Category Archives: Biblical Studies

A Christological Reading of Holy Scripture Contra the neo-Marcionite “Bible Teachers” of the 21st Century

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Let me be forthrightly clear: to follow a Christologically conditioned reading of Holy Scripture is not to be, at the same time, an implicit Marcionite. It is also not to suggest that the Old Testament history is simply the Hebrew peoples’ progressive knowledge of God, and thusly their writing thereof, as if it isn’t in fact heilsgeschichte, or the story of God’s in-breaking activity all throughout ‘salvation history,’ providentially and actively orienting and working through the events of said history in order to eventuate the actualization of his pre-destination in Jesus Christ to be for the world and not against it, but with it for all eternity. And yet this is how some very sloppy people, supposed teachers of Scripture (including Brian Zahnd, Wm Paul Young, Brad Jersak, David Bentley Hart et al.), handwave in support of biblical authority without also endorsing the accuracy of the Old Testament’s reality in Jesus Christ. They seem to want to say that the Old Testament is really just the Hebrews’ reflection on God as they wanted Him and thought Him to be; and that it wasn’t until Jesus showed up on the scene, who in an abstract way, takes up the OT and rewrites its reality, and its God, in light of His coming. As if the whole life of Christ is simply a sensus plenior (the full reading of Scripture unknown and even potentially drastically discontinuous with the original authors’ authorial intention). They even want to claim that like the Jesus Seminar, with their color-coded marbles, that they can use Jesus as a cipher to read the OT through; with such thrift and warrant that allows them to discern what in fact is real Scripture and what isn’t (i.e., in the Old Testament-Hebrew Bible). Higher criticize much? In reality most of these jokers are simply parroting what they have read from higher critic in chief, Peter Enns.

This kind of rubbish really shouldn’t be able to stand. It is simply post-Enlightenment rationalism and higher criticism repackaged for the 21st century mind. And this is ironic because these jokers attempt to bypass said modernity by asserting that they are really just forwarding the Bible reading practices of the early church and her respective fathers. This is ironic because their impulses are not being provided for by the church fathers or the early church in general, whatsoever! These jokers have confused some sort of style and mood of retrieval they believe they are inhabiting, with an actual reading and retrieval of the past pre-critical/modern readers of Holy Scripture. And yet their actual motivation is coming from the 18th and 19th centuries, and the Teutonic higher critics of Scripture; the ones who like to positivistically and rationalistically slice and dice Scripture into petri dishes of disparate and defunct books of redaction and various forms found in the history of religions.

Rubbish I say. I have no time for such garbage. Let God be true and every man and woman a liar.

A Brief Word on the Biblical Languages and a Theological Ontology

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The biblical languages often come with a perception of objectivity, like math or something. But the biblical languages are, indeed, languages. Language is fluid, and highly contextual. Learning the biblical languages can be very helpful for studying the Bible; but they aren’t definitive in regard to establishing this or that theological doctrine as true or false, per se. The more significant languages to learn are the theological languages; indeed, what could be called a theological ontology. This is not separate from biblical study; indeed, it establishes it, one way or the other, in a supra type of way. It will help the learner know how to deploy the biblical languages most appropriately, within a theological taxis (order vis a vis God). With a proper theological ontology in place, which I always argue is Christ (Logos) conditioned, the biblical languages come to have their contextual meaning; their heavenly meaning, as that has and continues to confront our lives and this world system. There is always an antecedence to the creaturely realm; which of course includes languages, and the total creational order. God in Christ is that antecedence from within the processions of His eternal and triune life. We come to evangelically know that “antecedent” life in and through the missions, the economy of God’s life for the world in Jesus Christ.

Reading the Prodigal Son Story as an Illustration of a Familial Rather than Legal Relationship

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Here at Athanasian Reformed we often talk about soteriology; indeed, as a nexus interlinked with a whole host of other theological loci, within a theological taxis (order). I was once again reminded by someone on X/Twitter that not everyone thinks these matters through the inner-theological reality present within the warp and woof of Holy Scripture; they simply skim the outer-textual-top and think they have somehow penetrated the marrow therein. But as is the case, the biblical marrow is only gotten at when the reader understands the Bible’s res (reality): i.e., Jesus Christ. When Scripture is “exegeted” through a Ramist place logic, logico-deductive schemata (as TF Torrance refers to Ramism), the purported exegete ends up with a text that thinks in abstraction, and out of a disordered order vis-à-vis its triune givenness as that has been provided for by God’s Self-exegesis/interpretation of Himself in Jesus Christ (cf. I John 1:18). As TF Torrance rightly notes (paraphrase): the context of the text of Holy Scripture is Jesus Christ. Since this is the case (without elaborating on what that entails), to read Scripture from within a center in yourself, as law-based, Augustinian based readings tend to do, is to disregard the clear Dominical teaching that Jesus Himself is God’s center for us; and it is within this relational/dialogical center wherein Scripture comes to have contextual-canonical referent and meaning.

