Pelikan on tradition and history

Josh Lim of Reformed Blogging has a knack for posting great quotes by great theologians. To save me having to constantly steal his material , I suggest that if you haven't already done so you subscribe to his RSS feed and nourish yourself with his wholesome offerings.

Here's his latest, on tradition and history:

“Tradition without history has homogenized all the stages of development into one statically defined truth; history without tradition has produced a historicism that relativized the development of Christian doctrine in such a way as to make the distinction between authentic growth and cancerous aberration seem completely arbitrary.” – Jaroslav Pelikan

[The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 9]

Interestingly, Pelikan, a Lutheran professor who co-edited 22 of 55 volumes of Luther's works, converted to Eastern Orthodoxy in 1996 (you can read a bit about this and other converts here). I love what he has to say here. I wonder if he'd say it differently now ... (or at least before he died in 2006)? Here's a comment on his conversion:

Members of Dr Pelikan’s family remember him saying that he had not as much converted to Orthodoxy as "returned to it, peeling back the layers of my own belief to reveal the Orthodoxy that was always there."

The final form of Scripture and the issue of readership

... the concept of final form is closely connected with the issue of readership. An important corollary to the designation of a written corpus as Scripture is that these writings function as Scripture for someone. They have been ordered toward a present and future audience who receives its identity in some way from Israel's past story which is lost if a new story is reconstructed apart from the received narrative form. Thus to suggest that the major force involved in shaping Israel's prophetic history derives from readings retrojected as literary constructs runs in the face of the final form of Scripture which is eschatologically oriented toward the goal of instructing every future generation of Israel in the reality of God who continues to act on its behalf.

Childs, “Retrospective Reading of the Old Testament Prophets,” Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 108:3 (1996), 362-377; here, 377.

Seitz on the divine authorship of Scripture

This is the first installment of my analysis of the presuppositions undergirding Seitz's book, Prophecy and Hermeneutics. For the introduction, go here.

Though Seitz never specifically thematizes the divine authorship of Scripture, it is a basic presupposition of his approach, as stated near the end of his book:

The very notion of a canonical process assumes a doctrine of inspiration that spills out from the prophetic word once delivered, as God superintends that word towards his accomplishing end (240).

To use terminology familiar from Brevard Childs' work, there is a force at work in the generation of Scripture, “the word of God,” mediated by a concrete channel, the historical prophet, guided by the will of a “superintending God” towards and eschatological goal: his “accomplishing end.”

What more does Seitz have to say about this reality? Check out the following formulation:

A word is uttered. It is the prophet's human word. Yet it is released, publicly, with a claim to be God's word, and to be that word it will have to move through time—even times of silence and darkness—and finally come to pass (252).

We see that for Seitz this word has certain characteristics: it has a divine source yet human vehicle, historically conditioned yet history creating. This fact calls for a subtle hermeneutic which gives each dimension its proper “proportionality” (91). On the one hand, the divine author of the word is also the “author of time” (50), and through his history with his people he is endeavouring to witness to his own dimension of time, “God's time” (73). On the other hand, he speaks through historically conditioned people-in-community, prophets and their disciples. The disciples of the prophets registered the original word within the context of their own different theological horizon (Seitz says, “in the context of a new set of circumstances, constraints, hopes, and divine judgments,” p. 129). This new understand of the original prophetic witness is, with the advantage of hindsight, theologically more profound, and has been registered in the editorially expanded and canonically shape literature that was later to become Scripture. For Seitz, the nature of the redactional expansions is signficant. They were not corrections to a failed prophecy according to an alternative agenda. Rather, the living author of the word has ensured that these new generations were “overtaken” and “enclosed” (129) by the creative power of his original word. The community

sees the original word pressing forward toward a horizon that God alone means to illumine, with recourse to the original word of his own, divulged by the work of the Holy Spirit in a new day (241).

We thus see that the historical prophets, though fully grounded in our “profane history,” are not exhausted by that history. The canonical process that is generated by Holy Spirit, operating out of an originally spoken word, strove to understand the prophets as figures within a theological history, “within the providential design of God's unfolding work” (46). They witnessed to revelation in their time, but they themselves are part of an unfolding progressive revelation.

In my forthcoming posts, we will see how Seitz unfolds these two dimensions of the text: the human and the divine.

[See also my post: Barr on scriptural authority and my thread on The authority of Scripture]

Barr on Scriptural Authority

Anyone vaguely familar with this blog will know that I am a great fan of Brevard Childs. Childs' greatest critic was James Barr, another brilliant scholar who I need to become more acquainted with. One thing I notice, however, when I read his critiques of Childs, is that he seems to consistently miss the point. I can't imagine Childs disagreeing with too much of what Barr said ... at least not the stuff I've read. It's just that Barr's own approach, as Seitz put it, is "myopic." He doesn't get to the substance of what Childs is talking about.

