"In Accordance with the Scriptures" #5: The Problem with the Jesus Seminar

Here I finally continue my thread focusing on Seitz's essay, "In Accordance with the Scriptures" (1998). My purpose is to demonstrate that the Old Testament is an indispensable witness to Jesus Christ, and thus forms the matrix within which he is to be comprehended. In order, the previous posts can be found here, here, here and here.

The problem with the "Jesus Seminar" is that is resists the force of the scriptures, as Paul and the creed mean that, on our understanding of Jesus, and consequently, it does not take seriously Jesus' relationship to God as imprinted by scripture's prior word and guided by that word's according potential. In order to understand the one who came to do the Father's will, we should assume that he took significant bearings from the scriptures of Israel, in exactly the public form we can now read them.

Historical investigation into Jesus is in itself not 'wrong'.One has every right to observe the root system of a tree. To do so, however, involves uprooting the tree itself. If, furthermore, one begins to insist that the tree is not as it should be, given the underground investigation, that the mature growth is a misunderstanding in need of correction by experts, or, more enticingly, that the underground tree is the tree itself, is the "historical tree", is that which should occupy our attention, that we have had things upside-down - then, Seitz claims, we are beginning to approach the logic of the Jesus Seminar.

The element of Jesus as requiring unveiling and discovery is not wrong, but has been translated and domesticated by the Jesus seminar and much historical-critical endeavour. It is not that Jesus is hidden behind the words about him, which must then be sifted to get at the "historical Jesus." It is, rather, that the words that tell about him simultaneously convey their inadequacy, in formal terms, because of the subject matter they are trying to reach. The very fourfoldness of the gospel record is a witness to the majestic difficulty of the endeavor of presenting Jesus as a character of time and space, fully man, fully God. But this is not an inadequacy that can be remedied through historical-critical heavy lifting, because it inheres with the subject matter itself, which is God in Christ - who exposes our inadequacy in trying to speak of him, and yet simultaneously remedies this through the work of the Holy Spirit in the church, allowing the frail testimony of human minds to be the lens on the glory of God, a touching of the ark of the covenant.

"In Accordance with the Scriptures" #4: Jewish Scripture and the Meaning of the Messiah's Resurrection

In my last post in this series, I quoted Seitz as saying that Paul's understanding of the resurrection was part of a "broader skein of convictions". I now hope to demonstrate this.

Within in the larger context of 1 Corinthians 15 we see that Christ's resurrection is precisely not significant because it is a singular event. Others had already been raised from the dead (Lazarus), or were believed to be resurrected (Elijah, John the Baptist). The phrase "in accordance with the Scriptures" stipulates how we are to understand this specific raising.

In vv. 12 - 28 Paul focuses on the fact of Jesus' resurrection - not as a fact unto itself - but as a fact inextricably related to the general resurrection of those united to his death and rising in baptism. This is of supreme relevance to his Corinthian addressees, who believed in his resurrection but felt it was of no relevance to them. Paul turns to the scriptures as the place where the answers can be found about what God is presently doing in Jesus and in those baptized into his death. If, "according to the scriptures" all died in Adam, then the reverse would equally be true and in accord with scripture: that Jesus Christ was the new Adam in whom all would be made alive. Christ's rising was not an isolated harvest, but the firstfruits of a much broader harvest, to which those in him would belong. Furthermore, Jesus' death and resurrection "in accordance with the scriptures" means that those in Christ are presently living between two times: the time of Christ as firstfruits, and the final time, when those who belong to Christ will be united with him at his coming again.

So what happens during this meantime? In order to understand what Jesus' resurrection entails, Paul searches scripture for clues. He discovers a 'meantime scenario': The meantime is a time when God puts all things in subjection to Christ. Then at the end Christ will hand the kingdom over to God the Father. For Paul, "in accordance with the scriptures" means that Christ's death and resurrection have implications whose lineaments can be seen in scripture. This is most clear in the motif of God's subjecting all things to Christ, with the exception of God himself. Here Paul explicitly takes his bearings from scripture (v.27):

But when it says [citing Ps. 8.6] "All things are put in subjection," it is plain that this does not include the one one who put all things in subjection under him"

Then, in v. 28, Paul explains the final significance of Christ's rising:

"When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to the one who put all things in subjection under him, so that God may be all in all.

