Alexamenos worships God

... the early church had the temerity to point to this event—the crucifixion of their leader—as the mighty act of God. What utter foolishness![1] Little wonder that the church was mocked by its opponents. A drawing scratched on a wall (graffito) from the early Roman Empire shows the body of a man with the head of an ass nailed to a cross, and a man worshipping it. Scrawled below is the mocking caption, “Alexamenos worships god.” Apparently some slave or child was poking fun at someone with this early cartoon. How stupid, how absurd, to worship a crucified god! The claim that Jesus’ death was a mighty act of God must have seemed utter foolishness anywhere within the first-century Roman world.[2]

[1] “In a world which longed for personal salvation, and which was full of gods and lords claiming to meet that need, how utterly absurd and indeed revolting to claim that a Jew from a notoriously troublesome province of the Empire who has been condemned as a blasphemer and executed as a traitor was the Saviour of the world! How on earth could anyone believe that”? (Lesslie Newbigin, “Context and Conversion,” International Review of Mission 68 (1978): 301)

[2]Bartholomew, C. G., & Goheen, M. W. (2004). The drama of Scripture: Finding our place in the biblical story (161). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.

Update: The following fascinating quote was posted in the comments:

This image is quite arresting and made me think of an ancient Roman misconception regarding the ‘image’ (or rather lack thereof) of God in the Jerusalem Temple. Tacitus, among others, jibed that the Jews worshiped the head of a donkey in their temple. I was not aware that this was extended to a lampooned crucified Jesus as well. F.F. Bruce described the occurrence of both in a 1984 article, of which I quote the following:

F.F. Bruce, “Tacitus on Jewish History” - Journal of Semitic Studies 29(1984)1: 33-44
The quote is from p. 38:

The belief that the image of an ass, or at least of an ass's
head, was venerated in the inner shrine is attested elsewhere.
Apion of Alexandria {ca. A.D. 30) asserted that the Jews kept a
gold ass's head in their sanctuary: it was discovered there, he
said, when Antiochus Epiphanes plundered the temple {Contra
Apionem, 2.80). Another writer, Mnaseas, tells how an
Idumaean named Zabidus stole the gold head from the sanctuary
by a trick {Contra Apionem, 2.112-14). According to Diodorus
{History, 34, fragment), what Antiochus discovered was the
statue of a bearded man (presumably Moses) mounted on an
ass. These tales were at least less sinister than another retailed
by Apion, how Antiochus discovered in the temple a Greek,
who was being fattened for a cannibalistic rite which the Jews
celebrated annually {Contra Apionem, 2.89-96).
As for the ass-god legend, it was in due course transferred
from the Jews to the Christians, as we know from Tertullian -
"for in fact, with other people, you have imagined that our god
is an ass's head" {Apology, 16.1) - and also from the well-known
Palatine graffito of a crucified man with an ass's head, with the
Greek caption: "Alexamenos worships his god".

What did Jesus leave behind?

In response to my post Why is Jesus taking so long? the following query was made:

One question I have is what exactly Jesus came to accomplish---what did he establish that did not exist before?

I gave the first part of an answer in my post If the Messiah came, why do death and evil remain? It has something to with cosmology and the Holy Spirit. Bartholomew and Goheen, whose book The Drama of Scripture has provided the basis of these posts, give a further clarification to this answer, this time in terms of the church, "the people of God."

The church’s new life is based on what God has done in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In Christ’s death, God has defeated the powers that rule “this present age”—sin, evil, and death. In Christ’s resurrection the “age to come” has begun, with its promise of life, love, and peace (Romans 6:1–11). The church’s new life is also empowered by the Spirit, which lives within the community of believers and constantly brings new life to it (Romans 8; Galatians 5). This, says Paul, is the new life of the Christian, begun by Christ’s work on the cross, lived out in the Father’s kingdom, and shaped by the Spirit’s power.

At the heart of this new life is a new relationship to God, which Paul describes in terms of righteousness, reconciliation, and adoption. First, since God is the righteous Lawgiver and Judge, we who follow rebellious Adam are estranged from him by our sin; we too are guilty. But Paul proclaims the good news that (for those who have faith in Jesus) our “guilty” verdict has been overturned. There is a new verdict: we have already been declared righteous—on the basis of the death of Jesus Christ (Romans 3:21–31; Galatians 2:15–16; 3:6–14).As far as the Christian is concerned, God’s final judgment has already taken place! With our guilt removed, we stand in a right relationship to God.

