Ways of Reading Scripture: Collected Papers (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen Zum Neuen Testament) 9783161540998, 9783161549557

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Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament Herausgeber / Editor Jörg Frey (Zürich) Mitherausgeber / Associate Editors Markus Bockmuehl (Oxford) · James A. Kelhoffer (Uppsala) Tobias Nicklas (Regensburg) · J. Ross Wagner (Durham, NC)

369

Frances Young

Ways of Reading Scripture Collected Papers

Mohr Siebeck

Frances Young, born 1939; first class honours degrees in Classics (University of London, 1961) and Theology (University of Cambridge, 1963); 1967 PhD, University of Cambridge; 1971–82 lecturer, since 1982 senior lecturer at the University of Birmingham; 1986 elected to the Edward Cadbury Chair of Theology; 1995–97 Dean of the Faculty of Arts; 1997–2002 ProVice-Chancellor of the University; since 2005 retired.

ISBN  978-3-16-154099-8 / eISBN 978-3-16-154955-7 DOI 10.1628/978-3-16-154955-7 ISSN  0512-1604 (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament) Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2018  by Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, Germany. www.mohrsiebeck.com This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that permitted by copyright law) without the publisher’s written permission. This applies particularly to reproductions, translations, microfilms and storage and processing in electronic ­systems. The book was typeset and printed by Gulde Druck in Tübingen on non-aging paper and bound by Buch­binderei Spinner in Ottersweier. Printed in Germany.

Preface I am grateful to Markus Bockmuehl for the suggestion that I should gather together publications of mine concerned with the New Testament for the WUNT series. The fact that the publisher was willing to allow me to produce some new papers to include alongside older studies made this project particularly attractive to me. Now well into retirement I had already been thinking I should like to return to some study of the New Testament. May I here record my immense gratitude to all those at Mohr Siebeck who have facilitated the bringing of this collection to print, especially for their patience with unforeseen delays. In some ways I hardly regard myself as truly a New Testament specialist, though I did teach Greek and New Testament studies throughout my lecturing career. Doing that alongside research in patristics, particularly in patristic exegesis, has constantly raised issues for me about exegesis, doctrine and hermeneutics. This somewhat disparate collection, with its rather all-embracing title, is the fruit of these discrete but overlapping concerns. This work would never have seen the light of day without the assistance of Rev Josephine Houghton, who typed papers not previously in digital form, and also assisted with the considerable editorial task of making references, abbre­ viations, etc., consistent across the volume. Thanks are especially due to her, and also to Rev Dr Andrew Teal of Pembroke College, Oxford, for compiling the Indices, with the assistance of his wife, Rachel, and Chris Long. February 2018

Frances Young

Contents Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XIII Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XV Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Chapter 1: Ways of Reading the Bible: can we relativize the historicocritical method and rediscover a biblical spirituality? . . . 9 I. The historico-critical method . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 II. Biblical Exegesis in the Fathers . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 1. Reading texts at School: the Origins of the Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 2. The subject-matter of scripture – Christ . . . . . 17 3. Doctrinal Reading of Scripture . . . . . . . . . . 18 III. A Model of Interpretation for Today . . . . . . . . . 20

Section A: Christology – from critical scholarship to constructive theology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Chapter 2: Christological ideas in the Greek commentaries on the Epistle to the Hebrews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Chapter 3: A Cloud of Witnesses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 The New Testament Witness . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 I. II. The Development of Patristic Christology . . . . . . 52 III. A Personal Testimony . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 IV. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 Chapter 4: Two Roots or a Tangled Mass? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 I. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 II. First Probings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 III. Digging Deeper into the Past . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 IV. Some Possible Theories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 V. Objections and Alternatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 VI. Fresh Probings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 VII. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

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Chapter 5: The Mark of the Nails . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 Tragic Vision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 I. II. The Passion Narrative as Tragedy . . . . . . . . . . . 112 III. The Resurrection in the Light of the Passion . . . . 113 Chapter 6: From Analysis to Overlay: A Sacramental Approach to Christology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 The complementarity of analysis and imagination . 117 I. II. Analysis and the Chalcedonian definition . . . . . . 119 III. Synthesis and imagination in Paul . . . . . . . . . . . 122 IV. An overlay of texts and images . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 Synthesis and mysticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 V. VI. Sacramental interpenetration . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 Chapter 7: Wisdom in the Apostolic Fathers and the New Testament 131 I. The virtual absence of sophia . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 II. A wider sapiential vocabulary? . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 III. 1 Clement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 IV. The Epistle of Barnabas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 Wisdom in the Apostolic Fathers: conclusion . . . . 139 V. VI. Wisdom in Early Christianity . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 VII. Reassessing Wisdom in the New Testament . . . . . 142 VIII. The Pauline Epistles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 IX. Other New Testament Material . . . . . . . . . . . 146 X. The Gospels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 XI. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 Chapter 8: The Gospels and the Development of Doctrine . . . . . . . 151 The Gospels in the Early Church . . . . . . . . . . . 151 I. II. Doctrine and Gospel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 III. Creeds and Gospels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 IV. The Gospels and Doctrinal Exegesis . . . . . . . . . 160 V. Doctrine, the Gospels and the Biographical Imperative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 VI. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 Chapter 9: John and the Synoptics: an historical problem or a theological opportunity? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 I. Modernity Pinpoints the Challenges . . . . . . . . . 171 II. John and the Synoptics in the Fathers . . . . . . . . . 172 1. One in Four . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 2. John’s difference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174 3. Doctrinal Exegesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178

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III. Can we Learn from the Fathers in the Postmodern Context? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 Chapter 10: Rereading Jesus through rereading the Gospels . . . . . . 183 Second-Century Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184 I. II. The Quest of the Historical Jesus and its implications for reading the Gospels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 III. Reading for Resonances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 IV. Rereading Jesus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203 Appendix: Traces of Jesus in the Pauline Corpus . . 209 V. 1. Love . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211 2. Abba, Father . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212

Section B: New Testament Epistles and their interpretation . . 215 Chapter 11: Notes on the Corinthian Correspondence . . . . . . . . . 217 Note 1. The Integrity of 1 Corinthians . . . . . . . . 217 I. II. Note 2. The Christ-party . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220 Chapter 12: Note on 2 Corinthians 1:17b . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221 The present consensus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221 I. II. Towards a more satisfactory interpretation . . . . . 224 Chapter 13: Paul’s Case for the Defence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233 Are the objections to the unity of this letter cogent? 234 I. 1. 2 Corinthians 10–13 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234 2. Other suspected dislocations . . . . . . . . . . . 236 II. What is the genre of 2 Corinthians? . . . . . . . . . 240 1. Introduction or exordium (προοίμιον – prooimion) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242 2. The narrative (διήγησις – diēgēsis) . . . . . . . . . 242 3. The proof(s) (πίστις – pistis) . . . . . . . . . . . . 242 4. The peroration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243 III. Can objections to this theory be met? . . . . . . . . 244 IV. What was the situation which gave rise to this apology? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248 What critical conclusions matter in order to V. understand the text? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256 VI. Appendix: Thematic and verbal anticipations of 2 Corinthians in 1 Corinthians . . . . . . . . . . . 257

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Chapter 14: The Biblical Roots of Paul’s Perceptions . . . . . . . . . . . 259 The importance of the psalms . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262 I. II. The importance of the prophets . . . . . . . . . . . . 266 III. The importance of the wisdom literature . . . . . . . 273 IV. Paul and the Scriptures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275 Chapter 15: Understanding Romans in the Light of 2 Corinthians . . . 279 2 Corinthians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279 I. II. Romans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283 Chapter 16: The Pastoral Epistles and the Ethics of Reading . . . . . . 291 Chapter 17: The Non-Pauline Letters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305

Section C: The Nature of Scripture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317 Chapter 18: Interpretative Genres and the Inevitability of Pluralism . . 319 Chapter 19: Augustine’s Hermeneutics and Postmodern Criticism . . . 335 I. What is postmodern criticism? . . . . . . . . . . . . 335 II. The socio-cultural location of Augustine’s Christian Instruction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338 1. Rhetorical theories of communication . . . . . . 339 2. Exegesis of literary texts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 340 3. Content and style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344 III. Augustine and Postmodern Criticism: the reference of the text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 346 Chapter 20: Books and their “aura”: the functions of written texts in Judaism, Paganism and Christianity during the First Centuries CE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351 I. Ἑλληνισμός – Hellenismos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353 II. Ἰουδαϊσμός – Ioudaismos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356 III. Χριστιανισμός – Christianismos . . . . . . . . . . . . 359 Chapter 21: Did Luke think he was writing scripture? . . . . . . . . . . 367 Chapter 22: The “Mind” of Scripture: Theological Readings of the Bible in the Fathers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373 The sense behind the wording . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373 I. II. A “more dogmatic” exegesis? . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378 III. The Bible and theology: then and now . . . . . . . . 383 IV. Learning from the past – and improving on it? . . . 385 V. Final words from Ephrem the Syrian . . . . . . . . . 387

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Chapter 23: The Trinity and the New Testament . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389 The “emergence” of trinitarian theology . . . . . . . 390 I. 1. The Monarchian controversies . . . . . . . . . . . 391 2. The Arian Controversy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 398 II. New Testament Theology and the Trinity . . . . . . 400 1. New Testament theology – “myth,” “doctrine,” or what? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401 2. A clearer view? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402 Chapter 24: Sacred text and the transcendence of tradition: the Bible in a pluralist Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407 Pluralist society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407 I. II. The nature of sacred texts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 410 III. The Bible and its attitudes to the “other” . . . . . . . 413 IV. The transcendence of tradition . . . . . . . . . . . . 417

Section D: Concluding Hermeneutical Exercise . . . . . . . . . . 421 Chapter 25: The Dynamics of Interpretation: Jesus and Scripture in Hebrews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423 Text and reader in Hebrews’ scriptural hermeneutics 424 I. II. Jesus and scripture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426 III. The formation of reading communities . . . . . . . . 428 IV. Learning to read scripture from Hebrews and its interpreters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 434 Final Word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 438 V. Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 441 Primary Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 441 Secondary Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 446 Index of Biblical and other Ancient Sources including References . . . 459 Index of Modern Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 480 Index of Subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486

Acknowledgements Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following journals and publishers for their kind permission to reproduce the articles, papers and chapters included in this volume: Cambridge University Press, for ch.  8 , “The Gospels and the Development of Doctrine,” from The Cambridge Companion to the Gospels, ed. Stephen Barton (2006): 201–223; ch.  17, “The non-Pauline Letters,” from The Cambridge Companion to Biblical Interpretation, ed. John Barton (1998): 290–304; and from the Scottish Journal of Theology, ch.  15, “Understanding Romans in the light of 2 Corinthians,” SJT 43 (1990): 433–446. De Gruyter, for ch.  11, “Notes on the Corinthian Correspondence,” from Studia Evangelica 7 (1982): 563–566. Dominican Publications, for ch.  1, “Ways of Reading the Bible: Can We Relativise the Historico-critical Method and Rediscover a Biblical Spirituality,” from Reading Scripture for Living the Christian Life, ed. Bernard Treacy, with Frances M. Young, J. Cecil McCullough and Thomas Brodie (2009): 7–25. Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd, for chs. 3 & 4, two chapters from The Myth of God Incarnate, ed. John Hick (London: SCM Press, 1977): 13–47 & 87–121. Koninklijke Brill NV, for ch.  20, “Books and their ‘Aura’: the Functions of Written Texts in Judaism, Paganism and Christianity during the First Centuries CE,” from Religious Identity and the Problem of Historical Foundation, ed. Judith Frishman, Willemien Otten and Gerard Rouwhorst (2004): 535–552. Louvain Studies, Peeters Publishers, for ch.  9, “John and the Synoptics: An Historical Problem or a Theological Opportunity,” Festschrift for Fr Kenneth William Collins, Louvain Studies 33 (2008): 208–220. Oxford University Press, for ch.  7, “Wisdom in the Apostolic Fathers and the New Testament,” from Trajectories through the New Testament and the Apostolic Fathers, ed. Andrew Gregory and Christopher Tuckett (2005): 85–104; and from the Journal of Theological Studies, ch.  2, “Christological Ideas in the Greek Commentaries on the Epistle to the Hebrews,” JTS NS20 (1969): 150–162; and ch.  12, “Note on II Cor. 1.17b,” JTS NS37 (1986): 404–415. SAGE publications UK, for ch.  16, “The Pastorals and the Ethics of Reading,” from JSNT 45 (1992): 105–120; ch.  18, “Interpretative Genres and the Inevitability of Pluralism,” also from JSNT 59 (1995): 93–110; and ch.  19, “Augustine’s Hermeneutic and Postmodern Criticism,” from Interpretation 58 (2004): 42–55. SPCK Publishing, for ch.  5, “The Mark of the Nails,” from Resurrection: Essays in honour of Leslie Houlden, ed. Stephen Barton and Graham Stanton (1994): 139–153; for

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ch.  6, “From Analysis to Overlay: A Sacramental Approach to Christology,” from Christ: The Sacramental Word. Incarnation, sacrament and poetry, ed. David Brown and Ann Loades (1996): 40–56; for two chapters from Frances Young and David F. Ford, Meaning and Truth in 2 Corinthians (1987), ch.  13, “Paul’s Case for the Defence”: 27–59, and ch.  14, “The Biblical Roots of Paul’s Perceptions”: 60–84; and for ch.  24, “Sacred Text and the Transcendence of Tradition: the Bible in a pluralist society” from Liberating Texts? Sacred scriptures in Public Life, ed. Sebastian C. H. Kim and Jonathan Draper (2008): 75–98. Wiley Global, for ch.  22, “The ‘Mind’ of Scripture: Theological Readings of the Bible in the Fathers,” from International Journal of Systematic Theology 7 (2005): 126–141; and for ch.  23, “The Trinity and the New Testament” from The Nature of New Testament Theology: Essays in Honour of Robert Morgan, ed. Christopher Rowland and Christopher Tuckett (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006): 286–305.

Abbreviations ACW ANCL AV BCBF BETL BJRL

Ancient Christian Writers, New York: Newman Press Ante-Nicene Christian Library, Edinburgh: T&T Clark Authorised Version Bulletin of the Catholic Biblical Federation Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium, Leuven: Peeters Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, Manchester: Manchester University Press CCL Corpus Christianorum: Series Latina, Turnhout: Brepols Centre for Indian and Inter-Religious Studies, Pontifical Oriental Institute, CIIS Rome CSCO Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium, Leuven: Peeters CWS Classics of Western Spirituality, New York: Paulist Press ET English Translation Fathers of the Church, Washington, DC: Catholic University of America FC Press Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller, Leipzig: Hinrich; Berlin: Aka­ GCS demie Verlag GNB Good News Bible Jerusalem Bible JB JBL Journal of Biblical Literature, Atlanta, GA: SBL Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press JEH JSNT Journal for the Study of the New Testament, London: Sage Publications UK JTS Journal of Theological Studies, Oxford: Oxford University Press LCC Library of Christian Classics, London: SCM Press LCL Loeb Classical Library, London: Heinemann and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press LXX Septuagint New English Bible NEB Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, New York: Christian Literature CompaNPNF ny; Oxford and London: Parker & Company NS New Series NT New Testament NTS New Testament Studies OECT Oxford Early Christian Texts, Oxford: Clarendon PG Migne, Patrologia Graeca, Paris 1857–1866 PTS Patristiche Texte und Studien, Berlin: De Gruyter RSV Revised Standard Version SBL Society of Biblical Literature SBLDS Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series

XVI SC SJT SNTS SST TDNT TS

Abbreviations

Sources Chrétiennes, Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf Scottish Journal of Theology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Societas Novum Testamentum Studiorum Society for the Study of Theology G. Kittel, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, trans. G. W. Bromiley (ET Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964–, German original, 1932–). Texts and Studies, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Biblical books Note: various translations are cited, including my own. Gen Genesis Exod Exodus Lev Leviticus Num Numbers Deut Deuteronomy Josh Joshua 1–2 Sam 1–2 Samuel Ps/Pss Psalms Prov Proverbs Isa Isaiah Jer Jeremiah Ezek Ezekiel Hos Hosea Mic Micah Zech Zechariah

Tob Tobit Wis Wisdom Sirach Sir Matt Matthew Rom Romans 1–2 Corinthians 1–2 Cor Gal Galatians Eph Ephesians Phil Philippians Col Colossians 1–2 Thess 1–2 Thessalonians 1–2 Tim 1–2 Timothy Heb Hebrews Jas James

Other Primary Sources Aristotle, Poet. Poetics On the Incarnation Athanasius, Inc.   C. Ar. Orations against the Arians   Decr. Defence of the Nicene Definition Embassy for the Christians Athenagoras, Leg. Christian Instruction Augustine, Doctr. Chr. Barn. Epistle of Barnabas Letter to his brother Quintus Cicero, Ep. Quint. Fratr.   Nat. d. De Natura Deorum 1st Epistle of Clement 1 Clem. Clement of Alexandria, Paed. Paedagogus  Strom. Stromateis Cyril of Alexandria, Comm. Jo. Commentary on John   Comm. Matt. Commentary on Matthew Did. Didache Eusebius, Hist. eccl. Ecclesiastical History   Praep. ev. Preparation for the Gospel

Abbreviations

  Vit. Const. Life of Constantine Hag. Hagigah Herm. Mand. Shepherd of Hermas. Mandate(s) Herm. Sim. Shepherd of Hermas. Similitude(s) Herm. Vis. Shepherd of Hermas. Vision(s) Horace, Carm. Odes To the Ephesians Ignatius, Eph.   Phld. To the Philadelphians   Pol. To Polycarp   Smyrn. To the Smyrnaeans   Trall. To the Trallians Irenaeus, Haer. Against Heresies John Chrysostom, Hom. 2 Cor. Homilies on 2 Corinthians   Hom. Heb. Homilies on Hebrews   Hom. Matt. Homilies on Matthew Josephus, Ant. Jewish Antiquities   J.W. Jewish War Justin, 1 Apol. First Apology   Dial. Dialogue with Trypho Lucian, Alex. Alexander the False-Prophet   Peregr. The Passing of Peregrinus Mart. Pol. The Martyrdom of Polycarp Origen, Cels. Against Celsus   Comm. Jo. Commentary on John   Comm. Matt. Commentary on Matthew   Princ. First Principles Ovid, Metam. Metamorphoses Philo, Confusion On the Confusion of Tongues   Flight On Flight and Finding   Moses On the Life of Moses   Planting On Planting   Q.E. Questions and Answers on Exodus   Q.G. Questions and Answers on Genesis Philostratus, Vit. Apoll. The Life of Apollonius of Tyana Plutarch, Alex. The Life of Alexander Porphyry, Abst. On Abstinence Quintilian, Inst. The Orator’s Education Tertullian, Herm. Against Hermogenes   Marc. Against Marcion   Prax. Against Praxeas Virgil, Ecl. Eclogues

XVII

Introduction The significance of this book must lie, surely, in the way it exemplifies the extraordinarily interesting changes which have taken place in biblical hermeneutics during the last 50–60 years. It consists of articles and chapters published previously over the course of a career as a scholar of early Christianity, together with a few newly composed additions. The focus is on studies concerned with the New Testament, but in a context of enquiries about methods of interpretation, and of exploration of the nature and function of sacred scriptures, with a slant towards theological and doctrinal reading. My principal research interest has been patristics, but my teaching activities for over 20 years were focused on the New Testament. The two areas converged somewhat in my work on patristic exegesis, Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture, which implicitly, though not explicitly, showed up the similarities and differences between ancient and modern interpretation.1 In 2012 a collection of my patristic essays and papers was published by Ashgate in the Variorum series; 2 this collection is my response to an offer to collect together my work on the New Testament. Many of the pieces included here draw upon my awareness of a broader range of early Christian texts than just the New Testament. They also display a range of compositional registers, many being accessible to a wider readership than is the case generally in collections of this kind. A few of those selected, however, are more technical articles concerned with Greek vocabulary and sentence construal.3 As in the earlier patristic collection, the process of gathering together previously published material has provided an opportunity for an introductory overview of the work included. It may seem strange to place first in this collection a piece composed at the end rather than the beginning of the author’s career. The reason, however, is clear: it provides retrospective light, not only on my own developing thought, but on a major paradigm shift that has affected some, if not 1  Frances Young, Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 2  Frances Young, Exegesis and Theology in Early Christianity, Variorium Collected Studies (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2012). 3  This has made it rather challenging to encompass all the articles in one consistent editorial policy, as requested, but in order to do so, the original Greek, transliteration and translation, whether or not such aids appeared in the original publication, have all been provided on the first occasion each word or phrase is used, though not thereafter.

2

Introduction

all, biblical scholarship in the past half-century. The collection as a whole reflects changes in approach in both large and small matters: for some readers the lack of so-called inclusive language in the early essays will be all too noticeable, alongside the assumption that original meaning can be distilled from historic texts if you set about it with the right linguistic and historical tools. When I began research, the dominant ethos of New Testament studies was entirely historical, as indeed was the approach to patristic study, geared as it was to tracing the development of doctrine in the first four to five Christian centuries. As postmodernism raised questions about objectivity and textual meaning, both exegesis and doctrine would be approached with rather different perspectives. Chapter 1, “Ways of Reading the Bible,” produced for a predominantly Roman Catholic conference on biblical scholarship, sets out the methodological issues as perceived towards the end of my intellectual journey, while subsequent papers are evidence of various stages along the way. My initial research at postgraduate level was to be a study of patristic exegesis of Hebrews. From the beginning, however, I was drawn to doctrinal and hermeneutical issues, and this proved a distraction from engagement with the epistle’s exegesis as such. In the end, my doctoral thesis focused on sacrificial ideas in early Christian writings from the New Testament to John Chrysostom, tracing the impact of Greco-Roman and biblical understanding of sacrifice on interpretation of the death of Christ, the eucharist and other aspects of Christian practice in the early church.4 An early paper, figuring here as chapter 2, similarly engaged with doctrinal issues, demonstrating as it did the influence on patristic exegesis of Hebrews of fourth-century christological preoccupations. Thus it exemplifies the hermeneutical point made in the opening essay that readers’ interests and questions materially affect the way a text is read – there is no presuppositionless exegesis. It also illustrates a related point that, while many of the same processes are at work in exegesis ancient and modern, differing interests and cultural presuppositions materially affect the outcome. It is, of course, by hindsight that such observations are possible. At the time the exercise was conceived entirely in terms of the historico-critical interest in what people thought back then, and what were the influences upon them. As indeed were conceived the following two essays in section A, originally published as chapters in the notorious volume, The Myth of God Incarnate.5 My involvement with that project was consciously driven by the sense that the majority of believers were in some sense docetist in their understanding, unable to take the human, historical Jesus really seriously and innocent of the inevitable implications of a truly historico-critical reading of the New Testament. Its reception did indeed highlight the gap between the scholar and the pew, exacer4  Published as Frances Young, Sacrificial Ideas in Greek Christian Writers, Patristic Monograph Series (Cambridge, MA: Philadelphia Patristic Foundation, 1979). 5  John Hick, ed., The Myth of God Incarnate (London: SCM Press, 1977).

Introduction

3

bated as reactions were by the mass media, much to my own discomfiture. Some 40 years later I am not ashamed to republish my contributions to the volume; they gathered together a whole range of cultural parallels to early Christian claims about Jesus, historical material which was and is routinely discussed among scholars. This gives these chapters a certain perennial usefulness, but there is a further point in their resurrection: from a later perspective they show how profoundly the critical approach challenged traditional Christology, and how inadequate the historico-critical method was for discerning scriptural meaning. It will be evident by now that I was somewhat preoccupied with Christology in my early researches – hence the focus of section A, which moves from critical and historical approaches to Christology to constructive theological reading. Postmodern questions have enabled a more complex appreciation of the nature of truth and knowledge, a wider perspective on what might constitute meaning, a recognition of the inseparability of fact and interpretation, a deeper readiness to value insight and intuition, multiple meanings, even paradox and ambiguity, and a willingness to value literary criticism as highly as historical analysis. This last move is reflected in chapter 5, entitled “The Mark of the Nails,” which springs from a fundamentally literary question: it argues that, even with the apparent resolution of resurrection, the drama of Jesus’s story is fundamentally tragic. Tragedy exposes the truth, and as tragedy the passion-story becomes “a universal narrative, a story told by an inspired poet, not a mere chronicler or historian.” Furthermore, its atoning power is revealed by its association with tragedy’s origin in cathartic rituals. Thus, the piece exemplifies the point that meaning and truth are found not in facts painstakingly established through ­historico-critical argument, but through interpretation and insight. The new intellectual environment also enabled a return to Christology some 20 years later: the outcome appears here as chapter 6. Tackling the view that the Chalcedonian Definition is incoherent, a view espoused by the editor of The Myth of God Incarnate, John Hick, it defended, on the one hand, the analytical approach of that historic statement as essential to safeguard Christianity from popular tendencies, either to divinize Jesus in ways analogous to pagan mythology, or to give an inadequate account of the Son of God as a mediating confusion of divinity and humanity, neither fully one nor the other; and, on the other hand, in a bid to re-present the identity and significance of Christ as traditionally conceived in Christian theology, it explored the synthetic thinking of, particularly but not solely, St Paul. His overlaying of scriptural texts produces, not so much a collage, as “a synthetic whole in which they all penetrate and illuminate one another.” Furthermore, being utterly other, “divine being could be both differentiated from and mystically identified with another being.” Thus, the article implies that neither exegesis nor doctrine need remain trapped in the reductionism of modernity’s critical analyses.

