Tabernacle and New Creation

A great quote:

"Exodus concludes with God’s coming to his tabernacle to dwell there (40:34–38). God’s occasional appearances to Israel have now yielded to his permanent presence in their midst. And the tabernacle moves with them wherever they go; God journeys with his people. But the tabernacle suggests much more than this: it is an emblem of the full restoration of God’s presence within the whole of his creation, just as he originally intended:

At this small, lonely place in the midst of the chaos of the wilderness, a new creation comes into being. In the midst of disorder there is order. The tabernacle is the world order as God intended writ small in Israel. The priests of the sanctuary going about their appointed courses is like everything in creation performing its liturgical service—the sun, the trees, human beings. The people of Israel carefully encamped around the tabernacle in their midst constitutes the beginnings of God’s bringing creation back to what it was originally intended to be. The tabernacle is a realization of God’s created order in history; both reflect the glory of God in their midst.

Moreover, this microcosm of creation is the beginning of a macrocosmic effort on God’s part. In and through this people, God is on the move to a new creation for all. God’s presence in the tabernacle is a statement about God’s intended presence in the entire world. The glory manifest there is to stream out into the larger world. The shining of Moses’ face in the wake of the experience of the divine glory … is to become characteristic of Israel as a whole, a radiating out into the larger world of those glorious effects of God’s dwelling among Israel. As a kingdom of priests, … they have a role of mediating this glory to the entire cosmos." [*] [**]

[*]Terence E. Fretheim, Exodus (Interpretation; Louisville: John Knox, 1991), 271-272.

[**]Bartholomew, C. G., & Goheen, M. W. (2004). The drama of Scripture: Finding our place in the biblical story (72). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.

Those Hasidim ...

"He is a remarkable man," my father murmured. "They are remarkable people. There is so much about them that is distasteful to me. But they are remarkable people."

"I wish they weren't so afraid of new ideas."

"You want a great deal, Reuven. The Messiah has not yet come. Will new ideas enable them to go on singing and dancing?"

"We can't ignore the truth, abba."

"No," he said. "We cannot ignore the truth. At the same time, we cannot quite sing and dance as they do." He was silent a moment. "That is the dilemma of our time, Reuven. I do not know what the answer is."

Chaim Potok, The Promise (Anchor Books, 1969; 1997), 312.

Passionszeitzitate

Heute ist Karsamstag, der letze Tag der Passionszeit. Unten sind Zitate die mir entweder besonders angesprochen haben oder mir zum Nachdenken gebracht haben:

Menschen gehen zu Gott,
in ihrer Not,
flehen um Hilfe,
bitten um Glück und Brot,
um Errettung aus Krankheit,
Schuld und Tod.
So tun sie all, alle,
Christen und Heiden.

Menschen gehen zu Gott
in Seiner Not,
finden ihn arm, geschmäht,
ohne Obdach und Brot,
sehn ihn verschlungen von Sünde,
Schwachheit und Tod.
Christen stehen bei Gott
in Seinen Leiden.

Gott geht zu allen Menschen
in ihrer Not,
sättigt den Leib und die Seele
mit Seinem Brot,
stirbt für Christen und Heiden
den Kreuzestod,
und vergibt ihnen beiden.

DIETRICH BONHOEFFER

Seid so unter euch gesinnt, wie es auch der Gemenschaft in Christus entspricht:

Er, der in göttlicher Gestalt war, hielt es nicht für einen Raub, Gott gleich zu sein, sonder entäußerte sich selbst und nahm Knechtsgestalt an, ward den Menschen gleich und der Erscheinung nach als Mensch erkannt.

Er erniedrigte sich selbst und ward gehorsam bis zum Tode, ja zum Tode am Kreuz.

Darum hat ihn auch Gott erhöht und hat ihm den namen gegeben, der über alle Namen ist, daß in dem Namen Jesu sich beugen sollen aller derer Knie, dei im Himmel und auf Erden und unter der Erde sind, und alle Zunge n bekennen sollen, daß Jesus Christus der Herr ist, zur Ehre Gottes, des Vaters.

PHILIPPERBREIF 2, 5-11.

Laßt uns alle vor seinem Kreuze schweigen; wir alle sind anders als er und sind vor ihm alle schulding.

STEFAN ANDREAS

Stirb mit dem, der lebt, daß du auferstehst mit dem, der gestorben ist, und lebst mit dem, der auferstanden ist.

RAPHAEL ROMBACH

Seine Gerechtigkeit gegen mich hätte ich begriffen, seine übermäßige Liebe ist unbegreiflich.

