Continued from last week
The Christian Old Testament
The same books that are the Jewish Scriptures are also the Old Testament for Christians. It is important to understand the distinction. The ultimate meaning of words is a function of their contexts. Accordingly, the words of the books of the Jewish Scriptures and Old Testament--although they are the same words--have quite different connotations and implications depending on the canonical context in which we place them.
The meanings of words are ambiguous without context. Words tend to have multiple possible definitions, not to mention the virtually limitless metaphorical uses to which they can be put. Additionally, the books of the Old Testament are not one book but a collection of books written over hundreds of years in differing contexts themselves. When this multiplicity of factors is conjoined with the question of appropriation for today, the import of these books can vary widely depending on who is doing the appropriation.
For those who do not accept the New Testament as Scripture, the Old Testament is not "old." It is not incomplete. For Judaism, the Old Testament is the testament. For such a person, the Jewish Scriptures may not anticipate a coming king. A Jewish reader may or may not see human nature as fallen or intrinsically corrupted. Such a person may see prayer and worship as the contemporary equivalent of the sacrificial system of Leviticus.
For a Christian reader of the Old Testament, Jesus Christ is the king who continues the royal line of David. The death and resurrection of Christ provides a fulfillment of the Levitical sacrificial system. For the Christian, default human nature is under the power of Sin, with Adam as either the literal or symbolic demonstration.
This biblical theology is a Christian biblical theology. That is to say, while we will try to listen to each biblical text first on its own terms, the ultimate organizing principles assume that a New Testament followed the Old Testament. Further, we assume that the Christian church followed the New Testament.
Of course Christians disagree on the precise contents of the Old Testament canon. They agree on sixty-six of those books. They agree on the five books of the Law: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. They agree on the "Former Prophets" of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings. They agree on the "Latter Prophets" of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi.
It is in the Writings that there is some disagreement. Nevertheless, even here, there is agreement on Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Ruth, 1 and 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Lamentations, and Daniel. To these books, the Roman Catholic Church would add Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, 1 and 2 Maccabees, as well as additions to Esther and Daniel. The Orthodox and Ethiopian churches include one or more others.
In keeping with Jerome's categorization of these as "deuterocanonical," as a kind of second canon. While we may reference them on occasion, we will focus on the books on which all Christians agree. Where these other books are most relevant for us is when they illuminate some aspect of New Testament belief or practice.
Showing posts with label canon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label canon. Show all posts
Monday, January 21, 2019
Thursday, November 20, 2014
Different canons at the time of Christ
I have a hunch that there were varied edges to the Old Testament canon at the time of Christ. Most agreed on the Law and the Prophets (although an argument can be made that the Sadducees really only considered the Pentateuch to be canon... Philo also is majorly focused on the Law and considers the Prophets a kind of second level canon).
The Essenes considered various apocalyptic writings Scripture like 1 Enoch. I've wondered if there was some overlap in the early Jerusalem church with the Essene community, and here it seems notable to me that Jude quotes 1 Enoch. At Qumran I suspect they looked at writings like the Hymns and such as Scripture.
The Protestant OT canon today, as well as the Jewish canon today, seems to me to be the canon of the Pharisees, which became the canon of Rabbinic Judaism. Meanwhile, the OT canon of Roman Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity seems to me to be the Diaspora, Hellenistic Jewish canon, which it seems to me was both the OT canon for the NT Greek writers, as well as the canon of the patristic church.
That is my sense of the lay of the land, certainly open for dispute and discussion. It is something like what seems most likely to me given what I've studied of the topic.
The Essenes considered various apocalyptic writings Scripture like 1 Enoch. I've wondered if there was some overlap in the early Jerusalem church with the Essene community, and here it seems notable to me that Jude quotes 1 Enoch. At Qumran I suspect they looked at writings like the Hymns and such as Scripture.
The Protestant OT canon today, as well as the Jewish canon today, seems to me to be the canon of the Pharisees, which became the canon of Rabbinic Judaism. Meanwhile, the OT canon of Roman Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity seems to me to be the Diaspora, Hellenistic Jewish canon, which it seems to me was both the OT canon for the NT Greek writers, as well as the canon of the patristic church.
That is my sense of the lay of the land, certainly open for dispute and discussion. It is something like what seems most likely to me given what I've studied of the topic.
Friday, May 10, 2013
Notes on Luther 1
Some day I would like either to blog or write through church history. This was my last week doing the Bible-theology-church history for a leadership class and we ended with a recap of Luther. I haven't done nearly enough research on Luther for it to count fully, but I thought I would put down some notes from today that I could pick up at some point in the future.
1. In hindsight, we tend to see the factors leading up to a major event out of proportion to their significance at the time. If we are involved in an event, we may get some hindsight. If we are outsiders, we will tend to see the lead up to an event in a skewed way. For example, was there truly any failing in not catching the Boston Marathon bombers beforehand? There may be room for improvement, but was the process of vigilance at the time normal and appropriate? After all, we have to balance the free life we all enjoy as Americans with threats like these.
