Category Archives: Biblical Studies

Jesus, The Scandal of Particularity: Some Exegesis on 1 Corinthians 1:23

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Some exegesis on 1 Corinthians 1:23 (taken from my Master’s thesis: Christ Crucified, The Wisdom and Power of God: An Exegetical Analysis of I Corinthians 1:17–25 circa. 2003). Take the writing cum grano salis. I was yet a burgeoning writer, so you will notice certain grammatical infelicities throughout. Nonetheless, the exegesis is solid.

but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness,

 ἡμεῖς δὲ κηρύσσομεν Χριστὸν ἐσταυρωμένον, Ἰουδαίοις μὲν σκάνδαλον ἔθνεσιν δὲ μωρίαν,

The next phrase, Χριστὸν ἐσταυρωμένον, is important because it brings the discussion back to that which is the cause of the adversative, noted above. This phrase serves as the content of the proclamation of foolishness, back in vs. 21.137 The term ἐσταυρωμένον is a perfect passive participle, and it is functioning as an adjectival-substantive participle, meaning the one who was crucified. The perfect participle carries the force of, “. . . describing an event that, completed in the past . . .,” and “. . . has results existing in the present time.”138 Thus Christ crucified carries with it the notion that Christ’s crucifixion stands as a past reality with its effects coming into the present.139 Lenski succinctly summarizes this phraseology:

The perfect participle ἐσταυρωμένον states that, one crucified, Christ now stands before us continuously as such. The fact of his crucifixion has become something permanent and enduring from the very moment when that fact occurred. This crucified Christ is both the sum of the gospel and the center from which every part of the gospel radiates, and in which all of its parts meet.140

The proclamation of Christ crucified is what serves as a stumbling block to the Jews and as folly to the Greeks.

Conversely, the next phrase, Ἰουδαίοις μὲν σκάνδαλον, ἔθνεσιν δὲ μωρίαν, “to the Jews, on the one hand, a stumbling block, and to the Greeks, on the other hand, foolishness.”141 The dative μὲν . . . δὲ construction, like in vs. 18, is noting the designation of two classifications of people. And the construction is also highlighting, “. . . the contrast between the interests of the Jews and the Greeks.”142 Nevertheless, the contrasts do not imply a different result in their judgment of the cross; rather it serves to highlight the point made in vs. 22, that “all” (i.e. Jew or Greek) human-centered wisdom will consider the message of the cross as foolishness (cf. vs. 21). Paul now turns to discuss the question, “what is the meaning of that saying?” (i.e. the saying that was just discussed, “We preach Christ crucified”). Paul provides a two-pronged approach to developing what this means first for the Jew, and then the Greek.

Paul approaches the Jew first and points out that the proclamation of Christ crucified serves as a σκάνδαλον, “. . . that which gives offense or causes revulsion, that which arouses opposition, an object of anger or disapproval, which is revolting to those who have no faith.”143 In concert with this definition, Conzelmann notes, “. . . There is correspondence between σημεῖα/σκάνδαλον . . ..”144 The correspondence is related to the definition of how Jews seek for validation of a work of God, as noted in vs. 22, they ask for signs or miracles. The Jews were aroused to opposition because Christ was a contradiction to what they expected. They expected great signs, but instead Messiah was crucified. Therefore, as Fee notes,

To the Jew the message of a crucified Messiah was the ultimate scandal. Although in Roman times the Jews did not crucify, they did afterward hang those who had been stoned, especially blasphemers and idolaters. They saw hanging therefore as the fulfillment of Deut. 21:23, because anyone who is hung on a tree is under God’s curse.145

From the Jewish perspective, which had imposed their criteria upon the dealings of God, Christ could not be the Messiah.

