The end of a "mega-thread" and the beginning of a new one

I have finally, after about three years of blogging, managed to finish my "mega thread", which I've re-christened: Theological Exegesis: Wrestling with Childs' Canonical Approach. It's been an exciting journey. The idea behind it started as an essay on methodology for my doctorate. I knew I wanted to do something both relevant to the world today as well as true to the nature of the Bible, but how? Given that Brevard Childs' "canonical approach" is generally considered to be a foundation for "theological exegesis," I thought I'd start with him and then move on to something more contemporary. I soon realized, however, that one cannot just "start" with Childs and then move on. The man was a phenomenon, and as with many phenomenons [somehow the -a ending doesn't work here ... ], he's been grossly misunderstood, both on the left and on the right. For those interested in a concise summary and defence of his approach in the face of much criticism and misrepresentation, I highly recommend Chris Seitz's excellent essay, "The Canonical Approach and Theological Interpretation," in Canon and Biblical Interpretation, 58-110. I also recommend getting hold of Daniel Driver's recently published PhD thesis: Brevard Childs, Biblical Theologian. Though I read the draft of this after I'd finished most of my work we are in strong agreement (which, I think, goes a long way to strengthen our thesis!). Driver has helped me in particular understand the meaning of "the mystery of Israel," as well as locate Childs in relation to Herman Gunkel's work. Especially valuable, of course, is his critique of the innumerable critiques that Childs' own work has received. I owe Driver a debt of gratitude for providing me throughout my research with essential reading tips and unpublished material by Childs. I think it's safe to say that without these tips and materials my understanding of Childs would look decisively different. So once again, Daniel: Thanks!

Back to the journey: I wrestled with the man, trying to find a deeper unity behind what others have considered to be a kind of schizophrenia, and that struggle ended up turning into the first half of my doctorate. The fruits of the first part of my struggle have been the subject matter of this thread, and can be read in slightly less processed form and obviously without the attendant dialogues online. A decidedly more "mature" version (so I'm told), drawing on the stuff I couldn't get into my first essay, will hopefully find its way into a journal in the near future.

A major impetus for continuing this line of enquiry came with a series of dialogues I had on Jim West's excellent on line Biblical Studies Forum with certain members of the "Copenhagen school" (they've now set up a guild with its own blog). It became clear to me that there was still much to be said on the subject and that I had a perspective I felt I was capable of defending. This provided me with the energy to do the unthinkable: set up a blog (!! outrageous for a cyberphobe like myself!!). And with hindsight that has been one of the best decisions I've made since ... I don't know ... learning to speed-type. I've been blessed to have had many commentators pop by to question, critique and challenge my view of things. I think it's fair to say that these dialogues have had and will have a significant impact on the way I finally draft up my final doctoral thesis.

In terms of my research I actually moved on to pastures new about a year ago, looking to apply Childs' approach (or rather my understanding of it) to Psalm 24. The switch has taken a bit of getting used to - rather than make broad statements about "the canonical process" or "the substance of Scripture," I've had to get down to the particulars of syntax, poetics, genre and particular ideology. It's a bit like descending from a mountain with its 360 degree views into the nitty-gritty of the jungle (as in the photo above). The switch explains the relative dearth in posting over the past few months. This stage of my journey is no less exciting, and I look forward to the time when I can feed the fruit of this work into my blog.

For now the contents of Narrative and Ontology will continue to wrestle with Childs, but from a different angle, one more relevant to my present concerns. Rather than talk about how one should read the Bible, I'm going to be presenting a host of examples of how Childs did read the Bible. The unifying concepts organizing my presentation will be those key concepts that I believe guided Childs' approach, namely attention to the profile of the vehicles of revelation, their form and fuction, and the nature of the reality itself that stands behind, within, and in front of them.

Outlining in more detail what that means will be the subject of my next post.

Thread summary: The dialectical nature of Biblical history

The following posts constitute the final leg of my "mega-thread" on theological interpretation.

