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The Glory of Kings: A Festschrift for James B. Jordan
Fyodor Dostoevsky
(Christian Encounters Series)
Athanasius
(Foundations of Theological Exegesis and Christian Spirituality)
The Four: A Survey of the Gospels
Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom
From Behind the Veil: The Epistles of John
Deep Exegesis:The Mystery of Reading Scripture
1 & 2 Kings
Brazos Theological Commentary
The Promise Of His Appearing: An Exposition Of Second Peter
A Great Mystery: Fourteen Wedding Sermons
Deep Comedy: Trinity, Tragedy, And Hope In Western Literature
Miniatures & Morals: The Christian Novels of Jane Austen
The Priesthood of the Plebs: A Theology of Baptism
A Son To Me: An Exposition of 1 & 2 Samuel
From Silence to Song: The Davidic Liturgical Revolution
Ascent to Love: A Guide to Dante's Divine Comedy
Blessed Are the Hungry: Meditations on the Lord's Supper
A House For My Name: A Survey of the Old Testament
Heroes of the City of Man: A Christian Guide to Select Ancient Literature
Brightest Heaven of Invention: A Christian Guide To Six Shakespeare Plays
Wise Words: Family Stories That Bring the Proverbs to Life
The Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church
It would be difficult to find a better short statement on the inspiration of Scripture than this:
“Those things revealed by God, which are contained and presented in the texts of Holy Scripture, were written under the influence of the Holy Spirit. . . . In the process of composition of the sacred books, God chose and employed human agents, using their own faculties and powers, in such a way that while he was acting in them and through them, they committed to writing, as genuine authors, everything which he willed – but only what he willed. Since, then, everything that the inspired authors or ‘sacred writers’ affirm should be considered to be affirmed by the Holy Spirit, the books of Scripture should be confessed as teaching firmly, faithfully, and without error that truth which God wished to be sealed in the sacred books for the sake of our salvation. . . . But since God, in Sacred Scripture, has spoken in a human way through human beings, the interpreter of Sacred Scripture – in order to grasp what God has wished to communicate to us – must carefully investigate what the sacred writers really intended to signify, and what it has pleased God to reveal to us in their words.”
It’s all there: The emphasis is on what’s contained “in the texts”; the writing is done under the influence of the Spirit but without cancelling the human faculties and powers; the texts contain “everything” God willed and “only what He willed”; what Scripture affirms, the Spirit affirms; and thus, Scripture teaches “firmly, faithfully, and without error” whatever God wanted to place in these books. And the hermeneutical conclusions are sound too.
The quotation is from Dei Verbum, Vatican II’s Constitution on Divine Revelation.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, August 31, 2011 at 12:05 pm
Augustine doesn’t think interpretive pluralism as a big problem:
“What difficulty is it for me when these words can be interpreted in various ways, provided only that the interpretations are true? What difficulty is it for me, I say, if I understand the text in a way different from someone else, who understands the scriptural author in another sense? In Bible study, all of us are trying to find and grasp the meaning of the author we are reading, and when we believe him to be revealing truth, we do not dare to think he said anything which we either know or think to be incorrect. As long as each interpreter is endeavoring to find in the holy Scriptures the meaning of the author who wrote it, what evil is it if an exegesis he gives is one shown to be true by you [i.e., God], light of all sincere souls, even if the author whom he is reading did not have that idea and, though he grasped a truth, had not discerned that seen by the interpreter.”
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, August 31, 2011 at 11:59 am
I wrote this early this morning and forgot to press “Publish,”
First Things posted an exchange between Christian Smith and me on the topic of biblicisim: http://www.firstthings.com/
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Friday, August 26, 2011 at 3:34 pm
After quoting extensively from Isaac Watts’s nationalistic renditions of the Psalms (Psalm 47 is made to say “The British islands are the Lord’s, / There Abraham’s God is known”), Willie James Jennings (The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Saturday, August 20, 2011 at 11:59 am
Paul Griffiths is always wise: “religious reading requires the establishment of a particular set of relations between the reader and what is read. These are principally relations of reverence, delight, awe, and wonder, relations that, once established, lead to . . . close, repetitive kinds of reading. . . . The questioning of authority and the concern with preliminary issues of method and justification (intellectual attitudes and concerns typical of modernity) make the establishment of such relations almost impossible because of the endless deferral of commitment that such attitudes bring with them. Commitment to some body of works as an endlessly nourishing garden of delights is essential to religious reading; and authoritative direction as to which works are of the right sort is a necessary condition for religious engagement with them.”
