5 Approaches to Biblical Theology (Barr, Carson, Wright, Childs, Watson)

When is Theology Truly “Biblical”

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2012/11/26/when-is-theology-truly-biblical/

 Scot McKnight

November 26, 2012

 

Everyone claims their theology is biblical. Which means “biblical” is used by everyone and so many different approaches use “biblical” that “biblical” diminishes in value. It becomes, sad to say, little more than a claim to authority.

 

What does it take for you to say something is “biblical”? Does biblical theology (as historical description — below) hold theology hostage to historical discoveries?

 

Jacob Milgrom is a world’s leading scholar on Leviticus: are his commentaries “biblical” theology? Lutheran and Reformed scholars and pastors teach a covenant theology (what I call covenant soterian theology): is this biblical theology? N.T. Wright ties the Bible together into the Story from creation to consummation: is this “biblical” theology? Wayne Grudem offers a politics that he would say is “biblical”: Is it biblical? What makes something a “biblical” theology?

 

Good question. And we’ve got a wonderful new textbook in a texbook-ish format, but readable, accessible and useful for upper level college and seminary/graduate students, that introduces us to five kinds of “biblical” theology. The book is called Understanding Biblical Theology: A Comparison of Theory and Practice, by Edward Klink III and Darian Lockett. We need this kind of book for students. Just this semester at Northern Seminary I taught (and am still teaching) “New Testament Theology” and I did a brief taxonomy of the various methods and approaches to NT theology on that day. What I did not find was a student-level sketch of the various approaches to NT theology, and this book — while more focused on the whole Bible — will be a good taxonomy for anyone teaching “biblical” theology — Old or New Testament.

 

They provide five models, and I suspect not a few of us will raise some questions about the order on their spectrum. It is only in the analysis of each model and theologian that their rationale will become clear. But they move the models or types along a spectrum from “history” to “theology,” and their five types of biblical theology (BT) are:

 

1 - BT as historical description: James Barr
2 - BT as history of redemption: D.A. Carson
3 - BT as worldview-story: N.T. Wright
4 - BT as canonical approach: B. Childs
5 - BT as theological construction: Francis Watson

 

The book is mostly theoretical and could have used a single text, which I will do in this series of posts, like Genesis 1:26-27, to illustrate each type of biblical theology.

 

Each type is processed through the following themes:

 

- Task

- Use

- Scope

- Sources

- Hermeneutical approach

- Subject matter

 

 

BT As Historical Description

November 26, 2012 

 

The first type is biblical theology as historical description, and the choice of James Barr is both exceptional and odd. Exceptional because he is well-known for his fierce criticisms of how many/most do “biblical” theology, and some of his attacks were withering and made many of us nervous about using sources (like Kittel) and studies (like Von Rad or Childs). The reason Barr is odd is because Barr never really produced a biblical theology. One could also probe Milgrom, Walton on Genesis 1, Hugh Williamson on the Chronicler or Isaiah.

 

But it all comes down to history, so that biblical theology is to be done by the professional biblical scholar who alone is qualified to read the languages at the level of expertise needed to contextualize those texts in history; the method does not care at all about normative theology but only “what it meant” “back then” to the “original author/text.” It is set over against theology as we know it; it uses any-and-all historical methods; and it is exegesis and history, including the dissection of the text into its sources.

 

The big category often used here: it is descriptive, not prescriptive. It is description of the past, of the text in the past, of the author in the past. The past tense is the best way to carry out the business of biblical theology.

 

[As example, the] “image of God” meant what it meant in the Ancient Near East (representative of a king) so there are discussions of how these terms are used in the ANE texts in Egypt and Babylon etc, or how this term is used in the Priestly source of Genesis 1:1–2:3, or in Genesis — but Barth’s relationality or modern scientific studies showing the uniqueness of humans over against the animal kingdom or the feminist appropriation of Genesis 1′s text are of no use. Nor does the use of “image of God” for Jesus have anything to do with “biblical” theology in Gen 1. The “us” of “let us” is not about the Trinity but about a divine council or angels or something along these lines because that is what the author at that time would have meant.

 

All that matters is what that text meant to that source/text at that time in its context. And that is biblical theology for this type of biblical theology. What it might mean for theology in later texts or in church history or today are of no concern to this type of biblical theology.

 

Though Klink and Lockett do not think this approach is the same as the History of Religions School, I would connect them closer than they do even if there are some notable differences (it’s degree not kind).
 

BT As A History Of Redemption

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2012/11/28/biblical-theology-as-salvation-history/

November 28, 2012

How does one read the Bible “biblically,” that is how does one read it right? That word “biblical” has some options and it is not quite as simple as some suggest. Some theologians study a theme hard and then run the whole Bible — or much of the Bible — through that theme and sometimes they discover some parts don’t fit their framework so they ignore those elements of the Bible. Very, very few “biblical” theologies or Story-approaches to the Bible know what to do with the Wisdom literature, which reading then ironically is a revelation of an “unbiblical” reading of the Bible!

 

How do you respond to the “salvation historical” approach to biblical theology?

 

What Edward Klink III and Darian Lockett, in their Understanding Biblical Theology, do is sketch five types (reminds one of Niebuhr’s types) of “biblical” theology, and they grade them from the historical to the systematic theological. The historical approach is typified by James Barr and in this post we want to look at the second type, “Biblical Theology as History of Redemption,” and they use D.A. Carson as their prototype. One of the highlights of this section in their book is the discernment of three “schools” in this approach, and when I began reading this chp I wondered if they’d factor in the various approaches — and I’m delighted they did. Furthermore, while Carson is the prototype here they use Graeme Goldsworthy throughout their sketch, and I would argue his many writings might even be a more forceful example because of his many writings directly on their theme.

 

What is not mentioned is that this “salvation history” approach to biblical theology is a species of Reformed, covenant theology. More needs to be said about this, but it would take us away from their sketch of this kind of biblical theology.

 

Here are the major elements of type 2:

 

1. The aim is to discern the historical progress of God’s work of redemption.

2. In the Canon of Scripture, all of Scripture, but tied together in the sweep of Scripture. Progressive revelation of the progress of redemption.

3. Themes discerned inductively are a major avenue to find this history of redemption.

4. Scripture is a revelation of God; Scripture is the source though other texts clarify contexts.

5. History is the arena in which God reveals himself; so history is fundamentally important.

6. Scripture is a profound, sometimes typological, unity revealing this history of redemption, and this biblical theology influences exegesis.

7. But exegesis builds into biblical theology and always has priority over systematic theology.

8. The church is the place where this theology is expressed — not just an academic exercise (as in Barr’s proposal).

 

The contribution of this chp entails their breakdown into three schools:

 

The Dallas School which focuses more on biblical books (Isaiah) and sections (Synoptics) as the arena for biblical theology, with larger syntheses being more systematics.

 

The Chicago School, which they use for Carson and his series of books in New Studies in Biblical Theology, extends the Dallas School to a larger synthesis of the Bible’s history of redemption. So the focus is a thematic coherence of the Bible.

 

The Philadelphia School, which is the Reformed tradition behind and at Westminster, with his great christocentric hermeneutical reading of the Bible — from the very beginning. I see this School as the origin of the second and which was countered by the more original forms of the Dallas School.

 

To continue the meme I began in the first post. What about the Image of God in Gen 1:26-27. Dallas might emphasize the meaning of “image” in Genesis 1 and Genesis and the Pentateuch; the Chicago School might focus on how Image becomes Image of Christ so that there is a progression in revelation leading to even fuller insights into the meaning of Genesis; the Philadelphia will begin in Genesis but will know that it needs fuller interpretation in light of Christ as the Image — leading them perhaps to say Adam, as Image, is made in the Image of Christ. Each of these will involve understanding Image in its Ancient Near East setting as the king representing God.

