that while many gods may exist, only one God is appropriate for worship. This God is not only the supreme God, but the God of Israel.
The NRSV captures the likely original of Deuteronomy 32:8-9 well:
"When the Most High apportioned the nations, when he divided humankind, he fixed the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the gods; the LORD's own portion was his people, Jacob his allotted share."
Here we have a picture of the highest God, El Elyon, whose proper name is Yahweh (LORD) apportioning gods to the nations. He assigns Molech to Moab; He assigns Dagon to the Philistines, and so forth. But then He, the highest God, assigns Himself to Israel. Here we have the acknowledgement that there are other gods, but the LORD is the highest God and the one that Israel is exclusively to worship.
This picture, however literally we are to take it, also seems to stand behind Psalm 82:
"God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment: 'How low will you judge unjustly...'
"I say, 'You are gods, children of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, you shall die like mortals...'" (NRSV).
And of course this perspective might also explain the curious wording of a number of passages: "You will have no other gods before Me" (Exod. 20:3) and "Let us create humanity in our image" (Gen. 1:26). The vast majority of the OT would fall into this category. When we see Elijah contending with Baal or Hosea decries sacrifices to Asherah, the prophets seem to contend with real evil forces.[3]
It is really with so called "second Isaiah" (40-55) that we encounter language of "pure" monotheism for the first time in the OT:
"I am the LORD, and there is no other; besides me there is no god" (45:5).
"Assemble yourselves and come together, draw near, you [Israelite] survivors of the nations! They [the nations] have no knowledge--those who carry about their wooden idols, and keep on praying to a god that cannot save" (45:20).
"To whom then will you liken God, or what likeness compare with him? An idol? -- a workman casts it, and a goldsmith overlays it with gold..." (40:18-19).
Christians and Jews of course would no longer want to use the word "god" in reference to the evil powers mentioned in the OT. Judaism itself at the time of Christ seems to have gone several ways in its conceptualization of these powers. The one path is that of the book of Wisdom, which like Isaiah 40-55 denies any reality behind idols:
"A skilled woodcutter may saw down a tree easy to handle and skillfully strip off its bark, and then with pleasing workmanship make a useful vessel that serves life's needs... But a cast-off piece from among them, useful for nothing, a stick crooked and full of knots ... he forms it in the likeness of a human being, or makes it like some worthless animal ... (13:11-14)
"[he] sets it in the wall, and fastens it there with iron. He takes thought for it, so that it may not fall, because he knows that it cannot help itself... (13:15-16)
"he asks strength of a thing whose hands have no strength" (13:19).
Paul apparently takes another Jewish trajectory, one that perhaps stands in greater continuity with the OT. In 1 Corinthians 10:20 he suggests that the one who sacrifices at a pagan temple is sacrificing to demons.
It is thus legitimately Christian to reconceptualize the gods of the OT as demonic forces subservient to God. Christians and Jews affirm that there is only one God.
The NT does not question the unity of God. Thus 1 Cor. 8:6 gives a sort of early Christian "creed" when it states that "for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist" (NRSV). Likewise, Ephesians 4:6 affirms that there is "one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all." Even Jesus himself in Mark 10:18 alludes to the oneness of God when he responds to a young man, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but one, God."
These passages lead us to one of the central questions of NT Christology. The oneness of God is not in question in the NT. But these classical texts of God's oneness seem to affirm it in distinction from Christ. So there is one God in 1 Corinthians 8:6, yes. But Christ is distinguished from Him in a different category, "Lord." There is "one God and Father of all" in Ephesians 4:6, but distinguished from Him in the previous verse is the "one Lord" of 4:5. In this regard 1 Timothy 2:5 is striking, "there is one God, also one mediator between God and mortals, the man Christ Jesus."
