The heart of the Gospel is ontological

I named this blog "narrative and ontology" because of my interest in theological hermeneutics and my conviction that the church needs to emphasize both of these dimensions of Scripture. The text is kerygmatic, proclamatory, verbal discourse designed to do something. And the thing it does is point beyond itself to a reality, a "real" reality, something "ontological" and not just existential, psychological, or sociological. But at the end of the day, it's not the Bible but this reality that really matters. The Bible itself points beyond itself to what Childs called its "substance," its Sachverhalt, its res (Childs considers Biblical intertextuality to be "deictic"). Without the ontology the narrative is meaningless and I personally would lose all interest in the Bible.

So what is the Sache? I usually attempt to answer this by reference to the Church's traditional rule of faith. For an extended discussion on this go here. However, I read a quote this morning and then heard a sermon this afternoon which I think gets to the Sache (gets to the "point") far more succinctly. The quote is by Herman Bavinck:

The essence of the Christian religion consists therein: that the creation of the Father, destroyed by sin, is again restored in the death of the Son of God and recreated by the grace of the Holy Spirit to a Kingdom of God

Here, the substance of the Christian - I would say Biblical - faith really is ontological. It has to do with being. An eschatological being, perhaps, one that explodes all our current categories, but being nonetheless.

I then heard an impassioned sermon on this subject, fittingly preached on Easter Sunday, the day of the Resurrection. It's about Heaven, and Heaven is "Real." The preacher is Phil Hill and the congregation is the Arab Local Baptist Church in Nazareth. You can listen to it here.

[P.S. For thoughts on this issue in relation to the Piss Christ, go here].

An Eastern Orthodox approach to Scripture

The blog Ora et Labora, authored by an Eastern Orthodox priest, has two interesting posts on the Orthodox approach to Scripture and Tradition. They consist of a translation of a Russian article written by Saint Hilarion (Troitsky), Archbishop of Verey (+1929). It is clearly written and contains much that is worth reading, especially for Protestants such as myself. Here are the two instalments:

Holy Scripture, the Church, and Scholarship I
Holy Scripture, the Church, and Scholarship II

(I've been told that there are two more posts in the pipeline)

A dialogue seems to be brewing on the second post between myself and the well-informed Orthodox blogger Kevin Edgecomb. My main issue turns on Hilarion's accusation that Protestants have lost Holy Scripture in their attempt to read it outside of the church, because the subjectivity of their unregenerate minds (my phrase) has simply produced a cacophony of interpretations which have little to do with the message the Spirit himself originally wished to communicate. The remedy to this is to interpret the texts within the context of church tradition, in strict non-contradiction of its established doctrine (which, Kevin has informed me, is as inspired as Scripture itself).

I can largely go along with this (except that Scripture ought still function as a critical norm), as I have posted on numerous occasions (see, e.g., my post: The relationship between exegesis and dogma, though I do wonder whether traditional Protestant and Orthodox theology are so radically different ...). My issue is with the apparent certainty that Hilarion believes Ecclesial tradition guarantees the interpreter of Scripture. He says that one can recite the whole of Scripture off by heart and still be far from salvation. True. But doesn't this also apply to Church Tradition? Surely one can recite all the creeds and Church Fathers off by heart and still be far from salvation. That is because salvation depends on one grasping the substance to which these various forms of witness point and not on the form of the witness itself. Neither Scripture nor Tradition guarantees our salvation, but the living Christ alone, who, in the Spirit, reaches out to us through Scripture and Tradition (and other media too, I believe) and creates the necessary epistemological conditions for a life lived in the mystery of the Gospel. As Hilarion rightly says (with my addition in parenthesis ... if I may be excused for supplementing a saint!):

[Either a] book [or tradition] ... could not and cannot save mankind. Christ is not a teacher, but precisely the Savior.

In short:

1) the accusation of subjectivity cuts both ways;

2) it's not about the Bible nor about Tradition, it's about the living Jesus.

For two related threads, see my translation of an article on the regula fidei by Bengt Hägglund and my unfinished thread: Faithful and Critical Exegesis. The series of video lectures on this issue by leading Lutheran theologian Robert Jenson is also relevant to this, though I still haven't listened to them yet.

Video of Jenson on Scripture and the regula fidei

Robert Jenson recently held a series of lectures at the University of Otago on that most important of all subjects: "The Regula Fidei and Scripture." Of course, this caused convulsions of frustration on my part as I'm in Germany and not Otago, but luckily Jason Goroncy of the marvelous blog Per Crucem ad Lucem as not only given us a detailed summary of each lecture (along with his own thoughts), he has provided links to the videos thereof. You can find them in his post Robert Jenson: The 2009 Burns Lectures. Joy is the word that first comes to mind :)

Here are Jason's own summaries:

Lecture 1: Creed, Scripture, and Their Modern Alienation
Lecture 2: The Tanakh as Christian Scripture
Lecture 3: The New Testament and the Regula Fidei
Lecture 4: The Apostles’ Creed
Lecture 5: The Creed as Critical Theory of Scripture
Lecture 6: Genesis 1:1 and Luke 1:26-38

Here are the video podcasts of those lectures, available for download as MP4s:

Lecture 1: Creed, Scripture, and their Modern Alienation
Lecture 2: The Tanakh as Christian Scripture
Lecture 3: The New Testament and the Regula Fidei
Lecture 4: The Apostles’ Creed
Lecture 5: The Creed as Critical Theory of Scripture
Lecture 6: Genesis 1:1 and Luke 1:26-38

For an interesting analysis of the meaning of the "rule of faith" for the earlier church (an analysis with influenced Brevard Childs), see my thread B. Hägglund on the regula fidei.