 

What is interesting, of course, is the division between Chicago and Philadelphia, and it illustrates the whole problem of “biblical” theology: a hermeneutic is formed, always on the basis of how the Bible is read, to the level that it becomes the guiding theme for reading each passage. The Chicago School focuses on redemption (salvation) while the Philadelphia School focuses on christology (though one might say their approach is also redemption history with a christocentric emphasis). The issue here is Who decides which theme guides our reading? I am convinced that all “soterian” and “history of redemption” readings are rooted more or less in Romans 5:12-21 or more broadly in Pauline soteriology (often enough justification theory). Other themes rise their hands asking for attention: like election, or the People of God, or missio Dei in a wider sense of redemption, et al.. But I want to emphasize that a cheap postmodern critique of this approach won’t work; the chp discussing Carson’s theory is laced together with his awareness of the issue of presuppositions, et al.

 

The authors provide what I think is an important reminder by way of critique: “Carson (and BT2 [this second type] in general) seems to underplay the abstracting character of history alongside that of reason and philosophy. History is not as neutral as Carson’s implicit construction suggests” (89). It is because NT Wright does deal with this “not as neutral” element that he is actually farther along the theological line for these authors, and yet one could make the case he is closer to the history end for the same reason.

 

 

BT As A Worldview-Story

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2012/11/30/nt-wrights-worldview-story-as-biblical-theology/

November 30, 2012

In a spectrum from history to systematic theology, where does someone like NT Wright fit? Is he closer to the history or the systematics end? Edward Klink III and Darian Lockett, in their fine new book, Understanding Biblical Theology, put Wright smack-dab in the middle of the two, but they put D.A. Carson’s history of redemption approach closer to history and Wright closer to theology. More of that later.

 

In their spectrum there are five types: history, history of redemption, worldview story, canonical and theological construction. BT1, BT2, BT3, BT4, and BT5, and today we look at BT3, worldview story. The big idea is learning to read each passage of the Bible in light of the worldview story/narrative of the Bible, however that might be constructed — and the commentary series of which I am the General Editor (now called “Story of God Bible Commentary”) will offer commentaries in light of this worldview story approach to the Bible. Had we had this book we would have asked each author to “subscribe” to BT3!

 

Where would you place NT Wright on the spectrum from history (left) to theology (right)? Is he more historical or theological than the History of Redemption/Carson?

 

Some major theoretical issues:

 

1. Narrative is both a literary and philosophical category.
2. Worldview story inherently critiques historical criticism in the direction of Hans Frei’s famous Eclipse of Biblical Narrative.
3. The way to read a passage is to see its location in the overall plotline of the Bible’s narrative/story.
4. This narrative speaks to modern readers/Christians.

 

This worldview story, in their view, is more connected to academy than to church, and here I would contend the pre-2oth Century church especially did not carefully distinguish church from academy so that appealing to anything before the (early?) 20th Century church is not much of an appeal.

 

Big for this approach is how the NT uses the OT; the sources for this approach are both canonical and non-canonical. The subject of the this kind of “biblical” theology is the narrative structure at work in the texts to which the author/s appeal, including both canonical and non-canonical authors.

 

Their sketch of NT Wright’s works is adequate, though it is more than difficult to read, let alone put together, all of them. My read of their sketch is that it is adequate. They focus on two words, story and worldview, then combine them into Tom’s approach being a worldview story. (I don’t know that Tom ever uses that expression.) But his “story” brings into concrete reality a worldview that is a set of assumptions. More important, NT Wright reads the NT in light of a “historically reconstructed ‘story’ of Israel’s Scriptures” (112). That’s dead-on. NT Wright’s method is critical realism. His worldview story is tied into Judaism’s story and stories and worldviews. The NT “continues” the OT story.

 

Well, what about the “image of God”? As I have said, I want to see if I can flesh out how each kind of biblical theology would explain “image of God” in Gen 1:26-27. NT Wright, connecting to folks like John Walton, sees the expression in light of the Ancient Near East and in the context of the role given to humans in creation: as those who represent God. We/they are, in other words, both kings and priests. This theme is unfolded in the Story of the Bible — to Abraham and Israel and to David and then to Jesus, as the priest-king, who is King/Messiah, and then as the Temple itself as well. And on to Paul’s use of Christ as temple and king and priest, into Hebrews, and with the people of God as kings and priests … to the new heavens and new earth. In other words, it’s not so much about progressive revelation as the continuation of an idea as the Story unfolds, a Story that gives meaning to the Bible and shows where humans fit in God’s Story, but also provides meaning for us today.

 

I have some issues with how the authors sketch the spectrum, and after reading the two chps on History of Redemption and Worldview Story I am less confident of their ordering. Here’s why:

 

1. NT Wright calls himself a historian; none in the History of Redemption self-identifies as historians. I find it odd then that they place Wright closer to the theology end.
2. Both read each passage in light of a “worldview” or “theology,” so this point applies to both: each reads each passage in light of a theology.
3. NT Wright is criticized in both of their chps for being too tied into a historical method; the BT2 History of Redemption approach is not criticized for its historiography.
4. Hovering over this entire set of chps is what the authors mean by “history,” and a good study of historiography shows that NT Wright’s approach to History is much more in tune with what history is — the creation of a story/narrative out of facts, sometimes conceived of as discrete facts, which is what NTWright does in his book. BT2 seems to me to be more in tune with theology and less in tune with this theory of history.

 

 

BT As A Canonical Aproach
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2012/12/03/biblical-theology-and-canon/
December 3, 2012

In the late 80s and early 90s perhaps no Old Testament scholar had built around him a way of Bible reading more than Brevard Childs at Yale. Childs resisted two approaches to Bible and theology — the historical-critical method that all but ignored theology and the “biblical theology” approach because it was too historical-critical in approach. He proposed what is often called a “canonical approach.” Childs knew his Bible well, and not just his Old Testament — so much so that he wrote an The New Testament as Canon: An Introduction, which I read as a young professor and then reviewed in TSF Bulletin. I sent my review to Childs, and he wrote back a long response which TSF Bulletin also published. I often greeted Childs at the SBL meetings and was saddened to hear, years later, that he was not physically well … a full study of Childs has been published by Daniel Driver, Brevard Childs, Biblical Theologian.

 

Today our concern is how Edward Klink and Darian Lockett, in their Understanding Biblical Theology, sketch a fourth type of biblical theology: Biblical Theology as Canonical Approach. The big issue here is to call attention to biblical theology as something involving decisions by the church on what constitutes its Bible. Bible is not just a document; it is a church’s book, a canon (as list and as norm for its theology).

 

But the big point is this one: the place for determining meaning is not the original setting or the original author but the text in its final form in the context of the canon. The task then for biblical theology is to affirm importance of canon.

 

What do you think of the “canonical approach” to biblical theology? What happens to our study of the Bible if we recognize canon as an important theological approach?

 

It looks more specifically like this:

 

1. The goal is not to find the original event, etc but to examine/explain the final “construal” of the event in the Scripture. The problems with the “find the original event/text/history” approach: history determines truth not the text; hypothesis makes all conclusions speculative; the Bible as the church’s text is denied; history trumps theology. Childs himself embraced the hist-crit method but it was swallowed into his canonical approach.

 

2. OT and NT are interwoven in this approach because they are unified. The Hebrew Bible becomes the Christian Old Testament, and Jesus Christ becomes the substance — though this does not mean the OT is swamped by NT theology. The OT is the initial hearing that is heard more fully in Christ.

