How Do You Read the Bible? Incarnationally, Inspirationally, Inerrantly, or Inexpertly?

Today's posting brings out some important questions for us to think about concerning the nature and relationship of biblical inerrancy to Christ's Incarnation.... I'll commence by asking the following questions:
 

• Is Christ more important than the Bible?
• Is theology be first centered in Christ or in the Bible?
• How were the early Christians informed of Christ?
• How were the believers in the OT informed of Yahweh?
• Was it necessary to have a Bible to believe in Christ (or Yahweh?)
• What place does the Bible have in relationship to Christ?
• Did the Bible inform the early church of Jesus her Lord?
• Or rather, did Jesus inform His church of Himself through the Hebrew Scriptures?
• Did Jesus add to these Scriptures, subtract from them, or simply re-interpret them?
• If Jesus did add or subject was it from the Pharisaical interpretations of Scripture?
• Did early Christianity function without a Bible in the early church?
• If not, what did they use? What place and purpose did the Holy Spirit have?
• What place and purpose did the Holy Spirit have in the Old Testament?
• Is Christ's Incarnation more central to theology than doctrinal inspiration?
• Is biblical inspiration based upon Christ's Incarnation or the other way around?
• How is inspiration and incarnation mutually accommodating or reactive?

 

In reading Wallace's argument I could not determine whether he removed the projected need for inerrancy, or simply reinforced its need based upon his own circular argument? I suspect the latter, however, a commenter did think this same about Wallace when saying: "Reading the Scriptures as mere ancient documents (no more inerrant than any other ancient documents) one can get to Jesus is Lord. Then, given that Jesus is Lord and that He considered the Scriptures to be the word of God, you can arrive quickly at inerrancy. We must believe that the Bible is the word of God because Jesus is Lord. For if we believe that Jesus is Lord because the Bible is the word of God, then, as it was with Bart Ehrman, the collapse of inerrancy leads to the collapse of faith in Christ."

 

What is clear to me is the importance of interpreting Scripture, both i) by itself internally, and ii) externally through outside sources lost to us its readers over the long millenias of time. I have argued before in earlier posts that it is basically an impossible task try as we may to determine the import of Scriptures as it is portrayed through its many cultures and events of the Bible. Even so, must we do the hard work of exegesis as it is possible, however limited or arcane. One may be a committed Jesus follower but it is important for Jesus' followers to know the Word of God - unreferenced by their own predispositions, suppositions, dogmas, or epistemologies. But in order to do that one needs to know oneself and one's group of believers, their needs, wants, and frame of reference. When boiled down we may have produced our own (religious) beliefs about God, His Word, and His Incarnation rather than God's Word itself. Thus the challenge to "interpret the Word" without getting in the way of it with our own wants and needs, views and opinions. Subscribing to the view inerrancy can do just that... it can obscure God's Word by our wooden (or literalistic) reading of its pages.

So what do you think? The way you answer these questions will pre-inform you how you may read the Bible... and how you read the Bible will affect how you think of our Lord. In the article today by Dan Wallace comes the evangelical argument for biblical inerrancy using a Christological method of argumentation based upon Christ's incarnation. I found it specious and unhelpful. Rather than answering the obvious question that Jesus didn't read the Hebrew Scriptures inerrantly Wallace instead went on to place precedence of Scripture over our Lord Himself.

For myself, I do assert the authority and inspiration of the Bible, but stop short of asserting the need for its inerrancy. It's only inerrancy lies within its description of God's salvation for man who has given to us abundantly this saving knowledge through His Son Jesus. As such, the word inerrancy is a slippery slope disallowing further biblical research and contextual construction... that is, it prevents asking further questions of God by stopping our asking questions all together. Which is never a good thing.

Too, it preferences a simplistic reading of the Bible that becomes clouded by personal nuance and prejudice. I'd rather God's Word be a more objective guide than one so simplistically, or subjectively, informed. One that grants latitude over literalism with its concomitant arguments for legalism over love, even as Jesus did so long ago when confronting the Scribes and Pharisees' own private (unloving and legalistic) interpretations of the Word of God.

Even so, doctrines like inerrancy can do just that - provide a harsh/hardened basis for unmitigated legalism preventing sight or sound of the divine words love, mercy, forgiveness and judgment. Let us not fall into this trap of doctrinal thinking. God's Word is larger than that. It's scope broader than we can often understand. And if we fail in this regard than we have darkened God's own council by our own fleshly words of wisdom and justice. Words that should never stand in the place of God's words when bounded by our own councils of what is "right" and "wrong." The bible isn't about that... its about opening up our hearts in submission and service to the councils of God against all the hell that we hold within our sinful hearts to act graciously and firmly in love towards those we would feel naturally inclined to hate, harm, banish, and mistreat. Let us not be the Pharisees of our day. It would be unworthy of our great God and King, our Lord and Savior.

R.E. Slater

December 13, 2013 

 

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A Bibliology Grounded in Christology

http://www.reclaimingthemind.org/blog/2013/12/a-bibliology-grounded-in-christology/

 

by Dan Wallace

December 6, 2013

Comments

 

The center of all theology, of the entirety of the Christian faith, is Christ himself. The Christ-vent—in particular his death and resurrection—is the center of time [(I call this the mid-point of salvation history - r.e. slater)]: everything before it leads up to it; everything after it is shaped by it. If Christ were not God in the flesh [(sic, the Incarnation)], he would not have been raised from the dead. And if he were not raised from the dead, none of us would have any hope. My theology grows out from Christ, is based on Christ, and focuses on Christ.

 

Years ago, I would have naïvely believed that all Christians could give their hearty amens to the previous paragraph. This is no longer the case; perhaps it never was. There are many whose starting point and foundation for Christian theology is bibliology. They begin with the assumption that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant Word of God. I can understand that. Starting one’s doctrinal statement with the Bible gives one assurances that the primary source of theology, the scriptures, is both true and trustworthy. I don’t start there, however. I have come to believe that the incarnation is both more central than inspiration and provides a methodological imperative for historical investigation of the claims of the Bible.

 

Sometimes the reason why doctrinal statements begin with scripture is because the framers believe that without an inerrant Bible we can’t know anything about Jesus Christ. They often ask the question, “How can we be sure that anything in the Bible is true? How can we be sure that Jesus Christ is who he said he was, or even that he existed, if the Bible is not inerrant?”

 

Inductive vs. Deductive Approaches to Inerrancy

 

My response to the above question is twofold. First, before the New Testament was written, how did people come to faith in Christ? To assume that having a complete Bible is necessary before we can know anything about Christ is both anachronistic and counterproductive. Our epistemology has to wrestle with the spread of the gospel before the Gospels were penned. The very fact that it spread so fast—even though the apostles were not always regarded highly—is strong testimony both to the work of the Spirit and to the historical evidence that the eyewitnesses affirmed.

 

Second, we can know about Christ because the Bible is a historical document. (Even if one has a very low regard for the Bible’s historicity, he or she has to admit that quite a bit of it is historically accurate.) If we demand inerrancy of the Bible before we can believe that any of it is true, what are we to say about other ancient historical documents? We don’t demand that they be inerrant, yet no evangelical would be totally skeptical about all of ancient history. Why put the Bible in a different category before we can believe it at all? As one scholar wisely articulated many years ago, we treat the Bible like any other book to show that it is not like any other book.