So it surely could not even have occurred to Luther that he might start a new church or a movement of withdrawal from the Roman Catholic Church. It simply wasn't even conceivable, surely. Luther thought a number of things were wrong with his church--his church, the church, the only church. He hoped they could be corrected. He was not trying to leave. That simply wasn't on anyone's radar.
2. Luther was a medieval person. He was a decidedly pre-modern individual. When there was a thunderstorm, he didn't think of barometric pressure, electric charges, or condensation. He thought of spirits and demons. The line that we may draw so solidly with Luther is hindsight. He was not born in the modern age.
He committed to become a monk in a bad thunderstorm, calling on St. Anne for protection.
3. I imagine Luther's brief encounter with Rome in 1510, before that fateful day in 1517, had a major effect on him. What he saw in Rome was a world that seemed to have little to do with the kingdom of God. He saw the resources of peasants being spent on opulence. He saw a materialistic world that was not focused on spiritual things. Perhaps he saw immorality.
Basically, he saw a building project (St. Peter's) supported by the doctrine of purgatory and indulgences. You pay money, the Pope gives you time out of purgatory. Our ideas rarely exist in some Platonic vacuum. This experience no doubt had a major impact on Luther's drive to find a way theologically to do away with indulgences. We shouldn't think that his ideas of "faith alone" and "Scripture alone" came out of nowhere. They followed naturally from his concrete hatred of the injustice he saw in papal indulgences.
3. In Luther's own words, he hated the idea of the idea of "righteousness of God" in Romans 1:17 because he heard in it the "justice of God" (iustitia dei). Perhaps his hatred here also related to his hatred of the idea of purgatory, the place where God's justice was allegedly satisfied. He kept his monastic vows.
It was perhaps somewhere around the year 1516 that he had his breakthrough. What if Romans 1:17 isn't talking about the justice of God being revealed in the gospel but a righteousness that God gives us, a righteousness from God. What if the gospel is about God declaring us righteous even though we are sinners?
This was the ideological breakthrough that would allow him to undo purgatory. God is not looking for moral perfection but for repentance, and nothing but individual repentance is required, not some penance administered by a priest. Rather, God justifies us by faith alone.
We should not think his theology was fully cooked at this time. It is really in his commentary on Galatians in 1531 that his theology here reaches something like its mature form. And of course most Paul scholars would say Luther was wrong on Romans even if mostly right on Christian theology. The righteousness of God in Romans 1:17 is God's propensity to save his people. And the gospel is the fact that God has enthroned Jesus as king by raising him from the dead, along with all that entails.
4. If you read the 95 Theses he nailed on October 31, 1517, they overwhelmingly address the question of indulgences. They are not the grand "five solas" of the Reformation. While Scripture played a major role in Luther's argument, we also find an acceptance of the Pope's authority in general. Sola scriptura would evolve later in the fullness of his defense. Again, most of our arguments follow our intuitions, to justify them. Most people do not move from ideas to reality but the other way around.
We can see Luther's hatred of the doctrine of purgatory standing behind his explusion of the "deuterocanonical books" from the Bible. What Protestants now call the Apocrypha had been quoted and used extensively from the very beginning of Christianity. Jerome in the 400s called them a "second canon," not quite as authoritative as the "protocanonical" books but still with some authority.
Luther would demote them, then the RC Council of Trent in 1545 would upgrade them to protocanonical status. Why did Luther not like them? Because 2 Maccabees had the proof-text used to justify purgatory. It may seem nonchalant for Luther to take these books out of the mix, because as Protestants we are used to them being out. In Luther's day, it reflected that 1) he did not view the canon as strongly as we think he did and 2) it was in the spirit of the same striking freedom he felt not to include James initially in his translation of the Bible into German.
5. October 31, 1517 was the tipping point. Contrary to Brad Gregory, Luther was not the primary cause of secularism. Luther could only happen because the church had undermined its own spiritual authority for years and its political power had been waning for years. Luther represents a critical mass of protests that had gone on for centuries and the Protestant Reformation is part of the Renaissance, which had been going on for a couple centuries as well.
The Reformation is part of the Renaissance.
1. In hindsight, we tend to see the factors leading up to a major event out of proportion to their significance at the time. If we are involved in an event, we may get some hindsight. If we are outsiders, we will tend to see the lead up to an event in a skewed way. For example, was there truly any failing in not catching the Boston Marathon bombers beforehand? There may be room for improvement, but was the process of vigilance at the time normal and appropriate? After all, we have to balance the free life we all enjoy as Americans with threats like these.
So it surely could not even have occurred to Luther that he might start a new church or a movement of withdrawal from the Roman Catholic Church. It simply wasn't even conceivable, surely. Luther thought a number of things were wrong with his church--his church, the church, the only church. He hoped they could be corrected. He was not trying to leave. That simply wasn't on anyone's radar.