Brueggemann on "canonical interpretation"

Canonical interpretation never gives an absolute grid for interpretation. It only permits us to find a reading through which we can be faithful. There is no eternal interpretation, so single "meaning." There is only timeless literature and timeful readings, and these together comprise canonical interpretation.[*]

I wonder how Childs' concept of the Holy Spirit, the coercion of the text, and the significance of the regula fidei fit into this?

[*] W. Brueggemann, "Canonization and Contextualization," in Interpretation and Obedience. From Faithful Reading to Faithful Living (Minneapolis, 1991), 119-142; here, 131.

History and ontology as the subject of Scripture

This post continues my analysis of Christopher Seitz's recently published Prophecy and Hermeneutics. Each post can be read on its own, but it may be best to read them together. For an overview go here.

Seitz's central theological category for thinking about the subject matter of Scripture is “time.” His understanding of time, however, breaks with the traditional Enlightenment model which understands time in terms of “discrete and particularized periods” (35). For the earlier critics since Gabler, “Time becomes history, with a special character and with tremendous expectations placed on it theologically and more generally” (35). Though Seitz wishes to maintain the theological significance of time, he rejects this Enlightenment model and strives to return to an earlier model:

An interest in temporality had of course always marked interpretation of the Bible as a theological and dogmatic endeavor, but it was directly related to more decisive claims about the character of God. … Time was previously understood according to not just economic but also immanent and ontological considerations, and these were seen as subsisting together in , and revealed by, a complex network of scriptural senses (35).

This more ancient understanding of time is more in line with that of the Bible, which wishes to witness to the “history of the prophetic word in Israel and the world, under God's providential care and final purpose” (219). This has hermeneutical implications for the late-modern interpreter. We need to go back to school, as it were, a rediscover

a form of historical interpretation of the prophets that will … try to comprehend just how the prophetic canon is offering its own very sophisticated version of history (72).

Seitz's thesis about the nature of Biblical history is that it is inherently figural. The Bible does not overly emphasise the particular nature of temporally discrete periods, rather it coordinates them according to “a theological account of the significance of history, seen from the perspective of several centuries” (50). I will discuss the hermeneutical implications of this insight into the “coordinated” nature of the text in another post. For now, I want to focus on the broader “comprehensive theological account” afforded by the Bible's canonical view of history as the goal of exegesis.

According to Seitz, the messengers of God's word are “participant[s] in a drama larger than [themselves]” (245); they belong to “to a larger history and sweep than they as individuals were able to recognize at the time” (242). The function of secondary levels of tradition is to “figure” these “elected agents” into this larger theological reality. The deeds, words, and events of the prophet's lifetime are understood within the broader context of God's providence, within “a larger history of God's ways with his people” (190).

I will focus on the way in which the Bible does this in a later post. My next post will give examples of the theological reality to which the “consolidated witness” (17) of Scripture is pointing.

P.S. For a more philosophical analysis of the problem of "time," especially as understood by the Venerable Bede and the Enlightenment, see the two fascinating posts by Tim F. of The Moving Image. The first is Rome Paper Part 1, the second Scripture and History. I posted a tantalizing excerpt here.

The real context of Scripture

Yesterday I posted on the true ecosystem within which each Biblical pericope finds its place. This quote, one of my favourites, talks of the true context of the of the Bible as a whole, according to ancient Christian understanding:

... classical scriptural interpretation proceeded from a rich and complex sense of Scripture's place and role within the economy of salvation; Scripture functions as a quasi-sacramental instrument of the Holy Spirit, through which the Spirit makes known the mystery of Christ in order to form the church as a sign of his messianic dominion. The church's knowledge of Scripture as inspired has therefore interpretive consequences; it calls for a specific art, or perhaps a concatenation of arts, of faithful reading, exposition, and application by which Christ is glorified and the church built up in its distinctive life and mission.

D.G. Yeago, “The Spirit, the Church, and the Scriptures: Biblical Interpretation and Interpretation Revisited,” in Knowing the Triune God: The Work of the Spirit in the Practices of the Church (ed. J.J. Buckley and D.S. Yeago; Grand Rapids/Cambridge: Eerdmanns, 2001) 49-93; here, 51; cited in Stephen Chapman, “Reclaiming Inspiration for the Bible,” 193

Divine revelation: text or reality?

Is the Bible itself God's revelation, or does it just point to God's revelation? If it is just a pointer, and not the reality itself, then is it dispensable? But what if it is the only medium adequate to the subject matter it is trying to broker? What if there is no other way to make revelation known? What if Scripture as text has been elected by God himself to play a central role in his unfolding plan of salvation? Would there be any justification in calling the Bible itself God's revelation? Is there a more accurate terminology to keep the different nuances in check?

This doesn't seem to be a recent "Protestant" issue, as the early church itself used a similar term in an ambiguous way: the "rule of faith/truth" (regula fidei/veritatis). Here's B. Hägglund's summary:

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." (My translation; for the full context go here).

Perhaps one of the better attempts to formulate this tension is Karl Barth's theory of "the three time's of the Word" (or das Wort Gottes in seiner dreifachen Gestalt). Here's Diem's summary of the three forms of God's revelation:

(1) the present preaching of the Church as related to the word of Scripture and referred to it as a norm; (2) the witness of Apostles and Prophets as contained in the canon of Scripture to the Word of God; and (3) the Word of God itself as revelation. (Diem, Dogmatics, pp. 57-58).

How else can we formulate the relation between each stage? It should be pointed out that for Barth, God is the speaking subject in each phase and his revelation has the character of an active force, one that convicts our consciences and shows us that we can also be part of God's story.

Related posts: Mishna as revelation, My take on "verbal revelation"

Update: Check out Glen's helpful comments in the comments section on a Trinitarian ontology.

