Theology for the Masses

This is what I have been reading lately:

Osborne, Grant R. The Hermeneutical Spiral: A Comprehensive Introduction to Biblical Interpretation. Rev Exp. IVP Academic, 2006.

I’ve had this book for a few years, it is really the best comprehensive work on hermeneutics around.  His Calvinism sometimes gets in the way, but astute readers will be able to ignore it.  I am working from this book in Parkade Baptist CYP’s current Sunday School series on Genre Hermeneutics.

Pierce, Ronald W., Rebecca Merrill Groothuis, and Gordon D. Fee. Discovering Biblical Equality: Complementarity Without Hierarchy. 2nd ed. InterVarsity Press, 2005.

This book is heralded as the egalitarian response to Piper and Gundem’s Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.  I have only had the chance to start a couple of the essays.  They have been pretty good so far.  I’ll talk about it more as I get more into it.

Piper, John. The Future of Justification: A Response to N. T. Wright. Crossway Books, 2007.

Disappointed.  All he did was convince me of Wright’s position.  Other people had built up Piper in my mind as some great exegete/theologian.  Not.the.case.

R, M. Daniel Carroll. Christians at the Border: Immigration, the Church, and the Bible. Baker Academic, 2008.

Reading this for one of my classes – looks to be good, but I am only a chapter or two into it.

Stowers, Stanley Kent. Letter Writing in Greco-Roman Antiquity. 1st ed. Westminster Press, 1986.

Every student of antiquity and of Paul needs to read this book.  Hands down one of the best books in the field.  I am re-reading it for my class on Letter hermeneutics this Sunday.

Wright, N. T. Justification: God’s Plan & Paul’s Vision. IVP Academic, 2009.

Dang.  I can’t talk too highly of this book so far.  I wonder how many critics of Wright will read this book.  If they read it without their systematic glasses on, they might just change their minds. 

The righteousness of God pertains primarily to his faithfulness to his convent with Abraham, not that he seeks his own glory above all else.

You know that book I picked up the other day?  The one that lead me to write frankly concerning community?  As I am skipping around in it, I am finding that she has some good things to say about the theologies of flourishing and natality.  I feel pretty comfortable with a theology of flourishing, and consider it to be what the author of Hebrews was talking about at the turn of 5 into chapter 6.  We see reflections of it in the parable of the vine in John and in Zechariah 9:16-17:

¹⁶ On that day the Lord their God will rescue his people,
      just as a shepherd rescues his sheep.
   They will sparkle in his land
      like jewels in a crown.
¹⁷ How wonderful and beautiful they will be!
      The young men will thrive on abundant grain,
      and the young women will flourish on new wine.

Jantzen, in Becoming Divine, wants to replace the masculine, escapist, and individualistic theology of salvation with the feminine, living, communal, theology of flourishing.  Here she is as wrong as those who focus exclusively on theologies of salvation.  Just as God contains both the male and the female, we need to hold theologies of salvation and flourishing in tandem.

We see it in the verse in Zechariah: after God saves his people, he wants them to flourish.  How exciting and hopeful is such a theology!  Salvation theology is the life-giving infants’ milk of Hebrews.  Theology of flourishing comes after, it is the meat and potatoes of our adulthood.  Now that the danger of sin has passed, God frees us to be who He wanted us to be.

When we loose sight of the dangers of sin, we lapse into selfishness, pride, forgetfulness (of God), and participate in oppression. [1]   People tend to reemphasize the danger when people slip into those modes of be-ing, forgetting that there is no condemnation in Christ and that we are sealed with the Holy Spirit, the seal of our salvation.

Instead, I propose that when the danger of sin passes, we should then concern ourselves with growth instead of danger as a motivating tool.  When we focus on growth, we focus on flourishing.  And you can’t flourish apart from that which God has for you.  You can’t flourish individualistically, either.  We are a part of the vine.  If one of the branches is sick, we are sick; if one of the branches is suffering, we are suffering.  Most importantly, I can’t flourish by exploiting you. 

We see all of the above in the various admonishments and advice given in the letters of the New Testament. [2] We are made to seek and glorify God.  We are made to be creative and live in harmonious communities.  We are made to be righteous.  We are made to bring the light of God to the world.  We are made to flourish.

As for natality?  I’m just starting to read about it.  But, Jantzen is right that we often don’t reflect upon theologies of birth but obsess over theologies of death.

