Pete Enns has graciously agreed to answer a few questions these next few days. He is busy finishing up his commentary on Ecclesiastes, so he'll have to slip in such vanity as this in its season. P.S. A living blog is better than a dead line (of commentary).
1. Give us a snapshot of who you are and where you are at in your pilgrimage, just in case someone has stumbled on this blog and has never heard of you.
Academically, I graduated from Messiah College in 1982 (Behavior Science), WTS in 1989 (MDiv), and Harvard University in 1994 (PhD, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations). I think it is safe to say that much of my academic journey has been a process of synthesizing these (and other) influences in my life.
If one were to read some of my writings with that in mind, some of what I do could be seen in proper perspective. I do not think of myself of adding new knowledge onto a past unalterable body of knowledge (so to speak) but of bringing new and old into conversation to achieve some sort of thoughtful, mutually corrective synthesis.
More personally, I was raised in a home of two German immigrants who raised me as best as they were able with a knowledge of God. I was converted in high school and began my spiritual journey in earnest.
It was not until after college, however, that I began exploring my faith on a deeper level, which led me to seminary and then doctoral work. I still find it bewildering that I went from an avowed non-reader in high school and college to someone who could not get enough of it by the time I reached 23 or 24. If you had told my college friends I was headed for a life of scholarship they might have suggested you spend less time in the hot sun without a hat.
My interests have been emerging over the years, but I suppose that Biblical Theology is a big one. By that term I mean reading the Bible as a grand narrative of diverse and historically particularized episodes that achieves an eschatological coherence in Christ. This explains my interest in the way that the NT authors handle the OT, which I see as being very creative and deeply Christological.
I am also very interested in continuing synthetic thinking in the interaction between the many important insights of modern biblical studies and an evangelical faith, the roots of which are pre-modern. One point where the two interests coalesce is in understanding the NT authors’ use of the OT in light of Second Temple hermeneutics. That piece of modern study helps me understand better the biblical theological categories of the NT writers.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Pagan Christianity 3
We finally get to the substance of Frank Viola's book Pagan Christianity. Chapter 2 is titled, "The Church Building: Inheriting the Edifice Complex." For my first looks at the book, see
Viola's Preface
Barna's Introduction
One thing that struck me as I made my way through chapter 2 is the two very interesting "emerging" trajectories right now. Barna, Viola, and Erwin McManus are a kind of anti-institutional radical Protestantism trajectory. What's funny is that at the same time there is the "ancient-future" thing going on, where interest in incense, symbol, sacred space, etc. is on the rise. Very interesting!
Viola ends the "Delving Deeper" section of the chapter with "five key points" he is trying to establish in this chapter (46--by the way, I hate the way they have done the page numbers and footnotes in the Revised edition. They must only want young people to read the book. I've been reading it at night in dim light and my forty something year old eyes have suffered immensely. Very frustrating--the people who are prone to read footnotes can't read them!!! I can't even make out the page numbers at night without squinting).
Here are the five key points of the chapter, although the highlights are from me:
1. It is unbiblical to call a building a "church," "the house of God," "the temple of God," the "sanctuary of the Lord," etc...
2. The architecture of the typical church building hinders the church from having open-participatory meetings.
3. It is unscriptural to treat a building as though it were sacred.
4. The typical church building should not be the site of all church meetings because the average building is not conducive to face-to-face interaction.
5. It is a profound error to assume that all churches should own or rent buildings for their gatherings.
Review
1. Let me start by saying that there is something significant to be gained here. I don't like the way Viola has gone about saying it, but I agree with what I take to be the heart of what he is getting at. For many, maybe most Christians, "church" is a somewhat superficial activity that doesn't penetrate into the core of who they are.
Interestingly, we were looking at 1 Corinthians 5 today in class and the question of church discipline at Corinth, the man sleeping with his step-mother. We were looking at the "little leaven leavens the whole lump" concept and pointing out some of the things Viola does, namely, that the church of Corinth was probably no more than forty or fifty people that met in houses. The potential for corruption of the "body" is way higher in such a small group than it would be in the 1000's of Willow Creek.
So then we posed the question, "Can we really be the church in a church that large if all we ever visit is a large, Sunday morning, "seeker sensitive," service?" (I realize Willow Creek is moving awy from this approach) If a person never gets into a small group out of the evangelistic fishing service into small group discipleship, has a person really "gone to church" (a phrase Viola hates)? Wesley of course had small class meetings where accountability took place.
At the same time, it is curious to me that Viola focuses all his energies on the building. To me it has more to do with the numbers. I value his concern for face-to-face interaction, for open participation. If all you are doing is going to a service of several 100 on a Sunday morning in which you sit and think about lunch, Viola is right, you are not experiencing the church. What's unfortunate in my view is all the distracting focus on the building.
I might toot the horn of the Wesleyan tradition and mention that in the past our revivalist heritage managed to accomplish many of Viola's goals in church buildings. First, because we were inwardly focused and a tad sectarian, we tended to be small in number. Secondly, we had even smaller Sunday night services and a "Wednesday prayer meeting" of which testimonies were often a part. And, interestingly, the really great Sunday morning service was when the "Spirit" came over the congregation and the pastor didn't even preach.
I speak of these things in the past tense because they are largely a part of the past in the Wesleyan Church, although small groups are on the rise!
2. I want to affirm Viola's sense that the local "church" is the visible gathering of the people of God and not the building. Of course I have no problem with referring to the building as a church. It just isn't the church.
At the same time, even though Viola correctly understands the body of Christ as the new temple of God, I think he so avoids the idea of the holy in general that he is unable to understand the nature of the sacred altogether. He gets the "Abba Daddy" side of the equation. He doesn't get the Ananias and Sapphira dropping dead side.
To be holy is to be set apart to God. Yes, this most meaningfully applies to the people of God. But when Paul in 1 Corinthians 5 delivers a member of the assembly over to Satan, what is the physical manifestation of it? The person cannot meet with the body of Christ any more. In other words, a shift in location is involved.
The idea of sacred space and sacred time is not absolute, in my view. To that extent I agree with Viola. But Paul continued to value feasts like Pentecost--it was a different kind of day than the others (e.g., 1 Cor. 16:8). He did not require believers to observe the Jewish Sabbath on Saturday (Rom. 14:5) but he also instructed the assembly not to look down on those that did (Rom. 15:1). The early believers met together ritually (not a bad word) on the Lord's Day (1 Cor. 16:2).
Any understanding of God that does not allow for sacred space and sacred time is an impoverished understanding. Leonard Sweet is not just unable to shake off tradition because it is too deeply ingrained in his head (37 n.198). This is a great gift that God has given us and that is part of our psyche. I agree with Viola--we should not absolutize such things. But we are robbing ourselves of something very special if we go with the radical Reformation, and the ancient-future movement is a powerful recognition of this fact.
I want to agree with Viola that buildings can be a great expense. I feel a little guilty to worship in such a nice church. When you think of the Crystal Cathedral or some of the incredibly beautiful structures in Europe, you have to wonder how much good could have been done for the poor with that money.
There is another side of me, however, that remembers the women who anointed Jesus' feet. "The poor you always will have with you, but she is anointing me for burial." I'm not saying it necessarily justifies it or that those who built these magnificent structures had the right motives. But many of these structures do indeed lead me upward to God. There is again something impoverished, merely animal, about an approach to God that doesn't have room for the magnificent and grandly artistic.
P.S. The stuff on steeples and Gothic cathedrals being pagan (read "wicked" here despite caveats) because of association with Plato was really bizarre to me. I know that's what I think when I see a spire--heathen philosophers! At times his quest to grab at anything about church buildings that he can associate with things "pagan" seemed to become a stretch.
3. Most of the chapter is a cataloging of how church building structures have interacted with cultural and historical factors. I am not an expert on these subjects but a lot of what he says seems well researched. I would agree with him that I'm not necessarily expecting to see Constantine in the kingdom. I'm okay with the idea that church buildings took off after him (after all, now it was legal to be Christian). I'm okay with the idea that reverence for tombs as holy sites took off after him.
Yes, there are some peculiar things in church history, like paying for your pew (thus "Free" Methodists). Yes, the Protestant tradition's emphasis on the word (not intentionally on the preacher, although this is admittedly a side effect) is reflected in building structure. Yes, I am similarly irritated with the "stage" quality of many modern church pulpits.
However, I think Viola has a very common but fundamental understanding of meaning. Meaning is always synchronous, not diachronous. What I mean is, meaning is always a function of now, not of prior history. To be sure, prior history (diachrony) can explain why the meaning now is what it is. But, ultimately, meaning is a question of the use and significance things have now (synchrony).
I've already talked much about how God meets us all, in every time, place, and generation, where we are at. Then he moves us on from there. Ultimately I don't care what the history of the church building was. To the extent that it fosters worship today is the question. I don't care about the history of Halloween or that Constantine put Christmas on the date when Saturnalia had been. What matters is the significance of these things today.
Paul demonstrates this attitude with meat offered to idols (1 Cor. 8-10; Rom. 14). Using Viola's approach to meaning, we would expect Paul to be all concerned with finding out where the meat you were eating had come from. Indeed, some early Christians were so preoccupied--so much so that they became vegetarians (Rom. 14).
But Paul's approach? Don't ask; don't tell. God owns everything so eat the meat without asking questions. If you find out it has been offered to an idol, don't eat it so that you don't mess up the person who does have a problem with it. But no food is unclean in itself. Eat it. Just eat it... eat it... Oooo!
So most of this chapter, in my opinion, is much ado about nothing.
4. Viola uses a lot of language like "unbiblical" and "unscriptural." He is not arguing that you don't have to meet in a building. He says things like "profound error" and "hinders the church." Many will be surprised to find that "The message of the steeple is one that contradicts the message of the New Testament. Christians do not have to reach into the heavens to find God. He is here! With the coming of Immanuel, God is with us (see Matthew 1:23). And with His resurrection, we have an indwelling Lord. The steeple defies these realities."
I have to say, I had and--as I type--am having a good laugh about those evil steeples. God may be immanent, but if I remember my theology correctly, He remains transcendent as well. Viola gets the Abba Daddy part. He just doesn't get the Isaiah 6, Acts 5, or Revelation 4 part.
On the one hand, Viola has correctly identified a strand of New Testament tradition on the Jerusalem temple that points to the body of Christ (Paul) or heaven itself (Hebrews) as the temple of God. For Hebrews and Revelation, there is no need for a temple any more. I would similarly agree that, although Paul never says this, Paul's theology has no need for a temple. Stephen's sermon in Acts 7 does indeed seem to call the temple perjoratively a building "made with hands," as does the Marcan saying in Mark 14.
However, I think that Viola is slightly misreading these verses because of his radically Protestant lenses. For one, he assumes the popular but blatantly wrong idea that Jesus and Christianity left Judaism--he sees a sharp break with Judaism that seemly wasn't the case. It is far more accurate to call the early Christians Christian Jews than to call them Jewish Christians, in my opinion.
Secondly, most of the passages he is using as lenses are, in my opinion, more explanations for why the temple was destroyed than polemics against the temple per se. Even Stephen's speech in Acts 7 was written after AD70 and this fact likely (IMHO) plays a role in how it is presented.
Even the Jesus tradition against the temple should be read more as an indictment of that temple and its administration rather than against the temple institution itself. These are debatable points, to be sure, but I've spent quite a bit of time thinking about them.
Viola admits that the early Christians did meet at the temple and in buildings like the School of Tyrranus at Ephesus. Important for him is that the Christians didn't build them. I find this drawing at straws. A house is as fixed a building as a church building. I personally would not be surprised if we were one day to find out that some synagogue building somewhere (and it is significant to realize that most synagogues at this time probably weren't free standing, dedicated buildings either--a "synagogue," like an "assembly" simply referred to a gathering) completely accepted Christ and, thus, that there actually was an early Christian assembly meeting in a building somewhere at this time that was wholly given over to Christian-Jewish worship.
So, Viola has some very important points to make in this chapter. Unfortunately, those points are overshadowed by a whole lot of smoke and mirrors, in my opinion. Next week, the order of worship.
Viola's Preface
Barna's Introduction
One thing that struck me as I made my way through chapter 2 is the two very interesting "emerging" trajectories right now. Barna, Viola, and Erwin McManus are a kind of anti-institutional radical Protestantism trajectory. What's funny is that at the same time there is the "ancient-future" thing going on, where interest in incense, symbol, sacred space, etc. is on the rise. Very interesting!
Viola ends the "Delving Deeper" section of the chapter with "five key points" he is trying to establish in this chapter (46--by the way, I hate the way they have done the page numbers and footnotes in the Revised edition. They must only want young people to read the book. I've been reading it at night in dim light and my forty something year old eyes have suffered immensely. Very frustrating--the people who are prone to read footnotes can't read them!!! I can't even make out the page numbers at night without squinting).
Here are the five key points of the chapter, although the highlights are from me:
1. It is unbiblical to call a building a "church," "the house of God," "the temple of God," the "sanctuary of the Lord," etc...
2. The architecture of the typical church building hinders the church from having open-participatory meetings.
3. It is unscriptural to treat a building as though it were sacred.
4. The typical church building should not be the site of all church meetings because the average building is not conducive to face-to-face interaction.
5. It is a profound error to assume that all churches should own or rent buildings for their gatherings.
Review
1. Let me start by saying that there is something significant to be gained here. I don't like the way Viola has gone about saying it, but I agree with what I take to be the heart of what he is getting at. For many, maybe most Christians, "church" is a somewhat superficial activity that doesn't penetrate into the core of who they are.
Interestingly, we were looking at 1 Corinthians 5 today in class and the question of church discipline at Corinth, the man sleeping with his step-mother. We were looking at the "little leaven leavens the whole lump" concept and pointing out some of the things Viola does, namely, that the church of Corinth was probably no more than forty or fifty people that met in houses. The potential for corruption of the "body" is way higher in such a small group than it would be in the 1000's of Willow Creek.
So then we posed the question, "Can we really be the church in a church that large if all we ever visit is a large, Sunday morning, "seeker sensitive," service?" (I realize Willow Creek is moving awy from this approach) If a person never gets into a small group out of the evangelistic fishing service into small group discipleship, has a person really "gone to church" (a phrase Viola hates)? Wesley of course had small class meetings where accountability took place.
At the same time, it is curious to me that Viola focuses all his energies on the building. To me it has more to do with the numbers. I value his concern for face-to-face interaction, for open participation. If all you are doing is going to a service of several 100 on a Sunday morning in which you sit and think about lunch, Viola is right, you are not experiencing the church. What's unfortunate in my view is all the distracting focus on the building.
I might toot the horn of the Wesleyan tradition and mention that in the past our revivalist heritage managed to accomplish many of Viola's goals in church buildings. First, because we were inwardly focused and a tad sectarian, we tended to be small in number. Secondly, we had even smaller Sunday night services and a "Wednesday prayer meeting" of which testimonies were often a part. And, interestingly, the really great Sunday morning service was when the "Spirit" came over the congregation and the pastor didn't even preach.
I speak of these things in the past tense because they are largely a part of the past in the Wesleyan Church, although small groups are on the rise!
2. I want to affirm Viola's sense that the local "church" is the visible gathering of the people of God and not the building. Of course I have no problem with referring to the building as a church. It just isn't the church.
At the same time, even though Viola correctly understands the body of Christ as the new temple of God, I think he so avoids the idea of the holy in general that he is unable to understand the nature of the sacred altogether. He gets the "Abba Daddy" side of the equation. He doesn't get the Ananias and Sapphira dropping dead side.
To be holy is to be set apart to God. Yes, this most meaningfully applies to the people of God. But when Paul in 1 Corinthians 5 delivers a member of the assembly over to Satan, what is the physical manifestation of it? The person cannot meet with the body of Christ any more. In other words, a shift in location is involved.
The idea of sacred space and sacred time is not absolute, in my view. To that extent I agree with Viola. But Paul continued to value feasts like Pentecost--it was a different kind of day than the others (e.g., 1 Cor. 16:8). He did not require believers to observe the Jewish Sabbath on Saturday (Rom. 14:5) but he also instructed the assembly not to look down on those that did (Rom. 15:1). The early believers met together ritually (not a bad word) on the Lord's Day (1 Cor. 16:2).
Any understanding of God that does not allow for sacred space and sacred time is an impoverished understanding. Leonard Sweet is not just unable to shake off tradition because it is too deeply ingrained in his head (37 n.198). This is a great gift that God has given us and that is part of our psyche. I agree with Viola--we should not absolutize such things. But we are robbing ourselves of something very special if we go with the radical Reformation, and the ancient-future movement is a powerful recognition of this fact.