4

Introduction

Chapters 7 and 8 from a further ten years on might seem to evidence a reversion to sharply critical methods. Demonstrating that the first incontestable christological use of Proverbs 8:22 ff. is to be found in Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho in the mid-second century, chapter 7 on “Wisdom in the Apostolic Fathers” makes the case that anachronistic doctrinal reading of the New Testament persists, despite the century and a half of modernity’s dismantling of the claims to find Christian doctrine in scripture – indeed this piece of work on wisdom undermined my own use of Wisdom-Christology in earlier papers (chs. 3, 4 and 6), where my assumption had been that Paul, not to mention the author of John’s Gospel, had correlated with the pre-existent Christ the personified figure of God’s wisdom found in Proverbs 8:22 ff. and subsequently in the ­Deutero-canonical books of Ecclesiasticus and the Wisdom of Solomon. The following chapter on “The Gospels and the Development of Doctrine” also uses critical methods to show that the Gospels had little real impact on doctrinal development: indeed, conversely, credal confessions and doctrinal disputes influenced the identification of approved gospel narratives rather than vice versa, and even affected the formation of the gospel texts. Later on proof-texts certainly figured in doctrinal argument, but they were drawn from right across scripture; appeal was not primarily to the gospel texts themselves – which were in any case invariably read in the light of doctrinal interests and often yielded ambiguous answers to the questions in debate. One of those questions arose entirely from the common assumption since Justin that Proverbs 8:22 ff. did refer to the pre-existent Christ, an assumption deriving from the second-­century impulse to search the prophetic scriptures for clues to identify the Christ-figure. The effect of these two pieces is to demonstrate that critical methods remain key to understanding the profound “otherness” of the reasoning and exegesis which produced classical Christian doctrine. Only by understanding this can we work out how to read scripture Christianly in a totally different intellectual environment, whether modern or postmodern, a point made even clearer by the following article (ch.  9) suggesting we might learn from the Fathers to treat the ­conundrum of the relationship of John’s Gospel to the Synoptics as a theological opportunity rather than a historical problem. Needless to say this brief if suggestive article scarcely begins to work out what that might mean. Thus, the various essays gathered in section A pose a series of provocative questions about Christology in particular, doctrine in general and, above all, how to read the Gospels Christianly. The newly composed chapter 10 suggests a way to reread the Gospels so as to reread Jesus, both as a historical figure and as the catalyst for Christianity, by being more methodologically open to reading for resonances and to respecting memory as a clue to the impact of Jesus. That Jesus was impelled by a scripture-shaped vocation to live and die for God alone is a conclusion some may regard as too great a concession to traditional Christian belief and a betrayal of critical scholarship. Yet it could be argued that

Introduction

5

it is not only true to the gospel texts, but something like this can alone account for the rise of Christian belief, a point perhaps further confirmed by the appendix to this essay: considering the Pauline evidence does, after all, introduce the earliest material we have for assessing Jesus and his impact. This also provides some transition to the following section. For the essays in section B mostly derive from a period in my career of intense engagement with the interpretation of the Pauline and post-Pauline Epistles. The works gathered here were almost all produced during the research process for two books. The first of these, Meaning and Truth in 2 Corinthians, was a joint project with David Ford – a deliberate attempt to build bridges between New Testament criticism and systematic theology. 6 Key to the book were the hours we spent debating how to translate each phrase and sentence, each paragraph and section of the letter. The outcome demonstrated how much, in matters of exegesis and interpretation, it all depends on what questions you ask of the text. Two of the chapters from my pen are included in this volume as chapters 13 and 14, not least because they presented challenges to the general consensus of New Testament scholarship while equally engaged with the questions concerning Paul’s own meaning and intention within his historical context. In the case of these two chapters, as well as the two articles that here precede them (chs. 11 and 12), literary, rhetorical and patristic readings became the genesis of fresh insights into the purpose and context of 2 Corinthians in particular and the Corinthian correspondence in general. One of our important contentions was that 2 Corinthians, as in effect Paul’s apologia pro vita mea, should provide the best access to what made Paul tick, and the following article (ch.  15 in this collection) was my attempt to test that out by reading the Pauline classic, Romans, in the light of our findings, rather than letting Romans lead the shaping of Pauline theology as it has done predominantly since the Reformation. The second book project arose from a request to contribute a short volume on The Theology of the Pastoral Letters to a series focusing, more or less one by one, on the theology of the New Testament writings.7 The associated article included as chapter 16 specifically tackled the question how to read appropriately texts generally recognised as pseudonymous. Here the consensus of New Testament historical scholarship was simply accepted as most plausible, and attention focused on the implications of such a conclusion: how were pseudonymous texts to be treated respectfully? How were they to function as scripture? Exploring how to read them ethically drew the discussion into an exploration of the interactions between author, text and reader, anticipating the dynamics traced in chapter 1. 6  Frances Young and David F. Ford, Meaning and Truth in 2 Corinthians (London: SPCK, 1987; republ. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2008). 7  Frances Young, The Theology of the Pastoral Letters (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

6

Introduction

The final piece in this section had a different genesis, which explains the curious range of material it covers. Gathering together the “non-Pauline letters,” with the exception of the Johannine epistles, might seem at first an arbitrary project generated solely by the exigencies of covering everything in a volume on biblical interpretation. Intriguingly the result produced far greater coherence than anticipated. For the material covered, Hebrews and the Pastorals, James and the Petrines, raised similar questions. All are most likely pseudonymous, all ask us to determine how they relate to Paul, and all seem to pose issues about the next generation, not least about the possibility of various different forms of early Christianity. Other questions raised in common by these diverse little epistles concern (1) the perceptions which they carry of their relationship with Jewish history, together with their interpretation of the Jewish scriptures, (2) their development of a Christian lifestyle, not least in response to persecution, and (3) their warnings against false teaching and search for the true tradition. If section A explored the “Gospel,” with an eye to the doctrinal significance of the gospel texts, while section B focused on the collected “Apostle,” section C turns to the function and nature of scripture. Function is implied in the first article, which considers the way in which interpretation is affected by the generic context in which it takes place: commentary, homily, theme-study, literary-­ critical study, church report, sermon, liturgy, hymnography, even systematic theology. The advantages and drawbacks of each context are considered, and the question raised whether we should expect exegesis undertaken in one genre to work effectively in another – indeed, whether we should expect scholarship and preaching to be related as master and slave. A plurality of meanings is perhaps inevitable, depending on what is asked of the text, how it is meant to function. The second piece in section C, commissioned for a journal issue focusing on Augustine, considers the similarities sometimes claimed between Augustine’s theory of signs and postmodern semiotics, highlighting the substantial differences in overall intellectual context, and suggesting not only that those similarities can be overplayed but that Augustine might have something significant to say with respect to certain postmodern trends. The perhaps surprising inclusion of this piece arises from the fact that it provides an overview and critique of postmodern approaches to interpretation, while also showing how Augustine could at once approach the language of scripture with a certain scepticism and insist on the essential truth of scripture. Thus it leads naturally into the following papers in which the very notion of scripture is explored. What is it after all which distinguishes scripture from other literature? In “Books and their ‘Aura’” this question is raised by exploring the functions of written texts in the Judaism, Paganism and Christianity of antiquity. In general books were venerated in a way we can hardly imagine; for miraculously they carried the wisdom of ancient, inspired and revered seers over generations. For Jews this was enhanced by the affirmation that their sacred books contained the

Introduction

7

Word of God. Against this background the Christian attitude to books at first seems surprisingly ambiguous: roughly speaking, authority shifted away from books to Christ as the Word of God, though books provided crucial testimony to that. So, eventually, a canon of authoritative books provided the church with texts functioning as foundation documents, as doctrinal and moral guidebooks, and as a key element in the liturgy, books read and interpreted in homilies, processed with candles and incense, becoming a kind of “icon” or “image” of the divine. Inserted immediately after this discussion is a brief new essay asking the question, “Did Luke think he was writing scripture?” This implicitly highlights those ambiguities associated with the term “scripture,” while at the same time enabling some consideration of the process towards canonization during the second century. The next pair of articles gives more consideration to the relationship between scripture and doctrine. In the first (ch.  22) ways in which the Fathers sought doctrinal truth through a search for the “mind” of scripture as a whole are contrasted with modern historical readings, and the question is raised how far their doctrinal legacy can remain valid. The suggestion is that systematic theology needs to justify the orthodox doctrine it interprets as an appropriate reading of scripture in our very different intellectual environment. The second turns specifically to the doctrine of the Trinity, avoiding the usual developmental model and asking whether the doctrine does or does not reflect the implications of the New Testament writings. It traces the building up of the trinitarian superstructure through deduction from, and argument about, the scriptural texts, and raises the question whether the result permits a better view of what the New Testament is about. So, through addressing a key example it potentially provides a way of responding to the challenge of the previous piece. The climax of section C is a piece written in a more popular register and with a far wider horizon, that of contemporary religious pluralism. Telling parallels are drawn between different religious traditions with regard to the cultic meaning and liturgical function of sacred writings, something which lies beyond any quest to read with understanding; while the apparent exclusivity of different, potentially rival, scriptures is challenged by highlighting the way they point to transcendence of sectarian perspectives, the Christian Bible providing a classic example. Thus implicitly the question is raised: how to read scripture as scripture. For in the end that is the real question raised by this whole collection. So, as a concluding hermeneutical exercise, I return after some 50 years to the exegesis of Hebrews, with which my research career and this collection began, this time seeking to learn something from Hebrews’ own approach to reading its scriptures – what Christians call the “Old Testament.” Two aims shape the enquiry: the first is to discern what Hebrews itself is all about; the second is to discover how to read scripture Christianly and as scripture, including Hebrews itself. It turns out that this means reading scripture not just as a collection of

8

Introduction

disparate texts from the past, but as a body of text which illuminates the present, text and reader being judged in the light of Christ, and drawn into the dynamics of scriptural living through hearing the Word of God in the context of liturgy. Thus, the essay reads Hebrews, and ultimately scripture, with bifocal vision – one eye on the demands of the academy, another on those of the ecclesia. That scripture is like an inexhaustible fountain was the suggestion of Ephrem Syrus in the fourth century.8 This collection of essays demonstrates that the interpreter of scripture cannot expect to come up with one incontestable, universal meaning appropriate to every age and context. Rather the riches of scripture lie in its potential to generate meanings that transform people’s lives in a multitude of ways, pointing beyond itself and themselves to the elusive yet revelatory reality of God’s love in Christ.

8  Ephrem Syrus, Commentary on the Diatesseron, 1.18–19, Syriac text: S. Ephrem, Commentaire de L’Évangile concordant, version arménienne, ed. and Latin trans. L. Leloir, CSCO 137, 145 (Leuven: Peeters, 1953). See the end of ch.  22 for quotations.

Chapter 1

Ways of Reading the Bible: can we relativize the historico-critical method and rediscover a biblical spirituality? * In this paper I shall attempt three things. I shall first outline the methods of biblical interpretation that have dominated the modern (as distinct from the past and the postmodern) period, remarking on the value and importance of the so-called historico-critical challenge to traditional interpretation, as well as its pitfalls.1 Secondly I intend to provide comparison and contrast by looking at the methods of interpretation used in the early church, briefly indicating its legacy in the medieval four senses of scripture.2 I propose, finally, to develop a model of interpretation 3 whereby we can hold this together with the historico-critical method, with benefits from both, while defining lectio divina against this background, and offering a doctrinal model of Holy Scripture which could undergird this.4 So I shall not suggest that we discard the historico-critical method, but rather put it into relation with past approaches so that it can be transcended.

*  Originally

published in Reading Scripture for Living the Christian Life, ed. Bernard Treacy, with Frances M. Young, J. Cecil McCullough and Thomas Brodie (Dublin: Dominican Publications, 2009): 7–25. 1  In this section I will eschew footnotes, since it simply summarizes for the general reader already well-known material. 2  In this section I am reproducing and adapting my own work published elsewhere, e.g. “The Rhetorical Schools and their influence on Patristic Exegesis,” in The Making of Orthodoxy, ed. Rowan Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989): 182–199; republished as ch. IV in Exegesis and Theology; “Interpretative Genres and the Inevitability of Pluralism,” JSNT 59 (1995): 93–110, reproduced as ch.  17 of the present volume; Biblical Exegesis; “The Interpretation of Scripture,” in The First Christian Theologians, ed. G. R. Evans (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004): 24–38. For detailed footnotes these should, for the most part, be consulted. 3  This was originally published as “The Pastorals and the Ethics of Reading,” JSNT 45 (1992): 105–120, and is reproduced in ch.  16 of the present volume. 4  This has previously been outlined in Frances Young, The Art of Performance: towards a theology of Holy Scripture (London: Darton Longman & Todd, 1990).

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Chapter 1:  Ways of Reading the Bible

I.  The historico-critical method A number of things contributed to the rise of the modern historico-critical method: In the fifteenth century the Renaissance and the work of great scholars like Erasmus reminded people that the word of scripture did not come in the Latin of the Vulgate, but rather Greek was the language of the New Testament, and what Christians call the Old Testament was originally in Hebrew. As printing superseded manuscripts, questions about the differences between the handwritten witnesses became significant, and the attempt to find what lay behind these differences, so as to provide printed editions of the pristine, uncontaminated original, became paramount. So one big factor was the drive to get back to the original and pare away all the mistakes and misinterpretations that had accumulated over the centuries. This has to be important. We all know that we cannot make things mean what we like: we argue over meaning in everyday life, sometimes because we have misheard, sometimes because we have not grasped the point the other person was trying to make; occasionally the person will say, “I said so-and-so but I really meant so-and-so.” In other words language carries meaning, and we cannot arbitrarily attribute meanings to words or sentences which do not fit them. To understand something requires the establishment of exactly what was said in the original language, and that involves acquiring the expertise to do it. A second factor was the rise of what has been called the romantic view of what happens when one reads a text. In the nineteenth century it was famously described as “thinking the author’s thoughts after him.” So primacy was given to authorial intention – the meaning lay in what the author had in mind when he wrote it. So in reading any text from the ancient world, the Greek and Latin classics as well as the Bible, the first thing was to grapple with the question what was in the author’s mind. In the case of scripture this meant establishing who the author was, with the time or occasion of the writing and how it fitted into the author’s situation and purposes, so as to discern the original meaning. Dating, biographical details, events and relationships would provide clues to authorial intention; so reconstruction of the original situation was fundamental. This too has to be important. In our everyday arguments about meaning we sometimes find a person saying, “You misunderstand – I was referring to something else.” We certainly will understand what we read better if we know something of the circumstances. Paul provides the most obvious example: he was writing letters to his congregations about all kinds of problems in the churches, and if we can reconstruct what was going on we shall get his point much better. Then alongside this was the rise of what has been called historical consciousness: that is, the sense that back then was not the same as now. Another famous

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11

quotation is “The past is a foreign country.” People grow up within a culture which shapes their whole way of thinking, and people think differently in different cultures. That applies not just across the globe in different areas, but across time in different periods. So uncovering that other world where the author lived, becoming acquainted with the author’s context, cultural assumptions, influences, sources, through studying parallel literature which could illuminate what the author might have meant – all this became crucial, and it remains so. There is a lot more to translation than simply substituting the words of a different language, since all kinds of resonances and assumptions are carried for people whose culture it is. You need to enter the biblical world with an informed imagination. Here too the developing science of archaeology had a big contribution to make, setting the material in the Hebrew Bible in the wider culture of the Ancient Near East as it was rediscovered through the unearthing and decipherment of hieroglyphs and cuneiform. But the sense of the otherness of the past also meant asking whether the religious and theological ideas were really the same as ours, and it encouraged attempts to make implausible narratives fit modern understanding. For example, scientific developments challenged the possibility of many of the miracle-stories in the Bible: so sceptics made hay with the credulity of believers, and serious scholars looked for cultural explanations – “What really happened was so-andso, but people back then didn’t understand the world the way we do, so they imagined it happened in a way we cannot believe it did.” The past is a foreign country. One can immediately see how these three contributing factors would drive the enterprise that has been called the “Quest for the Historical Jesus” – the Jesus of History had to be distinguished from the Christ of Faith, so that we could uncover what really happened. We can also see how the historico-critical method could enable theologians to meet the scientific challenges to the Bible’s accounts of creation – these stories came from a pre-scientific culture, and reflect the understanding of the Ancient Near East. These are just two of the consequences which have caused controversy and still do, in the deep divisions between so-called liberals and fundamentalists. The important thing to notice is that scholars of both those opposing camps are in fact stuck with the historico-critical method: the original meaning, or the literal meaning understood in those terms, is the starting point. The particular kind of literal fundamentalism that is around today in conservative Christianity is the child of modernity. It is not traditional interpretation. It is concerned with the factuality of the events behind the text, and shares this with so-called liberal scholars. All alike agree that the original meaning is the only valid meaning. It is, we might say, an entirely archaeological approach.

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Chapter 1:  Ways of Reading the Bible

The biblical scholarship of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has been dominated by these assumptions. To understand the Bible properly you need to be expert in the languages and cultures of all the different periods from which the biblical books come, which means even the experts become narrow specialists in particular bits of the Bible, and ordinary readers are dependent on the experts if they are going to understand the scriptures. That understanding means understanding what the texts meant originally, and it is not the job of the experts to tell us what it might mean for us now. This latter problem has given rise to hermeneutics, which explores the philosophy of how texts from another world can mean anything to us in ours. But despite all these problems with the method it has had enormously important fruits. It has meant, for example, that Jews and Christians could join together in a common enterprise as they tried to understand the same texts in their historical context. And since Vatican II Roman Catholic scholars have been able to join in the same project on the same terms. So it has been ecumenically important that there has been a common understanding of what the appropriate methods of interpretation are. It has also enabled study of the Bible to be conducted in the public domain, and its meaning debated in the academic world, without reference to any prior commitment or belief. However, many of these assumptions are breaking down in what has been called the postmodern context, and their disadvantages are becoming clearer. We turn to our second objective – to outline by comparison and contrast the approach to biblical interpretation found in the Church Fathers.

II.  Biblical Exegesis in the Fathers Patristic biblical interpretation was largely dismissed by the modern historico-­ critics because in their terms the Fathers really had no historical sense, and their so-called allegory allowed any meaning to be read into the text. Yet paradoxically commentaries still in fact cover much the same ground as they did back then, though often with rather different outcomes. It is important to realize first how much more like a school than a religion the early church was. The apologists had to respond to the charge that Christians were atheists because they had no temples, offered no sacrifices, in fact did nothing recognizably religious. They were more like philosophers, with teachings (= dogmas, doctrines) about the way the world is and how you should live your life (metaphysics and ethics); they gathered round teachers to read texts and interpret them.

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1.  Reading texts at School: the Origins of the Commentary We need to understand the physical reality: handwritten copies in the form of scrolls or codices, with no punctuation or even word-division, though some paragraph distinctions. Did all the copies in the classroom have the same wording? Had the text been tampered with? How were the words to be divided where there was ambiguity and different possibilities? “Correct reading precedes interpretation,” writes one ancient textbook.5 The first stage, then, was to establish the text – and as we have seen this was recovered in early modern biblical scholarship as a primary issue. The Fathers are aware of these contingencies and at crucial points they are discussed. In the ancient world the written text was regarded rather like a tape is now – it was a recording of speech. Reading was generally aloud rather than in people’s heads, and the object was recitation of the text, a kind of re-play. Sometimes tone of voice determines meaning which is not indicated in the written form: a statement could become a question if read differently, or it might be ironical – in other words it might actually imply the opposite of what it said. Such things are often discussed in commentaries, and similarly doubtful texts were discussed by the Fathers. Then there is grammar, and this involved parsing, vocabulary, and identifying figures of speech. Parsing words could show how they fit together in sentences – commentators still discuss such things where the original language is unclear or ambiguous. In vocabulary, it was important to explain ancient words no longer in everyday usage, or words with specialized senses in a particular body of literature: in the schools Homer presented problems, in the church the translationese of the Septuagint – in both cases exegetes would collect lists of instances and examples to show how the words were used in the relevant body of text, and commentators still do this. It was also essential to identify figures of speech, such as irony, but also metaphor, parable, hyperbole, and other techniques adopted to catch attention or reinforce the point. These were called tropes or turns of language. They remain current in our everyday speech: my children could always play with the non-­ literal character of language, teasing with a phrase like “Mum’s climbing up the wall.” In similar vein, what the Fathers were clear about is that you cannot do things like taking “God is my Rock” according to the letter, or literally, and worship the Standing Stone on the hill. The ancients also loved etymology, explaining the meanings of words by analysing their supposed roots – a good example occurs in the New Testament: the Hebrew roots of the name Melchizedek mean King of Righteousness, and he 5 Quintilian, Inst., 1.4–9 provides a general account of what is summarized here; Latin text and ET: The Orator’s Education, ed. and trans. H. E. Butler, 4 vols., LCL 124–127 (London: Heinemann and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1920–1922).

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Chapter 1:  Ways of Reading the Bible

was King of Salem = Peace (though it was an alternative name for Jerusalem). In the Epistle to the Hebrews this initiates a reading of the Genesis passage as pointing to our High Priest, Jesus Christ. Now we can see how the same techniques of identifying grammatical characteristics in the language produce different outcomes: the modern interpreter would keep Melchizedek firmly placed in his historical (or perhaps pre-historical and legendary) place, while making similar comments about the meaning of his name. Allegory may grow out of linguistic analysis. For language always points beyond itself. So far we have looked at the way they attended to the wording, and their recognition that the words point beyond themselves. The phrase we might translate as “literal” did not mean literal in the modern sense, but rather this careful attention to the “letter” – to the nature of the language being used. All this would be called τὸ μεθοδικόν (to methodikon). The next stage was called τὸ ἱστορικόν (to historikon): We have to grasp that this did not mean “historical” in our sense. The Greek word means “investigation,” and this implied enquiry concerning unexplained allusions in the text to myths or well-known stories, characters, events, heroes, legends, facts of geography or history – explanatory notes of all kinds. This potentially distorts the reading of the text by distracting from what the text is about to what the commentator finds problematic or interesting – Origen offers pages of comment on the “pearl”: 6 he writes down everything he could find out about pearls and where and how they form, showing off his learning, but hardly increasing our grasp of what Jesus was getting at when he spoke of the pearl of great price. Among the Fathers, Origen may be identified as the first really professional biblical scholar who produced commentaries. These have been described as “a strange mixture of philological, textual, historical, etymological notes and theo­ logical and philosophical observations.”7 Exactly so. Commentaries are still a bit like that because they arise out of following through a text providing notes and explanations as they go along in order to explain some difficult point in wording or reference. Comments are problem-oriented, often taking up ­problem-points discussed by earlier commentators, or noting new difficulties – there is no comment where the meaning is obvious. One ancient commentator remarked that it is the job of the commentator to deal with problems, whereas the task of the preacher is to reflect on words that are perfectly clear and speak about them. 8 6 Origen, Comm. Matt., 10:7–10, Greek text: Matthäuserklärung, ed. E. Klostermann, vol.  10 of Origenes Werke, GCS (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1935); ET in Allan Menzies, ANCL, additional vol. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1897). 7  J. Quasten, Patrology, 3 vols. (Westminster, MD: Newman, 1953–1960), 2:45–48. 8  Quoted by Maurice Wiles, who refers it to the introduction to Theodore’s Commentary on John, a work extant only in Syriac, in “Theodore of Mopsuestia as Representative of the

Chapter 1:  Ways of Reading the Bible

15

This piecemeal approach to interpretation was mitigated by paraphrase and summary. Paraphrase is a kind of interpretative translation – not word for word, but bringing out the meaning in another way (Targum would be an example); but the way something is said subtly changes its impact and possibly its meaning. Different paraphrases may bring out different nuances and different potential layers of meaning. I said earlier language carries meaning and you cannot make it mean what you like, and yet language is not rigidly finite either. We may not be able to determine a single definitive meaning. Exegesis is a process of substitution, but that very substitution produces slightly different tones and senses. Summary derives from the ancient schools who made a distinction between the subject-matter and the wording/style: the wording was the clothing in which the subject-matter was dressed. They recognized there were many different ways in which the same thing could be said, and often insisted that the style should be appropriate to the subject. As they read texts they sought to discern the hypothesis or argument underlying the outer dress of the style. So ancient commentaries, like modern commentaries, would summarize the argument of each section, or the text as a whole. This helps to counteract the piecemeal and problem-oriented character of commentaries. In these ways, modern commentaries are very like ancient ones. But now we can see some of the differences: they had a very different approach to coherence, sequence and structure, found different things problematic and had very different interests. The modern historico-critic spots incoherences and analyses inconsistencies in order to read between the lines and reach theories about the facts or history behind the text; the ancient reader was usually concerned with moral, spiritual or dogmatic meaning and worried when texts seemed to contradict themselves doctrinally: how could Jesus Christ both say, “My Father is greater than I” and “I and the Father are one”? In other words exegetical methods are not dissimilar, but interests are, and so different meanings emerge. This observation is confirmed by an article by Kenneth Hagan, writing of a very different time, the sixteenth century.9 He shows that there were three forms of interpretation: sacred page (the monastic interest in scripture as intended to guide the pilgrim’s journey to God); sacred doctrine (the scholastic interest in understanding the faith of the church); and sacred letter (the humanistic tradition begun by Erasmus whereby the Bible, along with other literature, was read for its wisdom, leading to piety, morality and Antiochene School,” in The Cambridge History of the Bible: From the Beginnings to Jerome, ed. P. R. Ackroyd and C. F. Evans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 491. 9  K. Hagan, “What Did the Term Commentarius mean to Sixteenth-Century Theologians?” in Théorie et pratique de l’exégèse: Actes du troisième colloque international sur l’Histoire de l’exégèse biblique au XVI siècle, ed. I. Backus and F. Higman (Geneva: Libraire Droz, 1990): 13–38.

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Chapter 1:  Ways of Reading the Bible

justice, and so a better society, better church, better education, better government). The difference lay in the different interests in what the Bible said. So what were the interests of the early church? To deduce right doctrine from scripture, especially in the face of heretics; to spell out the right way of life for Christian believers – ethics, ascetic ideals, etc., and to find maps for the spiritual journey of the soul. In other words, they were less interested in the material, earthly, historical or factual meaning than the theological or spiritual meaning. This too had a background in the schools. The great philosopher Plato had attacked Homer and the poets for the immorality of the stories; so people had to show how to find moral lessons in the texts which formed the backbone of education. By the time the early church was doing similar things with the Bible, philosophers were finding all their doctrine in Homer by allegorical interpretation. For the Fathers, the Bible was the Word of God for the church and its people NOW. They believed that God had accommodated the transcendent divine self to our human level not only in the incarnation but also in the language of scripture. So how did they get to this deeper meaning? – From linguistic analysis, metaphor, etc. (as already indicated), and cross-­ referencing different scriptural passages that use the same wording – From prophetic oracles and riddles, assumed to be in code which had to be unpacked – From exemplary actions/models – Job was a type of patience, for example – From puzzles (ἀπορίαι – aporiai) – for Origen the difference between John’s Gospel and the others was not a historical puzzle, but a theological opportunity From all of these allegory was developed: so they got to the classic interpretation of the Song of Songs in terms of the love between Christ and the church, or the soul of the believer; while Gregory of Nyssa’s Life of Moses shows how the journey of the soul follows the same pattern as the stories of Moses’s life. And there developed a symbol system allowing one always to interpret Jerusalem as referring to the church, Joshua as a type of Christ, etc. There was a reaction against allegory in the fourth century, yet the anti-­ allegorist was also finding types and symbols, morals and doctrines in the scriptures – they just avoided certain arbitrary methods of decoding associated with allegory. All of the Fathers were trying to discern the underlying eternal meaning intended by the Holy Spirit, rather than the historical factual meaning which has dominated modern interpretation. So what did they think the Bible was all about? What was the subject-matter behind the wording?

Chapter 1:  Ways of Reading the Bible

17

2.  The subject-matter of scripture – Christ Here, it should be said, Christ covers a range of things – obviously the incarnation, but also the Body of Christ, that is the church, the sacraments, Christians, their moral life, their salvation and final destiny, and so on. The view that the whole of scripture refers to Christ arose very quickly and was consolidated in various ways. Already in the New Testament there is the assumption that Christ fulfils the prophecies. The Dead Sea Scrolls and apocalyptic literature from the period show that many Jewish groups practised the prophetic reading of scripture, and for Christians this meant that Christ was there in the Law and the Prophets and the Psalms and the Wisdom-books. Prophetic interpretation often treated the scriptures as collections of riddling oracles, and applied individual texts to particular events – the New Testament showed the way, and the Fathers developed it. In Jewish tradition of the time we can trace the expectation that future salvation has been prefigured in the past as recounted in scripture. So events of the Exodus were to be replayed. In the New Testament the classic example is the miracle of the feeding in the wilderness, which is shown, implicitly in the Synoptic Gospels, explicitly in John’s Gospel, to be the fulfilment of the manna in the desert. The Fathers developed this so that the crossing of the Red Sea prefigured baptism, the Passover the eucharist, and so on. So scripture was taken to have a symbolic meaning throughout; it was always pointing beyond itself. In the third century the scholarship of Origen took up all these traditions and developed them into the spiritual meaning of scripture. The meaning was veiled until Christ came and revealed what it was all about. Ἀπορίαι, the puzzles and difficulties of scripture, were deliberately put there by the Holy Spirit to provoke the reader into discerning this deeper meaning intended by the Spirit. Progress in the spiritual journey was related to different levels of reading: the literal meaning was often important – you cannot ignore “Thou shalt not murder.” But the literal meaning was there for the simple, for the beginners; moral and spiritual meanings were for those who were making progress, and they were discerned by allegory. The feeding of the multitude was a symbol of spiritual feeding by God’s Word. Origen’s allegory sometimes produced many different interpretations of the same passage; he outlined a theory of three levels of meaning, but in practice offered multiple meanings in basically two modes – the literal and the spiritual. Nevertheless we can see in the Fathers, as they responded to his lead, the elements that would lead to the medieval analysis of four senses of scripture: the literal, the allegorical, the moral and the anagogical. To explain briefly: the literal sense teaches what happened, allegory what you are to believe, the moral

18

Chapter 1:  Ways of Reading the Bible

sense what you are to do, anagogy where you are going – there is a spiritual progression through levels of meaning.10 Even with the fourth-century reaction against allegory Christ remained the subject-matter: typology and prophecy were not rejected, and θεωρία (theō ria), or insight, was encouraged – deeper moral and doctrinal meanings were assumed to be what scripture offered. All of this is foreign to the historico-critical approach to the Bible, which, amongst other things, would set the prophecies in the time of the prophets, rather than assuming they were predictions of events centuries later. Some modern scholars, such as Daniélou, have tried to reclaim typology, suggesting that the consistent patterning of events derives from God’s providence, and so history, especially salvation history, is reflected in this.11 But that approach reinforces the contrast – the primacy of history for Daniélou and modern interpreters, over against what held primacy for the early church, namely, to discern true doctrine and derive moral and spiritual benefit from reading scripture.