1. both directly and indirectly [↩]
2. Such as Galatians 5:15-21; Ephesians 4:17-22; 1 Thessalonians 5:12-22; James 1:27; James 2:14-18; and James 5:1-16, just to same a couple of sections [↩]

One of the topics that is very dear to me is the role and function of women in early Christianity (both canon and post-canon).  A few days ago, I came across a post by the warm and fussy Jim West who linked to Gary Macy’s podcast on women being ordained until the 12th Century.  Edgar asked me why none of this shows up anywhere.

In this series, I’d like to highlight some of the primary sources for women being ordained in the early church.  I’ll cover official church documents, Roman sources, and unofficial church documents.  Today I am going to look at a letter dated in the early second century concerning a Roman governor’s report of Christian activity to the Emperor.

Source one: Pliny the Younger’s Letter to Trajan.

If there was one thing the Roman’s did not get, it was supertitio such as Christianity.   Christianity befuddled the Romans.  Why should a group Jews [1] revere a executed Roman criminal as a God?   Furthermore, why would people show such an excessive devotion to this person.  As weird as the Jews were to the Romans, these Christians  were even more excessive.

Viewing Christians through the eyes of the Romans helps us negate a certain bias inherent in any internal Christian writing.  Quite naturally, Christians writers were/are heavily invested in painting their brand of Christianity as the correct one over and against all other brands of Christianity, including internal dissenters within their own community (Think about a Cowboys or Boston fan writing about the NFL or the NBA).  Roman sources, while handicapped as mentioned above, bypass this bias.

In this letter from a Roman governor to the Emperor, Pliny asks Trajan what he should do with these darn Christians that have been rounded up.  There are a couple of telling passages in this letter, both about early Christian practice and for our immediate purposes, women’s roles in the early Church:

…They asserted, however, that the sum and substance of their fault or error had been that they were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god, and to bind themselves by oath, not to some crime, but not to commit fraud, theft, or adultery, not falsify their trust, nor to refuse to return a trust when called upon to do so. When this was over, it was their custom to depart and to assemble again to partake of food–but ordinary and innocent food. Even this, they affirmed, they had ceased to do after my edict by which, in accordance with your instructions, I had forbidden political associations. Accordingly, I judged it all the more necessary to find out what the truth was by torturing two female slaves who were called deaconesses. But I discovered nothing else but depraved, excessive superstition.

I therefore postponed the investigation and hastened to consult you. For the matter seemed to me to warrant consulting you, especially because of the number involved. For many persons of every age, every rank, and also of both sexes are and will be endangered. For the contagion of this superstition has spread not only to the cities but also to the villages and farms. But it seems possible to check and cure it…

(it is worth mentioning that this is the earliest non-christian course for christian practice)

What do we see here?  We see, around 110CE, a local assembly of Christians in the Bithynia-Pontus province that consisted of the complete strata of Roman society.  Slaves, freed persons, rich, poor, young and old.  Pliny, in his quest to find something prosecutable among their deeds, tortures two of the leaders of the community.  Horrifyingly enough (for an elite Roman) the leaders of this community were two slave women.

Thus, we see in unbiased Roman sources that historically women served as deacons in the early Church and, at least in Bithynia-Pontus, they were the leaders of the community, as least as it related to outsiders.

Now, there are some things that need to be held in tension here.  First, is this representative of Christianity of this period?  It is only one source, after all.  Secondly, how do we know that these were the leaders.  All Pliny really mentions is that they are deaconesses (the female form of deacon).  To be minimal in our interpretation of the letter, perhaps that there were women deacons is all we can say.  But, we can say that.  Additionally, it is these two and only these two that Pliny plucked out and tortured.  He would have gone right to the top of the community’s hierarchy to do this.  So, assuming these were the only leaders is a bit of a stretch, but, as stretching goes.  It is about two miles short of the gymnastics Christian historians go through when they try to make the whole of the Bible historically accurate and consistent.  So, as leaps go, it is pretty small.

1. Romans saw them all as Jews [↩]

As we are mired in the Saturday between the murder of Jesus by the Romans and his victory on Sunday, it is good to reflect on the nature of Jesus’ personality and sacrifice.  The following is from the Avengelyne/Glory 02 – The Godyssey.

In it, one of the protagonists has a vision, one where the Olympian Gods [1] show up at Jesus’ crucifixion and mock him because of his undue affection for [hu]mankind.  During his berating, Jesus wakes up from the dead, and is puh-issed.

