How to Read The Old Testament in Light of the New Testament

How to Read the Old Testament in Light of the New Testament

Daniel Kirk recently reviewed his colleague Dr. Goldingay's new book, "Do We Really Need the New Testament?" which asks the question how to read the Old Testament as a New Testament Christian.

Basically it advocates that the Christian learn to read the OT on its own without reading church history's re-interpretation of it through Jesus. Which is a fair point to be made - but impossible to do in light of Jesus.

At some point the text of the Old Testament should be discerned and interpreted in a twofold manner:

1. On its own apart from the New Testament's testimony to Jesus, and
2. Coupled with the New Testament's testimony of Jesus even as its gospel writers had clearly done.

Let us look at the first point.

If we are to read the OT alone without any interpretation to it by the NT then we must do so without the interpretation of the church councils which present doctrines like the "Trinity" into the mainstream of OT Jewish theology. Such doctrines were foreign to the theology of the ancient Jews even though within the texts of Scripture itself it can be seen by the "backwards glance" through the lens of the New Testament that the church doctrine of the Trinity is not as foreign a concept as first thought. But again, that is with the benefit of historical hindsight.

This may also be inferred by other "Christian doctrinal formulations" which developed after Jesus and not before during the period of the Old Testament. As such, Christian doctrine  is absent Old Testament Jewish theology as it developed its own theologies about God and their place within God's purposes for a time and people removed from the Christ-event to come.

So then, to read the Old Testament on its own and within its own historical periodicity is to attempt to understand its Scriptures without the theological perspective of the New Testament church and its councils which were not historically present in the OT.

Which gets to the idea then of "How does one read the OT in its own setting?" Or more to the point, "How does one read the OT without reading it through the grid of NT theology?" 

The best help and guide here would be from the ancient Jewish theologies themselves as they were formulated through the Inter-Testamental period between the Old and New Testament eras.

History of Jewish Theology

I find the Inter-Testament period between the Old and New Testaments to be significant for any number of reasons:

• It becomes the period of time when Israel comes to finally understand the full ramifications of God's covenants to Abraham, Moses, and David (the Abrahamic, the Mosaic, and the David covenants);

• When Israel comes to understand the full meaning of the blessings and curses that attenuated those ancient covenants when obeyed or broken;

• When Israel finally comes to understand the meaningfulness of God's promises to their daily lives as a true blessing - and not merely as a bothersome regulation or rule of authority;

• When Israel finally discovers what covenantal restoration really means in light of its repentance and confession from sins and transgressions to be fully restored to rightful fellowship to her Creator-God on the basis of blood sacrifice; or even,

• The scope of God's love and faithfulness to His chosen people at the height of their disobedience to Him (at the last, the Abrahamic covenant was ever-and-always enacted upon the faithfulness of God and NOT the faithfulness of Abraham nor his descendants).

Moreover, post-exilic Israel (now Judah) had the benefit of hindsight over its many years of redemption from Egypt as they tried to live as a people who worshipped a unique God quite unlike the gods of their polytheistic neighbors around them. A God whose expectations of ethics and morality were wholly unlike the ethics and moralities of the other gods of the nations. A God whose covenantal faithfulness and love was not really understood until experienced through difficult times of failure and breakage among his people as they strove to understand this God they worshipped and clung too (sic, the Psalms are full of the pathos of covenantal struggle and restoration).

The Inter-Testamental Period Demanded Owning up to Failure

After the times of the priests and early judges; after the times of the kings and their fickled people; after the times of the early and later prophets; now we come to Ezra and Nehemiah as they rebuild a people who have suffered long and hard for their sin and faithlessness. For sins that the God had warned them would create separation and struggle not only from Himself but from one another:

• From Himself as their Sovereign who granted the freedom of the heart to follow other loves, gods, and fallacious thinking; and

• From one another as evil entered into their assemblies causing this Godly separation to become harder, deeper, more grievous, with every twist-and-turn of the fallacious heart.

And so, after all this history, all the many stories of brokenness and restoration, Israel now stands on the other side of history and takes the long look back at itself. Its rich culture lost on the swords of so many destitutions. Its bright promise blighted in the night of its many sins. Its deep longings to be faithful to their loving God, their godly heritage, and to one another lost in the ragged return of its survivors coming to terms with the despair of their final and horrific holocaust.

Here now is Israel struggling to be a country lost amid the ruins of its own civilization as the world stage shifted from one empire to the next. From a Greek empire transitioning to a Macedonian empire ruled by a king named Alexander the Great. That fearless ruler who would conquer Asia Minor where Babylon once ruled; the land of Egypt where the Pharaohs once ruled; the lands of once mighty Persia; and finally find his eclipse in the terrible lands of India to vast its scourages, plagues, and tribes.

Upon Alexander's demise came the trading sea kingdoms of the Middle East and North African regions struggling against Egypt to the east and west and against Rome, to the north, becoming mightier and fiercer with every victory against nearer and further Gaul (Spain, France, Germany) as it came to its zenity to then turn its gaze southwards and across the blue Mediterranean.

Little Israel lay now in the ruins of world dominions seeking as it could the answers to a shattered faith that could give few answers but asked many unanswerable questions. Consisting of a covenanted people who remembered the religion of their fathers and sought to give this rich heritage a voice through their scrolls and scribes. Through new rules and laws (Mishna et al). Through a priesthood rededicating itself to its God who seemed no longer close. Or to care. Who was thought to be as faraway as His forsaken children  were from themselves struggling to survive in a harsh world made harsher in the lostness of their faith.