3.  Doctrinal Reading of Scripture Modern interpretation regards the doctrines of the church as future developments, not actually to be found in the texts of the New Testament. They distinguish different books of the Bible by authorship and date, even dissect particular books into sources. The Fathers argue for and then assume the unity of the Bible and the presence in scripture of orthodox doctrine.12 This is a fundamental difference between the approach of modern interpreters and their distant predecessors. We may look briefly at three important moments. Irenaeus, bishop of Lyon in the second century, was faced with Gnostics who produced and used books as scripture which are not now part of our canon, and interpreted the books which did become canonical in ways that delivered the wrong outcome – at least from Irenaeus’s point of view, as well as that of developed orthodoxy. At the time the Bible was not a single book – it was technically impossible to put it all together – it was a collection of books. So which belonged to the collection? The writings of Irenaeus contain the first attempt at defining the boundaries, and the first clear outline of what constitutes the unity of the scriptures and the criteria for interpreting them as a unity. This is contained in what he calls the 10 “Littera gesta docet, quid credas allegoria, moralia quid agas, quo tendas anagogia.” Quoted in Andrew Louth, Discerning the Mystery (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), 116. 11  Jean Daniélou, From Shadows to Reality: Studies in the Biblical Typology of the Fathers (London: Burns and Oates, 1960); for further discussion see my paper, “Typology,” in Crossing the Boundaries: Essays in Biblical Interpretation in Honour of Michael D. Goulder, ed. Stanley E. Porter, Paul Joyce and David E. Orton (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997): 29–48. 12  For fuller discussion of the points in this section, see my previous discussions in Young, Art of Performance and Biblical Exegesis.

Chapter 1:  Ways of Reading the Bible

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“Rule of Faith” or the “Canon of Truth.” It is not a fixed formula and appears in several different forms in his writings, but basically it is like the creeds. It affirms one God, the Creator of all, who sent Jesus Christ to be our Saviour in fulfilment of the prophecies of the Holy Spirit, and who will bring all things to fulfilment in the end. In other words there is an overarching story which is the Bible’s fundamental content, and you cannot read the scriptures “Christianly” without taking this seriously, and seeing that all the details relate to that outline. Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria in the fourth century, was faced with the heretic Arius and his successors. To an extent not always appreciated, the interpretation of scripture lay at the heart of the controversy. Each side appealed to particular biblical texts. One of these was Proverbs 8:22: “The Lord created me [that is, wisdom] in the beginning of his ways.”13 Both sides assumed the text was about the pre-existent Christ, who was identified with God’s Word and Wisdom. Arius deduced that Wisdom was a creature. How was Athanasius to deal with this over-literal interpretation? He argued that you have to attend to the mind/sense of scripture as a whole, and interpret individual texts in the light of the total perspective. In this case, the Christ did become a creature in the incarnation, but was the Word of God from eternity. Augustine, bishop of Hippo in North Africa in the late fourth and early fifth centuries, wrote a book about scriptural interpretation – its title is De Doctrina Christiana (On Christian Instruction), but that just bears out what I was saying earlier about doctrine meaning teaching and the reading of texts in schools. He makes a distinction between the subject-matter (res) and the language or signs (signa) that point to it.14 So his first book concentrates on the subject-matter and identifies it as “Love God and love your neighbour.” Then every detail has to be interpreted in the light of that, and if anything does not fit with that it has to be carefully considered and interpreted until it does. So to gather up the main points: – The Fathers insisted on the unity of scripture by contrast with modernist analysis and differentiation. – They were primarily interested in the spiritual/moral/christological sense rather than having the historical interest of modern interpreters. – They had an external test of how to read scripture aright, which we can roughly identify as the creed in one form or another. (One postmodern approach known as canon-criticism, tries to interpret in the light of the Bible as 13  See further my paper “Proverbs 8 in Interpretation (2): Wisdom Personified,” in Reading Texts, Seeking Wisdom, ed. David F. Ford and Graham Stanton (London: SCM Press, 2003): 102–115; republ. in Young, Exegesis and Theology, ch. XII. 14 Augustine, Doctr. Chr., Latin text: Aurelii Augustini Opera, CCL 32, ed. J. Martin (Turnhout: Brepols, 1962); ET, Saint Augustine, On Christian Teaching, trans. R. P. H Green, Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).

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Chapter 1:  Ways of Reading the Bible

a whole, as the Fathers did, but fails to see that the Bible is not self-explanatory unless there is some kind of a framework.) – They said a person had to have inspiration to read scripture – it was not just that the text was inspired, and for scripture to speak one had to see oneself in it, and learn from it; modern interpretation seeks to be objective rather than subjective. – They recognized the inadequacies of human language to express the divine, and so saw the language of scripture as symbolic of deeper meanings. – They understood that God in his infinite divine grace had accommodated the divine self to our level both in the incarnation and in the language of scripture.

III.  A Model of Interpretation for Today In the latter part of the twentieth century scholarly interpretation of scripture largely remained in its historico-critical phase, but some of the fundamentals of this method were also challenged.15 The possibility of objectivity began to be questioned, given the impossibility of divesting the investigator of all presuppositions, and so was the value of an exclusively archaeological approach to meaning, distancing the reader from the text. Meanwhile, critical theory changed the approach to texts across the whole field of literary studies, and this began to affect biblical interpretation too. Structuralism shifted the focus away from the original authorial intention – the French thinker Roland Barthes wrote a famous essay entitled, “The Death of the Author.”16 Attention was given instead to analysis of the text itself: for texts might carry a surplus of meaning that the author never intended. Structuralism, however, soon gave way to interest in the reader: for texts have no reality until “re-played” through someone making sense of the black and white patterns on the paper – so the reader’s contribution became paramount. It was then noticed that traditions of reading are formed in reading communities, that texts can acquire authority and “create worlds” – so, for example, the Bible had reinforced social orders which included slavery and patriarchy. The future of the text, its potential to generate new meaning, became important for interpretation, not just its past, or its background. Meanwhile hermeneutics had been attending to

15  The following paragraphs reproduce and adapt material found in Jean Vanier and Fran­ ces Young, “Towards Transformational Reading of Scripture,” in Canon and Biblical Interpretation, Scripture and Hermeneutics 7, ed. Craig Bartholomew et al. (Milton Keynes: Paternoster; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006): 236–254. 16 Roland Barthes, “The death of the author,” ET in Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader, ed. David Lodge (Harlow: Longman, 1988): 167–172.

Chapter 1:  Ways of Reading the Bible

21

questions concerning the gap between the world of ancient texts and the world of the reader. So, one way and another the question how texts are to be read is more open now than it was 100 years ago. Then it was generally assumed that arguments, especially between liberals and conservatives, were about the “facts behind” the text, such as questions about miracles; now arguments are often about the “future in front of” the texts, issues such as the position of women or the acceptance of persons who are gay. So this greater openness creates uncertainty: can we make texts mean anything we like, or are there ethical standards of reading? Against this postmodern background I want to suggest a model of the process of reading and interpreting which allows room for both scholarly research and spiritual reading, taking seriously the dynamics of objectivity and subjectivity implicit in each.17 The object of rhetoric in the ancient world was to achieve persuasion or conviction (that is, πίστις (pistis), usually translated “faith” in a New Testament context.) Three things were required for this: – The ἦθος (ē thos) of the author/speaker. The author’s character and life-style had to be such as to inspire trust in his integrity and authority – in other words, should carry conviction. – The λόγος (logos). The argument, narrative, discourse of the speech/text had to be logical, reasonable, convincing. – The πάθος (pathos) of the audience. If the readers/hearers were not swayed by the author and the argument – if there was no response, then the whole thing was ineffective and unconvincing. Conviction depended on the dynamic interplay of author/orator, text/speech and reader/audience. These three elements were interacting, and as it happens they are the three which modern and postmodern criticism have successively prioritised – they need to work together, as in figure 1. Figure 1 ē thos/author

pistis

logos/text

pathos/reader

17  This model is a development of the work of James L. Kinneavy, Greek Rhetorical Origins of Christian Faith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987); it has been previously published: see Young, “Pastorals” and “Proverbs 8”.

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Chapter 1:  Ways of Reading the Bible

But in the case of scripture, we can see a series of different dynamic triangles. The author may be identified, say, as Paul, writing a letter to his converts in Corinth (figure 2). Figure 2 ē thos/Paul

pistis

logos/ letter to Corinth

pathos/ the Corinthian Christians

But if that is the case, “we” are not the intended readers, and there is no way in which exactly that original situation can be recreated. Alternatively, we may identify the author as the Holy Spirit, ourselves as believers in the context of liturgy – part of the church universal over time and space, and the material as an extract from the timeless, canonical “Word of God” (figure 3). Figure 3 ē thos/Holy Spirit

pistis

logos/scripture

pathos/believers

This is a different “reading genre” with a very different dynamic, and it never exists in a “pure” sense; for we carry over the previous dynamic triangle, knowing that the text was shaped by human history and by particular circumstances, and that we are too – we do not read Holy Scripture now in the same way as believers in the Middle Ages. Scripture is the divine Word in human words – it is incarnational, and the point of scripture is transformation: it is meant to carry conviction and change people’s lives. In every generation and in different cultures particularities somehow carry the eternal Word of God. Somehow we need to keep both dynamic triangles in play, and the concern of the modern scholar, to be “objective,” and the concern of the believer, “subjectively” to hear the Word of God, are both valid and true to the nature of scripture.

Chapter 1:  Ways of Reading the Bible

23

So our model necessitates the recognized involvement of the reader when it comes to the interpretation of scripture. The reader cannot simply make the text mean anything he likes – he/she must respect the “otherness” of the text. On the other hand, we can discern a legitimate place for the believer approaching the texts for insight and spiritual transformation; for it is new insight that the believer seeks from the texts – a mirror reflecting back his/her own prejudices is a danger, but not necessarily the outcome: rather the text stands over against the reader, challenging and calling into a new future. Always the reader interacts with author and text, and ideally is changed by the process – for the point of scripture is transformation. What of Lectio Divina? So in the light of all this, how would we define lectio divina? Can we hold it alongside the historico-critical method? And can we offer a doctrine of Holy Scripture which would justify this? By lectio divina I understand the process of reading oneself into the text so as to come away changed. Cardinal Martini put the same thing in a slightly different way when speaking at the Dei Verbum Congress 2005 on the importance of the Vatican II statement on Holy Scripture.18 What is meant by lectio divina is “devotional reading,” “spiritual” in the sense that it is done under the impulse of the Holy Spirit, in the context of the church. It is “prayerful reading,” allowing us to “unify our lives within the framework of [God’s] salvation plan.” The “spiritual and meditative experience” of lectio divina may not be “strictly exegetical.” The Bible is to be treated as if it were a “Someone who speaks to the one reading and stirs in him a dialogue of faith and hope, or repentance, of intercession, of self-offering….” Martini emphasizes three moments: lectio, meditatio, contemplatio. Reading means reading as if for the first time, seeking to discover the key words, the characters, the actions, the context, both in scripture and in one’s own time. What is this text saying? Meditating means reflection on the message of the text, its permanent values, the coordinates of the divine activity it makes known. What is this text saying to us? Contemplation points to the most personal moment of the lectio divina, when “I enter into dialogue with One who is speaking to me through this text and through the whole of scripture.” Lectio divina is “prayer born of a reading of the Bible under the action of the Holy Spirit.” Now this might imply a freeing of the Bible as God’s Word from the expertise of church leaders and clergy, and indeed from the expertise of scholars: a lay person’s simple reading may discern more directly the core of what the Word of God is about. Nevertheless, we should note that Martini, just like the Fathers, 18  Carlo Maria Martini, “The Central Role of the Word of God in the Life of the Church: Biblical Animation of the Entire Pastoral Ministry,” Dei Verbum – BCBF 76/77 (2005): 33– 38.

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puts it in the context of church: “in the footprints of the great ecclesial tradition, in the context of all the truths of faith and in communion with the pastors of the church.” As for the expertise of scholars, let me give an example of how a little historical knowledge can sharpen the message of the text for us today. The parable of the Good Samaritan was not simply about the kindness of strangers: Samaritans had no dealings with Jews (John 4:9), although they had the books of Moses in common and originally derived from the Twelve Tribes of Israel. They were historically close, and yet different in ethnicity and religion, hostile to one another (like Jews, Christians and Muslims; like the various peoples of the former Yugoslavia). Jesus was challenging people (1) to see the goodness of those they hated and mistrusted and regarded as heretics; (2) to see the lack of goodness in those who rigidly obeyed religious rules (neither the priest nor the Levite could carry out their duties if they had touched a corpse, and that was why they passed by). To pick up the challenges of the parable, we need such information. So we do need to honour the expertise of scholars and church leaders, alongside engaging in our own prayerful meditation of the text. The theology that could undergird this is a view of scripture that acknowledges that it is in two natures: there is the human historical reality that these texts were composed by human beings in the dialectic they used at the time and limited by the ideas and knowledge of the time, and the texts were then subject to the chances and changes of constant copying and translation; and there is the divine reality that the Word of God is alive and active – it cuts like any double-­ edged sword and slips through the place where the soul is divided from the spirit or joints from the marrow; it can judge the secret emotions and thoughts (Heb 4:12). The Word of God was incarnate for our sake in the human Jesus; the Word of God is inscribed for our sake in the word of this collection of ancient books. This view of scripture not only parallels the incarnation, but also other core doctrines of the faith, such as the real presence in the eucharist. As the human Jesus had weaknesses and was vulnerable on earth, yet in him we see God, so scripture is earthly and limited, yet “teaching solidly, faithfully and with­out error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of our salvation.”19 To realize this we need the disciplined expertise of the ­historico-critical method alongside lectio divina.

19  Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation. Dei Verbum, Second Vatican Council, paragraph 11.

Section A

Christology – from critical scholarship to constructive theology

Chapter 2

Christological ideas in the Greek commentaries on the Epistle to the Hebrews* Although this paper deals with exegetical material, its main concern is not with problems of exegesis. The degree to which the commentators understood and expounded the Christology of the Epistle to the Hebrews itself, is an issue to which I shall only allude in passing. My purpose is rather to use these commentaries to illustrate classic and well-known christological positions, to elucidate the presuppositions which lie behind them, and the problems and concerns which gave rise to them; then briefly to relate the conclusions to modern christo­ logical debate. First, a brief survey of the material to be used: I shall ignore the large collections of commentary on this epistle collected in the ninth and tenth centuries1 and concentrate on what survives from the period immediately preceding Chalcedon. The works with which we shall be concerned are Chrysostom’s Homilies on Hebrews,2 the Commentary of Theodoret,3 and the fragments of exegesis by Cyril of Alexandria4 and Theodore of Mopsuestia 5 which can be extracted from the Catenae. The main point of interest is the difference in exegesis of the epistle by those representing the Antiochene and Alexandrian schools. The Antiochenes are well represented by Chrysostom, Theodore, and Theodoret, while for the Alexandrians we have to rely on Cyril’s fragments; but there is sufficient material for the difference in treatment of certain christological themes to be *  The original draft of this paper was presented to Professor Moule’s Seminar at the Divinity School of the University of Cambridge. I am grateful to the members of the Seminar for discussion, and to Professors D. M. Mackinnon and M. F. Wiles for their comments. It was first published in JTS NS20 (1969): 150–162. 1 Oecumenius, Commentaria in Novum Testamentum: Pauli Apostoli ad Hebraeos Epistola, Migne, PG 119.279–452; Theophylactus, Epistolae divi Pauli ad Hebraeos Expositio, Migne, PG 125.185–404. 2  John Chrysostom, Homiliae in Epistolam ad Hebraeos, Migne, PG 63.9–256. 3 Theodoret, Interpretatio Epistolae ad Hebraios, Migne, PG 82.673–786. 4  Cyril of Alexandria, Explanatio in Epistolam ad Hebraeos, Migne, PG 74.953–1066. See also the edition by P. E. Pusey in Sancti Patris Nostri Cyrilli Archiepiscopi Alexandrini in D. Joannis Evangelion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1872). Pusey includes in 3: 362 ff. fragments of Cyril’s exegesis of Hebrews, commentary and homilies, preserved in Greek and Syriac. Some passages in Migne’s collection Pusey assigns to the Tractatus de Recta Fide ad Reginas. 5  Collected in K. Staab, Pauluskommentare aus der griechischen Kirche, aus Katenenhandschriften gesammelt, Neutestamentliche Abhandlungen 15 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1933): 200–212.

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Section A:  Christology – from critical scholarship to constructive theology

apparent. Cyril and Theodoret were in fact on opposite sides of the Nestorian controversy, and in their commentaries we find their respective Christologies expressed far more explicitly than in the earlier Homilies of Chrysostom, but his preaching clearly presupposes the Antiochene approach. In this paper then I shall be illustrating the well-known distinction between Antiochene and Alexandrian Christology, in the hope of stimulating some reconsideration of their problems and the difficulties involved in their answers. The presupposition of all our commentators is the Nicene faith. Any overall consideration of the use of Hebrews in the Fathers would draw particular attention to their constant reference to Hebrews 1:3: “ὅς ὤν ἀπαύγασμα τῆς δόξης καὶ χαρακτὴρ τῆς ὑποστάσεως αὐτοῦ” (hos ō n apaugasma tē s doxē s kai charaktē r tē s hypostaseōs autou – who being the reflection of the glory and the imprint of God’s very being) as a proof-text against the Arians. Athanasius’s writings are saturated with reference to it. It is interesting to note that Theodoret says in his commentary that the Arians rejected the epistle from the canon because of this text. 6 All the commentators use Hebrews 1 to prove against the Arians that Christ is greater than the angels and is in fact ὁμοούσιος τῷ Πατρί (homousios tō (i) Patri – of one substance with the Father). All heretics who do not understand this formula correctly, Sabellians along with Arians, are suitably dealt with. The reason why I draw attention to this fact, is that it is commitment to this basic Nicene faith which raises the christological problem most acutely. The Sabellians were hated because of the implication that the Father suffered, but once the homoousion was accepted, the possibility of the Son’s suffering and incarnation became equally problematical. Right at the beginning, the commentaries are committed to an understanding of the divine nature of Christ which can hardly be reconciled with what the epistle later says about his suffering, temptation, and learning by obedience. Commentators in both schools of christological thought found themselves obliged to draw a distinction between the essential nature of the Son of God and things that are said about his humanity or his situation in the incarnation. Neither side would compromise the Nicene position of the Λόγος ἄτρεπτος (Logos atreptos – unchangeable Word). So Theodoret, in a passage that we shall examine later, remarks that it is necessary to know which names apply to the θεολογία (theologia – teaching about God’s divine self) and which to the οἰκονομία (oikonomia – God’s outreach in the “economy”); 7 Chrysostom not merely ascribes suffering and temptation to the manhood, but also priesthood and intercession, pointing out that these ministering functions are exercised κατὰ σάρκα (kata sarka – according to the flesh), as part of his ἀνθρωπότης (anthrō potē s – humanity), of his loving humiliation in the οἰκονομία, and that they are not to be 6 Theodoret, 7 Theodoret,

Ad Hebraeos, Migne, PG 82.681C. Ad Hebraeos, Migne, PG 82.708C.

Chapter 2:  Christological ideas in the Greek commentaries on Hebrews

29

confused with his sitting at God’s right hand in judgment which is τῆς ἀξίας τοῦ Θεοῦ (tē s axias tou Theou – belonging to God’s dignity). Cyril from the opposing school echoes this idea when he says: “At the same time he acts as priest ἀνθρωπίνως (anthrō pinōs – humanly) in that he has become man, and sits in authority θεϊκῶς (thē ikōs – divinely) in that he remains Logos.”8 This distinction between the natures can be further illustrated by the comments on Hebrews 3:1: Chrysostom remarks that the comparison with Moses is possible only because the author is speaking of Christ’s human qualities and not about his Godhead; 9 Theodoret explains that he is High Priest and Apostle as man – if he had been such as God he would have been such before the incarnation, but it was in the incarnation that he was sent (here, of course, he uses the verb from which Apostle is derived); 10 Cyril attacks those heretics who on the basis of this text claim that Christ cannot be ὁμοούσιος, and explains that it is only said about the incarnation.11 However, it is immediately clear that Cyril did not in fact mean the same thing as the Antiochenes by this distinction between the natures, for he goes on to explain that in the incarnation the Logos, though remaining God in his essential nature, became σάρξ (sarx – flesh), that is, a man with a soul and a mind. He insists that he is priest and God at the same time. He consistently speaks of the pre-incarnation Logos and the post-incarnation Logos, not of a distinction between the Logos and the man. So although he can make exegetical statements which appear almost identical with those of Chrysostom and Theodoret, his approach is quite different. This is made more explicit in his comments on Hebrews 1:8: while insisting that the anointing only applies to the incarnation situation, he explains, “though he remained as he was when he became man, by the anointing of manhood with Godhead he united creation to himself and made both ἕν (hen – one thing).”12 Thus even as he makes the distinction between what can be said of the Son’s divine nature and what can be said of him in the context of the incarnation, Cyril hastens to safeguard the unity of Christ’s person. So while admitting at the outset that both sides had the same christological problem and made a similar distinction between the natures as a result of a common need to safeguard the homoousion, we already find that this distinction is not exactly the same distinction. From this point, we shall proceed to elaborate the christological position implicit in Cyril’s commentary, and then later turn to the contrasting exegesis of corresponding passages in the work of the Antiochene commentators. 8 

Cyril of Alexandria, Ad Hebraeos, Migne, PG 74.972B; Pusey 468. Hom. Heb. 5, Migne, PG 63.48–49. 10 Theodoret, Ad Hebraeos, Migne, PG 82.697B. 11  Cyril of Alexandria, Ad Hebraeos, Migne, PG 74.969B; Pusey 466. 12  Cyril of Alexandria, Ad Hebraeos, Migne, PG 74.961B; Pusey 466. 9 Chrysostom,

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Section A:  Christology – from critical scholarship to constructive theology

One passage which shows up differences in Christology very well is Hebrews 2:6–18. All the commentators agree that the passage from Psalm 8 applies best to Christ although the Psalmist intended it of ordinary human nature. For Cyril the passage tells of the κένωσις (kenōsis – emptying) of the Logos who took a body which was liable to death, and suffered so as to destroy death and raise humanity to immortality.13 We were dishonoured by Adam’s fault; we were glorified by Christ’s obedience on our behalf. The taking of human nature by the Logos produced a true unity, which was not brought about by any change in the divinity which is ἄτρεπτος. The Son remained God when he took the body and his unity of person can be understood by the analogy of the unity of body and soul in a human person. This is clearly a dangerous analogy. It is well known that the result of the Alexandrian approach to Christology was inevitably to submerge the humanity of Jesus into the dominating role of the divine Logos. The extreme of this position had already been condemned in Apollinarius who claimed that in the case of Christ, the Logos replaced the human soul – meaning by this the human decision-making ego. Hence Cyril’s need to explain, as he frequently does in his commentary, that the σάρξ assumed by the Logos was a man with a soul and a mind; but his use of this analogy shows that he has not fully grasped the implications of the condemnation of Apollinarius and still moves in the same general pattern of thought. But the most important point that arises from this passage is the close link between Cyril’s Christology and his soteriology. His Christology is determined by what he regarded as necessary for salvation. Here is a selection of points from his commentary at this point: He shared our flesh and blood in order to overcome death which was the result of sin. Man could not be justified according to law; he had to be rescued from the curse. So, as High Priest, the Logos made expiation for our sins “according to the power of his divinity.” (Note this very important phrase.) Human nature was seen to be healthy in Christ, and this faultlessness saved those on earth. Those who shared his nature he linked to God the Father through himself. Behind Cyril’s remarks lies Athanasius’s understanding of salvation whereby sin and death are dealt with through the perfect life and sacrificial death of the Son of God and man is re-endowed with the lost image of God and raised to divinity (θεοποίησις – theopoi ē sis, “divinization”). For both Alexandrian bishops this salvation could be accomplished only by the power of God himself. It was this soteriological principle which had stimulated Athanasius to spend his life opposing the Arians and establishing that the Logos must be ὁμοούσιος and ἄτρεπτος; it was this that lay behind the christological tradition which Cyril represents. Only if the Logos is ἄτρεπτος and in principle unable to succumb to sin is the salvation of mankind assured. So, Cyril goes so far as to state explicitly when commenting on He13 

Cyril of Alexandria, Ad Hebraeos, Migne, PG 74.964A-969A; Pusey 463–466.

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brews 7:27 that as God he was stronger than sin, he could not sin, and hence the superiority of his priesthood and sacrifice to that of the Jews.14 Cyril had to safeguard the permanence and surety of his salvation by ascribing it entirely to the power of God overcoming the weakness and sin of humanity. He stresses over and over again that the Logos is not changed by the incarnation but unites humanity to his divinity so healing it and raising it to heaven to be presented purified to the Father as a sweet-smelling offering.15 In the light of this we should expect that Cyril would fail to give full weight to what Hebrews says about the human conflicts, temptations, and sufferings of Christ, and an examination of the few surviving passages that deal with this aspect of the epistle’s teaching confirms this view. On the final verse of chapter 2, he makes no use of the idea of Christ undergoing temptation during his life and thus being able to help the tempted from his own experience; 16 rather he identifies the temptation with his suffering on the cross, and indicates that it helps the weak and tempted because it is part of the sacrifice by which human nature was perfected. As we have already seen Cyril believed that this sacrifice dealt with the human problem because it was made according to the power of his divinity. The conquest of temptation is thus the automatic result of God’s power dealing with the weakness of human nature. Nor does Cyril allow full weight to what the epistle says about Christ’s being sympathetic to human problems because he has acquired personal knowledge of them through involvement in the incarnation. On 2:17 he begins by saying: “He is like us in being our brother in flesh and blood, through being in the form of a servant. He became our faithful High Priest in the incarnation.”17 But having stated this, he goes on to inquire: How can this be? Was he not merciful before? Did the Logos of God progress and become better than himself when he took the seed of Abraham? … How then was he ἄτρεπτος in nature if he became what he was not? How did he empty himself and bring himself low if he became better than himself? No, he was always merciful. He became priest when he took the seed of Abraham to save us….

In other words Cyril allows the Logos to humiliate himself and assume human nature (κένωσις frequently appears in his commentary), as long as by this it is not implied that he improved himself in any way. The incarnation could not bring about any change in the Logos; still less could it in any sense make him better. This position is both upheld and undermined by his remarks on He-

14  Cyril of Alexandria, Ad Hebraeos, Migne, PG 74.976B–C. Pusey attributes the passage to the Tractatus de Recta Fide; cf. 402 and 406n. 15  Cyril of Alexandria, Ad Hebraeos, Migne, PG 74.969A; Pusey 464–466; cf. 396. 16  Cyril of Alexandria, Ad Hebraeos, Migne, PG 74.969A. Pusey attributes this paragraph to the Tractatus de Recta Fide, cf. 396. 17  Cyril of Alexandria, Ad Hebraeos, Migne, PG 74.965C–968B; Pusey 464–466; cf. 396.

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brews 4:15.18 (In the following quotation, temptation and experience translate the same Greek root): Even if the Logos of God had not become man, he would have known human weakness as Creator; for he knows our formation. But since he put on our flesh, he has been tempted in all points; we do not say that he was ignorant, but that, with a pre-existing knowledge proper to divinity, it came about that he learned also by experience. But he did not become συμπαθής (sympathē s – sympathetic/co-suffering) from having had experience – he was already merciful by nature and is so as God. But after being what he is, he also became a man amongst us and for this reason this is said about him.