I want to agree with Viola that buildings can be a great expense. I feel a little guilty to worship in such a nice church. When you think of the Crystal Cathedral or some of the incredibly beautiful structures in Europe, you have to wonder how much good could have been done for the poor with that money.
There is another side of me, however, that remembers the women who anointed Jesus' feet. "The poor you always will have with you, but she is anointing me for burial." I'm not saying it necessarily justifies it or that those who built these magnificent structures had the right motives. But many of these structures do indeed lead me upward to God. There is again something impoverished, merely animal, about an approach to God that doesn't have room for the magnificent and grandly artistic.
P.S. The stuff on steeples and Gothic cathedrals being pagan (read "wicked" here despite caveats) because of association with Plato was really bizarre to me. I know that's what I think when I see a spire--heathen philosophers! At times his quest to grab at anything about church buildings that he can associate with things "pagan" seemed to become a stretch.
3. Most of the chapter is a cataloging of how church building structures have interacted with cultural and historical factors. I am not an expert on these subjects but a lot of what he says seems well researched. I would agree with him that I'm not necessarily expecting to see Constantine in the kingdom. I'm okay with the idea that church buildings took off after him (after all, now it was legal to be Christian). I'm okay with the idea that reverence for tombs as holy sites took off after him.
Yes, there are some peculiar things in church history, like paying for your pew (thus "Free" Methodists). Yes, the Protestant tradition's emphasis on the word (not intentionally on the preacher, although this is admittedly a side effect) is reflected in building structure. Yes, I am similarly irritated with the "stage" quality of many modern church pulpits.
However, I think Viola has a very common but fundamental understanding of meaning. Meaning is always synchronous, not diachronous. What I mean is, meaning is always a function of now, not of prior history. To be sure, prior history (diachrony) can explain why the meaning now is what it is. But, ultimately, meaning is a question of the use and significance things have now (synchrony).
I've already talked much about how God meets us all, in every time, place, and generation, where we are at. Then he moves us on from there. Ultimately I don't care what the history of the church building was. To the extent that it fosters worship today is the question. I don't care about the history of Halloween or that Constantine put Christmas on the date when Saturnalia had been. What matters is the significance of these things today.
Paul demonstrates this attitude with meat offered to idols (1 Cor. 8-10; Rom. 14). Using Viola's approach to meaning, we would expect Paul to be all concerned with finding out where the meat you were eating had come from. Indeed, some early Christians were so preoccupied--so much so that they became vegetarians (Rom. 14).
But Paul's approach? Don't ask; don't tell. God owns everything so eat the meat without asking questions. If you find out it has been offered to an idol, don't eat it so that you don't mess up the person who does have a problem with it. But no food is unclean in itself. Eat it. Just eat it... eat it... Oooo!
So most of this chapter, in my opinion, is much ado about nothing.
4. Viola uses a lot of language like "unbiblical" and "unscriptural." He is not arguing that you don't have to meet in a building. He says things like "profound error" and "hinders the church." Many will be surprised to find that "The message of the steeple is one that contradicts the message of the New Testament. Christians do not have to reach into the heavens to find God. He is here! With the coming of Immanuel, God is with us (see Matthew 1:23). And with His resurrection, we have an indwelling Lord. The steeple defies these realities."
I have to say, I had and--as I type--am having a good laugh about those evil steeples. God may be immanent, but if I remember my theology correctly, He remains transcendent as well. Viola gets the Abba Daddy part. He just doesn't get the Isaiah 6, Acts 5, or Revelation 4 part.
On the one hand, Viola has correctly identified a strand of New Testament tradition on the Jerusalem temple that points to the body of Christ (Paul) or heaven itself (Hebrews) as the temple of God. For Hebrews and Revelation, there is no need for a temple any more. I would similarly agree that, although Paul never says this, Paul's theology has no need for a temple. Stephen's sermon in Acts 7 does indeed seem to call the temple perjoratively a building "made with hands," as does the Marcan saying in Mark 14.
However, I think that Viola is slightly misreading these verses because of his radically Protestant lenses. For one, he assumes the popular but blatantly wrong idea that Jesus and Christianity left Judaism--he sees a sharp break with Judaism that seemly wasn't the case. It is far more accurate to call the early Christians Christian Jews than to call them Jewish Christians, in my opinion.
Secondly, most of the passages he is using as lenses are, in my opinion, more explanations for why the temple was destroyed than polemics against the temple per se. Even Stephen's speech in Acts 7 was written after AD70 and this fact likely (IMHO) plays a role in how it is presented.
Even the Jesus tradition against the temple should be read more as an indictment of that temple and its administration rather than against the temple institution itself. These are debatable points, to be sure, but I've spent quite a bit of time thinking about them.
Viola admits that the early Christians did meet at the temple and in buildings like the School of Tyrranus at Ephesus. Important for him is that the Christians didn't build them. I find this drawing at straws. A house is as fixed a building as a church building. I personally would not be surprised if we were one day to find out that some synagogue building somewhere (and it is significant to realize that most synagogues at this time probably weren't free standing, dedicated buildings either--a "synagogue," like an "assembly" simply referred to a gathering) completely accepted Christ and, thus, that there actually was an early Christian assembly meeting in a building somewhere at this time that was wholly given over to Christian-Jewish worship.
So, Viola has some very important points to make in this chapter. Unfortunately, those points are overshadowed by a whole lot of smoke and mirrors, in my opinion. Next week, the order of worship.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Calvin Quote for the Day 2-11-08
"If, therefore, these terms [theological terms in relation to the Trinity] were not rashly invented, we ought to beware lest by repudiating them we be accused of overweening rashness. Indeed, I could wish they were buried, if only among all men this faith were agreed on: that Father and Son and Spirit are one God, yet the Son is not the Father, nor the Spirit the Son, but that they are differentiated by a peculiar quality."
I might say as I look at Calvin's use of Scripture, I think I can understand why some of the more "fundamentalist" Calvinists have difficulty with people like Peter Enns. One of the sections of the Institutes I read today has Calvin looking for Christ in the Old Testament, and he consistently shows that he is unable to read the Old Testament inductively, to let it speak in context. Certainly he would have had little of our sense of the Ancient Near Eastern cultural context.
I was excited to get a copy of Three Views on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament today. I don't know when I'll be able to fit it in here, but I am looking forward to it greatly.
I might say as I look at Calvin's use of Scripture, I think I can understand why some of the more "fundamentalist" Calvinists have difficulty with people like Peter Enns. One of the sections of the Institutes I read today has Calvin looking for Christ in the Old Testament, and he consistently shows that he is unable to read the Old Testament inductively, to let it speak in context. Certainly he would have had little of our sense of the Ancient Near Eastern cultural context.
I was excited to get a copy of Three Views on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament today. I don't know when I'll be able to fit it in here, but I am looking forward to it greatly.
IWU MDIV: Open for Business
1 Corinthians as Novel...
We're finally in 1 Corinthians in my Thessalonians and Corinthians class. Yesterday we finished up chaps. 1-4. I often call what we do when we interpret a text like this one as "writing our novels" in class. We have to fill in the gaps left by the text. It is inevitable. And when we are interpreting a text like 1 Corinthians in historical context, a lot of those gaps prove to be of a narrative nature.
Since I wrote a popular commentary on 1 and 2 Corinthians (meaning I didn't engage most of the scholarly literature directly and focused almost as much on application as on the original meaning)--and since I was in the Durham Postgraduate Seminar the semester James Dunn was working on his 1 Corinthians guide--I have a lot of "novel" thoughts on the situation of 1 Corinthians. :-) A lot of them came out today.
I would love to write a Paul novel! The great thing about novels is no footnotes, you don't have to justify wild hypotheses, and it doesn't matter if you're right. It's just like giving a paper at SBL!
So if yesterday's class were part of a Paul novel, it might look something like the following--although I've had to make up even more stuff to put it in this form.
Here's chapter 8 1/2, in medias res...
________
...
Paul had been working for a couple weeks with Sosthenes on the letter when yet another delegation from the Corinthian church arrived. It was Stephanas with two of his sons, Fortunatus and Achaicus. Apparently, Gaius and some others had not been happy at all for Sosthenes to represent the whole community to Paul. Indeed, several of them were far more interested that Apollos weigh in on some of their conflicts than Paul himself.
So Stephanas volunteered to take a letter from the "opposition" to both Paul and Apollos, presenting the points of greatest disagreement. The letter was largely written by Gaius and Erastus, who had much preferred Apollos' take on things to Paul's. Stephanas himself mostly took Paul's side in the debates. After all, he had been Paul's first convert in Achaia. But he was trying to help both sides find some way to work out their differences.
Paul immediately asked Sosthenes to polish and copy what they had already written based on Chloe's letter. He set to work for the rest of the day on new papyrus and had it ready the next day. It opened with several blocks of material addressing the conflicts between the two principal groups in the church, then it addressed the situation with Quartus and his step-mother. Paul lambasted Erastus for taking Chloe to Roman court and gave them advice on head coverings and the Lord's Supper in worship. The letter ended with Paul's defense of resurrection.
He could see the letter would almost double in size when he addressed their questions--absurdly long for a letter, but these things were important. At first Paul thought they might just continue on the same roll. But Stephanas' clarifications and comments made it clear that it would be best to rewrite the whole thing, and Sosthenes wanted to integrate the new material with the old in some way.
As for Apollos, Paul had no desire for him to become a cowriter now. The letter from Gaius solicited Apollos' opinion on the questions too, but Paul viewed himself as the apostle to Corinth. To answer the letter together would give the impression that the two were of equal authority in the matter. Paul hoped instead to convince Apollos of his positions and perhaps send him back to Corinth later.
One of the things that Stephanas immediately noticed was Paul's comment on those he had baptized at Corinth. Paul had only mentioned Crispus and Gaius, primarily to bring out the irony that he had actually been the one who had baptized some of his opposition. But Stephanas was almost hurt to see that Paul had not mentioned him. After all, he had been the very first person Paul had baptized at Corinth! Sosthenes immediately took dictation from Paul and added a couple sentences in the margin to be copied in later...
Since I wrote a popular commentary on 1 and 2 Corinthians (meaning I didn't engage most of the scholarly literature directly and focused almost as much on application as on the original meaning)--and since I was in the Durham Postgraduate Seminar the semester James Dunn was working on his 1 Corinthians guide--I have a lot of "novel" thoughts on the situation of 1 Corinthians. :-) A lot of them came out today.
I would love to write a Paul novel! The great thing about novels is no footnotes, you don't have to justify wild hypotheses, and it doesn't matter if you're right. It's just like giving a paper at SBL!
So if yesterday's class were part of a Paul novel, it might look something like the following--although I've had to make up even more stuff to put it in this form.
Here's chapter 8 1/2, in medias res...
________
...
Paul had been working for a couple weeks with Sosthenes on the letter when yet another delegation from the Corinthian church arrived. It was Stephanas with two of his sons, Fortunatus and Achaicus. Apparently, Gaius and some others had not been happy at all for Sosthenes to represent the whole community to Paul. Indeed, several of them were far more interested that Apollos weigh in on some of their conflicts than Paul himself.
So Stephanas volunteered to take a letter from the "opposition" to both Paul and Apollos, presenting the points of greatest disagreement. The letter was largely written by Gaius and Erastus, who had much preferred Apollos' take on things to Paul's. Stephanas himself mostly took Paul's side in the debates. After all, he had been Paul's first convert in Achaia. But he was trying to help both sides find some way to work out their differences.
Paul immediately asked Sosthenes to polish and copy what they had already written based on Chloe's letter. He set to work for the rest of the day on new papyrus and had it ready the next day. It opened with several blocks of material addressing the conflicts between the two principal groups in the church, then it addressed the situation with Quartus and his step-mother. Paul lambasted Erastus for taking Chloe to Roman court and gave them advice on head coverings and the Lord's Supper in worship. The letter ended with Paul's defense of resurrection.
He could see the letter would almost double in size when he addressed their questions--absurdly long for a letter, but these things were important. At first Paul thought they might just continue on the same roll. But Stephanas' clarifications and comments made it clear that it would be best to rewrite the whole thing, and Sosthenes wanted to integrate the new material with the old in some way.
As for Apollos, Paul had no desire for him to become a cowriter now. The letter from Gaius solicited Apollos' opinion on the questions too, but Paul viewed himself as the apostle to Corinth. To answer the letter together would give the impression that the two were of equal authority in the matter. Paul hoped instead to convince Apollos of his positions and perhaps send him back to Corinth later.
One of the things that Stephanas immediately noticed was Paul's comment on those he had baptized at Corinth. Paul had only mentioned Crispus and Gaius, primarily to bring out the irony that he had actually been the one who had baptized some of his opposition. But Stephanas was almost hurt to see that Paul had not mentioned him. After all, he had been the very first person Paul had baptized at Corinth! Sosthenes immediately took dictation from Paul and added a couple sentences in the margin to be copied in later...
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
A good Calvin quote (can it be?)
"The Anthropomorphites, also, who imagined a corporeal God from the fact that Scripture often ascribes to him a mouth, ears, eyes, hands, and feet, are easily refuted. For who even of slight intelligence does not understand that, as nurses commonly do with infants, God is wont in a measure to 'lisp' in speaking to us? Thus such forms of speaking do not so much express clearly what God is like as accommodate the knowledge of him to our slight capacity. To do this he must descend far beneath his loftiness."
Calvin excerpt and a spiraling stream of thoughts
I'm behind on Calvin, but read this today:
"Here we must more carefully attend to those subtleties with which superstition disports itself. Indeed, it does not so decline to other gods as seemingly to desert the highest God, or to reduce him to the level of the rest. But while it concedes to him the supreme place, it surrounds him with a throng of lesser gods, among whom it parcels out his functions. The glory of his divinity is so rent asunder (although stealthily and craftily) that his whole glory does not remain with him alone. Thus, in the past, men, Jews as well as heathen, put a vast throng of gods under the father and ruler of the gods. Each of these gods according to his rank held in common with the highest god the government of heaven and earth."
"the distinction between latria and dulia, as they called them, was invented in order that divine honors might seem to be transferred with impunity to angels and the dead. For it is obvious that the honor the papists give to the saints really does not differ from the honoring of God."
P.S. The distinction between latria and dulia has to do with the Catholic distinction between the worship appropriate to God alone and the kind of lower reverence appropriate saints and such.
This discussion really reminded me of Bauckham and the sharp divide he places between God and other heavenly beings. The religious traditions of scholars do affect their biblical interpretation. So I wondered if Bauckham was much of an Anglican and if this section of the Institutes has had any significant impact on him.
I know he did use to teach theology and now that he's emeritus at St. Andrews he's at Ridley at Cambridge, an Anglican theological training college.
That of course made me think of how Calvinist the 39 articles are and the strange fact that the Westminster Confession is Anglican, that John Knox took it back to Scotland where it became ground zero for Presbyterianism.
Then I thought of N. T. Wright's strange view of faith as a "badge of covenant membership," not as what gets you in or justifies you. Sure seems Calvinist to me--faith does not get you in but is a sign that you're in.
So then there's a discussion I had with Bounds yesterday I think. Apparently Anglicanism was heavily Calvinist at the beginning until some Arminian influence came in the mid-1600's. Wesley came at the right time for this trend to influence him. Unfortunately, that trajectory apparently went heavily Deist, to where those Anglicans who take doctrine seriously today tend to be the Calvinist trajectory.
I'm sure I'm perverting the Bound discussion... I take responsibility. Is this right?
There, now free to carry the spiraling stream of consciousness where you will...
"Here we must more carefully attend to those subtleties with which superstition disports itself. Indeed, it does not so decline to other gods as seemingly to desert the highest God, or to reduce him to the level of the rest. But while it concedes to him the supreme place, it surrounds him with a throng of lesser gods, among whom it parcels out his functions. The glory of his divinity is so rent asunder (although stealthily and craftily) that his whole glory does not remain with him alone. Thus, in the past, men, Jews as well as heathen, put a vast throng of gods under the father and ruler of the gods. Each of these gods according to his rank held in common with the highest god the government of heaven and earth."
"the distinction between latria and dulia, as they called them, was invented in order that divine honors might seem to be transferred with impunity to angels and the dead. For it is obvious that the honor the papists give to the saints really does not differ from the honoring of God."
P.S. The distinction between latria and dulia has to do with the Catholic distinction between the worship appropriate to God alone and the kind of lower reverence appropriate saints and such.
This discussion really reminded me of Bauckham and the sharp divide he places between God and other heavenly beings. The religious traditions of scholars do affect their biblical interpretation. So I wondered if Bauckham was much of an Anglican and if this section of the Institutes has had any significant impact on him.