 

Warfield’s Two Premises

 

We are not asked to take a leap of faith in believing the Bible to be the word of God, or even to believe that it is historically reliable; we have evidence that this is the case. I enlist on my behalf that towering figure of Reformed biblical scholarship, Benjamin B. Warfield. In his Inspiration and Authority of the Bible, Warfield lays out an argument for inerrancy that has been all but forgotten by today’s evangelicals. Essentially, he makes a case for inerrancy on the basis of inductive evidence, rather than deductive reasoning. Most evangelicals today follow E. J. Young’s deductive approach toward bibliology, forgetting the great, early articulator of inerrancy. But Warfield starts with the evidence that the Bible is a historical document, rather than with the presupposition that it is inspired. This may seem shocking to some in the evangelical camp, but one can hardly claim that Warfield was soft on bibliological convictions! Let me prove my point with a lengthy quotation from his Inspiration and Authority of the Bible (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1948), p. 174:

 

“Now if this doctrine is to be assailed on critical grounds, it is very clear that, first of all, criticism must be required to proceed against the evidence on which it is based. This evidence, it is obvious, is twofold. First, there is the exegetical evidence that the doctrine held and taught by the Church is the doctrine held and taught by the Biblical writers themselves. And secondly, there is the whole mass of evidence—internal and external, objective and subjective, historical and philosophical, human and divine—which goes to show that the Biblical writers are trustworthy as doctrinal guides. If they are trustworthy teachers of doctrine and if they held and taught this doctrine, then this doctrine is true, and is to be accepted and acted upon as true by us all. In that case, any objections brought against the doctrine from other spheres of inquiry are inoperative; it being a settled logical principle that so long as the proper evidence by which a proposition is established remains unrefuted, all so-called objections brought against it pass out of the category of objections to its truth into the category of difficulties to be adjusted to it. If criticism is to assail this doctrine, therefore, it must proceed against and fairly overcome one or the other element of its proper proof. It must either show that this doctrine is not the doctrine of the Biblical writers, or else it must show that the Biblical writers are not trustworthy as doctrinal guides.”

 

Notice how often Warfield speaks of evidence here as the grounds for believing in inerrancy. The evidence is historical, exegetical, and doctrinal. Two statements stand out as crucial to his argument: “If they [the biblical writers] are trustworthy teachers of doctrine and if they held and taught this doctrine, then this doctrine is true…” and “If criticism is to assail this doctrine… It must either show that this doctrine is not the doctrine of the Biblical writers, or else it must show that the Biblical writers are not trustworthy as doctrinal guides.” Warfield’s argument is one of the most profound paragraphs ever written in defense of inerrancy. If you’re reading this quickly, go back and let it sink in for awhile.

 

Metzger’s Challenge: The Bible Doesn’t Affirm Its Own Inerrancy

 

In 1992, when Bruce Metzger was on campus at Dallas Seminary for a week, delivering the Griffith Thomas lectures, students would often ask him whether he embraced inerrancy. Frankly, I thought their question was a bit uncharitable since they already knew the answer (he did not). But as one who, like Warfield before him, taught at Princeton Seminary, and as a Reformed scholar, Metzger certainly had earned the right to be heard on this issue. His response was simply that he did not believe in inerrancy because he felt it was unwise to hold to any doctrines that were not affirmed in the Bible, and he didn’t see inerrancy being affirmed in the Bible. In other words, he denied Warfield’s first argument (viz., that inerrancy was held by the biblical writers). It should be pointed out that Metzger did not disagree with Warfield’s second argument. In other words, he had a high view of the Bible, but not as high as, say, the Evangelical Theological Society, precisely because he did not think that the biblical writers held to the doctrine of inerrancy.

 

The Role of 2 Timothy 3.16

 

I felt the import of Metzger’s argument even before I had heard it from him, because I had long ago memorized the passage from Warfield quoted above. When I was working on my master’s degree in the 1970s, I was convinced that Warfield’s twofold argument needed to be examined and either affirmed or rejected. So I wrote my master’s thesis on an arcane point of Greek grammar. It was entitled, “The Relation of Adjective to Noun in Anarthrous Constructions in the New Testament.” I chose that particular topic because it directly affected how we should translate 2 Timothy 3.16. Should we translate this verse “every inspired scripture is also profitable” with the possible implication that some scripture is not inspired, or should we translate it “every scripture is inspired and profitable,” in which case the inspiration of scripture is directly asserted?

 

I spent over 1200 hours on that thesis, working without the benefit of computers—in the Greek New Testament, in the Septuagint, in classical Greek, in the papyri—to determine whether adjectives in anarthrous constructions (constructions in which no definite article was present) could be predicate or whether they had to be attributive. All of this related to 2 Timothy 3.16 because the adjective “inspired” was related to the noun “scripture” in an anarthrous construction. Further, of the dozens of New Testament grammars I checked, not one gave any actual evidence that adjectives in such constructions could be predicate. A predicate adjective would be translated as an assertion (“every scripture isinspired”) while an attributive adjective would be translated as a qualification or assumption (“every inspired scripture”).

 

I felt an obligation to the evangelical community to wrestle with this issue and see if there was indeed genuine evidence on behalf of a predicate “inspired.” I charted out over 2200 Greek constructions in the New Testament, as well as countless others in other corpora—all by hand—then checked the primary sources a second time to make sure I got the statistics right. When an ice storm hit Dallas in the winter of 1978–79, cutting down power lines in our neighborhood, I had to work by lamplight for a week to get the first draft of the thesis in on time. My conclusion was that “inspired” in 2 Timothy 3.16 was indeed a predicate adjective. And I supplied over 400 similar examples in the appendix to back it up! These 400 examples had never been discussed in any New Testament grammar before. I believed then, and I believe now, that supplying this kind of evidence is a worthy use of one’s time. The main part of the thesis ended up being the first piece of mine accepted for publication. It appeared in Novum Testamentum (one of the world’s leading biblical journals) in 1984 as a lengthy article. And the editors kept my opening comment that my motivation for the article was to help resolve some disputes about bibliology raging at the time in American evangelical circles.

 

I mention the above autobiographical note for two reasons. First, the question of the nature of the Bible has been, and still is, a very precious issue to me. Obviously, to spend over 1200 hours on where to put the “is” in one verse of scripture shows that I regard such a text to be rather significant! And that such a passage is a major verse on verbal inspiration should show that this doctrine is important to me. Second, the conclusion I came to is equally important: I can affirm, with Warfield, that the biblical writers do indeed embrace a high view of the text of Holy Writ. To be sure, this verse is not all there is in defense of inerrancy. But it is a crux interpretum, deserving our utmost attention. I must therefore respectfully disagree with Professor Metzger about Warfield’s first argument.

 

Christological Grounds for a High Bibliology

 

Where does this leave us with reference to inerrancy? I arrive at inerrancy through an inductive process, rather than by starting with it deductively. My epistemological method may therefore be different from others, but the resultant doctrine is not necessarily so. At bottom, the reason I hold to a high bibliology is because I hold to a high Christology. Jesus often spoke of the Bible in terms that went beyond the reverence that the Pharisees and Sadducees had for the text. They added traditions to the Bible, or truncated the canon, or otherwise failed to handle scripture appropriately. Jesus had a high view of the text, and it strikes me that I would be unwise to have a view different from his. Indeed, I believe I would be on dangerous ground if I were to take a different view of the text than Jesus did. Thus, my starting point for a high bibliology is Christ himself.