Cyril does his best to do justice to what the epistle says about Christ’s experience or temptation, but his presuppositions make it very difficult for him. He does not want to say that the Logos improved, or added to his knowledge of and sympathy with the human condition; yet he cannot repudiate what the epistle says, especially since he recognizes the psychological value of an appeal to Christ’s experience of a human life. The Logos’s changeless experience of or involvement in the human condition, while essential to Cyril’s soteriology, is extremely difficult to envisage, and Cyril, while not admitting it, has found himself in a quandary. All this contrasts strongly with the very rich development in the Antiochene commentaries of the theme of Christ’s human achievement of obedience by progress through temptation and suffering. It is true that Cyril may have said more about this aspect of the epistle’s teaching; his commentary only survives in fragmentary form. But from the hints we have looked at, we may guess that he did not elaborate this further than he was forced to by the text. If we return to Hebrews 2:6–18, we find that in contrast to Cyril’s dominant interest in the conquest of human weakness by the power of God, the Antiochene commentators concentrate on the exemplary value of the Saviour’s own conquest of human weakness, temptation, and suffering. It is in Chrysostom’s Homilies that we have the most elaborate descriptions of Christ’s human struggle and triumph, used, of course, as an exhortation to the congregation to emulate him. His crowning with glory and honour in 2:9 is interpreted as a reminder of the cross, showing his love and persuading the epistle’s readers to bear all things nobly, looking to their teacher.19 His tasting of death is illuminated by comparison with a doctor who, though he has no need, tastes what has been prepared for his patient in order to persuade the sick man to have courage and face his food. This may seem a rather pedestrian analogy, but in this and his later treatment of Christ as an athlete and pioneer, Chrysostom concentrates on the exemplary nature of his work of salvation. He goes so 18  Cyril of Alexandria, Ad Hebraeos, Migne, PG 74.972–973A. Pusey attributes this passage to the Tractatus de Recta Fide. 19  For the following discussion see Chrysostom, Hom. Heb., 4, Migne, PG 63.39–42 especially.

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far as to identify sufferings with perfection and the cause of salvation, and, with the epistle, indicates that Christ leads the way for others to follow. Later in Homily 4 he turns to a direct attack on Docetists. The reality of our salvation depends on the reality of his identification with us in conflict with suffering, death, and the devil. Christ’s work of salvation involved the achievement of victory over the masters who had held men in bondage, the victorious recapitulation of Adam’s fatal path. Christ is glorified by suffering and the devil’s tyranny is broken because by looking to Christ’s pioneering work, men are delivered from fear of death. Already we can see the extent of the difference between Cyril’s interpretation and that of Chrysostom. Both consistently attribute salvation to the love and goodness of God, but one concentrates on the invincible activity of divine power, the injection of divinity into humanity, and the other on the exemplary power of human suffering and the achievement of a human victory over sin. Each christological emphasis is clearly determined by soteriological concerns. In the following Homily, Chrysostom proceeds to Hebrews 2:17–18.20 Where Cyril, as we have seen, is moved to safeguard the impossibility of the Logos progressing or changing, Chrysostom expands Christ’s identification with us in all things – he was born, nursed, grew, suffered all that he had to, and finally died; as our brother, he knows not only as God but also has come to know as man through the experience of temptation; he is συμπαθής because he suffered much.21 (Note how much more satisfactory is his exegesis of the epistle’s words.) Later he adds that since the majority consider that experience is a more reliable way of acquiring knowledge, the author wants to show that having suffered, he knows what human nature suffers.22 Clearly he takes the idea of knowledge through experience considerably more seriously than Cyril. It is hardly surprising to find that the same emphasis appears again in his comments on Hebrews 4:15: 23 Christ is not ignorant of our position, like many High Priests who have no idea what affliction is. For it is impossible for men to know the misfortune of the oppressed without experiencing it. Our High Priest has withstood all things so that he could have sympathy. He was persecuted, spat upon, condemned, mocked, had false witnesses brought against him, was driven out, and finally crucified. The phrase καθ᾽ὁμοιότητα χωρὶς ἁμαρτίας (kath’ homoiotē ta chō ris hamartias – according to the likeness without sin) indicates that it is possible to endure without sin, even in the midst of afflictions; for in nature his flesh was the same as ours, though in sin no longer the same. Here Chrysostom concentrates on only one aspect of Christ’s experience, namely the experience of persecution and rejection, but we see immediately the reason for 20 Chrysostom,

Hom. Heb., 5, Migne, PG 63.45 ff. Hom. Heb., 5, Migne, PG 63.47–48. 22 Chrysostom, Hom. Heb., 5, Migne, PG 63.50. 23 Chrysostom, Hom. Heb., 5, Migne, PG 63.63. 21 Chrysostom,

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his emphasis on the idea of Christ actually experiencing the human condition. It is not merely that knowledge acquired by experience is more reliable and therefore essential for his work as a sympathetic High Priest, but that the reality of his experience is essential for his victory over evil to be relevant to men. He has shown that it is possible for a man to go through everything without sin, and that is why Chrysostom can exhort his congregation to emulate him. This insistence on Christ’s being without sin in spite of being human contrasts with Cyril’s view that he could not sin because he was the Λόγος ἄτρεπτος, but clearly it is likewise based on what was regarded as soteriologically necessary. However, we must not overlook the fact that in his comments earlier on Hebrews 2:18, Chrysostom had found himself obliged to answer in an aside the objection that God is ἀπαθής (apathē s – impassible).24 He is aware that his emphasis on Christ’s human experience and suffering endangers the Nicene theo­ logy. He replies that the flesh of Christ suffered, and so he knows what it is like no less than we do. This is the kind of unsatisfactory statement to which both schools of christological thought were driven by their acceptance of the Nicene faith, but whereas Cyril in his anxiety to preserve the unity of the Christ, tended to underplay the suffering apart from the physical aspects which he could attribute to the flesh alone, Chrysostom emphasizes his experience of the human condition to such an extent that he is obliged to separate the Logos from it; this is the only way he knows of safeguarding both the reality of Christ’s human involvement, and the divine nature of the Logos. We find this position more explicitly expressed in Theodoret who says on Hebrews 2:17–18 that he learned the weakness of human nature by experience, but hastens to explain that this is said about his human nature.25 For he was our High Priest not as God, but as man; nor did he suffer as God, but as man; nor as God did he learn our condition by experience, for he knows everything clearly as God and Creator. On Hebrews 4:14, he warns his readers that it is necessary to know what pertains to the θεολογία and what to the οἰκονομία; 26 and having prepared us in this way goes on to say on v. 15 that the author encourages the believers of that time who were subject to persecutions, by teaching that our High Priest not only knows the weakness of our nature as God, but also received experience of our sufferings as man, remaining uninitiated only in sin. Since he understands our nature in this way, he can give us suitable help. He wants to say that the Christ knows our weakness both as God and as man, but in order to preserve the essential nature of his divinity and his humanity, he makes provisos which tend to undermine the unity of the Christ. Just as Cyril’s Christology was soteriologically based, so also was the Antiochenes’ emphasis on the reality of Christ’s human experience and conflict. But 24 Chrysostom,

Hom. Heb., 5, Migne, PG 63.48. Ad Hebraeos, Migne, PG 82.696C. 26 Theodoret, Ad Hebraeos, Migne, PG 82.708C–D. 25 Theodoret,

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they were as anxious as he was to preserve the Nicene faith in the ἀπαθής and ἄτρεπτος nature of the Logos. So, instead of compromising the human progress and achievement of the Christ, they failed to give an adequate account of the unity of his person. For them, the two natures were equally necessary to guarantee salvation, and they were terrified of any Christology which seemed to compromise either by mixing them together; they had to be kept unalloyed, and therefore any real connection between them was mistrusted. Thus their division of the natures became so acute that the possibility of speaking of an incarnation of the Logos looks less and less realistic. As we have seen, this christological position is not spelt out quite clearly in Chrysostom’s Homilies, but is more explicit in the Commentary of Theodoret. The most extreme statement of this division of the natures is to be found in a fragment of the commentary of Theodore of Mopsuestia, where he discusses the textual problem in Hebrews 2:9–10: 27 should we read χάριτι Θεοῦ (chariti Theou – by the grace of God) or χωρὶς Θεοῦ (chō ris Theou – apart from God)? He argues that χάριτι Θεοῦ was introduced for dogmatic reasons by copyists who could not imagine how Paul (the assumed author) could have said χωρὶς Θεοῦ; he proves that χάριτι Θεοῦ is not suitable to the context and supports this by reference to other uses of χάρις in Paul. Then he explains that the Godhead of Christ is not compromised by the words χωρὶς Θεοῦ when they are used in relation to his death. His suffering was not proper to his Godhead. What was proper to the Logos was his action in displaying as perfected through sufferings the pioneer of everyone’s salvation, the man that he took. Theodore thus asserts that the divine nature did not suffer, is ἀπαθής and ἄτρεπτος, and at the same time preserves the possibility of the human Jesus becoming perfect, progressing, learning through the sufferings he endures and so on, by indicating that he suffered death χωρὶς Θεοῦ. The person is divided but the real humanity given the chance to prove itself without being overridden by the all-embracing power of the divinity. Before posing some of the questions raised by aspects of this christological difference, I propose to indicate some of the effects that each christological position has on the exegesis of other themes in the epistle.

1.  The interpretation of the sacrifice of Christ Chrysostom speaks of sacrifice dealing with sin, and in many passages does not inquire how it cleanses mankind. However, various passages indicate that he assumed that the Father was angry and was propitiated by the sacrifice offered by our High Priest and mediator, Jesus Christ.28 27 

Fragment from Theodore of Mopsuestia in Staab, Pauluskommentare, 204. Hom. Heb., 16, Migne, PG 63.123 et al. loc.

28 Chrysostom,

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This position is mitigated by his constant attribution of our salvation to God’s φιλανθρωπία (philanthrō pia – love towards humanity), and by some interesting comments in Homily 17: 29 (1) when describing Christ appearing on our behalf before the Father with a sacrifice able to propitiate him, he interjects – “not that he was hostile; it was the angels who were hostile;” (2) in discussing “he bore our sins,” he states that Christ took sins from men and bore them to the Father, not so that the Father could make any judgment on them, but so that he could forgive them. Later he comments on εἰς ἀθέτησιν τῆς ἁμαρτίας (eis athetē sin tē s hamartias – for the annulment of sin) saying that this means despising of sin which no longer has any παῤῥησία (parrhē sia – “self-assertion” is perhaps the best translation). It suffered violence, he explains, because it should have been punished and was not; its forgiveness destroyed its power. These hints show that Chrysostom wants to attribute salvation to the love of God dealing with sin, and yet he assumes that the sacrifice offered by the man, Christ, propitiates the wrath of God, the Father. Father and Son are apparently divided, but since he consistently speaks of the High Priesthood of Christ being a function of his manhood, while his sitting on the throne of judgment is a function of his divinity, the implication is an uncomfortable division between God and man within the person of Christ himself. Theodoret explicitly states that this is so: as man he offered the sacrifice in which he was both priest and victim; as God he received it.30 Cyril on the other hand, regards the sacrifice as an act performed by the power of divinity to heal mankind, and describes how the same person receives, gives, and is the sacrifice whereby mankind is purified, raised to heaven, and offered to the Father as an ὀσμὴ εὐωδίας (osmē euōdias – sweet-smelling savour).31 The unity of the Godhead and the person of Christ is not impaired by his understanding of atoning sacrifice.

2.  The eternal intercession of Christ It is not merely in explaining the problems of the incarnation that we can see differences in treatment between the Antiochenes and the Alexandrians. The differences persist in discussion of the risen and ascended Lord, since both sides agree that the human nature of the Christ has ascended and continues in heaven. Cyril’s position here is quite plain. The Logos took human nature, purified it, and raised it to heaven so that it is now always present with the Father united with divinity. He implies, but does not explicitly state in the extant fragments of his commentary, that our θεοποίησις is involved in this union of humanity with God through Christ. The Son’s priesthood and intercession on our behalf are 29 Chrysostom,

Hom. Heb., 17, Migne, PG 63.127–134. Ad Hebraeos, Migne, PG 82.733B. 31 Theodoret, Ad Hebraeos, Migne, PG 74.972B–D, 988C–D; Pusey, 468. 30 Theodoret,

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functions of his κένωσις, but they continue eternally united with his functions as God: to quote his words “with flesh the only-begotten Logos of God rules everything, not apart from the Father.”32 He is said to be a minister, but he also sits at God’s right hand; he sits as God and serves as man, at the same time. He is the one Christ, the Logos of God who took flesh and united it with himself, so that now he unites us to the Father.”33 By contrast, in the Antiochenes, the functions of Christ even in heaven are kept divided between the Logos and his man. Chrysostom makes much of his sympathy and his eternal intercession on our behalf, but explains that these are functions of his humanity; as man he stands interceding and ministering, but this is not worthy of his divine nature. As God he sits on the throne,34 a throne which may be a throne of judgment not a throne of grace if we postpone taking advantage of it much longer.35 His function as mediator is divided from his function as judge and king.36 This division corresponds to the unhappy tendency we have already noted to regard the Godhead as the recipient of a propitiatory sacrifice offered by the manhood, and so bring about not merely a division of nature and function, but also by implication a division of will and purpose. At this point Cyril’s Christology is undoubtedly more satisfactory. In the main, this examination of these commentaries has only confirmed what was already known about the two different christological approaches in the pre-Chalcedon period, but it has provided further illustration of each position, its motivation, and its consequences. There follow a few comments on the two main issues raised and their relevance to modern christological explorations. 1. These two differing christological positions clearly illustrate that the problem of Christology is most acute where it is approached with a priori ideas about the nature of God. As we have frequently noted, Nicene orthodoxy as it was understood within the framework of contemporary philosophical theology made the christological problem essentially insoluble.37 If the Logos is ὁμοούσιος 32 

Cyril of Alexandria, Ad Hebraeos, Migne, PG 74.996A; Pusey, 414. of Alexandria, Ad Hebraeos, Migne, PG 74.969–973, 977, 984–988, 993; Pusey, 413, 466–468. 34 Chrysostom, Hom. Heb. 13, 14, Migne, PG 63.105 ff., 111. 35 Chrysostom, Hom. Heb. 7, Migne, PG 63.64. 36  It is interesting that both Chrysostom and Theodoret deny Christ’s eternal priesthood on the ground that his sacrifice was performed once for all and is now over and done with. They accept his eternal intercession, however. Perhaps we should link this with the contrast between baptism which was performed once for all, like the death of Christ into which the convert was baptized, and repentance for post-baptismal sin which was regarded as always possible. Chrysostom’s inconsistent acceptance of Christ’s eternal priesthood in other passages may be associated with the continuance of the one sacrifice of Christ in the eucharist, which is also discussed in these Homilies. See Chrysostom, Hom. Heb., 9, 11, 13, 14, 17, 20, etc. and Theodoret, Ad Hebraeos, Migne, PG 82.724A. 37  Professor M. F. Wiles also draws attention to the relationship between Nicaea and the 33  Cyril

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τῷ Πατρί, the incarnation becomes possible only if one of the following three possibilities is allowed: (1) if we implicitly deny the possibility of the full humanity of Christ – the path that Cyril took, although he tried to safeguard himself against it. It must be regarded as a form of Docetism to say: the Logos cannot have suffered; the flesh suffered but it was so united to the Logos that the possibility of its giving way or succumbing to temptation and sin is not a real one. It is generally agreed that this alternative is not open to us today. Docetism, however veiled, is not a solution. The reality of Christ’s human nature must be our starting point. But we must admit that, in spite of its difficulties, Cyril’s Christology, together with his soteriology, is a remarkably clear and consistent construction. (2) The second possibility is to separate the Logos from the man he is said to have assumed as the Antiochenes did. This leaves room for the real humanity, but hardly allows the Logos to be in any sense Incarnate. Whatever is done or suffered, the human nature is the subject, not the Logos, who remains unaffected by temptation, sin, death, and all the experiences of the man in whom he is supposed to be incarnate. This position is full of obvious difficulties, and is clearly not a possible alternative approach. However, it is important that we should be aware that their recognition of the true humanity of Christ, his weakness, temptation, and conflict, his progress, and his real experience of the human condition led the Antiochenes into a position which is clearly unsatisfactory. It is worth giving careful consideration to the question where we are led by our similar emphasis on the real humanity of Christ. Perhaps the consequences are equally unsatisfactory though we cannot recognize them as such. To solve our difficulties, we tend to allow the third possibility, which was not open to the Greek theologians, namely (3) to modify the idea of the divine nature with which Christ is ὁμοούσιος in such a way that the incarnation becomes conceivable. We like to deny the a priori notion that the divine nature must be impassible, we allow that God can suffer, that he can progress. Like Tertullian, though with different motives, we repudiate the God of the philosophers. We are tempted into thinking that we can get our concept of God not out of heads, but by looking at Christ.38 I think we need to consider very carefully how far this procedure is justifiable, and indeed how honest we are with ourselves in making this attempt. We do in fact have some sort of concept of God prior to looking at Christ, even if it is only of a being that transcends human individuals. Any form of anthropomorphism must be approached with extreme caution, even if it is in christological controversies in his paper “The Doctrine of Christ in the Patristic Age,” in Christ for Us Today, ed. N. Pittenger (London: SCM Press, 1968): 81–90. 38 This approach is typified by John Robinson, whose position is criticized by Ninian Smart in his essay “Towards a Systematic Future for Theology,” in Prospect for Theology: Essays in Honour of H. H. Farmer, ed. F. G. Healey (Welwyn, Herts: James Nisbet, 1966): 93–116. An extreme example of this procedure is to be found in H. W. Montefiore’s paper, “Jesus, the Revelation of God,” in Christ for Us Today: 101–116.

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the form of Christomorphism. It is easy to assume that some sort of sophisticated anthropomorphism is justified by a belief in the incarnation and the revelation of God through a human being, Jesus Christ, and we must admit that theological language is bound to proceed by means of human analogies; but if we think of God’s knowledge and emotions solely by analogy with our own, God inevitably tends to be reduced to our level whether we like it or not. Unless we proceed with extreme caution, we shall in the end find ourselves faced with the same problems as Chrysostom, Theodoret, and Cyril, although our approach has been different: is there any sense in saying that God learns by experience or progresses? I must confess that as far as I can see the path of modifying a priori concepts of God is the only one worth exploring if we are to stay within the territory of traditional Christology; but I am sure that we need to be more cautious in taking it than many appear to be. 2. The second point arising from this paper is that Christology should never be divorced from soteriology; for this is the reason for its very existence, and the motive that lies behind every christological construction. This is so not only with respect to the Christologies of Antioch and Alexandria as shown above; it is also the case in the New Testament. It is frequently said that the early centuries showed no interest in formulating a doctrine of atonement, but this is a grossly misleading statement. The formulation of both trinitarian and christological definitions was directly caused by soteriological beliefs. The reason for the development of different christological theories was simply that each side viewed the problem with different soteriological presuppositions. I want therefore to suggest that one of the problems with the construction of a satisfactory Christology now is that we have not first established a soteriology. We are distracted from this central issue by the twentieth-century problems of how to bridge the gap between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith, or of how to re-express traditional Christian beliefs in modern terms. But Christology clearly should not be divorced from soteriology, and our biggest problem is that it is not clear what salvation means in the modern world. From the point of view of religion and faith, we may adopt the view that fluidity in the interpretation of atonement is proper, that soteriology should not be defined, that salvation means different things to different people, different civilizations, different ages. But if we do, must we not admit that Christology may have to be regarded as similarly fluid, that the attempt to produce a formal definition of the person of Christ may be a vain undertaking; the soteriology and Christology of each individual is defined by the answer given to the question “What think ye of Christ?” However, if we take this to its limit we shall find that soteriology has no firm basis, since, as we have seen, it was the desire to establish an unshakeable foundation for salvation that led to the definition of an ontological Christology. This problem of the relationship between Christology and soteriology needs further exploration.

Chapter 3

A Cloud of Witnesses* “In Jesus Christ I perceive something of God”: a confession of that kind lies at the heart of Christian belief; it sums up the common mind of the faithful. Yet, as a matter of fact, Christian believers have experienced and understood this confession in more than one way. Since Jesus is confessed and has been confessed in many different cultural environments by many different types of people with many different hopes and expectations, there must be potentially a multiplicity of christological affirmations analogous to and dependent upon the multifarious ways in which atonement and salvation have been experienced and expressed. Indeed, one theme that runs throughout this chapter is that christological expositions are parasitic upon definitions and concepts of salvation; but its main contention is that christological statements should be regarded as belonging not to the language of philosophy, science or dogmatics, but rather to the language of confession and testimony. Exclusive claims that there can be only one way of understanding salvation in Christ have never been “canonized” in creed or definition, though they have often caused intolerance between Christians. By contrast, an exclusive claim that the only way of understanding the nature of Jesus is in terms of a unique divine incarnation has been enshrined in authoritative statements traditionally used as tests of orthodoxy. This has caused living witness and faith to appear as improbable scientific fact, and has encouraged arrogant and intolerant attitudes among the faithful. It has also obscured the potential richness and variety of christological images and insights by tending to subordinate everything to the confession of Jesus as incarnate Son of God. To recognize the possibility that diverse responses to Jesus Christ have equal validity may well be the only constructive way forward in a world which is beginning to value the enriching aspects of its variety and pluralism. In order to open the way to exploring this possibility, it is necessary to show that the traditional formulations of Christology, so far from enshrining revealed truth, are themselves the product of witness and confession in a particular historical environment. To this end, the first two sections of the paper consider the witness of the New Testament and the development of patristic theology. If we avoid reading the New Testament with spectacles coloured by later dogma, we * 

Originally published as ch.  2 in Myth of God Incarnate, ed. Hick: 13–47.

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find emerging a christological picture – or rather pictures – quite different from later orthodoxy; if we look at the contemporary environment, we discern not only the cultural factors which led the Fathers to the dogmatic position from which the New Testament has traditionally been interpreted, but also the inherent difficulties of their theological construction. In the light of this historical study, the primacy of soteriology becomes plain; and with this as background, it is possible to go on to consider in the third section, a personal approach to soteriology and the sort of christological affirmations it necessitates within the cultural context of the Western world. The conclusion then returns to the question of pluralism, some problems and some advantages.

I.  The New Testament Witness The New Testament is the first and greatest “testimony-meeting,” in the sense that here are gathered together a group of documents which testify to the saving effects of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. The documents have a variety of purposes, they come from differing backgrounds, and their dates of origin span approximately three-quarters of a century; they are of various literary genres and written in several different styles, both of language and theology. Yet virtually every page is affected by the fact that for each author Jesus Christ has become the central focus of his life and of his faith in God. Such a statement, though a broad generalization, would on the whole be endorsed by the majority of New Testament scholars today. Whether or not the particular conclusions of form-critical and redactional-critical studies are accepted, their common presupposition is that the faith of the church in a given historical setting affected the preservation and handing on of traditions about Jesus; and the faith of the gospel writers in another given situation affected their selection of material, its arrangement and preservation. Before such conclusions had been reached about the Synoptic Gospels, the Gospel of John had for generations been treated as a profound reflection on the life of Jesus, rather than a biographical account, and the most fruitful approach of more recent studies has been to see this Gospel as built out of homilies based on synoptic-type traditions.1 To turn to the epistles, the interpretation of Paul, it is generally agreed, depends upon seeing his theology as the set of presuppositions in the light of which he wrestled with contemporary problems in the Christian communities. Likewise, the Johannine Epistles can only be understood if they are set against a background of division in the church which forced further thinking about the 1  Developed particularly in Barnabas Lindars, St John, New Century Bible Commentary (London: Oliphants, 1972).

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nature of Christian witness to faith in Jesus Christ.2 The catalogue could go on, but the point of it is to stress the fact that it is the witness of communities and individuals to the effects of faith in Jesus Christ in their own particular situation which gives the New Testament writings their prime and distinctive characteristics – in other words, to stress the historical particularity of the documents and the cultural particularity of the images and concepts used to express faith in Jesus Christ. To turn to the more particular area of New Testament Christology, discussion here has tended to revolve around the various “titles” of Jesus; the possible connotations, both in the contemporary background and in their New Testament context, of Messiah, Son of Man, Son of God, Lord, Logos, etc., have been repeatedly explored and exhaustively discussed.3 A number of conclusions seem to emerge: (a) that the titles and concepts were there to be used before the early Christians adopted them – that is, they can be found in non-Christian documents and with non-Christian interpretations; (b) that by their application to Jesus they were filled with new content, and new interpretations became inevitable as a new combination of once distinct concepts was made; (c) the combination was probably the result of believers searching for categories in which to express their response to Jesus, rather than Jesus claiming to be these particular figures; and (d) each block of writings in the New Testament has its own emphases and combinations, that is, its own christological picture, and since a total Christology is not merely a combination of titles, these different christological schemes have to be explored in their own right and on their own terms, not simply by means of the titles-method. Some comments on each of these four points follows. (a) The titles were pre-Christian. It is clearly impossible either to review here all the evidence for this statement or to embark now on questions which are still in debate. Amongst other things, it is still by no means clear whether Son of Man is to be regarded as a title at all in the original Aramaic,4 and current Messianic expectations seem to have been of an extremely diverse kind. Nevertheless, it is agreed that the Old Testament and near contemporary literature must be used to establish possible connotations in the first place, and this applies not merely to the Palestinian background and the possible Aramaic originals, but also to the background of Hellenistic Judaism and the actual Greek words of the 2 

J. L. Houlden, The Johannine Epistles (Edinburgh: Black, 1973). O. Cullmann, The Christology of the New Testament (London: SCM Press, 1959); R. H. Fuller, The Foundations of New Testament Christology (London: Collins/Fontana, 1965). 4  G. Vermes, Appendix to An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels, by M. Black, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967): 310–330; R. Leivestad, “Exit the Apocalyptic Son of Man,” NTS 18 (1971–2): 243–267; J. A. Fitzmyer, “The Contribution of Qumran Aramaic to the Study of the New Testament,” NTS 20 (1974): 382–407; republished in Essays on the Semitic Background of the New Testament (London: Chapman, 1971): 85–114. 3  Eg.