1. The significance of history for the Bible

2. Childs on the "dialectical" nature of the Biblical view of history

3. Doing exegetical justice to Israel's view of history

Doing exegetical justice to Israel's view of history

Brevard Childs claims that the Biblical view of history is constituted by a dialectical tension between empirical history and God's unique action in history (see my post The dialectical nature of Biblical history for details). Once this is recognized, what are the implications for exegesis? In his Biblical Theology (pp. 100-101), Childs suggests the following four avenues:

1. Israel's history reflects both an inner and an outer dimension, i.e. there is both confessional witness and common public testimony. The contrast lies in viewing history from Israel's confessional stance, from within a community of faith, rather than from a neutral, phenomenological reconstruction. Nevertheless, the relation between the two is subtle, as neither perspective functions as a hermetically sealed system which functions in absolute independence from the other. The theological challenge is to exegete the passages in such a way as “to avoid rationalistic assumptions of a common reality behind all religious expression or the threat of super-naturalism which would deny in principle any relation between an outer and inner side of historical events.”

2. Israel's history involves both divine and human agency. The biblical witness to divine intervention in time and space is threatened if a historical methodology interprets such formulations as merely literary conventions which must be made to conform to the general laws of historical causality. However, the Bible reflects a great variety of relationships between the human and divine which spans a spectrum from closest interaction to harshest discontinuity. The exegetical challenge is "to do justice to the different dimensions of textual intensity (Dichtigkeitsgrad) without being trapped into rigid philosophical systems of historical causality."

3. Israel's history is construed within the Old Testament as oscillating between the past, present and future. The methodological challenge is to avoid a theological move “which would objectify Israel's history into a separate sphere of Heilsgeschichte which functions independently of all common experience. Conversely it is not helpful to flatten Israel's special historical experiences into general chronological patterns which have been reconstituted from extra biblical sources.”

4. Israel's history is depicted within the Old Testament in terms of foreground and background, i.e. there is conscious selection. One must learn to do justice to to Israel's peculiar assigning of significance to certain events and situations while denigrating others. The challenge is to avoid the arrogance of correcting Israel's judgement on the assumption of modern critical superiority while maintaining a sophisticated historical sensitivity which can "adjudicate the just claims arising from two sides of this genuine dialectical tension."

Childs on the "dialectical" nature of the Biblical view of history

In his overview of the Christian exegetical tradition, Brevard Childs notes that an intense interest in the nature of history has been an enduring characteristic of the Christian interpretation of the Bible from its inception (2004:317). This is hardly surprising when one considers the central role of historical events in both biblical testaments (see Childs' comments here). How, then, does the Bible itself present history?

Childs claims that a tension is expressed between ordinary and divine events, between an "inner" and "outer" dimension, or between a "confessional" and "secular" perception. According to Childs, within the Bible the relation between these two dimensions of history is “dialectical”, summarized as the tension between empirical history and God's unique action in history. The dialectic is such that the two dimensions cannot be fused, and yet they cannot be separated either. It is thus appropriate that throughout its exegetical history the Church has, on the one hand, committed itself to both dimensions of this reality, yet on the other hand, she has never reached a consensus on the relation of the two. The problem this tension posed for the Church was exacerbated with the advent of the Enlightenment, which fundamentally questioned the directness of the relation between textual account and historical event.

Childs is critical of both Conservative and Liberal reactions to this problem. For Childs, the Conservative position is historically untenable and blunts theological issues, whereas the Liberals are forced to adopt some form of a philosophical system, such as idealism, existentialism, or social functionalism, in order to escape radical religious relativism. In light of this quandary, Childs has attempted to provide a new approach which attempts

to do justice to the theological integrity of Israel's witness while at the same time freely acknowledging the complexities of human knowledge and the serious challenge of modernity to any claims of divine revelation (Biblical Theology, 99).

I will summarize his proposal in my next post.

Quote of the Day: The significance of history for the Bible

Today's post is a quote from my favourite Old Testament scholar, Brevard Childs, on the significance of "history" for the Biblical world view. It's purpose is to introduce a new thread looking at the nature of history from a Biblical perspective (Childs' calls it "dialectical," though note the scare-quotes) as well as the hermeneutical implications this view has for Biblical exegesis.

Before I post the quote I'd like to point out that I am aware of how problematic the phrase "Biblical world view" has become, what with the (post-)modern emphasis on particularity and multiplicity (I almost got sick of that word in my anthropological studies, almost ...) . I think this diversity is important, so if you are aware of places in the Bible which contradict Childs' general statement here, then please do point them out to me.