My take on "verbal revelation"

I recently quoted James Smart, who claims that

revelation is in the text itself, in the words ... It is through these words and no others that God intends to speak to us, and, when he does, we know that there is no other kind of inspiration than verbal inspiration.

Criticisms were made in the comments. Particularly insightful were those of Bob Macdonald:

Torah is not text but engagement with the one to who the text points. The medium is neither the messenger nor the source of the message (emphasis mine).

I agree with both points of view. They don't contradict each other, rather, they are pointing to two different dimensions of the issue. Smart's comment refers to the place where revelation is accessed now, whereas Bob's comment refers to the revelation itself. Revelation itself is, as Barth put it, the reality of God-with-us (Immanuel), and this is hardly a text but a living reality.

Nevertheless, what does it mean to say that “God is with us”? What is the nature of this reality? Our dogmatic assumptions must shape our approach to the text.

In the Bible, God's self revelation is seen as progressive (Exodus 6:3). The “one to whom the text points” is a profound being (Andrew Louth puts it eloquently here), one that needs to be sought. He certainly reveals himself suddenly and without expectation—and still does!—but he also hides himself and wishes to be found. In the Old Testament he is to be sought at specific places: cultic centres and ultimately the temple. He also reveals himself through the laws of the universe (the burden of Wisdom literature), through his written Torah, through the example and teaching of elders, priests, and parents. Within this universe, text is at least one medium of revelation.

Within this unfolding story of the Bible, however, we see that texts take on more and more significance. Moses receives his revelation directly from God, but he writes it down and the text becomes the vehicle of ongoing revelation and guidance (see my post, God, Moses, and Scripture). According to Jer 36, Jeremiah has his prophecies written on a scroll which survives to speak to new generations. C. Seitz summarises the implications of this chapter as follows:

the chapter tells of the victory of the Word of God. The king can kill prophets who speak God's word (see Jer 25:23); he can debar God's spokesman from the temple (Jer 36:5); he can callously burn God's word in a brazier until the entire thing is consumed (Jer 36:23). But the prophet lives to speak the word anew, and the scroll is recomposed (Jer 36:32). And more to the point: the new scroll will outlive the divine spokesman and the evil generation headed by Jehoiakim. In the end, God's word cannot be thwarted (ZAW 101:1, 1989, p. 14).

Indeed, Seitz sees a parallel between Jeremiah's scribe Baruch and Moses's successor Joshua:

just as Joshua brough new tables of the tôrāh to a new generation in a new day, so too the scribe Baruch symbolizes the survival of a new scroll from the prophet Jeremiah which will address a new generation of faith “in all the places to which (it) may go” (Jer 45:5) (p. 18).

He concludes that in Jer 45

we see a foreshadowing of the movement of prophecy into a new mode, as clarified in a later rabbinic dictum: “Since the day when the Temple was destroyed, prophecy has been taken from the prophets and given to the wise” (B. Bathra 12a).

We need to add to this our growing understanding of the nature of Biblical tradition itself, which went through a process of textualization or “inscripturation.” We see this in particular in the case of the “Book of the Twelve.” The “reality of revelation” within time and space to particular prophets is one thing, but within the context of God's economy of salvation it seems that the witness to this original Word has been enriched and expanded so that its true dimensions, understood with the advantage of hindsight (e.g. exilic redaction), find literary (“verbal”) expression in the final form of the text.

This is the conclusion of a scholar not known for his commitment to “synchronic” reading: Jörg Jeremias. See his comments on the literary (though not "historical" - in the narrow sense of the word) interrelation of Hosea and Amos:

The book of Amos very probably never existed without Am 7:10-17, and 7:10-17 very probably never existed without its hermeneutical key in Am 7:9. this verse urges the reader not to perceive Amos as an isolated prophet but to relate his message to the message of Hosea. They are to be seen as two messengers with one common message … .

The curiosity of the modern historian about the specific and singular elements in one prophet was quite alien to the traditionists. They did not want the words of either Hosea or Amos to be read with historical interest for a distant past but with a current interest in their words as a help for present problems. They were asking about the one message of God by two messengers (but without creating something like Tatian's harmony of the gospels). … (1996: 181, 182-183)

(I've posted a similar quote by Jermias in German, in Canon and the essence of prophecy)

This is simply a brilliant way to express the key concern of Childs' canonical approach. See also my thread on New Testament scholar Paul Minear, who holds that the Bible's view of “reality” should challenge that of the historian's - with hermeneutical implications.

Zitate zum Bußtag

Ich glaube, daß ich deswegen Christ bin, weil ich durch einzelne Christen erfahren habe und noch immer erfahre, was Vergebung ist. In ihr ist mir die schöpferische Herausforderung Jesu konkret begegnet. Vergebung befreit und verändert: mich, den anderen und unsere Beziehung zueinander. Vergebung setzt frei, wo Gefangenschaft war. Sie schafft eine Solidarität, die auch unsere dunklen, gefährlichen Seiten mitträgt. Dadurch wird sie zu einer Quelle von Freundschaft und Liebe.

- KURT MARTI

Da unser Herr und Meister Jesus Christus spricht: "Tut Buße", hat er gewollt, daß das ganze Leben der Gläubigen Buße sei.

- MARTIN LUTHER
1. THESE DER 95 THESEN VON 1517

Umkehr ist der schnellste Weg voran.

- C.S. LEWIS

The Nicene Creed - some interpretations

In my book review of Brazos Presses' Nicene Christianity, I summarized those articles dealing with the nature of creeds as such and their role within the life of the Church. In this post, I outline the rest of the essays in the book, each of which deal with a different article of the Nicene Creed.