Here is the post, on X/Twitter that reminded me of how important it is to have a properly formed, genuinely Christian biblical hermeneutic:

Romans 4:5 the verse abused by unemployed salvationists who think it means u can be ungodly have faith & never have works & be saved satan loves fooling ppl who want to cling to their flesh bcuz they can’t discern scripture talking about how the old covenant law can’t save [sic]

This Xr’s handle is @ osasisHERESY (i.e., once saved always saved is heresy). I’m simply snagging this guy’s assertion, about salvation, because it serves exemplary for how many many people think salvation (at least as that gets expressed online, and even in the literature). As my original tag, as I retweeted his post noted: “Doesn’t understand God’s Grace. He has separated the Person of grace from the works of grace, and placed the works of grace on us rather than Christ. Historically this is known as moralistic Pelagianism.” This poster’s thinking is really a subset of a larger soteriological frame that Latin (Western) Christianity has inherited, at pervasive levels; whether that be Catholic or Protestant iterations.

What I want to do with the rest of this post is use Luke 15, and the famous Dominical teaching, therein, on the prodigal son. I want to offer two different frames, and show how those frames, as the interpretive lenses, respectively, bear on an exegetical conclusion relative to the topic at hand. That is: “when someone is genuinely born again of an imperishable seed, is it possible to then lose this imperishable seed (as our poster on X asserts is the case)?” Depending on what the frame is, that is used to read the prodigal son story, will lead to variant theological-exegetical conclusions. As will become evident, what I am doing with Luke 15 ends up being something like a theological thought experiment; with the intention of illustrating how a broader understanding of soteriological theory is working within the canonical text of Holy Scripture. That is to say, I am not attempting to maximally prove from our passage that a so-called ‘once-saved-always-saved’ frame is indeed the frame present within a reading of Luke 15. Instead, more minimally, I am using the prodigal son narrative to suggestively illustrate what a law-based reading of salvation looks like juxtaposed with what I will call a familial (which could also be called filial or marital, by way of other biblical analogies/realities). The Christologically conditioned hermeneutic I am attempting to illustrate, through engagement with Luke 15, comes from a depth dimensional or deeper engagement with the context of the text of Holy Scripture, as that is provided for by the Christ. That is the aim of my post: to suggestively illustrate, at a theological level, that if the so-called prodigal son was in a work-release program set by his judge (father), then a so-called once-saved-always-saved frame (which our X poster calls “hyper grace”) would indeed, end up being sorely deficient and errant. But if the frame is understood, even as the immediate context provides for, as a familial relationship, as a father-son relationship seemingly gone awry, then the way we read this will end up illustrating how salvation, in the Bible, should be understood, indeed, as a familial relationship wherein the relationship can never be lost (it is biological, of a supranatural level, as it were—i.e., based on the shed blood of Immanuel’s veins; we as his adopted brothers and sisters).

 

The Text: Luke 15.11–32, The Prodigal Son

11 And He said, “A man had two sons. 12 The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the estate that falls to me.’ So he divided his wealth between them. 13 And not many days later, the younger son gathered everything together and went on a journey into a distant country, and there he squandered his estate with loose living. 14 Now when he had spent everything, a severe famine occurred in that country, and he began to be impoverished. 15 So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. 16 And he would have gladly filled his stomach with the pods that the swine were eating, and no one was giving anything to him. 17 But when he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired men have more than enough bread, but I am dying here with hunger! 18 I will get up and go to my father, and will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in your sight; 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me as one of your hired men.”’ 20 So he got up and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion for him, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. 21 And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ 22 But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet; 23 and bring the fattened calf, kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; 24 for this son of mine was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.’ And they began to celebrate.

25 “Now his older son was in the field, and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. 26 And he summoned one of the servants and began inquiring what these things could be. 27 And he said to him, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has received him back safe and sound.’ 28 But he became angry and was not willing to go in; and his father came out and began pleading with him. 29 But he answered and said to his father, ‘Look! For so many years I have been serving you and I have never neglected a command of yours; and yet you have never given me a young goat, so that I might celebrate with my friends; 30 but when this son of yours came, who has devoured your wealth with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him.’ 31 And he said to him, ‘Son, you have always been with me, and all that is mine is yours. 32 But we had to celebrate and rejoice, for this brother of yours was dead and has begun to live, and was lost and has been found.’”

 

Law-Frame Reading

Let’s think our passage through a Law-Frame rather than a Familial-Frame. The Law-Frame is the frame our Xr is using to arrive at the conclusion that someone can “lose their salvation.” The Law-Frame reading of Luke 15 would set the father-son relationship up as a judge-subject-criminal relationship. The son-subject in this frame would have run away from the legal jurisdiction of his judge, and from there engage in further perverse and potentially even criminal (law-breaking) behavior. As the son-subject ran out of resources, he would attempt to go back to his judge-father seeking mercy from the court; seeking permission back into the welfare system that he had available to him prior to his criminal fleeing. But since the judge isn’t the subject’s father, there is no necessary (biological-familial) relationship present; as such a merciful, even gracious relationship is not present, leaving the subject at the court’s mercy. But the court has no latitude available to it, even it if wanted to merciful, and allow the subject back into the kingdom. The subject, because of disobedience (to stay within the boundary of the judge’s jurisdiction, the kingdom), must prove by his obedience, by his performance, that he is a trustworthy client of the kingdom; bearing fruits showing himself worthy of the conditions set forth by the kingdom and its judge, in order to be provisionally let back into the kingdom. As the subject-son came back from the far country he would have to forever meet the conditions of the kingdom, set-out by the judge, in order to stay in the kingdom; otherwise, he would be cast out of the kingdom, forever, and this based on his lack of obedience and performance before the judge and the suitors he represents in the kingdom. The whole relationship is contingent not on the judge, but on the subject’s-son’s ability and desire to keep the codes of the kingdom. Outwith that type of obedience there is no legal place for the subject to be a son of the kingdom.