2. Luther was a medieval person. He was a decidedly pre-modern individual. When there was a thunderstorm, he didn't think of barometric pressure, electric charges, or condensation. He thought of spirits and demons. The line that we may draw so solidly with Luther is hindsight. He was not born in the modern age.
He committed to become a monk in a bad thunderstorm, calling on St. Anne for protection.
3. I imagine Luther's brief encounter with Rome in 1510, before that fateful day in 1517, had a major effect on him. What he saw in Rome was a world that seemed to have little to do with the kingdom of God. He saw the resources of peasants being spent on opulence. He saw a materialistic world that was not focused on spiritual things. Perhaps he saw immorality.
Basically, he saw a building project (St. Peter's) supported by the doctrine of purgatory and indulgences. You pay money, the Pope gives you time out of purgatory. Our ideas rarely exist in some Platonic vacuum. This experience no doubt had a major impact on Luther's drive to find a way theologically to do away with indulgences. We shouldn't think that his ideas of "faith alone" and "Scripture alone" came out of nowhere. They followed naturally from his concrete hatred of the injustice he saw in papal indulgences.
3. In Luther's own words, he hated the idea of the idea of "righteousness of God" in Romans 1:17 because he heard in it the "justice of God" (iustitia dei). Perhaps his hatred here also related to his hatred of the idea of purgatory, the place where God's justice was allegedly satisfied. He kept his monastic vows.
It was perhaps somewhere around the year 1516 that he had his breakthrough. What if Romans 1:17 isn't talking about the justice of God being revealed in the gospel but a righteousness that God gives us, a righteousness from God. What if the gospel is about God declaring us righteous even though we are sinners?
This was the ideological breakthrough that would allow him to undo purgatory. God is not looking for moral perfection but for repentance, and nothing but individual repentance is required, not some penance administered by a priest. Rather, God justifies us by faith alone.
We should not think his theology was fully cooked at this time. It is really in his commentary on Galatians in 1531 that his theology here reaches something like its mature form. And of course most Paul scholars would say Luther was wrong on Romans even if mostly right on Christian theology. The righteousness of God in Romans 1:17 is God's propensity to save his people. And the gospel is the fact that God has enthroned Jesus as king by raising him from the dead, along with all that entails.
4. If you read the 95 Theses he nailed on October 31, 1517, they overwhelmingly address the question of indulgences. They are not the grand "five solas" of the Reformation. While Scripture played a major role in Luther's argument, we also find an acceptance of the Pope's authority in general. Sola scriptura would evolve later in the fullness of his defense. Again, most of our arguments follow our intuitions, to justify them. Most people do not move from ideas to reality but the other way around.
We can see Luther's hatred of the doctrine of purgatory standing behind his explusion of the "deuterocanonical books" from the Bible. What Protestants now call the Apocrypha had been quoted and used extensively from the very beginning of Christianity. Jerome in the 400s called them a "second canon," not quite as authoritative as the "protocanonical" books but still with some authority.
Luther would demote them, then the RC Council of Trent in 1545 would upgrade them to protocanonical status. Why did Luther not like them? Because 2 Maccabees had the proof-text used to justify purgatory. It may seem nonchalant for Luther to take these books out of the mix, because as Protestants we are used to them being out. In Luther's day, it reflected that 1) he did not view the canon as strongly as we think he did and 2) it was in the spirit of the same striking freedom he felt not to include James initially in his translation of the Bible into German.
5. October 31, 1517 was the tipping point. Contrary to Brad Gregory, Luther was not the primary cause of secularism. Luther could only happen because the church had undermined its own spiritual authority for years and its political power had been waning for years. Luther represents a critical mass of protests that had gone on for centuries and the Protestant Reformation is part of the Renaissance, which had been going on for a couple centuries as well.
The Reformation is part of the Renaissance.
Saturday, August 25, 2012
3.2 Grudem: NT Canon
... continued from yesterday
___________
Someone who sees the Bible as Scripture is going to agree with Grudem that the books of the New Testament are the right books and that no more books should be added to the Bible. But there is a dreamy quality to the way he unfolds it that again is more like a two-dimensional legend with flat characters than reality. And there's no reason for it other than a compulsion for certainty.
Ironically, there is a great deal of "common sense" to his argument that implies what he will not tell you--he cannot rely on the Bible itself for the answers to which books are in the canon. This is a massive hint of the inadequacy of his overall view of Scripture. When it comes to justifying the contents of Scripture he must resort to a common sense completely outside of the text.
So it is "not accidental" that Revelation comes last or that Genesis comes first in the Christian canon 63). It "must" be that way. Why? Because it makes sense to him. Smile. Or is because there is a circularity to your argument, Wayne? Convinced that the Bible as it stands has to be the canon, you will find any argument that sounds like it makes sense to justify it?
What's the bottom line? It is because we can have confidence in "the faithfulness of God" (65). I agree. But where was that faithfulness manifested? Say it; say it. In the church. AD367. He acknowledges it. No writing prior to 367 has the same list of New Testament books that are now in our canon. AD397 before any official recognition of these books as the New Testament canon anywhere that we know of. Looks like the church wrestled a little with the question--and that it wasn't the first order of business (which contradicts the all-importance these issues have for his theology).