Zeus then proceeds to send god after god at Him because of his hubris.  Jesus proceeds to make short work of the gods.  The vision ends with Zeus and Jesus rushing forward for one final battle.

Jesus could have taken the world by storm.  He could have fought his Roman attackers and been victorious, but he did not.  I feel as though the above is what a “manly” Jesus would have done.  Instead of participating in the violence of the day (and of the fall), Jesus submitted and showcased true love – he laid down his life for his friends.  This passivity was the very opposite of masculine virtues of the day (and of today) which demand aggression be met with aggression and that one must be active and never passive.

What humans intended for evil, God transformed into good.

1. I would have liked them to have Rome’s gods show up, perhaps the Capitoline Triad or something [↩]

Synopsis:

Paul did not write 1 Cor 11: 3-16.  Read on for my reasons why.  I’ll post who I think wrote it and what we should do with it later this week.  I know this is not a popular interpretation around these parts.  I resisted it at first, thinking it was a cop out.  But it is the best conclusion I have come up with, given the data available.  I’d love to get your thoughts, especially on the manuscript and rhetoric sections.

Recap:

So far in our examining of 1 Corinthians 11, we have discussed the problems with standard interpretations, the bizarre appeal to angels, ideological considerations, the general purpose of the letter, and the body in antiquity. Now, I am going to set the stage for working towards a newer interpretation of the chapter, one that will seem deconstructionist at first, but I promise I’ll put things back together by the end of the series.

The Hypothesis:

It is quite possible to consider verses 3-16 of 1 Corinthians 11 as an interpolation. Under this view, someone in the later Pauline community inserted verses 3-16 that crystallized their solution to problems of public worship. There are several arguments supporting such a view. First, the theological content and word use in 3-16 is unique in all of genuine Paul. Secondly, the removal of the verses recovers the tight argumentative style typical of Paul. Thirdly, the proposed interpolation hooks show signs of textual smoothing. Lastly and most importantly, removal of the section will restore the unity of Paul’s philosophical underpinnings of the body and Parousa of Christ.

Unique Among Paul:

1 Corinthians 11:3-16 contains several unique ideas to Paul. First is the ideological subordination of women under men. Occasional theology aside, in real life Paul worked closely with and offers praises to women leaders in the local assemblies. [1] Nowhere else does Paul advocate“any form of male priority and female subordination” [2] As mentioned several times above, this is a far cry from the clear subordinate relationship between men and women that is outlined throughout the section. Even in 1 Corinthians this is the case; in chapter 7 Paul acknowledges explicit authority of married partners over each other in relation to conjugal rights. Additionally, Paul sees baptism as the means by which “the removal of the body of flesh” occurs. [3] Additionally, when Paul concerns himself with specific practices, he always elevates the practical over the theological. [4] The sentiments expressed in 11:3-16 are much more at home in the deutero-Pauline letters and the Pastorals such as Col 3:18-19 and Eph 5:22-33 than in the genuine Pauline Corpus.

Several key words are used uniquely in the passage. When Paul speaks of the “δοξα” of god elsewhere, it is never framed in terms of man in his present existence. [5] In fact, glory in places such as Romans appears as a concept lost to the whole of humankind until the Parousa. Additionally, the use of κεφαλὴ, or head, is odd. In the deuteron-Pauline Ephesians and Colossians, the writer twice uses κεφαλὴ the same way as in 1 Corinthians 11:3 and 5. In Col 1:18, 2:10 and in Eph 1:22, 4:15 and 5:23 κεφελὴ is used to refer to hierarchically based authority claims. This is not so in the genuine Paul. The only time it shows up in genuine Paul is 1 Cor 12:21 and the context here is hardly hierarchical; head here is placed on equal footing with the other organs of the social body of the community.

Restoring the Rhetoric:

Second, when 3-16 are removed, verses 2 and 17 suddenly leap out as a continuous thought. Under the unified view, Paul begins chapter 11 with a command to imitate him and sets the stage for a light admonishment by means of praise followed quickly by rebuke. However, he quickly abandons this line of reasoning for the moment in favor of a theoretical discussion about the ordering of creation. Given the use of rhetorical forms that Paul employs through his writings, this is out of character for Paul. However, if we connect verse 1 and 2 with verse 17, then we see the return of highly structured rhetoric parallel praise and rebuke:

1) μιμηταί μου γίνεσθε καθώς καγὼ Χριστοῦ. 2) Ἐπαινῶ δὲ ὑμᾶς ὅτι πάντα μου μέμνησθε καί, καθὼς παρέδωκα ὑμῖν, τὰς παραδόσεις κατέχετε. 17) τοῦτο δὲ παραγγέλλων οὐκ ἐπαινῶ ὅτι οὐκ εἰς τὸ κρεῖσσον ἀλλὰ εἰς τὸ ἧσσον συνέρχεσθε.