Of course these verses only represent one side of the coin. We also have passages like Hebrews 1:8, where Jesus is addressed, "Your throne, O God, is forever and ever." Similarly, Titus 2:13 speaks of how believers await the appearance of "our great God and Savior Jesus Christ." And while it is a matter of significant debate, one way to punctuate Romans 9:5 would render it, "Theirs [the Israelites] are the fathers and from them is the Messiah according to the flesh, [who is] God blessed forever, Amen." [3]
The Gospel of John of course is replete with statements of the oneness of God and Jesus as Son. We will discuss John's use of logos imagery in the next section, but we might at least note his comment that "the logos was God" in 1:1. When Jesus says that "before Abraham was, I am" (John 8:58), he seems to equate himself with Yahweh at the burning bush.
Indeed, there are a number of places in Paul's writings where Paul relates the title "Lord" to Jesus by way of a passage that is strikingly monotheistic in the OT. When Paul, perhaps drawing on an early Christian hymn, tells of God giving Jesus "the name above all names" and then alludes to Isaiah 45:23, what name can he have in mind but Yahweh? [4] Romans 10:13 also relates Joel 2:32 to Christ as Lord. Both Isaiah 45:23 and Joel 2:32 are passages that strongly affirm that God alone is to be worshipped. To apply them to Christ is radical, for it implies that he is also worthy of worship, like God.
Larry Hurtado and others have drawn attention to the worship of Jesus in the NT implied in passages such as these. [5] For Hurtado, this worship of Jesus is in itself sufficient to speak of Christianity already having parted company from orthodox Judaism. He speaks of the "binitarian" form of early Christian worship.
The book of Revelation of course is striking in the way that the Lamb is worshipped alongside God. A standard feature of Jewish apocalyptic literature is that when an angel appears to a seer, that person falls down on his face. But then, there is almost always a "denial formula," where the angel tells the seer to get up because only God is worthy of worship. Amazingly, Jesus does not tell John to get up in Revelation. He receives John's worship!
This worship of Jesus alongside God has led Richard Bauckham to speak of God including Jesus within His unique identity. [6] Perhaps a better way to express this phenomenon is to say that to worship Jesus is to worship God. The NT seems for the most part to subsume the godness of Jesus within the godness of God the Father.
Thus, when we return to Hebrews 1:8-9, we notice that while Jesus is addressed as God, the author is using the language that Psalm 45:7 had earlier applied to the human king on his wedding day. Hebrews 1:9 goes on to draw a distinction between Jesus as God and Jesus' God: "therefore God, your God, has anointed you [as king]." Applying divine language to Jesus thus relates to his cosmic kingship. As in the OT, language of the king being God's Son is applied to Jesus in a significantly expanded way.
The NT draws extensively on Psalm 110:1 to speak of Christ's exaltation to God's right hand as cosmic king. We notice here again that there are two Lords in play: "the LORD said to my Lord, sit at my right hand..." Paul's use of Lord in reference to Christ sometimes seems to draw on both of these Lords! As we mentioned above, sometimes he clearly relates LORD passages in the OT to Jesus as Lord.
In the sections that follow, we will explore the relationships of Jesus and the Spirit to the Father within in the oneness of God. But it should be fairly clear from our discussion here that our Christian beliefs on these matters owe a great deal to the unfolding of God's revelation in the church in the centuries following the NT. It is perfectly appropriate for us as Christians to read the Scriptures with these beliefs fully intact. But the original meanings of the biblical texts themselves are far from clear on the relationship between the unity of God and the divinity of Christ.
[1] Deuterocanonical Esther, the Greek form found in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox OT, has remedied this problem with prayers to God.
[2] While the Dead Sea Scrolls have largely confirmed the text of the OT as it has survived in the medieval Masoretic Text, there are a few places where they have clarified places where the Greek OT, the Septuagint, varied from the existing Hebrew manuscripts. Deuteronomy 32:8 is one of those places where the DSS have confirmed that the LXX is more original than the MT.
[3] On balance, this rendering would be quite ununsual for Paul, as Titus is.