 

3. The Bible as canon means the Bible is the church’s theology.

 

4. The substance and scope of the Bible is Jesus Christ. [This cuts a bit into BT2, the history of redemption approach, which makes redemption the substance of the Bible.]

 

5. I add this one: the canonical approach also asks what a given text — say John — now means in light of its inclusion in the canon, and might even ask what its ordered location (fourth Gospel, just before Acts) in the Bible means for how to read that text. My point here is that the canonical approach shapes each text in light of its placement in canon. As with BT2′s salvation history influence and BT3′s worldview-story influence, so this approach sees the decisive influence from canon. One might say BT2 and BT3 are “canons” within the canon influences — they ask what is driving the canon while the canonical approach asks that from a wider angle.

 

His approach has three “steps”:

 

1. Begin with the ancient text and its “plain” sense.
2. Dialogue between ancient text and canon.
3. Dialogue between subject matter and ancient text.

 

Christopher Seitz, a disciple of Childs, sees three areas: literary/exegetical (the final form is a commentary on the preceding forms of the text), catholic/ecclesial (the questions the church has posed to the Bible matter), and theological.

 

There are problems here, some of them overblown a bit, but many have pointed to lack of clarity on the meaning of “canon” — though I think this distracts from the genuine contribution of Childs and, at the same time, the challenge of making this approach work. A significant question for me is “Whose canon? Which canon? Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Jewish?” And “Which text?” This one is interesting because Childs embraces the entire textual manuscript tradition of the church … variants, too!

BT As A Theological Construction

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2012/12/04/restoring-theology-to-biblical-theology/

December 4, 2012

 

"Restoring Theology to Biblical Theology"

 

The problem is that Old and New Testament scholars, almost uniformly, ignore (systematic) theology in favor of what is demonstrable from the text in its historical context. Yet, yet, yet … who can read the Bible and not observe that it is theological? For theology, by theologically minded and for those who worship? This backing away from all things theological occurred from the Enlightenment on and now has a fierce (and oft-protected) grip on biblical studies and therefore some on biblical theology.

 

Where does theology invade biblical theology the most?

 

To the “rescue” comes a kind of biblical theology concerned with the theological dimension and focus of the text. This is BT5 in Klink and Lockett’s Understanding Biblical Theology, and they have chosen Francis Watson as their major proponent of this approach.

 

What is the “biblical theology as theological construction”? It is how the church reads Scripture as church and how the church reads Scripture as Scripture. That’s theoretical and, to be blunt about it, both “biblical theology as theological construction” and “theological interpretation of Scripture” is no clearer — in any statement I’ve seen. Maybe they’ll consider my definition for understanding their discipline.

 

Reading the Bible, then, is a theological enterprise — for the present. The Bible is not a historical text; for the church the Bible is Scripture. It is unlike any other book and so is unique as a genre. Those who judged this discipline are those for whom it matters: those of faith, those in the church. It involves the whole Bible — OT and NT, seeing a two-Testament Bible. Christian tradition matters.

There are emphases: the revelationist approach (Vanhoozer), textualist (Lindbeck), and functionalist (Fowl). The subject matter is God and secondly the church.

 

They move then to Watson, who offers a textually-mediated theology and a textually-mediated Jesus. The Gospels are narrated history (neither just history nor just narrative). This mediated theology is taken up into Christian worship and praxis, which influence how we read the Bible. Watson discusses the Old and New issue: a twofold Bible, with one preceding and one following, with the New taking on precedence in the person and work of Christ. So he argues for a christocentric reading of the Bible.

 

Most of Watson’s critics think he is not theological enough (not Trinitarian enough) while historians will say he’s too theological.

 

 

 

John Caputo: Towards a Radical Theology, Not a Radical Atheism: A Review of Modern Atheism, Atheology and Divine Inexistence

Christopher Watkin

Difficult Atheism: Post-Theological Thinking in Alain Badiou, Jean-Luc Nancy and Quentin Meillassoux

Published: June 07, 2012

Christopher Watkin, Difficult Atheism: Post-Theological Thinking in Alain Badiou, Jean-Luc Nancy and Quentin Meillassoux, Edinburgh University Press, 2011, 281pp., $105.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780748640577.

Reviewed by John D. Caputo, Syracuse University and Villanova University

http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/31269-difficult-atheism-post-theological-thinking-in-alain-badiou-jean-luc-nancy-and-quentin-meillassoux/

Being an "atheist" is not a simple matter. When Derrida says that there are "theological prejudices" imbedded in "metaphysics in its entirety, even when it professes to be atheistic", he means that when metaphysics poses as the supreme authority that pronounces "there is no God," it simply reenacts the role of God. It leaves the "center" standing and reoccupies it with other metaphysical pretenders to the throne: Man, History, Science, Reason, any version of Žižek's "Big Other." That is nothing more than a palace coup that leaves the palace system standing.

Such atheism, which a lot of us would call "modernist," Watkin says, "imitates" theism and is "parasitic" on the very framework it purports to negate. Atheism, he argues, is "difficult," a difficulty Nietzsche proposed to meet when he said "God is dead," where "God" meant not just the Deity but the whole system of "values," of "truth" and the "good," from Plato to the present, every attempt to establish a center, a foundation of knowledge and morals, including modern physics, which is also an "interpretation." Watkin thinks this atheism is exposed to a "difficulty" of its own, which he calls its "ascetic" approach, because it calls upon us to make do with the resulting debris or "residue" of lost foundations (the "death of God"), to live with finitude and imperfection, giving up on a satisfying transcendence, and putting up with an unsatisfying immanence (133). It does not really annul the place of God but merely leaves it empty (6-7), like Camus' "absurd man" shaking his fist at the void. This is an atheism that regrets that it is right.

The ascetic version faces a further difficulty: once we undermine foundations, we have undermined any foundational argument against the old God. That binds the hands of atheism, preventing any knock-out atheistic blow, thereby leaving the barn door open to religious faith. Kant was being a perfect Pauline-Lutheran Protestant when he said that he found it necessary to delimit knowledge in order to make room for faith. The "difficulty," in short, is that atheism needs foundationalism to cut off the escape route of faith, but foundationalism reenacts and repeats theism. Either concede our irreducible finitude, which leaves the infinite inaccessible and a possible object of faith, or somehow scramble over to the side of the infinite and cut off the escape route of faith, which runs the opposite risk of playing God. That explains "post-secularism," the postmodern "return of religion": once modernity is delimited and the metaphysical gunfire over God subsides, a postmodern version of classical religious faith is free to raise its hoary head. This "colonisation" of modern atheism by religion has particularly gotten Watkin's goat (239).

Watkin proposes a way out of this dilemma -- if not, we will never be rid of religion and all its resulting woes -- under the name of what he calls a "post-theological integration." This means, in Lyotard's words, inventing a new ("post-theological") game and not being content with a new move in the age-old game (theism versus atheism). Is there a way to think "after God" or "without God" that does not act as if it is God (parasitism), while not giving up on the ideas of truth and justice (asceticism), meaning that it can be "integrated" with ideas normally associated with God? (13) A lot depends on what Watkin means by "integration," which runs its own risk of aggression and colonization -- playing with religion and explaining it to itself. Philosophy (father) knows best, knows better than religion what religion is talking about. Philosophy knows that things would be "better" -- it's the "consensus" (239) -- "without" God and religion. A lot also depends on "without," a venerable word of Meister Eckhart's Latin (sine) and German (ohne) vocabulary, meditated upon at length by Heidegger and Derrida (sans). When it comes to being an atheist, who is without sin (sine peccato, anamartetos)?