His argument for the finality of the New Testament canon gives a glimmer of depth. If Christ is the final revelation, then it makes sense that the canon would not be far behind. This Christ-focused approach points us toward substance, revelation as something more than words, something deep and cosmic. But Grudem is so written word focused that this hint of depth comes only because he has no recourse in the biblical text itself. There's no text that says, "And with Revelation, the canon is closed." Grudem himself admits that the words about adding and subtracting were about the book of Revelation itself, not the Bible or the New Testament as a whole (65).
Ultimately, the collection of the canon--and the collection of doctrine and ethics--require mechanisms that are outside the biblical texts themselves. Some external organizing principle is required to determine the limits of the canon, as well as to systematize biblical teaching. Grudem is forced to engage such factors in this chapter, but he will return to pretending they are not at work in later chapters. His answer is actually quite good: we must rely on the faithfulness of God... in the church, through the Spirit to affirm the canon of Scripture.
Of course those who argue for the Majority Text (roughly that behind the KJV) use this argument as well--surely a faithful God would have preserved the precise text. Of course the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches use this argument as well--surely a faithful God would have preserved the right interpretations and applications of these texts.
Again, Christians will agree with the destination. These are the books that belong in the New Testament canon. Historically, though, that conclusion was won with far more disagreement and real debate than Grudem imagines. He imagines that it was almost obvious from the very beginning that Paul's writings were Scripture, that the gospels were Scripture. Galatians 2 points to much more conflict and disagreement in the early church. The real story was much more real, much more three-dimensional, like real history.
___________
Someone who sees the Bible as Scripture is going to agree with Grudem that the books of the New Testament are the right books and that no more books should be added to the Bible. But there is a dreamy quality to the way he unfolds it that again is more like a two-dimensional legend with flat characters than reality. And there's no reason for it other than a compulsion for certainty.
Ironically, there is a great deal of "common sense" to his argument that implies what he will not tell you--he cannot rely on the Bible itself for the answers to which books are in the canon. This is a massive hint of the inadequacy of his overall view of Scripture. When it comes to justifying the contents of Scripture he must resort to a common sense completely outside of the text.
So it is "not accidental" that Revelation comes last or that Genesis comes first in the Christian canon 63). It "must" be that way. Why? Because it makes sense to him. Smile. Or is because there is a circularity to your argument, Wayne? Convinced that the Bible as it stands has to be the canon, you will find any argument that sounds like it makes sense to justify it?
What's the bottom line? It is because we can have confidence in "the faithfulness of God" (65). I agree. But where was that faithfulness manifested? Say it; say it. In the church. AD367. He acknowledges it. No writing prior to 367 has the same list of New Testament books that are now in our canon. AD397 before any official recognition of these books as the New Testament canon anywhere that we know of. Looks like the church wrestled a little with the question--and that it wasn't the first order of business (which contradicts the all-importance these issues have for his theology).
His argument for the finality of the New Testament canon gives a glimmer of depth. If Christ is the final revelation, then it makes sense that the canon would not be far behind. This Christ-focused approach points us toward substance, revelation as something more than words, something deep and cosmic. But Grudem is so written word focused that this hint of depth comes only because he has no recourse in the biblical text itself. There's no text that says, "And with Revelation, the canon is closed." Grudem himself admits that the words about adding and subtracting were about the book of Revelation itself, not the Bible or the New Testament as a whole (65).
Ultimately, the collection of the canon--and the collection of doctrine and ethics--require mechanisms that are outside the biblical texts themselves. Some external organizing principle is required to determine the limits of the canon, as well as to systematize biblical teaching. Grudem is forced to engage such factors in this chapter, but he will return to pretending they are not at work in later chapters. His answer is actually quite good: we must rely on the faithfulness of God... in the church, through the Spirit to affirm the canon of Scripture.
Of course those who argue for the Majority Text (roughly that behind the KJV) use this argument as well--surely a faithful God would have preserved the precise text. Of course the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches use this argument as well--surely a faithful God would have preserved the right interpretations and applications of these texts.
Again, Christians will agree with the destination. These are the books that belong in the New Testament canon. Historically, though, that conclusion was won with far more disagreement and real debate than Grudem imagines. He imagines that it was almost obvious from the very beginning that Paul's writings were Scripture, that the gospels were Scripture. Galatians 2 points to much more conflict and disagreement in the early church. The real story was much more real, much more three-dimensional, like real history.
Friday, August 24, 2012
Grudem: OT Canon
My series reviewing Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology continues.
__________________
OT Canon
As with the previous chapter, Grudem's story of the OT canon's development seems more like a two-dimensional comic book version rather than one that demonstrates any depth of understanding. Just as an example, Numbers 33:2 says that Moses recorded the stages of Israel's journey at the LORD's command. Does Grudem want us to infer from this comment that the book of Numbers itself is the record? Inductively, this comment surely wants us to think of Numbers 33:3-49 as the record.