Familial-Frame Reading/Judge judged

This frame requires less development, since it is the immediate frame and context of our passage in Luke 15. The father-son relationship is the frame. The son has all the resources of the father available by pure virtue of him being his father’s son. He doesn’t have to perform for them, there is no obedience required of him, he simply has these resources (to one degree or another) available to him as one who was born into his father’s family. This is most clearly evidenced by the fact that when the son chooses to rebel, and be disobedient and “squanderous” with his father’s resources (and freedoms), that the son, no matter what kingdom he is apparently living in, remains the father’s son. When the son realizes what a fool he’s been he simply goes back to his father, seeking his father’s mercy. But remember, the whole time, the whole season, he remained the father’s son; not because of who the son had chosen to become, outside the normal expectations of the family, but based on the seed of the father that remained in the son, no matter how the son performed or “dis-performed.” When the son came back to the father, the father welcomed him back as if a son from the dead. All that mattered to the father was that his son was alive, and had come home from his disobedience. None of this was based on legal conditions being met, but instead on the fact that the son was simply the son of the father by birth. Within that relationship there was nothing thicker than the blood that bonded the son and the father together, not even the son’s disobedience.

How much more then is the blood thicker than any of our disobediences that might attempt to dis-bond us from our heavenly Father? The Son’s blood, is indeed of the imperishable seed, from the indestructible life of the triune life for the world in Jesus Christ. Within God’s covenant of grace, He is first and foremost our Father; indeed, on analogy, as He was and is the Father of Israel; indeed, and Jesus ultimately being the consummate Israel of God. We are so thoroughly entwined in the life of God, at the point of His conception for us in Christ, that the idea of being dis-bonded from him, based on some sort of extra-legal apparatus simply is the possible impossibility. This goes so far to even think that the legal apparatus was enforced, as in our first scenario, and the Son enters even into that relationship, who in fact is the Judge, and becomes the Judge judged for us (as Barth so rightly emphasizes).

Conclusion

As I noted in the beginning of this little post, the appeal to Luke 15 is only a minimalistic exercise. That is to say, I recognize that in fact the actual context of Luke 15 is Jesus referring to the expansiveness of His salvation offer over against the narrowness that the Pharisees and religious leaders of his day were offering. But in an attempt to suggestively illustrate how the Prodigal Son story would have looked much different, if framed from a nomist (law-based) reading of Scripture, I have taken the liberty of reframing it in a way that showed how the story itself would have no legs, no texture within the fabric of the Second Temple Judaic period that Jesus inhabited. So, there was something much deeper than law-keeping, that went beyond the cultic practices that the Pharisees et al. had absolutized and relativized to their Jewry. God’s relationship to the Jew and Gentile alike, according to Jesus, was and is based on the “God who first loved us, that we might love Him.” And because He knew we couldn’t love Him, in and of ourselves, or ever, He forged a way for us by “becoming us that we might become Him” by the grace of adoption; He feigned not to leave us as orphans, but instead, to make us His dearly beloved sons and daughters through the vicarious humanity, and big brother love of Jesus.

My hope is that readers, even antagonistic ones, might see how the frame we read Scripture through is all important. My money is on reading Scripture through its triune reality, given for us in the face of Jesus Christ. In His reality, there is space for disobedience; this, of course, is not the ideal, but it is the reality as we continuously remain simul justus et peccator (simultaneously justified and sinner) in this in-between not yet time.

A final note: to think of salvation as once saved always saved versus not once saved always saved, per se, or vice versa, is to think the frame of salvation from completely non-biblical errant theological premises. Salvation is God for us in Jesus Christ. God is elect for us in the humanity of Jesus Christ. God is the salvation that fills the gap that we never could between us and Him. God is Father of the Son / Son of the Father in the bond of the Holy Spirit, and it is this life, this inner reality of the covenant between God and humanity, in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ, wherein life eternal is wrought and won for all. We say Yes, as an echo of God’s Yes and Amen for us, who is the Christ. When we are found in Him, we are born again of an imperishable seed, that will endure as long as the Word of God. Indeed, the Word of God is Jesus Christ, and when we come into His life, as He first came into ours, it is in this combine of life that a person becomes “eternally secure” within the Father’s big hand. Within the Father’s hand it may superficially appear that they/we are falling or have fallen, but that is only the space between the Father’s upper and lower hand; they/we haven’t nor cannot escape His hands; not because of who we are for Him, but because of who He is for us: as Father of the Son / Son of the Father.

Clearly, there are people in the world who profess Christ, but have never become “possessors” (to use an old phrase); that is, who have never become ‘spiritually’ united to Christ. But de jure, when someone genuinely has come into spiritual union with the living God through Christ, there is in fact space for disobedience. This is not the aim, or the ideal, but it is in fact the reality. Any other Gospel other than this is a No-Gospel, based on a Pelagian type of performance and continuity of law-keeping; indeed, all the days of the “performer’s” life. If someone proclaims a Gospel to you that makes the Gospel contingent on you and your performance of the Gospel, then they are proclaiming to you another Gospel; may they be anathema.

