Though I don’t agree with Alter’s view of the OT narratives as ‘historicized prose fiction,’ I did find his explanation of the seeming contradiction in Genesis 42 helpful. The idea of literary intentionality on the part of the OT authors in shaping the text sounds very similar to Childs’ canonical approach. Rather than dismiss vv. 27-28, 35 as a scribal error or ignore any tension altogether, it seems wiser to understand that there is a specific purpose behind the text’s shape (i.e., final form):
. . . it may help us see the point of more elaborate instances of manifest duplication in biblical narrative. The contradiction between verses 27-28 and verse 35 is so evident that it seems naive on the part of any modern interpreter to conclude that the ancient Hebrew writer was so inept or unperceptive that the conflict between the two versions could have somehow escaped him. Let me suggest that, quite to the contrary, the Hebrew writer was perfectly aware of the contradiction but viewed it as a superficial one. In linear logic, the same action could not have occurred twice in two different ways; but in the narrative logic with which the writer worked, it made sense to incorporate both versions available to him because together they brought forth mutually complementary implications of the narrated event, thus enabling him to give a complete imaginative account of it.
. . . I cannot pretend to certainty in what I have inferred about the biblical writer’s sense of appropriate form, but it seems to me at least plausible that he was prepared to include the minor inconvenience of duplication and seeming contradiction in his narrative because that inclusion enabled him to keep both major axes of his story clearly in view at a decisive juncture in his plot. A writer in another tradition might have tried somehow to combine the different aspects of the story in a single narrative event; the biblical author, dealing as he often did in the editing and splicing and artful montage of antecedent literary materials, would appear to have reached for this effect of multifaceted truth by setting in sequence two different versions that brought into focus two different dimensions of his subject.
- Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative (Basic Books, 1981), 138-140.
Filed under: Hermeneutics, Quotes , Brevard S. Childs, Canonical Approach, Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative
Despite some not-so-minor disagreements on the doctrine of justification, N.T. Wright has some interesting stuff to say (a few times in this book, however, he makes a few questionable assertions regarding the Reformers and their theology without any additional explanation or support). I found this little snippet on Paul’s usage of the phrase ‘according to the scriptures’ helpful. (Christopher Seitz also has a helpful chapter on the Nicene Creed’s usage of the phrase in his book, Word Without End):
. . . The gospel of the early church, of Paul, of the evangelists, is that the promises of the Jewish scriptures had come true in the resurrection. That is why Paul and others keep insisting that Jesus’ death and resurrection happened ‘according to the scriptures’, or in fulfilment of them. People often write of such phrases (sometimes to commend them, sometimes to condemn) as if they meant that the early church could find proof-texts to show that Israel’s god had predicted the resurrection long before. Either one then searches for texts and comes up with small bits and pieces like Hosea 6.2 and (perhaps) Job 19.25; or, giving that up as a bad job, one writes that the early church did not have any particular texts in mind, but held the general belief that Israel’s god had been at work in Jesus, so of course it must be ‘according to the scriptures’, even if one could not say precisely which scriptures were in mind. . . . the point of such ideas is that Israel’s scriptures as a whole tell of the covenant; of the exile as the result of Israel’s god punishing his people for their sins; and of the great ‘return’ that will happen when that dark period is finally over and done.
- N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1992), 400.
Filed under: Biblical Theology, Quotes , Hermeneutics, N. T. Wright
“One learns to suspect people who claim to be the only unbiased voice on their subject; normally this simply means that their agenda is so large that, like a mountain which blots out the sky, they forget that it is there at all. There is no such thing as a point of view which is no-one’s point of view.”
- N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1992), 85.
Filed under: Quotes , N. T. Wright
The appeal to a rule of faith rests on a conviction shared by the tradents of the biblical tradition, both Jewish and Christian, that the shaping of the biblical material was not as a haphazard collection, but was the product of theological reflection that the tradents ascribed to divine inspiration. The effect of this canonical shaping was that a framework was given — later called a rule of faith — within which the material was interpreted. For example, the Torah of Moses preceded the prophetic books, with the books of Deuteronomy functioning as the Torah’s conclusion. Likewise, the four Gospels have been bound together, each with a designated evangelist, but these witnesses are linked as belonging to the one gospel of Jesus Christ. In other words, the biblical material in its larger structure has been rendered in a particular fashion. Often this redaction has been termed “canonical,” “kerygmatic,” or “confessional.” In contrast to an objective, history-of-religions perspective, it arises from a practiced and confessed stance of faith. In this sense, there is a semantic “given” designated by its role as sacred scripture.