A History Created and Remembered in the Aftermaths of Ruin and Forsakenness

The remnants of this once blessed kingdom now wrote its long histories:

(i) Remembering its covenantal failures to God over a remarkably long period since the days of Joshua who led them out of the Wilderness into the lands of Canaan;

(ii) Remembering its covenantal judgments for their many failures through numerous occupations as it split in two and became a Northern of 10 tribes and a Southern Kingdom of 2 tribes where the first Jewish kingdom suffered under the brutality of Assyria and the second kingdom under the breakage of the kingdom of Babylon;

(iii) Remembering its final, culminating cycles of repentance-and-restoration from their Babylonian captivity-and-release back into the lands of Israel broken and despised;

(iv) And finally, remembering to rest in the land of their fathers and there to do the hard work of recovering a culture from what they could remember upon the lost shards of time once mishandled with careless disregard. To make sense of a past become even more distant from themselves when cast upon the deep lores of forgotten times now faintly intoned upon the disillusioned lilts of songs and poems by dying tongues remembering fonder memories.

This is the story of the Old Testament before Jesus, before His disciples, before the authorship of the New Testament gospel writers, before the early church's pentecostal beginnings, before the early Church Fathers and their early church councils. 

This was the Old Testament without the historical Jesus who was to come. Which looked for a suffering Messiah-Redeemer not understanding what this really meant and sometimes confusing it with God's own suffering people as a nation broken and alone.

This was the Old Testament that spoke of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of the mighty God without ascribing to the later Trinitarian ideas of Father-Son-and Holy Spirit. Who saw the atoning sacrifices of the Old Covenant but could not make sense of its longer meaning until a toiling early church preacher wrote the NT book of Hebrews to ascribe to Jesus every precept and principal of the Jewish system built upon animal sacrifices and mediating temple.

Of a Jesus who paradoxically became both atonement and atoner. Both altar sacrifice and mediating priest. Both the broken covenant and covenant maker. Both the cleaved bullock halves of Genesis 15 and the Spirit of Him who walked between those halves to renew a covenant that would surely be broken again-and-again-and again in the wayward hearts of a sinful mankind.

Who was the suffering servant of Isaiah (52-53) and the mighty Davidic King who had at last come to reign and take His place among His people. But who offered a kingdom of upside-down proportions. Who sought weakness in place of strength - even in that of his earthly incarnation. Humility in place of grandness. Service in place of cruel reign. Sacrifice in place of survival. It was a King that the world could not appreciate - nor even want - so blinded by its councils and lost sight of the future.

And it was into this gospel era that Jesus, the Son of God, came as provision and provider. Who would re-write the passages and chapters of the Old Testament to once again become illuminescant with an unearthly meaning dared thought or hoped. Who came to re-write the histories of the Old Testament into the furthering chapters of the New Testament where those Jews of the land who had the spiritual vision to see might glimpse their portion of the promise of God made so many long years ago on the eve of their birthright upon the great faith of their Father Abraham. Himself called from the foreign lands of his fathers to leave all he held familiar and true and become a renewing man of faith and vision. And in a sense, a stranger to himself and his past when captured by God's vision for his future.

This is the story of the Old Testament. And the next chapter to its dusty pages scripted onto the heart of Jesus our Savior who would birth the many worlds of the church to come as it struggles even now to lay claim to a belief becoming more distant with every passing era of this new millennium.

A God who surely loves us and has become surety for us through His Son. A God who calls to a people not His own to become a people of His tabernacles. To there reside and no longer take up residence in any other alien lands. To find rest for the weary soul and an everlasting peace that will ever abide upon the faithfulness of His decrees and charters and eternal will. Amen.

R.E. Slater

May 18, 2015

* * * * * * * * * * *

Jesus and the Old Testament

http://www.jrdkirk.com/2015/05/15/jesus-and-the-old-testament/

by J.R. Daniel Kirk

May 15, 2015

My colleague John Goldingay has a new book out. Its provocative title: Do We Need the New Testament? Letting the Old Testament Speak for Itself.

The provocation doesn’t stop with the front cover, as the last chapter is entitled, “Theological Interpretation: Don’t Be Christ-Centered, Don’t Be Trinitarian, Don’t Be Constrained by the Rule of Faith”.

As someone growing my love for baseball, I want to say with all seriousness that batting .667 makes you one of the all time greats! Here’s my two out of three:

• Don’t be Constrained by the Rule of Faith. Agreed. 
• Don’t be Trinitarian (in your interpretation!). Agreed. 
• Don’t be Christ centered? Not so fast!

I have three compelling reasons to do Christ-centered (or Christ-directed) biblical interpretation.

But before I lay those out, I want to voice my partial agreement even with the idea that we should not read the OT Christologically. I agree with the claim up to this point: we should always allow the OT to say what it has to say, listen to what it has to say, as an expression of its own historical context as a first reading of the text.

In my forthcoming book on Jesus, I have 50,000 words invested in the notion that what pre-New Testament material says about God, humans, and how they relate is of its own importance, and absolutely essential as well for reading the NT aright.

So I half agree with my colleague. We need to first let the OT speak with its own voice. His batting average is now up to .833!

But we cannot stop there. We have to continue to a Christological reading. Here’s why.

1. The New Testament says that scripture is about Jesus

In the famous “all scripture is God-breathed” passage in 2 Tim 3, where we learn that all scripture–which would have meant our Old Testament–is profitable for teaching, etc., we often overlook something.

Before saying that scripture is profitable, Paul tells us what the outcome of such profitable reading is:

"Since childhood you have known the scriptures which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus."