Here's the quote:

It seems to be an incontestable observation that the Hebrew scriptures bear testimony to God's redemption and preservation of historical Israel. The witnesses of Moses and the prophets, of the psalmists and sages, all arose within Israel's history and relate in various ways to it. Moreover, when these witnesses were collected into a scripture, Israel's story of faith was largely preserved in a historical sequence (Genesis through Ezra) along with a variety of 'commentary' (Psalms, Prophets, Wisdom) (Biblical Theology, 97).

The next post in the thread will touch on the nature of this history (i.e. it's "dialecticalness").

[P.S. This thread is the last in my rather large "über-thread" on theological exegesis]

Christianity in a word?

Margaret, author of the Biblioblog Magaret's Musings, has posted a fun question which has got (or is it gotten?) some fun answers: " What word would you choose to summarize Christianity?"

Here are some of the answers so far:

Love

Christ

fullness

reconciliation

forgiveness

LIFE

My own suggestion was

Eden

Pop on over an join in. She promises to share her own thoughts in forthcoming posts.

Update: A non-Christian friend of mine, whose opinion I cherish, shared the follow words off-line:

anti-Judaism / intolerance / persecution / divided / many-tongued / arrogant - etc. etc.

She was worried about these terms being "nasty," but I don't think they are. A true friend is one who doesn't shy from pointing out uncomfortable truths, hopefully for the sake of transformation for the better. Given that what she has said does in fact apply to vast swathes of what has been done in the name of Christ, I'm happy to just let them stand as a legitimate and important contribution to the discussion.

[HT to John Hobbins for pointing out her blog. He has is own post telling us why he loves it in A biblioblogger and she is grand]

Update: Since posting this I've actually taken the time to read the other posts on her blog and they are great! I recommend her post on rabid otters.

Parallelism and redemption

I'm currently reading a most beautiful book: Adele Berlin's The Dynamics of Biblical Parallelism. One of the things that strikes me is that the particular way of understanding theological exegesis that I've often attempted to formulate in posts on this blog—i.e. that the living divine substance of the text reveals himself to us afresh within the form of the old, and that perceiving this requires a constant dialectic between, e.g. OT and NT, dogmatics and history, particular text and canonical whole—seems to be consistent with the mode in which large chunks of the OT itself has been composed. In other words, my (Childs', Barth's) theory is consistent with the compositional style of the Hebrew Bible (on the relation between literary mode and theology see the Minear's comments on typology in Revelation).

The literary mode is parallelism. Parallelism is held to be the defining feature of Biblical poetry, and one of the things Berlin does in her book is to extend this concept beyond the realm of parallel lines within poetry to contiguous lines in prose and to larger chunks of text, such as strophes and even whole psalms (she doesn't go that far, but others do). The function of parallelism is ultimately to communicate a message, and it does this by creating contrast within equivalence. Equivalence is established on various levels—e.g. grammatical, phonological, and semantic—, thus binding the pairs together, and yet within this bounded unit contrasts are set up. The contrasts that are set up have a double function: both to disambiguate and to ambiguate the previous part of the parallelism (i.e. they create redundancy and ambiguity, one of the major dichotomies in linguistic discourse). The significant point is that both functions occur simultaneously and that they occur for the sake of doing justice to the subject matter. Here's a quote from Berlin:

A parallel line does both; it insures the delivery of the information in the first line and, even in the context of the first line, it encourages a second view of things, an alternate interpretation. Redundancy and ambiguity (disambiguation and polysemy) are locked in eternal struggle in parallelism. To choose one is to lose the other, and thereby lose the major dialectic tension of parallelism. There is no better way to sum this up than to quote

Ps 62:

אחת דבר אלהים // שתים שמעתי

One thing God has spoken // Two things I have heard.

This verse not only lends itself to discussions of hermeneutics—that one statement has many interpertations—but it also reflects the essence of parallelism. Parallelism is constituted by redundancy and polysemy, disambiguation and ambiguity, contrast within equivalence. Parallelism focuses the message on itself but its vision is binocular. Like human vision it superimposes two slightly different views of the same object and from their convergence it produces a sense of depth (p. 99).