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Friday, August 19, 2011 at 5:00 pm
In his dense 1967 monograph on Homer and the Bible, Cyrus Gordon argued that the Iliad was written not for the sake of art only but to inspire the imagination of a Greek nation: “it does not divide Greek from Greek. The Trojans and their allies are treated with as much decorum and honor as the Achaeans and their allies. Moreover, in the Catalogue of Ships and in scattered descriptions of heroes (on both sides) and their genealogies, satisfaction is given to all the elements of the Hellenic world: in Greece, Asia Minor, and the islands. Pilgrims from widely scattered areas, attending the festivals where the Iliad was read, could listen with pride to the glories of their own epic hero, no matter whether they were Ionian, Cretan, or Peloponnesian. The Iliad tells how once the Greek world had participated in the glorious and manly Trojan War; listening to the Iliad could only inspire the entire Greek people with heroic sentiments and the vision of nationhood.”
The Pentateuch and especially the Patriarchal narratives, he suggests, had the same function for Israel, as Ugaritic myth did for Ugarit. He concludes, ”Israel, Greece and Ugarit had texts for the great problem in that part of the world: national union.” Yet, he goes on to indicate how different the Pentateuch is from the other epics: “It is infinitely more many-sided than any other national epic of any age. But perhaps its most distinctive feature is its universal framework. Genesis leads up to the Patriarchs with the story of the Creation and the peoples of the world, showing how Israel fits into the broad scheme of things.” Even in form of its “national epic,” Israel is evidently not merely a nation for itself, but a nation for the life of the world.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 11:10 am
Pity the radical. For every radical, there’s always someone more radical still, someone who plays “more radical than thou” with greater skill.
Recent New Testament scholarship has highlighted the “counter-imperial” import of the gospel. In some ways, this is a healthy recovery of the political resonances of the New Testament, but too often these interpretations ignore or neutralize contrary evidence (often using the tools of historical criticism). For Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza (The Power of the Word: Scripture and the Rhetoric of Empire
She finds anti-imperial interpreters like Horsley far too conservative. Writers like Horsley “have highlighted the interplay of religion and politics in the emperor cult, identified the imperial cross-cultural patronage system, and elaborated Paul’s counterimperial gospel, which is regarded as being patterned after but totally different from the gospel of Caesar.” But these works fail to see that “even resistance literature will re-inscribe the structures of domination against which it seeks to argue.”
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 5:26 am
Smith again: Step #3 is to “notice the Bible’s inability to settle matters in dispute.” He points to “the women’s issue,” war and pacifism, creation, the millennium, mode of baptism, etc.
Several responses. On the surface, he’s right. The church has had trouble settling disputes for centuries now. But I don’t think that’s due to reliance on Scripture. I’d place the blame more on the fact that we ignore essential teachings of Scripture, particularly its teaching about the unity of the church. We suffer “pneumatic deprivation” because we grieve the Spirit with our divisions, and that deprivation only deepens our divisions. I also suspect that the issue is not altogether to do with the question of what Scripture says, as with the question of whether we want to follow Scripture. It seems to me there’s less dispute about what Paul actually says about women than there is about whether we’re bound by it. Even some evangelicals regard the Bible as a book that reflects the primitive prejudices of its time.
Some historical perspective helps, though. Evangelicals have been unable to come to one mind about sex roles, but we have been debating this for how long? It took most of the fourth century for the church to come to one mind on so essential a point as the deity of Christ, and the church never really did come to a single mind about the divine and human in Christ, Chalcedon notwithstanding. A Catholic like Smith should show more patience: It wasn’t until the thirteenth century that a council of the Catholic Church affirmed transubstantiation, and it wasn’t until Trent that the Catholic Church formulated an authoritative dogma on justification. Give us another half-millennium, and we’ll get “the women’s issue” sorted out.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Saturday, August 13, 2011 at 12:18 pm
Christian Smith is on a roll. The Notre Dame sociologist came out earlier this year with a critique of “biblicism” (Bible Made Impossible, The: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture
Step #47 is to “realize that the doctrine of sola Scriptura is itself not biblical but, ironically, is received and believed as a sacred (Protestant) church tradition.” A neat bit of jiu jitsu, but the next sentence makes one suspect that he’s played dirty: sola Scriptura is the belief that Christians have “the Bible alone and no other human tradition as authority.” Later, he challenges his readers to find biblical passages that teach that “Scripture or the written word of God is the sole and sufficient authority for Christian faith.”