Watkin takes up Alain Badiou ("axiomatic atheism"), Jean-Luc Nancy ("atheology") and Quentin Meillassoux ("divine inexistence"), each of whom he thinks has just such a post-theological project in mind. The French focus omits not only Nietzsche but also Žižek, but it has the advantage of including Nancy -- instead of simply writing off deconstruction as (like God) dead and restricting the debate to the new or "speculative" realists -- along with a brief but illuminating discussion of Jean-Luc Marion. The problem is interesting, the question is very nicely framed, and the architecture of the book is impeccable (without sin). We can be especially grateful to Watkin for providing exemplary expositions of these authors, especially Nancy, an exceptionally elusive and allusive writer who requires a reading in French. The book is filled with subtle and complex commentaries to which no review can do justice. Difficult Atheism represents a sophisticated contribution to the debates that have arisen in the wake of the "theological turn", and it merits careful study by anyone interested in these issues.

Badiou's attack is directed against "ascetic" atheism, postmodern post-Kantian skeptics about "truth." His atheism is straightforward: theism is false; atheism is true. The dichotomy stands and one branch is broken off. By insisting upon our "finitude," the postmoderns allow the "infinite" (God, the One) to flourish like a poisonous mushroom in the dark soil of the "inaccessible." So Badiou reclaims the infinite for philosophy, stiffens the spines of the philosophers about truth, leaving the old God nowhere to hide while affirming truth and justice. Nothing is left over; nothing can escape the light of the Idea. This is done by invoking a specific version of set theory which wrests the infinite from the One of the Platonic-Christian tradition and transfers it to multiplicity. But, Watkin points out, Cantor was a Roman Catholic who distinguished a numerical infinity (the transfinite, quantitative multiplicity) from the "absolutely infinite" being of God (divine simplicity), which is neither numerically finite nor numerically infinite and as such the province of theology. There is nothing in mathematics which authorizes mathematics to speak about what is not mathematical to begin with. That is the very move Badiou wants to cut off. All Badiou can do with Cantor's distinction is to brush it off and declare "The One is not" an axiomatic decision (27-29). Ontology just is mathematics, adopting a posture often struck in Vatican encyclicals and in the Bible belt under the name of the "Word of God."

Nancy directs his attack against the sort of straightforward modernist or "imitative-parasitic" atheism we see in Badiou. As a deconstructionist, Nancy undercuts the "binary opposition" between theism and atheism (132), treating atheism as the flip side of onto-theo-logy. Theism and atheism are mirror images. He situates himself on the terrain of the "finite," which helps us avoid pretending that we are God, as Badiou has done. That is why Nancy speaks of a deconstructive "atheology," not "atheism." Nancy describes an infinite "open" which is only ever partially filled by any finite construction, an unbounded "sense" which cannot be saturated by any determinate "signification." There is no ahistorical arche or telos that shuts down or "axiomatizes" the open. The notion that something ahistorical breaks in upon the historical and henceforth changes everything -- the way the matheme ruptures the mytheme for Badiou -- is the very gesture of "Christianity," of the Incarnation, or what Nancy calls the "Christmas projection" (37). So it is Christianity that needs deconstruction.

But to deconstruct something is to open it up, not close it down. Deconstruction is un-closing, dis-enclosing. While Nancy's deconstruction of Christianity will give no comfort to the Vatican or Nashville, it will expose a sens deep within Christianity that "Christianity" (a signification) tends to close off. As Derrida points out, that attaches hyperbolic importance to Christianity itself, culling the wheat from the chaff, the spirit from the dead letter. This is made clear by the history of Derrida's word déconstruction, which translates Heidegger's Destruktion, which in turn translates what Luther called the destructio of medieval metaphysical theology in order to recover the pristine heart of the New Testament, which itself translates apolo in I Cor 1:19, which translates Isaiah 29:14. Heidegger's Destruktion retrieves the truth (aletheia) in metaphysics from which metaphysics itself is barred. Watkin concludes that Nancy's deconstruction is "parasitic" upon Christianity and not genuinely post-theological (39-40). Neither Badiou nor Nancy escapes parasitism. Each one convicts the other.

But is not Nancy's "repetition" of Christianity without Christianity exactly what an "integration" ought to be? Might we not distinguish a flat-footed parasitism from an ironic, conscious and creative one? Is there not an illusion embedded in speaking too strongly of the "post"-theological as if the theological could be over and done with? We cannot pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps and create de novo. We begin where we are, with the languages and traditions we have inherited, which we seek to re-think and re-open. The idea is not to decontaminate ourselves from these traditions but to transform them, to recover what is going on in them, without being trapped by them. Sometimes Watkin speaks of the post-theological as if "God," "theology" and "religion" were like AIDS, and the post-theological question is how we wipe out this threat. The post-theological is said to "reoccupy" and "integrate" with theology in order to subvert it.

Is philosophy then aggression, a force of "occupation," a hostile military takeover which "exploits the resources" of religion (99)? That would succeed only in being "integrated" with theological imperialism! What is the difference between the "post-secular colonisation" of atheism and the "post-theological occupation" of theology -- other than whose side one is on? Or is philosophy a repetition that will always be hyperbolic about something -- otherwise it would be "ahistorical" -- writing sous rature, deploying paleologism and a logic of the sans (Derrida's religion sans religion), as Watkin explicitly points out (79-80)? That is a much more delicate operation than the one Watkin ascribes to Badiou -- as if religion were an object exposed to the light of the Idea and the "philosopher" were the "master" who can explain religion to itself, while mocking its self-understanding as a mere "fable." But any idea, "theological" or "post-theological," is at odds with itself and is moved by its own internal tensions. A deconstruction tracks the way things are always already invaded by their other, always divided internally, but it is not exploitation, aggression, occupation, a plundering of religion or the work of art -- merci à Dieu!

At this point, Watkin is convinced we have reached a draw: neither position has found its way clear to post-theology. Badiou makes a primal decision about the axiomatization of being, declaring that the One is not, which even if historically "motivated" is a contestable faith that mathematical thinking is "better." Nancy is likewise unable to escape the shadow of theology, distinguishing a determinate belief (croyance) in a determinate "principle" (or signification) from a deeper but divided faith (foi) (in sens). This faith is not opposed to reason but is a keeping faith with or being "true" (treu) to reason that supplements reason. Reason needs such faith in order to function, given its own insufficiency, so that reason is never more "reasonable" than when it recognizes that it needs the supplement of faith. A self-sufficient reason is idolatry; true reason is unclosed, incomplete, insufficient, exposed to faith (115-16). Nancy calls this "atheology," the affirmation of the unprogrammable, un-axiomatizable, sens of the "world." But this, Watkin thinks, only continues to privilege Christianity. Atheism may be not only difficult but "incompletable" (121), led back to a Gödelian place: atheism cannot complete itself (Badiou) without becoming inconsistent, and it cannot be consistent (Nancy) without being incomplete (123).

Enter Meillassoux, who claims to provide an atheism both consistent and complete. Using Badiou's critique of finitude, Meillassoux attacks Kantian "fideism" (denying knowledge to make room for faith) and gives philosophy unlimited authority over God, rationalizing revelation -- not eradicating it -- not unlike Spinoza or Hegel. Philosophy denies both the transcendent God of theism and the God-less immanence of atheism, but in its place it produces a new God of its own construction, an "inexistent" God. Philosophy is not experimental science, whose methodological limits (finitude) play into the hands of religious faith, but neither is it classical metaphysics, which posits a necessary being. Hence it assumes a "speculative" form which denies the assumption that we are forced to choose between the contingency of the many (postmodernism) and the necessity of the One (God) (metaphysics). Readers of theology will notice that "voluntarist" or "divine will" theology, God as necessary, transcendent and inscrutably free to alter the laws of nature and morality, does service for "God" at large for Meillassoux. The "speculative" position is to assert the necessity of contingency, the necessity that everything is contingent, which Meillassoux calls the principle of the "factial" (le factual). It cannot be that the contingency of things is itself contingent.