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New Testament. While it is becoming increasingly apparent that to envisage a sharp cultural division is perhaps unrealistic, and all re-translation projects are bound to be grossly hypothetical, yet it cannot be denied that there are signs of a developing understanding of terms like Lord and Son of God according to differing linguistic and cultural environments. For further discussion readers are referred to the relevant literature.5 The point here is: New Testament Christo­ logy is built out of material which was part of the cultural heritage of the period, a point further illustrated elsewhere. 6 (b) The titles were changed and developed by their application to Jesus. It seems likely that there were around at the time within the Jewish community, political, social, nationalistic, prophetic, religious, apocalyptic and supernatural hopes of various kinds, sometimes overlapping, sometimes distinct, sometimes incompatible, all associated with particular kinds of title and particular ways of interpreting scriptural promises. The remarkable thing is that the New Testament reflects a kind of compulsion to see all possible expectations as fulfilled in Jesus. Jesus was not a particularly good political Messiah, but they claimed he was Son of David. He was not obviously a supernatural visitant, yet they claimed he was Son of Man.7 If he was Son of David, he could not be a priest according to the regulations of the Torah, but the Epistle to the Hebrews finds a way round that difficulty in order to assert that he is High Priest par excellence. Probably he came nearest to being a charismatic prophet heralding the coming of God’s kingdom, yet that role was attributed to John the Baptist, because they found a greater significance in Jesus. But to return to the main point, what was the effect of applying many different roles and titles to Jesus in this way? Because he did not fulfil current nationalist hopes but died as a martyr, the idea of Messiahship regained the role of the suffering king; 8 because he was not obviously a supernatural visitant, his glory veiled in a mystery on earth, was to 5  See note 3 above. A few of the other studies easily accessible in English include: W. Bousset, Kyrios Christos (Nashville: Abingdon, 1970); H. Tödt, The Son of Man in the Synoptic Tradition (London: SCM Press, 1965); A. J. B Higgins, Jesus and the Son of Man (London: Lutterworth, 1964). 6  See ch.  4 “Two Roots or a Tangled Mass?”. 7  While it is true that “Son of Man” could be an idiomatic phrase in Aramaic, referring to a human being or possibly a periphrasis for “I,” it is clearly used in the Greek Gospels as some sort of eschatological title, at least in some contexts. This statement is therefore not inconsistent with my earlier remark. 8  Whether or not the Suffering Servant passages of Second Isaiah were understood messianically in pre-Christian Judaism has been a subject of much debate. Opposing views are represented by W. Zimmerli and J. Jeremias, The Servant of God (London: SCM Press, 1957) and Morna Hooker, Jesus and the Servant (London: SPCK, 1959). It seems most likely that Messiahship tended to have political success overtones in the New Testament period, but the idea of the suffering king was latent in the Old Testament texts, particularly the psalms of suffering and possibly also Isaiah 53. Since the near-contemporary Maccabaean literature contains the idea that a martyr dying for the nation could expiate the nation’s sins (see J. Downing, “Jesus and Martyrdom,” JTS NS/14 (1963): 279–293), a positive understanding

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be revealed on his return; because he appeared as a prophet, he could be seen as a new Moses establishing a new covenant and a new Torah9 – and the combination of these ways of thinking that we find in various ways in the various Gospels, produces a figure quite different from any of the possibilities which have contributed to the pattern. We could add the further implications of Son of God, Lord, Logos, particularly as they gain additional connotations in a Hellenistic environment, but let this suffice to illustrate the point that the new christological combination becomes more than and different from the concepts which have contributed to it. A similar thesis is presented elsewhere to account for the unusual characteristics of the Christian doctrine of incarnation – namely a unique combination of a variety of current motifs in relation to Jesus of Nazareth.10 (c) The titles were attributed to Jesus by the early Christians and were not claimed by Jesus himself. This was assumed in the last paragraph, and it is an assumption which has the backing of a good deal of recent work on the subject, though it must be admitted that not all have been convinced.11 The extremely radical position that little or none of the synoptic material goes back to Jesus himself is clearly unreasonable, but the fact remains that it has obviously undergone modification and transformation as it was used in the preaching, teaching, worship and polemic of the church for the period of approximately one generation. What is the most likely kind of transformation? Surely a gradually increasing stress on its christological implications. The epistles of Paul – and indeed the speeches of Acts – reveal that the early Christian gospel was about Jesus Christ. This makes it the more likely that the Gospels correctly report that the message of Jesus was different – it was about the kingdom of God. There was no doubt implicit in that message some pretty far-reaching claims: his exorcisms display the sovereignty of God confronting the powers of evil (Matt 12:28//Luke 11:20); his healings display the forgiveness of God (Mark 2:10//Matt 9:6 and Luke 5:24); his teaching is the word of God (Mark 1:22//Matt 7:29 and Luke 4:32); the judgment of God can be seen in the way people reject or respond to him.12 Yet there are difficulties in tracing explicit Messianic claims back to Jesus of the role of suffering was available, and not unnaturally associated with prophecies of an ideal king-Messiah, in the view of the kingly suffering motif referred to above. 9 Especially in Matthew’s Gospel; see W. D. Davies, The Setting of the Sermon on the Mount (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964) and M. D. Goulder, Midrash and Lection in Matthew (London: SPCK, 1974). 10  See ch.  4. 11  Bultmann and his pupils have been the main protagonists of this view. An easily accessible summary of their position is to be found in G. Bornkamm, Jesus of Nazareth (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1960), 227–232. See also Higgins, Jesus and the Son of Man and Fuller, Foundations; contrast the position of Cullmann, Christology. 12  Implied in synoptic sayings like Mark 8:38; made explicit in John’s Gospel, e.g. 9:39–41. But note that the observations made in this sentence do not depend exclusively on the specific texts mentioned in the notes, but rather on the total impression created by the gospel material.

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himself. Apart from John where interpretative material is clearly placed upon the lips of Jesus, the Gospels invariably portray not Jesus but others as using phrases like the “Holy One of God,” or “Son of David,” or “Son of God.” Alone of all the titles “Son of Man” regularly appears as used by Jesus himself, and even here the evidence is puzzling, partly because of the continuing uncertainty as to the implications of the phrase, but also because in some texts Jesus seems to be referring to a figure other than himself (e.g. Mark 8:38). Furthermore, Mark’s Gospel conveys the impression that Jesus attempted to keep his identity as Messiah a secret divulged only to his inner circle. This “Messianic secret” motif in Mark remains an unsolved problem, especially since it appears sometimes to be introduced rather artificially; yet it adds to the impression that Jesus may well have preferred to remain enigmatic, in the interests of directing his hearers away from false enthusiasm for himself, to the consequences of the coming of God’s kingdom for their lives here and now. This is not to say that Jesus did not reflect upon his role himself; rather it is to say that we do not have the evidence available now to speculate realistically about Jesus’s so-called Messianic consciousness. (If we were to try and read between the lines we might even speculate that Jesus regarded personal claims as a Satanic temptation.) 13 Of course it remains true that the church’s christological preaching must have some continuity with, and basis in, the mission of Jesus, but its content need not be, and probably was not, identical. The challenge and the judgment of Jesus’s preaching recalls that of the prophets, who also spoke the “Word of the Lord.” But in the context of first-century Judaism, it is not surprising that that word of authority which ignored religious conventions and traditions, and spoke of God’s kingdom coming immediately, even now, was greeted as God’s final fulfilment of his promises,14 and current expectations were focused on the figure who brought this message. The implicit claims were not merely made explicit, but developed by the faith of the church.

13  This is a possible interpretation of the incident of Caesarea Philippi (Mark 8:27 ff. and particularly v. 33.) Cf. Cullmann, Christology, who argues that it certainly implies rejection of Messiahship. 14  Even though the “realized eschatology” of C. H. Dodd has received justifiable criticism, the immediate imminence, and even presence, of the kingdom is certainly not absent from the Gospel texts (e.g. Mark 1:15; Matt 12:28; Luke 17:20; and parallels and other examples). It is difficult to believe that it was not the core of Jesus’s preaching. It is conceivable that Jesus himself was correcting the futurist and apocalyptic hopes of the people, reminding them, like the prophets of old, that now matters. Yet, he seems to have made use of current hopes to reinforce his message and provide it with sanctions. Fuller, Foundations, argues that Jesus’s own understanding of his purpose and person was in terms of the eschatological prophet, and this view is certainly attractive. However, the main point here is that, in view of the then current assumption that prophecy had been dead for centuries and its arrival would herald the end, it was inevitable, whether or not Jesus claimed to be the fulfilment of prophecies, that his contemporaries should react to his message and authority in this way.

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So far we have argued that the common stock of christological titles found in the New Testament derive from the surrounding cultural background and were used by the early Christians to express their faith-response to Jesus of Nazareth. The early Christians were searching for categories which could adequately express their sense of salvation in him. It is significant that some saw him as a Rabbi, others as a prophet, others as a Zealot, others as a miracle-worker and healer; that some called him Lord, some Messiah, some Son of God and so on. Both in his lifetime and in the context of the early church, groups and individuals responded to him in their own way as the one who fulfilled their needs and hopes.15 It is impossible to overemphasize the fact that common to the many different ways of thinking is the sense that Jesus came on God’s initiative. It is fundamental to New Testament theology that God’s activity of redemption was at work in Jesus in fulfilment of his promises. Yet even so, different promises were valued by different people, and expectations revolved around different speculative figures constructed out of the promises. By the very fact that Jesus was identified as each of these figures, a new combination and mutual modification was inevitable, so that a different kind of figure emerged, whose essential characteristic was that he was the embodiment of all God’s promises brought to fruition. Such a characterization, I suggest, represents New Testament Christology better than the idea of incarnation, and it was in fact the germ of more and more christological ideas as the whole of the Old Testament was seen as fulfilled in Christ; 16 in the patristic writings we find the christological application of Old Testament texts firmly established. It was the sense that they had found what they were looking for in Jesus that started the whole christological ball rolling – in other words, christological formulations derive from a sense of having experienced God’s promised salvation (however interpreted) in and through Jesus Christ. This becomes all the clearer when we turn to the final point (d) made at the start, namely that to approach New Testament Christology solely in terms of titles and their development is to fail to appreciate its real nature. New Testament Christology is actually found in a number of different kinds of writing, 15  Although not advancing exactly the same point, an interesting comparison can be made here with E. Trocmé, Jesus and his Contemporaries (London: SCM Press, 1973), who argues that different pictures of Jesus emerge from the different forms of material in the Synoptic Gospels, and these were the different impressions created on different groups with which he came into contact during his ministry. 16  It is instructive to observe the way in which Old Testament texts are used christologically in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Texts concerning the Lord (i.e. Jahweh) are taken to refer to Jesus (e.g. Heb 1:10); and a text concerning mankind’s status in creation is turned into a prophecy of the descent into flesh of God’s Son, the heavenly man (Heb 2:6–9). The use of collections of “proof-texts” in the early church is apparent in many parts of the New Testament. See e.g. Matt 21:42; Mark 12:10; Luke 20:17–18; Acts 4:11; Rom 9:33; 1 Peter 2:6–8. For discussion see B. Lindars, New Testament Apologetic (London: SCM Press, 1961); C. F. D Moule, The Birth of the New Testament (Edinburgh: Black, 1962), ch.  4.

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stemming from different areas and “thought-worlds,” and each type of Christo­ logy reflects particular difficulties and crises of faith as well as particular ways of reacting to Jesus as the fulfilment of man’s hopes for salvation. The exposition of these differing Christologies, so that they may be compared and contrasted with one another, as well as with later dogmatic developments, should be the next step in our argument. We could explore the peculiar characteristics of the Christology of each of the Gospels; we could show how the Johannine understanding of salvation in terms of revelation has given this Christology its distinctive marks; and so on. However, space hardly allows so full a treatment, and instead an interpretation of the Pauline material is offered which illustrates (1) the fact that one of the most important New Testament christological schemes, although containing incarnational elements, is not a doctrine of God’s incarnation; and (2) the way in which a Christology, built up out of various traditional and scriptural elements, was formed both in reaction to contemporary pressures and problems, and as an expression of a particular understanding of salvation. (These points are not treated in turn, but are intertwined in the course of the following exposition.) In the Pauline Epistles, the truly significant title for Jesus is not Messiah but Κυρίος (Kyrios – Lord). Jesus is still “Son of David” (Rom 1:3), but the nationalist implications are irrelevant and Χριστός (Christos – Christ) appears to have become virtually a “surname.”17 Kyrios now expressed both the religious and the political significance that Paul and his converts saw in Jesus. For it was to him as Risen Lord that they owed total allegiance. They confessed him as Lord in their baptismal initiation (Rom 10:9); they continued to confess him in the face of persecution (1 Cor 12:3). What that meant to them, was informed by their acquaintance with other contenders for the title. They contrasted their Lord with Lord Caesar18 and with the Lords of contemporary mystery-cults. They could not have communion with their Lord’s table and also that of some other Lord (1 Cor 10:21). Unlike their neighbours who confessed gods many and lords many, they affirmed one God and one Lord (1 Cor 8:5–6). The Lord Jesus Christ was exalted at God’s right hand (Rom 8:34); he had been given the name which is above every other name, Kyrios (Phil 2:11). The Word of the Lord that came to the prophets in the past, was now the gospel of Christ (1 Thess 1:8); the Day of the Lord of which the prophets warned, was now the Day of Jesus’s Parousia (1 Thess 5:2). Thus, their God was the God of the Old Testament and their Lord, Jesus, was “God’s Vicegerent.” For Paul, Jesus held this position as a result of having acted on God’s behalf to overcome the powers of sin, death and evil. He was “made sin” (2 Cor 5:21), he “became a curse,” he annulled the law (Gal 3:13), he humbled himself and 17 Cullmann, 18 

Christology, 134; Fuller, Foundations, 230. Implied by 1 Cor 12:3 (as interpreted by Cullmann, Christology, 219 ff.).

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became obedient unto death, even death on a cross (Phil 2:8), in order that men might be redeemed, reconciled, justified, and sanctified, that men might be in him a new creation (2 Cor 5:17). “God made Christ Jesus our wisdom, our righteousness and sanctification and redemption” (2 Cor 1:30). Therefore God highly exalted him and believers now lived in him. It is christologically significant that Paul could speak of us being the body of Christ (Rom 12; 1 Cor 12), of us being in him and of Christ living in us (Gal 2:20). Although the historical fact of his death and resurrection was the basis of Paul’s faith, his conviction that Christ was presently alive and that in him a new humanity was created, constituted his experience of “faith-living.” Christ’s dying and rising became our dying and rising (Rom 6), so that our life became the life of Christ himself, and we became the righteousness of God (2 Cor 5:21). So far what we have said in interpretation of Paul could be given the anachronistic tag “adoptionist,” and indeed, it implies not just the adoption of Jesus but of all men in him. It certainly does not imply the incarnation of an essentially divine being. However, there is also in the Pauline writings a developing conviction of the pre-existence of this figure who is now Lord of the Christians. This is clearest, of course, in Colossians (whether Paul himself wrote it or a close disciple makes no difference here.) This epistle is directed at a situation in which the lordship of Christ was threatened by belief in other mediators and spiritual beings who contributed to man’s salvation. Utilizing ideas which had been used of the divine Wisdom,19 the author claims that the church’s Lord had always been God’s “right-hand man” from the moment of creation. In him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and it was not subdivided among a number of spiritual descendants or minions. Though the full development of this idea may well owe its existence to “gnostic” Christologies which were clearly inadequate from Paul’s point of view, 20 hints of this kind of claim are to be found in some earlier, undoubtedly Pauline writings. 1 Corinthians 8:6 is unintelligible except against a “wisdom” background, and the sense of renunciation of a former superior status is undoubtedly to be found in 2 Corinthians 8:9 as well as Philippians 2:5 ff. Furthermore, Romans 8:3 speaks of God sending him in the likeness of sinful flesh, which seems to imply the incarnation of a previously existing “Son of God.” Is this then a “divine incarnation Christology” in germ? Two points suggest that this is not the case; (1) Paul neither calls this figure God, nor identifies him anywhere with God. 21 It is true he does God’s work; he 19  Col 1:15–20. Cf. Prov 8:22–31; Sir 1:4; 24:3; Wis 7:25–26. Also see further discussion in ch.  7 below. 20  C. K. Barrett, “Pauline Controversies in the post-Pauline Period,” NTS 20 (1974): 229– 245. 21  Paul speaks of him as the “image of God” (2 Cor 4:4; Col 1:15), of his being in the “form of God” (Phil 2:6); and of God’s fullness dwelling in him (Col 1:20). These phrases imply a close relationship rather than identity (see note 23 below); and this is confirmed by the subjection of Christ to God (1 Cor 15:25 ff.; 3:23; 11:3). It is sometimes said that he is called God in

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is certainly God’s special supernatural agent, who acts because of God’s initiative. But ultimately he is to give up his delegated authority so that God will be all in all. (2) This figure is pre-existent not simply as a kind of divine being (though hypostatized Wisdom comes near to that), but as the “man from heaven”; 22 and his Sonship to God is not expressed in terms of “divine nature,” but as the result of divine creation and election on the one hand, and on the other hand, his own perfect obedience in doing God’s work and obeying God’s will. Indeed, he is the archetypal man and the archetypal Son of God in whom we become sons of God, fellow-heirs with Christ, who will bear the image of the man of heaven.23 In other words, we are back at the point stressed earlier – that for Paul, it is our incorporation into Christ and his “incarnation” in us that is Rom 9:5; 2 Thess 1:12; and Titus 2:13; but it is more likely that the first is pious ejaculation unconnected with the syntax of the sentence; that in the second and third, the Greek is rather loose and in fact refers (in the former) to the grace of God plus the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and (in the latter) to the glory of our great God and of our Saviour Jesus Christ. (The Epistle to Titus is probably not the work of Paul anyway.) 22  Paul speaks of the “man from heaven” in 1 Cor 15:48. It is highly likely that when he uses phrases like the “image of God,” he thinks not only of the divine Wisdom, but also of perfect manhood, as man was created to be. This is particularly probable as an exegesis of Phil 2:6, where there may well be a deliberate contrast between Adam, made in the image of God but tempted to be equal with God knowing good and evil, and Christ, also made in God’s image (μορφή – morphē) but humbling himself and not seeking equality with God. Cullmann, Christology, 174 ff. 23  Rom 1:3 and Phil 2:9 ff. et al. might seem to reflect an “adoptionist” sort of Sonship and Lordship, but they may be pre-Pauline. Paul himself uses the title Son in a variety of contexts, but especially (1) of him being “sent” to condemn sin in the flesh and to redeem men from the law, where his being born of woman and being in the likeness of sinful flesh is emphasized, and the point is his perfect obedience which destroys the power of sin and law over man (Gal 4:4; Rom 8:3); (2) of his Sonship and our adopted Sonship (Gal 4:4–7; Rom 8:14 ff.; note v. 29 where his chosen ones are to be “conformed to the image of his Son” (συμμόρφους τῆς εἰκόνος τοῦ Ὑιοῦ αὐτοῦ – summorphous tē s eikonos tou Huiou autou); cf. Eph 1:5 (even if Ephesians is not actually from Paul’s hand, I have regarded it as sufficiently Pauline in its thought and language to be used in this connection, and there are further references below.) He is the first-born of many brethren (Rom 8:29; cf. Col 1:15, 18); and we are his fellow heirs (Gal 4:7; Rom 8:17.) Clearly Paul thinks of Jesus Christ being “Son of God” in a special way (Rom 8:32: he did not spare his own Son,) but he is not the only potential son and he is sent as perfectly obedient man. As man he is God’s image, Son of God in the sense that Adam and Israel were destined to be sons of God if they had not been disobedient. He is sent (perhaps) in the sense that the prophets and John the Baptist were “sent” by God (born of woman, Gal 4:4). However, the phrase “man from heaven” used elsewhere suggests that his sending meant that he came from outside into the world and the flesh. But he is certainly sent as perfect man; his coming from outside does not imply any “substantial” relationship with God. He was the first-born of all creation (Col 1:15), who as God’s agent obediently carried out God’s predetermined plan for the redemption of all the children of God (Eph 1:5–12). Even the most far-reaching phrase about “all the fullness of God dwelling in him” (Col 1:19; 2:9) is paralleled in Ephesians by a phrase concerning men: “that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Eph 3:19); and furthermore, the fullness of God was pleased to dwell in him (εὐδόκησεν – eudokē sen); it was choice, will, purpose, election, rather than essential derivative nature.

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the centre of his living faith. It is this alone which can enable us to fulfil the law, to resolve our moral dilemma and enter into a perfect covenant-relationship with God. When Paul wrote: “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself,” he is unlikely to have envisaged a Nicene conclusion. He was expressing graphically that it was God’s saving initiative which had provided this means of salvation: “All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself” (2 Cor 5:18–19). When Paul wrestles with problems of conduct in his churches, when he faces Judaizers and “Gnostics,” his replies are always informed by a far-reaching “Christocentricity,” for Christ alone has always been the true “image of God” as man was created to be, and in him alone, he believes, men find their true selves and learn the way of true obedience to God. To preach this gospel is his burning passion, and his expression of it develops according to the opposition or difficulties with which he is presented. In order to give expression to it, he draws upon the Jewish religious literature he has inherited as scripture, and upon the traditional titles used by Christians to express faith in Jesus. He evolves a scheme which has incarnational elements, and probably owes a good deal to the syncretistic and potentially gnostic religious atmosphere of the time. But fundamentally it is the expression of the fact that Paul’s moral impotence has found its resolution in Jesus Christ, who now becomes the unique focus of his perception of and response to God. From this inevitably sketchy survey of New Testament Christology, both negative and positive conclusions may be drawn. On the negative side, we are bound to admit (1) that the New Testament provides us with evidence about how the earliest Christians reacted to Jesus, and how they utilized current concepts, especially eschatological speculations, to express their reaction; it does not provide directly revealed information about his divinity; and (2) the notion of God being incarnate in the traditionally accepted sense is read into, not out of, the Pauline Epistles, and I suggest that, space permitting, the same could be argued for the other New Testament documents. On the positive side, we may stress (1) that it is more than remarkable that Jesus should have stimulated such a far-reaching response from so many different quarters. Galilean fishermen and learned rabbis, Zealots and “Gnostics,” Pharisees and sinners, Jews and Gentiles – somehow he was all things to all men and broke down social, political and religious barriers. All manner of men found their salvation in him, and were driven to search for categories to explain him, never finding any single one adequate, always seeking higher ways of honouring, worshipping and understanding him; and (2) that even though Jesus is always distinguished from God the Father, in his risen as well as his earthly state, even though he is not directly confessed as God, yet the confessions used do show that he “stands for” God, and is the focus through which God is revealed to those who respond. On the whole the New Testament is totally Christocentric. Maybe the content and

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form of the confessions are not all that distinctive, yet their combined application as interpretative categories for the person of Jesus of Nazareth is unparalleled; and the force of this is to make Jesus the one intermediary through whom God is revealed and can be approached with confidence.

II.  The Development of Patristic Christology There may be some who although admitting the cultural particularity of the New Testament, want to argue that the New Testament writers were groping towards a full understanding of who Jesus was, and this was provided by the patristic development of incarnational belief. There was a gradual dawning of the full truth about the person of Jesus Christ, a development steered by the providence of God and inspired by the Holy Spirit. But this view surely demands radical questioning, just as much as the idea that it is all already there in the New Testament. It was inevitable that further “intellectualizing” should take place, that philosophical questions should be asked about Christian claims, which certainly contained highly paradoxical elements. But this does not mean that the questions were asked in the right way, or the right solutions found. As in the case of the New Testament writings, the development of doctrine in the early church was both culturally conditioned and determined by the course of controversy and debate, not to mention factors such as politics, personalities and the chances of history. Different christo­ logical positions were intimately related to different ways of understanding salvation; they were upheld by inadequate arguments and distorting exegesis of scripture; and compromise formulae were devised which did nothing more than restate the impossible paradox and leave it unresolved. Oversimplification is bound to be the main fault of an essay covering so much ground, but broadly speaking, it can be said that the Christian theologian of the first few centuries was faced with two key questions: (1) how is the exalted Jesus whom we worship as Lord, related to the one and only God? and (2) how is God related to the world? The first of these questions inevitably pressed upon a group whose theology derived from the monotheism of the Old Testament. Within Judaism, the “hypostatization” of Wisdom or Torah did not seem to undermine monotheism, since ultimately it was a kind of periphrasis used to circumvent the implication of direct contact between the transcendent God and the creation; true it had a positive function in this respect, but a faith so theo­ centric could never allow it really to challenge God’s “monarchy,” his ultimate originality and sovereignty. By identifying an actual person, Jesus, with such a mediating figure, by worshipping him and proclaiming so Christocentric a faith, the Christians both utilized current ideas and raised questions about their status. It was not only in apologetic to Jews and philosophers that they had to

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explain how they worshipped one God and one Lord but not two gods; 24 they had to justify their contradictory claims to themselves. The so-called Monarchian heresies were internal controversies which made explicit the problem of the relationship between the Lord Jesus and God his Father. The most influential way of solving that problem had already been provided by the translation of the Jewish “Wisdom”-language into the Logos-concept of contemporary philosophy.25 While it is true that to the average onlooker at the time, philosophy in this period appeared fragmented into schools with varying presuppositions and apparently opposing claims, 26 nevertheless, the predominant framework of thought was a sort of popularized Platonism, with influences from Stoicism and Pythagoreanism. Educated men believed in a Supreme Being, and were attracted by a life of virtue and contemplation of spiritual realities.27 Not only was this Platonism popular, but it seemed congenial rather than alien to the ethical 24  E.g., the charges of Celsus: Origen, Cels., 8.12, Greek text: Origenes Werke, ed. P. Koetschau, GCS (Leipzig: Hinrich, 1899); ET: Origen: Contra Celsum, trans. Henry Chadwick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953): “If these men worshipped no other God but one, perhaps they would have a valid argument against the others. But in fact they worship to an extravagant degree this man who appeared recently.” 25  The prologue of St John’s Gospel (whatever may have been the origins and connotations of the Logos in that context) gave scriptural authority for the development. The chief exponents of this theology were the Apologists; but the idea of the Logos was taken up and developed in a philosophical way by Clement and Origen, and Logos remained the normal title by which reference was made to the pre-existent and incarnate Lord right up to and after the Arian controversy. On the Logos-theology, see e.g. J. N. D Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 4th ed. (London: Black, 1968), chs. 1 and 4; E. R. Goodenough, The Theology of Justin Martyr (Jena: Frommann/Biedermann, 1923); G. L. Prestige, God in Patristic Thought (London: SPCK, 1952); H. A. Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Church Fathers (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964). 26 Origen, Cels. provides valuable insight into the debates between rival schools; note especially 1.10. The rivalry of different philosophical schools was in fact a commonplace of Christian apologetic and pagan satire. 27  The philosophers upheld an ultimate monotheism, while allowing polytheistic worship: e.g. Maximus of Tyre, Dissertationes, 39.5, Greek text: Dissertationes, ed. H. Hobein (Leipzig: Teubner, 1910): “The gods are one nature but many names.” Cf. Celsus in Cels., 5.45; 8.2. In Porphyry, grades of deity are expounded and fitting worship for each defined: Abst., 2.34– 39, Greek text: De Abstinentia, ed. Jean Bouffartigue, M. Patillon and Alain-Philippe Segonds (Budé, Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1979). Alongside this, the stress on ethics (with metaphysics only a support to moral teaching), a stress which was characteristic of post-Aristotelian philosophy, meant that true worship of the Supreme God came to be seen in terms of virtue and gradual transformation into God’s likeness until ἀπάθεια (apatheia – passionlessness) of soul was achieved. The best example of this is to be found in Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations, e.g. 5.27, 33; 7.9, Greek text: Meditations, ed. and trans. C. R. Haines, LCL 58 (London: Heinemann and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1915), though here we see it in the framework of Stoicism. Maximus of Tyre, Dissertationes, 9, expounds the “philosopher’s prayer” as understood in Middle Platonism. Both Christian Platonism and Neoplatonism adopted these attitudes, e.g. Clement, Strom., 7.14, 31, 33, Greek text: Stromateis, ed. O. Stählin, L. Früchtel, and U. Treu, GCS (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1970); Porphyry, Abst., 2.34–35.

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mono­theism of Judaism.28 So naturally enough, it became the prevailing philosophical environment which dictated the presuppositions within which Christian theology was to develop. This philosophical tradition both posed and purported to answer the second question mentioned earlier: how is God related to the world. The ultimate One was conceived as the “ground of Being” which provided the stability and eternity underlying the changes and chances of this life and the multiplicity of the world. In so far as God was identified with the One, he was perfect in form and substance; change from perfection could only mean degradation; therefore he was undifferentiated and indivisible within himself, and he was impassive and unaffected by anything external. He could have no history or development, no involvement.29 The consequences of such a concept was that it was hard to relate God, or the One, with the multiplicity of things, the world of which he was supposed to be the source and ground of Being. His utter transcendence meant his substantial irrelevance to the problem of which he had originally been the solution. Middle Platonism and its successor, Neoplatonism, wrestled therefore with the problem of God’s relationship with the world; it was a problem endemic in their whole approach to reality. Inevitably the solutions involved some kind of system of mediators or a “hierarchy of Being” linking the ultimate transcendent One, who was even “beyond Being,” with the known world.30 Thus we find schemes of emanation and mediation in both philosophical and gnostic sys-

28  For a convenient exposition of the Platonist tradition in Jewish and Christian form, see Henry Chadwick, “Philo and the Beginnings of Christian Thought,” in The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, ed. A. H. Armstrong (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967): 137–157. 29  These characteristics go back ultimately to Parmenides’ One. In Philo and the Christian Platonists the identification with God is clear, and seems to have been used in Middle Platonism. For a convenient exposition, see E. F. Osborn, Clement of Alexandria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957), chs. 1–3. For the attributes of God in patristic theology, see Prestige, God in Patristic Thought; and in Christian Platonism, Chadwick, “Philo.” For the One in Neoplatonism, see A. H. Armstrong, “The One and Intellect,” in Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy: 236–249; and J. M. Rist, Plotinus: The Road to Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967). 30  “The Good is beyond Being,”, Plato’s Republic 509B, Greek text: Platonis Res Republica, ed. Ioannes Burnet (Oxford: Clarendon, 1902). This statement was not only taken up in the ultra-transcendent theology of Neoplatonism (see Rist, Plotinus), but is found in the popular Platonism represented by Celsus (Origen, Cels., 6.64) and Justin, Dial., Greek text: Dialogus cum Tryphone, ed. M. Markovich, PTS (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1994); ET in ANCL. Platonism distinguished between the One as a unity in itself and a One–Many, that is, a composite unity. In Philo, for example, God in himself was the One, and the Logos of God, containing the Forms, was the One–Many, and the principle of creation. In Neoplatonism, the One is transcendent, but Nous and Psyche are composite hypostases linking the One with the world. For examples of this and parallels with the Logos-theology of Clement of Alexandria, see S. R. C Lilla, Clement of Alexandria: A Study in Christian Platonism and Gnosticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971); and Osborn, Clement.