In the same vein, Paul turns to ἔθνεσιν146, the Greeks from vs. 22. Although this time He explicitly refers to them as Gentiles. The term ἔθνος, from which the plural ἔθνεσιν is derived, carries with it the definition of: “. . . heathen, pagans, Gentiles.”147 Paul by way of parallel, with vs. 22, notes the Greeks as pure pagans.148 Paul continues and states that these Gentiles consider the proclamation of Christ crucified, as μωρία. This notion of μωρία is commented on by BAGD, they state, “Conversely, to all those who are lost 1:18 and esp. to the Gentiles vs. 23, the Christian preaching of a Savior who died a slave’s death on the cross was μ. It has pleased God to save the believers διὰ τ. μωρίας τοῦ κηρύγματος vs. 21.”149 The Gentiles could not receive the slave’s death on a cross as meeting their expectations of wisdom, therefore this message is pure foolishness to them.150

BAGD highlights the usage of this word, μωρία, from vss. 18, 21, and 23. Two of the three usages denote it as the Gentiles considering God’s wisdom as folly. But one of the usages they note, in vs. 21, relates the foolishness of the proclamation with God’s wisdom. And it is through such a reception of God’s wisdom, that a person is considered, one of those called. Therefore, Paul adversatively turns the discussion to those who receive the wisdom and power of God.

 

141 Translation provided by the author of this paper.

142 Kistemaker, I Corinthians, 61.

143 Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, 760.

144 Conzelmann, A Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians, 47.

145 Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, 75-76.

146 There is a variant reading on this term, and it is followed by the Textus Receptus. The Textus Receptus is following later manuscripts. The desire in following this variant reading was to make Paul’s terminology consistent. Metzger notes this variant reading in Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed. (Germany: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart 1994), 480.

147 Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, 217.

148 Conzelmann, A Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians, 47.

149 Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, 533.

150 Consult Kistemaker, 1 Corinthians, 59. He provides good summative coverage on the Gentiles perspective of the death of someone on the cross.

Reading the Bible Through and Through

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Just finished again, by God’s grace and mercy. The way I do it is to just start at the beginning and read straight through. While I’m in the OT I am concurrently reading whatever NT books I feel led to read at any given time. Once I make it into the NT I just read the NT through until the read through is complete. At points, on this viatorum, I have read the OT in the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) order. I read various translations (and I have read through the NT in the original Koine Greek), but my go to has been the NASB (now the NASB95). Without this commitment to reading and meditating on Holy Scripture I wouldn’t be here with you today. Soli Deo Gloria

Reading Romans 1 Against Natural Theology

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18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, 19 because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. 20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. 21 For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 22 Professing to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. –Romans 1.18–22

The above pericope has been used as the locus classicus for those who want to argue for a ‘natural theology,’ in regard to a theological methodology. That is, for anyone interested in promoting the idea that the triune Christian God can be liminally known simply by reflecting on the effects of nature; indeed, as those are reasoned back to their first cause (in a chain-of-being knowledge and casual schemata), in the cause of all causes, who just is God. But New Testament exegete, Jason Staples, argues something much more biblical,

In contrast to the standard Jewish polemical argument that Israel has been set apart from the theologically ignorant pagans by the reception of the Torah, the account of Rom I: I8–32 “offers a completely distinct explanation.” In Paul’s account, Kathy Gaca explains, the idolaters are “not theologically blind outsiders but something far more reprehensible in biblical terms. They are knowledgeable about God . . . yet have become rebels.” This is not a minor change. Right from the start, the alert reader familiar with traditional Jewish polemics will be startled by the assertion that “what is knowable about God is revealed among them, for God has revealed it to them” (I:19). Since when has the knowledge of God been revealed among the pagans? Is not the knowledge of God granted through the Torah the very thing that has set Israel apart?