I know he did use to teach theology and now that he's emeritus at St. Andrews he's at Ridley at Cambridge, an Anglican theological training college.
That of course made me think of how Calvinist the 39 articles are and the strange fact that the Westminster Confession is Anglican, that John Knox took it back to Scotland where it became ground zero for Presbyterianism.
Then I thought of N. T. Wright's strange view of faith as a "badge of covenant membership," not as what gets you in or justifies you. Sure seems Calvinist to me--faith does not get you in but is a sign that you're in.
So then there's a discussion I had with Bounds yesterday I think. Apparently Anglicanism was heavily Calvinist at the beginning until some Arminian influence came in the mid-1600's. Wesley came at the right time for this trend to influence him. Unfortunately, that trajectory apparently went heavily Deist, to where those Anglicans who take doctrine seriously today tend to be the Calvinist trajectory.
I'm sure I'm perverting the Bound discussion... I take responsibility. Is this right?
There, now free to carry the spiraling stream of consciousness where you will...
Plantinga and the Ontological Argument
I've finally finished a chapter on arguments for the existence of God that I started over a year ago. Ouch. I started to end the chapter by revisiting a version of the ontological argument by Alvin Plantinga. I remember hearing in seminary that it had made some atheists nervous... and I remembered having great difficulty wrapping my head around it.
When I first encountered Anselm's version of the argument, I remember thinking, "Man, I just don't understand it." But I've since concluded it doesn't make sense. Just because we believe in God doesn't mean that every argument for the existence of God makes sense. I used always to assume that I was stupid when I couldn't wrap my head around such things. That of course is still sometimes the case.
But I've also come to realize that sometimes the reason a philosopher or theologian or Bible scholar doesn't make sense to me is because, well, they just don't make sense :-) (P.S. Feel free to invoke this principle when reading my thoughts :-)
Just to remind you of Anselm's argument, it goes something like this:
1. I can conceive of the Greatest Possible Being--the Greatest Possible Being exists in my mind.
2. A Being that exists outside my mind would be greater than one that exists in my mind.
3. Therefore, the Greatest Possible Being must exist outside my mind as well as inside my mind.
This argument doesn't work on more than one level for me. The most significant reason it doesn't work is because it confuses ideas with things, like mixing apples and oranges. For this reason, premises 1 and 2 don't connect. They are like ships passing in the night.
I decided to leave Plantinga mostly out of the chapter because I think his argument is tautologous. His first premise is, in my opinion, exactly what we are trying to prove in the first place.
His argument goes as follows:[1]
1. There is a possible world in which maximal greatness is instantiated.
2. Necessarily, a being is maximally great only if it has maximal excellence in every world (and thus has omniscience, omnipotence, and moral perfection in every world).
3. If premise 1 is true, then it would be impossible for that being not to exist in that possible world.
4. But if it were impossible for that being not to exist in that possible world, it would be impossible for that being to exist in any world.
5. Therefore, that being must exist in all possible worlds.
I have several problems with this argument.
For one, I don't like thinking of God as the greatest possible being because the hidden premise is that we are talking about this universe, inevitably the argument limits God to the limits of to this universe, the greatest possible in this universe, since our conception here is unavoidably limited to our frame of reference. Such a scenario says nothing about the parameters outside this universe and the cosmological argument in any case places God outside of this universe. The entire line of thought is thus ill conceived as a premise for further argument.
It does seem true that if God exists, then God must exist in all possible worlds, understood from our point of reference. We cannot conceive or argue about possibilities beyond our point of reference. Arguments of possible worlds are thus only drawing pads for talking about our world and worlds that might be like ours. This immediately undermines the entire argument as well.
My hunch is that, if we pushed the ontological argument in the right direction, and maybe a nuclear physicist could help out here, we would find that the ontological argument and the argument from necessity turn out to be the same thing as the cosmological argument.
[1] God, Freedom, and Evil (New York: Harper & Row, 1974). My apologies to Plantinga for leaving out some of the subtleties of his actual argument, but since I consider his argument tautologous, it doesn't really matter.
When I first encountered Anselm's version of the argument, I remember thinking, "Man, I just don't understand it." But I've since concluded it doesn't make sense. Just because we believe in God doesn't mean that every argument for the existence of God makes sense. I used always to assume that I was stupid when I couldn't wrap my head around such things. That of course is still sometimes the case.
But I've also come to realize that sometimes the reason a philosopher or theologian or Bible scholar doesn't make sense to me is because, well, they just don't make sense :-) (P.S. Feel free to invoke this principle when reading my thoughts :-)
Just to remind you of Anselm's argument, it goes something like this:
1. I can conceive of the Greatest Possible Being--the Greatest Possible Being exists in my mind.
2. A Being that exists outside my mind would be greater than one that exists in my mind.
3. Therefore, the Greatest Possible Being must exist outside my mind as well as inside my mind.
This argument doesn't work on more than one level for me. The most significant reason it doesn't work is because it confuses ideas with things, like mixing apples and oranges. For this reason, premises 1 and 2 don't connect. They are like ships passing in the night.
I decided to leave Plantinga mostly out of the chapter because I think his argument is tautologous. His first premise is, in my opinion, exactly what we are trying to prove in the first place.
His argument goes as follows:[1]
1. There is a possible world in which maximal greatness is instantiated.
2. Necessarily, a being is maximally great only if it has maximal excellence in every world (and thus has omniscience, omnipotence, and moral perfection in every world).
3. If premise 1 is true, then it would be impossible for that being not to exist in that possible world.
4. But if it were impossible for that being not to exist in that possible world, it would be impossible for that being to exist in any world.
5. Therefore, that being must exist in all possible worlds.
I have several problems with this argument.
For one, I don't like thinking of God as the greatest possible being because the hidden premise is that we are talking about this universe, inevitably the argument limits God to the limits of to this universe, the greatest possible in this universe, since our conception here is unavoidably limited to our frame of reference. Such a scenario says nothing about the parameters outside this universe and the cosmological argument in any case places God outside of this universe. The entire line of thought is thus ill conceived as a premise for further argument.
It does seem true that if God exists, then God must exist in all possible worlds, understood from our point of reference. We cannot conceive or argue about possibilities beyond our point of reference. Arguments of possible worlds are thus only drawing pads for talking about our world and worlds that might be like ours. This immediately undermines the entire argument as well.
My hunch is that, if we pushed the ontological argument in the right direction, and maybe a nuclear physicist could help out here, we would find that the ontological argument and the argument from necessity turn out to be the same thing as the cosmological argument.
[1] God, Freedom, and Evil (New York: Harper & Row, 1974). My apologies to Plantinga for leaving out some of the subtleties of his actual argument, but since I consider his argument tautologous, it doesn't really matter.
Monday, February 09, 2009
Monday BCS: The New Testament as Christian Scripture (1.4)
This is the final part of the "first chapter" of the non-existent The Bible as Christian Scripture. I blogged a second chapter here as well, but it needs some serious reflection, I think.
Here are the other parts of the first chapter I've done.
1.1 The Problem of Christian Scripture
1.2 The Problem of Meaning
1.3 The Old Testament as Christian Scripture
I'll keep dabbling with this idea a few more weeks. I'm thinking chapter 7 next: "Law and Grace." Still haven't decided whether it's worth sending off somewhere.
1.4 The New Testament as Christian Scripture
The Christian reading of the New Testament story goes something like the following. The pre-existent Christ, the eternally begotten Son of God, took on human flesh and was born of the Virgin Mary. For three years he preached the good news of forgiveness for sins, of the reconciliation of the world, and accomplished the necessary atonement by dying on the cross.
Then he rose again on the third day and ascended to heaven, where he is waiting until the appointed time. Then he will return for a final judgment after which Christians will spend eternity in heaven, while the unsaved will spend it in hell. In the meantime, believers are charged to take the good news of salvation to the world, to love their neighbors and their enemies, and to live together as the church until he comes again.
We could no doubt debate my wording. Perhaps I should have used the language of the Nicene creed, which more or less covers the same ground. We could add some things. We could change the emphasis. But this is the basic Christian story, and we are a part of it.
This story, even more than a set of theological statements, provides the key basis for our integration of the individual New Testament books together as Scripture. In addition to the key events themselves, we have come as Christians to assign various significance to each event. At times, various Christian groups have assigned slightly different nuances to one or the other.
The first five books of the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts provide much of the material for this story. But as we argued of the Old Testament, they are not identical to the story. The Christian story is bigger than any of these documents and we fit them into our overall story rather them providing us with any straightforward version of it. The overarching framework is thus as much a matter of something we bring with us to the text as a function of the text itself.
For example, the incarnation is a major element of the Christian story. It is anticipated before the creation of the world that God will send his Son to earth to die for the sins of the world. The eternally begotten Son takes on human flesh to atone for the sins of humanity and to liberate us.
However, from the standpoint of the New Testament books themselves, read in context, the pre-existence and incarnation of Jesus does not play such a major or overarching role. The pre-existence of Jesus in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, for example, is not immediately clear, even if some have argued for it.[1] They have had to argue for it because it is not obviously mentioned. Even though Matthew and Luke present the virgin birth, they do not give any indication whether Jesus might have existed before that birth.
The pre-existence of Jesus in the rest of the New Testament is most obviously seen in the Philippian poem of Philippians 2:6-11. However, even here some have argued that we are reading later understandings into the poem when we see the phrase "although existing in the form of God" in this way.[2] In other places in Paul and Hebrews we find statements that in themselves might be taken one way or another (e.g., "though he was rich, for your sakes he became poor"--2 Cor. 8:9). As Christian readers, we are allowed to take them in terms of Christ's pre-existence without worrying about their precise original sense, because read this way they reflect a Christian reading of the text.
It is thus especially in John 1 and in scattered statements in John that we find a real emphasis on Jesus' pre-existence in the New Testament, not elsewhere. Elsewhere such sparse language might serve to compare Jesus to God's wisdom over the creation or His will for the creation. Colossians 1:15-17, for example, seems to draw on either Jewish wisdom or logos traditions to depict Christ was the agent of creation. They do not speak of the incarnation.
Similarly in John, Jesus' pre-existence does not seem connected to his ability to atone. We find no "that which is not assumed cannot be healed" in John in the manner of Gregory of Nazianzus. True, Hebrews 2:14, a fairly unique statement in the New Testament, comes close.[3] But those few texts that focus on pre-existence do not focus on atonement, and those few texts that focus on Jesus' embodiment as a mechanism of atonement do not focus on pre-existence. It is the Christian reading of the New Testament that connects these things in this way and assigns them the importance we give them.
The Christian reading of the New Testament thus elevates a minor element in two or three books (with the very imagery in these few instances even differing somewhat from one another) and unifies those elements together into a doctrine of some significance. The significance of the incarnation in a reading of the New Testament as Christian Scripture thus goes well beyond what we get from the biblical texts themselves. It is a valuation we have drawn from the life of the church beyond the pages of the Bible.
The same is even more dramatically so when it comes to the Virgin Birth. The idea that Jesus was born of Mary apart from human sex has been a major doctrine of the church. Indeed, one might argue that for the majority of Christian history, it has been emphasized more than the incarnation itself, tied as it became with Christ's sinlessness and the veneration of Mary. Augustine more than anyone else connected it to the idea that Jesus was born without original sin. Faith in the Virgin Birth remains one of the most important items of Christian faith.
It is thus significant to notice that this emphasis is a matter of the Christian reading of the New Testament. The significance of the Virgin Birth has to do with the way Christians throughout history have assigned value to the event and placed it within the overarching story. As far as the New Testament books themselves are concerned, the idea appears only in Matthew and Luke. Assuming that all the other New Testament authors knew of it, they never mention it. Even in Matthew and Luke, it seems to play no significance in these gospels after the first two chapters.
Further, neither Matthew nor Luke connect the virgin birth to Adam's sin in any way. Adam is a feature of Paul's writings in a couple instances. Luke only suggests uniquely that it is appropriate to think of Jesus as holy and as God's Son for this reason (Luke 1:35).
A Christian reading of the New Testament as Scripture thus integrates the New Testament texts together in a manner that derives from the life of the church after the books of the New Testament was written rather than straightforwardly from the texts themselves. A "thick" reading of these texts will not ignore their original meanings and functions, but the Christian prioritization of them is primary and post-biblical.
For example, from the standpoint of historical enquiry, New Testament scholarship has come to the predominant conclusion that John's presentation is more figurative than the Synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Yet it is John's Christology that comes closest to normative Christian theology more than those of Matthew, Mark, or Luke. Similarly, the majority of scholars see Mark as a primary source behind Matthew and Luke. Yet throughout Christian history, Mark was largely overlooked, with Matthew being the favorite.
Some Christian traditions have managed to maintain an interest in the earthly ministry of Jesus in the Synoptic gospels. Luke, for example, does not use salvation language primarily in terms of spiritual salvation but of the healing and liberation of earthly people in relation to their concrete disempowerment and oppression. But for Protestants in particular, Paul has often overshadowed these parts of the story to where what is really significant about Jesus is his death and resurrection rather than his earthly teachings.
We thus find that different Christian traditions prioritize and emphasize different parts of the New Testament when they read it as Scripture. The biblical texts themselves do not, indeed cannot, tell us whether to give more priority to Paul or to Mark as we integrate these texts together. In this case, not even Christian tradition has left us with an absolute set of priorities. We are forced, beyond the Bible, to integrate these books together so that they become Christian Scripture.
Some Protestant traditions have highly developed senses of this integration. The Lutheran and Calvinist traditions, for example, have highly specific understandings of how Christ fulfills the Old Testament Law. Augustine's integration of the biblical material stands in the background of these understandings. Humanity was totally "depraved" after Adam's "transgression" and the subsequent "Fall." This is of course not exactly what Paul says. For Paul, all have sinned. All are under the power of Sin. But Paul never says in literal speech that human beings are unable to do any good whatsoever in their own power.
The details of the end of the story are not entirely clear across the books of the New Testament either. That Jesus Christ will return to the earth in judgment and salvation seems clear enough. Whether we will then spend eternity in heaven or on a renewed earth is not. Revelation seems to point to a renewed earth, but then John 1:2-3 speak of Jesus receiving his disciples to where he will be in heaven.
The question of hell is also more a matter of common Christian belief beyond the New Testament than of the New Testament books themselves. Paul never mentions hell or speaks of the eternal destiny of the wicked. John does not mention fire. Mark does, but is not clear that the wicked are consciously tormented forever in fire. We might say the same of the lake of fire in Revelation. It is Matthew more than any other part of the New Testament that may indicate eternal torment in fire for the wicked. The Christian sense of eternal punishment for the wicked thus again has much to do with the later Christian reading of the New Testament.
Apart from the Christian story, we have also inherited a "rule of faith" and a "law of love" from the church that helps us distinguish "clear" teaching from "unclear" teaching in the New Testament texts. When 1 Corinthans 15:29 speaks of baptism for the dead, the rule of faith tells us to move on. When 1 Peter 4:6 speaks of Jesus preaching to the dead, we note the verse as a curiosity but do not worry too much about it. We have no way of knowing how prevalent or significant such ideas and practices were in the early church historically, but they are not significant today for us as Christians.
How solid is this rule of faith that has developed beyond the pages of the New Testament? If we look at the Protestant Reformation and the subsequent changes even to the Roman Catholic Church, we should probably allow that the original meanings of Scripture can play a corrective role on the trajectory of the church. The celebacy of the clergy, for example, was at one time the clear preference of the vast majority of Christians. Yet it is clearly unwarranted in the biblical texts and significant portions of the church catholic now allow for marriage.
Might there be other areas where we have yet to see reformation as things commonly agreed unravel in the light of the foundations of the church? I would suggest that the empowerment of women to roles of leadership in the church is one such area. It is the trajectory of the kingdom, where women will not be given to men in marriage. The spiritual empowerment of women is also a New Testament reality in much of Paul and Acts.
I believe that Christendom at large will eventually come to read the New Testament in such a way that 1 Timothy 2:12 is read as a curiosity, just as 1 Corinthians 15:29 is today. This is not a departure from the way Christians read Scripture now. It is simply an application of the way we read Scripture on other topics to this particular topic. What we find clear and unclear is not so much a property of the biblical texts themselves as of us as Christians reading them in the flow of Christian history.
What then is a "thick" reading of the New Testament texts as Christian Scripture? As we have been arguing, it first and foremost of all comes to these texts with certain Christian understandings of the overall flow of the story. It assigns emphasis and significance to elements of particular books in accordance with later Christian understanding more than the significance those elements had in their original contexts.