It is exactly this sort of inductive incompetency that plagues Grudem's understanding of the Bible in general. Numbers, like Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, talks about Moses in the third person. There is material in these books that is Mosaic. But the books as books, as wholes do not want to be read inductively as books written by Moses. We will have to abandon exegesis and inductive Bible study as our preferred method if this is the way we are to read Scripture and adopt an eisegetical hermeneutic, one that comes to the text trying to find the conclusions we already have.
Exodus, for example, makes reference to a "Book of the Covenant" that Moses reads to the people (24:7). This book is not just the Ten Commandments, but presumably other laws in Exodus as well. Inductively, is not this the material that Exodus 24:4 wants us to think of, the laws God wanted Moses to write down, not the book of Exodus itself? Similarly, there is no place in the Pentateuch that fits the description of the scroll mentioned in Exodus 17:14.
Again, like a high school student, it doesn't seem to occur to Grudem that these might be references to material that isn't actually in the Pentateuch. Why? Maybe because he doesn't have much of a place for revelation outside the written text as it has survived? So 1 Samuel 10:25 does not refer to anything that has survived in Scripture. 1 Chronicles 29:29 does not refer to anything that has survived in Scripture. Although I think Chronicles is well aware of Samuel and Kings, it doesn't seem likely to me that the "Chronicles of Jehu" are 1 Kings. Nor does Isaiah read like a catalog of the acts of Uzziah "from first to last."
In short, Grudem at least seems to reflect the classic pre-modern inability to distinguish between things in a biblical text and that biblical text itself as a historical document. The main character in a story irrationally becomes the author of the story. Why would anyone think, for example, that Joshua wrote Joshua because of Joshua 24:26? Joshua is not the Book of the Law? Joshua is talking about a book, not about itself! You begin to wonder who the Bible professors were at wherever Grudem studied!
Then there is the old fable about the Jews considering the canon closed with Malachi in about 435BC. There is of course no statement within the Old Testament itself that would attest to this. We know that in the 100s BC the Greek preface to Sirach mentions the Law, the Prophets, and "the other writings," but it doesn't say what those other writings were. Luke 24 mentions the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms (24:44).
If you ask an actual scholar of Second Temple Judaism, they will tell you that the general consensus is that the edges of the canon remained fuzzy at this time in its third section, "the Writings." There's actually no evidence for another legend, that the OT canon was set in stone at Jamnia in around AD90, but even this legend supposes that the precise contents of the canon remained fluid at the time of the New Testament, some 400 years too late for Grudem.
No reputable Dead Sea Scroll scholar would say that the Essenes did not consider a book like 1 Enoch to be Scripture. And if Jude 14 were talking about a book in the canon, Grudem would absolutely be touting the verse as proof that Enoch wrote 1 Enoch and that 1 Enoch should be considered Scripture. To try to argue that Melito of Sardis didn't think the book of Wisdom was Scripture is obviously special pleading because it doesn't work for Grudem.
And while the NT does not quote any of the apocryphal books as Scripture, they use them. No one interested in the truth (rather than just trying to justify what you already think) will conclude that Jesus in Matthew 11:28-29 is not comparing himself to wisdom in Sirach 24 and 51 or that Hebrews 1:3 is not an allusion to Wisdom 7:26 (Romans 1:21ff also has very similar themes to Wisdom 12-14). And Hebrews 11:35 is likely an allusion to 2 Maccabees 7. By far the Bible the early Christians used, even Paul, was the Septuagint, and even Grudem acknowledges that the Septuagint included these books (57 n.7). I suspect he had to add these notes in later editions because someone pointed out he'd missed a few things.
I can't see how anyone can actually read the patristic literature and not conclude that the fathers quoted books like Wisdom similarly to how they quoted the rest of the Old Testament. It is true that Jerome classified them as part of a "second" canon (deuterocanonical), not as authoritative as the first. So the Council of Trent in 1545 did arguably elevate their official status in response to Luther. But part of acknowledging this fact is also to recognize that Luther himself demoted their status from what they had been from almost the very beginning.
The status these books have within most of Protestantism seems almost certainly less than the status they had from the very beginning of Greek-speaking Christianity. If we have to choose between the two statements, it is more accurate to say that Luther took the books out than to say that the Catholic church added them in. The middle way is to go with Jerome. From almost the beginning, they had the status of a kind of "second canon," of more status than Luther gave them but less than the Council of Trent.
__________________
OT Canon
As with the previous chapter, Grudem's story of the OT canon's development seems more like a two-dimensional comic book version rather than one that demonstrates any depth of understanding. Just as an example, Numbers 33:2 says that Moses recorded the stages of Israel's journey at the LORD's command. Does Grudem want us to infer from this comment that the book of Numbers itself is the record? Inductively, this comment surely wants us to think of Numbers 33:3-49 as the record.