STEFAN ANDREAS

Das Kreuz Christi ist eine Last von der Art, wie es die Flügel für die Vögel sind. Sie tragen aufwärts.

BERNHARD VON CLAIRVAUX

Golgotha

Drei Räuber
kreuzigt man heute
auf Golgoth:

Der linke nahm mir mein Geld
der rechte nahm mir mein Gut
der in der Mitte nahm mir meine Schuld.

Auf Golgotha
kreuzigt man heute
drei Räuber.

LOTHAR ZENETTI

Der den Wein austeilt, / muß essig trinken.
Der die Hand nicht hebt zur Abwehr, / wird geschlagen.

Der den Verlassenen sucht, / wird verlassen.
Der nicht schreien macht, / schreit überlaut.

Der die Wunde heilt, / wird durchbohrt.
Der den Wurm rettet, / wird zertreten.

Der nicht verfolgt, hicht verrät, / wird ausgeliefert.
Der nicht schuld ist, der Unschuldige / wird gequält.

Der lebendig macht, / wird geschlachtet.
Der die Henker begnadigt, / stirbt gnadenlos.

RODOLF OTTO WIEMER.

Canon and the fullness of extrinsic reality

In response to James Barr's (and thus proleptically to all those who only read Childs through the lens of Barr) accusation that Childs opposes every extrinsic historical reconstruction as a vantage point for interpretation and thus severs the Old Testament from all extrinsic reality, Childs has the following to say:

I certainly confirm that Israel's faith was grounded in anterior reality. First in oral tradition and subsequently in written form Israel bore testimony to God's redemptive intervention on its behalf. These events of divine deliverance were not simply recorded, but continually re-interpreted throughout history. Israel actively shaped its traditions while at the same time being formed by the very material being transmitted.

Because of of the peculiar nature of Israel's tradition which is reflected in the multi-layered testimony of the canonical text to this sacred history, there is no direct access to the fullness of that extrinsic reality on which the faith was grounded apart from Israel's own testimony. One important purpose of establishing a normative canon was to mark the special relationship of the community to these witnesses.

... The central point to be made is that the nature of Israel's testimony to historical events varies greatly and that extrinsic reality can be represented in innumerable ways ... . [*]

The key word here is fullness. Mark it well.

Does anyone else's heart "burn within them" when they read this?

[*]Childs, "Response to reviewers of Introduction to the OT as Scripture," Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 16 (1980), 52-60; here, 57 [ATLAS has a free pdf of the responses and Childs' response]

Quote of the day: Exegesis in the "old" and the "new" age

My apologies for the lack of posting recently; what with the "excitement" of the Gaza conflict and a new stage in my own studies I've been finding it hard to tend to this blog. I intend to start a thread soon analysing Chris Seitz's recent Prophecy and Hermeneutics (Childs considers it a groundbreaker, though I believe he had already broken the ground). Till then, another delicious quote:

The biblical exegete is forced to hear testimony from inside and outside the community of faith because he lives in both worlds. He dare not destroy the canonical witness by forcing it into the mold of the 'old age', nore dare he construct out of the canonical witness a world of myth safely relegated to the distant past. Rather, he confesses his participation in the community of faith by 'searching the scriptures'. He seeks to share the bread of life with the church through the testimony of scripture. He remains open in anticipation to those moments when the Spirit of God resolves the tension and bridges the gap between faith and history.

Childs, Exodus, 302.

Zitat des Tages: Kunst feiert

"Kunst feiert. Kunst entgrenzt und öffnet Türen zu einem Überfluß von Gedanken und Gefühl. Kunst ist eine Schwester des Festes. Ein Glaube ohne Feste steht im Verdacht, der Gnade nicht zu glauben. Ein Beschenkter kann seine Arbeit ruhen lassen und feiern. Kunst-Pausen, Oasen, Stationen auf dem Weg zu dem einen großen Fest."

Oliver Kohler

When do the fireworks begin?

Attention to canon is not the end but only the beginning of exegesis. It prepares the stage for the real performance by clearing away unnecessary distractions and directing the audience's attention to the main show which is about to be experienced.

B.S. Childs, "The Canonical Shape of the Prophetic Literature, " Interpretation 32 (1978), 46-55; here, 55.

Vermutung

Du bist gekommen, Gottlose zu retten -
also rettest Du mich?

FRIEDRICH SCHWANECKE

Quote of the day: A strange irony

It is a strange irony that those examples of biblical interpretation in the past which have truly immersed themselves in a specific concrete historical context, such as Luther in Saxony, retain the greatest value as models for the future actualization of the biblical text in a completely different world. Conversely those biblical commentators who laid claim to an objective, scientific explanation of what the text really meant, often appear as uninteresting museum pieces to the next generation.