It will not worry over the original meaning of certain texts whose meaning might be ambiguous from an original standpoint because the fuller Christian understanding takes primacy when the texts are read as Scripture. Did the Philippian poem originally presume Christ's literal pre-existence? This question is largely irrelevant from a Christian point of view. It is perfectly legitimate for Christians to read it in terms of Christ's pre-existence regardless of its original meaning.
The idea that Christ's death indicates an end to the sacrificial system of the Old Testament is not clearly articulated anywhere in the New Testament except Hebrews. Yet the flow of Christian history has led us to read the other biblical texts in this light. The idea of Christ being of the same substance as the Father is not clearly articulated in any book of the New Testament. Yet Christians will read the relevant texts in this way in the light of fuller Christian understanding.
Yet the original meanings are also part of salvation's history. In particular, there are aspects of the historical Jesus of Nazareth that seem essential for Christianity to be true beyond any theological reading we might give to the texts. He must have lived as a true historical personage, for example. It would seem necessary that he be without sin or, to put it another way, that he be thoroughly righteous. He needed to have died. And he needs to have risen from the dead in history, such that his bones could not be found. We are not saying that all of these things can be demonstrated by historical method, only that their historicity seems essential for Christian faith to be true in anything like its historic form.
We will similarly understand the individual books of the Bible as moments in the flow of revelation. It may be later Christian eyes that gives their content a particularly Christian form. But we can recognize in each one a moment in God's walking with humanity toward that Christian organization. Luke is not just a text that we incorporate into the Christian story, a narrative that is part of the overarching metanarrative. It is a book written at a moment in history to God's historical people.
A thick reading of the New Testament as Christian Scripture thus affirms the primary role of later Christian history in providing us with appropriate lens through which to understand, prioritize, and emphasize New Testament teaching. Yet it affirms the original meanings of these texts both as moments in the progress of revelation, in the journey of God's walk with humanity, and it affirms the potentially reforming power of the original meanings as the Holy Spirit leads.
The historical meaning of the central New Testament books is more significant by far than the historical meanings of the Old Testament books in their entirety. This is because the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus stands at the very turning point of the story. These documents witness the most foundational and distinctive moments in God's walk with humanity. If the Christian story is not historically grounded here, then historic Christianity will become something quite different, and we would expect God's speaking at this juncture to be more direct than we require of the Old Testament.
[1] E.g., Gathercole.
[2] E.g., Dunn, Murphy-O'Connor.
[3] We might also mention Romans 8:3. Neither of these verses, in themselves, however, need imply Christ's pre-existence, although as Christians we are quite justified to read them in this way.
Here are the other parts of the first chapter I've done.
1.1 The Problem of Christian Scripture
1.2 The Problem of Meaning
1.3 The Old Testament as Christian Scripture
I'll keep dabbling with this idea a few more weeks. I'm thinking chapter 7 next: "Law and Grace." Still haven't decided whether it's worth sending off somewhere.
1.4 The New Testament as Christian Scripture
The Christian reading of the New Testament story goes something like the following. The pre-existent Christ, the eternally begotten Son of God, took on human flesh and was born of the Virgin Mary. For three years he preached the good news of forgiveness for sins, of the reconciliation of the world, and accomplished the necessary atonement by dying on the cross.
Then he rose again on the third day and ascended to heaven, where he is waiting until the appointed time. Then he will return for a final judgment after which Christians will spend eternity in heaven, while the unsaved will spend it in hell. In the meantime, believers are charged to take the good news of salvation to the world, to love their neighbors and their enemies, and to live together as the church until he comes again.
We could no doubt debate my wording. Perhaps I should have used the language of the Nicene creed, which more or less covers the same ground. We could add some things. We could change the emphasis. But this is the basic Christian story, and we are a part of it.
This story, even more than a set of theological statements, provides the key basis for our integration of the individual New Testament books together as Scripture. In addition to the key events themselves, we have come as Christians to assign various significance to each event. At times, various Christian groups have assigned slightly different nuances to one or the other.
The first five books of the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts provide much of the material for this story. But as we argued of the Old Testament, they are not identical to the story. The Christian story is bigger than any of these documents and we fit them into our overall story rather them providing us with any straightforward version of it. The overarching framework is thus as much a matter of something we bring with us to the text as a function of the text itself.
For example, the incarnation is a major element of the Christian story. It is anticipated before the creation of the world that God will send his Son to earth to die for the sins of the world. The eternally begotten Son takes on human flesh to atone for the sins of humanity and to liberate us.
However, from the standpoint of the New Testament books themselves, read in context, the pre-existence and incarnation of Jesus does not play such a major or overarching role. The pre-existence of Jesus in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, for example, is not immediately clear, even if some have argued for it.[1] They have had to argue for it because it is not obviously mentioned. Even though Matthew and Luke present the virgin birth, they do not give any indication whether Jesus might have existed before that birth.
The pre-existence of Jesus in the rest of the New Testament is most obviously seen in the Philippian poem of Philippians 2:6-11. However, even here some have argued that we are reading later understandings into the poem when we see the phrase "although existing in the form of God" in this way.[2] In other places in Paul and Hebrews we find statements that in themselves might be taken one way or another (e.g., "though he was rich, for your sakes he became poor"--2 Cor. 8:9). As Christian readers, we are allowed to take them in terms of Christ's pre-existence without worrying about their precise original sense, because read this way they reflect a Christian reading of the text.
It is thus especially in John 1 and in scattered statements in John that we find a real emphasis on Jesus' pre-existence in the New Testament, not elsewhere. Elsewhere such sparse language might serve to compare Jesus to God's wisdom over the creation or His will for the creation. Colossians 1:15-17, for example, seems to draw on either Jewish wisdom or logos traditions to depict Christ was the agent of creation. They do not speak of the incarnation.
Similarly in John, Jesus' pre-existence does not seem connected to his ability to atone. We find no "that which is not assumed cannot be healed" in John in the manner of Gregory of Nazianzus. True, Hebrews 2:14, a fairly unique statement in the New Testament, comes close.[3] But those few texts that focus on pre-existence do not focus on atonement, and those few texts that focus on Jesus' embodiment as a mechanism of atonement do not focus on pre-existence. It is the Christian reading of the New Testament that connects these things in this way and assigns them the importance we give them.
The Christian reading of the New Testament thus elevates a minor element in two or three books (with the very imagery in these few instances even differing somewhat from one another) and unifies those elements together into a doctrine of some significance. The significance of the incarnation in a reading of the New Testament as Christian Scripture thus goes well beyond what we get from the biblical texts themselves. It is a valuation we have drawn from the life of the church beyond the pages of the Bible.
The same is even more dramatically so when it comes to the Virgin Birth. The idea that Jesus was born of Mary apart from human sex has been a major doctrine of the church. Indeed, one might argue that for the majority of Christian history, it has been emphasized more than the incarnation itself, tied as it became with Christ's sinlessness and the veneration of Mary. Augustine more than anyone else connected it to the idea that Jesus was born without original sin. Faith in the Virgin Birth remains one of the most important items of Christian faith.
It is thus significant to notice that this emphasis is a matter of the Christian reading of the New Testament. The significance of the Virgin Birth has to do with the way Christians throughout history have assigned value to the event and placed it within the overarching story. As far as the New Testament books themselves are concerned, the idea appears only in Matthew and Luke. Assuming that all the other New Testament authors knew of it, they never mention it. Even in Matthew and Luke, it seems to play no significance in these gospels after the first two chapters.
Further, neither Matthew nor Luke connect the virgin birth to Adam's sin in any way. Adam is a feature of Paul's writings in a couple instances. Luke only suggests uniquely that it is appropriate to think of Jesus as holy and as God's Son for this reason (Luke 1:35).
A Christian reading of the New Testament as Scripture thus integrates the New Testament texts together in a manner that derives from the life of the church after the books of the New Testament was written rather than straightforwardly from the texts themselves. A "thick" reading of these texts will not ignore their original meanings and functions, but the Christian prioritization of them is primary and post-biblical.
For example, from the standpoint of historical enquiry, New Testament scholarship has come to the predominant conclusion that John's presentation is more figurative than the Synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Yet it is John's Christology that comes closest to normative Christian theology more than those of Matthew, Mark, or Luke. Similarly, the majority of scholars see Mark as a primary source behind Matthew and Luke. Yet throughout Christian history, Mark was largely overlooked, with Matthew being the favorite.
Some Christian traditions have managed to maintain an interest in the earthly ministry of Jesus in the Synoptic gospels. Luke, for example, does not use salvation language primarily in terms of spiritual salvation but of the healing and liberation of earthly people in relation to their concrete disempowerment and oppression. But for Protestants in particular, Paul has often overshadowed these parts of the story to where what is really significant about Jesus is his death and resurrection rather than his earthly teachings.
We thus find that different Christian traditions prioritize and emphasize different parts of the New Testament when they read it as Scripture. The biblical texts themselves do not, indeed cannot, tell us whether to give more priority to Paul or to Mark as we integrate these texts together. In this case, not even Christian tradition has left us with an absolute set of priorities. We are forced, beyond the Bible, to integrate these books together so that they become Christian Scripture.
Some Protestant traditions have highly developed senses of this integration. The Lutheran and Calvinist traditions, for example, have highly specific understandings of how Christ fulfills the Old Testament Law. Augustine's integration of the biblical material stands in the background of these understandings. Humanity was totally "depraved" after Adam's "transgression" and the subsequent "Fall." This is of course not exactly what Paul says. For Paul, all have sinned. All are under the power of Sin. But Paul never says in literal speech that human beings are unable to do any good whatsoever in their own power.
The details of the end of the story are not entirely clear across the books of the New Testament either. That Jesus Christ will return to the earth in judgment and salvation seems clear enough. Whether we will then spend eternity in heaven or on a renewed earth is not. Revelation seems to point to a renewed earth, but then John 1:2-3 speak of Jesus receiving his disciples to where he will be in heaven.
The question of hell is also more a matter of common Christian belief beyond the New Testament than of the New Testament books themselves. Paul never mentions hell or speaks of the eternal destiny of the wicked. John does not mention fire. Mark does, but is not clear that the wicked are consciously tormented forever in fire. We might say the same of the lake of fire in Revelation. It is Matthew more than any other part of the New Testament that may indicate eternal torment in fire for the wicked. The Christian sense of eternal punishment for the wicked thus again has much to do with the later Christian reading of the New Testament.
Apart from the Christian story, we have also inherited a "rule of faith" and a "law of love" from the church that helps us distinguish "clear" teaching from "unclear" teaching in the New Testament texts. When 1 Corinthans 15:29 speaks of baptism for the dead, the rule of faith tells us to move on. When 1 Peter 4:6 speaks of Jesus preaching to the dead, we note the verse as a curiosity but do not worry too much about it. We have no way of knowing how prevalent or significant such ideas and practices were in the early church historically, but they are not significant today for us as Christians.
How solid is this rule of faith that has developed beyond the pages of the New Testament? If we look at the Protestant Reformation and the subsequent changes even to the Roman Catholic Church, we should probably allow that the original meanings of Scripture can play a corrective role on the trajectory of the church. The celebacy of the clergy, for example, was at one time the clear preference of the vast majority of Christians. Yet it is clearly unwarranted in the biblical texts and significant portions of the church catholic now allow for marriage.
Might there be other areas where we have yet to see reformation as things commonly agreed unravel in the light of the foundations of the church? I would suggest that the empowerment of women to roles of leadership in the church is one such area. It is the trajectory of the kingdom, where women will not be given to men in marriage. The spiritual empowerment of women is also a New Testament reality in much of Paul and Acts.
I believe that Christendom at large will eventually come to read the New Testament in such a way that 1 Timothy 2:12 is read as a curiosity, just as 1 Corinthians 15:29 is today. This is not a departure from the way Christians read Scripture now. It is simply an application of the way we read Scripture on other topics to this particular topic. What we find clear and unclear is not so much a property of the biblical texts themselves as of us as Christians reading them in the flow of Christian history.
What then is a "thick" reading of the New Testament texts as Christian Scripture? As we have been arguing, it first and foremost of all comes to these texts with certain Christian understandings of the overall flow of the story. It assigns emphasis and significance to elements of particular books in accordance with later Christian understanding more than the significance those elements had in their original contexts.
It will not worry over the original meaning of certain texts whose meaning might be ambiguous from an original standpoint because the fuller Christian understanding takes primacy when the texts are read as Scripture. Did the Philippian poem originally presume Christ's literal pre-existence? This question is largely irrelevant from a Christian point of view. It is perfectly legitimate for Christians to read it in terms of Christ's pre-existence regardless of its original meaning.
The idea that Christ's death indicates an end to the sacrificial system of the Old Testament is not clearly articulated anywhere in the New Testament except Hebrews. Yet the flow of Christian history has led us to read the other biblical texts in this light. The idea of Christ being of the same substance as the Father is not clearly articulated in any book of the New Testament. Yet Christians will read the relevant texts in this way in the light of fuller Christian understanding.
Yet the original meanings are also part of salvation's history. In particular, there are aspects of the historical Jesus of Nazareth that seem essential for Christianity to be true beyond any theological reading we might give to the texts. He must have lived as a true historical personage, for example. It would seem necessary that he be without sin or, to put it another way, that he be thoroughly righteous. He needed to have died. And he needs to have risen from the dead in history, such that his bones could not be found. We are not saying that all of these things can be demonstrated by historical method, only that their historicity seems essential for Christian faith to be true in anything like its historic form.
We will similarly understand the individual books of the Bible as moments in the flow of revelation. It may be later Christian eyes that gives their content a particularly Christian form. But we can recognize in each one a moment in God's walking with humanity toward that Christian organization. Luke is not just a text that we incorporate into the Christian story, a narrative that is part of the overarching metanarrative. It is a book written at a moment in history to God's historical people.
A thick reading of the New Testament as Christian Scripture thus affirms the primary role of later Christian history in providing us with appropriate lens through which to understand, prioritize, and emphasize New Testament teaching. Yet it affirms the original meanings of these texts both as moments in the progress of revelation, in the journey of God's walk with humanity, and it affirms the potentially reforming power of the original meanings as the Holy Spirit leads.
The historical meaning of the central New Testament books is more significant by far than the historical meanings of the Old Testament books in their entirety. This is because the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus stands at the very turning point of the story. These documents witness the most foundational and distinctive moments in God's walk with humanity. If the Christian story is not historically grounded here, then historic Christianity will become something quite different, and we would expect God's speaking at this juncture to be more direct than we require of the Old Testament.
[1] E.g., Gathercole.
[2] E.g., Dunn, Murphy-O'Connor.
[3] We might also mention Romans 8:3. Neither of these verses, in themselves, however, need imply Christ's pre-existence, although as Christians we are quite justified to read them in this way.
Sunday, February 08, 2009
"Deep Magic" and Atonement
I deeply respect C. S. Lewis, although I have never idolized him. He thinks he has too much figured out for my liking. He was also a consumate modernist, at least in the first half of his writing and lecturing. I think I would have liked him, but I think I would have teased him a little too, like his buddies at Oxford did, especially about his cult like following by Americans. :-)
There, I have absolved myself so that I can now compliment him. I've been moderately impressed with him this week as I've been doing research for a chapter of the philosophy book. I think some of his arguments unravel pretty quickly, but you have to give him credit for others.
When it comes to explaining atonement, the idea of "deep magic," taken from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, is as good as anything any theologian has ever written on the subject.
And I might say, since a number of skeptics come across this blog from time to time, that this concept works whether you actually believe in atonement or not. The sacrificial practices of the world can hardly be unpacked in rational, propositional language. There is something much deeper going on here, something that defies literal linguistic expression.
We can say that this deep magic involves the disempowerment of evil powers and the empowerment of the person offering the sacrifice. In the case of Christ, it is the disempowerment of Sin over us and the empowerment to do the good we want to do through the presence of the Spirit in and among us.
We can say the deep magic in some way satisfies the need for order. To speak in sterile terms like to satisfies God's justice doesn't get at the mysterious. There is a setting of the world to right, somehow in the sacrifice. The offender needs to make amends in some deep way. It defies rational explanation.
In pagan contexts, there is the need to let the god be the god, to show that you are merely mortal and you would not dare think yourself anything. You humble yourself, giving the god no reason to want to put you in your place by throwing a lightning bolt, a sea storm, or a volcano.
And the victim magically takes the place of the offerer. It enables the criminal to escape death or the penalty.
All these aspects of atonement are a deep magic. Even to describe them is to disempower them. The need for atonement is a Jungian archetype, deeply imprinted within us. Some might want to say it is a deep part of our unconscious that we have inherited from Adam.
