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].

An Abstract of my doctoral thesis on Ps 24

The following is an abstract of my doctoral thesis on Ps 24 which Susan Gillingham has kindly offered to publish at the forthcoming Oxford Conference on the Psalms. It focusses on the exegetical dimension, leaving aside the hermeneutical and dogmatic parts of my doctorate. I'd appreciate feedback and questions (and bear in mind that the content of this blog is copyright):

My thesis is an attempt to read Ps 24 in the context of B.S. Childs' “canonical approach,” rightly understood. The first half outlines the coherence of his approach, which is not a method but a comprehensive construal of the particular nature of Israel's religious traditions that factors in the ontological reality its God. 


Turning to Ps 24, I argue that it is a poetically structured reworking of prior authoritative traditions with the goal of constraining future reception of those traditions, accomplished dialectically in the context of Israel's broader theological heritage, with the goal of witnessing to the true theological substance of that heritage. In particular, I argue that Ps 24 attempts to penetrate to the heart of God's ways in the world by drawing on Israel's core traditions of creation, Sinai/Zion, holy war, and the Davidic king and by subtly structuring their interrelations. 


The interpretive crux is the poetic juxtaposition of two portrayals of character: the obedient character of those who may access the fullness of creational life within the temple on Zion, accrued upon completion of the journey of pilgrimage, and the character of the author and guarantor of this life, the Lord, presented as a mighty warrior, about to enter into that very same location. The juxtaposition entails a subtle poetic movement of “actualization,” enacted within the protological/eschatological horizon of creation, whereby the Lord appears to accomplish what is only a possibility for Jacob. The significance of this juxtaposition, however, remains vague at the level of the Psalm alone. An account of Israel's cult along with a “theology of the Psalter” proves the paradigmatic centrality of Ps 24's themes to Biblical faith and strengthens the sense of their interconnectedness, yet it does not resolve the significance of their poetic presentation. 


A significant hermeneutical key is provided by the “canonical marker” לדוד, which asks us to read the Psalm in relation to the theological persona of David, a hermeneutical construct within the Psalter that takes its cue from the Book of Samuel. In Samuel we find that the context that constitutes David's identity mirrors the structure and content of Ps 24. On the one hand, David is an historically particular free agent who, out of love for God and Israel, acts on Israel's and his own behalf in obedience to torah in order to bring it and himself, through battle, to full creational blessing on Zion (2 Sam 6-8). On the other hand, David's story is embedded in a broader eschatological narrative in which David is a vehicle of the true agent of history, the Lord, who similarly acts in order to bring about his own purpose of divine communion with his righteous people in full creational blessing on Zion. As Ps 24 implies, God, through David, is the true subject of Israel's redemption in Zion, though not without its obedience. Given the persistent presence of disobedience, this fulfilment in time remains proleptic and the ancient cycle of Israel's struggle for life and divine judgement/redemption is perpetuated. This same dialectical pattern applies to the “David of the Psalter” whereby, on the one hand, “David” struggles for his own and Israel's life and witnesses to the Lord's intervention in judgement/salvation and, on the other hand, this cycle is situated within the ultimate context of divine reality. 


Ps 24's paradigmatic nature and hermeneutical function for Biblical faith becomes clearer when it is read as the frame and climax of the chiastically structured sub-collection of Pss 15-24. As part of the frame (Pss 15 and 19), it functions to set the remaining Psalms within the context of base realities: obedience to torah for the sake of creation. As the climax of the collection, understood as a series of intensifying parallelisms, it depicts the fulfilment of that reality with an arrival in Zion/new creation itself, albeit an arrival by the Lord with Jacob apparently in his train. 


A final clarification is provided by the Book of Isaiah, itself related to the Psalter, which deals with the persistent problem of Israel's disobedience by reconstituting it by means of the “Servant,” the “father” of 3^rd Isaiah's redeemed “servants.” Thus, similar to 2 Sam 7 and in line with the dialectic of Ps 24, the Lord's creation intentions come to fruition in Zion upon the entry of a newly constituted Jacob, created and led by the Lord. Like Ps 24, however, Isaiah closes with the Lord still poised before the gates, leaving the consummation of Israel's pilgrimage open to the future. 