- Brevard S. Childs, The Struggle to Understand Isaiah as Christian Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), 316.
Filed under: Biblical Theology, Church History, Creeds and Confessions, Hermeneutics, Quotes , Biblical Theology, Brevard S. Childs, Exegesis, Hermeneutics, Regula Fidei
March 18, 2009 • 10:52 pm
After an overview of Cyril’s exegesis, Childs makes a few points of observation:
First, Cyril never intends to explain the “original meaning” of the biblical text. Even this way of formulating the issue would have been incomprehensible to him. Nor is he concerned with the literal sense, since the object to which he is relating the imagery is not confined to sense perception, the hallmark of the literal.
Second, Cyril assumes the theological coherence of scripture in spite of the diversity of imagery. By seeking to explore the intertextual references to the one word, he gains different avenues into the theological substance, which is spiritual.
Third, to characterize Cyril’s approach as allegory, which in one sense it is, does not tell the whole story of what he is doing in this passage. Cyril comes to his exegesis with a knowledge of its substance gained from the whole of the Christian scriptures. He then returns to the Old Testament as if it were a set of musical notes from which he seeks to play a new and different tune in offering a fresh harmonization of Christian truth. This is the process he characterizes as the search for the higher, spiritual sense of scripture. The goal is not to impose upon the passage a theological system, as often claimed, but to move into a form of fresh proclamation to a living audience of hearers (readers) calling for a faithful life in the light of God’s great mercy.
Finally, it is crucial to note that Cyril’s exegesis is not an uncontrolled activity of creative human imagination. Cyril clearly recognizes a creative component, but he always sees it as a gift of the Holy Spirit. Cyril works materially within the theological norms of interpretation provided by the keyrgma and the paideusis and formally within the church’s received scriptures, constantly informed by a skopus which shapes both his questions and answers. The point is not to deny the element of spontaneity and fresh imagination in his commentary, but for Cyril this quality is not an independent force serving apart from the context of church tradition and the practice of worship.
- Brevard S. Childs, The Struggle to Understand Isaiah as Christian Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), 123.
Filed under: Biblical Theology, Church History, Creeds and Confessions, Hermeneutics, Quotes , Allegory, Brevard S. Childs, Cyril of Alexandria, Exegesis, Hermeneutics
And yet when people ask for God, they do ask for an answer which is identical with their question, for an infinite which is also finite, for One who is beyond and also here, for a God who is also man. To meet their question with an answer commending or condemning civilization, culture, or piety, however, well it may be meant, is simply to refer them, is it not, to the world they already live in? Are we to keep this up forever? Are we never to learn for what reason, for what amazing reason, they endure us and think they need us? If we believe it in secret, why not admit openly that we cannot speak of God? Or if we have serious compunctions against saying so, or saying so in just this way, may we not at least make their question about God our own? Why not make it the central theme of our preaching?
- Karl Barth, The Word of God and the Word of Man, trans. Douglas Horton (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1978), 191.
Filed under: Quotes , Karl Barth, Preaching
Jesus Christ is not the crowning keystone in the arch of our thinking. Jesus Christ is not a supernatural miracle that we may or may not consider true. Jesus Christ is not the goal which we hope to reach after conversion, at the end of history of our heart and conscience. Jesus Christ is not a figure of our history to which we may “relate” ourselves. And Jesus Christ is least of all an object of religious and mystical experience. So far as he is this to us, he is not Jesus Christ. He is God who becomes man, the creator of all things who lies as a babe in the manger. But as such he is to be understood by the other fact that he is the one who was crucified, dead, and buried, who descended into hell, but rose again from the dead. It is this, at all events, that Paul and the others meant when they spoke of Jesus Christ and him alone. This is the reason they dared speak of a solution to the ethical problem, for this is the reason they dared speak of a salvation. And if we do not learn what they meant, their theology will help us today no more than any other. And even if we do learn what they meant, we shall be helped only by reason of the fact that Jesus Christ is what he is whether we begin to think of him or not.
- Karl Barth, The Word of God and the Word of Man, trans. Douglas Horton (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1978), 181-82.