Here is a quote by Barr, which, at least read on its own out of context, I can pretty much agree with:

We have seen that scripture emerged from the tradition of the people of God. Now there is no reason why we should say that scripture, i.e. the final written product, is inspired byGod but the stages which led up to it, in which the important decisions were take, the stages of oral tradition and the like, were not inspired by God. So inspiration would have to be understood in the sense that God in his Spirit was in and with his people in the formation, transmission, writing down and completion of their tradition and its completion and fixation as scripture. In this process the final stage, the final fixation, was the least important rather than the most important. Now this helps us with another question: is the authority really the authority of the books as books, or is it the authority of the persons who wrote the book and the persons about whom they are written? Do we believe Romans because, being scripture, it is authoritative, or do we believe it because it was by St Paul who as a person was authoritative? In the way I have put the matter, it is not necessary to make the choice an absolute one. Authority resides in the people of God, or perhaps more correctly in the central leadership of the people of God; but it also resides in the scripture which they formed and passed on to later generations as their own communication, as the voice which they wanted to be heard as their voice. The grounding of scripture is in the history of tradition within Israel and the earliest church.”

Barr,J. (1980) “Has the Bible any Authority”, in The Scope and Authority of the Bible. SCM Press. pp. 63-64

[Hat Tip: Richard, of the helpful blog יהוה מלך).

The rule-of-faith as the reality behind doctrine, tradition, and scripture

I now come to the fourth of the implications Hägglund draws of the patristic understanding of the regula fidei for contemporary dogmatics. Here is the first, here the second, and here is the third. For an overview of the entire thread go here.

The fact that “truth” in the sense of the actual events of salvation history (dem tatsächlichen Geschehen der Heilsgeschichte) is signified as a regula has two implications: first, this reality is, in the final analysis, the fundamentum of theology, the starting point of the entire doctrinal tradition of the church. Second, this same reality forms the guidline (Richtschnur) for the appraisal of true or false doctrine. Today we look at the first implication:

Within scholarship there used to be a widespread opinion that the regula fidei was originally motivated by the struggle against heresy. It was understood to be the antiheretically interpreted Symbolum. As we have seen here, it is certainly true that the regula fidei was very often used in the conflict with the heretics: by Irenaeus against Gnosticism, by Tertullian additionally against Praxeas and the philosophers. This does not mean, however, that the regula was originally only a consolidation of church doctrine for the purpose of repudiating heretics. It played a far more positive role as “doctrinal foundation,” as starting point for Christian teaching and theological thought. According to the concept of the regula fidei there was primarily an allusion to that which was original (das Ursprüngliche), to the reality itself, which stands behind all ecclesial doctrinal decisions as well as behind the proclamation of the church and the witness of the scripture as the content of the divine revelation. The orientation of the rule to the facts (Tatbestand) of salvation history (as with Irenaeus) and the emphasis of its priority (as with Tertullian) show that it does indeed takes such a position with the Church Fathers.

The regula fulfils the function of being a fundamentum of the doctrinal tradition through the mediation (Vermittlung) of the holy scripture. We can perceive the reality of the revelation, the facts of salvation history only through the witness of the prophets and the apostles, through the writings of the Old and New Testaments. This witness must be interpreted and expounded again and again, but also recapitulated (zusammengefasst) and literally reproduced. In the process, however, the regula itself, the truth to which the scripture witnesses, maintains its position as an unchanging foundation. It is not a coincidence that the Greek word for rule, κανων, became more and more a fixed designation for the holy scripture. The original witness is not only “canonical” because it is endowed with the authority of the prophets and apostles, but also because it is a bearer (Träger) of the revelation, a mediator of the reality of salvation.

The orientation of the regula fidei to the actual events of salvation history, means, therefore, in concrete terms, a reference (Hinweis) to the holy scripture as the fundamentum of the doctrinal tradition of the church. The regula fidei cannot be retrieved from anywhere else other than from the prophetic and apostolic witness.

See Childs' important formulation of this here, in my post The text as tradent of authority.

Thread Summary: The authority of Scripture

The following is a summary of my posts dealing with the first of Childs' so-called "constitutive features of Christian exegesis":

1. Scripture as "witness" and the rule of faith
2. The function of Scripture
3. The dynamic of Scripture
4. The complexity of "canon"
5. Politics and the religious role of canon
6. The Writing of Scripture
7. Historical criticism and the reading of scripture
8. The exegetical obligations of the redeemed
9. The difference between Scripture and canon
10. The nature of the substance of the Bible
11. Clarifying the Bible's "subject matter"

Diem on Scripture, Doctrine and the Apostolic Tradition

I'm currently reading Hermann Diem's Dogmatics, which is providing me with essential background material for understanding Childs. I came across the following quote, which I thought I'd post as an update to my previous post on Luke 24 and the Dogmatic/Exegesis Relation.

“Our study has brought us constantly face to face with the circular argument that the Spirit which has inspired Scripture can be recognised only by the Spirit which they alone have who are apo Kuriou Pneumatos (II Cor. III. 18). Nowhere is there given any definite hermeneutical method of exegesis such as would furnish secure grounds for this recognition, nor can one be subsequently inferred from the practice of NT exegesis ... . Moreover, it is not the isolated individual believer nor the theologian, in his interpretation of Scripture, it is rather the Church as such (cf., for example, I Cor. II. 6-16) which moves within this circle. But the Church is never confronted immediately by Scripture in its bareness. Just as according to the Synoptics Jesus Himself must open to the disciples the mind of Scripture, so the later Church has Apostolic doctrine which with Apostolic authority appeals to the Lord Himself as the key to the right understanding of the Bible. Hence we receive no hard and fast hermeneutical principle for the exegesis of Scripture, but a new tradition of proclamation and doctrine which claims to be the right understanding and exposition of Scripture and also to test Scriptural exegesis. Hence our question about the authorisation of Gospel teaching and proclamation must be addressed to this Apostolic tradition itself." (1959: 178)

I find this fascinating and challenging.