[4] Bauckham
[5] One God, One Lord
[6] Bauckham
The vast majority of the OT is henotheistic rather than properly monotheist. Henotheism is the belief that while many gods may exist, only one God is appropriate for worship. This God is not only the supreme God, but the God of Israel.
The NRSV captures the likely original of Deuteronomy 32:8-9 well:
"When the Most High apportioned the nations, when he divided humankind, he fixed the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the gods; the LORD's own portion was his people, Jacob his allotted share."
Here we have a picture of the highest God, El Elyon, whose proper name is Yahweh (LORD) apportioning gods to the nations. He assigns Molech to Moab; He assigns Dagon to the Philistines, and so forth. But then He, the highest God, assigns Himself to Israel. Here we have the acknowledgement that there are other gods, but the LORD is the highest God and the one that Israel is exclusively to worship.
This picture, however literally we are to take it, also seems to stand behind Psalm 82:
"God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment: 'How low will you judge unjustly...'
"I say, 'You are gods, children of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, you shall die like mortals...'" (NRSV).
And of course this perspective might also explain the curious wording of a number of passages: "You will have no other gods before Me" (Exod. 20:3) and "Let us create humanity in our image" (Gen. 1:26). The vast majority of the OT would fall into this category. When we see Elijah contending with Baal or Hosea decries sacrifices to Asherah, the prophets seem to contend with real evil forces.[3]
It is really with so called "second Isaiah" (40-55) that we encounter language of "pure" monotheism for the first time in the OT:
"I am the LORD, and there is no other; besides me there is no god" (45:5).
"Assemble yourselves and come together, draw near, you [Israelite] survivors of the nations! They [the nations] have no knowledge--those who carry about their wooden idols, and keep on praying to a god that cannot save" (45:20).
"To whom then will you liken God, or what likeness compare with him? An idol? -- a workman casts it, and a goldsmith overlays it with gold..." (40:18-19).
Christians and Jews of course would no longer want to use the word "god" in reference to the evil powers mentioned in the OT. Judaism itself at the time of Christ seems to have gone several ways in its conceptualization of these powers. The one path is that of the book of Wisdom, which like Isaiah 40-55 denies any reality behind idols:
"A skilled woodcutter may saw down a tree easy to handle and skillfully strip off its bark, and then with pleasing workmanship make a useful vessel that serves life's needs... But a cast-off piece from among them, useful for nothing, a stick crooked and full of knots ... he forms it in the likeness of a human being, or makes it like some worthless animal ... (13:11-14)
"[he] sets it in the wall, and fastens it there with iron. He takes thought for it, so that it may not fall, because he knows that it cannot help itself... (13:15-16)
"he asks strength of a thing whose hands have no strength" (13:19).
Paul apparently takes another Jewish trajectory, one that perhaps stands in greater continuity with the OT. In 1 Corinthians 10:20 he suggests that the one who sacrifices at a pagan temple is sacrificing to demons.
It is thus legitimately Christian to reconceptualize the gods of the OT as demonic forces subservient to God. Christians and Jews affirm that there is only one God.
The NT does not question the unity of God. Thus 1 Cor. 8:6 gives a sort of early Christian "creed" when it states that "for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist" (NRSV). Likewise, Ephesians 4:6 affirms that there is "one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all." Even Jesus himself in Mark 10:18 alludes to the oneness of God when he responds to a young man, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but one, God."
These passages lead us to one of the central questions of NT Christology. The oneness of God is not in question in the NT. But these classical texts of God's oneness seem to affirm it in distinction from Christ. So there is one God in 1 Corinthians 8:6, yes. But Christ is distinguished from Him in a different category, "Lord." There is "one God and Father of all" in Ephesians 4:6, but distinguished from Him in the previous verse is the "one Lord" of 4:5. In this regard 1 Timothy 2:5 is striking, "there is one God, also one mediator between God and mortals, the man Christ Jesus."