C. Seitz opens with the first article, focussing on the phrase maker of heaven and earth. His approach is strongly exegetical, attempting to show the Biblical roots of the phrase and the meaning the creed therefore assumes in its current elliptical form. The phrase “maker of heaven and earth” is often tied to the personal name of God, the LORD, which assumes a particular identity in Israel's unique history. Jesus is not related to “deity,” he is related to Yhwh. This holds for all the propositions in the first article: “Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, each in its own way bespeaks the divine and sacred name” (28). The implication is that it is not possible to talk of the Son without reference to the Father, who is the foundation for faith. In this light, attempts to recover a “historical” Jesus, measure his work according to an abstract standard of truth, or reduce the Father to the beneficia Chrisit are to be avoided.

C. Gunton struggles with the tension between exegesis and theology in his treatment of One Lord, ... Begotten, Not Made .... Both creedal and Biblical formulations of Jesus' “begottenness” are not clear enough to rebuke the threat of Arianism, which undermines Christ's salvific significance. The creedal formulation risks depersonalizing the Son and thus risks marring the image of God, who is “the one who is the love of Father and Son in the Spirit” (38; emphasis mine). An attempt to recapture Jesus' uniqueness by turning to Scripture, however, faces the challenge of his time-conditionality. How do we speak of one who is eternally begotten? The solution lies at a more abstract level of analysis. Though in terms of the economic Trinity the Son is subordinate to the Father, at the level of the immanent Trinity it is soteriologically necessary to hold that he is fully divine. The absolute distinction between Creator and creation requires us to believe that if someone is to restore a sinful creation back to its maker, he cannot partake of that creation's sinfulness. Gunton summarizes: “The paradox is twofold: first that by putting this man, and this man alone, on the side of the Creator we maintain the integrity of the creation; and we can do it while remaining true to a confession of his full humanity” (44). “Eternally begotten” maintains the necessary tension between the economic and immanent Trinities and enables us to maintain a sense of the monarchy of the Father without rendering the Son as less then fully divine.

A. Torrance deals with the question of Jesus' Being of one substance with the Father. This truth's affirmation is the ground and warrant of both our salvation and our ability to talk about God in the first place. Epistemologically, “Jesus mediates knowledge of God because he is Immanuel” (56). But epistemic access to the Godhead also has a Trinitarian structure: the transforming presence of the Holy Spirit, who is also “of one being with the Father,” creates the necessary subjective conditions for a recognition of the Incarnate Word. Soteriologically, only Jesus can save as sin is essentially against God, and thus only He Himself can deal with it. To this dimension belongs also his essential humanity: God Himself provides the requisite human response, and in doing so also makes it possible for us too to have the mind of Christ.

J. Augustine Di Noia, O.P., deals with the question of creation in terms of the science-theology relation. Whereas science and philosophy can analyse creation's physical and ontological structures, a theological account of the cosmos as the stage for a divine drama which seeks to share its life with humanity is required in order to “personalize” the universe. Creation is the decision of a free agent, and humanity as the imago dei is uniquely capable of entering into this relationship. God's presence amidst evolution is understood in terms of secondary causes, providentially guiding creation to its providential goal. The recently developed “anthropic principle,” which argues that creation itself is directed to the emergence of human life as such creates space for potential fruitful dialogue.

R. Jenson expands our categories to breaking point in his treatment of “He was made man” by attempting a form of “revisionary metaphysics.” How can Jesus' pre-existence be considered “incarnate,” a logical necessity if we do not wish to posit two separate identities for him? Jenson's answer has to do with the nature of the place he came from: heaven. Heaven is part of creation, yet not as another piece of space but as the future mode of the final kingdom. Jesus comes to us from this created eschatological future in the power of the Spirit, who is the agent and power of that future. The incarnation occurs in this agency, “in the absolute possibility that is the final reality of historical being” (82), so that the future comes from where Jesus is. “There is only one advent of the messiah.”

D. Yeago outlines the implications of the clause Crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate. In short, the effect of the cross is to transform reality, as “divine love acts in a human way and human acts have divine force” (91). This global redemption took place as an episode in Israel's history in that Jesus accomplished the righteousness which was Israel's vocation: The cross was the “final test and unsurpassable realization of Jesus' distinctive way of being human” (97). The outcome is public: a renewed community with a divine calling and commandments. The “relational space” marred by sin is cleared by the cross, so that genuine communion with God is possible, as it takes place in Jesus alone, the new humanity and our hope.

C. Braaten reminds us the importance of physical Resurrection, which confirms Jesus' claims and continues his cause in history. Braaten outlines the various takes on the issue by key theologians (Pannenburg, Barth, Bultmann etc.) and concludes that it was an objective event, constituting a new mode of being in continuity with the old, applied by the Holy Spirit in preaching and the sacraments. The effect of such faith is motivation for mission, as the “resurrection is God's unique way of reclaiming the whole world for himself” (118).

D. Farrow confesses the significance of Christ's coming, which cannot be understood apart from Christ's ascension and heavenly session. Melchizedek provides the paradigm for understanding, as it combines the political dimension—Christ is the final authority as he currently rules through his church—and the priestly (Aaronic)--Christ's ascension to heaven completes the atonement, from where he now receives our sacramental thanksgiving. His return will be a public display in which he comes as judge. This return (parousia) will be the end of history as we know it, nevertheless it will break into our history. It will be an act of new creation, a fundamental act of reordering that impinges on creaturely reality.