Clarifying the Bible's "Subject Matter"

A certain Paul wrote an interesting response to my post yesterday on The Nature of the "Substance" of the Bible. I've decided to respond here, as the points he raises are important. His comments are in italics, my response beneath.

Seems to me the Bible is an anthology, multi-authored, composed over thousands of years, with some texts that are very similar and others widely disparate;

I'm in total agreement here. Yet the line of continuity between all these texts is that they have been used religiously by a particular community of faith throughout its history as a testimony and response to its God. Diversity and even logical contradictions don't exclude the possibility that there is one God behind it all, revealing himself to and guiding his people. Which is why, I think, Childs talks of the “substance” of the Bible as being “dynamic,” i.e. God in relationship in history. The central formulae of both Jewish and Christian faith are narrative in nature, rather than abstract description. Irenaeus, for example, spoke of a movement from “creation to incarnation to consummation.” The task of exegesis, an exegesis which wants to really get to the subject matter of the Bible, is to read each text both in its integrity as well as in relation to this (or another) broader picture. Christians believe in the Irenaen one. Others have other “meta narratives” by which to combine the parts into a whole (e.g. Marxist, existentialist, evolutionary, etc.).

the "substance" is always going to to be those elements and aspects that the particular theologian finds most meaningful and prefers to emphasize.

Subjectivity in exegesis is unavoidable. Bultmann, for example, chose to identify the existential dimension of the text as its “true” referent. Working with a Heideggerian understanding of this reality he then sifts out those texts which best accord with its truth claims (at least, that's what I see Bultmann doing ...). I think, however, that some ground rules are necessary, “boundaries of interpretation” or “a rule of faith.” This will depend on your confession, but Christians (of which I am one) not only confess that the Bible is Scripture and as such testifies to God (i.e. it is authoritative), but that it is a “canon,” i.e. a fixed rule which provides the boundaries within which theological exegesis can take place (I posted on this distinction a couple of days ago here). This canon provides the outer limits for exegesis, both a negative criterion marking the boundary between orthodoxy and heresy and a postive criterion, delineating the boundary within which diversity is allowed to flourish. Bultmann's problem, as far as I can see, is that he does not respect that “canonicity” of Scripture, in that he only selects certain strands as proclaiming “true existence” and he denigrates the Old Testament to the status of evolutionary precursor.

Which is why the potential for theological debate is truly eternal

I guess so, but it's not arbitrary. It's a matter of subjectivity within boundaries guided, hopefully, by the Holy Spirit.

The Difference Between "Scripture" and "Canon"

In discussions of the canonical approach, a failure to distinguish between the categories "scripture" and "canon" can lead to confusion. I hope today's thoughts help clarify the issue ...

Whereas both categories refer to the authoritative collection of sacred writings as the vehicle for communicating the will of God, the term scripture refers above all to the divine authority of these writings. Canon, on the other hand, refers to the scope of the collection.

This distinction is important for understanding the significance of the fluidity of the Christian canon, especially respecting the tension between the narrower (Jewish) and larger (Greek) forms of the Old Testament corpus. Historically speaking, this fluidity in scope has never played a decisive role in challenging the concept of the authority of Scripture. The tensions that arose in the Reformation were dogmatic in nature and were concerned with the relation of biblical authority to later church tradition, not with the question of biblical authority per se

Although the question of scope and the role of translations is an issue, it is important not to overestimate the scale of the problem. It is not the case that the church has functioned without a scripture or in deep confusion. Rather, as Childs states, “the implication to be drawn is exactly the reverse. In spite of areas of disagreement [concerning a few books on the periphery], the Bible in its various forms has continued to function as an authoritative norm for the church throughout its history.”[*]

As with most issues misunderstood by Childs' later critics, this point was made from early on:

“The fundamental theological issue at stake is not the extent of the canon, which has remained in some flux within Christianity, but the claim for a normative body of tradition contained in a set of books.”[**]

[*] Childs, The Struggle to Understand Isaiah as Christian Scripture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 301.

[**] Childs, Biblical Theology in Crisis (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1970), 98.

Exegetical Obligations of the Redeemed

The theological reality of the relationship between God and his people and the unique role of Scripture in this relationship has left a material mark on the text of the Bible with concrete implications for today's exegete. Since the Enlightenment it has become clear that one does not have to read the Bible according to its own perspective. It is possible to understand the Bible in history-of-religions categories. Yet, despite the importance of such work, the goal and procedure of such exegetical practice are different to an approach which would read the Bible as the Word of God to his people. Belonging to this people requires that one aligns oneself with the Bible's own perspective. As Childs says:

“The biblical text must be studied in closest connection with the community of faith which treasured it. Obviously these texts can be studied from any number of other contexts and perspectives, but not as Sacred Scripture! The authority of the canon of Scripture is not a claim of objective truth apart from the community of faith but it is a commitment to a particular perspective from which the reality of God is viewed.” [*]

The exegete as member of the congregation must face a hermeneutical decision before he reads the text: as a member of a historical people with a text that has been the unfolding word of God to them through time, how do I best situate myself to receive that message today? What is the authoritative context within which the message of the Bible takes shape? Given the peculiar function of this text over against this community within the context of God's eschatological purpose, Childs would argue the text's final form.

