Unfortunate Class Photo

Note the text just to the right of the instructor's head (that would be the guy in the blue vest, back row). Explanation below.








We'd been discussing the position of the opponents in the Johannine epistles, and I believe they held a docetic christology. That is, they believed Christ only "seemed" human; therefore the mortal "Jesus" could not be the "Christ." However, anyone who wants to put a cold stop to giving at Lancaster seminary might publish this!

A joyous Christmas to all!

Reading Hebrews Theologically

I just submitted a review of the anthology, The Epistle to the Hebrews and Christian Theology (Eerdmans, 2009). The chapters started out as papers at the 2006 St. Andrews Conference on Scripture and Theology, the second in a series of such events. The first (2003) involved the Gospel of John, and a third (2009) Genesis.

What's special about this book -- and these conferences -- is that it puts biblical scholars in direct conversation with doctrinal theologians. I've heard, from one of the book's editors, that the conversations were sometimes contentious. But the main thing is, this book testifies to the range of ways we might engage the Bible theologically.

I like to think of it as a spectrum.

• On one end, usually inhabited by biblical scholars, we have the inductive-thematic approach. Here we look at Hebrews with a specific question in mind (the trick is how to identify the right questions), and we sift through Hebrews for passages that relate specifically to that question. A little mixture of historical- and rhetorical-critical analysis might help, too, but basically the approach amounts to gathering the passages, interpreting them, and weighing the evidence. Richard Bauckham's essay on christology provides an example of an excellent scholar doing this sort of work.
• Theologians might be more comfortable at the other end of the spectrum, with its more tradition-sensitive approach. Here you begin with the "rule of faith" or a doctrinal tradition, bring it to Hebrews, and see how that theological tradition enlightens the text. Bruce McCormack's essay works through key figures in Reformed christology to ask how the death of God's Son relates to God's eternal and unchanging being in Hebrews. Brilliant stuff.

Conflict. Inductive-thematic people are gonna look at the tradition-sensitive ones and say, "You don't even listen to the text; you just impose your doctrine on it. The text has no autonomy with you." In reply, the tradition-sensitive folk will say, "You're so naive, you don't realize that interpretation without presuppositions is impossible. That's why your interpretations don't speak to the life of the church."

But here's the thing. You can't find a "pure" example of either approach in this volume. Both ends of the spectrum, the open-ended curiosity and the tradition-grounded engagement, are necessary for any enlightening interpretation of the Bible. Some of the essays in the volume (John Polkinghorne's, for example), work both ways -- and with insight. That's why I recommend this book -- it demonstrates the variety of approaches to theological interpretation, but it doesn't provide a too-easy answer to our questions.

Apocalyptic Preaching

For next week's class on the Book of Revelation, I've assigned a couple of essays from the excellent preaching and lectionary resource, workingpreacher.org. Both Anathea Portier-Young and I have contributed short essays on "Apocalyptic Preaching" (Thea) and "Preaching Apocalyptic Texts" (Greg). Read carefully, and you'll notice we're talking about different things.

Jewish Jesus People and Paul

This post isn't for scholars so much as it is for students, pastors, and the like. In my teaching -- on campus and off -- I continue to encounter powerful negative stereotypes about Judaism and Jews, including the Jewish followers of Jesus we encounter in Paul's letters. They're historically inaccurate, insulting to Jews, and harmful to Christian faith.

Here's the stereotype. Jews were all tied up about the law. They followed it because they feared they wouldn't pass the final judgment. As a result, they followed the law out of fear rather than devotion, or (healthy) pride. They thought they were superior to the Gentile Christians.

Paul's letters do indicate that some Jewish followers of Jesus expected Gentiles to convert to Judaism as part of their devotion to Jesus. We see this in Galatians, Philippians, and maybe 2 Corinthians. But that's some Jewish Jesus people; we don't know how many. And we might consider their motives.

