Scripture & Theology

Where I have some evaluative comments of my own to intersperse, these shall be in bold italics.

Volume V is titled Out of Egypt: Biblical Theology and Biblical Interpretation (2006). This title comes from one of the trickier verses for biblical theology, that of Hosea 1:11 which gets ‘misquoted’ in Matthew 2:15.

Bartholomew asks: What about Childs’ seeming indifference to matters of historicity: is this antifoundationalist? Perhaps, he thinks. Gerald Bray then makes the point that the fathers produced an account of biblical ontology since creation was central. However the necessity for this seems denied by many of the articles which follow!

The account of Charles Scobie’s Biblical Theology by Karl Möller (who writes marvellous English) is largely positive except for a suspicion that the categories of organisation might not always come from the bible itself. The fact remains that much of what Scobie does is intellectually underpowered in a way that gives Biblical theology a bad name. But Möller thinks that to be true to the bible, theology should have a narratival rather than a theoretical character, as McGrath and Goldingay concur. But first, is the bible fundamentally narrative anyway and second, is it really the case that theology is too often guilty of describing ‘states of affairs’? There is a footnote on p59 referencing Oswald Bayer but it is not clear that Bayer is not actually contradicting Möller’s case by looking for a poetological ontology. By the way, why does Scobie in quoting George Herbert put [sic] after ‘the constellation of the storie [sic]’? Does he think that Herbert didn’t know to spell?

Möller is anxious lest biblical theology, forgetting its ‘second-order role’ take the place of the bible in the church and try to be too ordered, and it should be more like a map for navigating the biblical landscape. I’m not sure about this metaphor. Just what is the landscape to which the bible is the map? In any case the preaching of the church need not tame the bible.

Francis Martin does well to point to Romans 12:3 for the origins of the idea of ‘the Rule of Faith’ and the ‘analogy of faith’ in 12:6. It is slightly confusing when he invokes the writer François Martin (no relation!) The Husserlian approach’s benefits (learned from Robert Sokolowski) are not very adequately brought out. Indeed I am not sure this essay fits well into this particular volume, as it is more about hermeneutics than biblical theology. It is great to have an introduction to Marco Nobile’s Italian OT theology and the controversial Bonhoefferian bon mot: ‘whoever wants to be and to feel too soon and too directly in a New Testament way, for me is not a Christian’ (92), a text introduced by Erich Zenger (the essay ‘Zum Versuch einer neuen jüdisch-christlichen Bibelhermeneutik’, in ThRev 90 (1994), 274-78 is significant.) Institutions are founded by theophany and struggle – this is interesting but it seems to serve some parts of Genesis and Ezekiel better than other. Nobile appears to have laid out the two different hermeneutics to the same bible and concluded that the Christian one is fuller, better – always a difficulty with a ‘Rahnerian’ approach’, while we are called now to hear the Logos in the OT together as Christians and Jews. (98)

Chris Wright joins in a theme which has been serving almost as a biblical theology for the likes of E.. Schnabel and C.Stenschke; moving Christians from grasping ‘the biblical basis of mission’ on to ‘the missional basis of the bible’ (103). Mission, perhaps even more than ‘God’ is what the bible is all about. One might also call it recovering an eschatological reading, based on the reality of God as ‘missionary as implying his authority to the ends of the earth and what he wants do with the church, moving on from messianic to missional hermeneutic. Wright’s essay is a fine piece, inspired by the idea of God’s self-sending into which the church must step. He concludes by observing that any hermeneutical framework will always distort the ground of Scripture and not include everything.

