Abstracts for my ISBL Amsterdam papers

I'll be giving two papers at ISBL Amsterdam this July. Here are the abstracts:

Narrative and Ontology: The Canonical Approach of Brevard S. Childs

Brevard Childs’ “canonical approach” to Biblical interpretation, introduced programmatically in his Introduction to the Old Testament in 1979, continues to find enthusiastic supporters and vigorous detractors. Yet Childs’ response to the reception of his work was often as critical of the former group as it was of the latter. The primary issue turns on his particular understanding of the meaning of the term “canon,” which he considered a “cypher” for a constellation of literary, historical, and theological realities. This paper provides a new account of the content of that cypher and thus the logical coherence of his approach. In short, it argues that the heart of the matter for Childs is “ontology,” the question of the identity of the text’s divine source and referent. In light of this analysis, it will also be suggested that Childs’ proposal has not yet been fully exploited by scholars seeking to understand the nature of the unity of Scripture and thus the proper method for interpreting it. 

Putting David in his Place: The Logic of the Arrangement of Psalms 15–24 

In recent years there have been a number of attempts to explain the structure and meaning of Psalms 15–24 (Auffret; Hossfeld/Zenger; Miller; Brown), generally understood to be the second of four “sub-collections” constituting the first book of the Psalter. While there is a consensus that the Psalms have been chiastically arranged according to their genre, there is still disagreement concerning the logic undergirding this arrangement. How do the parts relate to each other in the final form of the text? What is the function of this particular mode of arrangement? This paper seeks to contribute to the discussion by highlighting and interpreting four elements of the composition that have not yet received their proper due: 1) The manner in which the content of each psalm is “expanded” and “brought forward” in its chiastic parallel; 2) the nature of the relation between the framing Psalms (15; 19; 24) and those that intervene; 3)the identity of David as “author” of the Psalms; and 4), the significance of Zion as the horizon for interpreting the meaning of these Psalms. In short, I argue that the editors were concerned to situate David within his true theological context.

Is there a replacement for Techonrati?

Of all the pros and cons about starting blogging again that I have been throwing back and forth in my head since passing my viva (yes, I'm pretty much a doctor now, though the certificate won't arrive till March), there is one obstacle that stands out above all, and that is the fact the invaluable service once provided by Technorati no longer seems to work, at least outside of the States (customer service doesn't respond to questions either - I can't even delete my account!). Until this is sorted, I'm not sure I can get back to blogging again, for I will have no practical way of knowing who is reponding to my posts or not. Inter-blog dialogues are one of the things that make time invested in blogging worthwhile.

So, my question to the blogosphere: Is there a replacement for Technorati? My own googling efforts have revealed nothing . Specifically, what I want is a service that tells me, in chronological order (and not in order of my most popular posts) who has linked to me so that I can respond to them. 

Final version of my doctoral thesis

This blog has been sleeping for quite some time now (eight months, to be precise). As I wrote in my last post, I needed to prioritize in order to get my thesis in on time. I did in fact get it done by August, just in time to become a full-time stay-at-home dad. In the meantime I've done all the editing and I finally handed in the final product on October 21st. The viva voce is set for December 20th, which will hopefully mean that I'll get a doctorate for Christmas! My two external examiners are Walter Moberly and Neil B. MacDonald, i.e. an Old Testament guy and a systematic theologian. It is the interface between these two disciplines that excites me most so I'm really looking forward to the conversation we'll have!

Here is the abstract I handed in with the final form:

ABSTRACT

This thesis seeks to contribute to the theory and practice of theological interpretation by explicating the inner coherence of B.S. Childs’ “canonical approach” and by exemplifying that approach in an interpretation of Psalm 24.

Part 1 concerns the theory. In this section I argue that Childs’ approach rests upon a particular understanding of the nature of the Biblical text. In short, it has a twofold function, that of witnessing to the reality of God and that of shaping the community of faith in light of that reality. The God to whom it witnesses is himself involved in this witnessing activity in that he both evokes and infuses the tradition with his Spirit so that he may be known. The hermeneutical implication is that interpretation must attempt to grasp the reality “behind” the text while respecting the particular form in which that reality has been rendered. The result is a multi-level approach to interpretation involving a continuous dialectic between the witness (verbum) and its content (res). The affirmation of the nature of Scripture as an ongoing vehicle of revelation also implies the significance of the history of faithful Christian interpretation.