I don't know whether Christ had to die for us to be forgiven, although this seems part of Christian orthodoxy. Part of me would like to say that God had the authority to forgive us without anyone paying, if He had so chosen. He did not so chose, making it somewhat of an academic question. Even so, it may very well be that, like prayer, the need for sacrifice had a whole lot more to do with us--the "deep dynamics" of our deepest mind--that made it necessary for us to have this "deep magic" available for us.
There, I have absolved myself so that I can now compliment him. I've been moderately impressed with him this week as I've been doing research for a chapter of the philosophy book. I think some of his arguments unravel pretty quickly, but you have to give him credit for others.
When it comes to explaining atonement, the idea of "deep magic," taken from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, is as good as anything any theologian has ever written on the subject.
And I might say, since a number of skeptics come across this blog from time to time, that this concept works whether you actually believe in atonement or not. The sacrificial practices of the world can hardly be unpacked in rational, propositional language. There is something much deeper going on here, something that defies literal linguistic expression.
We can say that this deep magic involves the disempowerment of evil powers and the empowerment of the person offering the sacrifice. In the case of Christ, it is the disempowerment of Sin over us and the empowerment to do the good we want to do through the presence of the Spirit in and among us.
We can say the deep magic in some way satisfies the need for order. To speak in sterile terms like to satisfies God's justice doesn't get at the mysterious. There is a setting of the world to right, somehow in the sacrifice. The offender needs to make amends in some deep way. It defies rational explanation.
In pagan contexts, there is the need to let the god be the god, to show that you are merely mortal and you would not dare think yourself anything. You humble yourself, giving the god no reason to want to put you in your place by throwing a lightning bolt, a sea storm, or a volcano.
And the victim magically takes the place of the offerer. It enables the criminal to escape death or the penalty.
All these aspects of atonement are a deep magic. Even to describe them is to disempower them. The need for atonement is a Jungian archetype, deeply imprinted within us. Some might want to say it is a deep part of our unconscious that we have inherited from Adam.
I don't know whether Christ had to die for us to be forgiven, although this seems part of Christian orthodoxy. Part of me would like to say that God had the authority to forgive us without anyone paying, if He had so chosen. He did not so chose, making it somewhat of an academic question. Even so, it may very well be that, like prayer, the need for sacrifice had a whole lot more to do with us--the "deep dynamics" of our deepest mind--that made it necessary for us to have this "deep magic" available for us.
Friday, February 06, 2009
Friday Review: Jesus Remembered 4
This now the fourth in a series of reviews of James Dunn's book on the historical Jesus, Jesus Remembered.
1. Flight from Dogma
2. Flight from History
3. Historical Hermeneutics
This week we begin Unit 2 with chapter 7: "Sources." It is much like the material that Meier covered things like the agrapha and Nag Hammadi, Tacitus and other Jewish sources, and) Josephus and the books of the canon. In fact, Dunn mentions Meier's work as basically a point of departure on some matters (like Josephus). He doesn't argue as extensively for some things because Meier has done the homework for us.
Josephus and Tacitus
Here Dunn basically defers to Meier's excellent analysis. We don't learn much from these references although they are part of Jesus' impact. But, as Dunn says, "about once every generation someone reruns the thesis that Jesus never existed and that the Jesus tradition is a wholesale invention" (142). Indeed, one is under way, the absolute loser of an endeavor, The Jesus Project. Anyone who seriously thinks Jesus' existence is a real question is so bad a scholar that everything they say should be immediately questioned. Any self-respecting atheist should distance themselves from this ignorance fest.
Probably the most important evidence for Jesus' existence are Paul's letters to the Galatians and Corinthians. Paul tells people that he met with Cephas and James (the Lord's brother--the interpretation that he's a cousin or half-brother are similarly devoid of serious consideration) within three years of coming to believe Jesus was the messiah. Everyone agrees this was less than 10 years after the crucifixion. So I pronounce winner of the "Grand Loser of a Thinker" award anyone who seriously thinks there is any likelihood at all to the suggestion that Jesus wasn't even a real person.
Mark and Q
As Dunn is addressing sources for addressing the question of the historical Jesus (Jesus as we might try to reconstruct him using historical sources), he next comes to Mark and Q. He gives a modest recap of standard evidence of Markan priority and Matthew's use of Mark...
Here's an example from a footnote I thought particularly interesting:
Mark 6:5
"And he could do no deed of power there, except
that he laid his hands on a few sick people and
cured them. And he was amazed at their unbelief."
Matthew 13:58
"And he did not do many deeds of power there
because of their unbelief."
Dunn recognizes that the case for Q is less conclusive. Aside from our esteemed fellow biblioblogger Mark Goodacre, even someone like Martin Hengel has recently argued that Matthew used Mark and Luke and that a Q hypthesis is unnecessary. Nevertheless, Dunn believes with the majority that the existence of some sort of common source best explains the common material in Matthew and Luke that is not in Mark.
He does, however, spend some time qualifying what we can and cannot say about such a hypothetical source. For example, "we can hardly exclude the likelihood that Matthew drew on some material from this document which Luke ignored and vice-versa" (148). In other words, we cannot be certain that some of the material that has been designated M or L material is not actually Q material.
Dunn thus distinguishes between "q" material--the actual material that is common to Matthew and Luke but not in Mark--and the Q document, whose precise limits and contents we simply cannot reconstruct with any certainty. He also mentions something mentioned even as far back as Streeter, namely, that "a substantial amount of the common ('q') material was actually derived from oral tradition (not 'Q')" (149).
Some of the thinking out there regarding a Q community by top name scholars is also nothing short of embarrassing. Dunn mentions the "one document per community fallacy," as if a community that used Q would thereby have only used Q and not other sources (150). Dunn points out the lunacy (my wording) of suggesting that the absence of a theme from Q would then be taken to mean that the community that produced or used Q would not have believed in that theme. "On the same logic we could speak of 'wisdom villages' in the land of Israel which knew no prophetic books" (150).
Another potential problem with the way the Q community is often conceived is the assumption that such a community would have created the document for itself and its ideas might not be shared outside itself. Instead, "the evidence of our earliest sources is that communities maintained communication with one another; and it is more probable that tradition was written down in order to facilitate communication at a distance" (152).
Then we get into the so called "compositional history" of Q. Here Dunn says things like, "the attempt to classify and demarcate genre types has not proved very helpful in the discussion of Q" (155). And "The evidence is fully satisfied by the alternative hypothesis of a single compositional act, when the Q author/editor pulled together these different clusters, adapted them (the redactional interpolations), and knitted them into the larger single collection Q" (157).
Dunn agrees that the strongest case for Q's Sitz im Leben has been made for Galilee (159).
Matthew and Luke
Short section, "we need to be ... suspicious of the too simplistic rule of thumb that tradition only once attested is therefore necessarily of less value as a remembrance of Jesus" (161).
Gospel of Thomas
Dunn points out that scholarship is about evenly divided over whether Thomas knew the Synoptics or not. For the record, Dunn thinks Meier is a little too confident that it did. Dunn seems to favor the idea that the question of dependence is "insoluable" (162).
He discusses a little the question of whether Thomas might be Gnostic. As often, I find Dunn right on in his analysis. It is not helpful to use the word Gnostic prior to the second century, even in terms of "proto-Gnostic" or "pre-Gnostic." "We might as well describe Second Temple Judaism as pre- or proto-Christian, or mediaeval Christianity as pre- or proto-Protestant" (163-64 n.116). And Thomas seems to attest the developed, second century form of the Gnostic redeemer myth (GTh 28).
Thus, as I also believe, "it is perfectly comprehensible that a Gnostic redaction, for which a 'realized eschatology' was central, should have omitted and 'corrected' all tradition which attested a future eschatology and hope of a coming Son of Man" (164). Dunn's conclusion is apt: "while the question must always remain open that a particular Thomas saying has preserved an early/earlier version of the saying than the Synoptic tradition or that an unparalleled Thomas saying is as early as the earliest Synoptic tradition, it will always be the undoubtedly early Synoptic tradition which provides the measure by which judgment is made on the point" (165).
John
Dunn again gives a circumspect treatment of John as a source: "one can recognize both that the tradition has been heavily worked upon and that it is well rooted within earlier Jesus tradition" (167). John is mostly a secondary source to supplement or corroborate the testimony of the Synoptic tradition.
Dunn considers John the "Evangelist's meditations on the significant words and deeds of Jesus." But the style throughout John is the same whether we are hearing John the Baptist or Jesus or the woman at the well or 1 John--it would seem to be John's rather than Jesus' actual style. For example, Dunn posits, "Had the striking 'I am' self-assertions of John been remembered as spoken by Jesus, how could any Evangelist have ignored them so completely as the Synoptics do?" (166).
Other Gospels
Dunn closes the chapter with very brief consideration of the Dialogue Gospel, the Apocryphon of James, the Secret Gospel of Mark, the Gospel of Peter, Papyrus Egerton 2. He basically finds them to be witnesses to the various ways Jesus tradition developed. But he apparently does not find the evidence convincing to say they provide earlier witness to Jesus. Several times he reiterates that even if these sorts of sorts might provide independent witness to Jesus, that in no way means that they provide earlier witness.
1. Flight from Dogma
2. Flight from History
3. Historical Hermeneutics
This week we begin Unit 2 with chapter 7: "Sources." It is much like the material that Meier covered things like the agrapha and Nag Hammadi, Tacitus and other Jewish sources, and) Josephus and the books of the canon. In fact, Dunn mentions Meier's work as basically a point of departure on some matters (like Josephus). He doesn't argue as extensively for some things because Meier has done the homework for us.
Josephus and Tacitus
Here Dunn basically defers to Meier's excellent analysis. We don't learn much from these references although they are part of Jesus' impact. But, as Dunn says, "about once every generation someone reruns the thesis that Jesus never existed and that the Jesus tradition is a wholesale invention" (142). Indeed, one is under way, the absolute loser of an endeavor, The Jesus Project. Anyone who seriously thinks Jesus' existence is a real question is so bad a scholar that everything they say should be immediately questioned. Any self-respecting atheist should distance themselves from this ignorance fest.
Probably the most important evidence for Jesus' existence are Paul's letters to the Galatians and Corinthians. Paul tells people that he met with Cephas and James (the Lord's brother--the interpretation that he's a cousin or half-brother are similarly devoid of serious consideration) within three years of coming to believe Jesus was the messiah. Everyone agrees this was less than 10 years after the crucifixion. So I pronounce winner of the "Grand Loser of a Thinker" award anyone who seriously thinks there is any likelihood at all to the suggestion that Jesus wasn't even a real person.
Mark and Q
As Dunn is addressing sources for addressing the question of the historical Jesus (Jesus as we might try to reconstruct him using historical sources), he next comes to Mark and Q. He gives a modest recap of standard evidence of Markan priority and Matthew's use of Mark...
Here's an example from a footnote I thought particularly interesting:
Mark 6:5
"And he could do no deed of power there, except
that he laid his hands on a few sick people and
cured them. And he was amazed at their unbelief."
Matthew 13:58
"And he did not do many deeds of power there
because of their unbelief."
Dunn recognizes that the case for Q is less conclusive. Aside from our esteemed fellow biblioblogger Mark Goodacre, even someone like Martin Hengel has recently argued that Matthew used Mark and Luke and that a Q hypthesis is unnecessary. Nevertheless, Dunn believes with the majority that the existence of some sort of common source best explains the common material in Matthew and Luke that is not in Mark.
He does, however, spend some time qualifying what we can and cannot say about such a hypothetical source. For example, "we can hardly exclude the likelihood that Matthew drew on some material from this document which Luke ignored and vice-versa" (148). In other words, we cannot be certain that some of the material that has been designated M or L material is not actually Q material.
Dunn thus distinguishes between "q" material--the actual material that is common to Matthew and Luke but not in Mark--and the Q document, whose precise limits and contents we simply cannot reconstruct with any certainty. He also mentions something mentioned even as far back as Streeter, namely, that "a substantial amount of the common ('q') material was actually derived from oral tradition (not 'Q')" (149).
Some of the thinking out there regarding a Q community by top name scholars is also nothing short of embarrassing. Dunn mentions the "one document per community fallacy," as if a community that used Q would thereby have only used Q and not other sources (150). Dunn points out the lunacy (my wording) of suggesting that the absence of a theme from Q would then be taken to mean that the community that produced or used Q would not have believed in that theme. "On the same logic we could speak of 'wisdom villages' in the land of Israel which knew no prophetic books" (150).
Another potential problem with the way the Q community is often conceived is the assumption that such a community would have created the document for itself and its ideas might not be shared outside itself. Instead, "the evidence of our earliest sources is that communities maintained communication with one another; and it is more probable that tradition was written down in order to facilitate communication at a distance" (152).
Then we get into the so called "compositional history" of Q. Here Dunn says things like, "the attempt to classify and demarcate genre types has not proved very helpful in the discussion of Q" (155). And "The evidence is fully satisfied by the alternative hypothesis of a single compositional act, when the Q author/editor pulled together these different clusters, adapted them (the redactional interpolations), and knitted them into the larger single collection Q" (157).
Dunn agrees that the strongest case for Q's Sitz im Leben has been made for Galilee (159).
Matthew and Luke
Short section, "we need to be ... suspicious of the too simplistic rule of thumb that tradition only once attested is therefore necessarily of less value as a remembrance of Jesus" (161).
Gospel of Thomas
Dunn points out that scholarship is about evenly divided over whether Thomas knew the Synoptics or not. For the record, Dunn thinks Meier is a little too confident that it did. Dunn seems to favor the idea that the question of dependence is "insoluable" (162).
He discusses a little the question of whether Thomas might be Gnostic. As often, I find Dunn right on in his analysis. It is not helpful to use the word Gnostic prior to the second century, even in terms of "proto-Gnostic" or "pre-Gnostic." "We might as well describe Second Temple Judaism as pre- or proto-Christian, or mediaeval Christianity as pre- or proto-Protestant" (163-64 n.116). And Thomas seems to attest the developed, second century form of the Gnostic redeemer myth (GTh 28).
Thus, as I also believe, "it is perfectly comprehensible that a Gnostic redaction, for which a 'realized eschatology' was central, should have omitted and 'corrected' all tradition which attested a future eschatology and hope of a coming Son of Man" (164). Dunn's conclusion is apt: "while the question must always remain open that a particular Thomas saying has preserved an early/earlier version of the saying than the Synoptic tradition or that an unparalleled Thomas saying is as early as the earliest Synoptic tradition, it will always be the undoubtedly early Synoptic tradition which provides the measure by which judgment is made on the point" (165).
John
Dunn again gives a circumspect treatment of John as a source: "one can recognize both that the tradition has been heavily worked upon and that it is well rooted within earlier Jesus tradition" (167). John is mostly a secondary source to supplement or corroborate the testimony of the Synoptic tradition.
Dunn considers John the "Evangelist's meditations on the significant words and deeds of Jesus." But the style throughout John is the same whether we are hearing John the Baptist or Jesus or the woman at the well or 1 John--it would seem to be John's rather than Jesus' actual style. For example, Dunn posits, "Had the striking 'I am' self-assertions of John been remembered as spoken by Jesus, how could any Evangelist have ignored them so completely as the Synoptics do?" (166).
Other Gospels
Dunn closes the chapter with very brief consideration of the Dialogue Gospel, the Apocryphon of James, the Secret Gospel of Mark, the Gospel of Peter, Papyrus Egerton 2. He basically finds them to be witnesses to the various ways Jesus tradition developed. But he apparently does not find the evidence convincing to say they provide earlier witness to Jesus. Several times he reiterates that even if these sorts of sorts might provide independent witness to Jesus, that in no way means that they provide earlier witness.
Galatians 2:16 Mini-Bibliography
We spent nearly all of Greek Galatians class today translating Galatians 2:16. Surely it is the most debated verse in the New Testament. Am I wrong?
It occurred to me that I always throw out a core bibliography when I go through Galatians 2:16 for whatever reason. I thought I would post it. Certainly, the key articles reflects my interpretive leanings. Obviously, James D. G. Dunn features high on my list of resources. Since most of the relevant essays now appear in one volume, The New Perspective on Paul, I list the older articles as they are situated in this volume.
"We who are Jews by nature and not sinners from the Gentiles..."
James D. G. Dunn, "The Incident at Antioch (Gal. 2:11-18)," in Jesus, Paul and the Law: Studies in Mark and Galatians, 129-82 remains, in my opinion, an excellent introduction to the basic context of Galatians 2:15-21, which I agree is indeed the proposition of the letter.