Of course these verses only represent one side of the coin. We also have passages like Hebrews 1:8, where Jesus is addressed, "Your throne, O God, is forever and ever." Similarly, Titus 2:13 speaks of how believers await the appearance of "our great God and Savior Jesus Christ." And while it is a matter of significant debate, one way to punctuate Romans 9:5 would render it, "Theirs [the Israelites] are the fathers and from them is the Messiah according to the flesh, [who is] God blessed forever, Amen." [3]
The Gospel of John of course is replete with statements of the oneness of God and Jesus as Son. We will discuss John's use of logos imagery in the next section, but we might at least note his comment that "the logos was God" in 1:1. When Jesus says that "before Abraham was, I am" (John 8:58), he seems to equate himself with Yahweh at the burning bush.
Indeed, there are a number of places in Paul's writings where Paul relates the title "Lord" to Jesus by way of a passage that is strikingly monotheistic in the OT. When Paul, perhaps drawing on an early Christian hymn, tells of God giving Jesus "the name above all names" and then alludes to Isaiah 45:23, what name can he have in mind but Yahweh? [4] Romans 10:13 also relates Joel 2:32 to Christ as Lord. Both Isaiah 45:23 and Joel 2:32 are passages that strongly affirm that God alone is to be worshipped. To apply them to Christ is radical, for it implies that he is also worthy of worship, like God.
Larry Hurtado and others have drawn attention to the worship of Jesus in the NT implied in passages such as these. [5] For Hurtado, this worship of Jesus is in itself sufficient to speak of Christianity already having parted company from orthodox Judaism. He speaks of the "binitarian" form of early Christian worship.
The book of Revelation of course is striking in the way that the Lamb is worshipped alongside God. A standard feature of Jewish apocalyptic literature is that when an angel appears to a seer, that person falls down on his face. But then, there is almost always a "denial formula," where the angel tells the seer to get up because only God is worthy of worship. Amazingly, Jesus does not tell John to get up in Revelation. He receives John's worship!
This worship of Jesus alongside God has led Richard Bauckham to speak of God including Jesus within His unique identity. [6] Perhaps a better way to express this phenomenon is to say that to worship Jesus is to worship God. The NT seems for the most part to subsume the godness of Jesus within the godness of God the Father.
Thus, when we return to Hebrews 1:8-9, we notice that while Jesus is addressed as God, the author is using the language that Psalm 45:7 had earlier applied to the human king on his wedding day. Hebrews 1:9 goes on to draw a distinction between Jesus as God and Jesus' God: "therefore God, your God, has anointed you [as king]." Applying divine language to Jesus thus relates to his cosmic kingship. As in the OT, language of the king being God's Son is applied to Jesus in a significantly expanded way.
The NT draws extensively on Psalm 110:1 to speak of Christ's exaltation to God's right hand as cosmic king. We notice here again that there are two Lords in play: "the LORD said to my Lord, sit at my right hand..." Paul's use of Lord in reference to Christ sometimes seems to draw on both of these Lords! As we mentioned above, sometimes he clearly relates LORD passages in the OT to Jesus as Lord.
In the sections that follow, we will explore the relationships of Jesus and the Spirit to the Father within in the oneness of God. But it should be fairly clear from our discussion here that our Christian beliefs on these matters owe a great deal to the unfolding of God's revelation in the church in the centuries following the NT. It is perfectly appropriate for us as Christians to read the Scriptures with these beliefs fully intact. But the original meanings of the biblical texts themselves are far from clear on the relationship between the unity of God and the divinity of Christ.
[1] Deuterocanonical Esther, the Greek form found in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox OT, has remedied this problem with prayers to God.
[2] While the Dead Sea Scrolls have largely confirmed the text of the OT as it has survived in the medieval Masoretic Text, there are a few places where they have clarified places where the Greek OT, the Septuagint, varied from the existing Hebrew manuscripts. Deuteronomy 32:8 is one of those places where the DSS have confirmed that the LXX is more original than the MT.
[3] On balance, this rendering would be quite ununsual for Paul, as Titus is.
