Scripture & Theology

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

Reading Luke: Interpretation, Reflection, Formation (2006)

I consider myself ill-qualified to evaluate a book born out of Lukan scholarship so I shall confine myself to what I see to be a few important features:

There is an introductrory essay by Tony Thiselton which works more as a response or vote of thanks to the papers. In passing he makes his point (in criticism of the early volumes of the Blackwell series ‘Reception history is not simply a description of any or evey example drawn from a history of interpretation.’ (42) By this I think he means that Jauss was more interested in the performances and discontinuities, but I would argue that this is exactly what the Blackwell series is interested in!

Scott Spencer complains about the traditional bracketing out of theology from NT Introductions, and despite Wenham’s concern that there has been an over-reaction, thinks that no establishing that Luke was an eye-witness makes his account ‘objective’. Spencer wants to insist on the importance of God and the Holy Spirit for Luke. Spencer thinks it is important not to be distracted by possible historical influences on the text as Luke wrote it, but should follow the text ‘informed by the principal symbolic ‘scenarios’ structuring Lukan society (not events, but more Neyrey’s codes, relations, boundaries.) Yet he only gives us one short paragraph of how this sheds light on theological matters: to understand God as Heavenly Patron, Honored Patriarch and Holy of Holies) and the resonance between Christ’s suffering status and that of the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8:33-35 (although why the eunuch should be regarded as ‘suffering’ seems like eisegesis to me.)

David Moessner tells us that Luke’s Gospel, as all books of the Hellenistic era, is complete in itself with a diegesis in which meaning was conveyed by arrangement, and so the significance of Jesus’ death as the saving event is not lost by seeing it as only a mid-point stage in the whole of Luke-Acts.

Jesus’ parables about money are not about money according to John Nolland, pace David Holgate. This is affirmed and then qualified by Stephen Wright on account of the realism of the parable; it is about people first, though not about wealth and possessions, narrowly conceived. It is more than just a simile -it is a story whose details are to move us ethically

Wright skilfully manages to build on Nolland’s essay and take it further: ‘the primary way in which this parable works is by inviting its hearers into a realistic world so as to motivate and inspire a readjustment of their own vision of the world and their behaviour within it, rather than by ‘revealing’ or ‘arguing’ something about God…’ (223) For Luke in turn, the parables function as ‘the gospel in miniature’ Ricoeur’s dialectic of intention and exteriorization of the text is the hermeneutic Wright prefers, in this valuable essay. Canonically we should expect to understand the parable better than Luke, though the implication is that Jesus is bigger than all meanings.

Max Turner, building on years of scholarly endeavour, judiciously concludes: ‘Luke does not explicitly connect the Spirit with the broader soteriological functions which John and Paul elucidate. But his broad, dynamic, individual and corporate, highly experiential view of the ‘salvation’ of God accomplished in Acts demands an explanation as to what immanent power of God could achieve such a result.’(287) The early Dunn was simply wrong to think that only Jesus and not the disciples through his presence had this experience, but the experience of the Spirit is an experience of God and therefore salvific, not just a donum superadditum.

I don’t find the ‘theological’ chapters by Hahn, Scobie and Bartholomew/Holt quite so illuminating, but that might be my loss.

It is welcome that there are three chapters at the end on the Reception of Luke’s Gospel. For some reason the great F. Bovon refers to Andrew Gregory’s work in the 2nd century but wants to go further: the allegorical Gnostic interpretations (‘a source for authors wishing to create new stories’) were responded to by the orthodox (‘commentators to interpret and explain’) and Luke was to be read as part of a fourfold gospel (396). Gregory himself in a responding essay underscores this last point to show how the 2nd-century church was clear where the traditions about Jesus had become enscripturated. The canonical gospels are ‘authoritative witness to the world behind the text’, where Jesus is to be found ‘and that a Christian reading of Luke must treat it as pointing to something behind its text rather than as an end in itself.’ (410) Gregory nicely points to the importance of the oral ‘living’ tradition and that of the canonical gospels, although in his contention that the resurrected Jesus is not the same Jesus as ‘the historical Jesus’, despite there being some continuity, in saying ‘there is continuity between Jesus born of Mary and Jesus who was raised from the dead and remains alive today, but the two are not the same, and neither is identical to the historical Jesus whose life and teachings historians seek to reconstruct today’, he seems to confuse that which is reconstructed with that which the resurrected Jesus implies – that is no adoptionist ‘Son of God come lately’ but a pre-existent Son of God in the womb of Mary to the cross and beyond.

Joel Green’s ‘Afterword’ informs us that we have lost the literal sense in a variety of opinions as to what that might be. The canonical approach demands putting Acts after John, not so that ‘Luke- Acts’ nexus is ignored but that it is not absolutised. Green actually sees much mileage in ‘Luke-Acts’ and nicely writes: ‘Given the way the third evangelist has written the story of Jesus into the story of the Septuagint, the way he has written the story of the early church into the story of Jesus, and the way he has reached an end to this narrative without bringing closure to the story of the actualization of God’s purpose in history may provide us with clues as to how best to read canonically in this way.’ (441). More generally with N.T. Wright he calls for a theology of history to be attempted. Yet of course there are still theological questions about the significance, such that ‘the essential truth-claim lies above all in the claim of this narrative to interpret reality in the light of God’s self-disclosure of God’s own character and purpose working itself out in the cosmos and on the plain of human events.’ (443) A rule of faith demands doctrinal orthodoxy but also Christian orthopraxy in reading Scripture, and to that end looking at the history of impact of embodiment is welcome. We are to make full disclosure of our methodological commitments while preparing ourselves to listen and yield to the text. Also Eco has shown Green how meaning is plural though not limitless, and Green (448) shows that a theological reading of Scripture has the text in final form and as a whole, with a recognition of the cultural embeddedness of text, the canonical address and the witness of Scripture seen in its effects in the church, doctrinal formulations included.