This principle is argued for by an odd sort of tables-turning method of "conversion" (162). A minus (reasoning to a necessary being falls into infinite regress, explaining one contingent thing by another) becomes a plus: this failure is a direct insight into the non-necessity of any one being and of the necessity of the contingency of every being, which eliminates the need for faith (146). Being unable to come up with a sufficient reason for any being is an insight into the impossibility that any particular being could be necessary (147). What's ultimately "wrong" with God for Meillassoux is that we are forbidden to ask where God came from. Or again: the "strong correlationists" maintain that reality could always be otherwise than the way we have constructed it in language or consciousness. That is not the skeptical relativism it wants to be, but an intuition that it is inescapably necessary that things could always be otherwise than they are.

Finally, his amazing reading of Hume: the inability to find the necessary relationship between the antecedent and the consequent is an intellectual insight into the real lack of causal necessity, thereby switching the "non-reason" from us (skepticism) to the things themselves (realism). Meillassoux is not saying that the natural world is chaotic but that it is subject to a non-observable (speculative) contingency (143). There are laws and regularities and even causal connections in nature, but they are all contingent. Gravity is a law, but it is not necessary. It is thinkable that tomorrow there will be no gravity. Chaos is disorder, but radical contingency is a "hyperchaos," meaning that disorder may be destroyed by order just as easily as order may be destroyed by disorder. From the principle of "insufficient reason" (there being no sufficient reason for any particular thing) we can conclude to the necessity of contingency (145) and to the principle of non-contradiction, for if a thing were both itself and its contradiction it would already be any "other" that it could become; it would then be an unchangeable and necessary being. But every being is contingent.

None of this means that Meillassoux is done with God. Far from it -- he is the most "aggressive" (231-32) of all when it comes to post-theological "integration." After dispensing with the God of the ontological argument, God as an ens necessarium, it remains possible that God might happen to come about, even if God happens not to exist now. God's current inexistence does not exclude a possible future existence. Indeed, it is absolutely necessary that God (like everything else currently inexistent) might possibly exist later on. Why Meillassoux would ever be led to say such a thing -- he is nothing if not bold -- brings us to the question of justice, the other idea (along with truth) with which post-theology wants to "integrate itself," and to the age-old problem of evil. Justice demands we supersede both classical theism (because it affirms a God who permits the worst injustices) and classical atheism (because it allows the injustice done to the dead to go unrepaired) by positing the hope for the possible emergence in the future of a God who will raise the dead and reward them for their hitherto unrequited suffering by way of a Christ-like figure called the "Child of Man." Like an odd Hegelian, Meillassoux wants to "occupy" everything that (the Christian) religion has to say! That yields a "philosophical divine" (207), a God, religion and resurrection in which we may hope strictly within the limits of reason alone, of the principle of necessary contingency.

Watkin thinks that Meillassoux's principle of the necessity of contingency undoes itself. Given the unbroken rule of contingency, any such necessity would have to be temporally qualified as "according to the presently prevailing standards of rationality" (151). Maybe tomorrow morning what is judged rational or just today will be judged irrational and unjust, while what is irrational and unjust will be judged rational and just. The very notions of thinking and rationality, of necessity and contingency are all contingent and subject to change in the future. If they are not, then they are necessary and exempt from the principle of the factial. Meillassoux either erects a God-like idol out of thinking and rationality (parasitic atheism) or requires an act of faith that reason will not mutate under the force of hyperchaos (ascetic atheism) (155).

In Nancy, justice comes down to a "call" that for Watkin is too weak to be effective and to be effective would require miming a divine injunction. Badiou tells us his view of justice is motivated by his personal experience of the events of May, 1968, which compares to his view that his axiomatic decision to say that ontology is mathematics is motivated by the demands of modernity; while biographically interesting, this lacks the universality politics demands. Badiou bases his atheism on an axiomatic decision; Nancy builds faith into the very idea of reason; and Meillassoux, resisting both moves, attempts a demonstration of his founding principle, but the demonstration requires faith. Taken together, all three thinkers posit an axiom, a call or an intuition in which we must just have faith (233-34), which are considered eo ipso "good" and are given a pass on having to further justify themselves. He concludes with Fichte's remark that the kind of philosophy one chooses depends on the kind of person one is. Philosophy always risks such circularity, which is the ultimate difficulty in becoming an atheist.

But what goes around comes around. Watkin worries that the "colonisation" of atheism by "post-secular" theology ends us up back in theology, not atheism. That is evidently bad because, well, atheism is "good." But what is so good about atheism? Why is atheism not just as good-and-bad as theology, where it all depends upon how theologians and atheists behave both as thinkers and social agents? Why should we seek a "post-theology" that purges both the imitation and the residue of theology from atheism? Because atheism is good and a radical clean-sweep atheism is even better. The "post" in Watkin's post-theology is like Žižek's reading of the Hegelian dialectic as a double no: atheism means no God; post-theology means no God, not even a trace of God.

But why is "post-secular" theology not "good?" It belongs to a progressive wing of theology eager to absorb the insights of radical thinkers from Nietzsche to Žižek in order to engage in serious self-criticism and to undermine the demonization of atheism by theology. If we criticize theologians for not reading such writers, are we then to criticize them when they do? Postmodern theology results in a searching criticism of the violence and fundamentalism of religion from within theology itself, which is vastly more effective than any external criticism of theology. If we test the idea on Watkin's terms, by its pay-off in terms of justice, post-secular theology enacts an auto-deconstruction of theological imperialism, militarism, patriarchy, racism, and homophobia, drawing upon a theology of peace and justice stretching from Amos to Martin Luther King (which is why religious people are so regularly found working among the most destitute people on earth) and calling down upon itself the fire of conservative religious authorities. If such theological thinking were the coin of the realm in religion today, religious violence would not be in the headlines.

That being said, I do in part share Watkin's concern with post-secular theology, although that may come as a surprise to him, since Watkin numbers me among the post-secularists he criticizes, which I attribute to a rather glancing look at my work. I regard the "post-Kantian" version of postmodern theology as an attenuated or abridged edition of postmodernism; it is good but it could be better. It regards postmodernism as the contemporary version of "apologetics," cutting off reductionistic critiques of religion and allowing classical religious orthodoxy to stand untouched. A more searching version of postmodern theory requires a more searching (and post-Hegelian) criticism of what is going on in religion and theology. That requires a careful historical and critical study of the Scriptures, of the history of theology and of what we are talking about when we westerners speak in Christian Latin of "religion." The result would take the form, in my view, of an exposition (an expounding and an exposing) of the "events" that take place in religion -- events of promising and hoping, giving and forgiving, mourning and recalling, justice and hospitality, and the like. It would expose a deeper "faith" (foi) which runs beneath the "confessional beliefs" (croyances), where both "theism" and "atheism" are treated as croyances, while faith has to do with a deep-set affirmation or desire of something we desire with a desire beyond desire, a desire that overtakes us all, theists, atheists or still trying to decide.