Unlike Wisdom’s ignorant idolaters who failed to realize the knowledge of God through extrapolating from creation to creator, Paul tells a narrative in which the explicit revelation from creator to creation is realized but rejected. As such, like Adam, the subjects of Romans are “without excuse” or “indefensible” . . . precisely because they knew better and rebelled against the revelation of God. Not only did they have access to divine revelation, the “understood” . . . the “unseen things.” . . . Rom I:18–32 does not speak “of people who should have known God’s attributes through the creation around them” but rather of people who did know God’s attributes through the revelation God gave them. By implication, the knowledge of God and divine revelation is not in fact a safeguard against impiety and sin as Wisdom suggests (I5:2) but rather is the very reason the revels of Rom I stand without excuse for impiety and injustice. In Johnathan Linbaugh’s words, “Wisdom’s polemics targets idiots; Paul aims at apostates.”[1]

Staples’ argument is much more involved than the passage I just shared from him. But it serves our purposes precisely at the point that it signals an alternative, and more biblical way, to exegete Romans 1. It isn’t and thus shouldn’t be used as THE prooftext for giving natural theology the biblical ground it so desires; that it so needs, to be hip to the “catholic” groove. On this occasion Paul is making a particular argument vis-à-vis the relationship between the Jews and the Church (as given further development and climax in chptrs. 9—11). The underlying point of Romans 1, in Staples exegesis, is that it isn’t a naked creation that holds the vestiges by which the Christian God can be known; even if only discursively. Instead, as Staples shows latterly, Romans 1, as apiece with the following context in chapters 2—3, is written in order to reinforce the judgement that the Jew (which in itself is a complicated designation in the Pauline theology), and that the world, mediated by the ones who should have known through God’s Self-revelation as attested to in Holy Scripture, in the Torah, in particular, should have come to know and submitted to.

Staples’ argument resonates deeply with my own sense on this passage, relative to the notion that God has only ever really been known personally, and even generally (because how else would a personal God be known?), through God’s intentional and personal revelation first presented to the Jews in the Torah. To the Jew first, then the Greek.

[1] Jason A. Staples, Paul and the Resurrection of Israel: Jews, Former Gentiles, Israelites (United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2024), 118–19.

On Ethnic Israel and Jesus

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Given what’s going on with Israel and Iran I jotted down some thoughts (elsewhere online) on Israel and how ethnic Israel continues to relate to the Man from Nazareth, Jesus Christ.

There is a right-wing movement among some so-called MAGA people who are highly antisemitic, or we could more accurately say: supersessionist. They have bought into the old rhetoric that Israel as a nation ceased to exist in 70AD, never to reunite again. But her ethnicity has always been vouchsafed in the Man from Nazareth (see Jeremiah 31). Her ethnicity transcends itself in its purpose as the Messiah bearer for the world. And yet, the promises made to the fathers remain irrevocable (see Romans 11:29). If the nation of Israel, as a people group ceases to be, this would entail that the Man from Nazareth, the Son of David, would cease to be. But since He cannot cease to be in his particularity as a regionalized man, then neither can the nation that bore him cease to be in its perdurance before God. And this is why, I would suggest, that whether leftist or rightist, antisemitism has continued to exist down throughout the ages. The Enemy of our souls seeks to kill, steal, and destroy anything that stands for the ultimate purposes of God; including the Jews. Rightists are just as malevolent as the Leftists, and of the spirit of this age; in the kingdom of darkness rather than in the kingdom of the Son of His love. The pattern has always been: “to the Jew first, and then the Gentile.” That motif has never changed.

Jesus is the true Israel; the Jew from Nazareth. The church is only the true Israel for supersessionists and some Catholics.

The whole Kingdom of Christ is contingent upon the fact that Jesus is the Son of David. That’s where his free election to be human was and is situated. Jewishness wasn’t abrogated by the ascension of Christ, Jewishness was amplified by the expansionism of becoming the one (Jesus) for the many in the organic fulfillment of both the Abrahamic and New Covenants, respectively (and all the covenants in between, Davidic in particular). The nation or eretz (Land) of Israel today isn’t the Kingdom, per se; but it is a foreshadowing and demonstration that God remains faithful to His promises; for the Jew first, then the Greek. Political Israel today isn’t the Kingdom of Christ, but it is a demonstration of God’s faithfulness to His Word; which He willingly descended into in a Jewish body by design and grace. Only a Gnostic or Marcionite could think that God emptied His “human shell” at the ascension. No Christian of canonical principle would ever affirm that ethnic Israel was superseded by the coming of the Son of Man. Lots of rubbish being pushed around in the “Christian” church on this.

