The typologizing of prophetic oracles

I now come to the penultimate post on the different ways in which Israelite prophecy was rendered as Scripture for the community of faith. For the other six, go to my post Canonical shaping of the prophets. This is taken from Childs' article, "The Canonical Shape of the Prophetic Literature," 1995.

Oracles which originally functioned in a variety of historical settings have been arranged into set patterns which serve a new typological role in relation to the coming rule of God. The clearest examples of a patterning schema are the alternative blocks of oracles of judgment and salvation in the Books of Isaiah (compare 1:1-31; 2:6-22; 3:1-26, with 2:1-5; 4:2-6) and Micah (cf. chaps. 1, 2, 6 with 2:12f.; 4 and 5). The effect of this move is that a typological sequence subordinates the original historical one and refocuses the material on the dominant theological purposes undergirding all prophetic proclamation.

This is sickening

Watch the video - if you think you can stomach it.

When I was 18 I spent a year in Israel - travelling, working and generally having my life transformed. I come from a low-Anglican family with an odd mixture of traditional evangelicalism and charismatic elements. While in Israel I met people from all kinds of denominations who had an impact on me, in particular a travelling ex-gangster turned Pentecostal preacher and a conservative Brethren community in Haifa. One of my more negative experiences was visiting the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the site of Jesus' death and resurrection. What I sensed then is summarised neatly in a recent article from Times Online: Warring monks threaten destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. I can hardly think of a greater tragedy. It's things like this that test my faith most of all.

Here are some key quotes:

Rival denominations often battle for access or space and the congregation at the annual Easter service sometimes resembles the terraces of a boisterous football match. The keys to the main entrance of the church have been held by a Muslim family since the 12th century because the Christians do not trust one another.

— In the 19th century a ladder was placed on a ledge above the main entrance to the church. A priest from another denomination accused the man of trespassing and a row began that has yet to be resolved. The ladder is still there

— In 1995 the church announced it had reached a decision on how to paint a part of the dome in the central part of the structure — but only after 17 years’ debate

— In 2004 during Greek Orthodox celebrations of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, a door to the Franciscan chapel was left open. This was taken as a sign of disrespect by the Greek Orthodox faction and a fight broke out. There were several arrests.

— Another fight broke out on Palm Sunday this year when a Greek monk was ejected from the building by a rival faction. Police were attacked by the feuding monks and several people were taken to hospital

Probably the worst of all is the story of the Coptic bishop turning to the Israeli authorities ... but I'll let you read that.

I'm speechless. I honestly think the church would serve a far better function if it was torn down and turned into a public urinal.

[Hat tip: Bible and Interpretation]

Update: Sister Macrina, of A Vow of Conversation, and shared some interesting thoughts on this. Here's an encouraging anecdote:

In thinking about this I was reminded of a conversation I once had with the Melkite Patriarch Gregory III, when he was still bishop of Jerusalem. I was left to make small talk with him when the abbess I was accompanying was unexpectedly called to the telephone. Not knowing what to say I commented on the divisions of the Churches in Jerusalem and, in typical western liberal Christian fashion, lamented how terrible it was. I was quite taken aback by his sharp response, which basically reprimanded me for commenting on things that I knew little about, although he was too gracious to put it quite so bluntly. He proceeded to tell me how the Churches in Jerusalem were working together and how their leaders met regularly to discuss matters of common concern, accounts of which I later heard from other sources as well.

We want more OT exegesis

Halden's poll has been narrowed down to just two options: theological exegesis and biblical theology and ... something else. It's not important as the aforementioned option is the only one worth voting for. So please go here and vote: what should Halden blog on next!

Here are the comments I posted on his blog:

I’m delighted that theological exegesis is the clear leader! A while back Ben Myers said in one of threads that the best biblical theologians were all in Old Testament. I think there are good reasons for that. Reading the OT as a Christian forces you to deal with issues that NT scholars do not always feel too constrained to deal with: the function of Scripture as witness, the nature of referentiality, the nature of the substance of the text, the relation between community and text, the canonical process as part of revelation, the relation between the literal and spiritual senses, the relation between narrative and ontology etc. etc. A Christian specialising in the NT faces the danger of thinking that the NT has got it figured out, that when we read it we’ve somehow already arrived, that its witness to Christ is sufficent as it stands and that the OT simply serves as a hermeneutical matrix for the NT’s interpretation rather than an independent witness in its own right with its own voice - perhaps even over against the NT.

So, in short, I hope you’ll be posting a lot on the OT!

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.

Vote now!

Forget Obama! I have just discovered that the most important poll this year has been set up by Halden of the marvelous blog inhabitatio dei concerning the most pressing issue of all, namely:

What should I blog about?

If you look at the options available, the answer is clear: theological exegesis and biblical theology. Seriously, if you want to read a blog which is intelligent and direct, inhabitatio dei is the place to be. And if Halden starts blogging on this topic ... I think I would cancel all my other RSS subscriptions in order savour each word and lodge my limited opinions (OK, maybe not all of my RSS subscriptions).

So, don't leave it to chance: vote now!