[4] Bauckham
[5] One God, One Lord
[6] Bauckham
Sunday, June 03, 2007
Theology Sundays
1. A Christian Biblical Theology?
At first glance, the idea of a biblical theology might seem pretty obvious. You just collect the teachings of the Bible and there you have it. Many Christians today use this kind of language. They speak as if the biblical teaching on so many subjects is a fairly straightforward thing--the "biblical perspective."
However, it does not take long to realize that a good deal of what passes as a "biblical" perspective is really a "Christian" perspective. For example, there is no "biblical" perspective on abortion. The topic is never mentioned anywhere in the Bible. And the virgin birth plays no role in the writings of Paul, John, or the vast majority of the New Testament. But it is immensely important for Christian theology.
During the Protestant Reformation, the Reformers drove us back to the Bible, even to "Scripture alone," in their attempt to prune Christianity of beliefs like purgatory and practices like the celibacy of the clergy. But they apparently did not realize how much of fundamental Christian belief crystallized after the New Testament period. Like so many Protestants today, they did not realize how much of what they called "biblical" was really "Christian."
Another feature of the Reformation was Luther and Calvin's insistance that we read the words of the Bible literally. [N] From the very beginning, many Christian thinkers had interpreted Scripture in other ways as well. From Paul to Augustine to the medieval church, Christian thinkers often found meaning in Scripture through allegorical interpretations. But when the Reformers insisted on literal interpretation, they opened a can of worms they scarcely could have imagined.
Reading the words of the Bible literally eventually led Christian interpreters to read them in their original contexts. The biblical books say they were written to ancient audiences. Reading them literally requires us to ask what those words meant in their original settings in history. So it is not at all likely that any ancient Israelite would understand the "we" of Genesis 1:26 as a reference to the Trinity, a doctrine that was not solidified until AD325 and even then only officially. The "literal" context of the "we" in Genesis is the ancient near east, where something like the divine council of Psalm 82 would be far more likely.
The end consequence of the Reformation drive to Scripture alone, read only literally, was ultimately the divorce of the Bible and Christian theology. [N] Bible scholars came to study the original meaning of the varied books of the Bible. We might have a book on Pauline theology, assuming that his theology was consistent on some basic level. We might have a "Deuteronomistic theology" of the book of Deuteronomy, perhaps also including the so called "Deuteronomistic history" of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings. But finding a unified theology of the Old Testament or an extensive unity in the theology of the New Testament has proved more difficult than the Reformers ever imagined--at least when you follow their charge to literalism through to its logical conclusions.
But all is not lost. We have seen in recent days a slow hedging on the insistence of a fully literal approach to biblical theology. [N] It is not that we must forget what the literal meaning of the biblical books is. But the onset of postmodernity has allowed for greater freedom to organize and appropriate those literal meanings in ways that actually go well beyond the biblical texts themselves.
For example, it is perfectly legitimate for a biblical theology to assume that the canonical books of Christendom are the group of books on which a biblical theology is based. This may seem obvious to those who are Christians, but there is nothing about the Bible itself that demands we focus on these particular books. Indeed, some scholars have suggested that we should look at the entire religious context of early Christianity even beyond these books, arguing that the very notion of a biblical theology is incoherent. [N] The time is ripe for us to acknowledge that our focus on these biblical books is a Christian approach, a focus that is perfectly legitimate for a Christian, even though it does not derive from the Bible alone.
Once we have acknowledged that we are constructing a Christian biblical theology, we have little reason to worry about the eccentricities and overreactions of the Reformation. Why not approach the biblical material from a systematic perspective, even though such a perspective is not intrinsic to the biblical texts themselves? We would not thereby ignore the literal, original meanings of these texts. But we would be free to organize them in a Christian way that is not the way they organize their own thought.