 

Some may argue that we can’t even know what Jesus said unless we start with a high bibliology. But that approach is circular. Making a pronouncement that scripture is inerrant does not guarantee the truth of such an utterance. If I said the moon is made of green cheese, that doesn’t make it so. At most, what such pronouncements can do is give one assurance. But this is not the same as knowledge. And if the method for arriving at such assurance is wrongheaded, then even the assurance needs to be called into question. A web of issues brings about the deepest kinds of theological assurance: evidence (historical, exegetical, hermeneutical, etc.), affirmations, the role of the Spirit, etc. One does not have the deepest assurance about inerrancy simply by convincing himself or herself that it must be true. Indeed, I would argue that such a presuppositional approach often caves in on itself. Now if inerrancy is true, what harm is there in examining the data of the text?

 

Now, someone may say, “But how do you know that Jesus actually held to a high bibliology unless you start with that presupposition? How do you know that the Gospel writers got the words of Jesus right in the first place?” I think that’s an excellent question. I would use the criteria of authenticity to argue that he did indeed hold to a high view of the text. The criteria of authenticity, when used properly, are criteria that Gospels scholars use to affirm whether Jesus said or did something. Notice that I did not say, “Gospels scholars use to deny whether Jesus said or did something.” The criteria of authenticity should normally be used only for positive results. To take one illustration: The criterion of dissimilarity is the criterion that says if Jesus said something that was unlike what any rabbi before him said and unlike what the church later said, then surely such a saying is authentic. I think this is good as far as it goes. It certainly works for “the Son of Man” sayings in the Gospels. The problem is that the Jesus Seminar used this criterion to make negative assessments of Jesus’ sayings. Thus, if Jesus said something that was said in contemporary Judaism, its authenticity is discounted. But surely that would create an eccentric Jesus if it were applied across the board! Indeed, Jesus said things that were already said in the Judaism of his day, and surely the early church learned from him and repeated him.

 

How does this apply to Jesus’ bibliology? Since his statements about scripture are decidedly more reverential than those of the Pharisees or Sadducees, the criterion of dissimilarity requires us to see that Jesus did, indeed, hold to a high bibliology. Of course, I am not arguing that the average Christian for the past two thousand years needed to think about whether Jesus said something. But I am arguing that even the evidence from a historical-critical perspective points in the same direction. And I am arguing that in the modern world, and even postmodern world, for evangelicals to ignore evidence is tantamount to a leap of faith.

 

I must confess that I did not at first embrace a high bibliology because of applying the criteria of authenticity to the sayings of Jesus. No, I initially embraced a high bibliology because I believed that the Bible’s testimony about itself was sufficiently clear and certainly true. But when I came to grips with Warfield’s inductive approach and Metzger’s denial of Warfield’s first argument, I realized that, for those engaged in serious biblical studies, historical evidence needed to be assessed before dialogue with those of a different perspective could begin. The fact that many evangelical students abandon inerrancy may in part be due to them not wrestling with more than a fideistic claim. What harm is there in adding historical evidence to one’s arguments for a doctrinal position? Why are so many afraid, or unprepared, to do so? The impression this gives to many students is that such views are defenseless.

 

Incarnation as Methodological Imperative

 

Permit me to address one other issue. If Christ is at the core of our beliefs, then the incarnation has to loom large in our thinking about the faith. When God became man and invaded space-time history, this served notice that we dare not treat the Bible with kid gloves. The incarnation not only invites us to examine the evidence, it requires us to do so. The fact that our religion is the only major religion in the world that is subject to historical verification is no accident: it’s part of God’s design. Jesus performed miracles and healings in specific towns, at specific times, on specific people. The Gospels don’t often speak in generalities. And Paul mentioned that 500 believers saw the risen Christ at one time, then added that most of these folks were still alive. These kinds of statements are the stuff of history; they beg the reader to investigate. Too often modern evangelicals take a hands-off attitude toward the Bible because of a prior commitment to inerrancy. But it is precisely because I ground my bibliology in Christology rather than the other way around that I cannot do that. I believe it is disrespectful to my Lord to not ask the Bible the tough questions that every thinking non-Christian is already asking it.

 

 

 

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Select Reader's Comments

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Reader 1 - To assume that having a complete Bible is necessary before we can know anything about Christ is both anachronistic and counterproductive. Our epistemology has to wrestle with the spread of the gospel before the Gospels were penned…. If we demand inerrancy of the Bible before we can believe that any of it is true, what are we to say about other ancient historical documents?“

 

Reader 2 - It seems to me from reading the original article that Dr. Wallace keeps interchanging the terms "inspiration" and "inerrancy." In fact, he uses Warfield's book to make his case for inerrancy when the book's title is INSPIRATION AND AUTHORITY OF THE BIBLE, not INERRANCY AND AUTHORITY OF THE BIBLE.

 

Reader 3 - Like others previously, I concur that Wallace never demonstrates "inerrancy" in his article. And, his work on 2 Tim. 3 does not demonstrate inerrancy that I can see.

 

My own view on Paul's use of "God-breathed" (a term research to date indicates that he himself coined) is that he is calling to mind the life-giving nature of Scripture. "God-breathed" meant that God was giving life to a being. So, in Gen. 2 - God 'breathes' into humanity the breath of life. In Ezekiel God breathes life - through the Spirit (spirit, breath, and wind are all the same word in the OT - significantly) - into the dead, dry bones - a resurrection! And, in John 20 Jesus "breathes on the disciples" and says "receive the Holy Spirit." This is a new creation breath of life.

 

I think that is really all that Paul is getting at in 2 Tim. 3. That the Scripture can bring us "life" - not just physical, but real life, eternal. Life in God. Why? Because, as Wallace ably points out - the Scripture points us to Jesus. That, in fact, is also Paul's point in the context. V. 15 "and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus." The sacred writings, the God-breathed (life-giving) Scripture leads to salvation through Christ Jesus. They point us to Him and it is faith in Him, as the risen king, that transforms our lives and brings us victory.

 

Reader 4 - I  would echo two points made here in previous posts and elaborate on one of them:

 

(1) Wallace does appear to assume that "inspired" entails "inerrant" but that begs the question.

 

(2) It seems to me that the most one can derive from Wallace's "incarnation" approach to the question is the general conclusion that we, as followers of Jesus Christ, should adopt the same attitude toward Scripture as did our very Lord. I would agree with that. Taking such a view does have significant consequences. For example, b/c Jesus cites the Old Testament as authoritative for right conduct and revelatory of true God, so also should we--and hence reject all forms of Marcionism ("a Gnostic ascetic sect that flourished from the 2nd to 7th century a.d. and that rejected the Old Testament and denied the incarnation of God in Christ.")

 

But this view has limitations as an argument for inerrancy. First, and obviously, it entails nothing (directly, at least) about the New Testament.

 

Second, it also does not even follow from this view that Jesus believed that the Old Testament is inerrant. That Jesus appealed to the OT in instructing his followers and refuting his critics entails only, as Wallace's labored-upon text (2 Tim 3:15-17) itself actually says, that the OT scriptures are competent and capable of instructing us in God's way of salvation and righteousness for the purpose of making us effective doers of the good.

 

Third, and perhaps most problematic for Wallace's argument, Jesus himself did not grant the OT absolute authority in matters of right conduct but, evidently, took a critical attitude toward it, at least in part. In his most important sermon, Jesus explicitly repeals an OT law, forbidding his followers to retaliate evil for evil as was permitted by the Torah (Matthew 5:38-42). If Jesus believed the OT scriptures were inerrant, how then could he even qualify any text of scripture, much less reject a text of the OT as properly instructing us in the way of righteousness?