I would say that parallelism, whether in a poetic couplets like the above or within the juxtaposition of entire chapters like Gen 1 and 2, functions like a “stereoscope.” The true referent is neither line a or line b, but rather some other abstraction beyond both, an abstraction that can only be perceived via “the dialectic tension of both.” In terms of Ps 24, what is the referent of the singular feminine object pronoun in v. 2a and b? Tevel or Eretz? Or another reality that both point to imperfectly.

Paul Minear once pointed out that there is a connection between literary technique and theology (see my post Eschatology and historical methodology). Can we see that here? A major attribute of the Biblical God is that he is both creator and redeemer, he redeems his creation, he takes what he already once found good - the old - and brings it to its goal - the new (as I wrote in my post Beauty and the Piss Christ).

In a similar way, I wonder if one could call parallelism “redemptive," in that partialities are made to point beyond themselves to something "more true." Redemption is the instantiation of the Kingdom of God, the eschatological New Creation. Whatever that is, it is both continuous and discontinous with this side of creation (see Paul's argument about resurrection). Though I certainly don't think that poetic parallelism was created for the purpose of witnessing to this reality (it's just a mundane literary tool that can be put to all kinds of banal uses), the dialectic between old and new that is the stuff of Biblical theology lends itself nicely to such a paratacic literary technique.

Perhaps if Biblical scholars trained their vision to be able to see what emerges from between the seams of the Bible, their exegesis would bring us and the world closer to the reality that evoked the whole of Scripture in the first place.

Beauty and the Piss Christ.

A friend of mine here in Bonn organized an informal salon last weekend on the topic of "beauty." Various people get together and make various cultural contributions. I didn't have time to think up anything myself, so I simply did a German translation of a wonderful post that Ben Myers wrote a while back entitled Desire and Beauty: An Augustinian Anecdote. Interestingly enough, somebody else brought along a picture of Serrano's (in)famous Piss Christ, which Jason Goroncy also posted on a while back. It seems to me that on the surface these two posts diametrically contradict each other. Augustine talks of God as beauty itself, the actual substance of the form of beauty that we see in created things. Regardless of what we think, God is ultimately the real reason why we yearn for beauty in the first place. Serrano goes on to visually present precisely this God - and yet this image is in fact the opposite of what any healthy individual would consider to be "beautiful": a corpse, tortured to death, soaked in human fluid. How do I synthesize that? This is my own inadequate attempt - please help me to fill in the gaps:

The God that Augstine describes - beauty itself - never, in fact, enters into one-to-one unmediated relation to humanity. The basic Biblical metaphor for the relation between God and man is not a disembodied, formless, spiritual experience, but the Garden of Eden. This image brackets the Two Testaments like an inclusio and it pops up repeatedly and in various permutations throughout the rest of Scripture too. Whatever it means to enter into relation with God, it is always presented as a relationship with God the Creator. How does the Nicene Creed begin and end?

We believe in one God,

the Father, the Almighty,

maker of heaven and earth,

of all that is, seen and unseen.

...

We look for the resurrection of the dead,

and the life of the world to come. Amen.

However we conceive of God, then - Augustine's beauty itself - it can only be done within the context of the totality of God's good creation: interpersonal relationships, delicious smells, and spiritual fulfilment and all. The God who meets us in created forms is not a substance that supersedes the form, it is a substance that fills the form and thus redeems it (I think Ben's anecdote illustrates this wonderfully). We can rightly consider beauty in this world as a foretaste of what God has in store for us, his Kingdom, and a "post-taste" of something that once was but was lost (cf. Ps 24).

What does this have to do with the Piss Christ? This is something I'm still struggling to comprehend, as until now I've been used to thinking of the crucifixion in juridical rather than ontological categories. It has something to do with God's way of "filling the forms" ... God so loved this world, this cosmos, that he entered its deepest chambers in order to exhaust their darkness and bring light ... . As long as we live this side of the consummation, we have to train our vision to be able to see God everywhere, even in that place where God the Son cried "Why have you forsaken me?"