Second, since we were once estranged from God by our sinful rebellion, we need to be reconciled to him. Reconciliation, long thought to become available only at the end of time with the coming of God’s kingdom, is a gift freely offered even now (2 Corinthians 5:18–19; Colossians 1:20).Reconciliation removes the sin that has put God’s world p 193 at enmity with him and leads to peace. This means the restoration of the shalom and harmony of God’s original created order for the whole world and especially for humankind (Romans 5:1). Third, we who are born into the sinful race of Adam are restored to God by receiving his gift of adoption (Galatians 4:4–5; Ephesians 1:4). The same Spirit that lived in Jesus is poured into our own lives and enables us to call God “Abba, Father,” as Jesus did (Romans 8:14–15).

This is the church: a people who live in a new world with a new identity and a new relationship to God. Thus, Paul commands the church to live more and more the new life of God’s kingdom, to “take off” the old self (as if it were soiled clothing) and to put on the new (Ephesians 4:22–24; Colossians 3:9–10). In other words, they are to bid farewell to the way of life that was shaped by their experience of “this present age” and to embrace a new way of life as part of “the age to come.” And with this new life comes a call to a new kind of obedience to God’s law in every part of life, an obedience rooted in love.

Bartholomew, C. G., & Goheen, M. W. (2004). The drama of Scripture: Finding our place in the biblical story (192–193). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.

If the Messiah came, why do evil and death remain?

That's a question Paul was forced to asked, being steeped in the Rabbinic theology of his day. Here is his answer, according to Bartholomew and Goheen (see also my two other posts: Disappointment with Jesus (I) and Why is Jesus taking so long? (II).):

But if the old has passed away [the 'olam hazeh in the crucifixion] and the new has come [the 'olam haba', in the resurrection], why do evil and death remain in the world? Paul’s letters are charged with the same tension between the “already” and “not yet” aspects of the kingdom of God that we have seen in Jesus’ own teachings, but with some differences in emphasis. For Paul, the kingdom is here already in that Jesus’ death brings an end to the old and his resurrectioinaugurates the new. The Spirit is described as a deposit (or down payment) on the coming kingdom (2 Corinthians 1:22; 5:5; Ephesians 1:14). A deposit is not merely an IOU or promise for the future; instead, it is a real payment given now as a guarantee that in the future the rest will be paid. The Spirit is also pictured as firstfruits, the first part of the harvest, ready to be enjoyed now, and tangible evidence that the remainder of the harvest will also come (Romans 8:23).

The kingdom has not yet arrived for us in its fullness. We remain in a world that has not yet been fully delivered from the influence of evil, demonic power (2 Corinthians 4:4). We are still surrounded by the darkness of sin and rebellion against God (Ephesians 2:2–3), even while we anticipate the full revelation of God’s kingdom in which those things shall be no more. Thus, in Paul’s thought there is no clearly marked threshold between “the present age” and “the age to come.” We live in the “in-between” time, in which the two ages overlap. Paul goes on to explain that these two ages are allowed to coexist within God’s plan so that the church’s work of mission—the gathering of the nations to the God of Israel—can be accomplished before the final revelation of the kingdom. In fact, God gives this in-between time to the church as its own, to fulfill its calling as his witness to the coming of the kingdom.[*]

[*]Bartholomew, C. G., & Goheen, M. W. (2004). The drama of Scripture: Finding our place in the biblical story (190). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic [footnotes have been removed]

Why is Jesus taking so long? (II)

In my last post I made the potentially impious statement that I was "disappointed" with Jesus. The cause of my disappointment had to do with the expectations that my acquaintance with the Old Testament had raised for me. Wasn't the coming Messiah supposed bring about a world of universal shalom, both between humans and within creation? Just like Israel in exile (or in fact in most of its history), I want my own fig tree!

Luckily, it looks as if this disjunction between promise and fulfilment is found within the New Testament itself, as witnessed to by the reactions of John the Baptist and Jesus' own disciples (see my post). But why is there a disjunction in the first place? Here are Bartholomew and Goheen's interpretations of Jesus' parables of the kingdom:

Mark 4 and Matthew 13 offer an important selection of these stories. They are introduced with Mark’s phrase “The kingdom of God is like …” and Matthew’s “The kingdom of heaven is like …” (meaning the same; Matthew, writing to Jews reticent about using the name Yahweh, refers to God indirectly by naming the place from which he rules). In this series of parables, we learn the secret of the kingdom.

1. The kingdom does not come all at once. Though the Jews have expected the kingdom to arrive in fullness immediately, or at least very soon after the Messiah appears, this does not happen. Sometimes as Jesus talks about the kingdom, he speaks of it as if it is present already; at other times he suggests that it is coming in the future. Many of his parables help to explain this seeming contradiction. The parable of the sower and weeds teaches that in the present the kingdom comes by the “sowing” of the gospel. In the future the weeds will be separated from the wheat (Matthew 13:24–30, 36–43). The parables of the mustard seed and the yeast suggest that though the kingdom at present is small and seems insignificant, it will in the future be glorious and impossible to ignore (13:31–33; Mark 4:30–32). The parable of the net teaches that in the present all sorts of fish are gathered in to the kingdom, but in the future there will be a great separation (Matthew 13:47–50).