Scripture has a goal, an end, an outcome: faith in Christ.

This parallels what Paul says in Rom 10:4, when he claims that Christ is the end or goal (telos) of the Law.

It is recapitulated in Jesus’s words in John 5: “You search the scriptures because you think that in these you have life–yet it is these that testify about me!”

If we do not read OT scripture as pointing to something beyond itself, if we do not read it as part of a story that has an end in Christ, we are not reading it in keeping with the NT guidelines.

2. If we don’t read the Old Testament Christologically then Christianity is not true

I know that this is a strong statement. But I’ll stand by it. (At least until one of you talks me out of it in the comments!)

The story of Jesus can only be the story of God’s salvation if it is the answer to God’s promise to save God’s people and restore the cosmos. But a “straight” reading of the text from front to back does not in itself paint for us the picture of the Jesus about whose life we read on the pages of the NT. It does not adequately prepare us for salvation through God’s offering of God’s own Son.

Jesus claims at the end of Luke, for instance, that the whole OT (Law, Prophets, Psalms) speaks to a suffering Christ who thereafter enters his glory. We find out what this looks like, exegetically speaking, in the sermons in Acts.

How does the OT speak of the Christ to come? Only when we return to those scriptures to read them with new understanding after we already know that Christ has been crucified, raised from the dead, and enthroned at God’s right hand.

In other words, if we don’t ever read Psalm 110 as speaking about Jesus’s enthronement in heaven, despite the fact that it was originally about the coronation of Israel’s king, then we have no grounds to claim that what actually happened to Jesus is related in any way to the preceding story.

And if Jesus is not related to the story, then the claim that he fulfills the law and the prophets (Matthew), that he goes just as it is written about him (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), that he is the fulfillment of the promises God made beforehand in the prophets (Paul)–that claim is proved false.

If we do not allow what God actually did to transform our understanding of what God promised to do, we have no answer to the promises of salvation articulated in Genesis-Malachi.

3. If we don’t read the Old Testament Christologically then we have a mess on our hands

I know that this claim is also going to be controversial. But here’s the deal.

Over the past couple of years I have led small groups through studies of both Amos and Isaiah. And those prophets, alongside their beautiful visions of the future, are also a troubling mess.

The heights of proclamation about the mercy and justice of God are interwoven with gruesome vengeance–God meting out on the nations the very sorts of violence for which they themselves are allegedly being punished.

We have to be able to return to passages that look for God to give destroy Egypt as the ransom for God’s people, and say no. No, God chose a different path. God gave God’s son instead.

We have to be able to return to passages that look for God to subjugate the nations as vinedressers and shepherds and say no. No, God chose to bring in the Gentiles on equal footing, bearing the divine image as co-heirs with Christ as much as Israel.

The cross does not make every mess go away–and it is, in many ways, its own mess to wrestle with.

But Jesus does show us what the ultimate revelation of God looks like. It is the God who confronts the enemy–by sending the Son to die on their behalf.

This is what permits us, better, demands of us, that we not allow the depictions of the violence of vengeance to stand. (And, yes, the Jesus story might demand of us that we reread portions of the NT for the same reasons.)

So yes, bracket the Trinity and the Rule of Faith while you read. But don’t leave Christ to the side.

Our faith depends on it.

* * * * * * * * * *

Comments

Donald Juels, Messianic Exegesis, 1998. Christological Interpretation of the Old Testament in Early Christianity.

Anon - "Dr Goldingay's approach is helpful in one aspect. It helps us appreciate the fact that no one was thinking in terms of Messianism the way Christians did because they looked at who, and what, Jesus was-and-did and this changed the game. Basically if one reads Donald Juel's Messianic Exegesis he says it all. Juels book is quickly forgotten in these discussions.

Anon - "I have read that Jewish sages figured out that there was a suffering servant Messiah they called Messiah ben Joseph and a conquering king Messiah they called Messiah ben David. What they could not figure out is whether the relevant texts were discussing two Messiahs or just one and there was debate. The puzzle was they did not see how a Messiah that would suffer and die could also reign as king."

Book Review - Messianic Exegesis by Donal Juels

Anon - "Juel's work is one of those books that I wish had been assigned a long time ago. The basic premise of the book is to show that the early Christians were convinced that Jesus was the promised Messiah (meaning "king"), and then undertook the task of reflecting on the good news of his death and ressurection in light of the Scriptures. What came first was NOT apologetic argument but scriptural reflection whose goal was to understand the gospel.

Basically the early Christians take key words from well known Messianic passages already established, and use other passages NOT considered Messianic, and apply them to what they saw happened with Jesus in his unexpected death and resurrection.

This should be required reading for all who study the Bible. I believe this mainly because after being involved in Biblical Studies for a while and digesting all kinds of discussions, I feel that the way things are presented in this book should be the standard for understanding the relationship between the Tanakh and what is referred to as the New Testament.

It is the ultimate way of honoring Christ. The Messiah becomes the one who reinterprets everything that came before. The written word is in submission to the Living Word. SO when the unexpected happens we re-imagine everything in light of [Him who is] the Truth.

This means that one needs to believe first that the death and resurrection of Jesus really happened, and also beleive that the result of this was vindication of His self declaration of being Messiah. When the Chief Priest asked if he was Messiah, Jesus said, "I am".