Since we know that a person is not justified...
What does it mean to be justified? In general, John Piper is too thoroughly ensconched in the Calvinist tradition to be a reliable original meaning interpreter of Paul in general, although as we might expect, he is a good scholar when the right conclusion fits within Calvinist parameters.
N. T. Wright is good on justification two-thirds of the time--on the law court and eschatological parts of it. His covenantal spin, however, continues to be the best illustration of the fact that we often formulate our key ideas when we are young in a PhD program, then become associated with those immature ideas, then spend the rest of our career defending them. A must read is his forthcoming response to John Piper on the topic.
Basically, you can trust a Bible scholar when they are critiquing another Bible scholar. You just can't trust us when we are selling material from our dissertations :-)
by works of law...
Here Dunn's mature statement in the long introduction to The New Perspective, "The New Perspective--Whence, What and Wither" (1-97), is in my opinion the best understanding of this phrase.
Also significant is his earlier piece, "Works of the Law and the Curse of the Law (Gal. 3:10-14)" from 1985 (New Perspective, 121-40), not to mention the article that put the name "new perspective" on the new perspective, namely, "The New Perspective on Paul" (1983--in New Perspective, 99-120).
except...
Should we translate the two words here in their normal sense or as "but." Dunn's "Incident at Antioch" above argues for "except."
through faith of Jesus Christ...
The two key articles here are reprinted in Richard Hays' signature volume, The Faith of Jesus Christ: The Narrative Substructure of Galatians 3:1-4:11. The two articles were originally presented in Kansas City at the 1991 SBL: Hays: "Pistis and Pauline Theology: What's at Stake" and Dunn: "Once More, Pistis Christou."
even we have placed our faith in Jesus Christ that we might be justified by Christ faith and not works of law...
All the key issues above are repeated here. Consult especially Dunn on works of law and Hays/Dunn on redundancy if one goes with an objective genitive throughout.
Since this is my blog, you'll forgive me if I sneak in my article here, "2 Corinthians and the Pistis Christou Debate, CBQ 70 (2008): 524-37," which suggests Paul may have a double entendre in mind in the final pistis Christou. Since that claim was not a part of my dissertation, you can trust it. :-)
for by works of law no flesh will be justified.
This quotation of Psalm 143 and Paul's modifications to it are well treated by Richard Hays in his book, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul.
You could do a whole course on this verse, reading through this literature. It would actually be quite a good introduction to Paul's theology in the specific area of his interaction with the Jerusalem church. If twenty of you wanted to do an online graduate course on Acrobat in the Fall... :-)
Dunn's Historical Jesus summary of the day is a comin'.
It occurred to me that I always throw out a core bibliography when I go through Galatians 2:16 for whatever reason. I thought I would post it. Certainly, the key articles reflects my interpretive leanings. Obviously, James D. G. Dunn features high on my list of resources. Since most of the relevant essays now appear in one volume, The New Perspective on Paul, I list the older articles as they are situated in this volume.
"We who are Jews by nature and not sinners from the Gentiles..."
James D. G. Dunn, "The Incident at Antioch (Gal. 2:11-18)," in Jesus, Paul and the Law: Studies in Mark and Galatians, 129-82 remains, in my opinion, an excellent introduction to the basic context of Galatians 2:15-21, which I agree is indeed the proposition of the letter.
Since we know that a person is not justified...
What does it mean to be justified? In general, John Piper is too thoroughly ensconched in the Calvinist tradition to be a reliable original meaning interpreter of Paul in general, although as we might expect, he is a good scholar when the right conclusion fits within Calvinist parameters.
N. T. Wright is good on justification two-thirds of the time--on the law court and eschatological parts of it. His covenantal spin, however, continues to be the best illustration of the fact that we often formulate our key ideas when we are young in a PhD program, then become associated with those immature ideas, then spend the rest of our career defending them. A must read is his forthcoming response to John Piper on the topic.
Basically, you can trust a Bible scholar when they are critiquing another Bible scholar. You just can't trust us when we are selling material from our dissertations :-)
by works of law...
Here Dunn's mature statement in the long introduction to The New Perspective, "The New Perspective--Whence, What and Wither" (1-97), is in my opinion the best understanding of this phrase.
Also significant is his earlier piece, "Works of the Law and the Curse of the Law (Gal. 3:10-14)" from 1985 (New Perspective, 121-40), not to mention the article that put the name "new perspective" on the new perspective, namely, "The New Perspective on Paul" (1983--in New Perspective, 99-120).
except...
Should we translate the two words here in their normal sense or as "but." Dunn's "Incident at Antioch" above argues for "except."
through faith of Jesus Christ...
The two key articles here are reprinted in Richard Hays' signature volume, The Faith of Jesus Christ: The Narrative Substructure of Galatians 3:1-4:11. The two articles were originally presented in Kansas City at the 1991 SBL: Hays: "Pistis and Pauline Theology: What's at Stake" and Dunn: "Once More, Pistis Christou."
even we have placed our faith in Jesus Christ that we might be justified by Christ faith and not works of law...
All the key issues above are repeated here. Consult especially Dunn on works of law and Hays/Dunn on redundancy if one goes with an objective genitive throughout.
Since this is my blog, you'll forgive me if I sneak in my article here, "2 Corinthians and the Pistis Christou Debate, CBQ 70 (2008): 524-37," which suggests Paul may have a double entendre in mind in the final pistis Christou. Since that claim was not a part of my dissertation, you can trust it. :-)
for by works of law no flesh will be justified.
This quotation of Psalm 143 and Paul's modifications to it are well treated by Richard Hays in his book, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul.
You could do a whole course on this verse, reading through this literature. It would actually be quite a good introduction to Paul's theology in the specific area of his interaction with the Jerusalem church. If twenty of you wanted to do an online graduate course on Acrobat in the Fall... :-)
Dunn's Historical Jesus summary of the day is a comin'.
Thursday, February 05, 2009
I'm a quick study. Give me a job.
I hear they're afraid that if you only pay CEO's of failed companies $500,000 a year, they won't be able to find anyone competent to run them? I'm a pretty quick study, good with higher math, IQ around 140, don't need a lot of sleep. I'd be glad to stop blogging for a while to save a company.
All of that is to say, I'm sure there are plenty of competent people out there who'd be glad to do more than give it a shot. Who knows, maybe we can send the good old boy, slick talkers off to their bidets and get someone who might actually have virtue and brains.
All of that is to say, I'm sure there are plenty of competent people out there who'd be glad to do more than give it a shot. Who knows, maybe we can send the good old boy, slick talkers off to their bidets and get someone who might actually have virtue and brains.
Pagan Christianity 2
Last Thursday we began looking at Frank Viola's Pagan Christianity. For today I read through George Barna's Introduction and Viola's first chapter. So much build up... sorry I'm not to the concrete controversy yet! Someone complained last week that I reviewed the Preface.
Introduction
So Barna's introduction is more build up. There is a great sense of foreboding. The "institutional" church is in great crisis. It is like a plane that got slightly of course and has been flying for so long that it's way off course. It's like a cow that zig zagged, then a dog followed, then sheep, then horses, then people, then roads were built and cities and we're wasting thousands of miles of travel because we're stuck in that cow's rut.
What horrible shape we must be in! Sounds like Viola and Barna are the Luther and Calvin of the day, here to bring about a new Reformation!
Let me say, for all my tongue and cheek above, that their goal is great, to "get in touch with both the Word of God and the history of the church" (xxvii). "Our goal is to be true to His plan so that we may become the people He desires us to be and that the church may be all she is called to be" (xxix).
And let me also say that their definitions of things like "Pagan," "Pagan Christianity," and "Biblical" are carefully worded not to be simply dismissive of everything that had its origins in secular culture.
Chapter 1: Have We Really Been Doing It By the Book
The opening illustration is a guy who yells at his family trying to get them ready for church. They get to church late. Then they all have to smile and pretend they're happy while listening to a boring sermon about how "We at First Bible New Testament Community Church do everything by this book! Everything!" (3).
I'm assuming this image will resonate with a lot of American Christians? I certainly get the morning get to church panic. Actually, it applies in my family more in relation to getting to school. Obviously a pagan rather than a Christian problem. The problem--the institutional church! Naw, I don't think so. The problem--take a chill pill Dad and take a class in family management.
I do remember churches where what you wear and being on time is all important. Maybe they are the vast majority. The take away--Down with the institutional church! Naw, I don't think so. The take away is for a whole lot of people to get their priorities straight.
Sorry, my church isn't like that. People wear jeans and shorts and T-shirts if they want to. Those for whom dressing up is a (cultural) expression of God's holiness dress up--and shame on anyone who tells them they can't do this.
Are there people who look askance at the Schenck family if they're late? Probably. Maybe I need to pray about my attitude toward them because my thought is usually, you shallow loser for thinking that matters one iota. The institutional church the problem? Naw, I don't think so.
More importantly, Viola assumes throughout that the pastor is right about doing it solely by the book. He thinks the problem is that the pastor is not doing it by the book. Again, this pastor (and therefore Viola) at least borders on being the ignorant one.
When we look at the addresses on the Bible is says it was written to someone called (ancient) Israel and someone called "the churches of Galatia" and "to those who are at Rome." No one alive today is the actual audience of these books. And guess what, they were people embedded in a culture. It is impossible to extract yourself from culture, from "paganism." Paganism as Viola defines it will always, of necessity, of the nature of the case, always be inextricably intertwined with the business of being Christian, even of being an "organic" Christian.
So the biblical message is already thoroughly "pagan" in his sense, culturally embedded. And we don't go strictly "by the Book" because the living out of the gospel in their cultures (plural) has to be translated into living out the gospel in our cultures (plural).
Certainly Viola recognizes this to some extent. He says things a little like this in his notes. But the premise of the book seems to deny his acknowledgement as it gets into the details.
We'll see.
Introduction
So Barna's introduction is more build up. There is a great sense of foreboding. The "institutional" church is in great crisis. It is like a plane that got slightly of course and has been flying for so long that it's way off course. It's like a cow that zig zagged, then a dog followed, then sheep, then horses, then people, then roads were built and cities and we're wasting thousands of miles of travel because we're stuck in that cow's rut.
What horrible shape we must be in! Sounds like Viola and Barna are the Luther and Calvin of the day, here to bring about a new Reformation!
Let me say, for all my tongue and cheek above, that their goal is great, to "get in touch with both the Word of God and the history of the church" (xxvii). "Our goal is to be true to His plan so that we may become the people He desires us to be and that the church may be all she is called to be" (xxix).
And let me also say that their definitions of things like "Pagan," "Pagan Christianity," and "Biblical" are carefully worded not to be simply dismissive of everything that had its origins in secular culture.
Chapter 1: Have We Really Been Doing It By the Book
The opening illustration is a guy who yells at his family trying to get them ready for church. They get to church late. Then they all have to smile and pretend they're happy while listening to a boring sermon about how "We at First Bible New Testament Community Church do everything by this book! Everything!" (3).
I'm assuming this image will resonate with a lot of American Christians? I certainly get the morning get to church panic. Actually, it applies in my family more in relation to getting to school. Obviously a pagan rather than a Christian problem. The problem--the institutional church! Naw, I don't think so. The problem--take a chill pill Dad and take a class in family management.
I do remember churches where what you wear and being on time is all important. Maybe they are the vast majority. The take away--Down with the institutional church! Naw, I don't think so. The take away is for a whole lot of people to get their priorities straight.
Sorry, my church isn't like that. People wear jeans and shorts and T-shirts if they want to. Those for whom dressing up is a (cultural) expression of God's holiness dress up--and shame on anyone who tells them they can't do this.
Are there people who look askance at the Schenck family if they're late? Probably. Maybe I need to pray about my attitude toward them because my thought is usually, you shallow loser for thinking that matters one iota. The institutional church the problem? Naw, I don't think so.
More importantly, Viola assumes throughout that the pastor is right about doing it solely by the book. He thinks the problem is that the pastor is not doing it by the book. Again, this pastor (and therefore Viola) at least borders on being the ignorant one.
When we look at the addresses on the Bible is says it was written to someone called (ancient) Israel and someone called "the churches of Galatia" and "to those who are at Rome." No one alive today is the actual audience of these books. And guess what, they were people embedded in a culture. It is impossible to extract yourself from culture, from "paganism." Paganism as Viola defines it will always, of necessity, of the nature of the case, always be inextricably intertwined with the business of being Christian, even of being an "organic" Christian.
So the biblical message is already thoroughly "pagan" in his sense, culturally embedded. And we don't go strictly "by the Book" because the living out of the gospel in their cultures (plural) has to be translated into living out the gospel in our cultures (plural).
Certainly Viola recognizes this to some extent. He says things a little like this in his notes. But the premise of the book seems to deny his acknowledgement as it gets into the details.
We'll see.
Meaning is not a Shell Game but a Slot Machine
I'm pre-dating this post behind my Pagan Christianity review for the day. Thanks to Viola for helping me process further how to explain what's wrong with so much of the discussion of the Bible in relation to the church today. To use some of Viola and Barna's own imagery, small deviations at one point can result in massive deviations if that course is followed for long.
And here I refer to the way we conceptualize meaning. The "picture theory of language" is perfectly fine for teaching children words. It works fine for most of us most of the time in ordinary communication. The picture theory of language is the idea that meaning is like the picture in the bubble that appears above your head when you read or hear a word.
In other words, the right meaning is like finding the peanut under the shell in a shell game. The word is the shell, the "signifier," the cue. The meaning is the "thing" underneath, the thing signified.
The problem is that this is not really an accurate understanding of meaning, at least not a precisely accurate one. We don't know the meaning of what a wild-goose-chase is by adding the stuff from the bubbles of these three things up. And the most significant meaning of the word that literally refers to a female dog is not the picture of a female dog. What "thing" is the meaning of that word?
This way of thinking about meaning leads a person to think that the words of the Bible have a meaning, a meaning in them. The entry level reader simply thinks that this is the meaning in the bubbles above their head. Yet, and here is the point, very intelligent scholars of the Bible often function with the same basic model, only made more sophisticated.
For example, there is the notion that we are to try to separate the cultural aspects of the Bible from the timeless ones, arriving at the absolute, universal, timeless meaning that you can then re-clothe in our times and places. This idea still functions with the same basic misunderstanding of language, even if it does so on a more sophisticated level.
Meaning is more like a tumor that has metasthesized. You cannot separate the cancer from the "normal" tissue, because it is thoroughly ensconched, thoroughly intermixed. So it is with language. You cannot remove the absolute meaning from the time-conditioned meaning because any language you use is time-conditioned and ensconched in your context.
The more accurate model is to think of setting two thoroughly, culturally embedded meanings next to each other and finding points of similarity and dissimilarity. Every single word anyone uses is completely cultural. Every paradigm we use to conceptualize is thoroughly embedded in culture as well. And, yes, there are aspects of thought that are found in every culture. What we call "timeless" is thus rather the commonality shared by all human language.
Meaning is thus much more like a slot machine. To be sure, the options are already on the various columns. Each individual combination is a triangulation of factors--the symbol, the broader culture, and the individual context of the speaker speaking. Meaning never occurs without all these factors being in play, whether for the author of a text or for a reader.
Addendum: I should probably have also said that there are more than three columns to the slot machine and you can only see one of them. You can see the word, but the multiple other columns that determine the pay out are more or less unseen. Words thus give you the impression that their meaning is obvious, while the real factors producing their meaning are often less than conscious.
And here I refer to the way we conceptualize meaning. The "picture theory of language" is perfectly fine for teaching children words. It works fine for most of us most of the time in ordinary communication. The picture theory of language is the idea that meaning is like the picture in the bubble that appears above your head when you read or hear a word.
In other words, the right meaning is like finding the peanut under the shell in a shell game. The word is the shell, the "signifier," the cue. The meaning is the "thing" underneath, the thing signified.
The problem is that this is not really an accurate understanding of meaning, at least not a precisely accurate one. We don't know the meaning of what a wild-goose-chase is by adding the stuff from the bubbles of these three things up. And the most significant meaning of the word that literally refers to a female dog is not the picture of a female dog. What "thing" is the meaning of that word?
This way of thinking about meaning leads a person to think that the words of the Bible have a meaning, a meaning in them. The entry level reader simply thinks that this is the meaning in the bubbles above their head. Yet, and here is the point, very intelligent scholars of the Bible often function with the same basic model, only made more sophisticated.
For example, there is the notion that we are to try to separate the cultural aspects of the Bible from the timeless ones, arriving at the absolute, universal, timeless meaning that you can then re-clothe in our times and places. This idea still functions with the same basic misunderstanding of language, even if it does so on a more sophisticated level.