 

Reader 5's reply to Reader 4 - Well stated. I agree with you until your third point (last paragraph). There is no indication in the antithesis that Jesus is contradicting the Torah but the Scribal and Pharisaical interpretation and application of that law. Mt. 5:38-42 may be interpreted quite differently (and several commentators do) from the one you give. It seems much more in keeping with the whole series of antitheses and the context (5:21-48, coming in the context of Jesus calling for righteousness to exceed that of the Pharisees - 5:17-20) and even within the statement itself that Jesus is arguing against personal retaliation. They "eye for an eye" was not a license to take Torah into one's hands as a vigilante. But, was to be executed within the confines of a decision of the community. Jesus is not contradicting the punishment of the community; but the abused interpretation of the Scribes and Pharisees.

 

Reader 4's reply to Reader 5 - I quite agree that Jesus is addressing the legal practices of the covenant community. The lex talionis governed the reparation of harms and punishment of crimes within the Torah. The intent of the lex talionis was not to justify retaliation as an absolute standard of justice but to limit retaliation to the measure of equality ("one for one"). Even within the Torah, therefore, the lex talionis did not express the ideal of justice for the covenant community. That ideal, as Jesus himself taught, was the law of love: you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Indeed, the Torah itself points this way: the law of love for the neighbor is prefaced by a prohibition of taking vengeance against the neighbor (Lev 19:17-18). Jesus, who teaches the full intent and highest measure of the righteousness that Torah desires (Matt 5:17-20), thus instructs the community gathered around him that what is to define right relationship among them must exceed the lex talionis. The community of Jesus is to go beyond retribution against evildoers and enemies as the standard of justice; and transcending retribution leads us to complete love, including both neighbor and enemy, which is what God intends for us (Matt 5:38-48).

 

Reader 6 - I don't think that scripture attests to its own inerrancy in a Chicago Statement sense. And Wallace's grammatical analysis of 2 Tim 3:16 is irrelevant because all the verse attests is that Scripture comes from God for a purpose and serves that purpose. Yes that means a serious regard for Scripture ... but doesn't speak at all to most of the arguments that cause feuds in evangelicalism (historicity of Adam, nature of flood, genre of Jonah, whither the wandering saints of Matthew, etc. etc. etc.)

 

 

 

Evangelical Hermeneutics vs. Pauline Hermeneutics

Would Paul Have Made a Good Evangelical?

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2012/05/would-paul-have-made-a-good-evangelical/

 

by Peter Enns

May 24, 2012

Comments

 

No.

 

Even when you account for 2000 years of cultural differences between Paul and Evangelicalism, the answer is no.

 

Why? Because Paul didn’t treat the Bible the way mainstream Evangelicalism says you need to.

 

The way Paul handled his Bible–what we call the Old Testament–would keep him off the short list for openings to teach Bible in many Evangelical seminaraies and Christian colleges. Heck, John Piper, John MacArthur, and R. C. Sproul probably wouldn’t let Paul lead a home Bible study, at least not without supervision.

 

Here is the main reason why:

 

• For Evangelicals, the Old Testament leads to the Gospel story. For Paul, the Old Testament is transformed by the Gospel.
 
• For Evangelicals, the Old Testament, read pretty much at face value [(literally)], anticipates Jesus. For Paul, the Old Testament is reshaped in order to conform to Jesus.
 
• For Evangelicals, the Bible is God’s final authority. For Paul, Jesus is the final authority to which the Bible must bend.

 

You see, Paul had a monumental theological and hermeneutical task before him. The Old Testament is centered on Israel’s need for obedience to the law of Moses in order to stay in God’s favor–what the Old Testament often calls “life.” God’s favor is most clearly demonstrated by Israel’s remaining in the Promised Land–if they obey, they stay; if they disobey, the are cast out (which is what the exile to Babylon was all about). And, as an added benefit, when Israel is faithful to God, the other nations will take notice and also bend the knee to Yahweh, Israel’s God.

 

1. Obedience to law;
2. Holding onto the land (and along with it worship in the temple);
3. Conversion of the Gentiles. All central elements of being an Israelite.

 

The Gospel of Christ that Paul preached said:

 

1. Law was a parenthesis, a temporary measure;
2. Holding on to land is now a non-issue;
3. Gentiles can claim Israel’s God as their own as Gentiles.

 

Clearly something has to give. For Paul, it was the Old Testament.

 

Paul cites the Old Testament 106 times; 59 times in Romans. For example, look at the string of quotations in Romans 9:25-29. Paul is arguing for Gentile inclusion in the plan of God–Gentiles do not need to be circumcised, thus following Jewish law. They are included as Gentiles simply by faith in Jesus the messiah.

 

Paul could have simply said, “Jesus is here and we are turning a new page. From now on we welcome Gentiles with open arms without them becoming Jewish first.”

 

That would have been a pretty radical message all by itself, but Paul gets even more radical. He argues that in the Old Testament itself teaches that Gentiles are to be included among Israel solely on the basis of faith–not obeying the law. Paul claims that Gentile inclusion without circumcision was God’s plan all along.

 

If you’re familiar with the Old Testament, you would be right to wonder how Paul is going to pull that off, since the Old Testament is so adamant about maintaining the distinction between Jew and Gentile.

 

In this string of quotations in Romans 9, Paul cites two passages from Hosea and two from Isaiah to support his claim that Gentile inclusion is part of God’s plan. The problem, though, is that all four of these passages have nothing to do with Gentile inclusion. They are all aimed at God’s mercy at restoring Israel.

 

This is not a minor point. Paul is not getting a little creative with some passages, tweaking them a bit, teasing some fresh angle out of them. He is saying that these passages support his Gentile agenda, even though a plain reading shows unequivocally that they are about Israel.

 

Flip over to Romans 10:5-8. Paul places two passages from the law of Moses side by side–and he pits them against each other.

 

The first is Leviticus 18:5, where Yahweh tells Moses that the Israelites are to “Keep my decrees, for the man who obeys them will live by them.” Note that keeping the law is assumed to be attainable and a benefit to those who do so.

 

But in very next verse Paul brings in another passage from the Law, Deuteronomy 30:13-14. In Deuteronomy, these verses have a very clear meaning. The commands that God is giving to the Israelites are doable. They are not out of anyone’s reach. They are not up in the heavens or somewhere acoross the ocean. They are right here–”in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.”

 

The Israelites were expected to keep these laws, and keeping them brings life, which is sort of what Leviticus 18:5 says. The two passages are in complete harmony.

 

But Paul contrasts these two verses to pit law against faith.

 

For Paul, Leviticus 18:5 is correct insofar as it goes, but Paul clearly does not present obedience to the law as a benefit to anyone–which contradicts the point of the passage.

 

Paul’s handling of Deuteronomy 30:13-14 should, by all standards, drive mainstream Evangelicals crazy. In Deuteronomy, God tells the Israelites to keep these doable-written-on-your-heart commands. Paul says it is not about commands at all but about having faith in Christ, apart from the law of Moses.

 

Either Paul can’t read or something else is up.

 

Something else is up.

 

Paul handles his Bible the way he does for two reasons:

 

(1) Judaism has a long history of manipulating scripture in the interest of supporting theological arguments. Paul, in case you need reminding, was a Jew trained in this way of using scripture.

 

(2) Paul’s grand goal in Romans is to make the case that Jews and Gentiles are on equal footing before God; Paul’s angle is to show how the law itself made that same point all along–which requires Paul to take get very creative with the Old Testament.