Finally, in an attempt to clarify the Psalm's theological subject matter in its “economic” and “ontological” dimensions, this reading of Ps 24 is brought into dialogue with patristic and rabbinic exegesis, Jenson's Trinitarian metaphysic of heaven and Farrow's treatment of the Ascension

Barth on the Christological centre of the Old and New Testaments

Josh Lim of Reformed Blogging has posted the following quote by Barth which I find very helpful for understanding Childs' own approach to Biblical theology (especially the last bit, which I print in bold). It affirms, once again, Childs' strong Barthian outlook.

As regards handling of Old Testament texts, we maintain that for us the Old Testament is valid only in relation to the New. If the church has declared itself to be the lawful successor of the synagogue, this means that the Old Testament is witness to Christ, before Christ but not without Christ. Each sentence in the Old Testament must be seen in this context. Historical exegesis can and must be done, but at the same time we have to ask whether this exegesis does justice to the context in which the Old and New Testaments stand. Even in a sermon on Judges 6:3 it is possible both insist on the literal sense and also to set one’s sights on Christ. As a wholly Jewish book, the Old Testament is a pointer to Christ. As regards the justification of allegory, we have again to refer to the relation between the Old Testament and the New. In the Old Testament the natural sense is the issue. Preaching must bring out what the Old Testament passage actually says, but in a way that affirms the basic premise on which the church adopted the Old Testament. This does not mean that we will give the passage a second sense — just as we are not to oppose historical and Christian exposition to one another. Instead, we will see that this passage in its immanence points beyond itself. It is a signpost that gives us direction. The Old Testament points forwards, the New Testament points backward, and both point to Christ.[*]

A "signpost that gives us a direction," what a helpful way of thinking of the relation between the literal and spiritual senses.

For a statement by Childs that repeats this: "As a wholly Jewish book, the Old Testament is a pointer to Christ" - go to my post The Task of Jewish/Christian exegesis.

For a quote by Francis Watson on this issue go here.

[*] Karl Barth, Homiletics Translated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley and Donald E. Daniels (Louisville, KY: WJK, 1991) 80-81.

What does Barth mean by the "faktische Verheißung der Existenz Jesu"?

I'm interested in both translation possibilities and a conceptual clarification. The phrase comes from Barth's KD III §41 p. 68 (I don't own an English translation). Here's the quote:

Das Haupt der Gemeinde ... kann ja das alttestamentliche Zeugnis an sich und als solches noch nicht bezeichnen und mit Namen nennen. Es muß sich begnügen, seine Existenz faktisch zu verheißen und mit dieser Verheißung zum Gehorsam und zur Hoffnung aufzurufen.

Faktisch can mean different things: "factual," "actual," "objective," "literal," "virtual," "effective," "de facto," "in practice." It seems here that Barth is talking about the reality of Jesus Christ as something that transcends the particular and partial presentations of him as we find them in the various strands of the New Testament. He's bigger than the New Testament and can be witnessed to adequately enough by the Old Testament too (if only in a different "idiom"). As such, Barth could be talking about the Old Testament's witness to the reality of Jesus as such. The problem is that here the word faktisch is an adverb modifying the verb (he doesn't say "faktische Existenz"). It would seem that he is talking about a quality of promise, rather than a quality of existence. The promise itself is "faktisch." Or maybe I'm just being too pernickety. Perhaps translating with a kind of adverbial phrase could make faktisch apply to Existenz after all. One possibility would be: "It must be content with promising his existence in terms of its substance [rather then literally identifying Him]."