The Prayer-ful Hermeneutic Found in the ‘inner-text’ of Holy Scripture

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Depth Dimenson, that is the language TF Torrance uses when referring to an engagement with Holy Scripture’s deep context. He reifies the sacramental language of thinking Scripture as the signum (sign), and its res (reality) as Jesus Christ and the triune God that Christ mediates to the Church and world. The reification comes for Torrance as he thinks all things from the patristic homoousious and/or the double consubstantial (both fully God and human) person of Jesus Christ. It is from this analogy that Torrance thinks the relationship between Scripture’s broad canonical context, and the meaning that funds that context in Jesus Christ. So, for Torrance, the depth dimension of Scripture is none other than the Christ. It is within the context and space of God’s life for the world in Jesus Christ wherein Scripture, for Torrance, gains critical gravitas; meaning, that, for Torrance, Scripture’s inner-theo-logic must become the informing frame by which exegetical and interpretive conclusions are arrived at as the biblical exegete attempts to interpret Holy Scripture. If this isn’t the context, the fund for Scripture’s meaning, according to TFT, then all that one is left with is a literary piece of Ancient Near Eastern and Second Temple Judaic relevance. Scripture outwith the frame of its Christ conditioning, for Torrance, merely becomes an interesting piece of archaeological and artifactual history that the likes of an Indiana Jones might risk his life for, but not much more.

This type of theme, as being detailed above, is also present in Karl Barth’s approach to Holy Scripture (surprise!)—not to mention in much of the tradition of the Church. It is a confessional hermeneutic that starts with a confessional doctrine of Scripture wherein the belief is that Scripture is indeed God’s Holy Word. For Barth (and TFT et al.) of course, Scripture has a layered “ontology” as it finds its order first and foremost in God’s eternal Logos, Jesus Christ. Scripture is living and active precisely because of its deep reality in Jesus Christ and the triune God (which is just as true for all of creation, cf. Col. 1.15ff). Without belaboring these points further, let me refer us to Bruce McCormack’s rendering of how this all looks in the thought of Karl Barth.

Now because the ratio fidei (the Credo) is not identical with the ratio veritatis (the Word), conformity with the ratio veritatis will not be a simple matter of reading and understanding the outward text of the Creed. Revealed truth has an ‘inner text’ which must be grasped if the outward text is to be rightly understood. What is required is a special movement of thought which goes beyond mere reading. The outward text has to be read in relation to the inner text. But the inner text is not readily accessible. If the reader is to penetrate through the outer text to the inner text, she must be grasped through the reading of the outer text from the other side. It is not in mastering the object but in being mastered by it that the interpreter achieves a true comprehension of the ontic ratio of the object of faith, and the intellectus that is sought takes place. That means that the attainment of the ratio intellectus that is in conformity with the ratio vertatis hidden in the ratio fidei depends upon a divine decision, and therefore upon grace. That means further that the way to be taken in knowing God begins in prayer and faith.[1]

For those who know the Protestant Reformed history vis-à-vis the Scripture principle they will immediately recognize the type of riff that has been taken by Barth (as distilled by BLM) with reference to the thinking on the perspicuity of Holy Scripture (as that pertains to its inner and outer clarity). Neither Barth or Torrance is thinking too far away from the Protestant Reformation, in fact as Reformed theologians, they are constructively receiving it, and pollinating it with the categories and emphases of the conciliar past; that is, they are receiving the categories of the Protestant Reformation, and reifying them, as we already know, within a Christ concentrated frame. But no matter what they are doing, the point remains that for them, and for many others in the annals of church history, the biblical exegete has no point of reference to interpret Scripture from unless they are doing so from the fact that Scripture’s “depth dimension” is founded upon its ‘inner text’ who is Jesus Christ.

But the above stumbles some, especially the analytically typed. This is why I emboldened the last clause of the passage from McCormack. A depth dimensional reader of Scripture is doing so as a prayer, and from the tilt of the faith of Christ for us. That is, the depth interpreter is reading Scripture in dialogue with its reality as they are participants with Him in the triune life of the living God. This picks up on the Calvinian theme of faith as knowledge of God, and a knowledge of God in a Christ concentrated frame is a con-versant and growing knowledge as the disciple, the biblical interpreter is in constant discussion with the reality of Holy Scripture. It isn’t as if the genuinely Christian exegete is engaging with a relic to be bridged from now to back then. The genuinely Christian exegete knows the “bridge” of all of history, all of salvation reality, all of supranatural reality in the risen and ascended Christ. The Christian exegete speaks to the reality of Scripture, and allows that reality to confront and contradict them, as needed, as the Christian is being transformed from glory to glory. We have a speaking God who continues to speak to us in these last days by His Son. The depth dimensional interpreter takes full advantage of this access we have to the living God through the veil of the broken and glorified body of Jesus Christ. This is its concrete reality, not the secondary means of engagement that the exegete uses with reference to the literary, grammatical, historical components of Scripture. Those are components which have no orientation, and no meaningful place, without Scripture’s ontological reality as founded in Jesus Christ. Selah

[1] Bruce L. McCormack, Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development 1909–1936 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 430 [emboldening mine].

The Pressure of Triune Revelation on the Composition and Reading of Holy Scripture

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The various phenomena referred to in Holy Scripture, is the same phenomena we experience currently in the world. The world of the Bible, not its ANE (ancient near eastern) parallels, is definitive in regard to the way we think about the world. To use extrabiblical data, and read that into the “gaps” of Scripture, is neither safe nor sound. To speculate is to go beyond the things that have been revealed by God (Deut. 29:29). There is an inner-logic to Scripture, but that is biblical not speculative.