T. Smail offers an overview of the Holy Spirit. His being is constituted by the Trinity, as he “furthers the purposes of the Father as revealed in the gospel of the incarnate Son” (151). In this movement he is a person, taking on a different role to Jesus as enabler of subjective response to Jesus and communicator of eschatological life. His relation to Father and Son has been a cause of division between East and West. After reviewing the pros and cons of each proposal, Smail offers his own suggestion: “from the Father there originate two converging movements of divine self-giving. On the one hand, the Son comes from the Father through the Spirit; on the other, the Spirit comes from the Father through the Son” (165).

K. Green-McCreight works out the implications of He spoke through the Prophets. Amongst other things, it testifies to the unity of Scripture as a whole. The Patristic term skopus signifies goal and boundary of Scripture, understood to be and objective reality, not entirely identifiable with the text but related to it and borne by it. Divine meaning, then, is not identifiable with pure lexical meaning, so that a rule of faith is necessary as part of our hermeneutic. By hearing the parts in relation to the whole, Scripture interprets itself. The rule also functions as a guide for evaluating different interpretations: they must account for the unity of the God of Israel and the new covenant.

W. J. Abraham talks of the siginficance of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church. This clause is was not a definition but a witness to a living historical reality, a reality no longer fully evident. Given the tension between the fact that the most adequate referent of the creed is the Eastern church (they didn't introduce the filioque clause), yet the Holy Spirit, who is the true source of the church, as deigned to create multiple divided churches, we must pray for a new Pentecost and return to the church of the creed. This will involve 1) a return to the canonical heritage of the 1st millennium, 2) a relativising of our epistemological commitments, and 3) reckoning with the real possibility of divine judgement. Perhaps then the beautiful metaphors for the church in the New Testament will once again become more of a reality.

S.K. Wood negotiates the ecumenical challenge of one baptism for the forgiveness of sins from a catholic perspective. The prime distinction between believer's baptism and infant baptism is not the requirement of a mature profession of faith (both affirm that), but rather the location of that faith. For Catholics, there is a complex dynamic between the community, which proceeds the individual by nurturing him, and the individual himself, who must believe. Thus parents believe by proxy, until the child decides for itself in post-baptismal catechism. However it takes place, though, baptism is into the one Lord, who alone constitutes the unity of the churches. This raises the question of why baptised Protestants may not partake of the Eucharist. The answer is that Eucharist completes the unity the baptism only initiates, as it is here that “ecclesial and christological communion achieves repeatable sacramental visibility” (197). The Eucharist, however, separates the churches by identifying them in their particularity. This brings us to a bind: sacramental unity depends on ecclesial unity, yet the reverse is also true. However this is negotiated, the connection of baptism to Eucharist must be maintained as both constitute the church.

V. Guroian's contribution on the resurrection is unique in that it consists of an poetically evocative letter to his suffering mother, rather than abstract theology or biblical exegesis. It is theology in practice, as he weaves images from the Bible, nature, and poetry into a testimony to the need for faith in the resurrection of the flesh.

Book Review: Nicene Christianity

Many thanks to Brazos Press for sending me a review copy of Nicene Christianity: The Future for a New Ecumenism, (ed. C. Seitz; Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2001).

On one level, Nicene Christianity is a collection of essays by some of the world's top theologians, each exploring one article of the Nicene Creed. The quality of their work, the diversity of their denominational backgrounds, and the significance of the Nicene Creed within the global church are reason enough to purchase and study this book. But what makes it truly special is the context out of which it grew: an ecumenical conference held with the goal of renewing the contemporary church by returning to its theological and pragmatic roots in the pre-schism church. As Philip Turner says in the “Introduction,” the authors are united by the conviction that “theology is a practice with a soteriological goal that is properly carried out within the life of the church” (9). As such, it must be carried out in deference to a complex of practices broader than just the “intellectual.” According to these authors, Nicene Christianity “anchors the church in those beliefs and practices without which the church can preserve neither its unity in Christ nor its identity as Christian” (10). It is this holistic vision, grounded in the historical reality of a common and commonly validated past, that enables this book to make its unique contribution to the church's ongoing vocation in the world.

For the sake of space, this review will be divided into two posts. In this post I summarize three essays that frame the collection, giving background to the the concept of Nicea and the creeds as such. In the following post, I will work systematically through each of the articles of the creed, highlighting in the barest form possible the main lines of contribution each author makes.

Philip Turner opens with an “Introduction,” in which he provides background information on the nature and function of creeds within the church of the first millennium. They were “tokens or badges of Christian identity,” adequate expressions of Christian belief, guides for reading Scripture, and standards of truth. He applauds the current volume for its exhaustive treatment of the whole creed, rather than a truncated form which highlights one aspect at the expense of the others. Yet, he claims, if one is to maintain the spirit of Nicea, one must also situate the creed in its appropriate context. A form of Christian practice is required, a certain way of life. The corollary is that the church, rather than the secular academy, becomes the most appropriate setting for theological practice. But again, in the spirit of Nicea, the church as it is now not a sufficient context. A particular kind of church is required, one characterized by discipline and order. Church governance is an area in which Nicea has a lesson to teach to the modern church, a lesson, Turner believes, which under-represented in this volume (though see Radner's contribution).

In the middle of the collection of essays, we come to John Webster's excellent article on the nature and function of creeds in the church. For Webster, the true context for their interpretation is theological, i.e. the triune economy of salvation. As such, they are a response to God's grace, representing an episode in the conflict between God and sin that is at the centre of the drama of salvation. Although public and binding, their purpose is not to codify the truth. They cannot do this because of the transcendence of their subject matter. Rather, their function is to herald or testify God, who as “free transcendent presence” is communicated most fully and authoritatively in Scripture—God's elected means of grace. The Creed, then, is subordinate to Scripture as norm. It also gathers the Church around this subject matter in fear, trembling, consolation, and joy. It binds because the Gospel binds, making the act of confession the place to encounter truth. Again, due to the nature of the subject matter, this encounter is never automatic. Truth occurs only to the degree that the gospel is present as a coercive reality, creating an echo of elective grace.