 

If anyone else were doing this–me, you, the Pope, Jehovah’s Witnesses, an emergent pastor, a liberal theologian, a first year seminary student–Evangelicals would call it “distorting the inerrant Word of God.” Paul, however, either (1) gets a free pass because Paul is an apostle (and apparently it’s OK for apostles to do this), or (2) Paul’s reading of the Old Testament is defended as being consistent with the Old Testament meaning (which leads to overly subtle and back-breaking arguments).

 

Here is the great irony. Without question, as a first century Jew, Paul believed his scripture was God’s Word. He had what Evangelicals like to call a “high view” of scripture.

 

That is correct. It’s just that Paul’s high view and an Evangelical high view are clearly not the same. I’m just glad Evangelicals weren’t around at the time to try to stifle Paul, to keep him from landing his gig as apostle to the Gentiles. We would have missed out on a lot.


 

Which Do You Chose - Justice, Justification or Jesus?

Do We Have the Gospel Wrong?

Scot is on the money here in all three categories. We have (i) the right-wing evangelical conservatives in the Justice camp, (ii) the Reformed traditionalists (or revivalists) in the Justification camp, and (iii) the Love Wins / Emergent groups in the Jesus camp. Each have a condensed version of the Gospel of Jesus - group (i) has a politically charged social gospel with an empire theology at its heart; group (ii) has a soterian gospel that preaches the sinfulness of man and the cross as its penal substitutionary remedy; and, group (iii) has a pure Jesus gospel that sees God at work through Adam, Abraham, Israel and the Church as the completing story and remedy for man's need.

Yes, "Love Wins," but love wins through Jesus' love, and this is what the "Love Wins" group has been saying all along. If you preach Jesus as the gospel you will get both justice and justification (theological camps 1 and 2). But if you preach either the justice gospel, or the justification gospel, you may only get some Jesus, but not all of Jesus, in those gospel versions.

Consequently, preaching the Jesus of Paul's gospel includes both the perspectives of justice and justification. And this third-and-last "J-Gospel" is the theologically correct gospel to place your money on as Scot will go on to explain below.*

R.E. Slater
November 3, 2011

*For additional links on this subject matter please refer to: Do We Have the Gospel Wrong?; The New Perspective of Paul; and generally, to the sidebar "Pauline Theology").

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The Three “J’s” in the Gospel Debate

http://www.patheos.com/community/jesuscreed/2011/11/02/the-three-js-in-the-gospel-debate/#more-21889

by Scot McKnight

November 2, 2011

Some people are a bit baffled when they hear there is a gospel debate today. Others, and this is no surprise to the readers of this blog, know that many debates actually end up discovering that at the bottom of this debate is the gospel, or how we understand the gospel. Some mainline organizations break into a rash when interviewing a candidate for ministry and discover that he or she has a traditional Reformed understanding of the gospel, while some in that more traditional Reformed movement today do the same when they hear a candidate contend for a more new perspective view of the gospel. And some in the revivalist tradition cannot comprehend how in the world anyone doesn’t think the gospel is anything but that simple four or five point gospel. Yet others, and I’ll avoid giving names here, seem to think the gospel itself can be reduced to three words: God loves you.

The gospel is at the heart today of every major theological debate, and it spills over into one ecclesiastical debate after another.

In all of this lots of folks get thoroughly confused. Take, for instance, the new perspective and the gospel. Some people think this is a fun debate but at stake for many of us is not just a curious piece of history — what was 1st Century Judaism really like? — but instead we see the gospel at stake. To be sure, if you find yourself in the middle of all of this the debate can become bewildering.

So I want to contend this morning that there are three ways of framing the gospel today. What I want to emphasize is that how we frame the gospel determines everything, and I mean everything. I contend there are three J’s that can put the whole debate today on the table in the simplest of framing categories.

First, some people frame the gospel through the category of justice. The point of the gospel is this: Jesus came to establish a kingdom marked by justice, and of course justice is the big term that includes other important ideas like peace and love and salvation. In fact, for many in the justice camp the word “salvation” is robust enough to be called “justice” or “justice” is robust enough to be called “salvation.” For these folks, Luke 4:18-19 is about as gospel as you can get, and Jesus’ death and his resurrection are all connected to this vision of justice. This means gospel work is justice work; it also means any gospel work that doesn’t entail justice is not gospel work.

Some in this camp, of course, are so justice and so “social justice” that it seems like nothing more than political activism or the worst caricature of the social gospel. But a charitable reading of justice gospelers reveals that they do believe Jesus’ death forgives sins (I find few in this camp care much for substitutionary atonement but they are not denying atonement in the death of Jesus; to be sure, some are little more than Abelard or even Girard).

Justice gospelers today tend toward political activism, the summons for more Christians to see compassion for the poor and better laws and peace in the world, and toward a kingdom language. One of the more recent developments for justice gospelers is the category of empire, and they see a conscious and consistent anti-empire agenda at work in Jesus and in the apostles. They like this expression: “Jesus is Lord, Caesar is not.”

I’m not persuaded empire is as important to gospel as many do today, though anyone who claims Jesus is Lord knows that Caesar is not. The issue for me is how conscious is this. (And I’m co-editing a book with IVP, due out next Fall, that will put this anti-empire theory to the test. We’ve got some really, really good essays in this volume.)

Overall I am utterly convinced as I can be that Jesus intended to create a just society, and I’ve written about this in most of my books: but I am just as convinced that the gospel is not justice per se. Justice is the inevitable result and implication of the gospel but not the same as the gospel.

Second, some people frame the gospel through the category of justification. This is the traditional Reformation category, and Luther famously said that the church stands or falls with justification by faith. (Ahem, Jesus spoke to this and he said it stood or fell with the confession of Peter, namely, that Jesus was Messiah/King. [But] I digress.) For justification gospelers, the gospel is soterian and that soteriology, or doctrine of salvation, can all be summed up in and through the term justification. The essence is that we are sinners and guilty before God and God must deal in a legal courtroom kind of way with our status. The good news is that God forgives us through Jesus and we can become justified, or declared in the right, through the death and resurrection of Christ. (Justification gospelers don’t emphasize resurrection enough, sometimes revealing almost no interest. Most emphasize a penal substitution theory of atonement and see divine satisfaction as the primary act of God at work in making justification possible. Many are also double imputation folks. Not all, as others emphasize union with Christ.)

Justification gospelers preach a soterian gospel, and I’ve said enough about this on this blog and in my book (linked below). They tend to be at odds with justice gospelers, just as justice gospelers are at odds with justification gospelers. Tim Keller is on record saying justification leads to justice, but I don’t think the logic is necessary and it is too obvious to me that far too many justification gospelers inherently react to the justice gospelers because they don’t think justification leads inevitably to justice. More of that some other time. [Thus, though they say it they don't believe it. - re slater]

The issue I’m talking about is how to frame the gospel. The justice gospelers frame the gospel through systemic injustice that needs to be undone and justice established; the justification gospelers frame the gospel through the systematic theology of creation, fall, sinfulness, God’s just judgment of humans as sinners, and the remedy of justice in the cross (and resurrection) of Christ where God is both just and justifier.

But I want to contend once again that justification, like justice, is the implication or result of the gospel and not the gospel itself. The proof is in the absence of justification language (especially as the “driver”) in 1 Corinthians 15, the almost total absence of justification in the gospel sermons in Acts, and the same almost total absence of the category/term of justification in the Gospels (which are the gospel). Again, we are talking here about how to frame the gospel.