This is not to say that gaining an understanding of ANE and Second Temple Judaism, and its nearer antecedents, isn’t valuable towards understanding the cultural and literary milieu Scripture was written in. But it is to say that Scripture is driven by its revealed reality in Jesus Christ; that Scriptural reality, and the Revelation it bears witness to, takes a hold of the cultures and literary elements that make up Scripture, and retexts them with a new meaning from above even as it takes its literary grammar from below (think from the analogy of the incarnation).

On the Biblical Hermeneutical Dilemma: The Art and Science of Biblical Interpretation

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We all have interpretive tradition as we approach the task of exegeting Holy Scripture. Some know this, most, in the evangelical churches, don’t. As Christians we are all faced with the hermeneutical dilemma. That is, we are, as the ‘priesthood of believers,’ as the communio sanctorum, tasked with, and privileged by the calling to encounter and know God through the study of Holy Scripture. But precisely because we are believers, in the plural, this leads to said hermeneutical dilemma. That is, we all arrive at Scripture with pre-understandings, and a host of other culturally conditioned expectations that the text itself really isn’t (or shouldn’t be) subject to. So, as Christian interpreters of the Christian scriptures, part of the toiling we must go through, is to learn to identify our pre-understandings, and cultural conditioning, and then critically question if those pre-understandings help to enhance our respective exegeses of the text, or on the other hand, question if (and this is typically the case) these foreign apparatuses might be polluting and distorting our exegetical conclusions. Most interpreters of Holy Scripture don’t ever really get around to this process; we might call it, as DA Carson does, the process of distanciation; viz. the process of distancing, disentangling ourselves from our dearly held, and ingrained presuppositions, to the point that we might indeed come to better critically interpret the Holy text.

Yet, as I have already noted, most won’t go through this process; it can be painful. Don’t get me wrong, I am not referring to what more popularly has come to be called deconstructionism. No, in fact, what I’m after here is at real crosscurrents with this more popular and naïve approach currently under way by many disillusioned (and often young) Christians out there. Distanciation, is really the thickening process for understanding where we come from ecclesially; not to mention, culturally and personally. It is the process of digging down deep, self-examining, and listening to the past doctors of the Church in a way that might disrupt, disorientate what we have often, naively, come to hold as our sacred cows. For some, these interpretive cows might be the dispensational hermeneutic, for others, the covenantal/Ramist hermeneutic, for others an existentialist hermeneutic, and still yet for others, some form of identarian hermeneutic (i.e., feminist/womanist, queer, Black liberationist, so on and so forth). Whatever our pre-understandings entail, it is imperative that we come to understand what those are, and then shed what might be darkening our understanding of the text; and at the same time, taking on those hermeneutics that might, indeed, enhance a more proximate way towards arriving at our exegetical conclusions.

The primary problem of not going through the process of distanciation is that we end up conflating our said hermeneutic with the biblical teaching itself. That is, we end up so absolutizing our hermeneutic (i.e., dispensational; theonomic postmillennial; biblical patriarchal; Lordship salvationist etc.) with Scriptural teaching that we cannot see a critical distinction between the two. In this scenario, it becomes nearly impossible for genuine, and thus Christian engagement to obtain between competing hermeneutical adherents. Once this stalemate hardens, and it does, all we have left is a hard sectarianism, among the various hermeneutical systems, with the result being discord and back biting among purported brothers and sisters in Christ. In other words, these systems, when siloed so intransigently to the biblical text, and its teaching, lead various Christians to actually question whether or not their respective opponents are even Christians at all.

I’m all for the heated, but well-lit debate! But at the end of the day, the Christian needs to be humble enough to recognize that there is no salvific ultimacy tied to any hermeneutic, that indeed has been contrived under the broader banner of a genuinely catholic orthodoxy. This is why I am a proponent of a Christologically conditioned hermeneutic, by the way. Some scoff at the audaciousness of claiming such a hermeneutic, but for my money it is the only hermeneutic that has the capacity to provide the text of Holy Scripture with the proper orientation and context to arrive at the most proximate exegetical conclusions available.

A Screed on the Relationship Between the Biblical Exegete and Theologian

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When people say that theology isn’t really biblical studies, they fail to understand what theology is doing. Good theology is engaging with the inner theo-logic of the text of Holy Scripture and its reality in Jesus Christ. It’s engaging with the underlying notions that allow the Scripture writers to write and assert what they do about God. It’s identifying the theological ontological ground that sees Scripture in its taxis or order vis a vis as an instrument of the living and triune God. Good theologians are engaging with the Holy, as such, they unswervingly trust that God is a good communicator precisely because God became human in Jesus Christ. The theologian understands that the Bible is living and active because its reality in Jesus Christ is such. The theologian, like Jesus, understands Scripture is all about Him; every jot and tittle. So, when someone says that they are into biblical studies, and yet only engage with the surface presented by the grammar, syntax, literary designs, history, so on and so forth, they have actually failed to engage with the Scriptures more accurately. Biblical studies folks, because of the suppositions typically funding their respective discipline, aren’t ever making contact with the substantial reality of Holy Scripture; they aren’t touching the Holy, only the profane. Good theologians are really the best of biblical exegetes. But of course many theologians aren’t good. Many theologians get caught in the same web that their counterparts in biblical studies do; they get reduced to the content of their own fanciful imaginations and speculations, never touching down in the reality of the Text. These are bad theologians. The theologian doesn’t want to be an Apollos, they want to be a Priscilla and Aquila, who understands the reality of Scripture more accurately. An actual biblical studies person, who is a Christian, would never attempt to enter the holiness of Scripture without being in constant prayer and confession of their sins; they would never think they could read the Bible critically without the reality of Scripture first reading them critically. This necessarily entails that a good biblical studies person is ultimately a good theologian who is grounded in the confession that Jesus is Lord. It is from this holy ground that the Christian can more accurately engage with Scripture. Don’t be an Apollos, be a Priscilla and Aquila.