When you read the Jewish literature of Paul's day, you see that (by and large) people observed the law because they loved it. God had given the law as part of Israel's election, and that gift ordered Israel's life. The law was a source of wisdom and guidance (Psalm 105 and 119, anyone), not a source of fear.

The law also provided identity for the Jewish people. Countless ancient ethnic groups vanished as identifiable peoples during the Hellenistic and Roman periods, but Jews had the law to maintain their identity. When tyrants sought to abolish ethnic distinctions, Jews lived, fought, and died for their faithfulness to the law. It wasn't out of fear. It wasn't out of rigid legalism. It was out of devotion and love.

So when some (remember: some) Jewish Jesus people wanted to continue observing the law, they were simply honoring the tradition in which Jesus himself was born. They didn't think they were "better" than Gentiles, but they did understand the Jesus movement to be a Jewish movement. So did Paul, though his understanding of what that meant led in a different direction.

Preachers, students, and (a few) colleagues, it's time to stop describing ancient Judaism as fearful, elitist, and self-righteous. Look at Paul himself: Jesus people are to remember that we depend on Judaism for our lives, we are not to judge our sisters and brothers, and -- consider how many times Paul says this -- the gospel does not abolish the law.

A Hermeneutics of Passion

At the SBL Annual Meeting this past few days, I encountered phrases like "hermeneutics of welcome" and "hermeneutics of sympathy" pitched against the "hermeneutics of suspicion" other scholars supposedly hold. The thing is, no one ever names the people who hold a hermeneutics of suspicion -- probably because the charge wouldn't stick.

A word of explanation. A few decades ago Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza described a hermeneutics of suspicion as one feminist strategy for engaging the Bible (among others). She meant that feminist readers may safely assume the biblical authors downplayed the contributions of women. A hermeneutics of suspicion, then, looks for signs of women's agency and history where it's not emphasized. I've oversimplified things, but a hermeneutics of suspicion, properly speaking, is primarily a creative strategy -- not a destructive one.

Apparently some people (and I'm not naming them out of charity) feel a need to defend the Bible from its supposed attackers. They invoke "hermeneutics of welcome" or "hermeneutics of sympathy" to suggest that they're open to biblical truth -- while those who differ from them employ the more hostile "hermeneutics of suspicion." It's a specious argument, cowardly even, because it suggests that only one mode of interpretation really values the Bible.

The real truth is, relatively few interpreters set out to find negative things to say. Many more of us, however, find ourselves passionately engaged with scripture -- to the point that the Bible continually surprises us. Sometimes it says things we wish it wouldn't. Sometimes it confronts us with questions we'd never thought to ask. Sometimes signs of hope, grace, and correction leap from the page and into our hearts. Rather than a hermeneutics of suspicion, let's call this a hermeneutics of passion (copyright right here). What about it?

"Passion" in its truest sense means the capacity to be acted upon. I don't mean primarily the passion of desire, often eroticized (more below), but the passion of wild openness to the encounter of the text. I'm talking about a deep engagement, one in which we readers make ourselves vulnerable to the encounter. I'm talking about the possibility that we cannot predetermine interpretive outcomes. I'm talking about passion.

And yes, I'm talking about the passion of desire, eroticize it if you will. We come to the Bible from a lack, a deficit, a need. We come from a world that keeps selling us petty things all glittered up. Music overproduced. Food overportioned. Bodies over-Photoshopped. We lust for something that calls us beyond ourselves, a reality that fills us truly, a set of relationships that lead to transformation. We read passionately.

So... my resolution for today. When someone dismisses another interpretation with the "hermeneutics of suspicion" label, I'm gonna call them out as they cowards they are. It's a hermeneutics of passion, people!

SBL Time: Papers I'll Miss

For those out of the loop, SBL means the Society of Biblical Literature and its Annual Meeting, November 21-24 in New Orleans. The SBL is the world's preeminent biblical studies conference, and I suspect about 6,000 people -- way too many of them in polyester and tipping poorly -- will descend on the Crescent City this weekend.