Thus, the kingdom Jesus describes is both present and future: already begun here, not yet here in fullness. But this is not a contradiction, and Jesus is not mistaken. How then can something as important as God’s kingdom have these two apparently opposite qualities? How does it stand in tension between “already” and “not yet”?

In the parables Jesus offers his bewildered followers a resolution of this “already-not yet” quality of the kingdom. With the coming of the kingdom, the Jews expect the present evil age to pass away quickly. The parable of the weeds teaches them that the power of evil continues alongside the new healing power that has come into the world in Jesus. The age to come overlaps with the old age; the powers of both are present.

2. In the present, the kingdom does not come with irresistible power. The Jews have expected that when God’s kingdom arrives, no enemy would be able to resist it. They remember Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in which a rock not cut by human hands (representing the kingdom of God) strikes a great statue (representing the world kingdoms of Babylon, Media, Persia, Greece, and in later interpretation Rome) and shatters it (Daniel 2). Daniel says: “The God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed.… It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever” (2:44). Surely God will sweep his enemies away. Who can stand against the power of God?

But Jesus says: “Listen! A farmer went out to sow his seed” (Mark 4:3). And what a different picture emerges in the parable of the sower (4:1–20; Matthew 13:1–23). The Messiah does not come as a military conqueror but as a humble farmer. The kingdom does not arrive in irresistible power and force but by the message of the kingdom. The seed falls on the footpath, in rocky places, and among thorns—producing no fruit. In other words, listeners can reject the call of the kingdom and may well seem to be none the worse for it. Certainly no great rock hurtles from the sky to destroy those who refuse Jesus. The kingdom is hidden in a humble form and makes its way in the world in apparent weakness. In his ministry Jesus announces the message of the kingdom—the gospel—through his words, demonstrates it by his deeds, and embodies it in his life. The gospel is a seed, given to produce the fruit of the kingdom in the soil of receptive and believing hearts. Later Paul speaks of the gospel as the “power of God” (Romans 1:16), yet that power does not trample down or root out all resistance by force. The parable of the weeds gives us a picture of how this works (Matthew 13:24–30, 36–43). Jesus says: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat.” The wheat and weeds appear together. When the servants want to root out the weeds, the farmer forbids this, explaining that at the harvest he will separate the good plants from the weeds. Some people receive the word, and God’s power brings about the fruit of the kingdom, but others reject that message—and seem to suffer no harm.

3. The final judgment of the kingdom is reserved for the future. Jesus’ hearers expect God’s judgment to fall swiftly on the ungodly. The prophets spoke of a day when God would bring his kingdom in by judging his enemies in his wrath (Isaiah 63:1–6). Redemption and wrath are two sides of one reality: God saves his creation by judging the enemies that have ruined it (61:2; 63:4). But the parable of the weeds (Matthew 13:24–30, 36–43) shows the Jews that the judgment they expect does not fall immediately. The workers in the field want to root out weeds p 148 immediately (13:28), but the owner instructs his servants to allow both wheat and weeds to grow together. At the end of the age the judgment will indeed fall; until then the powers of God’s kingdom and of evil must continue together.

Many other parables similarly illustrate a judgment postponed: good fish will be sorted from bad (13:47–50) and sheep from goats (25:31–46). The master who has entrusted money to his servants will return to settle accounts (25:14–30). Five maidens keep oil for their lamps and are ready for the return of the bridegroom (25:1–13). Two men invest their master’s money wisely and are commended for it; another who merely buries his money is condemned as a “wicked, lazy servant” and thrown into outer darkness (25:14–30). Jesus’ true followers are those whose lives imitate his: they feed the hungry, clothe the naked, offer drink to the thirsty, and visit the prisoner. These faithful ones are invited into the kingdom of the Father. But another group whose lives show nothing of Jesus’ own life are sent away at last to eternal punishment (25:31–46). When Jesus speaks of the final coming of the kingdom in his parables, he stresses readiness and faithfulness in the present. One is to respond to the message of the kingdom and live a life centered in Jesus until the last day.