The other thing that one needs to believe in is that God is fully consistent. So that when something happens later in history after Jesus' resurrection and ascension that is significant, it should always be compared to the death and resurrection and seen as inferior to it. [sic, Christ as the Mid-Point of Salvific History" - r.e. slater]

Colossians 1:15-18 15 - "And He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation. 16 For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities-- all things have been created by Him and for Him. 17 And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. 18 He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the first-born from the dead; so that He Himself might come to have first place in everything."

Foundations for a Radical Christianity, Part 4 - A New Philosophy

I was lost without my friend and guide.

But with him I find paths to light and truth.

                               - re slater

Today's topic will show the basic struggle theology and philosophy pose to one another. Even as theology would decry philosophy as a pretender to revelation, so philosophy would decry theology's ignorance to social conditioning and existential blindness to its one-sided interpretations. It is the contention here that each discipline needs the other in order for each to come to the highest possible congruence to the aide of the other in ascertaining meaning, identity, and purpose.

As an example, the theological-philosophical discipline of "process theology" (a kind of theological outlook which I accept - but not entirely) would regulate Christianity to the realm of theo-poetics of ethics and mystery and away from the fabric of a Christian metaphysics of philosophy. However, I believe Christianity is more than these elements though it can, and does, subsist within these elements as well. So the system of process theology as both a philosophy and a theology can only be a partial descriptor of the Christian faith and not its sum total.

Similarly with worldly philosophies which influence Christian doctrine, the faith of its believers, its church liturgies and histories, and can even be found within the very enclaves of its original biblical authorships and ancient faith communities. It is the astute Christian theologian who can separate theology from the world's philosophy and yet use that worldly philosophy to teach of God and godly things such as shown by the Apostle Paul as he spoke to the Greeks on Mars Hill. Or by Jesus as He spoke to the religious priests stuck in their own theological ruts of Jewish interpretation.

Thus the effort today by many postmodern theologians to describe a Christian faith that comports well with the best of the world's sciences and philosophies without detracting from Christian doctrine. More so, theology is helped in its communication with non-theological philosophies by learning how it is what it is. Or why it is that it is. In essence, philosophy gives to theologians the tools to think about their studies in ways that might become unbounded from themselves, their institutions, and constituencies. Especially by hermeneutical traditions themselves driven by culture suppositions and inherited religious subjectivities.

Why Does Knowing Philosophy Matter?

Today, a Radical Christian theology will use the insight gained from the postmodern philosophies of the 20th and 21st centuries to exacerbate a more insightful biblical hermeneutic of interpretation than the earlier classical ones so popular among today's more classically orthodox audiences. An orthodoxy that has become sacrosanct for its traditionalists not unlike the orthodoxy held by the Jewish teachers of the Law in Jesus' day. But an orthodoxy nonetheless needing to be disturbed if it is keep pace with being relevant to today's global societies.

Today's technological cultures readily recognize the shortcomings of previous theologies built upon more classical philosophical structures. And because of that also recognize that the theology of the church can be wholly apart from what Jesus seems to be declaring in the Gospels. Thus making for a tension between the old classicists of Christianity to their newer contemporary counterparts arguing for a more progressive Christianity. One that is more flexible to the kind of inflexible fundamentalism or conservatism being loudly bantered about but at a lost to make meaningful connection to today's postmodern societies.

What is needed is a neutral, third-party arbitrator. And this is where contemporary philosophy can step in and offer a helpful service to the church and its faithful. A service that might help us stand outside of ourselves. Outside of our pet interpretations of the Bible. And outside of our colloquial interpretations of God's Word. To discover that we must change or risk becoming dead in our traditions and of no use to God as witnesses to the world.

Examples abound of this need, such as the influence of Hellenistic thought upon Christian doctrines; or neo-Platonism upon evangelicalism today; or Thomism upon Natural Theology of yesteryear. It would not be unusual to suppose that today's sciences and philosophies have come to where they are because of their ability to self-redact. So too with postmodern Christianity. It both needs, and finds itself, in the position of necessary redaction against all previous iterations of itself through the past Christian centuries.

And it is through this process that a better biblical understanding of the Bible, of God, of ourselves, can-and-will be more faithfully reproduced even though it may be differently re-configured than its neo-classical / medieval / Reformational antecedents. It can become a helpful process to identifying our human (and church) failings in thought and belief. As well as rally us back to the faith of Jesus in radically subversive ways which can be spiritual healthy to ourselves, our culture, and our church.

As example, we testify to the God who IS in the popular biblical phrase - "I AM who I AM" (Ex 3.14). And though it may be praiseworthy to worship a God who is self-existent, self-content, and self-possessing in a stoically Greek way of thinking, yet we miss its ancient Jewish import until we reconsider this biblical phrase through the existential philosophies of recent generations immersing us back to its original meaning. That God is He who is becoming - "I Am who I will become." A phrase that gives us hope to the static stitches of our lives refusing to move forward but knowing they must if personal fulfillment is to be had in the passages of time by the experiences of the turmoil of creation and presence of being.

It is for this reason that Christianity must utilize philosophy as an outside critic to its biblical interpretations and hermeneutics of the Christian faith. Without philosophy's "external criticism" Christian theology would be at a loss to critique itself before God's word. Moreover, Christian interpretation always tends to lift up our self-righteousness, our pretensions to holiness held within our sinful hearts, our fears of moving from human traditions and religious folklores less we enter into the Holy of Holies. Into the very presence of a God who demands we lift up our eyes unto the hills and see with His eyes the sorrow of the nations and their need for a Savior by the presence of Christ's gospel. And by a personal commitment to society in this life without awaiting the nether regions of a heavenly utopia in the life hereafter.