I think, and Watkin seems to agree, that there are no non-circular arguments against the existence of God, if by God we mean a being outside space and time. If that is what a radical atheism would mean, there is no such thing (243, n.3). What resources could we ever marshal to show what there is not in a world beyond space and time? If it is "difficult" enough to try to prove that something is there, it is even harder to prove there is not. But I do think that the good old God of St. Augustine and his two-worlds theory has run its course, that it has earned our "incredulity," to stick with Lyotard's precisely chosen word, an incredulity that is very often found among the theologians themselves. That, however, is a long way from giving up on God, or more precisely on the name (of) "God," or more precisely still the "events" that take place in and under the name (of) "God."

Pursuing what I call a "radical theology," I want to be "after" God in as many ways as possible, not only after/post the dualism of The City of God but also after/ad the name of God that gives words to a desire beyond desire, which Derrida has subtly if enigmatically set loose in texts like "Circumfession." This eccentric restaging of Augustine's Confessions is a deeply nuanced deconstruction of Christianity and even more so of his own Judaism, "haunting" the religious beliefs it repeats, making them tremble while also suggesting they contain something they cannot contain. Deconstruction is not "critique" but an oblique affirmation. Derrida does not try to "occupy" the Confessions like a conquering colonial army but to "repeat" religion "without religion," according to the subtle logic of the sans, thereby exposing the structure of a more profound foi that is going on in the Confessions while not being held captive by its doctrinal croyances. Deconstruction is not "occupying;" it is reading, slowly and meticulously.

Once the binarity of theism and atheism is displaced, once the grip of these "-isms" is broken, then thinking and acting after God can begin, as free from theism as from atheism, but also, apace Watkin, as free from atheism as from theism.

The Danger of Calling Behavior "Biblical"

 

The author argues that there are many meanings of the adjective 'biblical.'

 

My Take: The danger of calling behavior ‘biblical’

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/11/17/my-take-the-danger-of-calling-behavior-biblical/?hpt=hp_c1

 

 

Editor's Note: Rachel Held Evans is a popular blogger from Dayton, Tennessee, and author of “A Year of Biblical Womanhood.”

 

By Rachel Held Evans, Special to CNN

November 17, 2012 

 

On "The Daily Show" recently, Jon Stewart grilled Mike Huckabee about a TV ad in which Huckabee urged voters to support “biblical values” at the voting box.

 

When Huckabee said that he supported the “biblical model of marriage,” Stewart shot back that “the biblical model of marriage is polygamy.”

 

And there’s a big problem, Stewart went on, with reducing “biblical values” to one or two social issues such as abortion and gay marriage, while ignoring issues such as poverty and immigration reform.

 

It may come as some surprise that as an evangelical Christian, I cheered Stewart on from my living room couch.

 

As someone who loves the Bible and believes it to be the inspired word of God, I hate seeing it reduced to an adjective like Huckabee did. I hate seeing my sacred text flattened out, edited down and used as a prop to support a select few political positions and platforms.

 

And yet evangelicals have grown so accustomed to talking about the Bible this way that we hardly realize we’re doing it anymore. We talk about “biblical families,” “biblical marriage,” “biblical economics,” “biblical politics,” “biblical values,” “biblical stewardship,” “biblical voting,” “biblical manhood,” “biblical womanhood,” even “biblical dating” to create the impression that the Bible has just one thing to say on each of these topics - that it offers a single prescriptive formula for how people of faith ought to respond to them.

 

But the Bible is not a position paper. The Bible is an ancient collection of letters, laws, poetry, proverbs, histories, prophecies, philosophy and stories spanning multiple genres and assembled over thousands of years in cultures very different from our own.

 

When we turn the Bible into an adjective and stick it in front of another loaded word, we tend to ignore or downplay the parts of the Bible that don’t quite fit our preferences and presuppositions. In an attempt to simplify, we force the Bible’s cacophony of voices into a single tone and turn a complicated, beautiful, and diverse holy text into a list of bullet points we can put in a manifesto or creed. More often than not, we end up more committed to what we want the Bible to say than what it actually says.

 

Nowhere is this more evident than in conversations surrounding “biblical womanhood.”

 

Growing up in the Bible Belt, I received a lot of mixed messages about the appropriate roles of women in the home, the church and society, each punctuated with the claim that this or that lifestyle represented true “biblical womanhood.”

 

In my faith community, popular women pastors such as Joyce Meyer were considered unbiblical for preaching from the pulpit in violation of the apostle Paul's restriction in 1 Timothy 2:12 ("I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent"), while Amish women were considered legalistic for covering their heads in compliance with his instructions in 1 Corinthians 11:5 ("Every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head").

 

Pastors told wives to submit to their husbands as the apostle Peter instructed in 1 Peter 3:1, but rarely told them to avoid wearing nice jewelry as the apostle instructs them just one sentence later in 1 Peter 3:3. Despite the fact that being single was praised by both Jesus and Paul, I learned early on that marriage and motherhood were my highest callings, and that Proverbs 31 required I keep a home as tidy as June Cleaver's.

 

This didn’t really trouble me until adulthood, when I found myself in a childless egalitarian marriage with a blossoming career and an interest in church leadership and biblical studies. As I wrestled with what it meant to be a woman of faith, I realized that, despite insistent claims that we don’t “pick and choose” from the Bible, any claim to a “biblical” lifestyle requires some serious selectivity.

 

After all, technically speaking, it is “biblical” for a woman to be sold by her father to pay off debt, “biblical” for a woman to be required to marry her rapist, “biblical” for her to be one of many wives.

 

So why are some Bible passages lifted out and declared “biblical,” while others are explained away or simply ignored? Does the Bible really present a single prescriptive lifestyle for all women?

 

These were the questions that inspired me to take a page from A.J. Jacobs, author of "The Year of Living Biblically", and try true biblical womanhood on for size—literally, no “picking and choosing."

 

This meant, among other things, growing out my hair, making my own clothes, covering my head whenever I prayed, abstaining from gossip, remaining silent in church (unless I was “prophesying,” of course), calling my husband "master,” even camping out in my front yard during my period to observe the Levitical purity laws that rendered me unclean.

 

During my yearlong experiment, I interviewed a variety of women practicing biblical womanhood in different ways — an Orthodox Jew, an Amish housewife, even a polygamist family - and I combed through every commentary I could find, reexamining the stories of biblical women such as Deborah, Ruth, Hagar, Tamar, Mary Magdalene, Priscilla and Junia.

 

My goal was to playfully challenge this idea that the Bible prescribes a single lifestyle for how to be a woman of faith, and in so doing, playfully challenge our overuse of the term “biblical.” I did this not out of disdain for Scripture, but out of love for it, out of respect for the fact that interpreting and applying the Bible is a messy, imperfect and - at times - frustrating process that requires humility and grace as we wrestle the text together.

 

The fact of the matter is, we all pick and choose. We’re all selective in our interpretation and application of the biblical text. The better question to ask one another is why we pick and choose the way that we do, why we emphasis some passages and not others. This, I believe, will elevate the conversation so that we’re using the Bible, not as a blunt weapon, but as a starting point for dialogue.

 

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Rachel Held Evans.

 

 

 

Do We Have an Open Bible or a Closed Bible? Or, What Makes an Open Bible Closed?