4. The full revelation of the kingdom is postponed, to allow many to enter it during the present age. Since the coming of the kingdom has already begun in Jesus, why does God not complete his work? Why does he delay the final judgment? Why hide his kingdom’s glory and power? When we find an answer to these questions, we can begin to understand our own place and calling in the biblical story, between Jesus’ inauguration of the kingdom and its final revelation. One of Luke’s parables offers such an answer (Luke 14:15–24). A banquet is being made ready: the table is set and laden with food and drink. But there the host pauses; the guests must wait yet a little while. The enjoyment of the banquet is suspended—but the host has a very good reason for the delay. It is so that the lost can also be brought in to share at the banquet table. All—and especially the poor, the lost, the forgotten ones—are invited and welcomed to share in the banquet that is God’s kingdom. “This gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Matthew 24:14). When the Pharisees mutter that Jesus is welcoming all the wrong people, he tells them three parables: of a lost sheep (Luke 15:3–7), a lost coin (15:8–10), and a lost son (15:11–32). When the lost son (who has for a time wandered from his home and family) repents and turns back, the Father welcomes him with joy and favor.

Jesus tells many parables—at least forty—and we have looked at only a sampling. Yet in these few, the main themes of Jesus’ teaching are p 149 evident: the parables reveal what the kingdom is really like, in contrast to the misunderstandings of Jesus’ hearers.[*]

Though I can't confess to have understood everything about God's eschatological purposes (neither could Paul, cf. Rom 11:33-35), I do find it comforting to know that this structure of delayed fulfilment of promise, strengthened by proleptic foretastes in the meantime, reflects both Biblical reality (Abraham gets just a grave in the promised land; only Jacob's bones arrive there; Moses dies on the boarder, yet only after foretelling that Israel will forfeit everything anyway and have to go through exile before they can get it back again) and existential reality (read the Psalms; live a life of faith: God will do something, but when, how long, and how much?).

[*]Bartholomew, C. G., & Goheen, M. W. (2004). The drama of Scripture: Finding our place in the biblical story (146–149). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.

Disappointment with Jesus (I)

Around about six years ago I decided to read the New Testament as little as possible, focussing all my attention and energy on the Old. The aim was (and is!) to be able to see the witness of the New in all its particularity and difference. Christians tend to work in the other direction: we are thoroughly acquainted with the New and thus complain when the Old Testament doesn't seem to fit the paradigm. "Is the God of the Old Testament really Jesus' father?" Doing things the other way round raises a different question: "Is Jesus really the Son of the God of Israel?"

I've found the experience very instructive. For one thing, reading nothing but the Old has made me thirst for the New, not so much because the Old is inadequate but because it is so Israel-centered and I'm not a Jew. God has got some great things in store for his people, but who am I - a Gentile - to but in on the relationship?

Turning to the New, however, doesn't solve things quite so simply. One thing that haunts me is me is a constant feeling of disappointment. Here we have Jesus coming to fulfil God's promises to Israel, indeed the LORD himself has come to Zion, and yet ... where's the great harvest? I don't see the renewal of creation and the human heart that got Isaiah, Jeremiah, Moses - and yes, myself - so excited. Christmas is a particularly odd time for me. Here we have traditional readings (e.g. Isa 9:2–7; 62:1–5; 62:11–12; 52:7–10; Micah 5:2–5a) , praising the final coming of the King of Israel, but where is he now (up in Heaven waiting to come back again)?

C. Bartholomew and M. Goheen address this in their helpful book The Drama of Scripture: Finding our Place in the Biblical Story (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004). Today I'll post their comments on the disappointment that Jesus caused (and perhaps still ought to cause ...), tomorrow I'll post their answer to this.

Jesus announces the arrival of the kingdom of God, demonstrates it in his actions, and gathers a kingdom community. However, this kingdom does not look at all like what the Jews expected. Jesus himself does not look like the Messiah of Old Testament prophecy as popularly understood. The world itself does not seem much changed by what this prophet from Galilee is doing and saying. Jewish expectations seem doomed to disappointment yet again. For anyone in first-century Israel who takes the claims of Jesus seriously, perplexity and bewilderment reign.

We glimpse this confusion in John the Baptizer when he is in Herod’s jail. John has preached that the kingdom of God is near, the final judgment about to fall. The ax is already in the hand of the Messiah, John says, and he is about to chop down any tree that does not produce good fruit (Luke 3:9). John fully expects this prophetic message to be fulfilled. He explicitly identifies Jesus as the one sent by God to set these things in motion (John 1:29–34). Then Jesus announces the arrival of the kingdom—and apparently nothing major happens. John expects the Messiah to bring down the wicked rulers of the earth and to release their righteous prisoners (Isaiah 40:23; 61:1). Yet John himself remains rotting in prison while Herod continues his unjust rule and immoral lifestyle. Pagan Roman soldiers infest the holy streets of Jerusalem. Idolatrous Rome rules the world with impunity; oppression, injustice, and unrighteousness reign. Have not the prophets promised that the kingdom of God will come with justice, peace, and the knowledge of God? John wonders if he misunderstood everything. He calls his disciples and sends them to Jesus with a question: “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?” (Luke 7:19). Jesus answers by pointing to his miracles and his message of good news for the poor as signs that God’s redeeming power is present. Then he sends John’s disciples back with a promise: “Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me” (Luke 7:23). No doubt John holds on to his belief that Jesus is the Messiah. But until Salome30 has his head cut off for her mother’s sake, John is probably p 146 still confused about the kingdom and about his own role in announcing its coming (Matthew 14:1–12; Mark 6:16–29).