Finally, there are a number of issues where the biblical texts themselves have not reached a final answer on an issue, at least when they are each read literally in terms of their original meanings. The Trinity would be a case in point. Arius was quite able to argue from the biblical texts for an understanding of Christ that we now consider to be heretical. Even today, many splinter Christian groups with off center beliefs sometimes make ingenious arguments for their ideas from the biblical texts themselves.
Why not organize the biblical material on the presumption of basic Christian orthodoxy? In our exploration of God in the biblical texts, why not assume him to be omniscient, even when Genesis does not always portray him this way? Again, we need not skew the original meaning even though we are organizing and prioritizing the biblical thinking from the standpoint of Christian orthodoxy.
For our purposes, a Christian biblical theology is a systematic presentation of biblical thought organized and synthesized from the standpoint of orthodox Christian belief. It is a biblical theology in the sense that the materials are the actual meanings of the biblical texts. But it is Christian in the sense that it 1) limits itself to the books of the Christian canon, 2) organizes that material according to the categories of systematic Christian theology, and 3) prioritizes and synthesizes that material from a standpoint of Christian orthodoxy.
2. The Christian Canon
Before we begin to systematize biblical thought, the first question we must ask is what books constitute the Bible. From a Christian standpoint, the answer with regard to the New Testament is fairly straightforward. Since the fifth century after Christ, it has been the overwhelming consensus of all Christendom that the books of the New Testament include the following: four gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John), the book of Acts, thirteen letters of Paul, Hebrews, James, 1 and 2 Peter, 1-2-3 John, Jude, and Revelation. We accept these as the New Testament canonical basis for a Christian biblical theology, believing by faith that the Holy Spirit led the Church to consider these books the canon.
The matter of the Old Testament is more complicated, since there is no consensus on the precise boundaries. Certainly there is agreement on sixty-six of these books. Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant would all accept Genesis through Deuteronomy as the Law. In the Christian partitioning of the Old Testament, Joshua through Esther we might call "historical books." [N] Christians often refer to Job through Song of Solomon as "poetic books," although of course there is much poetry in the prophets. [N] Then Christians generally refer to Isaiah through Malachi as "prophetic writings." [N]
Roman Catholics and Orthodox of course agree that all of the above are in the canon, although they would include as well books Protestants commonly call the Apocrypha. For Roman Catholics, these include Greek expansions to Esther, additions to Daniel, Tobit, Sirach, Wisdom, Baruch, 1 and 2 Maccabees, and Judith. The Orthodox would add 1 Esdras. Here we have debate. On the one hand, there seems little doubt but that the consensus of Christendom for a thousand years was that these books were at least "deutero" canonical. [N] In other words, they were viewed to have at least a secondary level authority to the "proto" canonical books we mentioned above.
For this reason, it appears that both Luther's excision of them completely from the canon, as well as the "promotion" of them by the Roman Catholics at the Council of Trent in 1545, were both modifications of the prior position of the Church. A number of Protestant arguments against any relevance at all for them seem disingenuous. For example, although the Jewish canon at the time of Luther may not have included them, it seems quite possible that more than one Jewish canon existed at the time of Christ. Thus Jude seems to consider 1 Enoch, probably part of the Essene canon, as Scripture. [N] The canon that we currently call the Jewish canon, may very well have been more the canon of the Pharisees and their heirs than the definitive canon of Judaism at the time of the New Testament.
Similarly, a number of New Testament books seem to engage these books in the Roman Catholic canon, even if they do not cite them as Scripture. Matthew 11 seems to draw on material from Sirach 24 and 51. Romans 1 and Hebrews 1:3 both seem to draw on the book of Wisdom. Hebrews 11 probably alludes to a story that is most clearly told in 2 Maccabees 7. In short, Luther's concerns about these books seem anachronistic from a historical perspective. A more appropriate Christian perspective would be to consider these books deuterocanonical. They may provide generative ideas for Christian thinking, while not being fully authoritative.
So it seems appropriately Christian to focus primarily on the books commonly agreed on by all, Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Orthodox. Yet it also seems appropriately Christian to engage with the deuterocanonical books as well. With the limits of the canon identified, we are ready to address the actual content of the Bible.