What Hath the Biblical Critics To Do with the Confessors?

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Last night at work, as I’m prone to do, I was praying and thinking about—for some reason—the role that non-Christian biblical exegetes and commentators can have for the confessing Christian reading of Holy Scripture. When I was writing my Master’s thesis on I Corinthians I used a few commentators who would fit the higher critical non-confessional mold of a biblical exegete; one of these was Hans Conzelmann. He helped me work through some issues that the “evangelical commentators” weren’t. I think such critics can actually provide a fresh view of things without the oft ecclesial accretions that might attend the Christian confessional readings. Of course, the critics have to be critically received, and their limits must be recognized. Even so, there is still some value yet in engaging with such readers of Scripture; only to be constructively and critically received and deployed within the genuinely confessional Christian frame of mind.

I think the above sentiment is something Karl Barth affirms, particularly in his deployment of second naivete. That is to say, the critics only have value insofar that they do; limited by the horizontal vistas they work from. In the end, Barth would say that the critics out-critic themselves by attempting to go beyond the boundaries that they might be useful within. When the critics think and work from naturalist presuppositions, and they are engaging with a supranatural text, they end up seeing things from a muted frame of reference. In reduction they show that Holy Scripture is in fact too kerygmatic, too saga oriented (as Barth would say) for their framework to be of ultimate assistance. Even so, they do see certain things that confessional Christians might miss because of sectarian or other prior religious sociological commitments that might themselves impose upon their reading of Holy Scripture.

On a concluding and sobering note: Conzelmann died in his sins in 1989. He wasn’t critically aware of his limitations, and as such, ended up denying the reality of Holy Scripture; who is, Jesus Christ. Maybe one practical way of using such “exegetes” in our own critical ways, is to pray for them, if they are still alive, and ask that the Lord would open their eyes to the reality and power of God in Christ. That’s the sobering thing, at the end of the day a person can be the most educated genius in the world, and yet, if they don’t bow the knee to Jesus as Lord, the second they die, they will have realized they made a horrific and eternal mistake.

On the Christological Exegesis of the Biblical Text: Christ the Centraldogma of Everything

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The Old Testament makes no sense without Jesus as its centraldogma. It was really only after the advent and development of a post-Enlightenment deconfessionalized naturalist biblical studies movement wherein my thesis statement would make no sense. For the Christian, the idea that the Old Testament has any meaning other than its witness to Jesus, and its fulfillment therein, in principle makes no sense. Jesus himself thought as much: “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me . . . .” There is historical nuance, descriptions of historical narratives, development of historical characters, and much more in the Old Testament. But without their ultimate referent in Jesus Christ, they have no meaning, no context. They only remain a series of potentially inspiring, and variously interesting stories about a nation amongst the nations, but without Jesus Christ as its canonical-contextual ground, again, these stories remain largely aloof to anything relevant towards the meaning of life before God (coram Deo). Barth agrees:

But when they say that this subject is Jesus Christ, who according to the will of God was slain under Pontius Pilate and was raised from the dead by the power of God, we can only say again that the ultimate exegetical question in relation to these passages—the question of their subject—is identical with the question of faith: whether with the Synagogue both then and now we do not recognize Christ. This question obviously cannot be settled by the Old Testament passages as such. The final result of the passages as such is the difficulty. Again, it is naturally impermissible to accept the reply of the apostles solely because we cannot solve these difficulties in the exegesis of the text itself, or because, on the other hand, we share with them an idea that Jesus Christ is supremely fitted to occupy the place where we are pulled up short. The apostles themselves did not reach their answer as a possibility discovered and selected by themselves, or as a final triumph of Jewish biblical scholarship. They did so because the Old Testament (Lk. 24.27f) was opened up to them by its fulfilment in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and because in light of this fulfilment Old Testament prophecy could no longer be read by them in any other way than as an account of this subject. If we accept the decision of the apostles—for the same reasons as they did, compelled by the affirmation that the elect king, of whom they speak, is Jesus of Nazareth, will be not merely possible but necessary as the last word in the exegesis of these passages, the last word! So far we have mentioned His name in our investigation of these passages. We have remained within the Old Testament world and its possibilities. We have tried in this world to bring out and think through what is said there about the elect king. But we have been forced to the conclusion that the entity in question cannot be brought out or apprehended within the Old Testament world: whether we think of it in terms of the monarchy as willed by God, or of the person of the elect king; whether we think of the matter itself or of its unity. Therefore the decisive question: What is the will of God in this matter? and whom does He will for this purpose? is not a question which can be unambiguously answered from the passages themselves.1

Thomas Torrance summarizes what Barth is after this way:

Because Jesus Christ is the Way, as well as the Truth and the Life, theological thought is limited and bounded and directed by this historical reality in whom we meet the Truth of God. That prohibits theological thought from wandering at will across open country, from straying over history in general or from occupying itself with some other history, rather than this concrete history in the centre of all history. Thus theological thought is distinguished from every empty conceptual thought, from every science of pure possibility, and from every kind of merely formal thinking, by being mastered and determined by the special history of Jesus Christ.2