Become imitators of me just as I am of Christ. I praise you all because you all have remembered all of my things and just as you all hold fast to the traditions I have handed to you. But in this instruction I do not praise you because you all come together not for the greater, but for the worse. [6]

This restores the elements of paraenetic and admonishment letters that are lost in 1 Corinthians 11:1-16. Paul uses the example of his modeling of Christ’s behavior and then mildly rebukes them for the purpose of correcting their behavior. He approaches them as a father would his children, establishing a firm, but positive relationship. Paul attempts to “expose and constructively criticize” the behavior of the Corinthian assembly so that they can amend their behavior. [7] The mere presence of paraenetic features is by no means evidence of genuine or pseudo-Pauline authorship as the Pastoral Epistles contain elements of paraenesis. [8] However, when one inserts verses 3-16, the tight admonishment of Paul vanishes. Two verses separated by a self contained unit, the removal of which leaves a smooth connection between the two verses, is often evidence that there has been an editor at work. [9] As such, the unity in thought between verse 2 and verse 17 in light of the self contained rhetoric of 3-16 is evidence for the insertion of verses 3-16.

Hook!  Hook!  Hook!

Third, Walker proposes that there is strong manuscript evidence for such an insertion, saying:

Furthermore, there is strong manuscript evidence suggesting that some alteration of the text has occurred. Vs. 2 reads: ἐπαινῶ δὲ ὑμᾶς ὅτι πάντα μου μέμνησθε καὶ καθὼς παρέδωκα ὑμῖν τὰς ταραδόσεις κατέχετε, “I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I have delivered them to you.” Vs. 17, according to the RSV, begins But in the following instructions I do not commend you because…” (τοῦτο δὲ παραγγέλλων οὐκ ἐπαινῶ ὅτι…). This reading follows ﬡ, G and a the majority of MSS, but A, C*, and the Latin and Syriac versions have τοῦτο δὲ παραγγέλλω οὐκ ἐπαινῶν ὄτι…, while B has τοῦτο δὲ παραγγέλλων οὐκ ἐπαινῶν ὅτι…, D* and a minuscule have τοῦτο δὲ παραγγέλλω οὐκ ἐπαινῶ ὅτι…. [10]

He says that the proposed “hooks” for the interpolation show signs of smoothing in the manuscript record. [11] The alterations he lists in the blockquote strongly indicate that later editors and copyists were attempting to smooth out the rough transition from verse 16 to 17. [12]

Conclusion:

Given the above, we have strong reasons to suspect the work of an editor in the text. If we separate this 1 Corinthians 3-16 from the rest of the text we find two separate and, most importantly, consistent arguments for gender relations. Genuine Paul no longer has any place where there is an ontological priority assigned to either male or female which blatantly contradicts the fundamental ontological equality peppered all throughout his letters. In addition to this, we rescue the logic of 1 Cor 11:3-16 from its blatant contradiction of the rest of Paul. By removing and setting it aside (for now) we allow for the passage to stand out for its internal logic and to be heard, instead of being swept under the rug and only allowed to speak when it agrees with the interpreter’s views.

If verses 3-16 are an interpolation, then most of our problems with the passage fall away, because Paul no longer has to live up to them. Under this view, the problems that arise only do so because they are the thoughts of someone else. However, from whence did interpolation come? We will address this question in the next post, though we have alluded to the answer earlier.

1. See Margaret Y. MacDonald, “Reading Real Women Through the Undisputed Letters of Paul.” [↩]
2. Wm. O. Walker, “1 Corinthians 11:2-16 and Paul’s Views regarding Women,” Journal of Biblical Literature 94, no. 1 (March 1975): 104. [↩]
3. Wayne A Meeks, The First Urban Christians (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003), 155. [↩]
4. Walker, “1 Corinthians 11,” 106. [↩]
5. Ibid. [↩]
6. – 1st Corinthians 11:1-2;17. [↩]
7. Stanley Kent Stowers, Letter Writing in Greco-Roman Antiquity (Westminster John Knox Press, 1988), 127. [↩]
8. Ibid., 97. [↩]
9. Wayne A. Meeks, Writings of St. Paul (W. W. Norton & Company, 1972), 41. [↩]
10. Walker, “1 Corinthians 11,” 98. [↩]
11. Ibid. [↩]
12. Ibid. [↩]