[*] “The Sensus Literalis of Scripture: An Ancient and Modern Problem,” in Beiträge zur Alttestamentlichen Theologie: Festschrift für Walther Zimmerli zum 70. Geburtstag (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1977), 92.

Israel's Memory and the Rule of Faith

After a massive hiatus, I return to my ongoing discussion of Childs' canonical approach and it's implications for theological interpretation. The thread started an eternity ago here, where I outlined the overall structure of what I want to say. I'm still in stage 1: "The Authority of Scripture." Once this stage is finally finished, I'll move on to 2: "The Literal and Spiritual Sense of Scripture."

At the beginning of his career Childs worked as a form critic, which meant that his primary concern was identifying the unique ways in which Israel responded to its tradition and proclaimed its message. From this historical critical perspective Childs made the following statement about the theological function of Israel's traditions:

“Israel's memory ... serves a far more important role than merely providing illustrations from the past. It serves in making Israel noetically aware of a history which is ontologically a unity. There is only one redemptive history.”[*]

Childs seems to believe that this redemptive history finds its maturest expression in Irenaeus' rule of faith (Creation – Incarnation – New Creation). This rule functions as a boundary within which Christian exegesis can take place, as it sums up the true substance of Scripture. Yet the rule is not detached from the witness on which it is based, as if it were an external ideology imposed upon an innocent text. The very hermeneutical shape given to the text throughout its long canonical (kerygmatic) development adumbrates in complex ways the reality that would find its fullest expression in Irenaeus' rule. It would seem that for this reason Childs at times calls the canonical shape of the Bible itself a regula fidei.

[*] Memory and Tradition in Israel (London: SCM Press, 1961), 51.

The Final Form of the Text

This post represents the last section from Childs extremely important essay, "Retrospective Reading of Old Testament Prophets" (1996). Once again, I've copied it out verbatim, as I don't have the time to summarize it and think it's so concise it would be a shame to lose anything anyway. For the rest of the posts in this thread, see here and then here.

As for those who have left questions on this series, I will get back as soon as poss. We drive back from Berlin tomorrow!

"In the past the use of the term "final form" has evoked much controversy. Does the biblical text ever have a final form? Does it not vary within different textual traditions? Certainly such questions are fully legitimate within a discussion of textual transmission, variants, and stabilization. However, in reference to the hermeneutical issue of final form, the above questions are peripheral to the subject. Nor is the real issue at stake a debate between a diachronic or synchronic handling of the OT.

Rather, the basic hermeneutical issue of the so-called final form turns on determining the nature of this set of writings. To suggest that the Bible is literature, even religious literature, while in a sense correct, does not address its uniqueness. These writings reflect the experience of a historic people which developed over a long period of collection, transmission, and growth. However, at some point in this history - roughly in the Hellenistic period - the scope of the received books was limited and a process of stabilization of the tradition set in supported by critically authorized texts. even more crucial, these diverse writings were designed as Scripture and given a special function within a community. The Hebrew Bible became the story of Israel under Torah to which the prophetic writings were joined. In addition, the Psalms were tied to David and Wisdom to Solomon. In a word, a larger structure was imposed on this material which formed the distinct parts into a loosely ordered whole.

The hermeneutical implications of this development for interpretation suggest that this larger narrative structure is constitutive for the prophetic corpus and should be respected. Regardless of the ability of critical research to unearth earlier stages lying beneath the present form of the text, interpretation of this entity received by Israel as Scripture must ultimately focus its final attention on the received from. Of course, these writings can always be read as an ancient Near Eastern fragment, but it is not the Bible that is being interpreted. Similarly, the interpretation of the Old Testament is seriously impaired if critical literary analysis assigns to reconstructed redactional layers the decisive semantic role in construing the text's meaning.

The concluding point to make is that the concept of final form is closely connected with the issue of readership. An important corollary to the designation of a written corpus as Scripture is that these writings function as Scripture for someone. They have been ordered toward a present and future audience who receives its identity in some way from Israel's past story which is lost if a new story is reconstructed apart from the received narrative form. Thus to suggest that the major force involve in shaping Israel's prophetic history derives from readings retrojected as literary constructs runs in the face of the final form of Scripture which is eschatologically oriented toward the goal of instructing every future generation of Israel in the reality of God who continues to act on its behalf."

B.S. Childs, 1996 ZAW 108 pp. 376, 7.

The Text as Tradent of Authority

For an overview of posts in this thread, go here.