Childs, Biblical Theology, 88.

Quote of the Day: a theological and literary force ...

A major literary and theological force was at work in shaping the present form of the Hebrew Bible by which prophetic oracles directed to one generation were fashioned in Sacred Scripture by a canonical process to be used by another generation [*]

What is this force?

[*] B.S. Childs, "The Canonical Shape of the Prophetic Literature" (1978)

A Quote from the Pope: What has Jesus brought?

My wife kindly bought me an interesting gift recently, Pope Benedict XVI's Jesus on CD (14 hours long!). Reactions to the book depend on where one stands in the theological spectrum. The pastor of my Free Evangelical Church loves it ("wir haben einen evengelikalen Papst!" he's cried from the pulpit). Those of a more critical bent, such as the professors in the Catholic faculty here in Bonn, can't stand it (they interestingly compare his approach with Childs' canonical approach). I'm sure, in that case, I'll love it. Either way, it'll help me survive the hours of sitting on a beach which the second part of our holiday will entail.

Here's a great excerpt from the book, printed on the CD cover:

... the great question that will be with us throughout this entire [audio]book: But what has Jesus really brought, then, if he has not brought world peace, universal prosperity, and a better world? What has he brought? The answer is very simple: God. He has brought God! He has brought the God who once gradually unveiled his countenance first to Abraham, then to Moses and the prophets, and then in the wisdom literature - the God who showed his face only in Israel, even though he was also honored among the pagans in various shadowy guises. It is this God, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, the true God, whom he has brought to the peoples of the earth. He has brought God, and now we know his face, now we can call upon him. Now we know the path that we human beings have to take in this world. Jesus has brought God and with God the truth about where we are going and where we come from: faith, hope, and love.

Childs on Scripture/Incarnation

I'm back from my brief sojourn in the Ardennes, Belgium. Apart from illness and thunderstorms it was a pleasant retreat. I've only got a few minutes before I dash off to a birthday party so a quick quote by the illustrious Childs (pbuh) on the subtle dialectic between historical-criticism of the Bible and the Bible as a witness to God. It's things like this that make my mouth water ...

The Bible in its human, fully time-conditioned form, functions theologically for the church as a witness to God's divine revelation in Jesus Christ. The church confesses that in this human form, the Holy Spirit unlocks its truthful message to its hearers in the mystery of faith. This theological reading cannot be simply fused with a historical reconstruction of the biblical text, nor conversely, neither can it separated. This is to say, the Bible's witness to the creative and salvific activity of God in time and space cannot be encompassed within the categories of historical criticism whose approach filters out this very kerygmatic dimension of God's activity. In a word, the divine and human dimensions remain inseparably intertwined, but in a highly profound, theological manner. Its ontological relation finds its closest analogy in the incarnation of Jesus Christ, truly man and truly God. [*]

I feel like some quotes are like ripe peaches packed with health and juiciness. You just have squeeze them for a while and all manner of goodness oozes out. Or am I just weird? Does anyone know another doctrine of Scripture - or a compact summary thereof - that can produce such joy?

[*] B.S. Childs, "The Canon in Recent Biblical Studies: Reflections on an Era," Pro Ecclesia 14 (2005): 44-45

The Truth of Christianity and a newly discovered blog

I was delighted to receive a comment from a certain Sister Macrina Walker, ocso, a Cistercian monastic of Koningsoord Abbey in the Netherlands. Not only is she well informed concerning good BelgianTrappist beer, she has her own blog, A Vow of Conversation. According to the "About" section, she has "questions about the role of tradition in theology and became increasingly aware of the shortcomings of a typically Western modern-cum-postmodern theology that is cut of from the life of faith and the tradition of the Church." She's particular interested in the Church Fathers, with a completed thread dealing with the Syrian Fathers here (she also links to a fascinating Syrian Encylopaedia , the WikiSyriaca, here).

If that isn't enough to make her blog worth reading, she also happens to be a big fan of Andrew Lowth, a scholar whose significance I am slowly beginning to grasp.

As always, it's Brevard Childs who got me onto the Lowth trail. Childs' later work was dedicated to finding continuity in the Christian tradition, evidence of a theological force creating a Wirkungsgeschichte with a certain profile. Key is the centrality of the hermeneutical category of allegory and the distinction between a literal and a spiritual sense to Christian scripture. It is Childs' influence by Karl Barth - especially his understanding of Scripture as "witness" - that enabled continuity between Childs' historical critical, canonical, and later ... well ... "theological" exegesis.