Part 2 seeks to exemplify this approach by showing how such a multi-level interpretation of Psalm 24 is both possible and fruitful for our understanding of the reality to which it witnesses. I achieve this by moving through several stages. After reviewing contemporary methodology, I first provide a poetic analysis of the Psalm and conclude that it witnesses to the economy of God in a bid to call Israel to realize its true identity. I then provide a hypothesis of how the final form of the psalm is a result of a tradition historical process with its roots in the pre-exilic temple liturgy. This historical perspective not only clarifies the poetic shape of the psalm, it provides a bridge to discussing the question of the nature of the reality experienced within Israel’s cult. I conclude that there is a parallel between the structure of this reality and the shape of Ps 24. I then both confirm and attempt to deepen our understanding of this reality by following canonical pointers internal to the psalm to three other bodies of text: Samuel, the Psalter, and Isaiah. Key to this broader context is the agency of the David found in Ps 24’s superscription. I conclude my analysis by suggesting how a better grasp of the divine economy in the light of Christ may help us better understand the inner unity of Ps 24 itself.

As always, I'd be delighted to hear any feedback and criticisms.

This blog isn't dead, it's just hibernating

It's been two months since my last post, which is the longest break this blog has experienced since I set it up in Sept 2007. I've already indicated in the past that my posting will be slowing down. There are a number of practical reasons: our daughter Jasmine, who arrived seven months ago, is still capturing a lot of my attention (she's doing amazingly, for those who are interested: nothing could have prepared me for the new and beautiful dimensions of life that her presence is opening up for Ingrid and I); I have a number of projects that I want to dedicate more time to (Hebrew tutor, translation work [currently Berges' intro to Isaiah]); I'm working to get this rather large thesis done by August; and I'm looking for future employers.

I could no doubt still work out time to keep on posting, but there are two further issues that are causing me to hold back. The first is a matter of my research interests. Most of this blog has been dedicated to Brevard Childs. When I started posting I had already worked out my ideas on his approach and used this blog as a platform to discuss and share them with others. For quite some time now, however, I've been dedicating my attention to Psalm 24 in an attempt to implement what I've sketched out as the content of Childs' canonical thesis. The scope of inquiry that Childs challenges us to engage in has kept me from remaining in one spot long enough to turn my thoughts into a series of posts. I'm attempting an integrative interpretation that takes into account diachrony and synchrony, cultic liturgy and canonical poetics, dogma and history, a new interpretation that connects with very ancient ones. The challenge that this poses for me has caused me to step back with the sharing my ideas and focus instead on hammering out my thesis. This leads to the second reason for my silence:

Entering the new waters of actually reading the Bible rather than talking about how one should read the Bible has obviously opened up a new box of challenges for me. It's exciting, and I would love to share my thoughts in one-to-one dialogue, but I don't feel that it is right to talk about them online just yet. There's a time for speaking (Ecclesiastes 3:7), and the prudent need to learn when to do so (Prov 10:19; 21:23; Sirach 20:6-7). I want to work my synthesis to its end and get my feet firmly established in Biblical soil before I return to cyberspace to share my thoughts and engage in the welcome critique that comes with that. Hence the fact that this blog isn't dead, just hibernating, storing up resources until the arrival of the right "season."

Abstract for my SBL (London) paper

I just received the good news that the abstract for one of my papers has been accepted for SBL London. It'll be in the 'Writings' section. Here it is:

Psalm 24 as Prophecy: A New Poetic Reading

Psalm 24 is often seen to be a “baffling” psalm due to the juxtaposition of what seems to be thematically disparate material (creation, vv. 1-2; torah and sanctuary vv. 3-6; divine warrior and sanctuary, vv. 7-10). Most unusual, however, is the juxtaposition of the final two stanzas, for they seem to cancel each other out. In vv. 3-6, human beings desire access to God within the sanctuary, whereas in vv. 7-10 God himself is presented as standing outside the same location and desiring access. Multiple clues indicate that these two entrance scenes have been intentionally brought into parallelism with each other, yet no satisfactory answer has been presented as to the meaning of this poetic manoeuvre. In this paper, a poetic analysis is proposed that goes beyond those proffered thus far by looking at the way it represents time and space. The conclusion is that the Psalm belongs in the genre of prophecy.