It is just this kind of confusion that Jesus addresses in the parables. His disciples struggle to understand how the promises of the prophets are being fulfilled in Jesus. It certainly doesn’t look like what they expect. Throughout the Gospels it is clear that the disciples just “don’t get it.” Jesus’ parables are told to explain the “secret” of this kingdom that has appeared among them in such an utterly unexpected way (Matthew 13:11). The parables help those who receive Jesus’ word in faith to understand the nature of the kingdom as it appears in Jesus. At the same time the parables veil the truth from those who refuse to believe (13:12–17; cf. Isaiah 6:9–10; Acts 28:26–27).

Mark 4 and Matthew 13 offer an important selection of these stories. They are introduced with Mark’s phrase “The kingdom of God is like …” and Matthew’s “The kingdom of heaven is like …” (meaning the same; Matthew, writing to Jews reticent about using the name Yahweh, refers to God indirectly by naming the place from which he rules). In this series of parables, we learn the secret of the kingdom (pp. 145-146).

Tomorrow I look at his parables as a response to this odd situation.

Piss Christ

For some great thoughts on this piece of art, check out Jason Goroncy's post, Rethinking Serrano's 'Piss Christ'.

Bauckham as canonical interpreter?

Here is a quote from New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham, which nicely parallels my comments concerning Seitz and the Old Testament in my post Tradition-history: a two-way movement.

In one of the few Markan narratives that John also tells, John, like Mark, has Jesus saying, “It is I” (i.e., “I am” [εγώ ειμι]; Mark 6:50; John 6:20). In John this becomes the second of the Gospel's theologically potent series of seven absolute “I am” sayings (4:26; 6:20; 8:24, 28, 58; 13:19; 18:5, 6, 8). For readers/hearers of Mark, this series would not only develop the christological significance of the “I am” sayings they already knew in Mark 6:50 but also inform their understanding of the “I am” saying in Mark 14:62. In ways such as this, it would be possible to argue that John provides readers/hearers who already know Mark with a much fuller and more developed christological and soteriological interpretation of the Gospel story, but one which had clear continuity with the Markan Christology and soteriology they already knew. They would not perceive John's interpretation of Jesus as correcting or invalidating Mark's, but as extending and deepening it. … With the benefit of John's explicit interpretations of the few “signs” of the Jesus which he has carefully chosen for his highly selective Gospel narrative, they could also read with fresh perception the “many other signs” (John 20:30) that Mark records. While the fourth evangelist surely meant to lead his readers further and deeper into the significance of Jesus and his story than Mark's Gospel had done, he need not have intended them henceforth to leave Mark aside and to read only his own Gospel. He did not aim to replace Mark, but to write a different kind of Gospel: one which, by selecting far fewer traditions, left space for the reflective interpretation that is the distinctive characteristic of the Fourth Gospel. [*]

That, quite simply, rocks!

[*] R. Bauckham, “John for Readers of Mark,” in The Gospel for all Christians: Rethinking the Gospel Audiences (ed. Richard Bauckham; Grand Rapids: Eerdmanns, 1998), 169-170; cited in Seitz, Prophecy, 180-181

An ex-Orthodox Jew posts on Jesus

An ex-Orthodox Jew shares his thoughts over at Lubab No More. He obviously has a lot of respect for the guy, though given his reconstruction of the historical Jesus I'm not sure what his sources are. Here's an interesting comment:

Ironically, being raised an Orthodox Jew is quite possibly the best preparation in the world for understanding the Christian gospel. A Protestant Christian can read the New Testament and perhaps imagine to herself the religious philosophy Jesus sought to overthrow. An Orthodox Jew has lived it. (The other side of this irony, of course, is that you can't truly understand Rabbinic Judaism until you've read the gospels.)

I'll leave it to those more knowlegable in New Testament to respond, but do share your thoughts! Interestingly, here's the first comment by No One:

avraham abulfia [kabalist born in 1240] held he was a kind of proto type messiah called messiah son of joseph.this is scattered in his writtings.

The image above, taken from the post, is of Rabbi Hillel. The text he's expounding says: And you shall love your neighbour as yourself. This, of course, was part of what Jesus held to be the "golden rule" (Luke 10:27).