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tems,31 a fact which shows how widespread were these presuppositions in the thinking of this period. Educated Christians shared the same fundamental outlook. So Christian theo­logy found itself obliged to wrestle with the same inherent problems and contradictions, but with the solution apparently offered by their christological traditions. For the Christian philosopher, the quasi-divine Logos filled the role of the one and only mediator who was both One and Many, sharing in some sense the nature of both and bridging the gulf between them.32 Logically there was no room in this scheme for the Holy Spirit, but he found his place as another sort of mediating link in the chain of Being, forming a triad or Trinity not unlike that of the Neoplatonists. It is true that in their own contemporary context, the rival schools, including the Christians, were chiefly aware of the radical differences between their various solutions, but from our vantage point, they all look much the same in principle if not in detail. To this picture, the doctrine of incarnation provided the fitting culmination. It is well known that that was how Augustine viewed the situation: in the Neoplatonists he read all about the Logos, except for the most important thing of all, that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.33 In this connection, it is interesting that the Greek word οἰκονομία was used both for the incarnation and for the trinitarian nature of God, since both doctrines were concerned with the accommodation of God’s essential nature to the world. The ultimate mediation, then, was the coming of the Logos into the conditions of this world in order to bring men salvation from its changes and chances, its suffering and evil, its “non-Being.”34 However, debate about the real nature and implications of this “fitting culmination” ultimately drew attention to the illogicalities of the 31  Gnosticism was criticized by Plotinus as well as Christian writers. Both Neoplatonists and Christians were fundamentally opposed to any form of dualism; evil was not “in Being” and everything had its origin in God. Gnostic myths portrayed a fragmentation of and fall of the divine which was alien to the Christian and Platonic outlook. Yet there is a similarity in spite of this very important difference. Even the same terminology is employed: e.g. Basilides speaks of an unbegotten Father from whom was born Nous from whom was born Logos, according to Irenaeus, Haer., 1.19, Greek text: Sancti Irenaei Libros Quinque Adversus Haereses, ed. W.W. Harvey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1857); ET in Early Christian Fathers 1, trans. C. C. Richardson (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1953). 32  E.g., Clement, Strom., 4.25; Origen, Comm. Jo., 1.20, Greek text: Origenes Werke, ed. E. Preuschen, GCS 4 (Leipzig: Hinrich, 1903); ET in ANCL. See Osborn, Clement; Lilla, Clement; J. Daniélou, Gospel Message and Hellenistic Culture, vol.  2 of A History of Early Christian Doctrine before the Council of Nicaea (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1973). 33 Augustine, Conf., 7.9, Latin text and ET: Augustine, Confessions, 2 vols., trans. Carolyn J.-B. Hammond, LCL 26 (London: Heinemann and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014) and William Watts, LCL 27 (1912). 34 The classic exposition is Athanasius, Against the Gentiles and On the Incarnation, Greek text and ET: Athanasius. Contra Gentes et De Incarnatione, ed. and trans. Robert W. Thompson, OECT (Oxford: Clarendon, 1971). See my “Insight or Incoherence? The Greek Fathers on God and Evil,” JEH 24 (1973), 113–126.

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scheme as a whole. It was the Arian controversy which showed this up and made inevitable the consequent christological impasse. While based upon a contrast between the transcendent God and the world, the Platonic scheme avoided drawing a line between the divine and the created in its hierarchy of existence; there was a succession of descent. But Arius raised the implicit question about where the line should be drawn. It was a question which also pressed upon the Christian because of the biblical insistence on God’s otherness, the contrast between the Creator and his creation. Once the question was raised, it destroyed the logic of the total scheme and dogged all subsequent theological discussion. In a hierarchy of Being without firm ontological distinctions, the mediator could have some substantial relationship with what was above and what was below his own rung on the ladder, so providing an effective link. But an ontological distinction, a real line between the divine and the created, could not be drawn without insisting that the mediator fell on one side or the other, thus destroying his ability to mediate. The Nicene line was no better than the Arian; the mere fact that there was a line undermined what had seemed an admirable solution to the problem of God’s relationship with the world.35 Arius defined God as ἀγένητος (agenē tos) – that is, the ultimate source of everything who himself derived from no source.36 This is what distinguished God in his essential being from all other beings. Logically enough, Arius was forced to assert that the Logos derived his being from God and was therefore not God in the absolute sense. Arius destroyed the hierarchy and ruined the “mediator Christology” by severing the mediator from God. Yet in one sense he voiced the implicit assumptions of the scheme which he had destroyed. We should never forget that his language was so firmly in the mainstream tradition that solid churchmen like Eusebius of Caesarea felt more at home with his ideas than those of the opposition.37 Arius could accept all traditional creeds, and like his opponents, he asserted that the Son of God was the first-born of all creation through whom God created the world and revealed himself; in the incarnation, he brought knowledge of God to men, and conquered the sin and evil which held men in bondage. Indeed, Arius could give a thoroughly realistic exposition of those New Testament texts which assume that in temptation, Jesus had the 35 In post-Nicene theology, the notion of mediator is still found, but it has been re-­ interpreted. Now the God-Man is mediator because he is at once ὁμοούσιος τῷ Πατρί and ὁμοούσιος ἡμῖν (homoousios tō i patri – of one substance with the Father and homoousios hē min – of one substance with us); e.g. Theodoret, Interpretatio Epistulae I Ad Timotheum 2, Migne, PG 82.800A. This is clearly a quite different concept of mediation. 36  This was hardly original, belonging both to the philosophical and Christian traditions behind him. The real point was the conclusions he drew from it. For Arianism and the reaction, see e.g. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, ch.  9 ; Prestige, God in Patristic Thought. 37  For a discussion of Eusebius’s position, see G. C. Stead, “Eusebius and the Council of Nicaea,” JTS NS/24 (1973): 85–100.

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same moral experience as we have; because the Logos was a mutable creature, the possibility of his sinning was open. The fact that he did not sin was of profound soteriological significance, for it meant that by following him, other men were potentially capable of not sinning. It is unjust to Arius to describe his doctrine as utterly unbiblical, or to accuse him of being exclusively concerned with logic at the expense of soteriology. Why then did the church react against his scheme? It is Athanasius who represents the “nerve-centre” of anti-Arian reaction. Athanasius argued that the Logos “became man in order that we might become ‘god’”; 38 and if this is so, he must have been God himself, or he could not have endowed men with divinity. Soteriology determined Christology. Because of the argument’s emotional appeal to those who lived by faith in Jesus, in the divine power received in the eucharist and the hope of divine life hereafter, the inherent difficulties and illogicalities of this position were largely disregarded. However, Athanasius’s position is problematical for two reasons: (1) a real son is not needed to produce adopted sons.39 Since we only receive an adopted sonship and a derivative divinity, the essential Godhead and Sonship of the one who passes it on to us is not logically required. (2) Because of the definition of divinity generally assumed (and expounded above) once the Son is defined as ὁμοούσιος τῷ Πατρί (homo­ ousios tō i Patri – of one substance with the Father) the incarnation becomes logically impossible, and the problem of “Patripassianism” is simply raised in a new guise. For, if the Logos is inherently perfect and incapable of change, progress or suffering, he is no more able to mediate than the transcendent God himself. Consequently Athanasius’s exegesis of those New Testament texts which assume that in temptation Jesus had the same moral experience we have, that he was ignorant and weak, etc., is inevitably docetic in tendency, though not in intent.40 Where Arius severed the mediator from God, Athanasius s­ evered him from the world. The christological controversies which ensued were largely concerned with the now insoluble problem of how the ἄτρεπτος Λόγος (atreptos Logos), incapable of change or suffering, could be incarnate at all. The Antiochenes inherited a long-standing tradition of approaching Christology from the angle that saw Jesus as a man uniquely endowed with the Logos; 41 the Alexandrians represent38 Athanasius,

Inc., 54.3. himself insists time and again that we do not become θεοί (theoi – gods) or υἱοί (huioi – sons) in the same sense as the Logos is θεός (theos) or υἱός (huios) (cf. C.Ar., Migne, PG 25–28); but he does not perceive that it is a fatal admission for his argument, which may have religious force, but is not strictly logical. 40  Athanasius is driven to say “τὰ ἡμῶν ἐμιμήσατο” (ta hē mon emim ē sato – he imitated our condition/circumstances), C. Ar., 3.57, Migne, PG 26.441. See the classic article by M. Richard, “S. Athanase et la psychologie du Christ selon les Ariens,” in Mélanges des Sciences Religieuses 4 (1947): 5–54. 41  A. Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition (London: Mowbray, 1965), presents a case 39  Athanasius

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ed an equally long-standing direction of approach which concentrated on the incarnation of a supernatural figure. The basis of these different approaches is to be found in quite different understandings of salvation, similar to the differences already noted between Arius and Athanasius. In the post-Nicene situation, neither side could expound their approach in a completely consistent way; so that both were open to the criticisms of the other side. Like God, the Logos could not really be involved in the world. So the Antiochenes found themselves insisting on the difference between the two natures, each with its own inherent characteristics, to such an extent that they were unable to give a satisfactory account of the union between them, even when pressed. The Alexandrians, stressing the one nature of the Logos enfleshed, inevitably compromised the distinction between divine and human as currently defined. The paradox is summed up in the phrase ἀπαθῶς ἔπαθεν (apathōs epathen), he suffered without suffering – the suggestion that while the “body” or the “man Jesus” suffered on the cross, the Logos somehow suffered in sympathy because it was “his body” or “his man,” even though by his very nature he could not possibly suffer. The problem was insoluble – hence the controversies, and hence the unsatisfactory character of the Chalcedonian compromise. This so-called definition defines only in a negative sense, by excluding the extremes of both christological approaches, without being able to offer any positive christological understanding. In that philosophical context, a positive Christology had become a logical impossibility once the Nicene homoousion was firmly established. The insoluble problem of God’s relationship with the world was crystallized into the likewise insoluble problem of the relation of Godhead and manhood in the Christ. The above sketch is intended to show (1) that the patristic discussion of Christology was conducted within the framework of contemporary philosophical presuppositions – in other words, like New Testament Christology, it was culturally determined; (2) that inevitably, by the use of contemporary categories of thought, Christian theology produced results which have a clear similarity to other philosophical schemes of the time, and therefore can hardly be regarded as any more “timeless” than the rest; (3) that even within that framework of thought, inherent illogicalities are apparent; and (4) that as long as their intellectual presuppositions were determined by the surrounding philosophical cultures, they were logically incapable of making sense of the biblical message of God’s involvement with his world, and in particular could not help being led into a docetic reading of the Gospels. Platonism did not ultimately prove congenial to biblical faith, in spite of its superficial similarities. It is also clear (5) for seeing the Antiochene position as derivative from the Alexandrian in the post-Nicene situation. However, one suspects that Paul of Samosata at least must have had views somewhat akin to the later Antiochene approach, though his condemnation was hardly a good recommendation for his views!

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that “faith-reactions” and soteriological assumptions had a profound effect upon christological expositions. If space permitted, we could go on to document the fact that the course of doctrinal controversies was shaped not merely by the inherent quality of the arguments used, but by personalities and politics. Suffice it to give a simple reminder of how Cyril’s attack on Nestorius is related to the political struggle between the ecclesiastical power-centres of Alexandria and Constantinople, already evidenced in Theophilus’s scurrilous treatment of John Chrysostom; it is significant that Cyril compromised in the Formulary of Reunion once Nestorius was out of the way. The course of doctrinal development should never be studied in isolation from the historical context of the debates. Rightly or wrongly, deep emotions and profound intolerance stirred up councils, churches and armies of monks into horrific attacks upon one another, and to the excommunication and exile of upright and sincere church leaders. It is a distressingly human story. There are strong reasons then for seeing the patristic development and interpretation of incarnational belief, not as a gradual dawning of the truth inspired by the Holy Spirit, but as a historically determined development which led to the blind alleys of paradox, illogicality and docetism. It is not satisfactory to assert that nevertheless it was in the providence of God that the philosophical system was available and made possible the resultant true formulations. Appeals to providence are too easily invalidated by subsequent history. Eusebius of Caesarea provides an instructive example: he saw the hand of providence at work when he heralded Constantine as almost a new manifestation of the Logos bringing the kingdom of God on earth,42 yet from our historical vantage-point, he surely appears as an abject flatterer subservient to imperial greatness, and his insight into the workings of providence seems less than convincing. Likewise, if we appeal to providence bringing good out of evil in spite of obvious political, sociological and other human factors, we are in danger of pursuing a route which later generations will judge to be false – especially in view of the problematical character of the christological formulations reached. For the philosophical apparatus with which the Fathers worked, though an asset in some respects, in others was a grave disadvantage. Maybe it did facilitate the verbal and mathematical contortions to which they resorted in trinitarian theology: three divine beings did not imply tritheism, because the divine substance they shared was in principle indivisible and undifferentiated.43 Yet, while facilitating this sort of 42 Eusebius, Vit. Const., 4.29; 3.15, Greek text: Eusebius Werke, vol.  1: Über das Leben Constantini, ed. F. Winkelmann, GCS (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1975). 43 Basil, On the Holy Spirit, 18. 44–45, Greek text: Basile de Césarée: Traité du Sainte-­ Esprit, ed. B. Pruche, SC 17 (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1947); Gregory of Nyssa, Against Eunomius, 1.19, Greek text: Gregorii Nysseni Opera, ed. W. Jaeger et al. (Leiden: Brill, 1960). Cf. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 268.

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statement, it prevented a meaningful account of God’s self-revelation in Jesus, one of the most important factors which had stimulated the development of trinitarian theology in the first place. The presuppositions within which they formulated the questions made it impossible to produce answers. It is hardly surprising that the Fathers themselves were driven to admit that the ultimate nature of the divine and his relationship with the world is a mystery inexplicable in terms of human philosophy.44 It would be less than true to this insight to regard their theology, and the philosophy on which it was based, as timeless and unquestionable. Should we then feel committed to the results of the development we have been discussing? Does Christian faith have to be tied to a christological position which was never very satisfactory and certainly determined by a particular cultural environment? There is no doubt that a good deal of modern radical theo­ logy fails to convince because insufficient attention has been paid to the powerful motivations behind the bitter struggles of the patristic period. Too often the so-called out-dated substance-categories have been spotlighted and criticized without any appreciation of what drove the churchmen of the past to elucidate their faith intellectually in the way that they did. The old heresies constantly reappear in modern dress, and are rejected for remarkably similar reasons. Before anyone casts aside past formulations, a sympathetic awareness of the religious compulsions that found expression in this form is vitally necessary. The formulation of trinitarian and christological definitions was the result of a living fides quaerens intellectum, and within their contemporary context, they were a remarkable achievement. So again I wish to draw not merely a negative conclusion from this survey. As we have seen, it is a remarkable fact that the earliest Christians felt compelled by their confrontation with Jesus of Nazareth or with his story to respond by using more and more supernatural and mythical categories to envisage his nature and origin; it is also important to recognize that the sense of salvation received through him was the driving force of the subsequent philosophical and doctrinal formulations. It was the dynamic reality of their experience which they sought to preach to and articulate for their contemporaries. It is not by accepting traditional formulations as God-given and unquestionable that we join the band of witnesses in the New Testament and the early church, but by wrestling with the problem of expressing intelligently in our own contemporary environment, our personal testimony to the redemptive effect of faith in Jesus of Nazareth.

44 

Gregory of Nazianzus, Orations, 2.41, Migne, PG 35.449.

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III.  A Personal Testimony In any attempt to rethink christological belief, the primacy of soteriology must be recognized. This sense that the story of Jesus Christ provides the key to life, the answer to man’s moral idealism, and above all, a revelation of divine involvement in the suffering and evil of the world, has been mediated to us through the faith of generations committed to the church, and through the witness of the New Testament. Our response has been conditioned by the traditional way of spelling this out in terms of incarnation. If we now suggest that this account is not entirely satisfactory, we nevertheless have to do justice to our own faith, our own identity as members of the church and our own sense of redemption in Christ. Some sort of Christology is inevitable in so far as we come to terms with evil, suffering and sin by meditating on the story of the “crucified God.” This response to the cross was very inadequately expressed by the patristic Christo­ logy, precisely because it was tied to the philosophical presuppositions of that particular time; and if we re-open the question, it is in order to grasp more realistically how it is that we, like our predecessors, have met God disclosed in the man, Jesus. The Christians of the early church lived in a world in which supernatural causation was accepted without question, and divine or spiritual visitants were not unexpected. Such assumptions, however, have become foreign to our situation. In the Western world, both popular culture and the culture of the intelligentsia has come to be dominated by the human and natural sciences to such an extent that supernatural causation or intervention in the affairs of this world has become, for the majority of people, simply incredible. The transformation in popular assumptions has been recent and far-reaching. It could be illustrated from many sources; let me simply refer to a striking instance which recently came to my notice. The great metal craftsman of the Renaissance, Benvenuto Cellini, wrote an autobiography which reveals him as a thoroughly “worldly” man, concerned with his career and very little about religion; yet he always attributes his escapes from street brawls or his survival in battle to the providence of God or even to direct divine intervention. Such a reaction from such a man, so natural in his day, would be unthinkable now. This is not to say that nowadays the world is necessarily viewed in a crude mechanistic sort of way, but regular and predictable patterns of behaviour are presupposed, in all areas of life. There is no room for God as a causal factor in our international, industrial or personal lives, for statistical probabilities and natural patterns of cause and effect are presupposed in sociology and psychology, in medicine and genetics, as well as all the natural sciences. History is to be explained in terms of politics and personalities, or economics and power structures. Heavenly powers have given way to earthly forces.

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What is faith in Jesus Christ going to mean in this cultural environment? That is not, of course, a new question; but I want to offer a way of approaching the problem which I hope avoids the reductionism of radical “humanist” theo­ logies, while not simply being a conservative reassertion of the old view; for such a reassertion is not only blind to the seriousness of the question, but tends in an equally reductionist direction in that it is obliged to keep pushing God out of territory which he once occupied into ever-decreasing “gaps.” Christology is one among many areas where the difficulties arise. Jesus must have been part of world history and the inheritor of the normal genetic links in human descent.45 We do not feel happy about appealing to a supranormal break in our understanding of humanity and human history. Jesus cannot be a real man and also unique in a sense different from that in which each one of us is a unique individual. A literal incarnation doctrine, expressed in however sophisticated a form, cannot avoid some element of docetism, and involves the believer in claims for uniqueness which seem straightforwardly incredible to the majority of our contemporaries. But it is not only Christology which is affected by this problem. Like the Fathers, we find that the problem of Christology is intimately related with the more general problem of God’s relationship with the world. Our acceptance of the biblical accounts of God’s dealings with the people of Israel is equally problematical – not to mention the fact that belief in God’s providence and caring involvement in our own time is so called into question that faith and prayer can seem irrelevant and meaningless. In other words, the present climate is alien to the whole Christian position as traditionally conceived. Yet many of us remain Christian believers. Looking back over the years, we descry God’s care for us in the remarkable coincidences and creative chances of our lives. When faced with difficulties or crises, we turn naturally to prayer. In moments of joy, we instinctively offer thanksgiving. Sunday by Sunday we take ourselves to a place where the presence of other believers will assist us in praising and worshipping God whom, we claim, is the author and sustainer of the universe. We confess our sins and accept forgiveness in the name of Jesus Christ; we battle against evil and suffering in the power of the Lord. We offer intercessions for the sick and pray about situations of political conflict and war. None of these activities can be regarded as “rational” in so far as they appear inconsistent with our fundamental assumptions about the world in which we live. How is it then that we go on living in this way? Are we all schizophrenics? I suspect that many of us are – that most of the time we in fact make little real 45  Traditionalists may react by saying “What about the virgin birth?” Quite apart from the difficulty of “proving” such a story, as a literal statement of Jesus’s origins, it is virtually inconceivable in the light of modern knowledge of genetics and reproduction. The matter is discussed at greater length in J. A. T Robinson, The Human Face of God (London: SCM Press, 1973), ch.  2.

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attempt to integrate two world-views which must be related in some way and yet appear so incompatible. Those theologies which try to relate the two invariably face criticism because they are reductionist. They narrow the areas of our life to which faith is relevant by mapping out which parts can be assigned to which view – whereas we instinctively feel that the whole of life belongs to each. Dividing life into compartments does not work. So we find ourselves living and understanding at two different levels at the same time. We expect the world to work in accordance with known patterns of cause and effect, but we believe that somewhere God is involved in the total process. What we are doing is instinctive. When we spell it out like this it appears irrational. But it is surely not the only situation in which we find ourselves having to live with unresolved contradictions or provisional and unsatisfactory analyses. Even science has its apparent inconsistencies. When a scientist interprets the results of his experiments, he proceeds by using “models.” For example, he says, “Let an electron be a particle,” and calculates its behaviour as if it were a minute tennis ball. This model will account for much of his data, but there comes a point where his mathematical predictions on this basis do not fit the evidence, and he is obliged to turn to another complementary model and calculate the electron’s behaviour on the assumption that it is a wave. The wave model supersedes the particle model because it is a deeper understanding of how an electron behaves, though less convenient in most cases. This example has been introduced to indicate what is meant by a model. For our purposes, the interesting point is that there have been situations, for example in nuclear physics, where two models have been used at the same time although it is difficult to see how they fit together. Each model fails to predict accurately all that the physicist “sees,” and he is obliged to use two different definitions and two different mathematical languages, each adequate up to a point, but neither capable of describing the total complex picture produced by the experimental data. It may be that with advances in understanding, these two incompatible models can be superseded by a deeper and more adequate model which resolves more of the complexities; but meanwhile, the physicist works with two apparently inconsistent models alongside one another. What I want to suggest is that when we move from the “Trivial Plane” to the “Tragic Plane,” to use Arthur Koestler’s phrases,46 when we turn from day to day events to contemplate at a deep level the significance of human life, it is usual for us to proceed concurrently with different models, one of which is at any one moment perhaps temporarily suspended though not denied. In reflecting upon man’s nature and destiny, especially as it is explored in literature and drama, we accept categories of “truth” to which we would assign no literal, factual or scientific meaning. We accept that Tess has been the plaything of the 46 

Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation (London: Hutchinson, 1964), ch.  20.

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president of the immortals, because we recognize that this metaphorical way of speaking says something profoundly truthful about the human situation. So, the Christian believer lives in more than one dimension. In trying to understand the world in which he lives, he finds himself obliged to use different, apparently incompatible, models. Each is self-sufficient and adequate up to a point, but no single model represents on its own the total complex reality which we perceive, and in our present state of knowledge it is impossible to see how they ultimately fit together. As Paul said in a quite different context, “Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully….” As Christian believers, then, we work with (1) the scientific model which finds explanations of phenomena, behaviour and events in terms of natural causes, and (2) what we can only describe as “mythological” or symbolic models, models which however inadequately represent the religious and spiritual dimension of our experience. To call them “mythological” is not to denigrate their status, but to indicate that they refer to realities which are not only inaccessible to the normal methods of scientific investigation, but are also indefinable in terms of human language, and in their totality, inconceivable within the limited powers and experience of the finite human mind. Whereas the “scientific” model is to a large extent known, predictable, coherent and in principle understood (though we may not all have equal knowledge, and different specialists know different bits of it), there is not one “mythological” model but a number of different analogies, pictures, gropings, which may themselves seem incompatible; and different people may have different mythological models. This kind of truth is communicated – even conceived – in dramatic and poetic forms. Criteria are hard to formulate. This is bound to be the case since all language about God is analogical; it is the expression of the unknown and inexpressible in terms of the known. To take the simplest example: God is not literally “our Father,” or literally “a person.” It is impossible to conceive of the transcendence, immanence, and omnipresence of a person like the persons we know, and yet such characteristics are essential to our understanding of God in any but the crudest “Daddy-in-the-sky” picture. God may have sufficient characteristics in common with a father or a person to make the analogy meaningful, but each model is bound to be “poetic truth” or “mythological truth” rather than “literal fact.” In the light of this discussion, how am I going to express in the contemporary environment my own testimony to the redemptive effect of faith in Jesus of Nazareth? Salvation and atonement are the core of the Christian message. For me, experience of suffering, sin, decay and “abnormality” as a constituent part of the world, would make belief in God impossible without a Calvary-centred religious myth. It is only because I can see God entering the darkness of human suffering and evil in his creation, recognizing it for what it really is, meeting it and conquering it, that I can accept a religious view of the world. Without the

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religious dimension, life would be senseless and endurance of its cruelty pointless; yet without the cross, it would be impossible to believe in God. Faith demands a doctrine of atonement, and atonement means a conviction that God has somehow dealt with evil, with sin, with rebellion; that on the cross, God in Christ entered into the suffering, the evil and the sin of his world – entered the darkness and transformed it into light, into blazing glory; that God himself took responsibility for the existence of evil in his creation; that he bore the pain of it and the guilt of it, accepting its consequences into himself; that he in his love reconciled his holiness to a sinful and corrupt humanity, justifying the ungodly, accepting man just as he is. Yet, to say this kind of thing is to use poetic, anthropomorphic or “mythological” language; it is not to present a theological conclusion based on logical argument. However, whatever the status of the language, if such a faith is to have any grounds whatever, it does appear at first sight to require the conclusion that Jesus on the cross was God; in other words, it seems to force me back to the sort of “literal incarnation” doctrine which I dismissed as docetic earlier on. The question is: will my myth cease to be real if I find it intellectually impossible to make the ontological equation: Jesus = God? It is often argued, and more often assumed, that this is the case. But is it? There are, I think, good reasons for thinking that this is not so: (1) The simple equation Jesus = God not only fails to represent what Christian tradition has claimed, but is distinctly odd. To reduce all of God to a human incarnation is virtually inconceivable, a fact to which trinitarian doctrine is the traditional response. The status of all language about God, as we have already noted, is peculiar. The simple equation cannot help confusing the two models with which, I have suggested, we are obliged to work; in other words, it turns “myth” into “science.” An exactly parallel confusion may help to illustrate the point. At the Reformation, controversy raged over the exact way in which the eucharistic bread and wine is the body and blood of Jesus Christ. One side wanted to treat it as symbolic, the other side as literal. An account of the literal meaning according to the “science” of the time was offered: the underlying substance became the body and blood of Christ, while the accidents remained those of bread and wine. Such an explanation of the literal meaning ceases to have any value when we think in terms not of substance and accidents, but of molecules, atoms, electrons and nuclei. The cause of the whole debate lay in the confusion between “myth” and “science.” That in some real sense the bread and wine represent the body and blood is what Christian tradition has been concerned to affirm, but it does not help that concern to tie it to a literal or scientific way of expressing it. When the science becomes outdated, the myth is endangered. (2) I have used the word “mythological.” This is because, amongst other things, it is a story which treats God in a thoroughly anthropomorphic way, psychologically if not physically. This may be a suitable analogy which expresses as well as possible what we want to say about God, but it is in-

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evitably inadequate, and certainly not literally true. But if we no longer accept it as literal fact, does the story cease to be meaningful? Perhaps we shall find our answer if we consider some other examples. The story of Adam remains meaningful even though I accept that it is extremely improbable that Adam ever existed or that all men are descended from one ancestor; and Berlioz’s Grande Messe des Morts convicts and terrifies, even though I no longer accept as literal the picture of a heavenly assize after death. In other words, there are many areas where Christians habitually use stories which were once believed to be fact but are no longer. The “myth” remains evocative and conveys “truth” at a level beyond the merely literal. (3) The “truth” of my myth can be summarized approximately by saying that God is to be understood as a suffering God, at least in the same sense as we can talk of him as loving. How might I find out that God shares my grief and suffering, my struggles with temptation, evil and sin – indeed, that his grief and suffering at the evil in his creation is far more profound than my self-centred tears at my own difficulties? Surely I am most likely to be convinced of this, not by a single, isolated and unique occurrence, but by repeated experience of the fact that innocent sufferers and martyrs who bear the abuse of their fellow-men with forgiveness, have a godlike quality of a transforming kind; by repeated experience of the fact that one who trusts entirely in God, in spite of the apparent stupidity and irrelevance of such an attitude, one who refuses to run away from evil or to meet it with more evil, can turn darkness into light; from repeated experience of the fact that real love involves a person in suffering whether he likes it or not. It will then seem to be part of the make-up of the world, which in some sense reveals to the believer the God who created it and sustains it. The Book of Daniel speaks of the sufferings of persecuted Jews in the author’s own time; but his words can be taken (as by Israelis) as prophecy of the sufferings of Jews under Hitler; or they can be taken (as traditionally by Christians) as prophecy of the sufferings of Jesus. But surely there is no need to limit the application to any one of these occasions or fulfilments. Potentially, if not actually, what is expressed here is universal insight into the suffering of God’s faithful, a suffering which tells of God’s suffering. This insight is hinted at in many places in the biblical tradition, in the experiences of Jeremiah and the poetry of Isaiah 53. It is a suffering which Christian disciples are called to share. Jesus is not the only evidence for the suffering of God.47

47  These examples are particularly well emphasized by A. T. Hanson, Grace and Truth (London: SPCK, 1975). His argument that humanity is the appropriate vehicle for divinity in the space-time context, and his use of biblical parallels to the suffering of Jesus, comes close to my position. However, he fails to see that all this implies that the traditional “hard” distinction between God and man can no longer be upheld, and each man is potentially “God incarnate.” The ontological uniqueness of Jesus cannot then be successfully defended.