Now, I imagine that there are people who believe sola Scriptura as Smith describes it, and Protestants have always insisted that Scripture is a sufficient revelation of God’s will for us (cf., e.g., WCF 1.6). But neither the Reformers nor their heirs concluded that Scripture is the “sole” authority, nor did they deny the relative authority of human teachers. (If Calvin believed the Bible was the “sole” authority, why so much effort and time devoted to reading Augustine and Chrysostom?) As Smith himself points out, the Scriptures themselves point to human teachers and leaders who are to be honored as authorities. Smith is also correct that the New Testament writers encourage Christians to honor apostolic traditions. No argument there, but that’s because Smith has missed the point.
The argument is not about “sole” authority but “final” authority.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Saturday, August 13, 2011 at 12:00 pm
Jesus warns that His coming will be like the coming of a “thief” at night (Matthew 24:43; cf. 1 Thessalonians 5:2, 4; Revelation 3:3).
This specific image – a thief breaking in at night – comes in part from the law, Exodus 22 gives regulations about how to deal with a thief breaking into a house. It is used only twice in the prophets. Jeremiah 49:9 warns that though thieves would leave a few things behind Yahweh will strip bare, and Obadiah repeats the same warning.
Importantly, both of these warnings are directed at Edom (or, in the LXX idoumia). When Jesus says that He will come like a thief, He implies that Israel has become an Edom, Jacob has transformed into an Esau. And He also implies that His advent as a thief is specifically directed at the Idumianized kingdom of Israel, ruled by the Edomite Herods. In Revelation, the warning is directed at those who have imitated the “elder brother,” Esau, in other words, the Judaizers.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, August 4, 2011 at 4:28 am
Yahweh delivered Israel from the yoke of Egypt (Leviticus 26:13), and put her to work in His own field. He warned, though, that they would receive an iron yoke if they failed to plow faithfully (Deuteronomy 28:48).
That heavier yoke first takes the form of the yoke of Solomon. The word “yoke” appears eight times in 1 Kings 12, where Jeroboam asks for relief from Solomon’s yoke, heavy as a new Egyptian yoke. Eventually Yahweh breaks the yoke of the kings again, and places on Israel the easy yoke of His servant Nebuchadnezzar (Jeremiah 27), warning yet again that they would receive an iron yoke if they resisted.
That, in the event, is what happened, until Jesus came to break the burden and offer His own easy yoke and light burden.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, March 24, 2011 at 9:27 am
A “Well, duh” moment.
Yahweh regularly charges Israel with harlotry. This is not just serial adultery, though it is that. It is also commercialization. Yahweh loves His bride and calls her to intimate love. She wants to buy him off with sacrifices and trinkets.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, March 15, 2011 at 4:30 pm
In the article mentioned in my last post, Kloos argues that Augustine moves beyond allegorical and figural exegesis in the process of writing the Contra Faustum. Figural exegesis plays into Faustus’s hands: If the Old Testament physically figures spiritual realities, why not dispense entirely with the figurae and embrace the res?
The category of “witness” or “testimony” does multiple things for Augustine. On the one hand, it is a way of describing the continuing present significance of the Old Testament in the church. If the Old Testament is merely figural, then its use might pass away when the figures are fulfilled. As testimony, the Old Testament witnesses to its own fulfillment in the New Testament.
Further, since Jesus and the apostles testify to the ongoing significance of the Old Testament, there is an intra-canonical witness in both directions. The Old is a continuing witness to its fulfillment in the New, and the New testifies to the continuing value of the Old.
But the testimony offered is not simply textual. It is personal.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, March 15, 2011 at 8:05 am
Portier-Young notes that during the Ptolemaic domination of Palesting, “some families were taken captive and enslaved.” She cites Hengel, who claims that the slave trade flourished under the Ptolemies. Josephus claims that “soldiers sold slaves independently of imperial policy as a way to increase their profits from campaigning.” Another scholar notes that “The Ptolemies used their Syrian wars to make vast hauls of captives whom they then imprisoned to augment their military or working manpower,” and Portier-Young adds that the sale of slaves provided funding for the war itself.
The reputation of the Seleucids has been sealed by the depiction of Antiochus IV in Maccabees, but initially the Seleucides were liberators, freeing Israel from a return to Egyptian slavery. Despite Antiochus’ promise to liberate slaves and restore them to their lands (cf. a letter recorded in Josephus, Antiquities, 12), many Jews remained in slavery and without land: “No royal proclamation would guarantee the wholesale liberation and return of Judeans who had been exported in the slave trade.”
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, January 24, 2011 at 2:32 pm
Josephus (Antiquities 12) cites this intriguing decree (programma) from Antiochus III: ”It shall be lawful for no foreigner to come within the limits of the temple round about; which thing is forbidden also to the Jews, unless to those who, according to their own custom, have purified themselves. Nor let any flesh of horses, or of mules, or of asses, he brought into the city, whether they be wild or tame; nor that of leopards, or foxes, or hares; and, in general, that of any animal which is forbidden for the Jews to eat. Nor let their skins be brought into it; nor let any such animal be bred up in the city. Let them only be permitted to use the sacrifices derived from their forefathers, with which they have been obliged to make acceptable atonements to God. And he that transgresseth any of these orders, let him pay to the priests three thousand drachmae of silver.”