 

I recently wrote a post that detailed the differences between reading the Bible as a Scriptural Bible as versus an Academic Bible. For myself, I believe the Bible may be read broadly in both ways, and with an equal balance lest it become distorted by dogma on the one hand, or skepticism on the other. But when taking the Genesis account of creation and asking whether it is historical or figurative immediately can divide Christians between a literalistic reading of Genesis or a non-literal reading of the story of creation. And to further presage my case, I would call into question Paul's definitive understanding of the Genesis story by flatly stating that he could not know the answer, nor indeed was it necessary that he knew the answer. To tell Paul that mankind evolved would have made no sense to him in his ancient view of cosmogony filled with mythic import. For so it was, holding serpents that reasoned with man; god-like humans who could speak to the God of the Universe; who lived in undisturbed Paradise that bore a special fruit to give one life and another death; who nakedly walked-about in innocence with one anther without a care in the world or a fight between them; who daily communed within the pleasant, sheltering spaces of an environ that held neither harm nor ill to them such as sickness or death. No. Paul simply understood God to have created man and went on from there. Even so, an evolutionary view of man's creation can also see God as man's Creator. And though both viewpoints differ by the process (an ancient v. a modern cosmogony; a process of an immediate v. a mediated generation of creation) the outcome is much the same. And yet, it may not be as simple as all that because these very different approaches to the these questions affects how we read the Bible and understand God. Hence we have a secondary problem...

 

And that problem is determinative to how we read the Bible through the lenses of our belief systems (in several previous articles of late I've described these as our epistemologies). To read the Bible literally is to never question its texts nor to use any outside academic disciplines to be placed "over" the text of Scripture. However, a non-literal view will fully utilized any-and-all resources as necessary to determining the meaning of the Biblical text. As example, the applicable usage of the evolutionary theory coupled with a historical/critical method that would compare creation stories between ancient near eastern countries (from the same time period and place) would be considered just and proper. As such, and from what we know of history, Paul could not know anything about evolution because he was removed from the event (as common sense would tell us) and probably had an imperfect academic understanding of the similar ancient creation accounts that had existed at one time between very old cultures.Why? Because the Jewish text was written 600 years earlier from his century, and because the other similar creation accounts from Sumeria and Akkadia were much, much older even still (2500 years and more). And no, I don't believe that God told him, nor that it was necessary for Paul to know this information, based upon the message he wished to communicate. Namely, that Jesus is Lord and Savior. God simply used his ancient world-and-life view (or epistemic paradigms) and spoke to him of Jesus' comparative worth-and-meaning versus his interpretive knowledge of Jewish literature at the time (which now compounds our historic contextual studies four-fold! Requiring knowledge of ancient cultures - both Paul's and earlier; knowledge of Jewish beliefs as they transformed from Moses' Day to the Jesus'; Paul's biographical makeup himself; and of creation stories themselves; plus innumerable other details!)

 

The Scriptural Bible approach (also known as Sola Scriptura) would ignore all scientific and archaeologic criteria and tell us that what the text says is what it says (whatever that may be according to whoever is speaking at the time and according to the epistemology that they wish to vouchsafe). Whereas the Academic Bible approach would say that such a declarative raison de force reinforces a much larger religious view that is less naively dogmatic. While also saying that this same non-transparent epistemology creates in itself an unnecessarily restrictive (and protective) position not allowing additional tools and resources to be brought to bear on the historic understanding of the biblical text and culture of the ancient world at that time.

 

Another problem is how God spoke to Paul. That is, how Paul received God's revelation. At base here is whether God spoke to Paul as an automaton-like transcribing machine. Or if He spoke to Paul through all of Paul's primitive knowledge of the world, his character and personality traits, his temperament, life-based experiences, and so on. Of course the answer is yes to the second proposal and no to the first. Which is a relief because it then leaves a lot of room for the multi-dimensional uses of the human symbolic language consequently providing Scripture with its relevancy of communication to us today (I think of this as the mystery of language - that is, its currency and relevancy). If the human language were simply a machine language or even a reductionistic mathematical expression of formulaic syllogisms than it would have very little value for us today. In fact, I think we could rightly argue that by its very exactness of statement we would find the Bible immediately conflicted and obtuse (as machine type languages become requiring upgrades to the relevant environment around itself because it cannot transition on its own). But as expressed inside of human language instead of machine language interpretive relevancy and vogue lives and breathes and remains open to us today. As example, its stories (or narratives) in-and-of themselves would defeat any of our efforts to systematized the Bible into a complete collection of systematic statements or doctrines. It can't be done. And when it has been done creates too many fractured interpretations of God and the world.

 

And yet another problem is that the academic approach helps to take away the magic-like qualities attributed to the Bible which causes us to think of it as a mysterious answer book. And placing us in jeopardy of worshipping the Bible rather than the God-behind-the-Bible (what we call bibliolatry). And by adding magic-like doctrines of inerrancy to the Bible (where the Bible is meant to have no errors and is unbowed before man's more finite comprehensions) we remove it once again from the realms of external resources like science or ancient literary studies or even the study of the human language called philology. And when all is said-and-done we've created an iron-clad dogmatic system of belief that cannot interpret the Bible in any other way than through its own use of a strict literalism (dogmatic systems like Evangelicalism are an example of this). Completing the circle, modern day science and academic disciplines are no longer allowed to as outside resources helpful to understanding the Bible because they do not have the "deified" status of the Bible and thus cannot critique its sacred pages. This final qualifier makes the circle complete, as we say.

However, it has been the argument here at Relevancy22, that biblical/historical/scientific criticism must be used in understanding the Bible. If not, we can no longer hear God's living Word having created a closed Bible that speaks back to us of our own systems and beliefs, rather than of God's faithful and everlasting voice. An open Bible says that one must use both approaches - the Scriptural Bible AND the Academic Bible approach - in order to properly hear and understand God's Word. Even more so, we have an open Bible that is not closed off in its communication to us. That is not speaking back to us our own dogmas and religious beliefs. As a broadly Scriptural Bible I understand it as God's Word(s) to me (one which requires the reader to identify his epistemic sense of interpretation; thus requiring self-doubt and honesty). And as an Academic Bible I understand that it retains mysteries lost through the years from its originating authorship that cannot be understood except through the use of external academic tools provided for the task. That my own naive or simplistic interpretation of biblical texts couched within my own epistemic framework may not be enough to fully disclose its truths. By doing all this and more, dogmatic religious beliefs are kept at bay and the Bible remains living and relevant for us today.

 

R.E. Slater

November 16, 2012 

 

 

Previous articles that may be helpful -

Why Do We Need a Historical Adam? The Bible Doesn't

Peter Enns Responds (to the Sola Scriptura view)



Continue to -

Index to past articles on "An Open Faith and Open Theology"






 

What is Biblical or Historical Criticism? Part 1 of 3

The Roles of Biblical Criticism
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2012/11/15/the-roles-of-biblical-criticism-rjs/

by RJS
November 15, 2012

 

The introduction to the new book by Marc Brettler (Brandeis University), Peter Enns (Eastern University) and Daniel J. Harrington (Boston College), The Bible and the Believer: How to Read the Bible Critically & Religiously, provides a brief sketch of the history of biblical interpretation and the rise of historical criticism. The emphasis of this book is on the Hebrew Bible/Christian Old Testament with Marc Brettler providing a Jewish perspective, Peter Enns a Protestant perspective and Daniel Harrington a Catholic perspective. All three are both believers and biblical scholars.