On a James Whitean and Leighton Flowersian Naked Reading of the Bible

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Thumbnail created originally by Leighton Flowers (Caleb)

I was listening to James White live today on his Dividing Line vlogcast, and what he reinforces over and over is that he is what some are calling a ‘biblicist,’ or what I would identify as a solo Scriptura or nuda Scriptura proponent, as far as the way that he approaches Scripture. In this way, James White and his archnemeses, Leighton Flowers, ironically affirm the same bibliology and its attending hermeneutic. It is both modern, postEnlightenment, and Lockean (i.e., tabula rasa) in orientation. That is, it sees Scripture and its reception in a historicist frame of reference. This frame leaves the history of interpretation (i.e., creeds, confessions, catechisms etc.) in the dust, in regard to how White and Flowers receive Scripture. This ironically lends itself to a modernist-naturalist appropriation of and engagement with Holy Scripture, insofar that the Bible, in such a frame, seems to be a ‘white-slate’ wherein the interpreter has some type of objectivist angle into its exegesis.

The aforementioned is problematic for a variety of reasons. One prominent reason is that it ends up working from a petitio principii (circular reasoning). That is to say, it presumes: 1) My interpretation just is the objective reading of the Bible, 2) my interpretation of the Bible is a five-point Calvinist reading of the Bible, 3) therefore the objective reading of the Bible just is a five-point Calvinist reading (or just replace five-point Calvinist with Provisionist reading in Flowers’ case). What this approach fails to appreciate, for one, is that nobody approaches Scripture as a presuppositionless blank-slate; human agents are subjects, and as such we bring a variety of preunderstandings and unchecked a priori commitments to theological paradigms as we read Scripture. We could call this the “hermeneutical dilemma.” Neither James White nor his compadre, Leighton Flowers, acknowledge this. And thus, all that they are left to do in their respective debates and correspondences is to sling Scripture right past each other; never critically identifying or checking their theological a prioris at the frontend of their respective readings of Scripture.

But like I was noting, James White, today, as he was talking, in this case about Catholicism, made an absolute distinction between reading Scripture and the history of interpretation of Scripture; as if they inhabit two distinct silos. But they don’t inhabit two distinct silos, instead the history and the biblical exegesis are mutually implicating realities; insofar that human agents are subjectively reading and receiving the text of Holy Scripture. Until White and Flowers can admit this, and until all of their acolytes can come to grasp this, this whole “debate” between them, on five-point Calvinism versus Provisionism, will remain a futile endeavor. Unfortunately, they have many followers, respectively, who they are doing a disservice to. They are teaching young and biologically old, in some cases, Christian hearts and minds to read Scripture rationalistically rather than confessionally (and thus Christologically and Trinitarianly).

In closing, let me refer us to Matthew Levering’s sketch on the Whitean and Flowersian reading of Scripture (viz., what he writes indirectly critiques the Whitean-Flowersian combine of biblical interpretation); as far as its intellectual development and background go. Here Levering also offers an alternative approach that is participatorily grounded in a genuinely christologically and trinitarianly conditioned reading of Holy Scripture.

What happens, then, when Scripture is seen primarily as a linear-historical record of dates and places rather than as a providentially governed (revelatory) conversation with God in which the reader, within the doctrinal and sacramental matrix of the Church, is situated? John Webster points to the disjunction that appears between “history” and “theology” and remarks on the “complex legacy of dualism and nominalism in Western Christian theology, through which the sensible and intelligible relams, history and eternity, were thrust away from each other, and creaturely forms (language, action, institutions) denied any capacity to indicate the presence and activity of the transcendent God.” Similary, Lamb contrasts the signs or concepts that can be grasped by modern exegetical methods with the moral and intellectual virtues that are required for a true participatory knowledge and love the realities expressed by the signs or concepts. Lacking the framework of participatory knowledge and love, biblical exegesis is reduced to what Lamb calls “a ‘comparative textology’ à la Spinoza.” Only participatory knowledge and love, which both ground and flow from the reading practices of the Church, can really attain the biblical realities. As Joseph Ratzinger thus observes, the meaning of Scripture is constituted when

the human word and God’s word work together in the singularity of historical events and the eternity of the everlasting Word which is contemporary in every age. The biblical word comes from a real past. It comes not only from the past, however, but at the same time from the eternity of God and it leads us into God’s eternity, but again along the way through time, to which the past, the present and the future belong.