The Paradox and Mystery Between Theology and Philosophy

Surely this is both a paradox and a curiosity of the relationship between theology and philosophy. Each needs the other in identifying and speaking to social movement. Theology can never deny that there is a philosophy behind its theologian's words and thoughts. Nor can philosophy be so blind as to deny that God's revelation may guide its highest and best works.

I have used Alain Badiou in past illustrations whose philosophy of being is as close to the gospel as the gospel is to itself. Except that Jesus was Badiou's personal core in place of the atheism he espouses, his excellent philosophy bears with it stark parallels to the very heart of God's atoning work in Christ. This is as close to a human philosophy as I can find to the theology of Jesus as I have gone on to explain in several articles. But one that I have used to elucidate the profundity of the gospel within Radical Christianity.

And so, the church would be wise to craft the philosophical underpinnings of its theologies upon those philosophies that give to its hermeneutics the broadest reach. And when it does it must go back to do the hard work of re-conceptualizing what Christian doctrine may meaningfully become in light of this newer interaction. Because if it does not it will be done by other, poorer hands and minds less enlightened to the fullness of God's presence and being in this life.

A Comparison of Import

I sometimes think philosophy is theology's able-bodied friend who walks the paths of life with us to aid us when we are harmed and there to enable us when it is harmed. The dual roles of truth - one from the human side and the other from the Godward side - were not designed by God to be in conflict when each is attuned to the other.

The human experience can be a powerful truth-telling event to the testimonies of God when equally yoked and not unequally burdened by the church's unhearing ears and unseeing eyes. Otherwise we will find stubbornness, unenlightenment, and disbelief in the place of humility, yieldedness, and faith. But with the tandem interaction of both disciplines - each in circumspection to the other - a kind of guidance can be had as presented to us by God's Holy Spirit.

In the most basic terms, divine revelation requires interaction with human insight, and human insight requires reflective interaction with divine revelation. Neither can exist alone without the other. Such is the nature of humanity in relationship to the Divine. Such is the nature of personal or social investigation, observation, inspection, testing, and experiment.

Finally, even as philosophy might inform the church to its theologies, so too might well-constructed theologies inform philosophy to its metaphysical shortcomings and failings as well urge it forward to its heights and glories. I have met good philosophers whose conclusions are very Christian-like in their presumptions upon this good earth. But, in truth, those presumptions must bear a grounded reality in God through His Son Jesus as the foundation stone for all resulting human economies.

Be those philosophical conclusions to "love one another" or that of "political subversion" for the greater good of the unempowered hungering for release from oppression and tyranny. Without revelation philosophy has no guide. And without philosophy revelation has only its distortions and fables devoid of inward-looking mirrors telling us who we are. They each must inform the other with circumspection and attenuation to their own underpinnings.

Peace,

R.E. Slater
May 18, 2015

I looked into the mirror of my reflection

unseeing who I am without its silvered surface

reflecting a kind of meaning that I give it

back to myself from an unreal world

to one of sterile presence absent

arbitror or council, redeemer or friend.

- re slater

Is There (Can There Be) A “Christian Philosophy?”

source link

by Roger Olson
May 1, 2015

Comments

*Please note I have added graphics, paragraph subtitling, and quotations to the article below to elucidate it meaning for a Radical Christianity without altering the content of its author

For a variety of reasons and influences, modern Protestants have been

reluctant to engage in, if not outright resistant to, anything that could

be called  “Christian philosophy.” - Roger Olson

Why Christianity Has Been Skeptical to the Idea of Philosophy

Many Protestants, especially those influenced by Kant’s anti-metaphysical philosophy that put religion in the realm of “practical reason” and those influenced by dialectical (anti-natural theology) theology, resist all talk of a “Christian philosophy.” (This is to say nothing of many “experiential Christians” who think “philosophy” is just a bad idea in and of itself.)

For a variety of reasons and influences, modern Protestants have been reluctant to engage in, if not outright resistant to, anything that could be called “Christian philosophy.” To Kantians (whether they’ve ever read Kant or not) all religion belongs under the umbrella of “values.” They emphasize that Christianity is away of life, not a metaphysical vision of reality. 

The question is whether it is ever entirely possible to escape metaphysics. An argument can be made that certain metaphysical assumptions underlie all religion and ethics.

Of course, metaphysics is not all there is to “philosophy,” so one might still be a Kantian and engage in Christian philosophy as analysis of language (for example). Still, by and large, modern Protestantism has tilted away from anything labeled “Christian philosophy.” I think a major influence on that tilt has been Karl Barth and company and their rejection of natural theology. Anything labeled “Christian philosophy” smacks to them of natural theology with all its attendant dangers. So-called “Postliberal theology” is simply another chapter in the saga of Barthian-style antipathy to natural theology.

One notable exception to this is Swiss theologian Emil Brunner (d. 1966) who was by all accounts a dialectical theologian (even if not exactly a disciple of Barth). For him, as for Barth, all Christian doctrine derives from special revelation and faith is essential for true knowledge of God. His emphasis on “I-Thou Encounter” as the soul of Christian faith derives from Kierkegaard and the lesser known Ferdinand Ebner; it embraces a strong element of subjectivity in Christianity. One would not expect Brunner to speak of a “Christian philosophy” and yet he did.

"Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter,

[and] not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument.

There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object.

The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never

made  as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated."