Over at the Karis blog, a local Acts 29 Church plant, head pastor Kevin Larson had the following to say about The Shack:

I’ve posted this before, but I keep hearing people recommend The Shack, so I wanted to put it up here again. People argue that the author is just using metaphors, but the point of metaphors is to accurately represent the realities to which they point. To be clear, God is not an elderly African-American woman. And, no, I haven’t read it. Sorry if that bothers you. I have too many books to read and too little time. [Video of Mark Driscoll]

The following is my response.  I’d love to get your input on the issue (or head over there and talk about it):

I have no problem with you not reading the book – I know I don’t have the time to read it either (even though I want to do so). However, why exactly does the portrayal of God the Father as an African American woman bother you so much? From what I understand God (in the story) shows up as a n African American woman because of the main character’s deep wounds from his own father.

I am sure that we both agree that God the father is not male nor female. Genesis 1-2 teaches us that the image of God contains both the female and the male aspects. As such, the "fatherness" of God the Father is more a social description than a sexual description. God the Father as an African American woman displayed these social aspects, but in the gender of the female. As a matter of fact, I think that God the Father shows up as a male later on in the book. (I am not sure, however, I am only going off of descriptions of the work by students of mine that have read it and statements by the author during and interview at Catalyst this past month.) Any description of God in English (or any language for that matter) can only possibly give a flawed and partial picture of God. The finite can not contain fully the infinite.

Given this and the above, I don’t have a problem with God the Father being described with this metaphor – and that is how the author intended the book – as a metaphor. The book is designed to get the read to ponder the mystery of the Trinity and push the reader into repairing their relationship with God.  It is meant to be purely metaphorical – not a systematic theology.  The author is fully aware that this is not an accurate description of the trinity – and that a fully accurate statement on the trinity is impossible.

I guess what worries me is the aversion to a book that you have not read and statements that seem to contradict the author’s intended purpose.  The fact that the only stated problem with the book is its depiction of God the Father as an African American woman concerns me.  I know that your role as a head pastor means that you are responsible for the teaching of the people in your church and that you need to ward off false doctrine.  I just want to encourage you to reevaluate you stance towards this book.

But, with that said, the work you all (Karis) in the community is inspiring to other churches – keep up the good work of growing and cultivating the Kingdom of God!

Thoughts?

As I am going through part of of Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza’s book In Memory of Her I came across this nice, compact orienting passage of the various Jewish movements in Israel before 70CE and how the Jesus movement fit in with these other movements.

All these diverse Jewish renewal movements of the time were strongly concerned with how to realize in every aspect of life the obligations and hopes of Israel as the kingly and priestly people of God. … Some stressed and strongly utilized the cultic priestly traditions, some claimed prophetic authority, some reenacted the Exodus, and still others integrated wisdom teachings with an apocalyptic perspective. Regardless of differences in lifestyle and theological outlook, however, all these groups were united in their concern for the political existence and holiness of the elected people of Israel. the proclamation of the [kingdom] of God by Jesus and his movement shared this… However, the Jesus movement refused to define the holiness of God’s elected people in cultic terms, redefining it instead as the wholeness intended in creation. (Page 113)

As I am wading through In Memory of Her [1] I came across this quote from Fiorenza where she outlines what she considers to be the goals of good feminist scholarship. Given some of the issues that came up in another post, I thought this was appropriate.

The debate between feminist “engaged” and androcentric academic “neutral” scholarship indicates a shift in interpretative paradigms. Whereas traditional scholarship has identified humanness with maleness and understood women only as a peripheral category in the “human” interpretation of reality, the new field of women’s studies not only attempts to make “women’s” agency a key interpretative category but also seeks to transform androcentric scholarship and knowledge into truly human scholarship and knowledge, that is, inclusive of all people, men and women, upper and lower classes, aristocracy and “common people,” different cultures and races, the powerful and the weak.

Methods and implementation aside, the above is a worthy and necessary goal in biblical interpretation. Historically, scholars have viewed women as a variation of men, often as incomplete version of a man. Accordingly all scholarship and philosophical reflection is colored with this lens.

1. and I do mean wading – right now I am trudging through the barrow-downs of her survey and critique of all previous feminist biblical scholarship [↩]