Update: This isn't directly relevant, but Freethinking Upstart has fascinating post on the distinction between (Jewish) orthodoxy and orthopraxy. This is of particular interest to me as a Christian, as in contrast to Jews, we don't ask: "he is a practising Christian," but "is he a believing Christian?" The former without the latter would be an oxymoron. On second thoughts, the latter without the former would also be an oxymoron (James 2:14).

Jesus in the Old Testament?

I've been posting recently on Christian appropriation of the Old Testament and the question of whether it is possible for Christians, given their Christological instincts, to respect it in its own integrity. In my post on Christological interpretation, I turned the question around: perhaps its the Christians who need to have their image of Christ revised so that we can learn to understand the nature of the fit between Old and New. Here are some typically profound thoughts from Brevard Childs:

[T]he New Testament in relating the message of the Gospel to the Jewish Scripture goes far beyond asserting its relationship in terms of a historical sequence. Although the various writers make very clear that Jesus appeared at a given historical moment in the life of Israel—Gal 4.4 speaks of the “fullness of time”—this temporal orientation does not rule out at the same time moving the discourse to an ontological plane. According to John 1.1 Jesus Christ was the eternal Word who was with God in the beginning. Col. 1.15f. Speaks of his being “the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation; for in him all things were created.” Rev. 13.8 makes mentions of “the lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (“Does the OT Witness to Jesus Christ?” 60)

The question then, is how to relate the two. Childs talks of different contexts in which Scripture functions.

In the first instance, one seeks to hear the historic voice of Israel in its literal/plain sense. ... These witnesses are often fragmentary, at times contradictory, and always veiled in obscurity. Nevertheless, a literal and historical interpretation of the OT is exegetically crucial, especially in reveialing how fragmentary, mysterious, and obscure was the nature of God's messianic promise to Israel which, even following the exile, continued to expand in a host of diverse directions.

In the second instance, one is using Scripture as an authoritative collection of sared writings which has assumed a unique shape and been given a special role within the Christian community of faith as the continuing vehicle of divine manifestation. In this role the text of Scripture, when infused by the Spirit with the full ontic reality of God, resonates with a fresh voice, and evokes from its readers the response of praise and wonder. This voice which transcends its original historical origins calls forth the hymns, liturgy, and art of the church in ever-changing forms of grateful response. This is the genre of prise. The same words of Scripture now perform a different role in instructing the church toward an obedient and joyful life. To project this depth of meaning and experience back into the past as if this interpretation must be coexstensive with an original textual intention is not only a basic confusion of genre, but it falsely dehistoricizes the canonical witness of the two discrete portions of the Christian Bible. However, to speak o f Christuszeugnis in the sense being proposed is to describe 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. This approach is far removed from Vischer's in that its genre is confession not apologetics, its function is worship not disputation, its content is eschatology not time-conditioned history, and its truth is self-affirming not analytical demonstration.(63)

What do people think? Does that make sense? Does it work?

Is Christological interpretation OK?

Josh McManaway of A New Testament Student has asked the question that, I think, most Christians do and should ask themselves at some point:

Can one have a Christological interpretation that also pays due respect to the particular OT text in its particular context, or is this having one's theological cake and eating it too?

Yesterday, I gave a brief example of how I think a dialectial understanding of the relation of the two testaments helps preserve both the integrity of what Seitz calls the per se witness of both testaments, when read in relation to the one divine reality that evoked them both. This can be extended to the question of Christology, as it is Christ who Christians confess to be the one subject confessing Himself in both testaments.

The issue turns on what we mean by "Christological." In other words, which Christ are we looking to find in the Old Testament? The narratively portrayed Christ in one of the Gospels? The divine Christ? John's apocalyptic Christ? The Christ who is the eternal Logos? In other words, Jesus' identity is not a simple concept.

I think a lot of people struggle with the concept of Christological interpretation because they think it means reading the OT through the lens of the NT, subordinating it to the NT's own agenda. But that simply assumes that the NT on its own has somehow grasped the full reality of who Christ is. OT scholars such as Childs and Seitz, however, argue that both OT and NT are equal witnesses to the one Christ who transcends both testaments. This was the assumption of the NT writers, who read the Jewish Scriptures in order to understand Christ (see my thread on this), not in order to speciously back up their claims. The early church, too, read the OT to understand Jesus, and not just to apologetically back up the NT's own particular construal (though that did happen too).

In short, I think that before we can talk about the legitimacy of "Christological" interpretation, we need to figure out the meaning of the term.

P.S. One blog thread I really would like to read on this issue, whenever I find time, is Glen's Christ in the OT, influenced, I believe, by the illustrious Karl Barth.

P.P.S. For an example of what I'm talking about, see Nick Norelli's Gordon Fee quote. It is significant that the context of Nick's quote is a discussion of the Trinity.

The awesomeness of Andrew Louth ...