 - Emil Brunner

In Dogmatics III: The Christian Doctrine of the Church, Faith and the Consummation, Brunner endorsed a Christian philosophy and even called the Christian doctrinal consensus a profound Christian ideology. (I think that was an unfortunate choice of words, but I know from the context what he meant—not a political platform but a Weltanschauung - a particular philosophy or view of life; the worldview of an individual or group.) Earlier, in Revelation and Reason the Zurich theologian stated that “Christian philosophy is a fact.” Then he says “Christian philosophy is…both possible and necessary, because as Christians we neither can, nor should, cease to think. It is not reason, but rationalism, that makes Christian philosophy appear impossible.” (392) Brunner even went so far as to write an entire book on The Philosophy of Religion from the Standpoint of Protestant Theology.

All that is meant to illustrate is that there was at least one dialectical, neo-orthodox theologian who was not afraid to embrace the idea of a Christian philosophy—although he severely limited it in a way virtually all secular philosophers would resist.

Philosophy and Christian Metaphysics

Other Protestants have embrace the idea and engaged in something they called “Christian philosophy,” but fewer have embraced or attempted to engage in an explicit Christian metaphysics. I suspect that is largely because Protestants have tended to relegate the science of metaphysics to Catholic philosophy and to pagan and secular philosophies. Metaphysics seems inevitably speculative, leading away from revelation and faith. However, if “metaphysics” is simply defined as attempting reasonably to understand and explicate the ultimate nature of reality and reality itself behind appearances, issues not explicitly addressed in biblical revelation but implied by it, then there does not seem to be any reason to reject metaphysics—even from a Protestant perspective.

"[Christian] metaphysics is the science of understanding and explaining reality

as implied by biblical revelation and faith."

- Roger Olson

Among Protestants “Christian philosophy” and especially “Christian metaphysics” has largely been confined to Anglicans such as William Temple (Nature, Man and God) and Eric Mascall (He Who Is). In very different ways these and other Anglican theologians have engaged in what they would call, and rightly should be called, “Christian philosophy” including metaphysics. Many Protestant critics, however, would say they borrowed heavily from Catholic thought (e.g., Thomas Aquinas and Thomism generally). For the most part, however, modern Protestant theologians (to say nothing of pastors and lay people) have been reluctant to talk about “Christian philosophy” especially if that includes metaphysics.


Does Christian Philosophy Lead to Loss of Faith or Revival of Faith?

What might a biblically faithful, orthodox Protestant, even evangelical “Christian philosophy,” including something like metaphysics, look like? What might it do? And would it necessarily lead down some slippery slope to natural theology and even unbelief—replacing “faith” with attempting to use autonomous reason to peer into realms of knowing reserved for God?

• If “philosophy” is pre-defined as excluding revelation and faith, then, of course, a Protestant Christian philosophy would be hard to embrace.

• If “metaphysics” is pre-defined as a purely rational investigation of ultimate reality behind appearances, then, of course, it has little place in a Protestant Christian theology or philosophy.

Which is not to say a Protestant Christian can’t engage in it; it is only to say he or she might have difficulty doing so as a Protestant Christian.

But what if “Christian philosophy,” including metaphysics, is defined differently? Not as excluding revelation and faith and not as using autonomous reason to peer into ultimate reality but as investigating the implicit assumptions of revelation itself about revealed truths including the nature of reality itself behind appearances? In other words, might a Christian philosophy include the discovery and investigation/explication of the underlying “world picture” assumed by the biblical writers and essential for supporting explicit Christian doctrines?

Why would this be important? What would be its use? Let me explain my thinking about this.

Throughout my life as a Christian thinker (and I was that in a sense even as a teenager) I have noticed a strange phenomenon among American Christians. When I was a teenager, for example, I often heard missionaries (among them my own aunts and uncles) talk about the evils of “syncretism” on the “mission field”—even among their own converts. This was, according to them, one of the biggest challenges they faced—converts bringing with them, into their Christian lives, pieces of absolutely foreign-to-the-Bible-and-everything-traditionally-Christian world pictures derived from their indigenous cultures. In Bible college we were taught to fight against this syncretism which seemed to exist mainly, if not exclusively, on the mission fields (and among Catholics generally).

But then, especially during seminary and my Ph.D. studies in theology and philosophy of religion (where my main professor was Baptist theologian John Newport) I noticed how profoundly syncretistic much of American Christianity really is. Over the years I have encountered many, many self-identified Christians in America who have unthinkingly adopted elements of world pictures completely alien to the Bible and historical, classical Christianity. A clear (at least to me) and ironic example is social Darwinism [sic, "survival of the fittest" - re slater] which is rampant among conservative Protestants in America. They don’t know that’s what it is, of course, but it’s easily recognizable in, for example, their attraction to the writings of Ayn Rand [capitalism will overcome as the purest form of political economy - re slater] and to certain radio talk show hosts. Another, and usually very different, example of American syncretism among Christians is reincarnation which, researchers say, is embraced by approximately twenty percent of Americans—no doubt including many who consider themselves Christians.The point is that, apparently, a person can confess Christian doctrines and at the same time embrace beliefs totally contrary to the biblical world picture underlying those doctrines.


How Does Christian Philosophy Behave itself with Christian Doctrine?

What I am calling “Christian philosophy” including metaphysics, then, would investigate the foundations or pillars of Christian doctrines that they assume but do not explicitly say.

An example of this from second century Christianity would be the church fathers’ emphasis on creatio ex nihilo—“creation out of nothing.” It is nowhere explicitly stated in Scripture; it cannot exactly be called a “revealed truth.” However, the Christian fathers developed and promoted it to protect revealed truth from the encroachment of alien ideas of creation from non-Christian myths and religions. Creatio ex nihilo is an example of metaphysical foundational belief, a metaphysical pillar, of Christian doctrine—the doctrine of God.