A response to M. Welker on the relation between Scripture and theology

In an essay published in a Festschrift for Patrick Miller, Michael Welker, professor of systematic theology at the University of Heidelberg, has shared his thoughts on the relationship between Biblical exegesis and theology. The title of the essay is “Sola Scripture? The Authority of the Bible in Pluralistic Environments.” Here is my response, shaped as it is by Childs’ “canonical approach.”

Welker shares a basic starting point with Brevard Childs. In a very pregnant paragraph on p. 383 he claims that behind the diversity within the canon (if “behind” is the right metaphor for his approach) there is a single subject matter: God, and not just any god but a particular God. This God is a living reality and not just a theological postulate and as such he has left his imprint, in some undefined sense, on the traditions contained within the Bible (they “reflect his weight”). There is thus at work within the tradition-history behind the text a divine agency, something secular scholarship, by virtue of its own “confessional” stance, has no access to. Not only is there a “divine reality” at work in the actual composition of the textual witnesses, he also confesses that it is the same reality that is revealed in Jesus Christ. This seems to me to be an ontological statement, one that makes a very significant statement about the actual nature of the now textualized religious traditions of ancient Israel. In this he is still on common ground with Childs.

He adds one further claim, however, to this construal of the nature of the texts which both marks his common ground with Childs and yet also the point of divergence: the texts are to be understood as “witnesses.” As I have often stated on this blog, this category is central to Childs' own approach, yet he interprets in a different manner to Welker (his citation of Brueggemann at this point, fn. 21, confirms this, as this is the biggest sticking point in their two approaches). I hope that I am not misinterpreting Welker, but his claim about the texts' status as “witnesses” seems to be materially distinct from his claim about the texts' nature as a “reflection” of God. Although God exerts his a certain force upon the traditions (“weight”), even leaving an impact upon their formation (“mirror”), Welker understands their character as witnesses to be primarily a matter of a individual/communal “search for truth” (p. 392). It is a human “contribution.” In this he stands with the majority of contemporary Old Testament scholarship.

For Childs, however, the very force of the divine referent upon the witness is part of the definition of “witness” in the first place. The function of the Biblical witness, according to Childs, is not to search for truth but to point to a truth that has already impacted the witnesses. In other words, his affirmation of the divine impact on tradition has hermeneutical implications, as what the text is trying to do—even in its very historical particularity—is not wrestle with the theological question of God but to point to a divine reality that has broken into the witnesses' reality and perhaps even left him rather confused as a result. Von Rad spoke of a “lebendigen Wort Jahwes, das an Israel ergangen ist.” For Childs, of course, this “divine impact” was part of the literary shaping process of the traditions themselves, such that the final form sets the agenda for relating the parts. In relation to the issue of diversity within the canon, the canonical-shape functions either to guide our own interpretation of the meaning of the tradition, either by subordinating one view to another or allowing them to relate dialectically. The significant point here, however, is that the canon as witness calls us to resolve this dialectic at the level of the divine referent. The diversity in the canon is a consequence of the nature of the referent and not an accident of history or a function of human particularity.

This leads Childs (as I understand him) to a different answer to the question of how to relate the “canonical traditions” to “contemporary life” (p. 391). Rather than correlating canonical diversity with contemporary diversity, the canon compels us to seek unity within that diversity—a unity at the level of the divine reality itself—and then to reinterpret our current situation in light of that divine reality. As part of the hermeneutical spiral however, we not only interpret the unity of the present in light of the unity of the canonical referent, we also seek to comprehend the unity of the canon in light of the unity of its divine referent. Hence Childs’ dialectical approach. Whereas Welker seems to argue for a relatively unilinear mode of theological exegesis—the task of systematic theology in Biblical exegesis is to test the “Tragbarkeit” of exegetical, theological claims in the present (p. 388)— Childs argues that dogmatics ought, at a certain point in the hermeneutical circle, to contribute to exegetical claims about the actual meaning of the text itself. In my own work, this leads me to the strong (and unusual, given the current climate) claim that Robert Jenson's interpretation the “metaphysics of Heaven” (which is a Trinitarian concept) not only seems to supply Psalm 24 with its ultimate referent (when read historically, cult-critically, poetically and canonically), but it also helps us to understand the actual logic of the Psalm itself better. 