Filed under: Quotes , Karl Barth
One thing I appreciate about Childs is the fact that he seeks to let the Bible ask its own questions. When we fail to hear Scripture on its own terms we end up asking irrelevant questions and forcing answers out of the text that were never there to begin with (I’m thinking of things like 6/24 creation and dispensationalism). I’m assuming that he gets at least some of that from being so influenced by Barth (whose view of revelation, no doubt, brings up a number of other issues, but that’s beside the point). Anyway, here’s an interesting quotation from Barth related to that:
What makes it so difficult for us to remain true to the scriptural principle of the Reformation? We must answer honestly. . . . it is because the Bible has a somewhat uncanny way of bringing into the church situation its own new and tense and mighty (mightier!) expectancy. If the congregation brings to church the great question of human life and seeks an answer for it, the Bible contrariwise brings an answer, and seeks the question corresponding to this answer: it seeks questioning people who are eager to find and able to understand that its seeking of them is the very answer to their question. The thoughts of the Bible touch just those points where the negative factors in life preponderate, casting doubt over life’s possibilities — the very points, that is, where on the human side we have the question arising, Is it true? The Bible, with uncanny singleness of interest, omits all the stages of human life where this crisis is not yet acute, where a man in unbroken naivete can still take comfort in the presence of God in the cherry tree, the symphony, the state, or his daily work; but it does become concerned with him, and with weird intensity, at the stage — shall we call it the highest or the lowest? — where doubt has seized him. Even praise and thanksgiving and jubilation and certainty have their place in the Bible not on the hither but on the farther side of the point where man begins to seek, to ask, and to knock; where that last perplexed craving has seized him and leads him, let us say, to church.
. . . The cross is the demand of God that we ask about him, about God. It is his declaration that as long as we live, though all other questions may finally be answered, we may not tear ourselves loose and be free from this one. Clearly and ever more clearly through the Bible, through both the Old and the New Testaments, this message struggles for a hearing and becomes unambiguous and unmistakable in Jesus Christ. The Bible seeks people who can and will ask about God. It seeks those who are capable of letting their little questions — and which of them is not little in comparison? — merge in the great question about the cross, that is, about God.
- Karl Barth, The Word of God and the Word of Man, trans. Douglas Horton (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1978), 116-19.
Filed under: Quotes , Crisis Theology, Karl Barth
Here is the question that Seitz raises and seeks to answer throughout his book:
To raise in very basic ways the question, whose book are we reading, is at a minimum to remind the modern reader that the Old and New Testaments emerged from religious communities with specific identities. These sacred texts were intended for communities striving to share or at least participate in those same religious convictions, hopes, and practices. The Bible is not a “bestseller” in search of interested readers or readers who wish to have their imaginations stretched or their worldviews broadened, even when this may occur.
. . . How are Moses and Abraham about those who stand outside the circle of Israel? How is the Old Testament a book for and about those who stand outside a circle it assumes as operative by very logic of its own discourse? One would be tempted in the modern climate of biblical study to say that the Old Testament is a book for anyone who wishes to read it, and as a practical reality that is incontrovertible. The book is accessible; it can be purchased and read, as one book among others to be recommended for purchase, in a staggering variety of translations, at the local bookstore. But does that fact itself confuse us about whose book this is . . . ?
- Christopher R. Seitz, World Without End: The Old Testament as Abiding Theological Witness (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 341-43.
Filed under: Biblical Theology, Church History, Creeds and Confessions, Hermeneutics, Quotes , Biblical Theology, Brevard S. Childs, Canonical Approach, Christopher R. Seitz
March 12, 2009 • 10:30 pm
Another interesting quotation from Seitz’ book, Word Without End. Here he contrasts the historical-critical method with Childs’ canonical approach. He doesn’t dismiss historical criticism wholesale, but makes it subservient to the final form of the canon. I’m still working through some of this stuff myself, but it’s very interesting:
. . . On such a [historical-critical] model, what was of utmost importance was not the actual book itself, or its larger shape, since these could no longer with confidence be assigned to the traditional author, but rather a critical reconstruction of a variety of inspired individuals and the communities addressed by them. The focus had shifted from inspired book to inspired individuals.
To shift the focus back to the book itself is not to ignore this significant, substituted theory of inspired individuals, but it is to shift attention to the possibility that the final shaping has itself crafted these various inspired voices into an organic whole, capable of speaking with one voice. But the chief point to be made here is that “capacity to speak with one voice” is not the same thing as either an obliteration of historical depth, nor the production of a static text with only one possible meaning.
- Christopher R. Seitz, World Without End: The Old Testament as Abiding Theological Witness (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 197-98.
Filed under: Biblical Theology, Hermeneutics, Quotes , Biblical Theology, Brevard S. Childs, Canonical Appraoch, Christopher R. Seitz, Hermeneutics, Historical Criticism