I think we need an ongoing project of this kind of Christian philosophy, even metaphysics, because so many contemporary Christians have absorbed notions about reality, even about God, from secular or pagan cultures and attempted to include them among their Christian doctrinal beliefs.

Some years ago I had a conversation with a Christian professor of computer science who taught at an evangelical Christian university. He informed me that he believed that God, our God, the God of the Bible, Yahweh God, is a cosmic computer and that computer science reveals much about ultimate reality that is valuable to and enriching of Christianity.

I could cite literally scores of examples of that kind of thinking among even evangelical Christians—thinking that, if followed to its logical conclusion, would undermine if not destroy basic Christian beliefs (e.g., that God is personal, not an “It” but a “Thou”). I have met and had conversations with Christians, including intellectuals and professors, who picked up and embraced ideas about reality, physical and social, that completely conflict with biblical revelation. They rarely seem to notice it or accept it even when that is pointed out.

Some years ago I read a series of guest columns in the local newspaper by a retired history professor who had taught at a Christian university for many years and was extremely popular with alumni. In his columns he called for Christians to scrap belief in miracles and anything supernatural and embrace a “scientific worldview.” (He was a member of a Baptist church.) To the best of my memory he never attempted to explain how this would “fit” with being a Christian. My guess is that he was Kantian and reduced Christianity to ethics only.

Throughout most of my thirty-three years of teaching theology in three Christian universities I have been at the periphery, if not the center, of the debates within evangelical academia about “integration of faith and learning.” All three universities paid lip service to it and, I believe, at least some people at all three seriously believed in it and attempted it. In fact, at one of them, candidates for what was falsely called “tenure” (five year contract) were required to write an essay about how they integrated Christian faith with the disciplines they taught. We had many faculty meetings (forums, symposia, workshops) about faith-learning integration. For five years I served as general editor of a Christian scholarly journal devoted to faith-learning integration.

I have noticed that many people who attempt to explain what faith-learning integration means simply fail. That is, they do not explain it well at all which contributes to consternation about the practice among many well-intentioned Christian faculty members.

I have written about faith-learning integration here before, so I won’t repeat what I said then. However, it seems to me that if and insofar as one wants to practice it something like Christian philosophy, including metaphysics, development of a Christian world picture where “world” includes that which is unseen and “picture” includes more than what is explicitly stated in Scripture, is necessary. Faith-learning integration is not (for example) pondering the meaning of the doctrine of the Trinity for mathematics (or vice versa). It is asking questions about the suitability of holding a basic Christian world picture that necessarily underlies explicit Christian doctrines, while holding and even teaching methods and ideas that seem to conflict with that. Can one be a sheer cultural relativist and also a Christian in the mental sense of “discipleship of the mind” (a phrase borrowed with gratitude from James Sire)? Can one picture God as a great cosmic computer and also a Christian in that sense? Should one, as one Christian professor told me, leave Christianity outside the laboratory and classroom and keep them in water tight compartments?

I suspect we need to work on developing a Christian philosophy, world picture, including metaphysics, for the sake of avoiding syncretism and for the sake of having a holistic, integrated Christian mind.

Being Discontent with Status Quo Religion Can Be the Beginning Point to Finding God

Dreaming into the World: Beyond Neurosis, Perversion and Psychosis

http://peterrollins.net/2015/04/dreaming-into-the-world-beyond-neurosis-perversion-and-psychosis/

by Peter Rollins

April 04, 2015

One of the critiques often leveled against psychoanalysis is that it is effectively a normalizing discipline. That it aims to integrate the individual back into the social fabric that she feels alienated from.

Politically speaking this is viewed as problematic, for the very experience of psychic alienation testifies to a problematic environment. The truly radical move is not then to reintegrate a community into that system from which their symptom erupts, but rather to help weaponize them so that they might better overcome it. The positions of neurosis, perversion and psychosis are thus romanticized and read as potent outbursts against oppressive systems.

In short, our world is in crisis and the supposedly psychic anomaly of a subjective “disorder” is in fact the Archimedean point to be used for toppling the oppressive system that gave rise to it.

From this perspective the normalizing of the individual or community implies a form of reintegration into a politically, socially or religiously oppressive environment. Instead of birthing a properly dissident political subject, one produces docile and obedient citizens. This critique gains even more persuasive power when one considers how impossible it would be to sustain a therapeutic clinic that seeks to increase dissatisfaction and alienation. The posture of analysis would thus seem to be in opposition to a radically political one.

In light of this there is a tendency for some academics to celebrate the political vitality of neurosis, perversion or psychosis.

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Leaning on the insights of Todd McGowan in his excellent Enjoying What we Don’t Have I want to push back on this celebration of such conditions in individual or communal form.

It is true that neurosis, perversion and psychosis are cries against the system that gives rise to them, but the problem in each case lies in the particular way that they remain impotent to change what they cry out against.

In the case of neurosis, the individual or community retreat into fantasy as a means of escaping the exigencies of life. The fantasy provides a way of imagining sexual, political and religious freedom, yet this fantasy doesn’t touch upon the social reality it rejects. It tends to be a retreat from the world as it is, into a purely private world of fantasmic pleasure.

In perversion the individual or community does fight against an oppressive, repressed, and hypocritical system. They don’t retreat into some fantasy life, but attempt to live out their fantasy. Yet the problem here is that the perverse act requires what it fights against, gaining pleasure from provoking the system it rejects. Because of this it becomes a type of transgression that demands what it rejects in order to sustain its libidinal economy.

