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Author: henry

  • Book Notes: Theology of the Old Testament (Brueggemann)

    Brueggemann, Walter. Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997. ISBN: 0-8006-3087-4.

    As is usual, note that I’m calling this book notes, and to some extent a response, rather than a review. That is more necessary in this case than most because the book is not aimed at a popular audience, and I am not a theologian, much less a specialist in Old Testament theology, and thus not qualified to write a formal review. I’d also be rather late, given publication in 1997!

    That’s one of the key things that struck me while reading this book–the rather substantial difference between Biblical exegesis and even hermeneutics used in its broadest sense and theology. To many, the term “theology” simply refers to any kind of religious studies, but as a technical term it is much more specific than that.

    For example, I can study Isaiah or Ezekiel, look at their historical situation, inquire as to the meaning of particular texts and passages, view them sociologically as a phenomenon of their time(s), and yet not get down to their theology, what they said or tried to say about God. In fact, it’s not even quite that simple, in that one can dispute whether theology is primarily a study about God, or more a study of what certain people said about God.

    In the case of Old Testament theology the question gets thornier, as one asks whether one is studying about God, what individual authors had to say about God, or an overall Old Testament view of God. To divide this further, is one studying the “Old Testament”, which has a name indicating its an element of Christian scripture, or is one studying the Hebrew Bible, in which case one’s study lenses might be quite different. One can even differentiate, I think, between studying the Hebrew Bible as Israelite theology as opposed to Jewish theology, modern Rabbinic Judaism being different from Israelite religion.

    Several elements of my immediate past reading came into play as I read this volume. First, through an accident of how interlibrary loan books arrive, I read Brueggemann’s work shortly after that of Bruce Waltke. It is nearly impossible to compare the two books, though I will try. First, Waltke writes at a more basic level. Neither work is popular, but Waltke’s would more suitably address beginning students in theology than would Brueggemann.

    Waltke is more conservative and traditional. In fact, despite his conservative credentials, Waltke gives more credit to historical-critical methologies than does Brueggemann, though it would be hard to nail that down. Both give some credit to the methodologies, and both criticize them. Despite statements regarding such methodologies, however, I think Brueggemann was more dependent on the results. The division of Isaiah into at least First (1-35[36-39]) and Second (40-55 or 40-66) Isaiah, and possibly Third Isaiah (56-66) is a critical element of Brueggemann’s theology, which he places at the time of the exile. Situating those texts elsewhere, for example in the traditional dating, would make a hash of his theological plan which assumes formation of the canon around the experience of the exile. That is, of course, one of the more obvious results of critical scholarship, but I think it demonstrates that no matter how much we may want to escape the historical questions, it is impossible to do so. More minor examples abound throughout the book.

    In addition, Waltke’s form, which includes individual theologies of the various books, as well as basic introductory material, would work well for a textbook for those without a strong background in Old Testament. Brueggemann, on the other hand, would not be suitable for students who had not worked through a good Old Testament introduction first.

    There was only one negative for me about this book, so I’m going to mention it first. A great deal of the post-modern vocabulary simply gets on my nerves. This may be a personal problem, as I was generally agreeing with the major points made, but I found the vocabulary a bit heavy in comparison to the freight it was carrying. Frequently, I would find that a passage that was quite convoluted in form, and mega-multi-syllabic in vocabulary, produced a fairly straightforward point. (Note to self: Do I do this unto others???) This included the double metaphor of testimony and grammar around which the book is woven. On the other hand, while many of the points were simple and straightforward, they were simultaneously quite profound.

    The organizing metaphor of the book is stated in the subtitle: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy. Brueggemann reads the Old Testament as Israel’s testimony regarding Yahweh. That oversimplifies it a bit, so let me expand. He sees Israel testifying in various voices, and he places this specifically as courtroom testimony. (Please leave all atonement theories out of this; the purpose is different!) In a courtroom an attorney weaves a case out of the testimony of many people, no one of which knows the whole case, but each of which has some piece to add. They may not all meet smoothly at the edges, but the attorney making the case pulls them together.

    Well, not so much with the pulling it together part. Though he uses the metaphor, Brueggemann does not pretend to pull Old Testament theology into a coherent whole in the sense of making a unified case about God. Thus he avoids my usual criticism of Biblical theology, which is to say that the more systematic the theology, the less Biblical. The Bible is simply not systematic in its theology. He uses the term “thematization” as opposed to “systematization” in what may be one of the most profound suggestions of the book.