To say that Christ rose again in "accordance with the scriptures" is at its heart a statement about God's long-range plans, with Christ, on our behalf, as this has been set forth in scripture. To quote Seitz:

"It is not that a straight line moves from the Old Testament to Christ in some mechanical fashion. Rather, we comprehend what God is doing in Christ right now and to eternity by returning to the Old Testament and seeking to find within its manifold testamony accordance with what we are coming to know about God in Christ. Once again we are brought up against the reality that the Old Testament, as Christian scripture, is not just before Jesus, but after him as well. It is both B.C and A.D., because Jesus lives in relationship to the Father, to Israel, and to the world; and the Father has set forth his broader plans for the world in his word to Israel, plans at whose center stands Christ. For an understanding of Christ's present rule and relationship to God, from the moment of God's raising him from the dead to that final point when God is all in all, it was necessary to search a first testament to learn about last things." (Seitz, 1998: 57)

"In Accordance with the Scriptures" #3: Jesus and the Plan of God

Though you can read this post independently, it's part three of a sub-thread starting here and then here.

So what does it mean when Paul asserts that what he received of first importance was that Christ had died and been raised in accordance with the scriptures 1 Corinthians 15? Seitz claims that we need to get the sense of direction right:

"It was not so much that a straight line pushed forward from the Old Testament to Jesus' death and resurrection and could compel faith on those terms - which it failed to do in the instance of Judaism. ... Rather, in the light of Jesus' death and resurrection, the inherited scriptures were seen from a different angle. They did not predict his death and resurrection in some straightforward manner - the creed does not say that. Rather, his death and resurrection accord with, are congruent with, scripture. This accordance is not about scattered proof texts, but about a much broader skein of convictions. In a word, these involve God: the agency of God, the relationship of God to Jesus, and the present life of Jesus in relationship to the Father until the Second Coming. ... To speak of God raising Jesus is to ask how such raising fits into a larger scriptural depiction of God's plans with the world" (pp. 52, 55).

This becomes clear when one follows Paul's larger argument in 1 Corinthians 15. But more on that next time ...

(sorry, time's short: I've just discovered that I'm to be the tutorial assistant for Hebrew, which means more work [aaagh] and more money [mmmmm]!).

"In Accordance with the Scriptures" #2: One possible understanding

What does the Nicene Creed mean when it says, “and the third day he rose again according to the scriptures”? The phrase means: consistent with the plain-sense claims of the Old Testament. So why doesn't the Creed simply say “and he rose again in accordance with the Old Testament”, seeing that the Creed is late enough to presuppose a two-testament canon of scripture? Seitz points out that it is here, more then anywhere else, that we see the exegetical character of the Creed. The phrase is derived from 1 Corinthians 15:4 - 3, where Paul says:

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures

Although other lines from the Creed are based on the claims of scripture, both New Testament and Old, this line is a direct quotation. In this sense the line is unique in the Creed, as it quotes from New Testament scripture a confession grounded through Old Testament accordance.

But what does the phrase "and he rose again in accordance with the scriptures" actually mean?

One usual explanation is that the episodes conjoined with the phrase (i.e. Jesus' death, burial, resurrection) were the ones most demanding careful defense in the face of criticism from faithful Jews who claimed that their scriptures spoke otherwise. In the face of a scriptural legacy everywhere seen to be God's very word, the Church was faced with the challenge of what to do with Jesus. In this sort of climate, the Creed asserts that the stickiest moments in the life and ministry of Jesus were fully congruent with the Old Testament and its presentation of the Christ to come. Isaiah 53:5 - 12 had spoken of an expiatory death; Hosea 6:2 and Psalm 16:10 are likewise pressed into service as proof texts from the Old Testament, demonstrations that Jesus' death and raising were "in accordance with the scriptures".

Seitz doesn't dispute this way of understanding the character of scriptural accordance, but he does believe that it is exegetically too narrow and theologically too functional a view of the matter. The problem with the idea that the congruence between Jesus' resurrection and the plain sense of scripture is a matter of collecting scattered proof texts is that it fails to understand what is at stake in Paul's larger argument in 1 Corinthians 15, where the phrases appear.

Stay tuned to find out why!