At first glance, the idea of a biblical theology might seem pretty obvious. You just collect the teachings of the Bible and there you have it. Many Christians today use this kind of language. They speak as if the biblical teaching on so many subjects is a fairly straightforward thing--the "biblical perspective."
However, it does not take long to realize that a good deal of what passes as a "biblical" perspective is really a "Christian" perspective. For example, there is no "biblical" perspective on abortion. The topic is never mentioned anywhere in the Bible. And the virgin birth plays no role in the writings of Paul, John, or the vast majority of the New Testament. But it is immensely important for Christian theology.
During the Protestant Reformation, the Reformers drove us back to the Bible, even to "Scripture alone," in their attempt to prune Christianity of beliefs like purgatory and practices like the celibacy of the clergy. But they apparently did not realize how much of fundamental Christian belief crystallized after the New Testament period. Like so many Protestants today, they did not realize how much of what they called "biblical" was really "Christian."
Another feature of the Reformation was Luther and Calvin's insistance that we read the words of the Bible literally. [N] From the very beginning, many Christian thinkers had interpreted Scripture in other ways as well. From Paul to Augustine to the medieval church, Christian thinkers often found meaning in Scripture through allegorical interpretations. But when the Reformers insisted on literal interpretation, they opened a can of worms they scarcely could have imagined.
Reading the words of the Bible literally eventually led Christian interpreters to read them in their original contexts. The biblical books say they were written to ancient audiences. Reading them literally requires us to ask what those words meant in their original settings in history. So it is not at all likely that any ancient Israelite would understand the "we" of Genesis 1:26 as a reference to the Trinity, a doctrine that was not solidified until AD325 and even then only officially. The "literal" context of the "we" in Genesis is the ancient near east, where something like the divine council of Psalm 82 would be far more likely.
The end consequence of the Reformation drive to Scripture alone, read only literally, was ultimately the divorce of the Bible and Christian theology. [N] Bible scholars came to study the original meaning of the varied books of the Bible. We might have a book on Pauline theology, assuming that his theology was consistent on some basic level. We might have a "Deuteronomistic theology" of the book of Deuteronomy, perhaps also including the so called "Deuteronomistic history" of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings. But finding a unified theology of the Old Testament or an extensive unity in the theology of the New Testament has proved more difficult than the Reformers ever imagined--at least when you follow their charge to literalism through to its logical conclusions.
But all is not lost. We have seen in recent days a slow hedging on the insistence of a fully literal approach to biblical theology. [N] It is not that we must forget what the literal meaning of the biblical books is. But the onset of postmodernity has allowed for greater freedom to organize and appropriate those literal meanings in ways that actually go well beyond the biblical texts themselves.
For example, it is perfectly legitimate for a biblical theology to assume that the canonical books of Christendom are the group of books on which a biblical theology is based. This may seem obvious to those who are Christians, but there is nothing about the Bible itself that demands we focus on these particular books. Indeed, some scholars have suggested that we should look at the entire religious context of early Christianity even beyond these books, arguing that the very notion of a biblical theology is incoherent. [N] The time is ripe for us to acknowledge that our focus on these biblical books is a Christian approach, a focus that is perfectly legitimate for a Christian, even though it does not derive from the Bible alone.
Once we have acknowledged that we are constructing a Christian biblical theology, we have little reason to worry about the eccentricities and overreactions of the Reformation. Why not approach the biblical material from a systematic perspective, even though such a perspective is not intrinsic to the biblical texts themselves? We would not thereby ignore the literal, original meanings of these texts. But we would be free to organize them in a Christian way that is not the way they organize their own thought.
Finally, there are a number of issues where the biblical texts themselves have not reached a final answer on an issue, at least when they are each read literally in terms of their original meanings. The Trinity would be a case in point. Arius was quite able to argue from the biblical texts for an understanding of Christ that we now consider to be heretical. Even today, many splinter Christian groups with off center beliefs sometimes make ingenious arguments for their ideas from the biblical texts themselves.