    He does this by first looking at Israel’s core testimony. I would note again, in passing, that in locating Israel’s core testimony, Brueggemann is most dependent on historical criticism. He then responds with Israel’s countertestimony. This is a very helpful approach, because there is a tension in scripture between the testimony of who God is and how God is experienced. We talk about loving heavenly parent, and at the same time experience the times of God’s silence and even abandonment.

    Israel’s experience in the exile testifies against their core testimony that God is eternally faithful and will not abandon them. It’s profoundly important in understanding Israelite theology, I think, to recognize that many of the strongest proclamations of the faithfulness of Yahweh to Israel were made in the face of actual experience. Some of the strongest statements come from Second Isaiah, for example, and are made from exile in Babylon. This countertestimony is discussed in the second section, from page 317-403.

    Part III discusses Israel’s unsolicited testimony, following the same courtroom metaphor, in which a witness adds things that he things are important, but which were not requested in order to make the original case. The key theme here is partnership, along with the suggestion that Israel comes to demand of God the faithfulness reflected in the core testimony. Brueggeman sees Israel in exile essentially waking God up to his obligations.

    I think this latter point, which is intricately woven into the book through the testimony metaphor, is quite important. Theologians, especially of the more systematic type, often subjugate the actual statements in the text to the demands of the theological system. For example, God can’t possibly change is mind (Genesis 6:6 / repent) or forget something and then remember it (Genesis 8:1). People can’t really be righteous, as was Job. So we try to make the text mean something else. Brueggemann let’s it say what it says, even in some cases where that grates.

    In a final section, Brueggemann discusses how the testimony is embodied, looking at worship, the canon, kings, priests, and so forth. This is probably the most straightforward section of the book, but is a necessary effort to tie things together.

    One point Brueggemann attempts to avoid is reading the Old Testament through supercessionist eyes. He does not see Christianity as a necessary result of Israelite religion as would Eichrodt, for example. He also resists the Christological interpretation of the Old Testament that is espoused by Brevard Childs, with his canonical approach. I would have to say, however, that Childs does have a very strong point to make, in that if one’s canon includes the New Testament, there is no way to conduct canonical criticism without seeing Old Testament passages as part of that canon.

    My own solution here is to use two terms. I use “Hebrew Bible” when looking at it as a document of the historical Israelite religion, and “Old Testament” only when reading it as an element of Christian canon. I believe one’s reading in those two cases is sufficiently different that one must practically regard the source as two different books. Though they contain the same words, those words take on a sufficiently different meaning that dangerous confusion results from pretending they are the same.

    I still regard both uses as legitimate, however, because I see canon as a product of community, rather than the reverse. Each book had its own place in history, but when they are made into a canon, they change roles. This applies even to smaller sections. Isaiah, Ezekiel, or Jeremiah, read as part of the canon, make very different points from what they would read as individual texts from their own historical time.

    In general, I found this book useful, but it also made me quite glad that I specialize more in exegesis than in theology. At the same time it reminds me of how much my role as a popularizer forces me to do theology on a daily basis no matter how I feel.

  • Two Steps Back, and Proof Texts Too

    Via Aristotle’s Feminist Subject, I found the story of the “True Woman” movement. See their manifesto as well.

    Earlier today, John Hobbins was calling for “respectful dialogue” as the “need of the hour.” I like John Hobbins, and he displays great wisdom. Respectful dialogue is both needed and rarely to be had.

    Unfortunately, with respect to the issue of women in leadership, I have a hard time complying with that request. It’s not the nature of the logical arguments involved. I do regard the complementarian position to be an egregious misapplication of scripture, using a collection of particulars to overcome the force of the overarching and underlying narrative. It uses a few comments by Paul to transform the incarnation into some sort of petty power play.

    But that’s not why I’m emotional about this, despite my fairly heavy language in the last paragraph. I read, hear, and speak this issue in the shadow of the many women I know whom God gifted for leadership, and whose behavior these women would call ungodly.