James Dunn has re-issued the English original of the 1995 contribution to the Dohmen/Söding book (which does not get listed in the biography, but presumably is Eine Bibel-Zwei Testamente. There is a lot of sense and the asking of good questions, but it seems a bit dated and does not advance things much. Richard Bauckham’s searching critique of St Andrews colleague Nathan MacDonald’s dissertation, with help from Gnuse, De Moor and Sawyer and the a number of pages on Monotheism in the NT is all interesting if a bit overdone. MacDonald’s wish to preserve Deuteronomy from the covering of an ‘enlightenment construct’ is admired yet challenged in its key claim that ‘Deuteronomy does not deny the existence of other gods. I have heard W.Moberly (MacDonald’s Doktorvater) interpret the shema in a similar way, as to do with YHWH’s uniqueness. The point seems to be that YHWH means business in a unique way. Bauckham thinks this underestimates his objective uniqueness, ‘even independently of Israel’.(193). This comes after some exegesis which would suggest that ontologically YHWH is in a class of his own. Having shown the need for biblical scholars to take more time on theological conceptual analysis, Bauckham goes on to demand a biblical-theological account of these texts in the light of other OT texts (canonical context) and these texts as informed by a history of religions account. ‘As in the case of the historical Jesus, I would be reluctant simply to let history and theology go their separate ways…’(198). De Moor’s more conservative proposal (exclusive El worship among proto-Israelites as the origin of monotheism) is preferred.

Stephen Barton writes that the belief in the unity of humankind is predicated on that in the unity of God: ‘the unity of humankind is, theologically speaking, a matter of revelation: it comes to us as gift. It is an invitation to share in the life of the God who is One.’(256) Peace for the nations requires communion in the church as a link between Christ and the Spirit and the world, while being self-aware about tendencies. I warm to the sensibility of Barton here, but wish for a bit more clarity.

The less clarity, the more need for hermeneutics to stretch to show how, in this case Zechariah 14(‘obscurissimus liber’ – Jerome) can be made to relate to the rest of Scripture, or, to be precise, as Al Wolters puts it, ‘its relationship to the grand narrative of Scripture as a whole.’ (263) To aid this we get Theodore (grammar and non-Christological typology) setting up Zerubbabel vs Gog, and the Maccabees vs Antiochus; then there is Didymus (spiritual interpretation which takes words and finds other passages where they can speak of impeccably orthodox theological truths); and finally Jerome who sees the purpose of prophecies to be Christ and the Church. Wolters judgment that Jerome too fails to see the historical reference of this prophecy fully enough and resorts to allegory, seems a bit unfair. Then there are modern commentators who are nevertheless open to Zechariah’s fulfilment beyond OT times (Unger the premillennial dispensatonalist, van der Woude’s general pastoral application of the principles Zechariah is expounding, E. Achtemeier’s emphasis on an eschatology inaugurated with Christ’s resurrection). There is a wise point learned from Theodore ‘that the use of figurative language does not somehow compromise the ability to tell the truth about historical states of affairs.’(284) There is also the possibility of multiple fulfilments of prophecy. This is a nice study in the history of exegesis.

William Dumbrell’s essay is long and painstakingly exegetical but not especially ground-breaking research. It all serves a conclusion, arrived at by other authors here, that Christians are no longer under the law of Moses and that while biblical exegesis needs to know biblical theology, ‘this latter is itself an understanding of the progressive implementation of God’s purposes through history.’ (310)

Andrew Lincoln observes how the new sense of the use of the bible in the church and the general interest in reception and interpretation in literary theory has encouraged theological readings of the bible. He then moves immediately to Hebrews. This author saw his task as primarily pastoral application of the OT in his communication of scriptural truth to his audience. The writing of Hebrews as creative is informed also by a philosophy of Jewish temporal and Greek vertical eschatologies. It recognises that the new in Christ remodels what OT Scripture means, while of course the OT gives us an authoritative interpretation of this new thing. Preachers should preach OT and NT texts together more than they do. So far, so good, although we might hear warning bells ringing in the stress on the ‘contingency of Hebrews’. The controversial moment comes three pages from the end, at p333. ‘If Hebrews can relativise and critique parts of its authoritative Scriptures in the light of what has happened in Christ (see above), should not any biblical theology that adopts its approach be prepared to critique and relativise parts of its Scriptures-including now, of course, the New Testament, in the light of its central confession about the gospel of the crucified and risen Jesus?’ It is (as a justifying footnote explains) about judging the bible by the standard of Christ, not a new one of our own, but that fulfilment in Christ’s ‘not-yetness’ allows room in the Spirit for doing some of that fulfilling! ‘It also entails that the fulfilment in Christ has both an ‘already’ and a ‘not yet’ aspect and that the specific implications of this for later settings remain to be worked out by responsible interpreters under the guidance of the Spirit.’ That will include a criticism of Hebrews for giving hostages to fortune (or the history of interpretation) in its over-readiness to claim the finality of Christ and not just his fulfilment which was roughly simultaneous with a Jewish ‘supercessionism’ regarding the OT (from cult to synagogue).