Was ist christliche Erkenntnis?

I'm revisiting old essays and reworking them for the final form of my thesis. In the process I'm discovering Karl Barth in a new dimension. Childs is often said to be Barthian, and this is surely right. But I'm still not sure the implications of what that means have been fully worked out. Is there a treatment to date which expresses the canonical approach in terms of Barth's teaching of the Three Forms of the Word (neither Xun nor Driver mention it)? Unfortunately, I'm only going to be briefly touching on this myself as 50% of my thesis is enacting Childs' hermeneutic and not explaining its intellectual ancestry. Nevertheless, grasping the dogmatic underpinnings of the "canonical approach" (as Childs understood it) is key to implementing it exegetically. I'm grateful to Childs for having introduced me to Barth, whose writings make my heart race almost as much as those of Childs. I do wonder how much my love of Childs is in fact a love of Barth, where the one stops and the other continues. I don't know my Barth well enough to judge just yet.

Here's an awesome quote on the nature of Christian (Biblical) truth that embodies what it is that I love about Barth, and what it is that makes the canonical approach so rich:

Der Begriff des Wissens, der scientia, genügt nicht, umd das zu beschreiben, was christilche Erkenntnis ist. Wir müssen vielmehr zurückgehen auf das, was im Alten Testament die Weisheit genannat wird, was der Grieche sophia nannte und der Lateiner sapientia, um das Wissen der Theologie in seiner Fülle zu erfassen. Sapientia unterscheidet sich von dem engeren Begriff scientia, Weisheit unterscheidet sich von Wissennicht dadurch, daß sie nicht  auch Wissen in sich enthielte, aber darüber hinaus redet dieser Begriff von einem Wissen, das ein praktisches Wissen sit, das die ganze Existenz des Menschen umfaßt. Weißheit ist das Wissen, von dem wir faktisch, praktisch leben dürfen, ist die Empirie und ist die Theorie, welche darin gewaltig ist, daß sie sofort praktisch ist, daß sie das Wissen ist, welches unser Leben beherrscht, welches wirklich ein Licht auf unserem Pfad ist. Nicht ein Licht zum Bestaunen und Betrachten, nicht ein Licht um allerhand Feuerwerke damit anzuzünden - und wenn es auch die tiefsinnigsten philosophischen Spekulationen wären! - sonder das Licht auf unserem Weg, das über unserem Tun und über unserem Reden stehen darf, das Licht in unseren gesunden und in unseren kranken Tagen, in unserer Armut und in unserem Reichtum, das Licht, das nicht nur dann leuchtet, wenn wir Momente der Einsicht zu haben meinen, sonder das uns begleitet auch in unsere Torheit hinein, das nicht verlöscht, wenn alles verlöscht, wenn das Ziel unseres Lebens im Tode sichtbar wird. Von diesem Licht, von dieser Wahrheit leben, das heißt christliches Erkennen. Christliches Erkennen heißt in der Wahrheit Jesus Christi leben.

Karl Barth, Dogmatik im Umriss, in der Universität Bonn vorgelesen, 1946.

Quote of the day: Gunkel/Barth

Daß es sich im Alten Testament um eine bewegende Sache handeln möchte, fing mir erst in Berlin bei Gunkel aufzugehen (Nachwort 190f.; Busch, Leben 51; cited in Bächli, Das Alte Testament in der Kirchlichen Dogmatik von Karl Barth, 3.

What was it that Barth saw in Gunkel? I won't share my thoughts here, as my own answer constitutes part of my thesis (though see Bächli on pp. 324-325). I just wanted to share this quote as a witness to the fact that Barth, and Childs, never intended or wanted to escape the challenge of either the Enlightenment or historical-criticism. Their approaches go through it and thus result in a vision of Scripture and God which, as far as I am concerned at least, makes my heart burn. I worry that the contemporary growth in "theological exegesis" hasn't fully grasp the move made by Barth and then Childs on this score.