Incidentally, it would seem that this (apparently) "Barthian" emphasis on the adequacy of the Old Testament as a direct witness of Jesus is not shared by all Christian theologians. In his "Translator's Introduction" to the work of another Barthian, Heiko Miskotte (When the Gods are Silent), J. W. Doberstein makes the following criticism:

It is not a primary function of a translator to criticize a book which he has translated. I cannot conceal the fact, however, that I do not share one of its basic points of view, namely, its completely Barthian orientation. Though the author is certainly right in insisting that the Testaments must not be isolated from each other, he, following Barth, sees no real redemptive progress from the Old to the New Testament, but rather tends to regard them as two concentric circles which revolve around an identical centre. There would seem to be no qualitative difference between the Testaments, only a difference in manner of presentation. This results in the typically Barthian confusion of Law and Gospel. (1967, p. x)

I have to say, this is one of the things I really like about Barth (and it is picked up with vigour by Brevard Childs; cf. his Biblical Theology; cf. also Seitz, Word Without End). Could someone explain what Doberstein means by Barth's "confusion of Law and Gospel"?

Update: Howard of Sans Contexte has kindly supplied the following quote by Barth in the comments:

"...There are still far too many things which I cannot understand in the counter-thesis, advanced with varying degrees of sharpness and consistency by these authors, that the Gospel and the Law differ and are even antithetical in significance and function.

I do not understand (1) with what biblical or inherent right, on the basis of what conception of God, His work and His revelation, and above all in the light of what Christology, they can speak, not of one intrinsically true and clear Word of God, but of two Words in which He speaks alternately and in different ways to man according to some unknown rule."

A multiple level reading of Scripture

I've been posting on the issue of "figural reading" of the Old Testament recently, in particular on the way in which Jesus relates to the OT both "narratively" and "ontologically." I gave an example of the kind of challenge this type of reading can pose here (with an interesting response by Luke). Today I look at a proposal made by Brevard Childs.

Childs defends a multiple level reading of Scripture according to different contexts, but one where the integral contact between text and subject matter is not blurred. What he proposes is

a single method of interpretation which takes seriously both the different dimensions constituting the text as well as distinct contexts in which the text functions (1997:61).

As I mentioned in a thread dealing with the literal and spiritual senses of Scripture, there is no fixed temporal order in the exegesis: we already come to the text with a dogmatic framework, which is then altered in the light of the text. However, for pedagogical reasons Childs illustrates this move by taking us from the more familiar exegetical activity to the more complex reflective enterprise (taken from his essay, "Does the Old Testament Witness to Jesus Christ?" pp. 61-63):

1.The Old Testament's witness must be heard in its own voice (as I pointed out in this thread), which means it must be interpreted within its historical, literary, and canonical context. The genre of story, for example, excludes the possibility of having Jesus Christ read back into it, as in this context promise and fulfilment cannot be fused.

2.This literal/historical reading can be extended by placing it within the context of the two part canon. Structural similarities and dissimilarities between both testaments are analysed in which the aim is to pursue a relationship of content. For example, in terms of an understanding of God, it inquires as to which features the two testaments hold in common respecting the mode, intention, and goal of God's manifestations. This theological relationship is pursued both on the level of the textual witness and on that of the discrete matter (res) of the two collections.

3.The pursuit of the theological relationships between the two testaments provides an avenue towards comprehending the greater theological unity of the Christian Bible. The reality which undergirds the two testaments should not be held apart and left fragmented, but be critically reunited. When this reality is confronted, however, the reverse move takes place, as the interpreter is compelled to understand the biblical text from the context of this fuller horizon. In reference to the Old Testament's witness to Christ, this means moving beyond the unique voice of the prophets' testimony to a coming royal figure. Rather,

in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ in the history of Israel, the texts of both testaments in their fragmentary testimony to God's utterly mysterious purpose of new creation and redemption take on fresh life. Thus, when the interpreter moves from the reality of God manifest in action back to the Scriptures themselves for further illumination, he or she is constrained to listen for a new song break forth from the same ancient, sacred texts. As a result, in spite of generations of scholarly denial, few Christians can read Isaiah 53 without sensing the amazing morphological fit with the passion of Jesus Christ.”