This Christological theology of history, which depends on a metaphysics of participation inscribed in creation, provides the necessary frame for apprehending the true meaning of biblical texts.

In short, for the patristic-medieval tradition and for those attuned to it today, history (inclusive of the work of historiography) is an individual and communal conversation with the triune God who creates and redeems history—and the Bible situates us in history thus understood. (Levering, 23)

Biblical Studies Has Failed the City of God

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I read NT exegetes, particularly in their commentaries on Paul’s theology, and wonder if they ever wonder if they should in fact be doing so from the theo-logic inherent to the homoousion (the notion that Jesus is both fully God and fully human). Most don’t do this, which illustrates the flaw of their discipline-specific training in Biblical Studies. In other words, just as anti-supranaturalism has yeasted the discipline itself—that is to say, to approach the Bible as if it doesn’t have an inner, antecedent, supranatural reality; and that it can be read purely and critically as a historical artifact—it is this spread of a flawed premise that then informs said exegete’s interpretive conclusions, in this case, about what Paul communicates throughout the corpus of his Apostolic communiques. As a result, such exegetes read Paul based upon a series of ad hoc historical reconstructions, and make their conclusions about say, Paul’s soteriology, contingent upon these reconstructions. But this just won’t do. If so, for one thing, we never would have arrived at the grammar of the Trinity that we did in the early conciliar machinations (because they presumed that Scripture was first received as a confessional reality undergirded by God’s gift of Himself to the world in Jesus Christ). The Bible, for the Christian, is first the Word from the Lord before it becomes a Word at all. If this isn’t underwriting the exegete’s method at the most basic level, then their exegetical conclusions will always run awry of the fact that Scripture is first Holy, before it ever becomes Scripture.

To elaborate a bit further: when I refer to the homoousion as the key to a proper exegesis of Holy Scripture, what I mean to be doing with that is to point to its analogical reality when applied to the “hermeneut.” That is to note, that just as the person and work of God are not ripped asunder in the singular person known as Jesus Christ, likewise, a proper reading of Holy Scripture ought never be dissected into a profane historical reading of the text (i.e., higher critical), over against a confessional reading of the text (i.e., churchly). Just as God and [hu]man are inseparably related, yet distinct, in the singular person of Jesus Christ, likewise, a proper reading of Scripture will start with the premise that its ultimate reality has a depth and inner dimension that must take primacy when attempting to rightly divide the Word of God. When an exegete doesn’t do this, I might find some of their conclusions interesting, but beyond that the only depth it might have is the genius that stands behind said readings and historical reconstructions (which in itself, human genius is never enough to pierce the veil of God’s body).

If we were to stay consistent with the logic of my appeal and premise, then we would see such Bible readers and exegetes as adoptionistic rather than orthodox in posture. In other words, just as an adoptionist christology believes that the divine simply “adopted” this guy named Jesus to be His dearly beloved Son, not having the ground of His person as the eternal Logos, per se, the Bible readers I have been considering, would approach Scripture as if it is just this “Holy Book,” and attempt to understand what it is saying without attending to the fact that Scripture’s ontology itself finds its inner reality not in a nakedly natural form, but as it is given for us in the breath of the Holy Spirit in the face of Jesus Christ. This reception of the Bible, one way or the other, changes how people arrive at their respective exegetical conclusions.