The gospel, I contend, is not properly framed as injustice becoming justice (though clearly this happens) or as the unjust becoming just/justified (though clearly this happens too). And the debate between these two folks proves an inability to convince one leads to the other compellingly. There’s a better way. Instead…

Third, some people frame the gospel through the category of Jesus. As I argue in The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited, fundamental category for the gospel in Jesus and the apostles is the Story of Jesus. Just look at 1 Corinthians 15, just look at the gospeling sermons in Acts, and then just take a good look at why the first four books are called THE GOSPEL according to (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John).

What drove them was the Story of Jesus as the completing/fulfilling Story of God’s work in this world, beginning with Adam and then taken up into Abraham.

There are three J’s in the gospel debate. The right J is Jesus.

If you preach Jesus as the gospel you will get both justification and justice.

If you preach justification you may get Jesus (but I see only some of Jesus and not the whole of Jesus) and you may get some justice (I’m skeptical on this one).

 If you preach justice you may get some justification (but I’m skeptical on enough justice gospelers ever getting to justification) and you get Jesus, but again only some of Jesus (often only his teachings, his life, and his life as an example).

If you preach the Jesus of Paul’s gospel (1 Cor 15) or the apostolic sermons in Acts or the gospel of the Gospels, you get all of Jesus and all of Jesus creates both justice and justification.

As for me and my house, we take the third J.

Comments

Comment by Russ — November 3, 2011 @ 6:47 am

Hi Scot. I made a second reading of your article this morning and came to the conclusion that the third-and-last J-Gospel speaks to the “Love Wins / Emergent Church groups” that are unmentioned in your opening paragraph.

Not that other Christian church groups don’t fit into this, but for me (at least my version of the Love Wins/Emergent groups) places this group squarely into the center of the New Perspective of Paul understanding of the Gospel.

And this is the version that I wish to support and to push onto any "Emergent / Love Wins" groups floundering around for direction in their theology. As does the Rob Bell version of the gospel that I am acquainted with. Rob is all about “Jesus” 24 x 7, and goes on to show how Jesus relates to every other thing in societal structures.

I firmly believe the Emergent Church Movement can help revive the Gospel to our pluralistic, postmodern world, and can appeal to all groups, both evangelical and non-evangelical, to denominations and to sub-sectarian groups, to Judaism, Muslimism, Hinduism, and so on. And it can do so in re-righting the understanding of how God loves us through his son Jesus. And as you have said, "Jesus is the center and nothing else," including one of God’s attributes known as divine love. But the “Love Wins” crowd knows and understands this most central of all truths (again, at least in my first-hand experience of this through Rob Bell’s ministry).

And lest I stand wrong in these statements than please correct those gaps and oversights. The Emergent Church movement needs direction (and not backwards) and I believe to the degree it is given that direction, to that degree Christianity can again become relevant to the world rather than hung-up in its factions and “isms.”

Thank you.

Biblical Interpretation - History v. Theology

I thought that Andrew has done another fine job in recognizing current trends in evangelicalism that have gone astray from the task of staying to the texts of Scripture. Here, he points out that evangelicalism has separated its dogma from the historicity latent in the biblical texts by elevating systematic theology over biblical theology. Systematics has grounded itself into a-historical, philosophic (or theo-sophic) arguments about God and pet dogmas. Examples: a gospel of personal salvation; a gospel of the kingdom of God pertaining to the gospel of salvation; a gospel for high Christology... none of which are untrue, however, its how these dogmas have been seated outside of the scope of biblical history and into pet dogmatic pronouncements by popular evangelic preaches, schools, and churches.

However, if it is understood and agreed upon that all systematic theology should first be preceded by, and founded upon, what use to be known as biblical theology, which incorporates biblical history into its historical-critical studies, than we have a more proper sense and scope for the work of theologizing Scripture. One that is planted inside of the Bible's historical record and can lead to a fuller, less lop-sided understanding of doctrines such as salvation, kingdom-eschatology, sin, heaven, hell and Christology.

At least this is how I had been taught before evangelicalism as a dogmatic practice succeeded evangelicalism as a movement. To place this within evangelical parlance - the teaching of the Bible is far more important than the teaching of man - and that includes evangelic dogmatic preachers and professors and their students. If biblical theology is the foundation from which systematic theology arises than we have a proper structure. But if it has been turned around (as it seems that it has again) than that structure is building upon sand and soon to stray from the revelation of the Word of God into pet, personal doctrines.

And I believe I stand in good company when reading that current theologic bloggers like NT Wright, JR Daniel Kirk, and Andrew Perriman, all testify to the same necessity to this theologic requisite - that biblical hermeneutics demands a historical-critical method from which must proceed a proper reading of a theology about God, about man, and about ourselves. We need not fear to do less - for God's very Word will lead us. What we do need to fear - is speaking more (or less) than what God would speak through his Word, and thus place the words of men above the sacred words of our Redeemer, Creator, and Lover of men's souls.

-skinhead

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History and theology: never the twain shall meet

http://www.postost.net/2011/08/history-theology-never-twain-shall-meet

by Andrew Perriman

Friday 19 August 2011

Murray Rae’s History and Hermeneutics is “an enquiry into how theology and history may be thought together”. This is an overriding concern of contemporary hermeneutics, and the book is an excellent contribution to the debate. But how you think the problem is to be resolved depends very much on where you start from.

At the end of a detailed account of how the conflict between history and theology has been handled by modern scholarship, Rae comes to N.T. Wright’s insistence that the New Testament must be read both historically and theologically, with both a postmodern self-consciousness regarding the reading process and a recognition that “the rootedness of Christianity in history is not negotiable”. But while it should be possible in principle to balance the seesaw, scholars inevitably have to sit at one end or the other. So whereas “Wright establishes base camp in the fields of historical enquiry”, Rae proposes to “set out from certain theological convictions about the self-revelation of God” (45).

The question is whether there is really any prospect of history and theology reaching an agreement.

If you start with history and move towards theology, you end up, as I see it, roughly speaking, with the exaltation of Jesus to the right hand of the Father and the concrete outworking of that belief for both Judaism and the pagan world.

If you start with theology and move towards history, you will end up at some abstracted principle, which then becomes the lens through which the New Testament is interpreted. For evangelicals that abstracted principle is likely to be either a gospel of personal salvation or—for the more socially minded—the kingdom of God.

The problem is that neither theological concept—neither gospel nor kingdom—really fits the New Testament narrative as it is interpreted historically.

For Rae—and for many traditionally minded theologians—the abstracted principle is incarnation. He argues that the heart of the Christian concern with history is “the story told in the Gospels of God’s redemptive participation in history by which history itself, turned away from God through human sin, is reoriented to its proper goal in the kingdom of God” (58).

This is the point of the incarnational narrative. In the incarnate life of Jesus Christ, the Word of God and second person of the Trinity graces our history with his own presence, thus confirming its goodness, and showing it to be the medium through which God’s loving purpose is worked out. In Jesus Christ, God’s relation to the world takes the form of his becoming a subject within it. The one through whom and for whom all things were created and hold together (Col. 1.17) renews through his presence that which human sinfulness had subjected to disorder and decay and ‘reconstitutes it in its relation to God’. (59)

The direction of thought here is quite apparent. The Word of God, the second person of the Trinity, becomes incarnate, which becomes the defining centre of God’s relation to the world. Conceptually the argument reaches back only as far as a text like Colossians 1:17 because theology—or at least modern theology—needs to work with the largest possible abstractions. The incarnation is framed cosmically; it is for the sake of the salvation of the whole of humanity. The concrete existence of the historical people of God is barely relevant. We would struggle, I think, to give a good answer to the question, “What has incarnation to do with Israel?”