Otto Bächli's book is awesome (I'm surprised Childs' didn't cite it in his Biblical Theology). Incidentally, he was born in Switzerland in 1920 and there a section on him on this amazing website by the Swiss Reformed Church dedicated to the memories of Swiss pastors during the war. Here's the reason he got into Old Testament:

Wir hatten ein Bauernhaus mit vier Wohnungen, und in einer lebten Juden. Wir sprachen auch Jiddisch im Umgang mit jüdischen Kindern. Wohl aus diesen Erfahrungen heraus wurde später mein Hang zum Alten Testament und zum Hebräischen sehr stark.

Barth, Ps 24, and the unity of the Testaments

Christians believe that the Old Testament witnesses to  God-in-Jesus. Jesus himself made this clear to his disciples as he walked with them on the road to Emmaus, opening their eyes to the way the Law and the Prophets spoke of his suffering and resurrection. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, if you enjoy thinking about this kind of thing), he didn’t leave behind a divinely inspired hermeneutical key which can infallibly illuminate the manner in which the Old Testament goes about doing this. We are left with a frustrating inner conviction but the impossibility of proving this conviction to the unbeliever. This reminds me of Jesus’ response to the Pharisees’ demand for a sign, when he simply states that what he says is true because he is the one who says it. I can imagine how frustrating that must have been! Somehow the truth is “self-affirming.”

For my part, I do believe that the Old Testament witnesses to God-in-Jesus, and the church has consistently confessed the same (cf. the abundant allegorical interpretation for the vast majority of the church’s history, including throughout the Reformation). However, like many in the church, I also struggle to back up this claim with a philosophical or theological account of how this happens. To draw another analogy with responses to the historical Jesus, I find myself in the similar position of Jesus’ neighbours in Nazareth, who , when confronted with his claim that he is the initiator of the kingdom of God, responded with the question: “isn’t that Joseph’s son… ?” (note the title of a recent book whose contents would seem to affirm this surface recognition as the last word on the matter). The analogous Christian version that I hear again and again is: “is that the God of the New Testament?” The answer is “yes,” and if you can’t figure out why or how than you better take stock of the adequacy your own grasp of the gospel. I experience this challenge regularly.

This is not to say that there are not a host of helpful theses that each in their own way shed light on the phenomenon, allowing Christians to both deepen their own faith as well as present it to others. The recognition of mystery ought to function as an invitation to enter it, rather than as an excuse to just give up wrestling with the issue in the first place (cf. A. Louth, Discerning the Mystery).

One thesis that touches on this issue was made by Karl Barth, which I will now share in massively reduced form (primarily because I have only read this thesis in a paper about something else, namely  the influence of Barth on Miskotte). It’s about the continuity  and discontinuity between the Testaments:

Similarity	Disimilarity
Both Testaments see God as one who freely initiates relationship with human kind.	The OT has a variety of covenants and only an implicit Messianic hope. The NT has only one covenant and the Messiah is identified as Jesus of Nazareth.
Both Testaments recognize the mysterious hiddenness of God.	The OT sees this hiddenness in God’s judgement of the nations, including Israel. The NT sees this in God’s judgement of his Son. God’s judgement in the NT is, in some sense, final.
Both Testaments have an “already-not yet” eschatology (my phrase), as God is both one who is already experienced but also one who is coming.	The NT not only see’s Jesus as the One who is coming, it is waiting for the one who has already come [though I have to admit, I don’t see how this is any different from the OT perspective, for there God also already came … ].

The framework for these similarities/differences is Barth’s concept of the relationship between Divine Revelation and time. There are three “times,” the time of the expectation of revelation (Old Testmaent), the time of the fulfilment of revelation (Jesus’ history), and the age of remembering the fulfilment of revelation (New Testament). It’s important to note that the NT is not the fulfilment of the OT (contra Louth, cited above), Jesus is. The NT and OT both function to point to a single referent that stands outside of themselves. They do this in their own idiom and from their own perspective (hence the differences), but their referential object is the same (hence the similar structure and content).

As you may have noticed from my comments in square brackets, it seems to me as if Barth is not doing full justice to the OT (though feel free to correct me here). In short, he seems to overemphasises the NT’s “already” element in contrast to the OT’s “not yet.” Isn’t it the case that the OT already witnesses to a past fulfilment that provides the “ontological” ground for the possibility of the history that ensues? The example I’m thinking of is the opening strophe of Ps 24: “The earth is the LORD’s … for he has founded it upon the seas … .” Isn’t this past act as decisive in its grounding of God’s history with his people as Jesus’ resurrection from the dead? E. Otto talks of God’s acts here as  creating the “Möglichkeit” (possibility) for the obedience found in vv. 3-6: There can be such a thing as a righteous, obedient Jacob (v. 6), because God’s stabilization of the earth in the face of chaos guarantees the validity of such obedience. In a similar way, the New Testament talks of resurrection life in the Spirit creating a heart of flesh and the capacity to be obedient to the Torah.