The collection closes with an innovative and powerful challenge from E. Radner to the authors to reorder their theological vision according to the spirit of the Nicene Creed, which is integrally tied up with the legal issue of church order. If truth and community are intimately connected (Lindbeck), what would it look like if the Church's “canon of truth” were seen as implicating Church “canon law”? Nicea's fundamental conviction is that truthful speech requires truthful discipleship, and in Nicea this manifested itself in a political form of “self-mortification” designed to limit moral pride amongst bishops and laity. In short, the divine truth of the Creed is mirrored in common discipline. The evangelical significance of this self-ordering is that it represents God's character in the world. Ecclesial self-mortification makes space for the divine assertion of Christ's own gracious form upon his body. Yet disunity is not only an obstacle to evangelism. Our yearning as theologians for truth has been “disordered into incompetence.” Disunity is “a fundamental obstacle to our grasp of the truth ... creedal Christianity is unable to hold the object of its desire” (227). The solution is to follow James 4:2-3 and learn to “desire rightly, for such right desire—the desire of personal and institutional mortifying order—is the opening of grace by which the way forward in unity can be discovered” (228).

These brief summaries can only be a hint of the richness of the content of each essay, which alone make the book worth buying. They “carry” the treatments of the individual articles of faith by giving them a broader context in the life of the church, challenging them to make sense of our current disordered context. Stay tuned for the rest of this review.

What is the "reality" of the Bible?

In response to my post on the need for ontological categories in biblical exegesis, Douglas Dobbins of en christo has asked an important question: how does one know when one has identified the reality to which the Bible points?

My aim today isn't to answer this question, only to sharpen its point. If exegesis is to wrestle with the the reality to which Scripture points (according to its genre as kerygmatic witness), then how does one access it and then verify whether one has identified it? This is an issue that is often simply ignored by those who like to imagine themselves as doing "objective" research. As Childs says,

“Seldom has the issue of the substance of the witness, that is, its reality, been dealt with above board and clearly, but rather some sort of assumed hermeneutic has been silently approved" (Biblical Theology, 80ff.).

Here are the examples he provides us to help make his point:

(1) G. von Rad's form of Heilsgeschichte as a history of continual actualization of tradition assumes that there is a reality lying behind the various witnesses which emerges in ever greater clarity at the end of the process, but which can also at times be anticipated through typological adumbration. Yet the reader is given only vague hints of what is theologically involved. In his final chapter (Old Testament Theology, II, 319ff.) von Rad is forced to fall back to several traditional, but often conflicting, schemata (Law/Gospel, prophecy/fulfilment, letter/spirit) in order to relate the Old Testament's substance to his christological model (cf. Oeming, Gesamtbiblische Theologien, 58ff).

(2) R. Bultmann's search for the reality behind the New Testament's witness assumes it to be a mode of authentic existence which is described by means of modern existentialist categories. Only those New Testament writers who appear compatible to this move provide vehicles for an authentic voice (Paul, John) while many other New Testament authors are rendered largely mute by means of critical deconstruction (Luke, Pastorals, II Peter, Revelation).

(3) P. Tillich speaks freely of the reality of the New Being which conquers existential estrangement and makes faith possible. Jesus as the Christ is the symbolic expression of this New Being, and the biblical portrait of this symbol mediates a knowledge of God. Participation, not historical argument, guarantees the event on which faith is grounded as a sign of the continuing transforming power of this reality once encountered by Jesus' disciples. That the Old Testament plays a minor role here is apparently taken for granted.

(4)Again, many modern 'narrative theologies' seek to avoid all dogmatic issues in the study of the Bible and seek 'to render reality' only by means of retelling the story. (Hence the agreement of both liberals and conservatives regarding the centrality of narrative, but who disagree concerning the nature of the 'old, old story'.) The move has recently become popular of inviting the reader to enter the fictive world of the biblical text, a realm of symbolic language, which evokes new imagery for its hearers. Clearly an assumption is being made regarding the nature and function of the Bible which privileges the genre of story over against those other biblical forms of psalmody, law and wisdom.

(5)Finally, many modern biblical scholars have been attracted by a hermeneutical theory such as that proposed by David Kelsey (JAAR, 585ff.) who defends the position that the Bible's authority does not rest on any specific content or property of the text, but lies in the function to which biblical patterns have been assigned by the 'imaginative construals' of a community of faith. One cannot rightly attack the consistency of the theory, but the theological issue turns on whether one can do justice to the function of scripture when it is so loosely related to its subject matter, that is, to its reality.

I hope to give my own thoughts soon.

I also hope this begins to highlight the naivety of the outdated categories of liberal/conservative recently employed by N.T. Wrong in his attempt to "figure out" his colleagues. For more on this, see Paul Minear's work.

Redaction and the "rule of faith"

In response to my recent post prophetic redaction as a rule of faith, a certain Michael asked some interesting questions concerning the nature and adequacy of using the category in relation to the Bible.

What precisely is the "rule of faith" that is in operation in these examples?

Childs' use of this important category stems from his interaction with patristic hermeneutics. I've outlined its interpretation by an important scholar here. Kathryn Greene-McCreight is another important name here. In “He Spoke Through the Prophets” she defines it as “the pre-creedal, creedlike material outlining the basic points or narrative moments of the Christian faith” (172). Again, “The rule of faith functions as an outer limit that places constraints on what can be argued as a legitimate reading ... The rule of faith is 'the real content of revelation, the fundamental tenor of the one message of Scripture'” (173). In short, the rule of faith is the substance of the whole of Scripture, God's ordo salutis, which provides the norm for correctly interpreting it in a kind of hermeneutical circle. If one reads Scripture according to this rule, one is letting Scripture interpret itself (scriptura sui interpres est).