Finally, in psychosis, one can definitely see an attempt to construct a different type of world that would overcome the one that presently exists. Yet it rarely gains a foothold. In paranoia the individual or community forms a world at radical odds with social reality. It is a world full of dark conspiracies, maniacal villains and insidious plots all aimed at undermining them. Because of the extreme nature of these fantasies it is only in rare moments that they gain any traction at all. The paranoid vision is just too bizarre to make a change and remains on the fringe.

In contrast, psychoanalysis outlines a different approach. It is true that ego psychology can be seen to offer a way of reintegrating people into their social environment, adapting them to their world. However the properly Freudian tradition rejects this. In this tradition [it is] the “normal” individual (one who does everything that a given society judges decent, right and upstanding) is considered to be exhibiting a particular type of abnormal reaction.

For Freud, the "healthy individual" was not someone with only a minimal need for fantasy, i.e. someone so content in their world that they don’t require much of a fantasmic supplement. Rather the "healthy individual" is able to mobilize their fantasies of a better world so that they directly touch upon the social fabric, contributing to its ongoing transformation. Instead of retreating from the world, the healthy individual or community is able to let their dreams impact the world that sustains them and work for real change. Finding satisfaction in this act.

To contrast this with the neurotic act we can say that our fantasy of a better world is not what we use in order to cope with the painful one we inhabit, but rather is the fuel that feeds our desire to make that world less painful.

This is the difference between a hope that we use to avoid changing the world (e.g. the hope that the next world will be better than this one), and a hope that demands our involvement in changing the world (e.g. the hope that there will be justice for minorities brutalized by the State). In other words, a hope that requires my involvement to become a reality. A theme I take up in The Divine Magician.

In short, dreams shouldn’t take us out of reality, but inspire us to change it.

* * * * * * * * * *

You Can Fulfill Your Dreams… Just be Prepared for the Abject Horror

http://peterrollins.net/2015/05/fulfill-your-dreams-so-you-can-see-how-powerless-they-are/

by Peter Rollins

May 05, 2015

In a previous post I contrasted neurotic, psychotic and perverse political strategies to a psychoanalytic approach that attempts to help people realize their fantasy in reality (rather than in a retreat from, or protest against, it). The problem here, as Todd McGowan points out, is that the political potential of psychoanalysis can start to sound like a sophisticated form of the motivational poster that asks us to fulfill our dreams. This however fundamentally misses the truly subversive politicial potential of the discourse.

In order to gain a better understanding of the relationship between fantasy and reality in psychoanalysis (which is a large subject) we should first consider how the realization of the fundamental fantasy in an individual’s social reality is actually traumatic to the subject rather than joyous.

The reason for this stems from the idea that our basic fantasy is a type of lie we tell ourselves in order to cover over the trauma of an originary loss. To directly realize one's fantasy (rather than simply achieving some practical goals) means confronting the deception of the fantasy and thus feel the tremor of an inner lack it covers over. This can be described as a type of failure that is hard baked into the very heart of success.

The success of achieving one's fantasy is ultimately a failure insofar as one perceives their desire as connected to the object that the fantasy aims at. For instance, if one directly fantasizes about becoming a millionaire, then achieving the goal exposes, at a subjective level, how the true function of the fantasy is precisely to keep one from achieving its aim, so that one can keep the fantasy alive. The goal posts must thus be changed by the individual in order to keep the fantasy (and the function of the fantasy) alive. If this doesn’t happen the individual can suffer from a breakdown.

In psychoanalytic theory one of the reasons for confronting our fundamental fantasy is not so that we can better “achieve our goals,” and find fulfillment, but precisely so that we can confront the lie of our fantasy.

The point is not to do away with fantasy, but to try and change the relationship we take up in relation to it. The new relation is one that doesn’t locate the pleasure of the fantasy in achieving it, but in directly assuming the fantasy regardless of fulfilling it. The individual realizes that the goal of fantasy is not in its being swallowed up in some final victory, but is concerned with keeping our desire alive.

Politically speaking, this means that we engage in a certain cause without deferring our pleasure to the point when the cause is achieved. This approach does not simply drain the pleasure out of fighting for the cause in the moment, but it also ensures that any ultimate success is experienced as a type of subjective failure or destitution.

Instead, we must try to reposition ourselves so that we can directly enjoy our commitment to the cause itself; learning to directly embrace it as an end in itself. To do this means that we give ourselves to it in a mode of action outside the realm of economic exchange. From the position of rational calculation this can seem like a form of madness, for if we embrace our cause as an end in itself we might end up giving ourselves to seemingly lost causes.

This is one of the lessons we might take away from the Norse gods. From what I’ve been told (I’ll need to do some research to check), some clans would follow Norse gods destined to defeat. If this is in fact the case, then it gives a powerful expression of the approach outlined here. Namely, that we pursue our highest goal regardless of the ultimate cost or outcome for the pleasure is found in the commitment itself.

Take the example of environmentalism. What if we truly embrace the idea that we’re past the point of no return, and that a catastrophic crisis is just around the corner. That there is nothing we can do to avert a coming environmental apocalypse. If we then give up trying to actually make a difference; our activism is likely still caught up in a deferred desire for a positive outcome. Here we misconstrue the role of fantasy as its disappearance in fulfillment. If however we still give ourselves unconditionally and absolutely to the cause, then it is possible that we are directly assuming our excessive desire for the cause as an end in itself.

Not only is this type of relation to our fantasy healthier, but the type of uncompromising action that comes from this stance is precisely what marks a true militant for truth.