It is exactly this sort of inductive incompetency that plagues Grudem's understanding of the Bible in general. Numbers, like Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, talks about Moses in the third person. There is material in these books that is Mosaic. But the books as books, as wholes do not want to be read inductively as books written by Moses. We will have to abandon exegesis and inductive Bible study as our preferred method if this is the way we are to read Scripture and adopt an eisegetical hermeneutic, one that comes to the text trying to find the conclusions we already have.
Exodus, for example, makes reference to a "Book of the Covenant" that Moses reads to the people (24:7). This book is not just the Ten Commandments, but presumably other laws in Exodus as well. Inductively, is not this the material that Exodus 24:4 wants us to think of, the laws God wanted Moses to write down, not the book of Exodus itself? Similarly, there is no place in the Pentateuch that fits the description of the scroll mentioned in Exodus 17:14.
Again, like a high school student, it doesn't seem to occur to Grudem that these might be references to material that isn't actually in the Pentateuch. Why? Maybe because he doesn't have much of a place for revelation outside the written text as it has survived? So 1 Samuel 10:25 does not refer to anything that has survived in Scripture. 1 Chronicles 29:29 does not refer to anything that has survived in Scripture. Although I think Chronicles is well aware of Samuel and Kings, it doesn't seem likely to me that the "Chronicles of Jehu" are 1 Kings. Nor does Isaiah read like a catalog of the acts of Uzziah "from first to last."
In short, Grudem at least seems to reflect the classic pre-modern inability to distinguish between things in a biblical text and that biblical text itself as a historical document. The main character in a story irrationally becomes the author of the story. Why would anyone think, for example, that Joshua wrote Joshua because of Joshua 24:26? Joshua is not the Book of the Law? Joshua is talking about a book, not about itself! You begin to wonder who the Bible professors were at wherever Grudem studied!
Then there is the old fable about the Jews considering the canon closed with Malachi in about 435BC. There is of course no statement within the Old Testament itself that would attest to this. We know that in the 100s BC the Greek preface to Sirach mentions the Law, the Prophets, and "the other writings," but it doesn't say what those other writings were. Luke 24 mentions the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms (24:44).
If you ask an actual scholar of Second Temple Judaism, they will tell you that the general consensus is that the edges of the canon remained fuzzy at this time in its third section, "the Writings." There's actually no evidence for another legend, that the OT canon was set in stone at Jamnia in around AD90, but even this legend supposes that the precise contents of the canon remained fluid at the time of the New Testament, some 400 years too late for Grudem.
No reputable Dead Sea Scroll scholar would say that the Essenes did not consider a book like 1 Enoch to be Scripture. And if Jude 14 were talking about a book in the canon, Grudem would absolutely be touting the verse as proof that Enoch wrote 1 Enoch and that 1 Enoch should be considered Scripture. To try to argue that Melito of Sardis didn't think the book of Wisdom was Scripture is obviously special pleading because it doesn't work for Grudem.
And while the NT does not quote any of the apocryphal books as Scripture, they use them. No one interested in the truth (rather than just trying to justify what you already think) will conclude that Jesus in Matthew 11:28-29 is not comparing himself to wisdom in Sirach 24 and 51 or that Hebrews 1:3 is not an allusion to Wisdom 7:26 (Romans 1:21ff also has very similar themes to Wisdom 12-14). And Hebrews 11:35 is likely an allusion to 2 Maccabees 7. By far the Bible the early Christians used, even Paul, was the Septuagint, and even Grudem acknowledges that the Septuagint included these books (57 n.7). I suspect he had to add these notes in later editions because someone pointed out he'd missed a few things.
I can't see how anyone can actually read the patristic literature and not conclude that the fathers quoted books like Wisdom similarly to how they quoted the rest of the Old Testament. It is true that Jerome classified them as part of a "second" canon (deuterocanonical), not as authoritative as the first. So the Council of Trent in 1545 did arguably elevate their official status in response to Luther. But part of acknowledging this fact is also to recognize that Luther himself demoted their status from what they had been from almost the very beginning.
The status these books have within most of Protestantism seems almost certainly less than the status they had from the very beginning of Greek-speaking Christianity. If we have to choose between the two statements, it is more accurate to say that Luther took the books out than to say that the Catholic church added them in. The middle way is to go with Jerome. From almost the beginning, they had the status of a kind of "second canon," of more status than Luther gave them but less than the Council of Trent.
Monday, June 25, 2012
Augustine's On Christian Doctrine Book 3 (Part 1)
What follows is the first part of a summary and comment on this classic hermeneutical work by Augustine. If you want to read this classic Christian (and philosophical) piece, you will find it here.
__________
In Book 2 of On Christian Doctrine, produced in AD397, Augustine set out his understanding of how words indicate meaning. Words are "signs" that point to meanings. Ludwig Wittgenstein, a twentieth century philosopher, called this the "picture theory" of language. You might think of it like a cartoon. When I read a word, a picture that is the meaning for the word appears in the bubble above my head.