Applied to the editorial history of the Bible, it implies both the source of the editors' inspiration and the function of the result. The final form of the book of Amos, for example, wants to retain the particularity of its various oracles within the broader theological horizon of God's ways with Israel. The editor is committed to a theological vision, a “rule of faith,” and this informs his editing activity. As such, to quote Childs, “The imperative to "remember the law of my servant Moses" ... sets a check against any misuse of the prophet's words which would call into question national solidarity.” The phrase “rule of faith” also describes the function of that which the editor has created: the new literary work provides the material “with an interpretative guidline.” Only in following the final form's shape can we access the theological substance to which the editor is witnessing (in continuity with, though expanding upon, the historical Amos, of course).

And are they the same in each example? (i.e. Amos and Ecclesiastes)

Given the description above, I don't see why not. “Rule of faith” describes the form and function of the text, not its substance. For theological reasons we are committed to believing that on some level the substances create a theological unity (Childs calls it “ontological”).

How is this "rule of faith" created?

Through divine revelation, comprehended in an ongoing dialectic between history/experience and tradition.

Is the label "rule of faith" appropriate for what you see going on?

Yes. “Rule” references the establishing of an authoritative guideline, a κανών, eschatologically orientated to future generations of the faithful. “Faith” describes the nature of the substance witnessed to by the rule: it is a faith reality.

Is what is going on (whatever label you use for it) occurring consistently in other texts as well, with the same function?

Childs has consistently argued in numerous publications on both testaments that this is the case. In my opinion, as long as “rule of faith” is primarily understood in terms of form and function, this shouldn't be too problematic. The “content,” the “object of the witness,” is the complex bit. Can you think of examples to the contrary?

The true context of Scripture

This is one of my favourite quotes:

... classical scriptural interpretation proceeded from a rich and complex sense of Scripture's place and role within the economy of salvation; Scripture functions as a quasi-sacramental instrument of the Holy Spirit, through which the Spirit makes known the mystery of Christ in order to form the church as a sign of his messianic dominion. The church's knowledge of Scripture as inspired has therefore interpretive consequences; it calls for a specific art, or perhaps a concatenation of arts, of faithful reading, exposition, and application by which Christ is glorified and the church built up in its distinctive life and mission. [*]

This links up to my previous call for ontological categories in biblical exegesis.

[*] D.G. Yeago, “The Spirit, the Church, and the Scriptures: Biblical Interpretation and Interpretation Revisited,” in Knowing the Triune God: The Work of the Spirit in the Practices of the Church (ed. J.J. Buckley and D.S. Yeago; Grand Rapids/Cambridge: Eerdmanns, 2001) 49-93; here, 51; cited in Stephen Chapman, “Reclaiming Inspiration for the Bible,” 193

Prophetic redaction as a "rule of faith"

Today I return to my interrupted thread on the various ways in which the prophetic material in the Bible was rendered to function as canonical Scripture for future generations of the community of faith. My last post was on the subordination of chronology to typology.

6) The original prophetic message was placed within a rule-of-faith which provided the material with an interpretative guideline. It is generally recognized by critical scholarship that two appendices have been fixed to the conclusion of the Book of Malachi. To dismiss these verses as a "legalistic corrective" stemming from some disgruntled priestly editor is to misunderstand the canonical process utterly. Rather, the first appendix reminds the whole nation that it still stands under the tradition of Moses. The imperative to "remember the law of my servant Moses" does not weaken Malachi's attack on the nation's sins, but it sets a check against any misuse of the prophet's words which would call into question national solidarity in the name of additional requirements for the pious. The canonical effect of the first appendix to Malachi testifies that the law and the prophets are not to be heard as rivals but as an essential unity within the one divine purpose. The effect of the second appendix (Mal 4:5-6) is to balance the memory of the past with the anticipation of the future.

In a similar way, the ending on the Book of Ecclesiastes is another example of a rule-of-faith which would also order a wisdom book from a perspective informed by God's commandments (Eccl 12:13) and the coming judgment (v. 14).

How could Augustine do that?

I've often wondered at the validity of Augustine's hermeneutical axiom that if a passage can be variously interpreted, the interpretation which encourages love of God and neighbour should be preferred.

Is that good exegesis? Can one just take an ethic of love as the norm for interpretation of these ancient texts? It sounds like a nice idea, but surely true interpretation involves hearing the text in and of itself, regardless of our ethical presuppositions?

I recently saw Augustines' move within the context of moves made by other church fathers and something went "click" in my head (as the Germans say). Irenaeus, for example, in his battle with the varying scriptural interpretations of the Gnostics, appealed to God's one redemptive purpose uniting both testaments as a context for interpretation. Origen spoke of multiple levels of meaning in Scripture in which the reader is led from external form to internal, spiritual sense, all as part of the divine pedagogy.

What unites these approaches is the conviction that the Scriptures are a witness to a unified theological reality. Though diverse in form, they are united by a single function, the kerygmatic, deictic one of "witnessing," pointing, or referring to this reality, the divine referent. Given ecclesial interpretation is an existential matter of profound importance, rather than an exercise in "dispassionate" curiosity about a dead religion, it makes sense that interpretation start from the position of the reality testified to. The movement is then circular, as we move from referent to text and back again, each pole enriching the other. That this is not necessarily a form of fideism (though in practice it often is) is testified to by the fact that it is only through the literal sense that spiritual was achieved. Just as the church confesses the risen Christ in the text of Jewish Scripture, the New is always testified to in terms of the old.