Reading the Bible as a Christian: The Outer and Inner Reality of Scripture

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Scripture has an outer logic and an inner logic. Back in the day this was referred to as its outer and inner clarity (perspicuity of Scripture). In some ways the rift between the disciplines of biblical studies and systematic theology pivots on which one of these the practitioner is focused on. That is to say, the biblical studies folks, typically focus on the outer components of the text; i.e., its grammar, philology, sitz im leben (e.g., historical situadedness), composition, transmission, and other “text critical” factors. Whilst the systematic theology folks focus more on the inner-theo-logic of the text; attempting to “lay bare” what is there, and allows the text to make the assertions that it does in its outer realm. But to focus on one or the other is a mistake of “Enlightened” proportions.

As Christians we are to come to the text based on the analogy of the incarnation. That is, we are to recognize that just as the Logos of God came in an outer (and real!) physical body, so too on analogy, the text of Scripture comes with this “two-natures-in-one-person” mode of presentation just the same. As TF Torrance would say, there is a “depth dimension” to Holy Scripture wherein the outer signum (signage) of the text, points beyond itself to its deeper and inner res (reality) in Jesus Christ and the triune God.

To have departments in seminaries and bible colleges that focus on “biblical studies” and/or “systematic theology,” is simply a turn to the Enlightenment way wherein there is continuous competition between the binary of the natural (the outer) and the supranatural (the inner); or the accidents (the outer) and the essence (the inner). This is not the Christian approach to doing biblical studies or theology.

The Bible’s Meaning as Near as Your Next Prayer: On a Biblical Hermeneutics

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For some reason there are many Christians, through the centuries even, who want to make an attempt at reading Holy Scripture without reading it from its God-given context in Jesus Christ. That is to say, there are Christians who want to read the Bible from a christologically contextless frame wherein the Bible becomes a wax-nose given shape by their wits and capacity to marshal the latest reading strategies of the day. But the Bible isn’t a book like that. It isn’t open to naturalist or immanentist frames of reference. It has its whole and its parts altogether, in regard to its res (reality), to its meaning in Jesus Christ and the triune God. To just focus on reading the Bible as literature (as is popular among evangelicals and progressives, secularists and elitists alike) is to completely ignore its confessional frame as a Christian Scripture as Self-given by God for the world in Jesus Christ. In other words, the Bible surely has meaning, indeed it has an intensive meaning that has been given to it through the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ. That is to say, all of Scripture, both Old and New Testaments alike have a telos, a meaning that are singularly funded by the life of Christ as its ultimate reality. Some biblical studies folks might want to assert that this is too reductionistic, too restrictive to attempt some type of “Christian” reading of Scripture. But this fails to take seriously that the Bible, for the Christian, is the Word of God in written format. None of this is to say that its literary factors, and/or its historically grammatical features aren’t significant towards explicating its outer meaning. It is simply to say that Scripture is indeed Holy because of its inner reality as that is found in Jesus Christ. Folks fail to recognize, often, that everything is suffused with some type of prior or inner context, whether we are conscious of what that is or not. And that prior or inner context informs the way we deploy the various literary and historical tools we have available to us in the hermeneutical process; it shapes the way we arrive at our biblical exegetical and theological conclusions. The art and science of biblical interpretation either lives under its kataphysical reality in Jesus Christ, or it strays wither and hither, here and there, over the arid landscapes and oases we perceive as the contextual factors, and thus meaning factors for Holy writ.

Charles Taylor refers to the aspects, and even the history of modern hermeneutical developments in the following way:

A hermeneutical account is one which strives to make (human) sense of agent and action, and hermeneutical argument tries to show that one account does so better than a rival one. It was recognized early on that this required a kind of circular argument. The aim, in the original context of Bible interpretation, was often to make a particular passage clear which was uncertain or enigmatic. But the reading offered of this passage or verse had to make sense of the whole to make sense of the part. But a question can always be raised; do we understand fully the meaning of the whole? Perhaps the meaning we see in this verse ought to call into question the idea we have of the whole, and lead to a reinterpretation. It is possible to argue in both directions, and hermeneutics involved a kind of circle, where one has to balance potential arguments in either direction against each other.