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But it is of course true that Christian tradition has seen this truth about God as supremely to be witnessed in the suffering of Jesus on the cross, and it is doubtful if the other examples would be seen in the same light without the story of Jesus. His associates responded to his death as the suffering of the martyr par excellence, the full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. Thus our attention has been focused upon one central story which for the Christian believer provides the revelation that God’s redemptive activity, God’s love for his creatures, involves him in the suffering and evil of the world, involves him in a way which is in some sense real though inconceivable apart from analogy, and inexpressible apart from myth. So I find myself driven to tell two stories, to think in terms of two models, which cannot be fitted together in a literal way, or spelled out in relation to one another, but which in some sense reflect both the “scientific” model of the world which my culture forces upon me and the “mythological” model from which my religious faith cannot escape: (a) The story of a man who lived as the “archetypal believer,” who lived and died trusting in God, and accepted the bitter consequences of the stupidity of such a career and his inevitable failure. (b) The story of God being involved in the reality of human existence with its compromises, its temptations, its suffering, its pain, its injustice, its cruelty, its death; 48 not running away from it, not pretending that all this does not exist, but transforming its darkness into light, demonstrating that he takes responsibility for all that seems wrong with the world that he created.49 These two stories together provide me with the challenge to trust in God against all odds and to join in the costly work of turning darkness into light, and also with the assurance that God is worth trusting and shares with me in the battle and the victory. This is a Christology which “works,” a Christology which is not incredible in so far as Jesus is a real man in the human context, and a Christology which transcends the limits of human understanding and allows for the mystery and the paradox of belief in God. So I find myself able to say: “I see God in Jesus,” and “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself,” and other such traditional statements, with48  I deliberately include the idea of God’s death, since this highlights the “mythical” and paradoxical nature of the Christian story. The Fathers were nonplussed by the claim that God died on the cross, and tried to give an intelligible account of it; but this was to miss the whole point. I do not think it is possible to say exactly what is meant by God dying, but that it is an essential element in the saving story, I am sure. 49  This does not mean that I am suggesting as some do, that in Jesus “myth” was “actualized” in history, or that something happened in “God’s biography” when Jesus died on the cross. I am simply stating that as a matter of fact the story of Jesus has become a catalyst which has opened the eyes of those in the Christian tradition to this aspect of God as revealed in the world he created. That the same truth could be witnessed elsewhere is undeniable, e.g. in Jewish history.

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out necessarily having to spell it out in terms of a literal incarnation. I find salvation in Christ, because in him God is disclosed to me as a “suffering God.” God is not only disclosed in him, nor is revelation confined to “biblical times”; but Jesus is the supreme disclosure which opens my eyes to God in the present, and while remaining a man who lived in a particular historical situation, he will always be the unique focus of my perception of and response to God.

IV. Conclusion If we admit the primacy of soteriology, we inevitably open the gates to a multiplicity of Christologies, rather than insisting upon one to which all are expected to conform. There is no suggestion that the approach of the last section will be meaningful or acceptable to everyone. Genuine faith in Jesus Christ does not take the same form in all believers. A little “historical theology” soon reveals this, but it is also true in the church today. I do not simply refer to the phenomenon of “Black Theology,” or to the obvious differences between the expressions of Christian belief in different cultures, art-forms, etc. It is true of any average congregation. There are a fair number of residual Christians who go on believing what they were taught as children and adolescents, but increasingly individuals who have not “made the faith their own” drift away under the pressures of this non-religious age. There are blocks of Christians who claim to have conversion-experiences of a remarkably similar type, and “sects” which assert particular narrow beliefs as the only true Christianity, and in each case their members conform to the pattern both psychologically and intellectually. But apart from such exceptions, in the average congregation there are as many different responses to Jesus Christ as there are different fingerprints. The “gut-­ centre” of each person’s faith is different even where conformist language is used to describe it. It is surely undeniable that an honest recognition of this fact could be a positive move in this ecumenical age. The slogan, “unity but not uniformity,” must apply not only to the so-called “non-theological” factors. To reduce any living faith to a set of definitions and propositions is bound to distort it. Attempts to produce creeds are inevitably divisive or compromising: Eusebius of Caesarea signed the creed of Nicaea for the sake of church unity, but he was clearly embarrassed about it. What we need is not new creeds, but a new openness which will allow manifold ways of responding and elucidating that response. These ways may not seem consistent; they may have to co-exist in tension and paradox; but they need not pass judgment on each other. Even when in friction they may simply provide a valuable way of mutual criticism. No single one is to be regarded as “the truth” or beyond critical discussion.

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A number of objections to this position may be raised: (a) By what criteria can we define orthodoxy or heresy if we abandon credal definition? To this question, I ask the counter-question, how far ought we to discriminate between ortho­doxy and heresy? Heresy hunts have always done more harm than good; the intolerance of the past still produces its sad harvest. Fanatical adherence to “truth” is divisive. We need to break down barriers, not build them up. It is spiritual arrogance to be convinced that we have the truth and everyone else is misguided. We want today to be free to commend Jesus as Saviour without the harmful attitude to others which inevitably accompanies dogmatic and arrogant claims. The questions we ought to ask, surely, are which “myths” or claims to truth are dangerous or harmful rather than healing and constructive. This criterion would exclude much that has passed for orthodoxy, but would welcome any positive insight, and any signs of reconciliation between people. (b) If we all have our own Christologies, how can there be any “ontological” or real basis or justification for them? To this question some response has been indicated in the last section. To what was said there I would add two points: (1) Response to Jesus as Saviour and Christ is not something we make in isolation from “the tradition” – indeed, each individual’s faith is parasitic upon the faith of others, and ultimately on the response of Jesus’s immediate followers. There is therefore a common ground to our response, and that common ground must have some reasonable basis. The New Testament witness cannot be entirely out of character with the sort of person Jesus was: for example, Brandon’s suggestion that Jesus was really a nationalist, closely associated with the Zealot guerrilla movement will not do, because it totally fails to account for Christian faith with its stress upon self-giving love, love even of one’s enemies.50 However complex historical reconstruction may be, there must have been something about Jesus which elicited the response whereby each follower saw him as the answer to his deepest needs, and claimed to see God disclosed in him. (2) “What does Christ mean to me?” usually elicits from a Christian believer some sort of claim that “God” is disclosed in him. What we want to say is: He is “as-if-God” for me. The question is, how do we spell that meaning out? Does it really matter if we spell it out in lots of different ways? I am not sure that it does. This is not my first reference to the fact that when we bring in talk about “God” we introduce an unknown, or only dimly known, quantity into the situation. Everything we say enters the realm of analogies which are only half-adequate. If we were “flat-landers” living in a world of two dimensions, we could only experience a three-dimensional object in two-dimensional terms. Suppose we found a circular ashtray: we would experience its base as a circle, or its side, if it were upturned, as a line. We might become aware of a number of different aspects of it if it were “projected” on to our two-dimensional plane. All these 50 

S. G. F Brandon, The Trial of Jesus (London: Batsford, 1968).

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different experiences might suggest to us that the three-dimensional ashtray was more complex and mysterious than our perception of it, but we could not realistically visualize it or even conceptualize it; we could only describe some of its properties, which to us would appear almost incompatible. The mathematician who tries to construct or perceive a four-dimensional object is not unlike the religious man in his perception of a complex reality which is not conceivable in its totality within the limits of our present experience. We are bound to attempt to describe the unknown in terms of the known, indeed to experience the “beyond” in terms of the “here and now”; but this leaves areas of “mystery,” where we think we may perceive something but cannot grasp it fully. Every statement about God is inevitably inadequate, expressing one among many possible “projections” of his reality; and it may be that manifold ways of expression are the only way in which we can dimly perceive the depth of riches beyond. So, if we say that “God is disclosed in the man Jesus,” we may all perceive different facets, so that a multiplicity of Christologies is inevitable by the very nature of our subject. To recognize this can only help to enrich and deepen our theology. (c) Is it possible to safeguard the uniqueness and finality of Christ if we abandon a clear dogmatic stance? It should be clear from remarks made earlier that I doubt whether there is any necessity to safeguard this in an “ontological” sense – indeed, it may be detrimental to do so. Truth about the world is found nowadays not in unique particular exceptions, but in statistical averages: many witnesses are more convincing than one. In a world context, the witness of differing prophets and differing faiths to the “beyond” is more important to all religions than the exclusive claims of any one. Of course, for the New Testament writers, for the church, for all believers, Jesus Christ undoubtedly holds a unique position; no one else has the same role for faith. But in the case of outsiders, has it not become increasingly difficult to maintain that faith in Christ is indispensable for salvation? The idea of Christ’s finality is surely linked with the eschatological presuppositions of the early church, presuppositions which were central and fundamental to them but which we can only make our own in some kind of “demythologized” form. Within one cultural stream, namely the Judaeo-­ Christian European tradition, some case can be made for seeing Christ as a kind of “coping-stone” to religious developments in the ancient world, the spiritual climax, as it were, of Hellenistic philosophy, which determined the subsequent religious culture of Europe; but to claim that Jesus as the cosmic Christ has the same ultimate significance for all mankind irrespective of time, place or culture is surely unrealistic. (d) If our Christology is allowed to become ill-defined, how can we uphold a trinitarian doctrine of God? It must be admitted that the development of trinitarian theology was intimately, though not exclusively, linked with patristic Christology; so does this mean that re-thinking incarnational belief involves us in abandoning the characteristically Christian theology of God as “Three-in-

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One”? While for some to do this would be a welcome release from an incomprehensible and cramping burden, for many others it would appear a serious break with Christian tradition. Would we have left anything which could be called a Christian doctrine of God? It seems to me that a discussion of these issues is hampered as long as we insist on a one-to-one identification of Christian affirmations about God with factuality. To the comments made above we may add the observation that modern discussions have insisted on the impossibility of treating God as a thing like other things about which factual statements can be made. Besides this, it is notoriously difficult to elucidate trinitarian doctrine without falling either into Sabellian or tritheistic statements. The only thing that enabled the Cappadocians to avoid these pitfalls was their understanding of the divine substance, an understanding intimately linked with the philosophical heritage within which they worked. It would not be surprising if the trinitarian concept of God is found unintelligible in a different philosophical environment. Perhaps then we shall get further by raising the question what function the trinitarian concept of God has had in Christian theology and devotion, and whether our concept of God needs in one way or another to perform the same functions. It seems to me that the doctrine has had two important roles: (1) Logos-theology and trinitarian doctrine made it possible for God to be involved. The impassible, transcendent One, beyond Being, was intellectually adequate and mystically inspiring, but could not elicit the faith and devotion of most ordinary mortals. The doctrines of the Logos and the Spirit made it possible to believe in a God who was both transcendent and immanent, however paradoxical that might seem to be. We cannot afford to lose this element in our understanding of God, and it is interesting that prior to reaction against Christianity, Judaism was itself developing a theology of divine hypostases to preserve this aspect of belief in God. For Christianity, it has been trinitarianism which has made possible a concept of richness, variety, and adaptability in God: thus the process of creation and history was not divorced from God’s Being. So we can say that evolutionary theology and process theology are not foreign to the Christian tradition, because Christian theology has always insisted that God is not monolithic. Where it is not a crude anthropomorphism, pure monotheism is liable to become belief in a static and remote First Cause, almost irrelevant to the religious life. (2) Trinitarian theology, simply because it defies expression, was a constant warning against over-simple theologies, blasphemous in their attempts to pin down the Being of God. Religion is destroyed without mystery – indeed paradox. Faith and devotion depend upon the interplay of awe and familiarity, and the Christian doctrine of God as Father and Brother, Judge and Advocate, King and Servant, the one to whom we pray, the one with whom we pray, and the one who prays within us, has had an essential role in the worship and spiritual tra-

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dition of the church. It is instructive to read medieval literature like the writings of Julian of Norwich. Trinitarian theology is the traditional way of expressing the mystery of God and the inadequacy of our human attempts to express his Being whether in imaginative and analogical terms, or in abstruse philosophical definitions. It would be a serious impoverishment to lose this. We worship a mysterious, not an anthropomorphic God. So, despite the objections raised, the future seems to lie with pluralism in Christology. For some time now the church has been moving towards pluralism in the expression of salvation and atonement; because Christology is so intimately linked with soteriology, sooner or later it must take the same path. Jesus Christ can be all things to all men because each individual or society, in one cultural environment after another, sees him as the embodiment of their salvation.51 He becomes, as he did for Paul, the unique focus of their perception of and response to God.

51  A. T. Hanson’s study of the incarnation, Grace and Truth, has come to my notice since the first draft of this paper. It is interesting that he makes a similar plea for admitting more than one expression of Christology.

Chapter 4

Two Roots or a Tangled Mass? * I. Introduction In its original context this chapter was a response to a specific theory accounting for the rise of incarnational belief. That theory provided a very good example of the kind of hypothetical reconstruction which is possible. The chief objection to that sort of theory is that exclusive concentration on one or two specific sources inevitably involves ignoring evidence of parallels and coincidences found elsewhere, and thus fails to do justice to what seems to have been a highly complex and syncretistic situation in this particular period of GrecoRoman civilization, especially on the borderlines of Judaism. In this chapter no specific theory is advanced. This is simply an attempt to present samples of the kind of evidence at hand which could be relevant, and to outline some of the other theories which have been proposed. For all the material available to the scholar, the gaps in our knowledge are still more extensive than the areas filled in, and the precise implications of much of the evidence is open to considerable dispute. Yet, while it may be admitted at the outset that there seems to be no exact parallel to the Christian doctrine of incarnation, and certainly not in indisputably pre-Christian material, the indications are that christological confessions about Jesus evolved from a vast range of expectations and concepts, images and speculations that were present in the culture of the age and society in which the church was born and matured. Scholarship has not yet found enough pieces of the jigsaw to reconstruct a totally convincing picture of the sources and development of christological belief, but it is certain that the jigsaw is there to be played with; or, to change the analogy, we may not be able to identify confidently two and only two roots of the Christian myth, but roots *  Originally published as ch.  5 in Myth of God Incarnate, ed. Hick: 87–121. It was preceded by a chapter entitled “Two Roots of the Christian Myth” by Michael Goulder: 64–86, and was a response to that theory. Notes were mostly confined to identifying passages actually quoted. Translations follow the Loeb Classical Library where it is available, apart from occasional changes introduced by myself. Other translations used include: Chadwick, trans., Origen. Contra Celsum; E. H. Gifford, ed. and trans., Eusebii Praeparatio Evangelica, 4 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1903); Isidore Epstein, ed., The Soncino Babylonian Talmud, 36 vols. (London: Soncino Press, 1935–1952); Hugo Odeberg, ed. and trans., 3 Enoch or the Hebrew Book of Enoch (London: Cambridge University Press, 1928). Other texts (e.g. Qumran) are quoted from the secondary sources referred to.

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there were, even if they appear more like a tangled mass whose full unravelling is probably not possible in the present state of knowledge. Let us dig around and see what comes to light.

II.  First Probings Round about the year 248 CE Origen, who may be described as the first great Christian scholar, undertook to compose a reply to an attack on Christianity written some seventy years previously by a pagan named Celsus. Amongst other things, Celsus had poured scorn upon the idea that Jesus was Son of God, miraculously born of a virgin. The character of the arguments for and against the Christian position is very illuminating: (a) Celsus regarded Jesus as one of many frauds, who only impressed the gullible. The sole reply that Origen could offer was that his so-called fraud had had considerable success, whereas the followers of Simon Magus or of Dositheus were reduced to a mere thirty faithful.1 The debate assumes more than one claimant to divine origin, amongst whom it was impossible to decide except by the “Gamaliel test” (Acts 5:38–39): “If this doctrine be of men, it will be overthrown, but if it be of God, you will not be able to overthrow it” – a text Origen himself quoted.2 It was not a bad argument in the syncretistic atmosphere of the Hellenistic world where faith was “directed to divine power rather than divine personalities” (i.e. the believer cared more about the “success-rate” of a god or his prophet than his precise identity or character); 3 yet in the thought-world of today, it would surely be more natural to look for historical causes to explain how the claims for one survived the demise of all the others. At any rate, the controversy reflects a cultural atmosphere in which such claims could find root and might thrive. Celsus indeed points to many prophets in Palestine wandering about saying “I am God, or a son of God, or a divine spirit.”4 (b) Celsus’s main argument against Christian claims for Jesus were variations on the theme that he was not a very proper divine visitant; he was just not what one would expect an incarnate god to be like; ichor not blood flows in the veins of the gods; a god would not have been born or have died in the normal way; a divine being would have foreseen the terrible death plotted for him and would have used his power to avoid it; and so on. Such arguments imply a cultural climate in which docetic incarnation was an acceptable possibility. To claim that 1 Origen, Cels., 1.57, the Simonians number thirty; Origen, Cels., 6.11, Dositheans under thirty. 2 Origen, Cels., 1.57. 3  A. D. Nock, Essays on Religion and the Ancient World, vol.  1, ed. Zeph Stewart (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), 35. 4 Origen, Cels., 7.9.

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a god visited the earth in human disguise would have caused no surprise and little comment. What Celsus was determined to assert was that “no God or child of god has either come down or would have come down” in the sense that the Christians meant; 5 but in the sense in which Apollo and Asclepius “came down” with oracles and miracles, Celsus not merely admits such a possibility but refers to the witnesses’ insistence that Asclepius was “not a phantom”: “a great multitude of men, both of Greeks and barbarians, confess that they have often seen and still do see not just a phantom but Asclepius himself healing men and doing good and predicting the future.”6 (c) Origen replies to attacks on the notion of the virgin birth by appealing to parallel pagan stories: In addressing Greeks, it is not out of place to quote Greek stories, lest we should appear to be the only people to have related this incredible story. For some have thought fit (not in respect of any ancient stories and heroic tales, but of people born quite recently) to record as though possible that when Plato was born of Amphictione, Ariston was prevented from having sexual intercourse with her until she had brought forth the child which she had by Apollo.7

Clearly Origen lived in a society in which such stories were current, and the notion of divine paternity was by no means peculiar to Christian circles. If we look around the religious world in which Celsus and Origen lived, we find further confirmation of this kind of outlook. Two writers exemplify this particularly clearly. In the satirical works of Lucian of Samosata, we meet examples of the religious fraud or charlatan. Lucian lived through the latter part of the second century CE and was contemporary with Celsus. We shall briefly consider two of his characters – Alexander of Abonuteichos and one Peregrinus, otherwise known as Proteus; typically, Lucian enjoys playing upon the fact that he had the name of the mythical old man of the sea who kept changing his form. These two characters are not Lucian’s inventions. That Alexander existed and established a new cult centre and a famous oracle is confirmed by archaeological evidence. Gems, coins and inscriptions corroborate what Lucian tells us, and show that the mystery-cult he founded had widespread influence and lasted at least a century. Both Alexander and Proteus are mentioned in other ancient sources: for example, Athenagoras, the Christian apologist, discusses statues of them both which were supposed to give oracles and perform cures. 8 Many people were clearly taken in by these men, even if Lucian himself was not. Proteus’s main claim to notoriety was his self-immolation by fire at the Olympic Games in 165 CE. The whole incident was clearly set up as an imitation of the 5 Origen,

Cels., 5.1. Cels., 3.24. 7 Origen, Cels., 1.37. 8 Athenagoras, Leg., 26, Greek text and ET in Athenagoras. Legatio and De Resurrectione, ed. and trans. William R. Schoedel, OECT (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972). 6 Origen,

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myth of Heracles’s apotheosis. Advance publicity spoke of Proteus being about to depart from among men to the gods, borne on the wings of fire; 9 and prior to the event, according to Lucian, he manufactured myths and oracles suggesting that he was to become the “guardian of the night”: a verse prophecy from the Sibyl was produced bidding men that, when Proteus “kindleth fire in the precinct of Zeus … leapeth into the flame and cometh to lofty Olympus” (the mythical home of the gods), they should pay honour to “him that walketh abroad in the night-time, greatest of spirits, throned with Heracles and Hephaestus.”10 The story went that “when the pyre was kindled and Proteus flung himself bodily in, a great earthquake first took place, accompanied by a bellowing of the ground, and then a vulture, flying out of the midst of the flames, went off to heaven, saying in human speech with a loud voice, “I am through with the earth, to Olympus I go.”11 This account Lucian claims to have deliberately initiated, and goes on to mock the credulity of his contemporaries by recounting how he met an old man a little later who claimed to have seen the transfigured Proteus since his cremation, and to have witnessed the vulture flying out of the pyre.12 Earlier in his narrative, as a counterblast to the propaganda on behalf of Proteus’s divinity, Lucian reports a debunking speech which gives an extremely unsympathetic account of his life as a wandering prophet, affirming that the reason why he originally left his hometown was that he had to flee from charges of parricide and other crimes. Amongst other stages in his dubious career, we are told, Peregrinus, on arrival in Palestine, joined up with the Christians.13 “He was prophet, cult-leader, head of the synagogue, and everything all by himself … and they revered him as a god … next after that other whom they still worship, the man crucified in Palestine….” There follows an account of how Peregrinus was arrested for his faith, and while in prison became virtually an object of pilgrimage and amassed great wealth in the process. The Christians Lucian regarded as peculiarly gullible: “If any charlatan or trickster, able to profit by occasions, comes among them, he quickly acquires sudden wealth by imposing upon simple folk.” On his release, Peregrinus flourished on Christian funds until even these supporters were eventually offended. Lucian’s account thus throws interesting light upon the Christian image in the late second century – Christians were known for their charity and for their willingness to die as martyrs; but his main purpose is to poke fun at the fact that simple people were so easily induced to revere exceptional prophets as gods. That Lucian certainly misunderstood the attitude of Christians to martyrs only 9 Lucian, Peregr., 4, Greek text and ET in The Passing of Peregrinus, trans. A. M. Harmon, LCL 302 (London: Heinemann and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936). 10 Lucian, Peregr., 29. 11 Lucian, Peregr., 39. 12 Lucian, Peregr., 40. 13 Lucian, Peregr., 11–16.

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proves the point for non-Christians; and the actual apotheosis is entirely of pagan inspiration. Lucian alludes not only to the stories of Heracles’s ascent to the gods by fire, but also to the deification of Asclepius and Dionysus “by grace of the thunderbolt”; and to the strange stories about the death of the philosopher, Empedocles (for which see below).14 Lucian’s other impostor, Alexander of Abonuteichos, is even more instructive since there is even less question of direct Christian influence, misunderstood or otherwise; the Christians are mentioned, but rather more sympathetically, being linked with the Epicureans as Alexander’s atheistic opponents. Lucian’s exposé, including accounts of deliberate trick questions and so on, was written approximately ten years after Alexander’s death in the 180s. According to Lucian, Alexander obtained a tame serpent and attached to it a false human head. He chose Abonuteichos as a likely site because the nearby Paphlagonians were known for their credulity, staring at any travelling musician or fortune-teller “as if he were a god from heaven.”15 He proceeded to organize prophecies of the appearance of Asclepius and an oracle saying: Here in your sight is a scion of Perseus, dear unto Phoebus (i.e. the god Apollo) This is divine Alexander who shareth the blood of the Healer (i.e. the god, Asclepius); 16

then he engineered the birth of a tiny serpent from an ostrich egg, and the apparently wondrous birth was followed by apparently wondrous growth; for a few days later Alexander seated himself on a couch clothed in apparel suited to a god and took into his bosom the large, tame snake with the false human head. The snake became known as Glycon, the new incarnation of Asclepius. By various tricks Alexander produced prophecies and prescriptions for cures, and projected himself as the prophet who gets answers to prayers. Asked whether Alexander was a re-incarnation of Pythagoras’s soul the oracle answered: No, Pythagoras’s soul now wanes and waxes at other times; His, with prophecy gifted, takes its issue from God’s mind. Sent by the Father to aid good men in the stress of the conflict, Then to God it will return, by God’s thunderbolt smitten.17

That many believed him and that the cult of Glycon was a long-standing and wide-ranging success is quite clear; it is also likely that Alexander’s claims should be interpreted in some kind of incarnational sense. Alexander of Abonuteichos was a pupil of a Pythagorean philosopher, Apollonius of Tyana. The Life of Apollonius by Philostratus is the most frequently 14 Lucian,

Peregr., 4. Alex., 8–9, Greek text and ET in Alexander the False-Prophet, trans. A. M. Harmon, LCL 162 (London: Heinemann and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925). 16 Lucian, Alex., 11. 17 Lucian, Alex., 40. 15 Lucian,

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cited parallel to the life of Jesus presented in the Synoptic Gospels. This work was composed some thirty years earlier than Origen’s book against Celsus; it was commissioned by the Empress and based upon some genuine letters of Apollonius, some other available documents and evidence gleaned by the author on his travels. Apollonius was a neo-Pythagorean philosopher who was admired for his asceticism, was devastatingly critical of contemporary religion, especially the practice of sacrifice, and performed remarkable cures. The story told by Philostratus makes much of his virtue and piety, his miracles, his visit to the Brahmans in India and his brilliant defence against charges of wizardry and black magic before the Emperor. Several features of this narrative are of interest from our point of view. (1) The first is the story of his miraculous birth which includes his mother’s vision of Proteus, “in the guise of an Egyptian demon. She was in no way frightened but asked him what sort of child she would bear. And he answered, ‘Myself.’ ‘And who are you?’ she asked. ‘Proteus,’ answered he, ‘the god of Egypt.’”18 Alongside this story, Philostratus reports that there was a spring sacred to Zeus near Tyana, and “the locals say that Apollonius was the son of this Zeus, though the sage called himself son of Apollonius” (Apollonius had the same name as his father).19 (2) Philostratus calls Apollonius “δαιμόνιος τε καὶ θεός” (daimonios te kai theos – supernatural and divine).20 In this period people believed in gods and demons as two ranks of higher beings; so Apollonius is being described as one with supernatural attributes. Furthermore, in his defence-speech, Apollonius not only defends himself against charges of wizardry, but also the charge that he is like a god, and that men regard him as a god.21 He refuses to be ranked with Empedocles on this score (see below). (3) At the end, a series of mysterious reports are given about the uncertainty of his death; one tells how he entered a temple and a chorus of maidens was heard singing, “Hasten thou from earth, hasten thou to heaven, hasten”; his remains were never discovered and no one ventured to dispute that he was immortal. Furthermore, he continued his teaching after his death; for he appeared to convince a doubter that the soul is immortal and that he was himself alive.22 These items of evidence have been variously assessed. Apollonius and Alexander have been treated as the chief examples of the “divine man” phenomenon in the ancient world, miracle-workers and prophets who were regarded as visi18 Philostratus, Vit. Apoll., 1.4, Greek text and ET in The Life of Apollonius of Tyana, ed. and trans. Christopher P. Jones, 2 vols., LCL 16 and 17 (London: Heinemann and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005). 19 Philostratus, Vit. Apoll., 1.6. 20 Philostratus, Vit. Apoll., 1.2. 21 Philostratus, Vit. Apoll., 8.7. 22 Philostratus, Vit. Apoll., 8.30 ff.