Trevor Hart nicely draws attention to how Karl Barth re-worked his doctrine of baptism in the light of NT evidence and provided a systematic yet ‘open-textured’ and even open-ended, provisional theology with plenty of ‘eschatological reservation’. Systematic theology, as it tilts at the issues of the day need to kept honest by a biblical theology which works from the bible’s agenda. While of course it would be hermeneutically naïve to conceive this as a two-step movement of first, a descriptive biblical theology, then a normative systematics. But the latter has the task of making sense of Scripture for our place in culture.

John Webster writes on the clarity of Scripture with special attention in the small-print section to Luther, Zwingli and especially Bullinger with his controlling notion of ‘the history of the proceeding of he Word of God.’ Inspiration takes place in the divine use of human authors and their speech to become sanctified or holy. The texts have an ontology, ‘they have a measure of durability and resistance and can be spoken of in se. They are more than a score for performance, much more than an empty space for readerly poetics.’ (366) It is a unique communicative action, one that does not belong to general hermeneutics. Clarity with the help of the Spirit serves efficacy as scripture gets caught up in God’s revelation and a communicative presence; but it is the words themselves which receive that clarity as God uses them.

Rusty Reno shows how the patristic-era exegetes like Origen and Chrystostom did not feel they had to explain scripture and draw out abstract lessons from it. For Reno it is Protestantism’s fault for being less than detailed whereas Chrysostom refers the text to the Christian practice of prayer, reflection on the liturgy. ‘To my mind, the distance between the literal sense and theological abstractions is the single greatest failure of earnest and well-meaning attempts by modern exegetes of the NT to produce theological exegesis.’ (391f). So it is better when Roy Harrisville on Romans 8:26 uses the phrase ‘cruciform life’ rather than ‘redemption’ or ‘eschatological’. It means using the plain sense of the text to allow Nicene personal Trinitarianism to shine through. Reno mocks Brueggemann’s phrase: ‘it is human agency in the service of Yahweh’s solidarity with Israel.’ (395) This should be contrasted with the example of Gregory of Nyssa, who, on Exodus ‘does not draw away for the semantic particularity of Exodus.’ (396). Theology is not a result but a method of exegesis. Reno even takes issue with Childs’ following the sign’s witness to the res. ‘Childs assumes that true theology must move from ‘description’ of what the text says to ‘analysis’ of its subject matter, and this subject matter is formulated with the abstracted and scripturally thin concepts that characterize so much unsuccessful theological exegesis.’ (399) Childs is more concerned with the biblical view of justification rather than how to reconcile Galatians with Leviticus. This is a very worthwhile and stimulating paper.

In Stephen Chapman’s ‘Imaginative Readings of Scripture and Theological Interpretation’, the author fears that there is too much subjectivity and too little intellectual rigour in recent approaches which try to make Scripture sound meaningful. The Church fathers were right that for understanding and being touched, study is required. Imagination is good if it helps us stick closer to the text, but not if it would stand in its way. It must be like Bach using Ernesti yet then using his own music to touch the present, or the preacher using historical criticism in Moby Dick only to rise above it. I fear he misrepresents L.T. Johnson on p433, unless Johnson is saying that the lack of mutual need of historical reconstruction and theology is mutual. Chapman likes Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling: ‘if the theological interpretation of Scripture is to find a receptive audience – if it is to touch hearts as well as minds – it will need to be just as direct, every bit as imaginative, and similarly sly.’ (441) Yet how does this accord with 2 Cor 4:2 about non-sly communication of the gospel?

Charles Scobie outlines three stages of biblical interpretation in preaching: Historical context – canonical context – hearers of the sermon. The work at the 2nd stage can overcome the damage done at the first and form the agenda for the third.