There is a circle here, but it is not a vicious one. It doesn’t involve the notorious “circular argument”, where one assumes the conclusion among the premises. On the contrary, the attempt is to bring the arguments in both directions into an equilibrium in which one makes maximum sense of the text.

Heidegger, and after him Gadamer and Ricoeur, pointed out that something like the hermeneutical circle obtains in our attempts to understand what I’m calling here “human meanings”. The “texts” here can be events, passages in the life of individuals or societies, or human history; or we can start from individual experiences feelings, actions, decisions, and try to determine their meaning. Whatever meaning we attribute to the part has to make sense within the whole, whose meaning it also helps determine. The individual decision stands in this relation to the whole segment of my life in which it falls; the revolutionary turning point to the whole period in the history of society which it inflected; my momentary emotional response to the whole pattern of my feelings.

I believe that the notion of a hermeneutical circle can be generalized to understand how we operate with the skeins of interdependent meanings which are central to our human self-understanding, like that of pride versus shame, in contrast to guilt versus innocence, as well as their proper objects, which I mentioned in the first section; or the moral landscapes linking norms, virtues, and positive and negative motivations, which I have been describing in this one. Because here too, any change in one term disturbs the skein, and would have to be ratified by changes in others. Equilibrium can be restored either by making the ratification, or by refusing the original change.

There are examples in the above discussion of arguments in both directions. I argued, for instance, that our approbation of benevolence had to be seen as a putative insight into good, rather than as a brute reaction, because of how this experience opens into a whole chain of hermeneutical reasoning. The argument here runs from the potentiality of the part to generate a certain kind of whole. But there are also arguments in the opposite direction: Nietzsche is too firmly convinced that appeal for mercy cannot be emanate from the slave’s will to power for him to accept its face validity. Equilibrium comes when one has a plausible account on both levels together; or to put it as a double negative, when there is no palpable distortion at either level. And hermeneutical argument usually consists in pointing out something which a rival view distorts or cannot account for.[1]

A lot to process, even in this small section from Taylor. For our purposes, I simply wanted to engage with the Taylor passage to help illustrate the complexities involved in both biblical and other types of hermeneutics, respectively. But what I also wanted to refer us to is the point about the part to the whole and whole to the part in the combine of meaning generation; within the context of text in particular.

Ultimately, for the Christian reader, we already dramatically understand that the whole meaning of the text of Holy Scripture is finally going to climax and realize itself in its inner reality in Jesus Christ. As such, this ought to invite us into the banqueting tables of Christ’s radical potluck of interpretation of Holy writ. That is to say, when we are reading the Bible, whether in its Old or New Testament iterations, what always ought to be informing our understanding of the parts to the whole and the whole to the parts of meaning is that its connective tissue is none-else than Jesus Christ. We ought to learn how to allow this reality to be at the forefronts of our hearts and minds as we approach each and every passage we encounter within the binding of the Book we hold in our hands; more commonly known as the Bible or Holy Scripture. We ought to recognize, as is the case with any hermeneutical endeavor, that all things are a circle. But in the case of reading Holy Scripture the Christian is actively and participatorily brought into the circle of God’s triune life; and that within this circle, as Scripture’s terminating and circulating reality, the Christian has a dialogical means of contextual matter with the very personal-relational reality of Holy Scripture itself. What a joy to be a Christian within the fellowship of the triune life of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Indeed, we are not orphaned readers, but readers of Scripture emblazoned with the fiery passion of God’s life of eternal love, one for the other, in the other, and us in the other and singularity of God’s eternal wooing of love and invitation into the life indestructible. So, take up and read Holy Scripture, but do so understanding that its meaning and reality is as near as your next prayer.

[1] Charles Taylor, The Language Animal: The Full Shape of the Human Linguistic Capacity (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2016), 218–19.