Why not organize the biblical material on the presumption of basic Christian orthodoxy? In our exploration of God in the biblical texts, why not assume him to be omniscient, even when Genesis does not always portray him this way? Again, we need not skew the original meaning even though we are organizing and prioritizing the biblical thinking from the standpoint of Christian orthodoxy.
For our purposes, a Christian biblical theology is a systematic presentation of biblical thought organized and synthesized from the standpoint of orthodox Christian belief. It is a biblical theology in the sense that the materials are the actual meanings of the biblical texts. But it is Christian in the sense that it 1) limits itself to the books of the Christian canon, 2) organizes that material according to the categories of systematic Christian theology, and 3) prioritizes and synthesizes that material from a standpoint of Christian orthodoxy.
2. The Christian Canon
Before we begin to systematize biblical thought, the first question we must ask is what books constitute the Bible. From a Christian standpoint, the answer with regard to the New Testament is fairly straightforward. Since the fifth century after Christ, it has been the overwhelming consensus of all Christendom that the books of the New Testament include the following: four gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John), the book of Acts, thirteen letters of Paul, Hebrews, James, 1 and 2 Peter, 1-2-3 John, Jude, and Revelation. We accept these as the New Testament canonical basis for a Christian biblical theology, believing by faith that the Holy Spirit led the Church to consider these books the canon.
The matter of the Old Testament is more complicated, since there is no consensus on the precise boundaries. Certainly there is agreement on sixty-six of these books. Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant would all accept Genesis through Deuteronomy as the Law. In the Christian partitioning of the Old Testament, Joshua through Esther we might call "historical books." [N] Christians often refer to Job through Song of Solomon as "poetic books," although of course there is much poetry in the prophets. [N] Then Christians generally refer to Isaiah through Malachi as "prophetic writings." [N]
Roman Catholics and Orthodox of course agree that all of the above are in the canon, although they would include as well books Protestants commonly call the Apocrypha. For Roman Catholics, these include Greek expansions to Esther, additions to Daniel, Tobit, Sirach, Wisdom, Baruch, 1 and 2 Maccabees, and Judith. The Orthodox would add 1 Esdras. Here we have debate. On the one hand, there seems little doubt but that the consensus of Christendom for a thousand years was that these books were at least "deutero" canonical. [N] In other words, they were viewed to have at least a secondary level authority to the "proto" canonical books we mentioned above.
For this reason, it appears that both Luther's excision of them completely from the canon, as well as the "promotion" of them by the Roman Catholics at the Council of Trent in 1545, were both modifications of the prior position of the Church. A number of Protestant arguments against any relevance at all for them seem disingenuous. For example, although the Jewish canon at the time of Luther may not have included them, it seems quite possible that more than one Jewish canon existed at the time of Christ. Thus Jude seems to consider 1 Enoch, probably part of the Essene canon, as Scripture. [N] The canon that we currently call the Jewish canon, may very well have been more the canon of the Pharisees and their heirs than the definitive canon of Judaism at the time of the New Testament.
Similarly, a number of New Testament books seem to engage these books in the Roman Catholic canon, even if they do not cite them as Scripture. Matthew 11 seems to draw on material from Sirach 24 and 51. Romans 1 and Hebrews 1:3 both seem to draw on the book of Wisdom. Hebrews 11 probably alludes to a story that is most clearly told in 2 Maccabees 7. In short, Luther's concerns about these books seem anachronistic from a historical perspective. A more appropriate Christian perspective would be to consider these books deuterocanonical. They may provide generative ideas for Christian thinking, while not being fully authoritative.
So it seems appropriately Christian to focus primarily on the books commonly agreed on by all, Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Orthodox. Yet it also seems appropriately Christian to engage with the deuterocanonical books as well. With the limits of the canon identified, we are ready to address the actual content of the Bible.
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