    It’s not that they want to raise children. Many of the women of whom I speak raised families as well, and I do not intend to speak ill of those women–or men–who make a choice to be homemakers. It’s a praiseworthy choice. It’s not so praiseworthy, however, when one pretends that choice makes one spiritually superior, or makes efforts to restrict the choices for other women who may feel somewhat differently.

    At the emotional level I know women who are definitely gifted, ranging from Lucille Knapp, the gifted woman who taught me my first two years of Greek to Dr. Leona Running who taught me such languages as Syriac, Akkadian, and Middle Egyptian, to my wife Jody Neufeld who is a gifted teacher capable of taking spiritual concepts and bringing them down to daily life.

    The problem, you see, is that when I hear someone say that a woman can’t speak or lead in a church, it’s not some abstract thing. I see those women and the myriad of others like them, being told that it doesn’t matter how God has gifted them–they better shut up, go away, and make that other choice.

    Egalitarians can, and should, celebrate women who choose to make their ministry in their home. But complementarians will find it impossible to celebrate those women who choose to exercise their God-given gifts of leadership in the church, or those men who choose to be homemakers.

    And that leaves me with a strongly, even emotionally, held position.

  • Christian Carnival #CCLIV Posted

    . . . at Chasing the Wind.  Enjoy!

  • Evidently the Jesus Seminar is too Religious

    The Christian Post reports on a new effort to study the historical Jesus, known as the Jesus Project. Since I don’t always trust the objectivity of the Christian Post (or anyone else including myself, for that matter), I looked for additional information.

    According to both that source (and others):

    . . . Dr. R. Joseph Hoffmann, chair of the Project and the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion, said that the “The Jesus Seminar had difficulty separating itself from the faith commitments of its members. Its agenda was not exclusively, but in large measure theologically driven. Its conclusions and methods raised more questions than they answered.”

    Many people questioned whether the members of the Jesus Seminar actually had faith commitments, though I know personally that many did and do. Nonetheless, the Seminar remains a relatively radical consensus when the whole of historical Jesus scholarship is examined.

    The new effort is sponsored by the Center for the Scientific Examination of Religion, a “a research division of the Center for Inquiry” [source].

    Simply from the list of names, this looks pretty radical in nature, and the sponsorship is largely skeptical. I have no problem with such a project, though I think that any relatively narrow inquiry is going to, to paraphrase Dr. Hoffmann, “. . .raise more questions than it answers.”

    Note the following as well:

    During the closing conference round-table, Tabor was quick to emphasize that “the Jesus Project repudiates any theological agendas, special pleading, or dogmatic presuppositions.” All members of the project share a common commitment to the importance of applying scientific methodologies to the sources used to construct the Jesus tradition.

    [found in both sources cited]

    I personally am very skeptical of the possibility of repudiating “all theological agendas, special pleading, or dogmatic presuppositions.” In fact, the very claim generates more questions than answers in my case.

    I wish any scholarly group that studies the historical Jesus well, but I’m not setting my expectations very high for this one.

  • Cars for the Public Interest

    Ignoring the day’s flavor of scandal, I want to comment on something I heard yesterday about the auto industry bail-out. Of course, just in case you were thinking the government would be free of corruption, you’ve just had a reminder.

    Chris Matthews last night commented that we needed to get the auto industry to “produce cars for the public interest.” First, we ought to ask just what that phrase would mean. Frankly, I have no idea. One presumes producing more cars that please Chris Matthews and associates.

    I had this really weird idea, however, that when one has a problem one identifies it and then finds a way to solve that problem. Now is the problem that auto manufacturers have not been producing “cars for the public interest?” Well, no, not exactly. The problem is that the auto manufacturers are not making a profit.

    So if the problem is that they’re not making a profit, and thus accumulating the cash reserves necessary to going through difficult times, perhaps the solution would be either that they make a profit, or be replaced by folks who will.

  • Mark – The Mission of John the Baptist

    The following audio comes from a radio program I recorded in 2003.  The scripture is Mark 1:1-8, especially Mark 1:4.

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  • Mark Introduction

    The attached audio is from an introduction to Mark I presented for a radio program in 2003.

    {audio}mark_intro.mp3{/audio}

  • The Worst Argument for Bailing Out the Auto Industry

    I was thinking of this as I watched a few interviews today. I’m still less than at full speed after being sick in bed early in the week, and I’m spending more time on the couch working on my laptop and less at the desk in my office.