“The kingdom of His beloved Son”: On the Non-dualist Reality of the Kingdom

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“For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, …” Colossians 1:13

Do you see how this is not a dualistic scheme—like light versus darkness, good versus evil? Christianity does not operate in a dualistic frame of reference. It presents the world and the church with the fact that everything in relation to God in Christ is asymmetrical; and asymmetrical in a way where there is no comparison between who He has offered for Himself in the eternal Son become flesh in Jesus Christ, and every other thing in this world that is contingent (indeed upon the sustenance of His Word, Jesus Christ). There is no us versus them in the city of Man vis-à-vis the kingdom of His beloved Son. There is no contest; there is no competition between God and fallen humanity—which the incarnation of God in Christ ought to make eminently clear to all of us. God is God and nobody else is. We aren’t in a Greek drama where humanity simply replicates the battles of the gods in the pantheon above; the “good gods” versus the “evil gods.” We inhabit and participate in a world, in the life of God, where God is God without any competitors. As we have bowed the knee confessing that Jesus Christ is Lord, we have been transferred into an economy of God’s triune Life that is seated high above all the principalities and powers of this earth (with their demonic dragon breath behind them). We are the Victors because Christ was first victorious for us, that we might live in His victoriously resurrected and ascended life for us at the Right Hand of the Father. Don’t let this world fret you into thinking otherwise.

Who is Israel?

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Who is Israel? Is the Church, Israel now? Are there still ethnic Jews? My response will be brief, but hopefully to a point. Israel in the Bible are Yahweh’s chosen, covenant people. Israel in the Bible was chosen by God to be the people He vocationally used to mediate the Messiah to the world through; through the seed of the woman, Mary. This “election” had a special promise tied into it: i.e., that the ethnic Jew would always be tied into the promises and gifts of the living God. According to the Apostle this entails that ‘all Israel,’ all of ethnic Israel will be saved (this is a proleptic promise, yet future from the time of Paul’s authorship of the epistle to the Romans). They are of the natural olive tree, we of the wild olive tree (i.e., we Gentiles). The Church is presently made up of both Jew and Gentile; in fact, the first iteration of the Church was fully Jewish; thus, fulfilling God’s order: i.e., to the Jew first then the Gentile. And yet not all Israel currently believes that Jesus is their Messiah, as such God in Christ is using the Church to make them jealous until they too repent and bow the knee to Jesus. Clearly, just from this rendition, there is a distinction between ethnic Israel and the Church; even into the 21st century. This ought to indicate, in and of itself, that the Church is not ethnic Israel. Interestingly, ethnic Israel’s identity has always already been chained to Yahweh’s promises, and will be forevermore. Ethnic Israel has a telos as the covenant people of God; as already noted, their respective purpose was and is to mediate God’s salvation to all the nations (so the Abrahamic and New covenants, respectively). The nation of Israel, and the promises made to her by God were not superseded by the coming of Jesus, or the institution of the Church; indeed, they were fulfilled. Theologically ethnic Israel’s purpose always pointed beyond itself to its reality in Jesus Christ, just as all of creation’s purpose has pointed just the same. As such, the root of the olive tree, both natural and wild, is Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ, the One for the many (both Jew and Gentile alike); Jesus Christ, the ethnic Jew par excellence, the son of David. In the most proper sense Jesus is Israel, and ‘in Israel,’ all those in union with Him are now included in the expansive promises and gifts that Yahweh originally gave to ethnic Israel. All of those promises have been fulfilled in Jesus Christ, the ‘Israel of God.’

Ethnic Jews still exist, whether they are Ashkenazi or Sephardic. And just as is the case for us Gentiles they too have only one way to the Father; i.e., through Jesus Christ, the ‘Israel of God.’ The purpose of salvation-history was not to magnify a particular ethnicity, per se, but to magnify the name of Jesus Christ and the triune God of Israel. Jesus is Israel; He is the root of Jesse; the seed of the woman. To realize what it means to be the Israel of God is to come into union with Jesus Christ. Even so, ethnic Israel remains a reality before God, just as the other nations do. As such, God’s providential hand remains with ethnic Israel even and insofar as the promises and gifts made to the fathers remain. We along with them, in Jesus Christ, will finally experience the Land promises made to Israel (Land and Davidic covenants) at the coming of Jesus Christ; when Revelation 21—22 is finally realized.