"Prophetic authority is related to the function of the biblical text. The text is the tradent of authority in establishing a link with specific prophetic figures. The literature has no life apart from Israel's life, institutions, and offices. The prophet serves as the living voice of God now preserved in a living text of Scripture. The text can certainly be extended beyond the scope of the original prophecy, but the theological link with its origin must be maintained in order to sustain its authority. It is impossible to have free-floating literary constructs which are totally without historical rootage because authority ultimately rests on divine communication through these prophetic messengers. The prophetic text is not a creation of nameless editors to manipulate for a private agenda, but it remains the irreplaceable vehicle in the service of God for the sake of Israel.

There are different functions of textual authority which directly relate to the issue of the retrospective reading of the prophets. One such role provides the proper theological explanation for the function of etiology with the biblical prophecy. The technique of historical retrojection is not an attempt, as often claimed, to buttress a failing prophetic authority, but rather a means of confirming its recognized truth. Events in history were retrojected into the past precisely to confirm the authority of the prophetic voice. Thus, most likely the savage imagery of the utter destruction of Jerusalem in 587 was used post-factum in Isa. 6:11ff. to register the truth of the prophetic threat which the editors viewed as a unified reality according to its substance which unfolded in history as predicted. Similarly, Isa. 22:8b-11 appears to be a retrojection of the destruction of the city which functions as the voice of the prophet who outlined the plan of God which was never heeded by Israel either in the 8th or 6th century.

Then again, the role of the biblical text as tradent of prophetic authority explains the important feature of intertextuality common to the prophetic corpus. A prophetic text is specific and concrete, yet its imagery continues to reverberate within the tradition. It continues to exert a coercion on future generations of recipients and gives evidence of its force in the way in which a text is repeatedly actualized to remain highly existential even in changing historical contexts. This echoing effect arises from a widespread conviction that the authority of a single text extends to the larger story and partakes of the selfsame reality. By means of intertextuality a text can be extended into the future by means of Fortschreibung or it can be retrojected into the past by expanding and enriching the earlier imagery from the content of later events. Both redactional movements employing intertextuality rest on the same inner logic of Scripture's textual authority."

B.S. Childs, "Retrospective Reading of the Old Testament Prophets" (1996: 375, 6) ZAW 108 362-77.

God Hates Fags?

I was genuinely blown away when I accidentally came across the website of Westboro Baptist Church the other day. It really is amazing, it depicts in the most blunt and explicit terms how totally depraved interpretations of God and his Gospel can be extracted from the Bible. It's as if the Bible is a beach of different coloured stones, and it's up to the interpreter to pick them up and rearrange them in what ever fashion he wants. The criteria for arrangement may well say as much about him and his culture as about the Bible itself.

So what is their central message? God hates you! Isn't that amazing? They actually consider it their God-given duty to tour America with placards, picketing military funerals and other symbolic events with the message that everyone (but them) are going to burn for an eternity in the lake of fire, where "their worm shall not die", in the most exquisite agony, in full display of the elect in heaven.

Not only is the message shocking and bemusing, but so is the professionalism of the website. Whoever did this is not an unintelligent red neck whose education consists in stacking shelves at Walmart.

The congregation is led by Fred Phelps, who defends his "profound theological statement" that "God hates fags" in a video clip here. You can watch clips of other members of his congregation (most of whom are relatives of his) defending the various placards they carry here. Here are some of the slogans they carry: "Thank God for 9/11", "God hates fags," "AIDS cures fags," and "Fags die, God laughs (or mocks)", "priests rape boys".

A full documentary of the man has been made here.

A great clip from a church sermon plus interview with Louis Theroux can be found here.

A new generation? Phelp's scary granddaughers are interviewed here.

What does this say about theological exegesis? One thing it does for me is emphasise the importance of 'ecclesial tradition' as a mediator of the gospel. From earliest times, Christian reading of the Bible was understood to be a 'ruled reading', in which a specific theological framework was already presupposed, the regula fidei or 'rule of faith'. This rule of faith, or the 'Gospel', was not understood to be an alien structure imposed onto the Bible, but a faithful summation of the content of the Bible, or perhaps better, the reality to which the Bible witnesses (its 'substance', as Childs puts it). The starting point of all our thinking is not an abstract commitment to a book, but our relationship with the resurrected Son of God. Through his eyes we turn to Scripture as his primary witness, and there starts the dialectical dance as wrestle with God (Israel=Yisra-'el) in hope and faith.

Fred Phelp's primary problem is not his biblical interpretation, it's the God he worships.

On the Extension of Prophetic Tradition

Having summarised the midrashic theories of prophetic extension as well as Zimmerli's influential theory of Fortschreibung (see my post yesterday), Childs (1996) looks at two more theories and then critiques the lot.

The theory of Editorial Redaction holds that texts are reworked by later editors in accordance with a particular perspective. Thus, H. Barth (1977) isolated an "Assyrian redaction" of the book of Isaiah during the period of Josiah. Though similar to Fortschreibung, the two approaches differ in emphasis. The major force evoking Fortschreibung is the desire for clarification of a text. The impulse is specific and text orientated, whereas in editorial redaction there is a shift in focus. The emphasis falls on the effect of changing sociological forces on the editors who then sought to harmonize and original text with their new perspectives through a systematic process of literary layering. Nevertheless, in both cases there is a core written tradition which is reinterpreted and extended, in which later historical perspectives are retrojected, and which requires critical reconstruction in order to disengage the levels.