Some people, like Helmut Thielicke, see Barth, and Torrance, respectively, as Christomonist. The idea being that Barth et al. so reduce the contours of Holy Scripture to Jesus, that nothing else is seemingly significant in itself. For the Lutheran, Thielicke, his critique largely stems from his desire to read the Bible through the Law/Gospel dialectic, but for others, the critique of Christomonism simply arises from the facile notion that Barth and company reductionistically reduces all of reality, including Scripture’s, to Jesus Christ. As a Christian, I am left scratching my head in regard to this critique. The Apostle Paul writes, “that their hearts may be encouraged, having been knit together in love, and attaining to all the wealth that comes from the full assurance of understanding, resulting in a true knowledge of God’s mystery, that is, Christ Himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” If Paul is right, and he is, then in what way is seeing Jesus everywhere, and in every way, monist and/or reductionistic? It seems to me that people who make such critiques have already posited a priori some other meaning of Scripture, constructed from some other place than Scripture, about Scripture’s principial meaning as that is found in Jesus Christ alone (Solo Christo).

In certain sectors, there is a lot of talk about theological interpretation of Scripture or theological exegesis these days. But for my money, the only game in the Kingdom, hermeneutically, should really be designated Christological exegesis; at least for the genuinely Christian approach to all things. Barth, and Torrance following, reflect the sort of Christological exegetical approach that I believe every Christian should be about. We see this, even radically so, in someone like Martin Luther, and John Calvin in lesser ways, and I think we ought to see this more today among the exegetes wherever and whenever (which is a huge ask these days) they might actually be found. To not be a Christological exegete only leads to the sort of impoverished biblical exegesis we see attending so much of the evangelical world in our contemporary culture. If all of reality is about Jesus, then this, at least, ought to imply that all of biblical exegesis is self-same. How this gets fleshed out can only happen insofar that the analogy of the Incarnation is allowed to inform our exegetical efforts. Some form of the Chalcedonian Pattern, as George Hunsinger would call this, needs to be the imprimatur of the exegete’s Christian existence. But will the Lord really find such biblical exegetes on earth?

 

1 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics II/2 §35: Study Edition Vol 11 (London/New York: T&T Clark, 2010), 196.

2 Thomas F. Torrance, Karl Barth: An Introduction to His Early Theology 1910-1931, 196. 

Theological Ontology and Biblical Interpretation: How This Impacts People Like NT Wright, Andrew Perriman, and Everyone

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Theological ontology and biblical interpretation are not often paired in the way they should be. Samuel Adams (someone I’ve had correspondence with in the past) wrote his PhD dissertation on this locus; it was published in 2015 with the title: The Reality of God and Historical Method: Apocalyptic Theology in Conversation with N. T. Wright. I just happened upon a Facebook thread, based on a post from a friend, wherein a (unbelieving, as I discern it) NT studies guy (someone I have some history with online) falls prey to the sort of naïve historicist epistemology that someone like N. T. Wright promotes. Someone else who falls prey to this, and someone I have had an argument with in reference to the themes that Adams is promoting in his work is a biblical studies scholar named, Andrew Perriman. In order to “de-thread” the argument I was having with Perriman approximately 5 years ago, I am going to share my response to him, where I also quote salient portions of his press-backs to me. I don’t think many have considered the gravity of these things before, and so I hope this brief exposure will at least pique your interest. Here’s the exchange (at least as I frame it in my responses back to Perriman):

Andrew wrote:

If we are then left with a gulf between our understanding of the Bible and dogmatic tradition, then we have to do something about it. My preference is to regard dogmatics as part of the narrative, as much subject to prevailing worldviews (pace Adams) as New Testament apocalyptic. The answer is not to keep allowing theologians to make scripture say what they think it ought to say.

This is quite a negative view of what theologians do! But since you reject (below) the idea of the ‘inner-logic’ of Scripture, negativity makes sense. What’s interesting, though, is that you don’t seem to hold the same view when it comes to the capacity that historical-criticism can and can’t do. Apparently historical-criticism does not attempt to reconstruct the “inner-history” within which the text of Scripture is located and written within. To me your critique is a double-edged sword, and you ought to fall on it as much as any theologian (if they ought to at all).

The history of interpretation is framed by confessional Christian dogmatics; that is undeniable. Yes, post-enlightenment has moved some beyond confessional so-called pre-critical interpretive practices; but that’s a crying shame. At the same time, I’m not totally antagonistic towards what has happened in the critical and now post-critical periods—there is some value there—but I only see that value tempered by also realizing the role and frame that Christian dogmatics offer, with particular reference, again, to the history of interpretation as a resource for the interpretive process. I’m not advocating an all or nothing, but a some here a some there.

Andrew wrote:

I’m afraid that sounds to me like a theological fiction. To ascribe an “inner logic” to scripture is just the same as the old sensus plenior argument—it’s a way of smuggling meanings into the Bible that don’t belong there.

Eh, I’ve just addressed this above. Historians do just as much “smuggling” ostensibly as do the theologians; not buying that response.

Andrew wrote:

Clearly Israel believed it was participating in history with YHWH. This is not conflating two different models. It is simply recognising that the biblical narrative has to do with a historical community’s experience of God. So I would turn it around: the concrete historical experience of the community is the ground for any more abstract notions of participatory history.