    My first inclination was to cite the argument that we already gave $700 billion to the financial industry, so we should obviously be willing to give $25 or $34 or $xx billion to the auto industry. That suggests that if I stupidly spend a large amount of money on some techie toy I thereby license myself to spend additional money on any other toy I may desire. Why not? I’ve already established the principle, no?

    Of course, since I do think the financial system bailout was a bad idea, and has also failed to bail out the financial system, I obviously would find the argument that we ought to do more of the same unconvincing.

    The auto company executives shouldn’t be too surprised they’re getting more scrutiny either, since many congressmen are quite annoyed at the apparent lack of effect of the original bailout and the fact that they really don’t know just how the money is being used.

    But I actually heard what I think is the worst argument from the mayor of Lansing who was interviewed on MSNBC. He refined the “we already bailed out the financial industry” argument so as to make it much worse when he said that since we had bailed out the financial industry we should be willing to bail out the auto companies where, after all, “real” people make “real” products. (Note that this summary is from memory just after watching the interview.)

    When certain Republicans talked about “real” people during the campaign and suggested that those of us on the other side were less patriotic, less American, or didn’t have values, I found it annoying. I also think it’s counterproductive in politics when you suggest people you ought to try to persuade that they are morally defective. (The left prefers to accuse its enemies of being mentally defective instead.)

    But in this case problems come from two directions. First, some of us “unreal” people out here are customers who buy those cars. And I would note that unlike a certain congressman who was advocating the bail-out this week, but was found to be driving a Honda himself, I do own an American car. And no, I don’t have a couple of foreign cars as well–I only own the one American product.

    But further, this entire distinction between the “real” people who produce “real” products is invalid in an economic sense. Without those “unreal” people on wall street, the auto manufacturers would be unable to gather the capital necessary to invest in those factories and create those jobs. We have this bizarre vocabulary that suggests that the “everyday workers” who man the assembly lines “make cars” but somehow the white collar folks do not.

    But the brains the design the cars, the managers who organize the rather complex manufacturing process, the financiers who pull together the money, and those who distribute them all have a major part to play. The assembly line workers would be unable to build any cars without all those people. That’s not intended as a put-down. They also have their part in the process, and an honorable one it is. But that’s no excuse to pretend that they’re the whole operation.

    The best argument may be the economic risk of letting the industry fail with the resulting dislocation. The problem with this argument is that, if the industry is not doing well now, and if we don’t have an actual plan that is likely to make it better later, all we’ll be doing is delaying the day of reckoning. And sort of like an earthquake fault, the more pressure we allow to build, the worse the crash is once it comes.

    The arguments used to pretend that the U. S. auto industry is really much better than their sales and balance sheets indicate don’t give me any sort of feeling of assurance that the current team is going to fix things. When they are told that they’re failing they point to ratings in automotive magazines and good reviews. But good reviews don’t pay the bills. “Unreal” people like me, who don’t work assembly lines but nonetheless need transportation, pay those bills when we choose an American car.

    Of course there is an alternative. Get those magazines and those reviewers to bail out the industry. Apparently they believe the manufacturers are doing well. On the other hand, I’m betting they got their test and/or review cars free.

  • Stories in a Chronological Context

    Several things over the last couple of weeks have called my attention to time.  My pastor preached about it last week, speaking of times of God’s extended silence.  I lost some of it while being sick this week which always makes me a bit tense.  Then I received a copy of 24/7:  A One Year Chronological Bible, which puts Bible readings into a chronological framework.  (I’ll get around to reviewing the Bible in a later post.)  Finally I was asked about God’s answers to prayer and the frequencies of his miraculous intervention.

    As Christians when we read scripture we need to be aware of these long periods of time.  There are times to lose our sense of times, especially when our liturgy calls us to become more aware of eternity and less aware of the present.  It is rare in my experience that the liturgy is successful in this call, but it is certainly worth it, and should be more frequent.  But the very experience of eternity impinging on our limited, dare I say puny, time requires that we be aware of time.

    Stories, on the other hand, tend naturally to give a false impression of time.  You cannot tell a story of a long period of time whilst truly giving the full impression of the extended time of waiting involved.  Frequently you’ll see phrases like “after a long time” or “after several months” or even “years passed.”  For the reader, whether it is a few days or a few years, they are passed in just a moment.