Etiology has been used as a means of historical retrojection, understood as a particular form of causality. An etiological story is one which proceeds from observing an existing phenomenon in nature (Gen 19:26) or in the cult (32:32) which it links causally and retrospectively to an ancient occurrence in the primordial past. This form of explanation can be extended to entire redactional layers, O. Kaiser (1981), for example, claimed that a layer in Isaiah stressing divine retribution functions to etiologically explain a sociological change which occurred in the Persian or Greek era.

Despite the genuine contributions of these approaches, Childs outlines serious problems with each approach:

Fortschreibung

Despite Zimmerli's concern to retain a meaningful continuity along a developing trajectory, as exemplified in his Ezekiel commentary, younger scholars working with the same exegetical assumptions ended up deconstructing this theological continuity within the book of Ezekiel e.g. Garscha, 1974). Fortschreibung became absorbed within redactional criticism along with its emphasis on literary tension and discontinuity. Later, Greenberg (1983) argued that Ezekiel's style was from the beginning non-memetic and did not develop in a trajectory. Much of Zimmerli's hypothesis came to be seen as unproven.

Conceptual Rationalization and Literary Fragmentation

The problem with redactional analysis is that under the guise of diversity "the biblical text is subjected to the criteria of rigorous, conceptual coherence which has been defined according to modern conceptual categories" (369). The result is acute fragmentation accompanied by the lack anything even vaguely resembling a scholarly consensus. Though Childs accepts that major tensions are to be found, the crucial exegetical task remains how skillfully to handle the different kinds of tension present.

The Misapplication of the Term "Midrash"

In addition to pointing out that contemporary uses of the term "midrash" misunderstand its original function, Childs claims that theories of textual expansion which use the concept do not rest on a descriptive textual analysis, but on a prior theological value judgement respecting the content which equates a story with fantasy and illusion. Under the rubric of midrash a whole set of assumptions regarding the content of a story has been made which exceeds the task of tracking editorial redaction.

Theological Reductionism through Etiological Reconstructions

Within modern redactional criticism, the concept of etiological causality has been expanded, so that post factum events now function retrospectively as a means for explaining the growth of redactional layers. By reversing the direction of the main force of growth, Israel's history becomes a literary construct without genuine historical rootage.

Though Childs recognises the presence of post factum elements in the prophetic literature, he resists seeing this as the major force in the development of the entire prophetic tradition. He notes three exegetical implications:

1. Traditional historical controls for dating the material are weakened, as history is now simply a matter of patterns of events retrojected into the past.
2. The influence of Israel's religious faith on the shaping of the prophetic corpus has been largely subordinated to political, economic, and social factors which are deemed to be the only real forces at work in the world. The result is a massive demythologizing of the OT.
3. Retrospective redactional criticism presents a major threat to the theological substance of the Hebrew Bible. The literature which claims to be Israel's response to divine intervention is now rendered into ideological constructs of editors whose agenda is largely determined by wishful thinking or self-interest.

Childs concludes this section thus:

"The point is not to deny that human factors were at work, but the total impact of the prophetic literature calls into question this cynical evaluation of the whole" (372, italics mine).

What is this "impact of the whole" that leads Childs to a different understanding of the nature the whole? That is the subject of my next post: Temporal Sequence and Prophetic Dialectic (isn't that a juicy title?).

I understand that this post is highly condensed. I'd love for it to generate discussion, so please feel free to ask questions for clarification, or point out that Childs is missing the point and that this is really just a waste of time!

God, Moses and Scripture

In a recent comment, the following statement was made:

"... the Bible is not itself envisioned as an act of God, and the fact that the prophecies that the Bible contains are genuine does not make it so. In short, while Childs keeps pushing everything toward the "final form", the Bible itself locates revelation at the initial form, at the pre-textualized phase. I see nothing within Scripture to warrant associating revelation, inspiration, or God's authoring of something with the final form of the canon."

As I've come to see, Child's understanding of the authority of the Bible is far more nuanced that this. Though he claims that for the church the authority of Scripture lies at the level of the final form, the final form is authoritative in a derivative sense. As Childs said in 1972,

"... the formation of the canon in the first centuries of the Christian era testified to a fundamental understanding of the nature of the Christian faith. By tying the Christian faith to an authoritative body of Scripture the church sought to establish its truth in terms of both a historical and theological continuity with the prophets and apostles." (713, italics mine)

In other words, it is fundamental to our faith to affirm the inspiration and authority of the prophets and apostles as historical personages, rooted in time and space. This involves a commitment to the text as an intentional act of communication rather than a timeless text floating above history. The authority of the final form is derivative of the authority of the historical prophets and apostles.

The question arises as to the nature of the relationship between the texts that evolved from these historical sources and the sources themselves. Is it the task of theology to dig behind the accumulated tradition in order to uncover what these historical personages actually said?

I believe that the answer is 'no' and in this and forthcoming posts I will try to demonstrate why. Today I will look at the example of Moses in Deuteronomy (taken from Childs' Introduction pp. 132-135). Tomorrow I'll take this post further by looking at Childs' article"Retrospective Reading of the Old Testament Prophets" (1996) ZAW 108 362-77.