(but note Halden's disclaimer in the body of the post)

Is the canonical approach uncritical?

If one were to approach the canonical approach exclusively through the secondary literature, then the answer would be "yes" (unless one read Seitz, Thiselton, McConville, etc.). If one were to read Childs himself (and I'm referring here to a specifically "Childsian" canonical approach), then the answer would so obviously be "no" that one would wonder how the secondary literature came to its position in the first place.

Sounds a bit overconfident? Then read Childs! Or at least have a look at some of the examples of canonical exegesis I have posted over the last year (in particular no.# 3 on the Pentateuch and this thread on the prophets). As far as I can see, the major source for the claim that Childs' is uncritical is the theoretical foundation he provides for his approach (invariably misunderstood). If you take a look at his actual exegesis, it is clear that he is anything but uncritical (see also my posts: The significance of the diachronic dimension and source criticism and the final form).

A blog post recently summarised this position. I respond to each sentence below, printed in italics as a proposition:

Canonical exegesis imposes unity on the text and searches for a theological point.

I'm not sure how the second part of the statement is related to the first. Is the imposition of unity a result of the theological interest of the interpreter? If so, how? Although it can certainly happen that the Bible gets reduced to a single scheme, this is a danger we all face, whether theological or not. We all have a broader theory of reality within which we try and comprehend the text. I don't see how a non-theological approach would be more accurate. Especially given that the texts themselves are intrinsically theological. They claim to be inspired by God, a response to God, to witness to God. I'm not sure how factoring him out of the equation guarantees objectivity in a way in which confessing him doesn't.

Canonical exegesis imposes unity ...

Canonical exegesis in the sense in which Childs understands it claims that the unity of the text lies in its theological referent. That means that there can be diversity, but that it is at some point resolved at a “higher level” outside of the text. The diversity is a result of the kerygmatic nature of the text, i.e. its genre is human proclamation of the divine, with all the historical and cultural particularity that that entails. It doesn't follow that their common subject matter, the God of Israel, also consists in conflicting identities. Admittedly this is a theological assertion, but the question of whether the theological (and not literary) unity claimed for the Bible is an imposition or not should be adjudicated on the basis of concrete proposals, and not used to reject the approach per se. To honest, I'm not sure how a confessing Christian or Jew could read the Bible with any other assumption.

Added to this is an important element of the redactional history of the Bible: it consists in a Sachkritik (critique according to content). According to Childs, ancient traditions were critically judged according to a standard of truth which the editors claimed represented the true theological content of those traditions. Isaiah's oracles concerning Assyria, for example, were sifted and ordered and collected with other oracles concerning Babylon according to a theological account of time. The two empires became types of one reality: sinful human hubris. Here, then, you have both particularity and unity. Again, in the inner-canonical reception history of the Exodus traditions, only certain elements were highlighted. The vicious domination of the Egyptians is not thematized, but the graciousness of God is. Here, too, we have a diversity of possibilities being brought under the aegis of a single theological trajectory.

... searches for a theological point

Given that the Bible is theological, I'm not sure why this is a criticism. Is one doing the book of Kings more justice by looking for archaeological evidence or by assessing its description of God?

It's not critical biblical scholarship because it requires the presupposition that Old and New Testaments are equally divine revelation and the words themselves point to some coherent higher reality.

I'm afraid I don't get this. Does that mean that to be a critical scholar one must be either an atheist or a non-Jew/Christian? How can a Christian be asked to stop believing that the Bible witnesses to God it order to be more critical? Isn't that to reify methodological atheism? Some of the greatest OT scholars believed that “ Old and New Testaments are equally divine revelation and the words themselves point to some coherent higher reality”: von Rad, Noth, Eichrodt, Zimmerli, W.H.Schmidt, Wolff, Childs, Seitz, Kaufmann, etc. Are they not critical?

This is subordinating both texts to a theological agenda.

Again, one cannot simply assume that the texts do not point to a single divine reality, as if this is self-evident. The idea that God has nothing to do with the Bible is relatively new, a result of recent secularist developments in the late 20th century. The names given above would reject this from the outset, and they are some of the fathers of Old Testament criticism.

Now if one is approaching the text from a Christian theological perspective, then there's nothing really wrong with that.

If everything you've said up to this point is true, then to continue asserting it in the name of “Christian theology” would make the enterprise a sham. Theology based on an imposed, external, theological agenda is not true theology. It is fideism and not worthy of belief and obedience.

Jesus gave them a new way of understanding their Scripture, and the NT is primarily a witness to their transformed way of understanding the revelation of the OT.

I'm in full agreement here. And so is Childs. It's part of his argument for a dialectical reading of the two testaments, rather than subordinating the Old Testament to its reception in the New. That is a fundamental presupposition of the canonical approach. It takes the two-testamental nature of Scripture seriously. The New is simply juxtaposed with the Old, so that means we too must look at both in their own integrity rather than subordinate one to the other (as I wrote in my post, Two testaments and four gospels).

Comic of the day

Vermutung

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

FRIEDRICH SCHWANECKE

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.