    Which in the ordinary course of reading a story is a minor issue.  You know that time passed for the characters, and you’re glad you don’t have hundreds of pages narrating when they ate, went to bed, got up, or went to the toilet.

    But when you go to reading scriptural stories, which provide us with an example (1 Corinthians 10:6), you need to think about this.  How long was it between one thing and the next.  Consider for a moment Judges 13:1:

    The Israelites again did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, and the LORD gave them into the hand of teh Philistines forty years.  (NRSV)

    Now how do we normally read this story?  Well, when I got it in church, I heard immediately about the arrival of the angel and then we wandered through the story of Samson as one overwhelming chain of miracles.  Of course, with all this miraculous intervention by God, we also shook our heads over Samson’s terrible failures.  How could he, when God was so obviously with him?

    But that view of the story misses two important things.  First, those forty years.  Forty years ago it was 1978, and Jimmy Carter had been president for nearly two years.  Forty years ago I was in college.  Forty years ago the PC was a pretty marginal idea.  Forty years ago there was no internet.  Forty years is a long time, and the Israelites had been under foreign domination for that length of time.

    Second, there’s the lifetime of Samson.  While the story of Samson can be covered in a Sunday School lesson or so, at least as stories are commonly covered in Sunday School, we’re told that Samson judged Israel for 20 years (Judges 16:31).  Twenty years is an awful lot of lifetime in which to hide those miracle stories.  It may be that Samson spent years between those miraculous interventions wondering whether God was going to do things for him.  Yes, we’re told he always had his strength, but it seems to have come into play only rarely.  All things considered, I would guess that Sampson did often long for God’s more direct intervention

    We can apply this principle to the entire Bible story.  I’m frequently asked why God doesn’t act today in the way he acted in Bible times.  Which Bible times?  Do we refer to the hundreds of hears the Israelites spent in slavery in Egypt?  Or perhaps we’re looking for century after century of the divided kingdom.  Maybe instead we should think about the 400 years or so from the time of the return from the exile to the opening pages of the New Testament.  Sure, we have a few interventions under the Maccabbees, but would you really want to suffer what those guys did in order to get a couple of divine interventions?

    My point here is certainly not that we should pray less, or ask less of God, nor is it to cut off hope.  More importantly, I think we need to cut off excuses.  We shouldn’t claim that God is more absent from our lives than he was from the lives of people in “Bible times.”

    Yes, there are moments in time when God’s intervention is pretty frequent, but even then remember that we are being told a few stories that cover a long time.  The book of Acts, for example, relates around 30 years of the history of the early church.  If we spread the number of miracles recorded in Acts over 30 years of the modern church, is it possible that people would complain bitterly about God’s absence?

    Stories are wonderful.  They can be encouraging or instructive.  But in the Bible they form part of a history of how God has intervened.  Understanding how they fit into time can be very important as we try to learn the lessons they offer for our lives.

  • Book: By Schism Rent Asunder

    This is the second book in this series by David Weber.  I reviewed the previous volume, Off Armageddon Reef, here.

    Weber continues the series with more excellent writing.  I think there is nobody in science fiction who can combine exciting characters, excellent military writing, interesting politics, and a plot that keeps you reading like David Weber can. I often find that as series go on my interest drops.  After a time I quit caring what happens next, but that is not true of any of Weber’s series.

    In By Schism Rent Asunder, we get to learn a great deal about the church, its structure, and its scripture.  It’s interesting, and I’m pretty sure intentional, that the various scriptures attributed to the archangels are generally slightly rewritten passages from the Bible or to some extent from other scriptures.

    On the one hand we have religious suppresion and cruelty carried to the maximum degree, then we have a more moderate church.  Yet there remains the question of whether the entire church is based on a lie.  King Cayleb and his Kingdom of Charis have to face these questions along with the much more practical issue of whether they will manage to keep on living while fighting against “God’s church” and its secular power.

    There’s a certain amount of reflection of the reformation period in Europe with elements like excommunication and the interdict brought into play.

    This book is clearly not a conclusion to the story, but it does answer many questions even as it leaves you wondering just what those power sources are under the temple in Zion, and how long can Nimue Alban, also known as Merlin Athrawes manage to remain undetected.