So how do I interpret the relation of Ps 24:1-2 in relation to the NT? Jesus can’t have “fulfilled” it because Ps 24:1-2 is not pointing forward to a moment yet to be fulfilled, it is pointing back to something already established once and for all. As mentioned, the relation  seems to be of a structural nature. In fact, the analogy can be expanded to apply to Jesus’ entire mission, for just as in Ps 24 strophe 1 (vv. 1-2) is the precondition for strophe 2 (vv. 3-6), these two strophes are somehow “consummated” by strophes 3 and 4 (vv. 7-10; on my interpretation of the poetic structure, I should add). Similarly, Jesus was raised from the dead (strophe 1), has cleansed his people (strophe 2) and will return again to consummate his work (i.e. Advent; strophes 3-4). Except that even here our analogy runs into conceptual difficulties, for it is the case that  Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension are all contained in vv. 7-10: his death was a battle with death, his resurrection was his victory and his ascension was its consummation (i.e. Ascension not advent). So are vv. 7-10 about Christ’s return to earth as king or his ascension to heaven to be enthroned? In addition to this, where does this leave strophe 1 if the resurrection in is the final two strophes? The odd thing is that strophe 1 in fact has the same content as strophes 3-4, albeit on a “mythological” rather than “historical” plain! Strophe 1 is also a kind of battle, this time with the seas, and it is also a proclamation of victory, i.e. the establishment of a viable living space. So does Ps 24 taken on its own, regardless of its correlation to an external event in time (not in space: Jesus was crucified in Jerusalem!) contain its own odd witness to “ontological-unity-in-temporal-sequence”? Srophes 3 and 4 “consummate” strophe 1, even as the “recapitulate” its content. The “chronos” is different but not the “chairos.”

 The intermediate conclusion  all this mind bending has for me is that every time I try and relate Psalm 24 to the Gospels my temporal categories are consistently being confirmed (there is a genuine analogy) and subverted. It’s like a lover who tempts me with a kiss and a flash of her eye-lashes but teasingly disappears around the corner, leaving a trail of perfume to beckon me on (Song of Songs was always had a hermeneutical function for church and synagogue!).  I see the analogy, am breathless at the sheer scope of who Jesus is and what he has achieved, and yet still am left to struggle and see how the past and present within an Psalm’s “narrative world” is “fulfilled” by the Gospel’s presentation of past and present, a past and present that can be collapsed into one moment.

I mentioned above that the OT’s inevitable and consistent challenge to the Christian claim about its Christological content ought to primarily be a challenge to Christians, not to prove their faith to the sceptics but to deepen the content of their own faith, which is always far from perfect. I can’t claim to have a concrete answer to my issue with Ps 24 above (though I’m working on it!), but it has forced me to return to my own construal of the “gospel” and to see it with new eyes. Of particular relevance here is the concept of the relation between the “ontological” and “economic” Trinity, God in himself and God for us. McGlasson summarizes the relation as follows:

God’s sending of his Son for our salvation and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit are a replication in time of God’s eternal self-identity. God’s redemptive love for humanity is an expression of God’s free decision to draw us into a relationship with himself, which is based on the relationship of love that he himself is (McGlasson, Invitation, 198).

As Barth implies above, the NT is not the fulfilment of the OT, it points to it’s fulfilment. This means that drawing structural analogies between the OT and the NT can only take us so far. They point us in the right direction, as the content of the NT is the same as the OT. But the reality itself is greater than what is at most the partial testimony of both Testaments (cf. Childs, Biblical Theology). Hence the necessity of higher level dogmatic theology in order to grasp what is really going on in Scripture. The practice of theology, after all, originally consisted in nothing other than meditation upon the mystery of the ontological trinity. I think I ought to learn to do the same.  


[For a post on Moberly's interpretation of the Emmaus story, go here; see also my post Reading in a Revised Frame of Reference].