The historical reading of the New Testament begins with the concrete reality of Israel under Roman occupation, with its particular self-understanding; it interprets Jesus primarily in relation to that concrete circumstance; it locates salvation within the story about Israel; and while it may strain tentatively towards certain high level notions of the relationship of Jesus to the Father, it arrives basically at a thoroughly apocalyptic account of the resurrection and exaltation of Jesus as Lord—that is, a theological interpretation of history rather than a historical embodiment of theology.

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Scripture as the (historical) theological interpretation of history

http://www.postost.net/2010/11/scripture-historical-theological-interpretation-history

by Andrew Perriman

Thursday 11 November 2010

This is a fundamental dilemma facing biblical hermeneutics: how do we get from scripture as ancient religious text, which is at one level at least unquestionably what it is, to scripture as Word of God for the church today, which at one level at least is unquestionably what it needs to be? Arguably it is the most serious dilemma currently facing biblical interpretation.

The dilemma consists in the fact that there are two broad trajectories that interpretation can take, given the starting point of scripture as an ancient text. The first is the route of theological interpretation, which is the route that has mostly been trodden throughout the history of the church. The second is the route of historical interpretation, which was discovered only quite recently through the application of the historical-critical methods.

Theological interpretation has largely been of the opinion that consistent historical readings will not generate a viable, evangelical Word of God for the church—and it has to be said that the evidence for the most part has supported that opinion. Therefore, history must first be assimilated into theological interpretation, which usually means theological tradition, and in effect de-historicized, before it is may be permitted to address the church.

I would argue, however, that historical readings are in and of themselves theologically significant and capable of addressing the church today with the force of the Word of God. What makes this possible is the fact that scripture is already the theological—and more particularly prophetic—interpretation of history.

This argument would probably lead us to modify Campbell’s base-superstructure model. The base is not merely text waiting to be interpreted theologically. It is already a theological engagement both with prior texts and—retrospectively and prospectively—with history. It speaks as Word of God now because the church is an extension of that engagement. This does not mean that we have no further need for theological constructs that transcend or disregard the contingencies of history, just that we do not need to be protected from history in the interests of theology. Indeed, I would suggest that by grasping the evangelical force of the historical narrative we potentially unleash theological creativity because we do away with the need for dogmatic restraints.

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Three ways to fit the story of salvation into history

http://www.postost.net/2011/08/three-ways-fit-story-salvation-history

by Andrew Perriman

Wednesday 17 August 2011

I argued in “The story of how Jesus died for everyone (longer version)” that the account of Jesus’ death in [the book of] Hebrews highlights both the constraints of the Jewish narrative and the importance of the martyrdom motif for soteriology. I suggested that the “saving significance of Jesus’ death is mediated to the world precisely through the story of the suffering of the early martyr church”. Having reflected on a brief exchange with Peter Wilkinson that ensued, I have sketched here, very roughly, what seem to me the three main ways in which we can locate the event of Jesus’ death and resurrection in history.

The a-historical paradigm

The popular or traditional understanding of Christianity has Jesus arriving more-or-less out of the blue in the centre of world history to save mankind from its sins. The Old Testament is useful because it contains prophecies of this singular event, but [it makes] the history of Israel is largely irrelevant. The church is the institutionalized—sometimes highly institutionalized—outcome of the universal salvation that is found in Christ. Its mission is mainly to convert, assimilate, and expand until Jesus returns.

The half-historical paradigm

This view fully embraces the historical narrative leading up to Jesus, but once we have arrived at the climax of the covenant, the climax of God’s redemptive purposes through Israel, history as theologically significant narrative comes to an abrupt halt. Then we revert to the a-historical paradigm. After Pentecost the next event of theological significance is the second coming of Jesus at the end of the world. The half-historical people sometimes acknowledge the importance of the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple as the dreadful terminus of the Old Testament story. The main gain from taking the Old Testament narrative more seriously [than in the a-historical paradigm] is [taht it gies] a broader sense of the corporate nature of the church as an extension of the concrete existence of Israel.

The consistent historical paradigm

My preferred consistent narrative-historical paradigm inserts the event of Jesus’ death and resurrection firmly into the continuing existence of a people that finds its identity and purpose in the calling of Abraham to be the father of a new creation. The people of God is radically changed by this event: it becomes a supra-ethnic community of the Spirit under the lordship of Jesus that will, in some sense, inherit the world. But the basic template remains the same: it is new creation in microcosm in the midst of the nations, for the sake of the creator God.

Under this paradigm theologically significant history does not stop with Jesus. Subsequent events are just as important, whether predicted by the New Testament (the destruction of Jerusalem, the vindication of the suffering churches, the defeat of pagan Rome), or not (the collapse of Christendom, the triumph of secular rationalism, and so on, indefinitely).

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History and theologies: schematization number 6

http://www.postost.net/2011/06/history-theologies-schematization-number-6

by Andrew Perriman

Wednesday 29 June 2011

Actually, I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve attempted to schematize the relationship between history and theology. But I think it is central to the current theological task, so another attempt won’t go amiss. Modern evangelical theology is largely an abstraction. It is a very basic abstraction, very communicable, in many ways very appealing, and it can have a powerful impact on people’s lives. But a price has been paid for this accommodation to the narrow, privatized domain of modern religiosity.

First, it has made it very difficult for us to read scripture well, because the whole chaotic, glorious thing has somehow to be chopped up, pared down, allegorized, and in various ways misinterpreted in order to fit into a very small conceptual box.

Secondly, we have a very weak grasp of what is in fact the central narrative element in the Bible—the concrete historical existence of a people called in Abraham, in reaction against socially constructed blasphemy, to be a corporate, visible and credible witness to the full reality of new creation. In my view, this goes a long way towards explaining why we find it so hard to integrate social and environmental values into our theology and witness.

So what I want to do here is simply to show the difference between a standard evangelical theology of personal salvation (2) and an emerging or new perspective reading of the New Testament (3) as regards their relation to history (1). Whereas modern evangelical theology is largely an escape from history, New Testament theology is very much an engagement with history—that is, with the corporate existence of a people over time.

1. As a culture we have reference to a more or less empirical narrative told by journalists, historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, biologists, geologists, and astrophysicists. It starts, in theory, with the big bang, it encompasses what is likely to be the relatively brief span of human history, and it concludes, again in theory, with some sort of unimaginable cosmic curtain call. We are concerned here with a strand in the narrative that begins with the emergence of Israel as a nation, runs through exile and restoration, Roman occupation, the emergence of a breakaway sect that mutates over time into a thoroughly Gentile church, the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, the conversion of the empire to a modified Jewish monotheism, the rise and demise of an expansionist Western Christendom, and the ensuing struggle to redefine Christianity for the post-Christendom era, in which we are all, in our different ways engaged. (Click on the images to enlarge them.)

Click to Enlarge

2. Traditional evangelical theology barely makes contact with this historical narrative. Israel exists only as the negative backdrop to the abrupt appearance of grace in Jesus. Acts establishes the paradigm of a church that primarily exists to preach a gospel of personal salvation to the nations. Then nothing much happens of theological significance, with the exception perhaps of the Reformation, until the end of the world, which could happen at any time. At best the corporate narrative of scripture is translated into an allegory of personal salvation: I am a sinner because of Adam (or because of Eve); I cannot save myself by works of religion; Jesus died for my sins; I have new life in him; I must also preach the good news of personal salvation; and I will go to heaven when I die.