In sum, Childs is proposing

“a text-oriented hearing of Scripture by a Christian community of faith which allows biblical texts to resonate from the force of divine reality gained through an encounter with the entire Christian Bible.”

The "horizontal" and "vertical" nature of the Old Testament witness

Old Testament scholars, especially those influenced by Karl Barth (which seems to include most of the German post-war generation, such as von Rad, W.H. Schmidt, Zimmerli, perhaps Otto Kaiser; see this post), often talk of the "witness" of the Old Testament. In other words, they understood a central function of the Bible as being to point beyond itself to some kind of reality. How did the New Testament understand this reality?

On the one hand, this reality was obviously understood to be "the message of the Gospel." Yet how this witness was understood to be rendered is more complex. In the New Testament, this message is related to the Jewish scriptures both in terms of a historical sequence (i.e. Jesus appeared in the “fullness of time”, Gal. 4:4), as well as on an ontological plane. Brevard Childs cites John 1:1, Col. 1:15f, and Rev. 13: 8 as examples of “a mode of speech in relation to a subject matter which disregards or transcends temporal sequence.”[*] As Childs said in one of his first publications: the Old Testament is not just a preparation for Jesus Christ but a manifestation of him. [**] (See his discussion of Wilhelm Vischer's more "vertical" approach in contrast to von Rad's more "horizontal" Heilsgeschichte).

We thus have different ways of understanding the way in which Jesus is related to the Old Testament. On the one hand, we can take the now well-know heilsgeschichtliche approach, and talk about him fulfilling Israel's narrative. On the other hand, one can take a more "vertical" (rather than "horizontal") approach, and talk about Jesus as the ontological reality which the Scriptures point to at each stage of the way (see my post The need for ontological categories in Biblical exegesis). This kind of move leads to that type of move from "text to subject-matter" known as "allegory" (see my post, What is Christian allegory?).

Allegory is, of course, incredibly unfashionable at the moment in Biblical studies (though I sense the tide is changing). One criticism of this type of exegetical move is that when exegesis is loosed from the controls of historical critical exegesis it opens the path to uncontrolled flights of fancy. Another criticism (raised by Rolf Rendtorff, I believe, in response to Childs' Biblical Theology), is that such a hermeneutical approach undermines the canonical function of the Old Testament, which was to preserve Israel's Scripture according to its own integrity. I've responded to this issue already in terms of the hermeneutical circle and the literal sense in a previous thread dealing with Literal and Spiritual Senses of Scripture. In my following posts, I will focus on how a modern Christian interpreter can conscientiously practice a multiple level reading of Scripture.

[*] 1997: 60; i.e. Jesus was the eternal Word who was with God in the beginning, “the image of the invisible God, first-born of all creation”, “the lamb slain from the foundation of the world”.

[**] 1962: 103, Myth and Reality in the Old Testament (SCM Press: London). Here the relationship between Old Testament and church is expressed in terms of the “New Israel” as witness to divine reality.

P.S. Considerations such as these inspired the name of my blog: Narrative and Ontology.

Picking up posting again

Almost precisely a year ago, I posted my last post in a thread that has yet to be finished: my overview of what (I think ought to) constitute Christian theological exegesis, inspired by the work of Brevard Childs. You can see an outline of all posts in my summary: Faithful and Critical Scholarship: Interpretation within Boundaries.

I've decided to pick this thread up again and try to invest more time in blogging. As people may have notice from the dearth of posting, I've been busying myself of late with far too many extra-doctorate-related things (well, extra in the "academic" sense of the word; involvement in Church life is not exactly tangential to theological research, whether Old Testament or not). I've set my priorities and will now hopeful get back into the swing of things.

The next section of my task with be dedicated to "the Christological content of the Christian Bible," as Childs put it. A contentious, complex, and important issue. This will be the subject of my next post. For now, here are some links from the past where I have already attempted to deal with the issue:

1) Is Christological Interpretation OK?
2) Jesus in the Old Testament?

Feel free to tell me I'm making a huge mistake (oh, and point out how/why).