Meaning is more like a tumor that has metasthesized. You cannot separate the cancer from the "normal" tissue, because it is thoroughly ensconched, thoroughly intermixed. So it is with language. You cannot remove the absolute meaning from the time-conditioned meaning because any language you use is time-conditioned and ensconched in your context.
The more accurate model is to think of setting two thoroughly, culturally embedded meanings next to each other and finding points of similarity and dissimilarity. Every single word anyone uses is completely cultural. Every paradigm we use to conceptualize is thoroughly embedded in culture as well. And, yes, there are aspects of thought that are found in every culture. What we call "timeless" is thus rather the commonality shared by all human language.
Meaning is thus much more like a slot machine. To be sure, the options are already on the various columns. Each individual combination is a triangulation of factors--the symbol, the broader culture, and the individual context of the speaker speaking. Meaning never occurs without all these factors being in play, whether for the author of a text or for a reader.
Addendum: I should probably have also said that there are more than three columns to the slot machine and you can only see one of them. You can see the word, but the multiple other columns that determine the pay out are more or less unseen. Words thus give you the impression that their meaning is obvious, while the real factors producing their meaning are often less than conscious.
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Sin, the New Perspective, the Pope, and Peter Enns
No, the post doesn't try to connect all these. These are just some topics that have wandered through my head today as I sit at home with my sick son Tom until my wife returns to relieve me for Latin at 1:15.
First, sin. We translated Galatians 2:15 today in my Greek Galatians class this morning. I argued to them that to put "sinners" in quotes ("we who are Jews by nature and not sinners from the Gentiles") reflects a misunderstanding of the context (sic to the NIV). Of course Paul literally meant that Gentiles were sinners. Indeed, the point he is building to in 2:17 is that Christian Jews are sinners too.
Where the new perspective on Paul comes in is this. First, calling it the new perspective turns out to be a little like thinking of modern translations as more recent texts than the "old" King James. The text is not newer, it's older. The KJV text is based on manuscripts over 700 years "newer" than those on which modern translations are based.
Exactly! The new perspective on Paul is nothing other than the attempt to take Paul's Jewish context seriously, just as the "third quest" is nothing other than the attempt to take Jesus' Jewish context seriously. The reason some groups have fought tooth and nail against the new perspective is not because their perspective is "older" but because some of their traditions are being questioned by the recent trend of reading Paul in his Jewish context.
So on the matter of Paul's understanding of sin--and I don't know anyone who has addressed this from this "new, original Jewish, perspective"--it is the same error of tradition to define sin as anything short of absolute perfection. Just as when Paul says "all have sinned" he is thinking concretely of Jews and Gentiles, both have sinned, what standard would a Jew take as the point of departure for what a sin is? Obviously, the concrete Jewish Law.
A sinner is thus someone who violates the Jewish Law, not someone who falls short or "misses the mark" of absolute moral perfection. And the primary sense of such sin is intentional, not unintentional. I can hardly find any room in Paul's thought for unintentional sin in the context of known rights and wrongs.
Then the Pope. He reinstated an excommunicated priest who had denied the Holocaust. Now he is demanding the priest recant such positions. For all my sense of the importance of the church catholic, it is unfortunate that so much authority came to be placed into a single individual and a single institution that only with great difficulty can reverse its course on an issue.
Finally, I've asked Peter Enns and he's agreed to do a Q & A in the near future here on some topics of interest. Personally, I'm very intrigued that he has been attending a Nazarene Church for about 7 years, although I believe he remains a member of the Presbyterian Church of America and theologically Calvinist. We'll forgive him for that :-)
Nevertheless, I'll be interested to know what differences in flavor he has picked up on. We'll also ask him what he's been up to recently and let him respond to our recent reviews of his book, Inspiration and Incarnation.
Pagan Christianity review 2 tomorrow, Lord willing...
First, sin. We translated Galatians 2:15 today in my Greek Galatians class this morning. I argued to them that to put "sinners" in quotes ("we who are Jews by nature and not sinners from the Gentiles") reflects a misunderstanding of the context (sic to the NIV). Of course Paul literally meant that Gentiles were sinners. Indeed, the point he is building to in 2:17 is that Christian Jews are sinners too.
Where the new perspective on Paul comes in is this. First, calling it the new perspective turns out to be a little like thinking of modern translations as more recent texts than the "old" King James. The text is not newer, it's older. The KJV text is based on manuscripts over 700 years "newer" than those on which modern translations are based.
Exactly! The new perspective on Paul is nothing other than the attempt to take Paul's Jewish context seriously, just as the "third quest" is nothing other than the attempt to take Jesus' Jewish context seriously. The reason some groups have fought tooth and nail against the new perspective is not because their perspective is "older" but because some of their traditions are being questioned by the recent trend of reading Paul in his Jewish context.
So on the matter of Paul's understanding of sin--and I don't know anyone who has addressed this from this "new, original Jewish, perspective"--it is the same error of tradition to define sin as anything short of absolute perfection. Just as when Paul says "all have sinned" he is thinking concretely of Jews and Gentiles, both have sinned, what standard would a Jew take as the point of departure for what a sin is? Obviously, the concrete Jewish Law.
A sinner is thus someone who violates the Jewish Law, not someone who falls short or "misses the mark" of absolute moral perfection. And the primary sense of such sin is intentional, not unintentional. I can hardly find any room in Paul's thought for unintentional sin in the context of known rights and wrongs.
Then the Pope. He reinstated an excommunicated priest who had denied the Holocaust. Now he is demanding the priest recant such positions. For all my sense of the importance of the church catholic, it is unfortunate that so much authority came to be placed into a single individual and a single institution that only with great difficulty can reverse its course on an issue.
Finally, I've asked Peter Enns and he's agreed to do a Q & A in the near future here on some topics of interest. Personally, I'm very intrigued that he has been attending a Nazarene Church for about 7 years, although I believe he remains a member of the Presbyterian Church of America and theologically Calvinist. We'll forgive him for that :-)
Nevertheless, I'll be interested to know what differences in flavor he has picked up on. We'll also ask him what he's been up to recently and let him respond to our recent reviews of his book, Inspiration and Incarnation.
Pagan Christianity review 2 tomorrow, Lord willing...
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
How Words Work: Word Studies Vidcasts (1)
I did this vidcast in a rush, as you will see, but its topic is on how words do and do not work. It includes material on word fallacies and some of the most common mistakes made from the pulpit having to do with words.
Monday, February 02, 2009
The Last Supper: IWU Style...
You want to know what student life is like at IWU. Here's what it's like:
Photo taken by Casper Hamlet, IWU Photography and Marketing. For all its faults, I can't imagine you can beat IWU for campus life, synergistic creativity, and a faculty that actually like each other!
IWU, Yeah, it's like that.
1.3 The Old Testament as Christian Scripture
Previous posts in this series are:
1.1 The Problem of Christian Scripture
1.2 The Problem of Meaning
The Jewish Bible has the same content as the Protestant Old Testament, with the exception of the way the books are arranged. The Protestant Old Testament more closely follows the order of the Septuagint, while the Jewish Bible collects the writings in the way Jews apparently did at the time of Christ. The Roman Catholic and Orthodox Old Testaments include further books that are not in the Jewish or Protestant Bibles.
However, far more than the actual content, the difference between the Jewish Bible and the Christian Old Testament is a matter of 1) perspective and often 2) the meaning of the text. These two crucial distinctions will often blur into one another, although we can distinguish between them.
By the meaning of the text, we point to the fact that both New Testament authors and Christian writers throughout the centuries have often interpreted the words of the Old Testament in ways that their original authors did not intend. We should not think, of course, that non-Christian Jewish interpreters have done any differently. We simply are using the original meaning of the Old Testament texts as a benchmark by which to mark such departures.
Nor do we wish to suggest in any way that the New Testament use of the Old was in any way inappropriate, especially given the interpretive methods in use in its day. As the commentaries at Qumran interpreted various passages directly in the light of their community, so the New Testament often interprets the words of Old Testament passages in the light of its communities. As rabbis used interpretive techniques such as the use of catchword phrases, the argument from lesser to greater, the argument from the silence of the Torah, so various New Testament authors used these methods.
Nevertheless, New Testament and later Christian authors did often read Old Testament texts in ways the authors of those texts never intended. For example, we certainly do find the expectation in some of the post-exilic parts of the Old Testament that the Davidic dynasty will be restored. The New Testament relates some of these texts to Jesus, as well as various royal psalms.
Reading those passages in context, however, it is quite clear that they do not have in mind a heavenly king who will rule the entire cosmos. They look for a quite human king who will rule Israel from Jerusalem. One might argue that parts of the New Testament expects this scenario to happen eventually with Jesus as well. But clearly the nature of Christ's kingship is unexpected by the original meaning of these texts, to say the least.
At other times, the New Testament use of texts is quite different from the probable original meaning. When Matthew 2:23 suggests that Jesus growing up in Nazareth is a fulfillment of prophecy, it is difficult even to know exactly what Scripture Matthew has in mind, for there is no mention of the village of Nazareth in the Old Testament. Matthew seems to consider it a kind of spiritual fulfillment of more than one prophet, using the plural.
The form of the statement, "he will be" looks a little like the form of Judges 13 where Samson will be a Nazirite. The word nzr is used in Isaiah 11:1, which speaks of the royal branch coming out of Jesse, father of David. Neither of these passages have anything to do with the village of Nazareth, but they do associate words in the Old Testament that sound similar with a king, at least in one instance.
Another example is Paul's use of Genesis 15:6. Paul clearly understands the verse to be God's declaration of Abraham as righteous (e.g., Romans 4). But the context and grammar of Genesis in the Hebrew perhaps more likely indicate that it was Abraham who was affirming God to be righteous.
In these cases, we have Christian readings of the Old Testament that must surely constitute reading the Old Testament as Christian Scripture. For Christians reading the Old Testament, these interpretations are more important than their original meanings. That is not to say that the original meaning cannot be Christian Scripture as well when viewed from a broader Christian perspective. It is simply to say that we have precedent for understanding the meaning of these passages differently from the meanings they originally had.
We might suggest the same for distinctive Christian readings of Old Testament passages that come from Christian history. We think, for example, of Genesis 1:27, which says, "let us make humanity in our own image." Christian interpreters have long heard an echo of the Trinity in this statement.
From the standpoint of the original meaning, of course, this interpretation is highly problematic to say the least. The doctrine of the Trinity was not worked out until several centuries after Christ. Certainly with a pre-modern understanding of Scripture, one would simply suggest that God revealed the Trinity to Moses.
Following out the implications, we must then conclude that this text was a curiousity to Israel throughout the centuries and, indeed, on into some point in the early church. The New Testament, for example, never uses the Genesis text in this way. Then finally, some early Christian, perhaps unknown to us, rediscovered this meaning that God had hidden in the wording all along.
The inductive method of course follows a different course. It asks, given how words were used at the time Genesis was written, what is the most likely meaning its originally intended audience would take from these words? In other words, it assumes that God actually intended these texts to speak to those for whom they were actually first written more than to people who would not live until perhaps over a thousand years later. Given passages like Deuteronomy 32 and Psalm 82, it seems far more likely in context that Genesis 1:27 originally referred to YHWH's heavenly council, whether one takes it literally or poetically.
Nevertheless, it would seem perfectly Christian to read Genesis 1:27 in relation to the Trinity because its wording is susceptible to such an interpretation, and we as Christians believe in the Trinity. The fact that this was not the original intention of the human author is irrelevant. As Christian Scripture, the verse reads very nicely in this way.
But we read the Old Testament as Christian Scripture far more importantly because of the broader perspective we take on the Old Testament, far more than by the way we read the occasional verse where the New Testament or later Christian history has given a passage a distinctively Christian meaning.
This perspective, more than anything else, is that of a broader story into which we place the Old Testament books, a story whose most crucial event is the incarnation, atoning death, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ. When we read the Old Testament in this way, it is part of a plot leading up to Christ and the ultimate restoration of all things.
A story proceeds on the basis of some unfulfilled goal. Red Riding Hood is trying to see her grandmother, but a wolf gets in the way. Cinderella longs for a life of happiness, but her wicked step mother stands in the way. God intended humanity to rule over the creation but Sin and Death got in the way.
The Christian telling of history is distinctive. God created humanity for glory, to rule over the creation. But Adam sinned, and brought death into the world. Now all humans are born under the power of Sin and cannot be reconciled to God apart from the reconciling death of Jesus, whose death God has used to make such reconciliation possible. God raised him up victorious from the grave and seated him as cosmic king in the heavens. At the appropriate time, he will come again and set the whole world to right.
Some may note that I have told the story with a particularly Pauline and perhaps even Augustinian twist. Adam, for example, is not clearly mentioned in this way anywhere in the New Testament outside of Romans and 1 Corinthians. Moreover, I have left out very important Christian parts of the story like the incarnation and the virgin birth. From the standpoint of this section, I have barely even mentioned the Old Testament.
Nevertheless, to read the Old Testament as Christian Scripture, more than anything else, is to read it as the first part of this Christian story. Needless to say, its texts by themselves do not in any way require or beg for such a reading. That is to say, the Old Testament alone does not read with the expectation of such a second half. It does not read as old material awaiting the new. It is rather a Christian perspective that creates this dynamic.
For example, in terms of the Old Testament itself, the story of Adam in Genesis 3 plays no appreciable role in the thought of the Old Testament. It is never mentioned again, other than the possible allusion in Ezekiel's self designation as son of Adam. The Christian reading of the Adam story is not attested in Jewish literature until around the time of Christ. Thus The Life of Adam and Eve in the first century BC is the first to equate the serpent with Satan, and the book of Wisdom mentions death entering the world through the Devil's envy.
It is thus interesting to note that Judaism does not have any sense of human nature as fallen in the manner of Augustine's understanding of Paul. Indeed, Paul himself says nothing of total depravity. Paul merely claims that all have sinned and thus cannot claim any right to God's grace. The doctrine of total depravity is not even a universal Christian understanding, particular as it is to Western Christianity under Augustine's influence.
What we are saying is that the Christian perspective on Adam is not demanded of the Genesis text at all. Words like disobedience, condemnation, original sin, depravity, Satan, appear nowhere in the text of Genesis itself. These are part of the Christian perspective we bring to the Genesis text. It is a valid perspective. It is our perspective. It is not the original perspective.
The giving of the Jewish Law at Mt. Sinai, so central to the Jewish perspective on Exodus, has a quite different significance for Christians. Christians read Exodus, once again, through the perspective of Paul and later Christianity. Rather than see this covenant as foundational rules for living as ethnic Israel before YHWH, we see most of this legislation as a shadow of a reality accomplished by Christ.
This perspective is perhaps best illustrated by the Christian understanding of the Levitical laws having to do with sacrifice. Christians see these sacrifices as foreshadowing the one effective "sacrifice" of Jesus on the cross for sins. None of the Old Testament legislation regarding sacrifice is now to be observed because Jesus has once and for all accomplished these aspects of the old covenant in lieu of the new covenant in Jesus Christ.
Certainly this development is unexpected from the standpoint of the Old Testament texts themselves. Indeed, if we listen to the prophets in context, we would have to acknowledge that the Old Testament texts themselves do not have a completely unified understanding of the role of sacrifice in the life of Israel. Prophets like Micah and Isaiah decry them as a diversion when God only requires mercy and justice. Jeremiah even seems to consider them a secondary accretion from God's original relationship with Israel (7:22).
Nevertheless, to read the books of the Jewish Bible as Old Testament Scripture is to see them as a part of the Christian story. The story of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the story that leads to Jesus and the kingdom. The story of Moses and God's subsequent relationship with Israel is leading to the story of Jesus and the spread of the gospel to the nations. The Jewish story becomes the story of those of us who are Gentiles. Although we would scarcely have been included in the original understanding of the story--a fact illustrated most vividly by Galatians--it has become our story because we read the Old Testament as Christian Scripture.
Yet we must push even deeper as Christians. We must push toward a "thick" interpretation of these Old Testament texts. If all we have as Christians is a later Christian reader's response to the Old Testament texts, our reading is too shallow to stand the test of time. If we are aware of what it means to read those Old Testament texts in context, we will not be able to shake it from our mind. We will have a gnawing sense that we are hanging in air without anything to ground us. At some point we will fall.
A thick interpretation will have to see not only a superficial re-reading of these texts as a reading of them as Christian Scripture. A thick interpretation will push deeper to see the contextual readings of these books as part of the historical story of God walking with humanity in history. We will scarcely be able to believe in the Christian story over the long haul if we conclude that it appeared out of thin air at the time of Jesus, let alone at the Council of Nicaea. Surely for Christian faith to work, we must believe that God actually walked with Israel as well in its own day, not simply in the Christian story of Israel, potentially unattached to the historical Israel.