 

As a scholarly term biblical criticism does not have a negative or pejorative connotation – at least it need not have such a connotation. For the believer biblical criticism is broadly defined as “the process of establishing the original, contextual meaning of the biblical text and assessing their historical accuracy.” (p. 3)

“Historical criticism,” which means placing a biblical text in its original historical context, is our preferred term. Historical criticism often involves comparing the text with parallel or analogous biblical or extrabiblical texts from the same general geographical area and the same general time period. This helps us better understand what was “in the air” at the time and what may have been the cultural assumptions underlying the biblical texts, its authors, and earliest audiences. (p. 4)

The sketch of the history of biblical interpretation begins almost immediately after the writing of the earliest portions of the Hebrew scriptures. The later writers wrestle with and interpret the earlier texts. The inter-testamental authors wrestled with the text – as we see in works like those found among the Dead Sea scrolls. Large portions of the New Testament “can be regarded as an interpretative process of connecting Israel’s story with the story of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.” ( p. 11) This later point is important. Unless we understand the Old Testament, and the general cultural assumptions concerning the Hebrew Scriptures at play in the first century, we will almost certainly misinterpret large parts of the New Testament message. The New Testament authors, Brettler, Enns, and Harrington note, “quote the Old Testament well over 300 times and allude to it over a thousand times.” These are significant quotations and allusions, deeply entwined with the meaning the authors wishes to convey.

 

The reformation laid the groundwork for scholarly biblical criticism and the rise of skeptical biblical criticism. The reformation doctrine of sola scriptura required that the faithful believer pay close attention to what Scripture is actually saying. This also led to a political twist to biblical criticism. Biblical criticism moved out of the church and became a tool to undermine the authority of the church, and the authority of the state when church and state were intertwined. The deep enlightenment and modernist skepticism grew further and became tied to questions of science and faith – with miracles denied and the text demythologized. There is much more to this history – more in the brief sketch provided by Brettler, Enns and Harrington; and even more in the books suggested for Further Reading.

 

Out of this history though, there is perhaps a path forward. A path that does not ignore the results of textual criticism, source criticism, redaction criticism, historical criticism, but considers them critically in conversation with traditions of religious faith.

While we may sympathize at times with some of the critics on either side, we are convinced that it is possible to read the Bible both critically and religiously. Although historically it has been the case that “the scriptural Bible and the academic Bible are fundamentally different creations oriented toward rival interpretive communities,” we do not believe that this should be so. We used the broad understanding of historical criticism, proposed by scholars like John Barton, as outlined earlier: biblical criticism refers to the process of establishing the original contextual meaning of biblical texts with the tools of literary and historical analysis. Whatever challenges such study raises for religious belief are brought into conversation with religious tradition rather than deemed grounds for dismissing either that tradition or biblical criticism. (p. 18-19)

The next three or so posts will look at how this conversation between historical criticism and religious tradition plays out for Brettler’s Jewish approach, Harrington’s Catholic approach, and Enns’s Protestant approach.

 

What does it mean to use historical criticism in conversation with religious tradition?

 

Does the Protestant refrain of Sola Scriptura require that the conversation occur?

 

After all, if Scripture is our authority, whatever contributes to a a better understanding of scripture should help us better understand the faith.

 

Or does the Protestant refrain of Sola Scriptura relegate historical criticism to a back seat?

 

After all, the plain meaning of scripture should be accessible to anyone, anywhere, with only a moderate education required.

 

 

 

 

What Is the Number One Obstacle in Living for Jesus?

 

Jesus Doesn't Want You to Be Afraid

http://www.intervarsity.org/blog/jesus-doesnt-want-you-be-afraid

 

By: Adam and Christine Jeske

November 12, 2012

 

 Three weeks ago, I asked several hundred college students a question:

 

What is your biggest obstacle today to giving your whole life for God’s global mission?

 

Let me be clear, as I was that day—I wasn’t asking about dropping out of society, selling everything, and moving to Turkmenistan (although that was fair game).

 

Rather, I explained that giving your whole life for God’s global mission is being fully given over to God’s purposes in the world. If you’re following Jesus' calling, you can serve God just as well as a businessperson in the U.S. as a church planter in Sri Lanka.

 

I had people text me their biggest obstacles to fully following Jesus. Some answers were not very surprising: selfishness, busyness, lust, health issues, lack of self-discipline, and materialism.

 

And the Number One Obstacle Is . . .

 

But one answer stood out, named by a quarter of those responding as their biggest obstacle to giving their whole life to global mission: fear.

 

These students—and Christians, no less—were afraid of everything:

• Being alone
• Failing
• Being uncomfortable
• Not knowing where they’re going or what they’re doing
• Entering a new culture
• What their parents would say
• Not hearing God correctly
• Not being good enough
• Being unprepared spiritually
• Not speaking well
• Being too broken

 

I couldn’t believe it. Fear is the biggest obstacle to these followers of Jesus fully joining in his mission, whether here in the U.S. or anywhere in the world. How did this happen?

 

Real Reasons for Fear (Escalators Not Included)

 

We know there are people around the world with seriously fearful surroundings—gnawing hunger, no education for their children, violent crime, unjust local officials, unhealthy water, and spreading disease.

 

And most of us know, when we’re logical about it, that a lot of our fears here in the West are wildly spun out of control. We find TV reports like, “The Hidden Dangers of Escalators.” Really?

 

And then there are big fears. At the end of it all, we are dead. And that scares us. So we run around trying to do whatever we can to preserve our lives, whether through work, success, family, relationships, art, or health. It makes sense to me that people who don’t know Jesus would be afraid. We hear messages all day saying, “If you’re not afraid of all these things, you’re not normal.”

 

A Call to Abnormality (Yes, This Includes You)

 

But I thought that’s exactly what Christians are supposed to be—not normal.

 

Think about what we read in the Bible:

• “The Lord is my light and my salvation—whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life—of whom shall I be afraid?” (Psalm 27:1).

• “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28).

• “The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry,’Abba, Father’” (Romans 8:15).

• “For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline” (2 Timothy 1:7).

• And perhaps most pointedly: “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love” (1 John 4:18).

 

Admittedly, we are outliers on this one. We got married while we were still college students. A year later, we boarded a plane for Nicaragua with a vague connection to a friend of a friend that we hoped would meet us when we arrived. We lived without power, water or transportation. We took our baby daughter to the most polluted city in the world, Lanzhou, China. We rode motorcycles across southern Africa.

 

That doesn’t mean we didn’t get scared. We got scared when Adam’s amoebas wouldn’t go away in Nicaragua and then his already weak body picked up malaria. Or when we blew black snot out of our noses in China. Or when our neighborhood had its third break-in within a month in South Africa (where you’re 20 times more likely to get murdered by gunshot than in the U.S.), and then Chrissy found police dealing with a dead body down the street.

 

But do you think God didn’t really mean that stuff about fear in the Bible? When you get scared, you have to do something about it. Naming it helps. Reading and claiming these biblical reminders can helps. Praying light-saber prayers that cut your fears to pieces can help.

 

As we wrestled with trying to follow Jesus here in the U.S., Chrissy wrote a chapter on fear in This Ordinary Adventure: Settling Down Without Settling. She said fear is like underwear. Everyone’s putting it on every day and keeping it politely covered up.

 

Here’s your chance to bring your fear out into the light.

 

A Step Through Our Fear

 

The hundreds of Christians I spoke to named fear as the greatest obstacle to joining in God's global mission. And, truth be told, there is good reason to be afraid. I work for Urbana. Each year, we hear about Urbana alumni who have suffered and even been martyred for their faithful proclamation of Jesus Christ, even while serving obvious needs in hard places around the world. Jesus' call to give up everything we have (Luke 14:33)—the call to follow the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and the call to take up your cross and step into God's global mission—is not to be taken lightly. But a life of playing it safe rarely results in God being glorified or our neighbors being loved.

 

So. What are you afraid of? Name it as a first step in facing your fear. And then ask God—the stronghold of your life—if you should go to Urbana as a next step in facing your fear and being open to his mission for your life, whatever it might be.