It's so incarnational it hurts. In a nice way.

Here's a great Lowth quote, taken from Sister Macrina Walker's personal introduction:

For the truth that lies at the heart of theology is not something there to be discovered, but something, or rather someone, to whom we must surrender. The mystery of faith is not ultimately something that invites our questioning, but something that questions us.

Andrew Louth, Discerning the Mystery. An Essay on the Nature of Theology (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983) 95.

Quote of the Day: The shock of God's actuality

All the reasons given for crediting the proposition "God exists" cannot prepare one for the shock of His actuality. The Gospel administers this shocking mystery. Woe to theology [or historiography or hermeneutics] if it provide metaphysical insulation against it!

Julian N. Hartt, A Christian Critique of American Culture (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 144.

Quote of the Day: Childs on the Third Quest for the Historical Jesus

One of the great ironies of the so-called third quest for the historical Jesus, which is presently a fad in many academic circles, is that the same old heresies raised first in the nineteenth century are again surfacing in dreary monotony

B.S. Childs, "Interpreting the Bible amid Cultural Change," Theology Today 54 (1997): 200-11, here 211.

Quote of the Day: Theopoetics

Before the message there must be the vision,
before the sermon the hymn, before the prose the poem.

The structures of faith and confession have always rested on hierophanies and images.

From Wilder's Theopoetics.

Reminds me of this quote on our contemporary poetry wilderness.

What is "biblical" preaching?

A sermon is not truly biblical unless the preacher moves through the text to engage its true subject matter. Only when one proceeds from, say, Paul's understanding of faith to Christian faith itself, can a bridge from the past to the present be made.

B.S. Childs, "One Gospel in Four Witnesses," in The Rule of Faith (Harrisburg: Morehouse Publishers, 1998), 51-62. Available online here (along with some other brilliant essays).

The Challenge of the Christian Interpreter

The Challenge of the Christian interpreter in our day is to hear the full range of notes within all of Scripture, to wrestle with the theological implication of this biblical witness, and, above all, to come to grips with the agony of our age before a living God who still speaks through the Prophets and Apostles.

B.S. Childs, "Psalm 8 in the Context of the Christian Canon," 20.

Poetry Wilderness

“The poetic imagination is marginal within our dominant scientific culture. This tends towards a deadening literalism. In most traditional societies, poetry, myth, song and music were central to the culture. In our society these have often been reduced to entertainment. The hunger for the transcendent is still there in the human heart. As St. Augustine said, it is restless until it rests in God. But in our postmodern society it is harder for the preacher to evoke that ultimate human destiny which transcends our words. Few preachers are poets. I am not. But if the preaching of the word is to flourish, then we need poets and artists, singers and musicians who keep alive the intuition of our ultimate destiny. The Church needs these singers of the transcendent to nurture her life and her preaching.”

(Timothy Radcliffe OP, ”The Sacramentality of the Word,” in LITURGY IN A POSTMODERN WORLD, pp.133-147, here p.145)

On Thinking for Oneself

Schopenhauer was known for his succinct aphorisms. As I go about trying to write a viable thesis proposal, the following quote serves me as a humble reminder of what true learning is about. I think I may have committed the sin against the 'Holy Ghost' more than once ...

"Just as the largest library, badly arranged, is not so useful as a very moderate one that is well arranged, so the greatest amount of knowledge, if not elaborated by our own thoughts, is worth much less than a far smaller volume that has been abundantly and repeatedly thought over. For only by universally combining what we know, by comparing every truth with every other, do we fully assimilate our own knowledge and get it into our power. We can think over only what we know, and so we should learn something; but we know only what we have thought out.

... [knowledge] is ...a hundred times more valuable if we have arrived at it through our own original thinking [rather than having read it in a book]. Only then does it enter into the whole system of our ideas as an integral part and living member. Only then is it completely and firmly connected therewith, is understood in all its grounds and consequents, bears the colour, tone, and stamp of our whole mode of thought, has come at the very time when the need for it was keen, is therefore firmly established and cannot pass away. Accordingly, Goethe's verse here finds its most perfect application and even explanation:

"What from your fathers' heritage is lent,

Earn it anew, really to posses it!" "

Isn't that beautiful and challenging at the same time?

As for comments, I'm sorry for the late reply. I've replied to "In Accordance with the Scriptures", the rest will have to wait till tomorrow I'm afraid.

I should also add that the "In Accordance" series is not finished, there's one more coming on the implications for 'quests for the historical Jesus'.