We thus cannot use our newfound understanding of the Old Testament as Christian Scripture as an escape from contextual and critical scholarship of the Old Testament. We cannot forget what it means to read the Old Testament in context even though we finally recognize the legitimacy and indeed primacy of the Christian reading. A Christian reading of the Old Testament will thus also see in the original meanings of these texts God walking with humanity in a progress and flow of revelation, a process of God unfolding an understanding over centuries, indeed, over millennia, apparently in no great hurry to lead humanity to a full understanding.
Job 19:25 provides us with an excellent case study: "I know that my Redeemer is living, and afterwards He will rise on the dust. After this my skin is thus destroyed, from my flesh I will see God." This verse has a distinctively Christian reading, although not one attested in the New Testament. Nevertheless, Christians--especially since Handel wrote his Messiah in the English speaking world--have conventionally heard in this verse a reference to the resurrection, with Jesus as the Redeemer in question. Job affirms that one day Jesus will resurrect his body.
There is nothing wrong with this reading of Job as Christian Scripture. It is, however, very unlikely to be anything like the original sense of Job 19. Elsewhere, the book of Job--as the bulk of the Old Testament--consistently denies any meaningful afterlife for the dead, even the righteous dead: "My life is a breath... As the cloud vanishes and fades, so the one who goes to Sheol does not come up. He returns no more to his house" (7:7-10).
Therefore, in its original context, it seems far more likely that what Job is saying is that he believes that God, his Redeemer, will eventually come--before he dies--and vindicate his innocence, restoring his flesh. As Christians, we will find the later reading, the distinctively Christian one, far more appropriate for us. Yet at the same time, we cannot unlearn the contextual reading. We cannot return to our first naivete even if we want to, and in any case, any view based on a denial of truth is not likely to survive for long.
The answer is to see not only the Christian reading of Job 19 as legitimate, but also to validate the original meaning as a Christian reading, taken from the perspective of where God was leading humanity in history. The first reading is a textual reading, a reading of the text of Job as Christian Scripture. The second reading is a contextual reading, a historical one, placing Job within the overall history of God walking with humanity on its way to a fuller understanding of the afterlife.
The Christian reading of the Old Testament as Scripture thus involves both particular meanings that we are more likely to find in particular texts and overarching perspectives we have on those texts. The meanings we sometimes find, as well as the way we place the Old Testament texts within an overarching narrative, derive from where we believe the story went beyond the pages of the Old Testament books. And we read these texts through the twin lenses of the Christian "rule of faith" and "law of love."
Yet even the original meanings of these texts fit within our Christian perspective on them. Viewed in this way, they are moments of God walking with humanity on a journey that led, most significantly, to Jesus Christ, but also to what we believe is a fuller understanding of a wide variety of other matters, such as the nature of human life after death. A "thick" interpretation will not deny one or the other, the contextual or the distinctively Christian reading, but has room for both.
1.1 The Problem of Christian Scripture
1.2 The Problem of Meaning
The Jewish Bible has the same content as the Protestant Old Testament, with the exception of the way the books are arranged. The Protestant Old Testament more closely follows the order of the Septuagint, while the Jewish Bible collects the writings in the way Jews apparently did at the time of Christ. The Roman Catholic and Orthodox Old Testaments include further books that are not in the Jewish or Protestant Bibles.
However, far more than the actual content, the difference between the Jewish Bible and the Christian Old Testament is a matter of 1) perspective and often 2) the meaning of the text. These two crucial distinctions will often blur into one another, although we can distinguish between them.
By the meaning of the text, we point to the fact that both New Testament authors and Christian writers throughout the centuries have often interpreted the words of the Old Testament in ways that their original authors did not intend. We should not think, of course, that non-Christian Jewish interpreters have done any differently. We simply are using the original meaning of the Old Testament texts as a benchmark by which to mark such departures.
Nor do we wish to suggest in any way that the New Testament use of the Old was in any way inappropriate, especially given the interpretive methods in use in its day. As the commentaries at Qumran interpreted various passages directly in the light of their community, so the New Testament often interprets the words of Old Testament passages in the light of its communities. As rabbis used interpretive techniques such as the use of catchword phrases, the argument from lesser to greater, the argument from the silence of the Torah, so various New Testament authors used these methods.
Nevertheless, New Testament and later Christian authors did often read Old Testament texts in ways the authors of those texts never intended. For example, we certainly do find the expectation in some of the post-exilic parts of the Old Testament that the Davidic dynasty will be restored. The New Testament relates some of these texts to Jesus, as well as various royal psalms.
Reading those passages in context, however, it is quite clear that they do not have in mind a heavenly king who will rule the entire cosmos. They look for a quite human king who will rule Israel from Jerusalem. One might argue that parts of the New Testament expects this scenario to happen eventually with Jesus as well. But clearly the nature of Christ's kingship is unexpected by the original meaning of these texts, to say the least.
At other times, the New Testament use of texts is quite different from the probable original meaning. When Matthew 2:23 suggests that Jesus growing up in Nazareth is a fulfillment of prophecy, it is difficult even to know exactly what Scripture Matthew has in mind, for there is no mention of the village of Nazareth in the Old Testament. Matthew seems to consider it a kind of spiritual fulfillment of more than one prophet, using the plural.
The form of the statement, "he will be" looks a little like the form of Judges 13 where Samson will be a Nazirite. The word nzr is used in Isaiah 11:1, which speaks of the royal branch coming out of Jesse, father of David. Neither of these passages have anything to do with the village of Nazareth, but they do associate words in the Old Testament that sound similar with a king, at least in one instance.
Another example is Paul's use of Genesis 15:6. Paul clearly understands the verse to be God's declaration of Abraham as righteous (e.g., Romans 4). But the context and grammar of Genesis in the Hebrew perhaps more likely indicate that it was Abraham who was affirming God to be righteous.
In these cases, we have Christian readings of the Old Testament that must surely constitute reading the Old Testament as Christian Scripture. For Christians reading the Old Testament, these interpretations are more important than their original meanings. That is not to say that the original meaning cannot be Christian Scripture as well when viewed from a broader Christian perspective. It is simply to say that we have precedent for understanding the meaning of these passages differently from the meanings they originally had.
We might suggest the same for distinctive Christian readings of Old Testament passages that come from Christian history. We think, for example, of Genesis 1:27, which says, "let us make humanity in our own image." Christian interpreters have long heard an echo of the Trinity in this statement.
From the standpoint of the original meaning, of course, this interpretation is highly problematic to say the least. The doctrine of the Trinity was not worked out until several centuries after Christ. Certainly with a pre-modern understanding of Scripture, one would simply suggest that God revealed the Trinity to Moses.
Following out the implications, we must then conclude that this text was a curiousity to Israel throughout the centuries and, indeed, on into some point in the early church. The New Testament, for example, never uses the Genesis text in this way. Then finally, some early Christian, perhaps unknown to us, rediscovered this meaning that God had hidden in the wording all along.
The inductive method of course follows a different course. It asks, given how words were used at the time Genesis was written, what is the most likely meaning its originally intended audience would take from these words? In other words, it assumes that God actually intended these texts to speak to those for whom they were actually first written more than to people who would not live until perhaps over a thousand years later. Given passages like Deuteronomy 32 and Psalm 82, it seems far more likely in context that Genesis 1:27 originally referred to YHWH's heavenly council, whether one takes it literally or poetically.
Nevertheless, it would seem perfectly Christian to read Genesis 1:27 in relation to the Trinity because its wording is susceptible to such an interpretation, and we as Christians believe in the Trinity. The fact that this was not the original intention of the human author is irrelevant. As Christian Scripture, the verse reads very nicely in this way.
But we read the Old Testament as Christian Scripture far more importantly because of the broader perspective we take on the Old Testament, far more than by the way we read the occasional verse where the New Testament or later Christian history has given a passage a distinctively Christian meaning.
This perspective, more than anything else, is that of a broader story into which we place the Old Testament books, a story whose most crucial event is the incarnation, atoning death, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ. When we read the Old Testament in this way, it is part of a plot leading up to Christ and the ultimate restoration of all things.
A story proceeds on the basis of some unfulfilled goal. Red Riding Hood is trying to see her grandmother, but a wolf gets in the way. Cinderella longs for a life of happiness, but her wicked step mother stands in the way. God intended humanity to rule over the creation but Sin and Death got in the way.
The Christian telling of history is distinctive. God created humanity for glory, to rule over the creation. But Adam sinned, and brought death into the world. Now all humans are born under the power of Sin and cannot be reconciled to God apart from the reconciling death of Jesus, whose death God has used to make such reconciliation possible. God raised him up victorious from the grave and seated him as cosmic king in the heavens. At the appropriate time, he will come again and set the whole world to right.
Some may note that I have told the story with a particularly Pauline and perhaps even Augustinian twist. Adam, for example, is not clearly mentioned in this way anywhere in the New Testament outside of Romans and 1 Corinthians. Moreover, I have left out very important Christian parts of the story like the incarnation and the virgin birth. From the standpoint of this section, I have barely even mentioned the Old Testament.
Nevertheless, to read the Old Testament as Christian Scripture, more than anything else, is to read it as the first part of this Christian story. Needless to say, its texts by themselves do not in any way require or beg for such a reading. That is to say, the Old Testament alone does not read with the expectation of such a second half. It does not read as old material awaiting the new. It is rather a Christian perspective that creates this dynamic.
For example, in terms of the Old Testament itself, the story of Adam in Genesis 3 plays no appreciable role in the thought of the Old Testament. It is never mentioned again, other than the possible allusion in Ezekiel's self designation as son of Adam. The Christian reading of the Adam story is not attested in Jewish literature until around the time of Christ. Thus The Life of Adam and Eve in the first century BC is the first to equate the serpent with Satan, and the book of Wisdom mentions death entering the world through the Devil's envy.
It is thus interesting to note that Judaism does not have any sense of human nature as fallen in the manner of Augustine's understanding of Paul. Indeed, Paul himself says nothing of total depravity. Paul merely claims that all have sinned and thus cannot claim any right to God's grace. The doctrine of total depravity is not even a universal Christian understanding, particular as it is to Western Christianity under Augustine's influence.
What we are saying is that the Christian perspective on Adam is not demanded of the Genesis text at all. Words like disobedience, condemnation, original sin, depravity, Satan, appear nowhere in the text of Genesis itself. These are part of the Christian perspective we bring to the Genesis text. It is a valid perspective. It is our perspective. It is not the original perspective.
The giving of the Jewish Law at Mt. Sinai, so central to the Jewish perspective on Exodus, has a quite different significance for Christians. Christians read Exodus, once again, through the perspective of Paul and later Christianity. Rather than see this covenant as foundational rules for living as ethnic Israel before YHWH, we see most of this legislation as a shadow of a reality accomplished by Christ.
This perspective is perhaps best illustrated by the Christian understanding of the Levitical laws having to do with sacrifice. Christians see these sacrifices as foreshadowing the one effective "sacrifice" of Jesus on the cross for sins. None of the Old Testament legislation regarding sacrifice is now to be observed because Jesus has once and for all accomplished these aspects of the old covenant in lieu of the new covenant in Jesus Christ.
Certainly this development is unexpected from the standpoint of the Old Testament texts themselves. Indeed, if we listen to the prophets in context, we would have to acknowledge that the Old Testament texts themselves do not have a completely unified understanding of the role of sacrifice in the life of Israel. Prophets like Micah and Isaiah decry them as a diversion when God only requires mercy and justice. Jeremiah even seems to consider them a secondary accretion from God's original relationship with Israel (7:22).
Nevertheless, to read the books of the Jewish Bible as Old Testament Scripture is to see them as a part of the Christian story. The story of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the story that leads to Jesus and the kingdom. The story of Moses and God's subsequent relationship with Israel is leading to the story of Jesus and the spread of the gospel to the nations. The Jewish story becomes the story of those of us who are Gentiles. Although we would scarcely have been included in the original understanding of the story--a fact illustrated most vividly by Galatians--it has become our story because we read the Old Testament as Christian Scripture.
Yet we must push even deeper as Christians. We must push toward a "thick" interpretation of these Old Testament texts. If all we have as Christians is a later Christian reader's response to the Old Testament texts, our reading is too shallow to stand the test of time. If we are aware of what it means to read those Old Testament texts in context, we will not be able to shake it from our mind. We will have a gnawing sense that we are hanging in air without anything to ground us. At some point we will fall.
A thick interpretation will have to see not only a superficial re-reading of these texts as a reading of them as Christian Scripture. A thick interpretation will push deeper to see the contextual readings of these books as part of the historical story of God walking with humanity in history. We will scarcely be able to believe in the Christian story over the long haul if we conclude that it appeared out of thin air at the time of Jesus, let alone at the Council of Nicaea. Surely for Christian faith to work, we must believe that God actually walked with Israel as well in its own day, not simply in the Christian story of Israel, potentially unattached to the historical Israel.
We thus cannot use our newfound understanding of the Old Testament as Christian Scripture as an escape from contextual and critical scholarship of the Old Testament. We cannot forget what it means to read the Old Testament in context even though we finally recognize the legitimacy and indeed primacy of the Christian reading. A Christian reading of the Old Testament will thus also see in the original meanings of these texts God walking with humanity in a progress and flow of revelation, a process of God unfolding an understanding over centuries, indeed, over millennia, apparently in no great hurry to lead humanity to a full understanding.
Job 19:25 provides us with an excellent case study: "I know that my Redeemer is living, and afterwards He will rise on the dust. After this my skin is thus destroyed, from my flesh I will see God." This verse has a distinctively Christian reading, although not one attested in the New Testament. Nevertheless, Christians--especially since Handel wrote his Messiah in the English speaking world--have conventionally heard in this verse a reference to the resurrection, with Jesus as the Redeemer in question. Job affirms that one day Jesus will resurrect his body.
There is nothing wrong with this reading of Job as Christian Scripture. It is, however, very unlikely to be anything like the original sense of Job 19. Elsewhere, the book of Job--as the bulk of the Old Testament--consistently denies any meaningful afterlife for the dead, even the righteous dead: "My life is a breath... As the cloud vanishes and fades, so the one who goes to Sheol does not come up. He returns no more to his house" (7:7-10).
Therefore, in its original context, it seems far more likely that what Job is saying is that he believes that God, his Redeemer, will eventually come--before he dies--and vindicate his innocence, restoring his flesh. As Christians, we will find the later reading, the distinctively Christian one, far more appropriate for us. Yet at the same time, we cannot unlearn the contextual reading. We cannot return to our first naivete even if we want to, and in any case, any view based on a denial of truth is not likely to survive for long.
The answer is to see not only the Christian reading of Job 19 as legitimate, but also to validate the original meaning as a Christian reading, taken from the perspective of where God was leading humanity in history. The first reading is a textual reading, a reading of the text of Job as Christian Scripture. The second reading is a contextual reading, a historical one, placing Job within the overall history of God walking with humanity on its way to a fuller understanding of the afterlife.
The Christian reading of the Old Testament as Scripture thus involves both particular meanings that we are more likely to find in particular texts and overarching perspectives we have on those texts. The meanings we sometimes find, as well as the way we place the Old Testament texts within an overarching narrative, derive from where we believe the story went beyond the pages of the Old Testament books. And we read these texts through the twin lenses of the Christian "rule of faith" and "law of love."
Yet even the original meanings of these texts fit within our Christian perspective on them. Viewed in this way, they are moments of God walking with humanity on a journey that led, most significantly, to Jesus Christ, but also to what we believe is a fuller understanding of a wide variety of other matters, such as the nature of human life after death. A "thick" interpretation will not deny one or the other, the contextual or the distinctively Christian reading, but has room for both.
Sunday, February 01, 2009
Brian Small's new blog
The so called "N.T. Wrong" has a new Top 50 Bibliobloggers list up. On it he mentions a new blog by an old seminary friend of mine named Brian Small who is finishing his PhD at Baylor right now.
I have a pretty good library on Hebrews, as you might expect, but Brian's has me beat by a long shot. You will find on his new blog, Polumeros kai Polupetros the kind of meticulous and detailed scholarship you have not come to expect of me. :-)
I've added it to my blogroll off to the right side.
I have a pretty good library on Hebrews, as you might expect, but Brian's has me beat by a long shot. You will find on his new blog, Polumeros kai Polupetros the kind of meticulous and detailed scholarship you have not come to expect of me. :-)
I've added it to my blogroll off to the right side.
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