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

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

Kähler on the "real" Jesus

As an illustration of how a theological reading of the Old Testament, guided by the Spirit, can be more profound than a purely historical-critical one, I contrasted Gunkel and Bonhoeffer on Genesis in my post The Spirit, Gunkel, and Bonhoeffer. In light of a recent interesting dialogue on the theological role of "canon" in relation to historical-criticism for the New Testament (in the comments of my last two posts here and then here), I offer another example of someone who B.S. Childs (the true author of this blog, for whom I am only a "vehicle";) ) considered to be a scholar able to "penetrate" scripture to "another dimension of reality," Martin Kähler (who has made his way into an ecumenical Heiligenlexicon!):

The reason we commune with the Jesus of our Gospels is because it is through them that we learn to know that same Jesus whom, with the eyes of faith and in our prayers, we meet at the right hand of God, ... because he is God's revelation to us. ... The risen Lord is not the historical Jesus behind the Gospels, but the Christ of the apostolic preaching, of the whole New Testament. ... The real Christ ... is the Christ who is preached. The Christ who is preached, however, is precisely the Christ of faith. He is the Jesus whom the eyes of faith behold at every step he takes and through every syllable he utters - ... our risen, living Lord. [*]

In case the phrase "Christ of faith" gets your Bultmann-alarm ringing, read the last three words closely and the title of the book. The key issue for a canonical approach is not a distaste for history or the need for the security of a self-referential textual universe, but rather the nature of history itself, the nature of biblical referentiality, and the function of the church within the economy of God.

For New Testament types with an interest in all this, read Paul Minear.

[*] M. Kähler, The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic, Biblical Christ (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1964), 60-61, 65-66. Cited in Childs, "Interpreting the Bible Amid Cultural Change," Theology Today 54 (1997), 200-211; here, 205-206.

Jesus and Jewish tradition

Here's what Hermann Diem has to say, taken from my notes on his excellent Dogmatics (the continuity with Childs' canonical approach should be clear!):

Jesus grew up in the Jewish faith in the tradition of Sinai, and recognised its validity by His attitude. In arguments with pharisees, Jesus does not reject the paradosis [Greek for tradition] as such, but applies to it a critical norm as follows: (155)

“where the Law as the content of the paradosis is no longer understood to be the present concrete requirement of God, demanding the self-surrender of man, but rather serves as a form of human righteousness which can be manipulated by man himself in the interests of his own self-justification, then the law in question is to be rejected.” (155)

Jesus

“opposes the tendency to establish the Law as an absolute by putting forward the point of view that the Law exists for the sake of man and not man for the sake of the Law. By this means He refers us back from the Law to the Lawgiver, and thus changes as radically as possible the meaning of the Law itself by restoring its original connexion with the divine Covenant. The Rabbis have forgotten the consolation and the promise of the law and no longer envisage the Scriptures as a whole, as the Book of the Covenant, the document which bears witness to the Covenant grace of God.” (157)

Thus we see His connexion with the Rabbinic tradition of teaching and at the same time the source of His conflict with it. He does not violate the authority of the Scribes and Pharisees ... (Mt. 23:2f), just as much as no iota of the Law will be allowed to perish until all things be accomplished (Mt. 5:18).

For a related post, see my Jewish and Christian appropriation of the Law of Moses

Childs on Jesus in the Old Testament

In our opinion, Jesus Christ is in the Old Testament to that degree in which true and obedient Israel took shape. He fulfilled by his obedience to the will of God the task unfulfilled by Israel. However, the humanity of Jesus Christ was prefigured to that degree to which Israel did respond in obedience. In the institutions of Israel, as well as in the prophets, the "Suffering Servant," the "I" of the Psalms, a reality appeared which found its wholeness in Christ. The New Testament goes far beyond the point of understanding the work of Christ in the Old Testament merely in terms of his role as the Eternal Word. Rather, the humanity of Jesus Christ, who is true Israel, was forming itself in the Old Covenant [*].

I should point out here that Glen, author of the Barthian blog Christ is the Truth, has a thread dealing with Christ in the Old Testament. Given the Barthian flavour of this quote as well as most of Childs' theology, I hope to find time to read this series in order to help me grasp Childs' theology better.

Go here for Wilhem Vischer's approach.

[*] B.S. Childs, "Prophecy and Fulfillment: A Study of Contemporary Hermeneutics," Interpretation 12 no 3 (1958), 270, 1.

Childs on Jesus and Isaiah 53

Childs' Isaiah commentary can be a dense work. It's a distillate of everything he's written over his career, packed into the restricted dimensions of a single volume Isaiah commentary. Today I read his thoughts on "The Suffering Servant and Christian Theology" (422, 3) and was again challenged to rethink some of the basic assumption I bring to both the Old and New Testaments. Here are his thoughts, what do you think?