Click to Enlarge

3. The presumption behind an emerging or new perspective account of New Testament theology is that it is at every point an interpretive response to or anticipation of historical events. Genesis 2-3 is as much an account of Israel’s exile as it is of the universal beginnings of sin; Abraham represents the foundational self-understanding of a people chosen to be “new creation”; Israel’s troubled encounter with empire is a key thread in the developing story; Jesus preaches to and dies for Israel; the early prophetic community of his followers interpreted his resurrection as a certain sign of God’s intention to judge both Israel and the nations; the churches share directly in the death and resurrection of Jesus as they face the same hostility for the sake of the future of the people of God; they are vindicated, first by the destruction of Jerusalem, secondly by the eventual conversion of the Greek-Roman empire and the public confession of Jesus as Lord; the family of Abraham in this way inherits the world and embodies new creation on a grander scale.

Click to Enlarge

The corporate narrative is clearly much more complex than the personal narrative. It does not preach well, particularly in a society that has lost all sense of historical existence and is concerned only with the immediate consumption of material and cultural goods. But the corporate narrative has priority biblically, and I think it has to be recovered—not merely by academics but by the church as a whole—if we are to construct a viable long-term future for ourselves following the disintegration of the western Christendom paradigm.

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Theology and history and Jesus as the culmination of Israel's story

http://www.postost.net/2011/05/theology-history-jesus-culmination-israels-story

by Andrew Perriman

Wednesday 11 May 2011

For reasons which I won’t disclose, I have been working through a [systematic] doctrinal course with a distinctly Reformed hue. If the church is convinced that it needs such a thing as a “doctrine course”, Reformed or otherwise, then this is by no means a bad one. But for me it has highlighted again the fact that so much theological activity [decoupled from biblical history] puts the cart before the horse.

Let me give an example. The section on the Trinity lists a number of biblical texts as “evidence” for the belief that Jesus is God. The assumption is that the doctrine or belief is a given fact and basically beyond dispute; biblical proof texts may be adduced as evidence for it, but this is merely a formality and certainly does not require anything as troublesome as EXEGESIS.

That is very different to reading Matthew 9:4, say, and considering how Jesus’ insight into the thoughts of the scribes is to be explained, from which it is unlikely that we would draw the conclusion that he is omniscient and therefore God. It is very different to reading Matthew 9:1-8 and asking about the significance of the fact that authority has been given to men to forgive sins—the passage virtually rules out the conclusion that Jesus was God.

I should stress that I am not making an argument here against a high Christology; I am making an argument for a high view of scripture. The problem is that a “[systematics] doctrine course” is bound to end up subordinating the organic, contextual argumentation of scripture to the rigid requirements of a theological system that has forgotten how to read historical texts.

So I am very much in agreement with Daniel Kirk when he says in a recent post on theological interpretation:

…I am convinced that there are better ways to conceive of the theological task than traditional systematic, confessional, and dogmatic theology. There is a theology that trades in the diachronic and polyvalent nature of scripture itself, and that continues to embrace such inevitable change and diversity as the church itself continues to speak over time.

Daniel has been writing some very thoughtful and stimulating stuff recently about theology and history and about how the believing church and the (unbelieving?) academy respectively understand Jesus. It ties in well with my history of biblical interpretation. The argument in Daniel’s series of posts zig-zags backwards and forwards rather, and it is difficult to know quite where the dialectic is going to land on any particular issue—which is another way of saying that I may be missing the point in what follows. But this section in a piece on The Church’s Jesus and Israel’s God raised a couple of questions in my mind, and if nothing else, they provide an excuse for some off-the-cuff reflections on the relation of Jesus to Israel’s story:

But the church’s Jesus is not merely a historical religious phenomenon. The church’s Jesus is the one in whom and through whom Israel’s God is bringing about the fulfillment of God’s promises to that people. And so, when we go to study the church’s Jesus we find that each of the four Gospels demands of us that we interpret the Jesus story as the culmination of the Israel story.

Why can’t church and academy tell the same historical story?

The first question has to do with the idea that the church’s Jesus is “not merely a historical religious phenomenon”. Why not? If the church’s Jesus is “the one in whom and through whom Israel’s God is bringing about the fulfillment of God’s promises to that people”, why is that not simply a “religious historical phenomenon”? Why is “religious historical phenomenon” a reductive category?

To put the question differently, was the Jesus of the New Testament communities anything more than a “religious historical phenomenon”? Israel’s existence was historical; the promises to Israel were embedded in historical texts; Jesus was a historical figure; his death and resurrection were historical events in one way or another; and the subsequent unpacking of the implications of his death and resurrection in the life of the community was a historical process.

Why cannot the academy, therefore, take seriously the historical self-understanding of the early church that it existed as a result of a major eschatological transformation of the status of the people of God? After all, it was the academy, roughly speaking, that encouraged us to explore this new contextualized perspective on the New Testament in the first place. By the same token, why cannot the church even today find its identity in the story of the historical-eschatological transformation of the people of God?

So Daniel’s question—”Do you see how the Gospels take us into an interpretive field that can never be entered by the academy?”—seems to me to admit an unnecessary dissociation of the two spheres. The academy may draw the line at confessing the active involvement of God in the historical process; but as far as interpretation goes, it seems to me that in principle there is nothing to keep the church and the academy from telling the same story. That Jesus was a “man attested by God” is part of the story. Whether the academy chooses to believe it is another matter.

What is the narrative of which Jesus is the culmination?

W come to the second question. What exactly is the narrative of which Jesus is the culmination? Reformed and evangelical theologies will insist that this is a story of salvation, but again I think that this is letting the tail of a particular theological tradition wag the dog of scripture.

Jesus is clearly a saviour figure. He “saves” the story from premature termination. But that does not mean that the story is all about salvation. The historically limited meta-narrative of scripture, bookended by creation and new creation, is the story of how an insignificant people, chosen to represent the one good creator God, chosen to be new creation, finally got the better of pagan imperialism and inherited the world (cf. Rom. 4:13; Rev. 11:15). From Babel to Babylon to “Babylon”. This is why Philippians 2:6-11 concludes with the confession that Jesus is Lord rather than that Jesus is Saviour. The church stands in need of further correction here.

So if the academy has helped the church to return Jesus to his narrative context, it may also help us to take what seems to me to be the next critical step in understanding the narrative. The church has learned from the general New Perspective approach to see Jesus as one who marks the culmination of Israel’s story. But the evangelical assumption is that the story effectively stops there—that there is nothing more to be said that isn’t somehow encapsulated in the event of Jesus’ death and resurrection and perhaps Pentecost as a direct consequence of the resurrection, and perhaps, at a stretch, the destruction of Jerusalem, though we’re not entirely sure why that should matter.

But I think it is a mistake to suppose that Jesus is, in effect, the end of history. The priority of national Israel in the story—centred on Jerusalem and the temple, governed by the Law—came to an abrupt and brutal end with the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in AD 70. But the story itself continued. If Jesus sums up what went before, he also anticipates what is to come.

This future of the narrative is partly foreseen in the New Testament—judgment on Israel, the vindication of the persecuted churches, the radical transformation of the ancient world. The biblical narrative is always concretely prophetic, forward-looking—arguably more forward-looking than backward-looking. But if we are to be true to our narrative-historical convictions, we also have to learn how to narrate what falls beyond the victory of Israel’s God over the forces of European paganism—and now, ironically, beyond the collapse of the Christendom worldview. Jesus is the end of one story but the beginning of others.