This only works some of the time. Wittgenstein pointed out that the meanings of a lot of words and "signs" can't be pictured. For example, you can picture a rude gesture but you can't picture its meaning. Other examples I might give include the word "is" or the word "righteousness." I personally do not even picture a "wild goose chase" and yet understand the phrase perfectly well all the same.
Wittgenstein much more soundly proposed that the meaning of words is not in some pictured definition but rather in the way we use them in certain contexts. In certain contexts or "forms of life," as he called them, we play certain "language games" with words. If I yell "fire" in a crowded room, you know that what I have really said is to leave the room as quickly as possible if you don't want to burn to death. If I yell "fire" as the commander of a group of men with rifles pointing at a blindfolded criminal, I'm probably telling you to shoot the person to death. More examples could be provided.
By the way, it is in Book 2 of Augustine's On Christian Doctrine that he gives what was no doubt becoming the consensus of Christians at that time concerning the books of the Old and New Testament. The canon of the Old Testament, as it is called, included the so called apocryphal books that Martin Luther would later remove from the Protestant canon. The canon of the New Testament corresponds to the list of books that had first appeared only three decades previously in the 367 Easter letter of Athanasius.
Book 3 deals with the question of Scripture's ambiguity and especially when we should read the Bible literally and when we should read the Bible figuratively. Some ambiguity can come from matters of punctuation (chap. 2). Here we need to keep in mind that texts of Augustine's day (and this was true of the original biblical texts as well) largely did not use punctuation to separate words from each other, let alone one sentence from another (it's called "continuous script," or scriptio continua in Latin). All the punctuation in our Bibles is a matter of interpretation.
Augustine of course teaches that decisions about punctuation should be guided by the "rule of faith" when one cannot resolve an issue on the basis of context. For the Christians of the earliest centuries, the rule of faith was that sense of basic Christian beliefs, core Christian thinking, the "deposit" of faith left by the earliest apostles. For Augustine, it was this basic Christian theology that resolved issues of ambiguity. We might put it this way: when in doubt, go with an interpretation that results in an "orthodox" meaning.
This approach brings out a crucial issue. It seems beyond question that the original meaning a biblical text had was a function of its historical and literary context. That is to say, the meaning a biblical author or a biblical audience would have understood by the words of a biblical text is a function of how words were being used at that point in time and place and that they would have understood the words of one verse in the light of the words that had come just previously.
What we will find repeatedly in Book 3 of On Christian Doctrine is that Augustine's decisions on the meaning of a text follow context unless that meaning bumps up against the rule of faith. In that case, he will shift into a figurative meaning that fits with the rule of faith and consider that the meaning God intends the text to have. He is by no means unique in this approach. We can easily find it in other interpreters of the time (e.g., the first century Jewish writer Philo), not least the New Testament authors themselves.
Since the Protestant Reformation, there has been reluctance to interpret biblical texts figuratively unless it was clear that the biblical authors themselves were being figurative originally. For example, we can interpret the story of Sarah and Hagar allegorically in Galatians 4 because that is the way Paul takes the story there. An allegory is where someone interprets the characters or various elements of a story as representations of something else that is unrelated to the original sense.
So Sarah in Paul's interpretation becomes a symbol of the heavenly Jerusalem, while Hagar symbolizes the earthly Jerusalem. This interpretation has nothing to do with the original story of Sarah and Hagar, which was about two women who fought over their children. Paul's interpretation is allegorical.
Evangelicals of the twentieth century have arguably tended to modify Augustine's approach. Follow what seems to be the most likely contextual meaning of the biblical text unless it comes into conflict with the rule of faith (that is, the "orthodoxies" of the evangelical tradition or the particular faith community of which one is a part). If they conflict, then find other possible ways to read the text in context such that it fits with the rule of faith. In this way, evangelical hermeneutics (the study of how to interpret texts) has avoided the kinds of non-literal interpretations of pre-Reformation interpretation while still trying to read the biblical texts in context. One of the purposes of this summary is to help us wrestle with these questions of hermeneutics.
Interestingly, Augustine considers some ambiguities of punctuation to be relatively unimportant. If context is not clear, if the rule of faith does not dictate a particular interpretation, he leaves it up to the individual. Punctuate however you like if neither the context nor the rule of faith give you a clear sense of how to punctuate...
The rest tomorrow
__________
In Book 2 of On Christian Doctrine, produced in AD397, Augustine set out his understanding of how words indicate meaning. Words are "signs" that point to meanings. Ludwig Wittgenstein, a twentieth century philosopher, called this the "picture theory" of language. You might think of it like a cartoon. When I read a word, a picture that is the meaning for the word appears in the bubble above my head.
This only works some of the time. Wittgenstein pointed out that the meanings of a lot of words and "signs" can't be pictured. For example, you can picture a rude gesture but you can't picture its meaning. Other examples I might give include the word "is" or the word "righteousness." I personally do not even picture a "wild goose chase" and yet understand the phrase perfectly well all the same.