I can't wait until the day when form and content become truly co-extensive, the day when - as the poem on Jason's post puts it - there will no longer be such a thing as "useless beauty."

Update: Jason Goroncy has given a helpful response to my post in the comments section of his original post, which you can read here. I've taken the liberty of reposting his response in the comments to this post. He basically affirms my point and enriches it by drawing on a paper by Trevor Hart entitled "Ugly as Sin? Beauty, Holiness, and the Crucified." Well worth a read.

One thing I like about Mowinckel

I was recently asked what I thought of the work of the psalms scholar Sigmund Mowinckel (in response to this quote of his). Thus far I've only read the opening chapters of his key work, The Psalms in Israel's Worship (if you follow the link you can read these chapters, plus a helpful preface by Crenshaw, for free), but he's said enough in order for me to formulate an initial impression.

What I like most about Mowinckel is - what at least appears to be - his sensitivity and openness to the reality and impact of the divine within Israel's history. In a German language biographical sketch of his life I read that at some point he went through something of a "religious awakening."[1] Perhaps it is this is that comes to expression at various points in his work on the cult (apart from his dependence on the anthropologist Grønbech) ...

For example, he summarizes his entire work on the psalms as follows:

The present author has ... endeavoured to apply a really cult-functional intepretation, and ... to prove that the psalms of the Psalter, on the whole, are real cult psalms and an expression of that experience of God which the cult seeks to further (p. 34; emphasis, here and elsewhere, mine).

According to this perspective, the cult functions as one of a number of possible vehicles of divine revelation within Israel. There is an experience of God - to which the psalms are a response and for which the cult is a medium.

Again, Mowinckel says the following concerning the function of music in the cult:

Like rhythm and tune it is a way of expressing the sense of rapture and sublime abandonment. It is a reaction to the encounter with the holy. ... Together with cultic song goes the dance, which is a common way of expressing the encounter with the holy. ... At a higher level it develops into an expression of joy at the encounter with the Holy One" (p.9; note the move from "holy" in general to "the Holy One" in particular).

Unlike many scholars today,[2] Mowinckel doesn't reduce Israel's spiritual life to socio-psychological categories. His language here smacks of divine immanence. In other words, there is a transcendence (however vaguely and inadequately Mowinckel may conceive it) which enters into Israel's time and space, an ontological (?) reality which Israel experiences and to which it responds. In fact, this reality even impacts the shape of Israel's institutions. See, for example, Mowinckel's statement that the cult is

the visible and audible expression of the relation between the congregation and the deity" (p. 16).

These presuppositions are expressed most explicitly on pages 16-17:

It may often look as thought he initiative lies with the congregation, on the human side. But seen from the point of view of cult and religion it is rather the other way round: the initiative lies with God. True enough, it is man that 'searches for God,' 'seeks God,' but he can, and odes so, because the deity first 'revealed himself' and taught man where and when and how to seek him. This is a fundamental idea of all religion, and not least in Israel. The deity represents a reality and a power which is different from the human, a belongs to the sphere termed 'the holy', he is experienced as something 'different' and 'separate' - ... Through the cult this effective [!] and wonderful 'power' is imparted to the partakers, the congregation or the society.

"... seen from the point of view of cult and religion .. ." Is it the case that Mowinckel is just using emic categories, like a good phenomenologist of religion? Or is this in some sense his perspective too? What modern psalms scholar would talk with such confidence about the "effective ... 'power', not of the cult, but of the deity that is mediated through the cult? And what impact would giving space to this possibility have on modern interpretation of the psalms?[3]

[1] 1934 erlebte er durch die Begegnung mit der sogenannten „Gruppenbewegung“ (Oxford Group Movement) so etwas wie eine religiöse „Erweckung“, nach der er in vieler Hinsicht ein aktiveres Kirchenmitglied wurde und sich schließlich (1940) auch noch ordinieren ließ.

[2] In a seminar here in Bonn, Prof. W.H. Schmidt bemoaned the way in which contemporary Biblical exegesis has been reduced to a form of cultural analysis.

[3] It seems to me that some kind of account of divine immanence is required in order to give theological substance and methodological nuance to the justifications usually made for form criticism. See, e.g., my post Justifying form criticism of the psalms.