I would flip this on its head (your flip) and say: the concrete particularity of God’s life in Jesus Christ enfleshed and those in union with Him by the Holy Spirit is the ground of experience through which God is known, and by which all other historical particularities in regard to Israel make sense (moving from shadow to substance/telos). Participation is not grounded in an abstract historical experience of the “people of God,” it is grounded first in God’s own participatory life for us in Christ, and it is this vertical reality that implicates how linear history (so called) makes sense in relation to Him and His in-breaking into the world. There is no Israel, there is no history, there is no revelation without that first order reality who is God (In the beginning). If you are going to read from bottom-up (i.e. Israel’s experience of God back to God), then I would suggest the better route, as I just noted, would be to start with Christ (as the par excellence particularity of Israel’s history) and work from there (a posteriori).

Andrew wrote:

… how would the ancients have explained their own metaphysics?—but a very difficult one, because they didn’t ask the questions in the sort of terms that you presuppose; in fact, the question may be anachronistic and meaningless.

This seems really rather strange to me, Andrew! You seem to have much more confidence (maybe of the enlightenment sort) to access what in fact the ancients actually thought. And then you seem be building a whole hermeneutic based upon your confidence and ability to reconstruct the ancient near east psyche. I think Adams is critiquing this very notion, and rightly so! This is about theological ontology and epistemology, and your treatment of things doesn’t seem to critically engage with that reality at all (i.e. the noetic effects of sin etc and how that impacts theological enquiry and hermeneutical/exegetical conclusions). You can assert that what Adams, and what I am saying is meaningless and anachronistic, but that fully misses the point here; again, the point has to do with theological/hermeneutical epistemology which is intextricably tied to theological ontology. You can dig your heals in all you like at this point, you claim a certain access to history, etc, but that does not engage with the elephant in the room which happens to be a theological elephant — this is where Adams’ (and of course I haven’t read him so I’m guessing based upon what you’ve written and knowing in general where he is coming from) thesis I think pretty much leaves your position listless. J

Andrew wrote:

… There’s nothing peculiar about it. The problem is that for 1500 years the church forgot what the original context was and assumed that its dogmatic conclusions were all that was needed to guarantee an accurate reading of the text.

No Andrew, I think this is rubbish! The church did not forget anything (your position is starting to sound a little like the Ladder Day Saints!), the mind of the church, if properly conceived, is first grounded in the life of God’s life in Christ by grace. This takes us back to my early response to you about participation (in this comment). Jesus never abandoned his church, but to read what you just wrote (and what many others in your mode do like NT Wright et al) one would think exactly that; i.e. that God’s presence had been absent until the ball got rolling to its current trajectory (in sectors, like yours, in biblical studies) — that just silly and absurd! In fact there is a movement of theological retrieval and ressourcement that is attempting to draw from the riches that lay in the heritage of the Christian church. Now just because you seem to think that that heritage is either not there or defunct doesn’t make it so — God forbit it! — it just means that you have chosen to believe that the enlightened mind is better suited to access the real life categories of Scripture than is the “pre-critical” mind. But I refuse to accept that, in fact I take it as pretty much blasphemous thinking! If we follow through on your logic God had abandoned his church for 1500 years; the years that gave the church the grammar for the Trinity, the hypostatic union, the homoousious, etc. This is why I actually think you do reject the idea of participatory history, because it is that reality that believes that God has always been present in his church providing dialogically conditioned ways of knowing him through Holy Scripture by the Spirit.

Anyway, Andrew, we are on totally different wave lengths here; as I’m sure you and Adams are. But the hurdle that you haven’t overcome or even really engaged with, as far as I can see, is the hurdle of explicating and engaging with the notion of a theological epistemology (which is a very important piece, even fundamental piece of thinking Christian dogmatically — which is maybe why you haven’t really engaged with it). To simply defer to the mind of the ancients only illustrates your disengagement here (with theological epistemology); because you are already presupposing upon an epistemology that believes it can access the ancients mind unabated, at least enough to say with enough certainty that allows for you to develop a whole hermeneutic that ostensibly gets God in Christ more right than does the Trad of the Christian church (in ALL of its history thus far).

To be clear: I’m not saying there is no value in attempting to reconstruct history, ancient minds, etc; but it is dangerous to presume that that is the basis for establishing a robust hermeneutic. It is dangerous because it remains contingent upon you and others’ capacity to reconstruct the history, and as such is susceptible to winds and waves of the historian’s mind rather than the mind of Christ.

Perriman ended up writing a whole long post in response to my pushback here. All he ended up doing was doubling down on his thesis, without actually responding to my points on theological ontology/epistemology.

I am somewhat known (at least in the online theological world) for my intense focus on prolegomena, or methodological considerations when it comes to doing theology and biblical interpretation. The debate between Perriman and myself ought to illustrate why. I will have to get into explicating further what these things entail more fundamentally in a later post. Suffice it to say that if people do not critically attend to these matters, such people could become lost in a suffocating loss of Christian faith and reality; and this, all in the name of critical realism. The basic point is this: the Christian ground for epistemology is not based in an abstract naked self, but instead in God’s fulsome Self and Being for us in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ. This is where the concrete reality of the real comes to be known; that is as humanity is confronted by the Triune Being who has always already been in the ultimacy of His life as the prius of all that is following.

In nuce: people need to take the noetic effects of the Fall much more seriously. The resurrection says so.