Wittgenstein much more soundly proposed that the meaning of words is not in some pictured definition but rather in the way we use them in certain contexts. In certain contexts or "forms of life," as he called them, we play certain "language games" with words. If I yell "fire" in a crowded room, you know that what I have really said is to leave the room as quickly as possible if you don't want to burn to death. If I yell "fire" as the commander of a group of men with rifles pointing at a blindfolded criminal, I'm probably telling you to shoot the person to death. More examples could be provided.
By the way, it is in Book 2 of Augustine's On Christian Doctrine that he gives what was no doubt becoming the consensus of Christians at that time concerning the books of the Old and New Testament. The canon of the Old Testament, as it is called, included the so called apocryphal books that Martin Luther would later remove from the Protestant canon. The canon of the New Testament corresponds to the list of books that had first appeared only three decades previously in the 367 Easter letter of Athanasius.
Book 3 deals with the question of Scripture's ambiguity and especially when we should read the Bible literally and when we should read the Bible figuratively. Some ambiguity can come from matters of punctuation (chap. 2). Here we need to keep in mind that texts of Augustine's day (and this was true of the original biblical texts as well) largely did not use punctuation to separate words from each other, let alone one sentence from another (it's called "continuous script," or scriptio continua in Latin). All the punctuation in our Bibles is a matter of interpretation.
Augustine of course teaches that decisions about punctuation should be guided by the "rule of faith" when one cannot resolve an issue on the basis of context. For the Christians of the earliest centuries, the rule of faith was that sense of basic Christian beliefs, core Christian thinking, the "deposit" of faith left by the earliest apostles. For Augustine, it was this basic Christian theology that resolved issues of ambiguity. We might put it this way: when in doubt, go with an interpretation that results in an "orthodox" meaning.
This approach brings out a crucial issue. It seems beyond question that the original meaning a biblical text had was a function of its historical and literary context. That is to say, the meaning a biblical author or a biblical audience would have understood by the words of a biblical text is a function of how words were being used at that point in time and place and that they would have understood the words of one verse in the light of the words that had come just previously.
What we will find repeatedly in Book 3 of On Christian Doctrine is that Augustine's decisions on the meaning of a text follow context unless that meaning bumps up against the rule of faith. In that case, he will shift into a figurative meaning that fits with the rule of faith and consider that the meaning God intends the text to have. He is by no means unique in this approach. We can easily find it in other interpreters of the time (e.g., the first century Jewish writer Philo), not least the New Testament authors themselves.
Since the Protestant Reformation, there has been reluctance to interpret biblical texts figuratively unless it was clear that the biblical authors themselves were being figurative originally. For example, we can interpret the story of Sarah and Hagar allegorically in Galatians 4 because that is the way Paul takes the story there. An allegory is where someone interprets the characters or various elements of a story as representations of something else that is unrelated to the original sense.
So Sarah in Paul's interpretation becomes a symbol of the heavenly Jerusalem, while Hagar symbolizes the earthly Jerusalem. This interpretation has nothing to do with the original story of Sarah and Hagar, which was about two women who fought over their children. Paul's interpretation is allegorical.
Evangelicals of the twentieth century have arguably tended to modify Augustine's approach. Follow what seems to be the most likely contextual meaning of the biblical text unless it comes into conflict with the rule of faith (that is, the "orthodoxies" of the evangelical tradition or the particular faith community of which one is a part). If they conflict, then find other possible ways to read the text in context such that it fits with the rule of faith. In this way, evangelical hermeneutics (the study of how to interpret texts) has avoided the kinds of non-literal interpretations of pre-Reformation interpretation while still trying to read the biblical texts in context. One of the purposes of this summary is to help us wrestle with these questions of hermeneutics.
Interestingly, Augustine considers some ambiguities of punctuation to be relatively unimportant. If context is not clear, if the rule of faith does not dictate a particular interpretation, he leaves it up to the individual. Punctuate however you like if neither the context nor the rule of faith give you a clear sense of how to punctuate...
The rest tomorrow
Friday, January 25, 2008
Some Friday (Substitute) Lectures
No doubt as a part of the great conspiracy to disempower me, a meeting has been scheduled across two of my classes tomorrow. But I will not admit defeat. Adobe to the rescue.
(P.S. I'm not serious, which of course doesn't mean that people aren't actually out to get me.)
Below are the vodcasts I'm having these two classes watch in partial substitution for class tomorrow:
For Greek 2: The Second Aorist Tense (about 10 minutes long)
Names taken in vain: Stanley Porter and Robert Mounce.
For New Testament Survey:
Special Themes of Mark (19 minutes)
and
The Formation of the Canon (16 minutes)
(P.S. I'm not serious, which of course doesn't mean that people aren't actually out to get me.)
Below are the vodcasts I'm having these two classes watch in partial substitution for class tomorrow:
For Greek 2: The Second Aorist Tense (about 10 minutes long)
Names taken in vain: Stanley Porter and Robert Mounce.
For New Testament Survey:
Special Themes of Mark (19 minutes)
and
The Formation of the Canon (16 minutes)
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