So coming back to Augustine, the validity of his hermeneutic should not be judged according to a theory of historical referentiality whereby a text only means what it's author intended, or what the literary framework constrains it to mean. This would arguably impose an alien category onto the text itself. Rather, Augustine should be judged by his ability to do justice to both the nature of the text and its true referent. If the texts really are prophetic, and if God really is a God of love, then I may have to rethink my views.

P.S. Check out Brant Pitre for a great quote from Origen on interpretation.

Whence a rule for meaning?

Where there is no critical interpretation of Scripture, there will be a mystical or rhetorical one. If words have more than one meaning, they may have any meaning. Instead of being a rule of life or faith, Scripture becomes the expression of the everchanging aspect of religious opinions.

—Benjamin Jowett

Without a form of allegory that at least allows for analogy, the biblical text can only be an object of archaeological interest.

—Frances Young

[Source: Daniel Driver's forthcoming and excellent dissertation. Congratulations Daniel, for passing your viva yesterday!]

Quote of the day: Revelation in law and history

[I]n the Old Testament God reveals himself neither in history nor in law in some general sense, but in his special covenantal history with Israel. In the act of creating a people for himself history and law are not antagonistic, but different sides of the one act of divine self-manifestation.

Childs, Exodus, 402.

A theological justification for Form Criticism

Confessional biblical scholars often give fascinating arguments to justify the use of historical criticism in the reading of the Bible. They come in various forms. Richard of יהוה מלך has posted the following interesting quote from Klaus Koch on the theological justification for the Form Critical method. It is clearly indebted to the dogmaticians Karl Barth and Hermann Diem and shares its outlook with that of von Rad:

The Old and New Testament claim to be the revelation of a god whose word and deed are fundamental to true human existence. For two milenia Christian theology has repeatedly reinterpreted this claim, checked it, and found it to be right. Form criticism provides the means for a more accurate interpretation and examination thatn has been possible before. If the thesis is right that form criticism culminates in a language history (literary history, transmission history) involving all manifestations of life then that claim cannot be justified by appealing merely to isolated texts, but to a complete history of all the biblical writings, to which each Old and New Testament book would contribute, and in which each would gain the recognition due to them, and this history would be carried further by church history. Within an overall historical framework of this kind it is possible to see why the early Christians (and Christians even now) recognise in Jesus the Christ. I do not believe that such a large historical enquiry will lead to our being less convinced than our fathers in the church were that Scripture is of God’s making and prompting. On the contrary, we have clearer grounds for sharing their conviction, for careful historical analysis enables us to see each stage of the biblical compilation as a living response to God (from The Growth of Biblical Tradition).

I think Brevard Childs would share a lot of these assumptions. God has established a kerygmatic witness to Himself in his prophets and apostles and so listening to this proclamation in all its details can surely be only helpful. This explains Childs' penchent for "tradition-historical trajectories," both inner-biblical and in post-biblical tradition.

But there is another dimension to this issue which I think Koch et al have left out, namely, the ontological. As I argued in my post The need for ontological categories for Biblical exegesis, there is a sense in which a grasp of the fuller reality of God reconfigures older testimony to Him. The Old really is "transformed" by the New (if that's the right word). And if it is the case that Christ "opens up" the Old in such a way as to show us its true heart, then shouldn't we allow the later hermeneutical shape of the canon to reconfigure whatever existed before, at an older tradition-historical level? To give some examples from the prophetic literature: a prophet's message is often expanded in scope by its placement in a new literary context, or it is metaphorically extended, or oracles are detached from their original historical moorings and given a new theological context, or traditions are edited in the light of the larger canon. All these manoeuvers have hermeneutical implications and a theological reading of Scripture that wants to grasp the fullness of its divine Subject must not only take the final form seriously as part of a trajectory, it must allow the final form to exercise a critical function in "re-calibrating" everything that went before.

This quote has inspired me to start a new thread looking at the various ways in which the prophetic literature in the OT was canonically shaped, as opposed to just tradition-historically extended. Stay tuned!

It is this conext, by the way, that Chris Tilling's recently posted Brueggemann quote should be evaluated

The awesomeness of Andrew Louth ...

... consists, for me, in his ability to elucidate the canonical approach of Brevard Childs, and perhaps that of Karl Barth, as evidenced in my post on Barth's biblical exegesis. Interpretation of the Bible is all about the subject matter, and that has huge hermeneutical implications (see my The Bible and the Historian). I still have only access to Louth via my reading of Childs and the wonderful posts of Sister Macrina. Here is her latest goody which has just sent me reeling in ecstasy:

At [the heart of the patristic understanding of "mysticism" is] the understanding of Christ as the divine mysterion: an idea central to the epistles of the Apostle Paul. This secret is a secret that has been told; but despite that it remains a secret, because what has been declared cannot be simply grasped , since it is God’s secret, and God is beyond any human comprehension. The secret of the Gospel is the hidden meaning of the Scriptures: for Christians the whole of what they call the ‘Old Testament’ finds its true meaning in Christ. God’s plan for humankind to which the Scriptures bear witness is made plain in the Incarnation. And this is the most common context, as we have seen, for the use of the word mystikos: it refers therefore to the hidden meaning of the Scriptures, the true meaning that is revealed in Christ, a meaning that remains mysterious, for it is no simple message, but the life in Christ that is endless in its implications. Christians, however, share in the life of Christ pre-eminently through the sacraments - mysteria in Greek - and the word mystikos is used therefore in relation to the sacraments as a way of designating the hidden reality, encountered and shared through the sacraments. The final use of the word mystikos refers to the hidden reality of the life of baptized Christians: a reality which is, as St Paul put it, ‘hid with Christ in God’ (Col. 3: 3). (205)