Here's what Childs has to say on Moses and the phenomenon of 'scripture':

"Within the Pentateuch, Moses' writing activity is closely tied to his mediatorial role in receiving the divine law at Sinai. Whereas God himself is portrayed as writing the decalogue (Ex. 34:1; Deut. 4:13; 10:4), Moses not only proclaims the 'words and ordinances' of God to the people (Ex. 24:3), but he is also commissioned to write them (v. 4; cf. 34:27). The significance of Moses' writing of the law receives its clearest formulation in Deut. 31. The context of the chapter is the impending death of Moses, and his commissioning of the writing of the law. Several crucial points are made in the chapter. The law, which derived from God's speaking to Moses, applies to every successive generation of Israel (31:11-13). It serves as a witness to God's will (v. 28). The law of God has now been transmitted for the future generations in the written form of scripture. It is placed next to the ark in book form to be read to the people periodically (10ff.). Indeed, the original role of Moses as the unique prophet of God (34:10) who proclaims the word of God as a witness (31:27ff.) will be performed by the book of the law in the future (31:26ff.). Moses will shortly die, but his formulation of the will of God will continue. Throughout the rest of the Old Testament the identification of the divine law with Moses' writing of it in a book is continued (Ezra 6:18; Neh. 13:1; II Chron. 25:4)." (133,4).

We thus see that within the divine economy provision is made for the for ongoing knowledge of the will of God, revealed to a prophet, yet safeguarded in a text. This text is understood to be sufficient for revealing God's will to future generations, without the need for the physical presence of the prophet.

Given Childs' commitment to the historical dimension of the text, a logical corollary of his commitment to a faith revealed to the prophets and apostles, how do we explain the historical evidence that the canonical form of the Pentateuch contains much material which is obviously later than the age of Moses?

In the context of Childs' essay, the main concern is to determine the canonical function of Mosaic authorship. As such, Childs does not focus attention on the historical question of 'how' the text got to its final form, preferring instead to focus on the significance of the fact that such a move was made ("The claim of Mosaic authorship functioned as a norm by which to text the tradition's authority").

In the light of the challenge posed above, however, namely that for Christians the Bible should function as an archive within which one must peal back the accretions to get to the real Moses, the question of the 'how' becomes important. If it is the case that our faith is based on the testimony of the prophets, are these later accretions legitimate?

This is the subject of my next post. For the meanwhile, it is interesting to note that in Childs' Introduction one possible historical scenario is posited: Perhaps the role of Moses was continued in an office and later persons accordingly added material in the name of Moses? Though Childs quickly brushes off the theory for lack of evidence, it is telling that at the level of the diachronic dimension he is committed to some form of theological continuity between the layers. It is the 'quality' of the relationship which counts.

The Hermeneutical Implications of the Canonical Shaping of the Pentateuch

To round off his presentation of the canonical shaping of the Pentateuch, Childs briefly sketches a few of the hermeneutical implications of this approach to Scripture:

1) First, the present shape of the Pentateuch is a theological witness which is lost if its shape is destroyed in order to reconstruct a chronological sequence. The present arrangement preserves a basic critical norm as to how the tradition was to be understood in the life of the people of God.

2) Divine revelation is not buried in past historical events which depend on recovery by archaeology in order to be made available to the church. Rather, the long history of the development of tradition reflects God's continuing revelation of Himself to His church which left its mark in the canonical shaping of the Pentateuch. The growth of the Pentateuch was not an arbitrary selection and arrangement by individuals apart from the ongoing life of the community of faith. The final shape of the Pentateuch is canonical, that is, normative for the life of faith, because it reflects the fullest form of the church's understanding of God's revelation.

3) The decisive factor in shaping the tradition was the concern to render it in a form so that it could be correctly understood and rightly appropriated by the succeeding generations of God's people. This is the role and function of canon. Scripture became the vehicle by which the original historical events were remembered, but also theologically interpreted to function as revelation for the generations yet unborn. The decisive hermeneutical role of canon was to guide the church in moving from the past to the present.

4) By taking seriously the canonical shape of the Old Testament the Christian interpreter suddenly discovers that he stands in the company of all the great Christian expositors of the past. Augustine, Luther, and Calvin, rather than being regarded as museum pieces of an uncritical age, are found to be wrestling with the fundamental issues of faith.

Childs concludes:

In the end, the goal of all our endeavors is that we interpret the Scripture so that men and woman will recognize in them the living Christ, and God willing, some will perhaps even testify: "Did not our hearts burn within us when He opened to us the Scriptures?" (722).

Description of the Canonical Shaping of the Pentateuch

According to Jewish tradition, the five books of the Pentateuch constitute a unity, designated as the "Torah", the "Torah of Moses", or the "Book of the Law of Moses". The tradition is ancient, assumed already in the Septuagint and all the Hebrew manuscripts.

Childs* asks whether this five-fold division actually belongs to the canonical tradition of the Old Testament itself or whether it was a post-Old Testament development. He looks to the redactional evidence.

First, it is quite clear that the five books were seen as separate entities by the final Biblical editor in spite of the continuity of the one story (Creation-Death of Moses). For example, though Exodus continues where Genesis left off, at the outset it recapitulates material from Genesis (Gen. 48.8ff) in order to form an introduction to the new book. There is similar evidence amongst the other books of both continuity of the story and integrity of each book.