I always look forward to SBL. Most of all, I'm anxious to reunite with old friends. Then there's meeting with editors and working groups, interesting presentations, and the famous book exhibit -- some publishers discount as deeply as 50%, though things are getting tighter every year. This year there will be a panel review of Sinners on Saturday morning, I'm meeting with a prospective editor concerning a secret project (really, it's secret), and the Rhetoric and the New Testament Section has lots of business to conduct. I've already booked up my calendar with sessions, meetings, and socializing.

But there are also the papers I'll miss.

• For example, there's a retrospective session on Wayne Meeks' The First Urban Christians. Steve Friesen is speaking there, and I'm particularly interested in Steve's work on the economic resources of the first Christians (extremely bleak, says Steve).
  
• Thomas Blanton has a paper on 2 Corinthians 3 and the New Perspective on Paul (available online -- it's a very strong paper).
• There's a session on the value of (or otherwise) religious experience as a category for the study of early Christianity -- I'd be especially keen to hear Jim Crossley's remarks.
• Shawn Kelley has a paper that challenges many of our cherished assumptions concerning parables.
• There's a session on reclining (at meals) -- Jennifer Glancy has some thoughts on how early Christians reacted to this custom.
• Paul Middleton has a paper on how Revelation's hymns relate to violence. (I've written on this myself.)
  

Death (and Paul)

I used to think -- and teach, and write (Ultimate Things, 133-34) -- that Paul changed his mind concerning what happens when we die. In 1 Thessalonians and 1 Corinthians, Paul writes that those who have fallen asleep will be raised and transformed upon the return of Christ. As I understood it, these early letters of Paul revealed a series of assumptions concerning afterlife hope.

1. We are not immortal, nor do we have immortal souls.
   
2. When we die, we really die. We don't go on to "a better place."
3. Life is a gift from God, and it is embodied life. Paul believed in the resurrection of the body -- a new body, for sure -- but one continuous with the body in which we lived our lives, the same body that really, really dies.
   

Abe Simpson sound byte on death.

However, in Philippians 1 Paul writes that "to die is gain," since to die is "to depart and be with Christ" (1:21-24). This sounds much more like the Gospel of Luke, in which the rich man and Lazarus go on to afterlife dwelling places and Jesus says to the thief on the cross, "Today you will be with me in paradise." It seemed to me that Paul's opinion changed as time passed, as the return of Jesus tarried, and as he faced the prospect of his own death more seriously.

Here's the key: Early Jews and Christians expressed two kinds of hope concerning the afterlife, one involving death then resurrection, and the other involving an intermediate life beyond the grave but before one reaches one's final destination. The classic studies on this topic are by Richard Bauckham, in an enormously wonderful book, The Fate of the Dead; Jaime Clark-Soles, in Death and the Afterlife in the New Testament; and N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God. See also Oscar Cullmann's famous essay.

I've made a lot of this point in my teaching. Christians, I've argued, believe in the resurrection of the dead, not the immortality of the soul. Our hymns and liturgies demonstrate great confusion on this point, as do some of our creeds. This is important for several reasons (and I still think it is):

1. Resurrection means the reclamation of our bodies -- our bodies matter. Therefore, what we do in and with our bodies, and how we relate to the bodies of others, also matters.
2. There's nothing special or immortal about us, except insofar as God graces us with life and status. Our life depends on God, now and forever.

Now I'm thinking I might be wrong about Paul. In Philippians 3:11 Paul writes in hope that he will "attain the resurrection of the dead." Could it be that for Paul (and for the author of Revelation), the idea of a temporary dwelling place and a final resurrection did not represent exclusive options? I can't get my mind around it, but the presence of both ideas in both Philippians and Revelation suggests that I may need to revise my views. How much, or in what way? I'm still sorting that out.