The theological category used for [the] interpretation [of Isaiah 53 in the NT] was not primarily that of prophecy and fulfillment. Rather, an analogy was drawn between the redemptive activity of the Isaianic servant and the passion and death of Jesus Christ. The relation was understood "ontologically," that is to say, in terms of its substance, its theological reality. To use classic Christian theological terminology, the distinction is between the "economic" Trinity, God's revelation in the continuum of Israel's history, and the "immanent" Trinity, the ontological manifestation of the triune deity in its eternality. Thus, for example, the epistles of Ephesians and Colossians argue that the creation of the universe cannot be understood apart from the active participation of jesus Christ (C0l. 1:15ff). Or again, the book of Revelation speaks of "the lamb slain before the foundation of the world" (13:8). In a word, in the suffering and death of the servant of Second Isaiah, the self-same divine reality of Jesus Christ was made manifest. The meaning of the Old Testament servant was thus understood theologically in terms of the one divine reality disclosed in Jesus Christ. The morphological fit between Isaiah 53 and the passion of Jesus continues to bear testimony to the common subject matter within the one divine economy. Of course, in a broad sense, isaiah 53 does continue to function as prophecy since the chapter is bracketed within the eschatological framework of an unfolding divine economy.

To summarize, the servant of Isaiah is linked dogmatically to Jesus Christ primarily in terms of its ontology, that is, its substance, and is not simply a future promise of the Old Testament awaiting its New Testament fulfillment. It is significant to observe that in Acts 8, when the eunuch asked about the identity of the Isaianic servant, Philip did not simply identify him with Jesus of Nazareth. Rather, beginning with the scriptures, "he preached to him the good news of Jesus." The suffering servant retains its theological significance within the Christian canon because it is inextricably linked in substance with the gospel of Jesus Christ, who is and always has been the ground of God's salvation of Israel and the world (423).

A Quote from the Pope: What has Jesus brought?

My wife kindly bought me an interesting gift recently, Pope Benedict XVI's Jesus on CD (14 hours long!). Reactions to the book depend on where one stands in the theological spectrum. The pastor of my Free Evangelical Church loves it ("wir haben einen evengelikalen Papst!" he's cried from the pulpit). Those of a more critical bent, such as the professors in the Catholic faculty here in Bonn, can't stand it (they interestingly compare his approach with Childs' canonical approach). I'm sure, in that case, I'll love it. Either way, it'll help me survive the hours of sitting on a beach which the second part of our holiday will entail.

Here's a great excerpt from the book, printed on the CD cover:

... the great question that will be with us throughout this entire [audio]book: But what has Jesus really brought, then, if he has not brought world peace, universal prosperity, and a better world? What has he brought? The answer is very simple: God. He has brought God! He has brought the God who once gradually unveiled his countenance first to Abraham, then to Moses and the prophets, and then in the wisdom literature - the God who showed his face only in Israel, even though he was also honored among the pagans in various shadowy guises. It is this God, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, the true God, whom he has brought to the peoples of the earth. He has brought God, and now we know his face, now we can call upon him. Now we know the path that we human beings have to take in this world. Jesus has brought God and with God the truth about where we are going and where we come from: faith, hope, and love.

Quote of the Day: Childs on the Third Quest for the Historical Jesus

One of the great ironies of the so-called third quest for the historical Jesus, which is presently a fad in many academic circles, is that the same old heresies raised first in the nineteenth century are again surfacing in dreary monotony

B.S. Childs, "Interpreting the Bible amid Cultural Change," Theology Today 54 (1997): 200-11, here 211.

A Remarkable Exchange of Roles

Ernst Käsemann in his report on the problems of NT scholarship in Germany [*] points out a remarkable exchange of roles in the history of NT research:

'This began about two hundred years ago with the intention of freeing the historical Jesus from the fetters of dogmatics. Now this attempt ends with the confession, made by its most radical representatives ,that the Easter faith is the Church's foundation and the sole means of access to the historical jesus Himself. In order that this spectacle, so interesting to those who understand, should not be altogether lacking in human comedy, a new orthodoxy (or what is considered such) is, at the same time, endeavouring to show that, both as regards method and intrinsic necessity, the only way out of the difficulty is to recover the life of the historical Jesus, and out of the Gospels is accordingly making factual reports. The critics have become dogmatic and the orthodox liberal. Now the fight is being waged the other way round.'” But there remains a genuine problem: “in what relation the faith, doctrine and preaching of the Church stand to the historical Jesus.”

[*] “Probleme der Neutestamentlichen Arbeit in Deutschland,” in Die Freiheit des Evangeliums und die Ordnung der Gesellschaft, 1952: 138. Cited in H. Diem, Dogmatics, 1959: 82]