In sum, there is clear editorial evidence to establish five divisions within the material

Childs goes to to ask whether there is editorial evidence to show a relationship in terms of content, beyond the formal aspect. It is clear that the three middle books share the same basic content, which has to do with the giving and receiving of the law by Moses at Sinai. This history at Sinai is given coherence by means of an explicit chronological sequence, and the event is both preceded and succeeded by accounts of the wanderings to Sinai and from Sinai. Though Genesis differs greatly in style and content to this central block (it speaks of a family, not a nation), the material is integrally connected with what follows in that it speaks of the promise of a posterity and a land. As such, Genesis was seen by the final redactor as the introduction to the story of Israel which began in Exodus. The final book in the collection, Deuteronomy, is also distinct in style (e.g. it is paranetic). Whatever its original role in the development of Israel's history, the editor understood Deuteronomy's role as a type of commentary to the preceding laws. In its new setting and period, Moses is emphasised as mediator and interpreter of the divine will. It is therefore in order that the Pentateuch closes with his death.

To summarize, the content of the five books evidences an intentional structuring of these books into a purposeful theological whole.

The full force of the concept of a 'Pentateuch' is emphasized when one realizes that the shape of this redaction is neither the natural nor the original historical order. Rather, the original tradition extended into the book of Joshua, forming a Hexateuch. The editors, however, decided that Deuteronomy should conclude the first part of the sacred tradition as the place where God made his will known to Israel. The stories which continue with Joshua are qualitatively distinguished from the Pentateuch in that the revelation of the will of God (Torah) is assumed to be known in Israel (Josh. 1.8).

Again, to summarize,

"the recognition of the Pentateuch as a special body of sacred tradition which constituted a whole is already testified to within the Old Testament itself. It needed only later tradition to formulate the terminology for a reality which it had received." (p. 717)

*"The Old Testament as the Scripture of the Church" Concordia Theological Monthly 43 D (1972) 709-22

Historical Criticism and the Reading of Scripture

In my post The Writing of Scripture I outlined the diachronic dimension the text as consisting of a 'canonical process', a theological process in which the various traditions and texts were shaped to provide a normative criticism for the ongoing life of the people of God. It's now time to look at a concrete example: the Pentateuch.

Writing in 1972*, Childs is more or less in agreement with the main insights of historical criticism regarding the makeup of the Pentateuch. Both Mosaic authorship and the simple historicity of its account are rejected in favour of the view that the Pentateuch reflected a long history of development through an oral and literary stage, parts of which history can be recovered through critical research.

Childs does not reject the conclusions of historical criticism. His distinctive claim, however, is that this historical approach to the literature is a distinct and different enterprise from studying the Pentateuch as the Scriptures of the church. Such a move is to read the text outside the perspective of the tradition, which is the perspective of faith. To replace the study of the canonical shape of the Pentateuch with a reconstruction of the literature's historical development is to confuse the historical with the theological task. Rather, as he says, "the present shape of the Pentateuch offers a particular interpretation - indeed confession - as to how the tradition was to be understood by the community of faith." (1972: 715). Therefore, as far as theology is concerned, it is important to describe the actual characteristics of the canonical shape and secondly to determine the theological significance of this shape.

My next post will look at Childs' description of the canonical shaping of the Pentateuch.

* "The Old Testament as Scripture of the Church" Concordia Theological Monthly 43 D (1972) 709-22

The Writing of Scripture

After a rather long excursus dealing with C. Seitz's article "In Accordance with Scripture" (the last of which, see here), I now return to my overarching project, which is to outline what a Christian heremeneutic might look like. The manifesto is here and the last post is here.

As I have tried to say so far, the Christian confession of faith postulates history as the arena within which God is unfolding his plans for the world. This plan involves God's creation of the world, his establishing within it a covenant people to be his instrument and witness, who then themselves, through Word and Spirit, are active within the world to bring about God's redemptive purposes (for a more classic formulation, check out Irenaeus' rule of faith).

The writing of Scripture, then, is an episode within this divine economy. Its function is to witness to this reality which is the life and sustenance of the church. Its authority for the covenant people of God lies in its ability to witness to this truth and to guide this people in terms of it. According to the Scripture itself, this relationship between God and his people is not static.
This very real, ongoing relationship 'outside' the text encompasses the process whereby the texts themselves are produced (from independent traditions to canonical Scripture). As such, 'authority' from a Christian perspective entails a diachronic dimension.

The result of this peculiar relationship between God and his people via Scripture is that the text has acquired its own theological dynamic. The process of collecting, interpreting and shaping the sacred traditions was primarily a theological one, in which the sacred heritage was shaped in such a way that it would be able to function as authoritative scripture for those who had not participated in the original events of revelation. It was a profoundly hermeneutic activity. An interpretive structure was given, contouring relationships between texts and setting the boundaries for later generations within which God's voice was to be heard. A “redactioned” or “ruled” reading of the texts, often characterised as “kerygmatic,” “confessional” or “canonical,” was thus required by later generations in order to hear God's word for a new day.

The closing of the canon fixed the shape of the text, focusing attention on the final form. After this point commentary became the accepted means of interpreting Scripture for changing needs.