Two comments on this. First, though alternative interpretations have been suggested, Anathea Portier-Young (Apocalypse against Empire: Theologies of Resistance in Early Judaism
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, January 24, 2011 at 2:09 pm
In an older article on purity in ancient Israel, Jacob Neusner makes the trenchant observation that purity concerns arise primarily within sectarian disputes among Jews: “When gen- tiles profane the Temple, the language of cultic purity is not apt to enter into the description of the event, nor to predominate in the interpretation of its meaning. But when Jews accuse other Jews of doing the wrong thing in the Temple or in connection with the cult, they are apt to make their indictment, in part, through accusations of polluting the sanctuary or entirely misunderstanding the meaning of purity.”
One reason, he thinks, is that each of the main sects of Judaism (Essene, Church, Pharisees, rabbis) stake claims to be the temple or to carry on the holiness of the temple: ”as with their approach to the Temple’s other symbols and meanings, the several sects all determined to define their relationship to the established Temple and to come to terms with it. They took over its rules, either by reinterpreting or by rejecting them. The three sects struggled with one another because they were so much alike, and because their claims in respect to the Temple brought them into direct conflict.”
Charges of impurity arise not only among Jewish sectarians, though, but also among Christians, in the Arian dispute for example. Purity is not just about policing the fences that protect the community from external dangers, but, perhaps even more, about policing the internal boundaries of a community.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Friday, January 7, 2011 at 1:52 pm
Another paper from Warren Gage, “The Typology of the Word,” is available here. Just click on “Downloads” and look for the paper.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, December 22, 2010 at 8:21 am
Abel is righteous, but ends up dead at the hand of his brother.
Jacob is perfect, and survives, in spite of Esau’s attempts to kill him.
That progression foretells the progression of Israel’s exiles. In Egypt, they are “Abel,” exalted at first but eventually enslaved and slaughtered by the Pharaoh who does not know Joseph. In Babylon, they are Jacob, surviving and often flourishing in spite of the hostility of their neighbors.
In Babylonian exile, Israel proves to be Israel, true sons of Jacob the wily.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Saturday, November 13, 2010 at 11:52 am
Theodore Lewis assesses Tryggve Mettinger’s comparative study of Israel’s aniconic tradition in a 1998 issue of JAOS. Lewis’s enumerated conclusions are (the next few paragraph are directly quoted):
1. Aniconic traditions (i.e., Mettinger’s “de facto ani-conism”) are not uniquely Israelite.
2. Cultures can have both aniconic and anthropo-morphic traditions at the same time.
3. The repudiation of divine images is very rare in the ancient Near East apart from Israel. A type of programmatic aniconism is attested in Egyptian Amarna theology, yet it lasts only briefly. Mesopotamian Anu is rarely portrayed in art but this may very well be due to his obscure nature rather than any programmatic ani-conism for which we have no evidence. Only ancient Israel developed and sustained a theological programme against representing a deity iconographically.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, November 8, 2010 at 3:26 pm
A 1984 article by Baruch Levine and Jean-Michel de Tarragon in the JAOS examines a Ugaritic liturgy that commemorates the accession of Ammurapi and includes honors to his dead father Niqmaddu.
The liturgy begins with a summons to the Patrons of Ugarit, including the “Rephaim of the netherworld and their council of Didanites.” Two recently departed kings are also summoned, addressed as “king” not “Rapha,” and the “text continues with a lamentation over the dead king, Niqmaddu. The narrators addresses the throne of the departed king, personified, and commands it to weep. He exhorts the footstool and royal table to shed tears.” The narrator turns to the goddess Shapash, asking that she “locate the departed kings during her nocturnal circuit beneath the earth.” She finds them, and tells the priest or perhaps the king “to descend into the netherworld, ‘below,’ where Niqmaddu and Ammishtamru can be found near the Rephaim. The dead kings and the Rephaim arrive, and sacrifices are offered. Based on what we know of the Rephaim we can assume that they and the former kings join their human hosts in the sacred feast.” The authors believe that the “direct address to the throne, and the references to the footstool and royal table suggest that this liturgy was recited in the royal palace of Ugarit.” Possibly the sacrifice took place at a temple, but sacrifices might also “have been offered in proximity to the royal tombs.”
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, November 8, 2010 at 2:43 pm
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