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tants from another realm; it was this phenomenon, it is claimed, which accounts for the development of incarnational belief in the Gentile Christian communities. Others have treated most of these cases, and also the evidence in the Against Celsus concerning prophets claiming to be god or a son of god, as post-­Christian parody of Christian claims about Jesus; in particular, the Life of Apollonius is regarded by some as a consciously contrived rival to the Gospels, focusing on a more congenial and respectable philosopher than the barbarian Jesus of Nazareth. In fact the very considerable differences between this Life and the Gospels makes the theory that Philostratus wrote a deliberate imitation somewhat weak; and we have evidence in Eusebius that no overt comparison was drawn between Apollonius and Jesus until the time of Diocletian, nearly 100 years after Philo­ stratus wrote the Life.23 Yet we do have to allow for the fact that all the evidence we have considered so far is nearly 200 years later than the New Testament period and belongs to a situation in which Christian claims were more and more before the attention of the public; the atmosphere was possibly affected by Christian influence. So we turn to the question: can we trace this kind of attitude back two, three or more centuries?

III.  Digging Deeper into the Past The ancient world had a remarkable cultural continuity. From Plato to Augustine is a period of nearly 900 years; yet Augustine felt he belonged to the same world with the same heritage as Plato. In a mere 200 years, then, we should not expect to find a very marked degree of cultural change – certainly not so great as the cultural changes which have taken place during the 200 years of American independence. Yet it would be totally unscientific to ignore the question of chronology. The evidence we have considered is some of the clearest and most graphic available, but we must look for earlier clues to justify any claim that this kind of cultural climate can be read back into New Testament times. There are a number of clues which are of considerable importance: (a) Origen did not invent the currency of the story of Plato’s miraculous birth; it is also mentioned a few decades earlier by Diogenes Laertius, the pagan author of the Lives of the Philosophers, and he cites as authorities Speusippus’s book Plato’s Funeral Feast, Clearchus’s Encomium on Plato and Anaxilaides’s On Philosophers II.24 Clearchus was a pupil of Aristotle who was a pupil of 23  Eusebius wrote a treatise against an attempt by Hierocles to turn Philostratus’s Vit. Apoll. into a rival gospel; he provides a critique of Philostratus’s claims for Apollonarius. See appendix to LCL edition of Philostratus. 24 Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 3.2.1, Greek text and ET, 2 vols., R. D. Ricks, 2 vols., LCL 184–185 (London: Heinemann and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925).

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Plato; but more impressive is the fact that Speusippus was the son of Plato’s sister Potone. The story of Plato’s divine parentage must go back well before New Testament times. Nor should we imagine that only Plato attracted such legends. Diogenes also reports stories implying the miraculous birth or death of other philosophers, attributing his information to sources well pre-Christian like Heraclides of Pontus, a pupil of Plato, or Hermippus, a collector of Lives who lived around 200 BCE. Two of the philosophers around whom myths of incarnation and deification clustered were the presocratics Pythagoras and Empedocles. According to one version, Pythagoras was the incarnate son of Hermes who though refused immortality, was allowed the miraculous facility of remembering a long series of incarnations; 25 but his disciples were supposed to have claimed that he was the Hyperborean Apollo, a fact mentioned not only by Diogenes,26 but also by Aristotle, to whom is attributed the additional information that Pythagoras had appeared to many and came to heal men. 27 The full development of such legends is to be found in the Life of Pythagoras by Iamblichus, the Neoplatonist philosopher who belongs to the early fourth century CE, but it is clear that much of the material originated long before the New Testament period. As for Empedocles, one of the surviving fragments of his teaching reads: “All hail! I go about among you an immortal god, no more a mortal”; 28 his claims became almost a literary commonplace, appearing as we have seen in both Lucian and Philostratus. Stories of healing, of rain-making and magical feats are coupled with reports that people responded by worshipping and praying to him as to a god.29 Diogenes gives various different versions of his “death,” one of the most persistent stories being that he threw himself into the fiery craters of Mount Etna in order to confirm belief in his divinity.30 But the story told by Heraclides was that Empedocles disappeared one night; afterwards someone claimed to have heard a loud voice in the middle of the night calling Empedocles and when he got up he saw a bright light in the heavens; and on failing to find any trace of him, his associates decided that “things beyond expectation had happened to him and it was their duty to sacrifice to him since he was now a god.”31 (b) However, Diogenes’s evidence only takes us to pre-Christian times at second­hand; so it may be felt that further confirmation is needed. We can move back further by looking at the works of Plutarch. 25 Diogenes,

Lives, 8.1.4–5. Lives, 8.1.11. 27  According to Aelian, Historical Miscellany, ed. and trans. Nigel G. Wilson, LCL 486 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997). 28 Diogenes, Lives, 8.2.66. 29 Diogenes, Lives, 8.5.59 ff. and 70. 30 Diogenes, Lives, 8.2.69. 31 Diogenes, Lives, 8.2.68. 26 Diogenes,

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Plutarch lived during the late first century CE, but while he is contemporary with the writings of much of the New Testament literature, he was certainly remote socially from the Christian movement. He too reports the story about Plato’s birth, and the following comments follow: I do not find it strange if it is not by a physical approach, like a man’s, but by some other kind of contact or touch, by other agencies, that a god alters mortal nature and makes it pregnant with a more divine offspring…. In general (the Egyptians) allow sexual intercourse with a mortal woman to a male god, but in the contrary case they would not think that a mortal man could impart to a female divinity the principle of birth and pregnancy, because they think that the substance of the gods consists of air and breath (or spirits), and of certain heats and moistures.32

The prevalence of miraculous birth narratives is further confirmed by Plutarch’s most famous work, his collection of Lives. Here we find divine genealogies and stories of the supernatural begetting of the founders of cities and outstanding rulers. We may briefly consider Alexander the Great and Romulus. (1) Alexander’s claims to divine descent go back to his own lifetime, and inscriptions and other sources confirm that Plutarch’s statements are not based on recent legendary accretions. So it is that Plutarch regards it as beyond question that Alexander was a descendant of Heracles on his father’s side and from mythical heroes of Troy by his mother.33 He is less confident about the various versions of his birth, though he feels constrained to pass them on. The night before his parents consummated their marriage, the bride was said to have dreamed that a thunderbolt (presumably originating from Zeus) fell upon her womb; 34 such a claim might find confirmation in a story narrated by Plutarch later on, to the effect that a Syrian prophet greeted Alexander as “παῖ Διός” (pai Dios – child of Zeus) which Plutarch takes as a foreigner’s mistake for “παιδίον” (paidion – child) a familiar greeting, but Alexander, he reports, interpreted it as “Son of Zeus.”35 The most persistent legend, however, with varying detail in different versions, attributed Alexander’s conception to a god in the form of a serpent with whom his mother, Olympias, was espied sleeping; Philip ceased to sleep with her, convinced that she was the partner of a superior being, and an oracle implied that it was Zeus Ammon,36 from whom Alexander later claimed descent. Furthermore, serpents were associated with the worship of Dionysus, son 32 Plutarch, Table Talk, 8.1.2, Greek text and ET: Moralia, 2 vols.: vol.  1: trans. P. A. Clement and H. B. Hofflett, LCL 424 (London: Heinemann and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969); vol.  2 : trans. Edwin L. Minar, F. H. Sandbach, and W. C. Helmbold, LCL 425 (London: Heinemann and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961). 33 Plutarch, Alex., 2, Greek text and ET: Life of Alexander, trans. Bernadotte Perrin, LCL 99 (London: Heinemann and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1919). 34 Plutarch, Alex., 2. 35 Plutarch, Alex., 27. 36 Plutarch, Alex., 2–3.

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of Zeus, and the description, “new Dionysus,” came to be associated with Alexander soon after his death, though probably not before.37 (2) As in the case of Alexander, so for Romulus, Plutarch reports a number of different versions of his birth and descent. Rather than survey these, we may consider the one which is also found in the work of the Roman historian, Livy, which takes us back to an even earlier date, namely, a little before 25 BCE. Livy tells how the vestal virgin, Rhea Silvia, was raped and gave birth to twins, of whom it was said that their father was Mars, the god of war.38 Romulus, however, is just as interesting for the legendary accounts of his end. Again Plutarch produces several versions, one of which is found in Livy’s earlier work. During a review of the army, a sudden storm enveloped all in thick cloud and when it passed over Romulus was no longer on earth. “All with one accord hailed Romulus as a god and a god’s son, the king and father of the Roman city, and with prayers besought his favour that he should graciously be pleased to protect his children for ever.” A little later one of the noblemen claimed to have seen Romulus descend from the sky with a command: “Go and declare to the Romans the will of heaven that my Rome shall be the capital of the world; so let them cherish the art of war, and let them know and teach their children that no human strength can resist Roman arms.” So saying, Romulus departed on high.39 (c) Livy belonged to the great age of Roman literature inspired by the peace and success of the Empire under Augustus. That gods could descend among men and ascend back to their heavenly abodes appears in other literature of approximately this period. Baucis and Philemon entertained Jupiter and Mercury without realizing they were visited by gods in mortal form; here was an ancient myth retold by Ovid round about 8 CE in his poetic collection of Metamorphoses (i.e. miraculous changes of form narrated in the myths of Greece and Rome).40 This is a reminder that the appearance of gods to men on earth was the stock-in-trade of mythology and poetry from Homer onwards. How seriously these mythological narratives were taken is an open question, but that some people were far from sceptical is proved by the story in Acts 14:11 ff., where Paul and Barnabas are taken for appearances of Hermes and Zeus (the Greek gods with whom Ovid’s Jupiter and Mercury were conventionally equated).

37 Nock,

Essays, 134–152. History of Rome, 1.4, Latin text and ET: History of Rome, Books 1–2, trans. B. O. Foster, LCL 114 (London: Heinemann and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1919). 39 Livy, History, 1.16. 40 Ovid, Metam., 8.626–721, Latin text and ET: Metamorphoses, 2 vols., trans. Frank Justus Miller, rev. G. P. Goold, LCL 42 and 43 (London: Heinemann and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1916). 38 Livy,

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The association of contemporary men with divine appearances is particularly marked in the case of rulers. Roughly at the time of Jesus we find the following examples: (1) In 60 BCE Cicero wrote to encourage his brother who was then governor of the province of Asia; the Greeks of Asia were to be so impressed by the incorruptibility of their governor, he suggested, that they would think that some great figure of past history or even a divine man from heaven had dropped down into their province.41 (2) In 40 BCE Virgil wrote an eclogue addressed to the consul, Pollio, associating the arrival of a Golden Age with the birth of a child. The eclogue was later interpreted as a Messianic prophecy by Christians, though it cannot have had that sense in Virgil’s own mind; precisely what, or rather whom, Virgil had in mind is much discussed. In this eclogue he speaks of the child consorting with gods and heroes and ruling the world in peace; he calls the child “dear offspring of the gods, thou hast in thee the making of a Jupiter.”42 (3) The court-circles around the emperor Augustus, during whose reign Jesus was born, wrote poetry celebrating the fact that he had been sent by the gods and even suggesting that he was a god come to earth. Horace, writing about 30 BCE addressed his second Ode to Augustus: Whom of the gods shall the people summon to the needs of the falling Empire … To whom shall Jupiter assign the task of expiating guilt? … With form changed may you, winged son of gentle Maia [i.e. Mercury], appear on earth as a young man, ready to be called the avenger of Caesar; late may you return to the skies, and long be pleased to dwell with the people of Quirinius [i.e. the Romans];

and the last verse makes it plain that Augustus is addressed as Mercury incarnate.43 While it is true that these examples should probably be treated as literary conceits with no very serious meaning, they do serve to remind us that such language was current at the time of Jesus, especially for rulers; indeed, the apotheosis of members of the imperial family became so absurd in the first century CE that it was an obvious target for satirists, notably in Seneca’s Pumpkinification (apocolocyntōsis for apotheōsis) of Claudius, written soon after the death of that Emperor in 54 CE. We have, then, some grounds for tracing back the attitudes evidenced in Origen’s debate with Celsus to an earlier date in the Greco-Roman period, indeed

41 Cicero, Ep. Quint. Frat., 1.1.7, Latin text and ET: Letters, trans. D. R. Shackleton Bailey, 3 vols., LCL 205, 216 and 230 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001). 42 Virgil, Ecl., 4, Latin text and ET: Eclogues, trans. H. Rushton Fairclough, rev. G. P. Goold, LCL 63 (London: Heinemann and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1916). 43 Horace, Carm., 1.2, Latin text and ET: Odes and Epodes, ed. and trans. Niall Rudd, LCL 33 (London: Heinemann and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004).

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to the time roughly contemporary with Jesus and the rise of the Christian movement.

IV.  Some Possible Theories In the previous section allusion has been made to general background features which carry this atmosphere even deeper into the past, namely (1) the traditional mythology, particularly that concerned with the “immortals,” gods like Heracles, Dionysus and Asclepius, who attained immortality and divinity after living first as exceptional men, and (2) the fact that Rome in­herited the language of the ruler-cult from the Hellenistic dynasties in Egypt and Syria. It is this material coupled with the evidence presented earlier which has, not surprisingly, given rise to a number of theories tracing the origins of christological belief to the general Hellenistic religious and mythological en­vironment. Each of the theories has been seriously questioned in detail, partly on grounds of sparsity or lateness of evidence, partly because none provides an exact analogy to Christian claims about Jesus. Yet it is important to realize that there is at least sufficient evidence to have produced each suggestion as a serious possibility, and the total impact of the evidence has led to widespread ac­-ceptance of the view that it was the Greek-speaking Gentile converts who transformed Jesus, the Jewish ­Messiah of Palestine, into an incarnate divine being. Since such a development was inconceivable, it is said, in the context of Jewish monotheism, only the syncretistic pagan environment can account for its origin. (a) The ruler-cult. In his fascinating book Light from the Ancient East, Adolf Deissmann collected together a number of representative inscriptions and papyri to show that early Christian titles for Jesus are closely paralleled by the imperial cult.44 An Asian inscription of 48 BCE speaks of Julius Caesar as “god manifest, offspring of Ares and Aphrodite, and common saviour of human life.” A marble pedestal from Pergamum bears the inscription: “The Emperor Caesar, son of a God, god Augustus, overseer of land and sea.” In these two examples alone we have the Greek words ΘΕΟΣ (THEOS – GOD), ΘΕΟΥ ΥΙΟΣ (THEOU HYIOS – SON OF GOD), ΣΩΤΗΡ (SŌT Ē R – SAVIOUR) and ΕΠΙΦΑΝΗΣ (EPIPHAN Ē S – MANIFEST). In the Oxyrhynchus papyri Augustus is described as ΘΕΟΣ and ΚΥΡΙΟΣ (KYRIOS – LORD), and many ostraca refer to Nero as ΚΥΡΙΟΣ. The virtual synonym ΔΕΣΠΟΤΗΣ (DESPOT Ē S – MASTER) is rarely used of Jesus, but ΒΑΣΙΛΕΥΣ (BASILEUS – KING) is a very obvious example of terminology common to emperor-worship and early Christology.

44  Adolf Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East, trans. L. R. M Strachan (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1927). For the following material see 342–384.

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Even more interesting is the fact that it is not only titles that are common but also other associations, notably the words ΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΟΝ (EUANGELION – GOSPEL) and ΠΑΡΟΥΣΙΑ (PAROUSIA – ADVENT): e.g. (1) a stone from the market-place at Priene reads: “But the birthday of the god [namely the Emperor Augustus] was for the world the beginning of ΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΟΝ because of him”; (2) Papyri and ostraca from Ptolemaic Egypt refer to the raising of contributions to make a presentation to the king at his ΠΑΡΟΥΣΙΑ, that is, during his imperial tour; advent-coins were struck for Nero’s visit to Corinth; and years could be dated from an imperial visit or parousia: one inscription reads, “in the year 69 of the first parousia of the god Hadrian in Greece.” The alternative word ΕΠΙΦΑΝΕΙΑ (EPIPHANEIA – EPIPHANY) is also found for an emperor’s visit. From the time of Alexander the Great, kings and emperors had received divine honours. Were they regarded as gods incarnate? Some of the evidence concerning Alexander we have already glanced at, and certainly the Hellenistic kings represented themselves as Zeus and Apollo on their coin-types. Rulers of Hellenistic and Roman times had their statues erected in temples alongside other gods, and as we have seen Augustus was hailed by one poet as Mercury in human form. Literary and archaeological evidence seems to present a coherent picture, though precisely how significant these facts are from a religious point of view is much debated. A. D. Nock points out (1) that there is little indication of the ascription of any supernatural efficacy to rulers when dead, and even less of genuine prayers being offered to divinized rulers dead or living; and (2) that most of the terminology applied to divine rulers is vague and it is not usual to find notions of the incarnation of a definite deity in a human frame continuing throughout a particular life-span: the rulers were ΕΠΙΦΑΝΗΣ not throughout their careers but by specific manifestations of power, especially in war, though sometimes through miracles or healings.45 Nevertheless, the divine language used of the ruler so closely parallels titles accorded to Jesus in the New Testament that it cannot be regarded as entirely without significance. According to Josephus, Jews suffered all sorts of torments rather than confess, or even seem to confess, that Caesar was their master; for God was their only ΔΕΣΠΟΤΗΣ.46 In a similar way, it is clear that the early Christian confession of Christ as ΚΥΡΙΟΣ was regarded as excluding Caesar-­ worship: bishop Polycarp’s persecutors may have regarded it as a simple thing to say ΚΥΡΙΟΣ ΚΑΙΣΑΡ (KYRIOS CAESAR – LORD CAESAR), but it was not

45  A. D. Nock produced many studies of ruler-cults, the most important being in the posthumous collection cited above. For these remarks see Essays, 2:841 and 1:152. 46 Josephus, J.W., 7.10.1, Greek text and ET: The Jewish War, trans. H. St John Thackeray, 3 vols., LCL 203, 487 and 210 (London: Heinemann and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1927–1928).

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so for Polycarp himself; still less would he curse Christ.47 It is with some plausibility that this situation is read back into the New Testament and used to interpret texts like 1 Corinthians 12:3: “No one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says, ‘Jesus be cursed’ and no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.” Jews and Christians alike paid pagans the compliment of taking their religious language about Caesar seriously. The early Christians’ confession of Jesus as Lord can be seen as a deliberate antithesis to the imperial cult: the real King and Lord is Jesus who, like Caesar, was God manifest on earth, and the Lord and Saviour of men. (b) Divine men. Nowadays, however, the ruler-cult is usually regarded as being “a negative stimulus rather than a model”48 and more stress is put upon the general concept of the “divine man” in the Hellenistic world. The hypothesis is not infrequently advanced that the early Gentile communities basically subscribed to a θεῖος ἀνήρ (theios anē r – divine man) Christology and Mark, almost certainly the earliest Gospel, is then supposed to have utilized or perhaps corrected a source or tradition which presented Jesus as a “divine man,” that is a man endowed with superhuman miracle-working powers. The character of the “divine man” was admirably reconstructed by L. Bieler; in his book, Theios Anē r, he collected and organized an enormous amount of material purporting to show that in the ancient world certain individuals were regarded as belonging to a class “between gods and men,” commonly described as θεῖος or by other characteristic expressions.49 Typical motifs and biographical features are associated with these figures, along with similar accounts of their wisdom, exceptional powers and remarkable activities. Some of the best examples we have already utilized in this chapter. Superficially an extremely impressive picture is presented, but it has a number of weaknesses: a mass of evidence from Homer to the Middle Ages is pressed into service with little respect for chronology, and the material is over-schematized, giving the impression that the features described appear in amalgamation with greater frequency than is in fact the case. Further, to turn the expression θεῖος ἀνήρ into a kind of title is a dubious procedure. That θεῖος was a very general adjective with no incarnational overtones is clear from the fact that in a later period Christian saints and fathers could be so described: God’s grace or spirit was enough to make a man or the scripture “divine.” In pagan and Christian usage, the adjective could take the comparative form, “more divine,” or the superlative form, “most divine”; thus in common parlance, men and things could have degrees of divinity. It was an honorific epithet and could be used in a variety of contexts. It is therefore true, as many have pointed out, that θεῖος ἀνήρ is by no means a fixed expression 47  Mart. Pol., 8, Greek text and ET: Polycarp’s Epistle to the Philippians and the Martyrdom of Polycarp, ed. Paul Hartog (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). 48  Martin Hengel, Son of God, trans. John Bowden (London: SCM Press, 1976), 30. 49  L. Bieler, Theios An ē r (Vienna: Hofels, 1935 and 1936).

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and there is no such thing as a specific and defined class of people commonly called “divine men.”50 The adjective θεῖος by itself conveys little more than the sense “inspired.” Yet for all the criticisms, the existence of striking analogies to Christology cannot be totally dismissed. We are confronted not just with the fact that anyone regarded as exceptional or outstanding in personality, power or status could be called θεῖος, but with the fact that miraculous birth-stories, legends of extraordinary disappearance at death, acts of salvation and healing, deification and appearances from on high were not infrequently associated with such figures. There are also occasional references to a named god appearing in human form, but “son of Helios” or “son of Zeus” was very much more common. Where did these titles and motifs come from? It is pretty clear that they were borrowed from ancient mythology,51 the myth of Hercules being particularly influential.52 In Stoic circles especially, Hercules became the ideal of manhood, overcoming evil and establishing world-wide peace, triumphing over death by his invasion of Hades and ultimately achieving immortality for his virtue; we find the dramatic presentation of these themes, along with the traditional mythological motifs, in the tragedies of Seneca written in the mid-first century CE. Christian apologists had to reckon with Hercules, Asclepius and Dionysus as potential rivals to Christ; in the second century, for example, Justin Martyr had a rather ambivalent attitude to the parallels, dismissing them, on the one hand, as deceitful fabrications by evil demons designed to reduce the Christian story to a “mere tale of wonders like the stories told by the poets,” and yet on the other hand using them to take the sting out of pagan mockery of Christian claims.53 According to Plutarch, Alexander believed that although God was the common father of all mankind, still he made peculiarly his own the highest and best of them; 54 the kinship of men with gods became a philosophical commonplace, and it was generally believed among philosophers that the polytheistic gods were originally deified men, as the myths of the “immortals” made clear. Whatever the weaknesses of the θεῖος ἀνήρ theory, it cannot be denied that in the case 50  See W. von Martitz, “Hyios,” TDNT 8:339, G. Kittel, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, trans. G. W. Bromiley (ET Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964–, German original, 1932–). 51  C. H. Talbert, “The concept of immortals in Mediterranean Antiquity,” JBL 94 (1975): 419–436. 52  Arnold Toynbee, among others, has popularized parallels between Hercules and Jesus; see A Study of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1939), 6:465–476. M. Simon, Hercule et le Christianisme (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1955) is a more cautious historical study. 53 Justin Martyr, 1 Apol., Greek text: Iustini Martyris Apologiae pro Christianos, ed. M. Markovich, PTS (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1994); ET in ANCL, ACW. See The Writings of Justin Martyr, trans. Thomas B. Falls, FC 6 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of ­A merica Press, 1948), 54 ff. and 21 ff. for these two different viewpoints. 54 Plutarch, Alex., 27.

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of exceptional men, especially rulers and philosophers (who may be regarded as the inspired religious leaders or prophets of the Hellenistic world), the myths of the “immortals” were utilized to express a sense that they belonged, or had attained to a superior race and another realm; and since it is convenient to refer to this phenomenon by some agreed shorthand, the term θεῖος ἀνήρ will continue to serve the purpose. Moreover, one cannot dismiss out of hand the view that something of the same kind happened in the case of Jesus. There are, to take but one example, general similarities between Livy’s account of Romulus and some synoptic narratives about Jesus: a virgin birth, conception by a god, a remarkable career, no trace of his remains after death, an appearance after death to commission his successors, the offering of prayers to him. It would be impossible to make a convincing case for direct influence; but people living at roughly the same time do seem to have produced mythological accounts with parallel motifs.

V.  Objections and Alternatives So far we have concentrated upon depicting a particular kind of atmosphere widespread in the ancient world in which any one with exceptional powers was liable to receive divine honours from a responsive populace. This provides an instructive context for considering the rise of christological belief, even though specific theories deriving Christology from this background have failed to prove entirely convincing; this is partly because of the difficulty of showing any direct influence, but also because no-one knows quite how seriously to take many of these professions of belief and worship: the ruler-cult seems to have become a half-mocked convention performed solely for political reasons and probably not affecting the bulk of the populace, and the traditional mythology could certainly be treated with scepticism at least by the educated. As an alternative hypothesis, then, the origins of Christology have been attributed to the more esoteric religious phenomena of the Greco-Roman world, to rites and deities which certainly did call forth personal devotion. To explore the various possibilities in detail here would be to expand this chapter into a book, quite apart from the difficulty that the issues are somewhat clouded by lack of agreement concerning definitions and precise distinctions within a range of apparently related material and ideas. One important hypothesis concerns the parallels between the early Christian community and what is known of the practices and terminology of the mystery-religions, in which, it seems, salvation was imparted to the initiates through mystical identification with a dying and rising god. Another focuses attention on parallels with the revelations of the Hermetic literature. These phenomena have been associated with a general religious atmosphere in the ancient world described as “Gnosticism,” and the Paul-

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ine incarnational language has then been explained by reference to the so-called “gnostic Redeemer-myth,” the coming of an archetypal, heavenly figure into the world to reveal the secrets of the universe and the destiny of spiritual man. These theories have been widely influential, but none has proved generally acceptable. This is partly for chronological reasons (it is just as likely that Paul influenced Gnostics as vice versa); partly because of the nature of the evidence which is open to a variety of different interpretations and is fragmentary, diverse or nonexistent, with the result that the supposed parallels can be regarded as hypothetical reconstructions in the minds of modern scholars corresponding to no historical reality; and partly because alternative sources can often be plausibly proposed. Rather than enter into this highly complex and debated area, it seems more worthwhile to admit that there is a considerable objection to all the various hypotheses so far mentioned, namely that they depend upon a dramatic “paganization” of the gospel at a very early date, a development which seems improbable given the Jewishness of Christian origins and the evident fact that Paul and the other New Testament writers maintained many Jewish prejudices and attitudes. The gospel spread among Jewish communities scattered around the empire, or among close associates of the synagogue, and the early church was only divorced from its Jewish roots after bitter internal controversy and outright rejection by the majority of the Jewish people. Judaism was therefore the context of early Christian origins, and Judaism in this period was resistant to pagan influence: for with the successful Maccabaean revolt in the early second century BCE, most religiously influential Jews had rejected once and for all any assimilation to the dominant syncretism of the Hellenistic world: they were prepared to die rather than let the one true God be diluted by equation with Zeus or any­ one else. No other being could be worshipped and no son of God was really a son of God in the Hebrew tradition. Hence the superficial attractiveness of the view that Christology as we know it could never have flowered on Jewish soil, that it has a natural basis in Hellenistic syncretism and only the Gentile expansion of the church can account for the rise of incarnational belief. But this is to overlook the fact that the Jew, Paul, is our first witness to the belief that a supernatural agent of God entered the world in Jesus Christ. Could Paul, with all his Jewish prejudices, with his evident training in Jewish theology and exegesis – could such a man have been influenced by Gentile mystery-religions or some other pagan belief? Increasingly it has seemed improbable. In proposing the view that it was by analogy with Lord Serapis that Jesus was worshipped as Lord, Bousset stated: No-one thought this out and no theologian created it. … They would hardly have dared without further ado to make such a direct transferral of this holy name of the Almighty God. … Such proceedings take place in the unconscious, in the uncontrollable depths of

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the group psyche of a community; this is self-evident, it lay as it were in the air, that the first Hellenistic Jewish communities gave the title kyrios to their cult-hero.55

But this hardly appears an adequate explanation given the deep-seated rejection of polytheism and heathen myths among Jews of the period; at least within the first-generation church, such a development seems very unlikely, and the continuance among Christians of Jewish apologetic traditions and polemic against polytheism and syncretism throughout the patristic period shows the strength of the church’s attachment to its inherited past. Such is the objection. The question is, how valid is it? After all, there did develop in Christianity doctrines which tended to undermine in a rather embarrassing way this monotheistic emphasis. Perhaps this fact should encourage us to enquire whether the Judaism from which Christianity sprang was so monolithic and impervious to pagan influence as has been suggested. Subtle influences often master conscious resistance. Clearly it now becomes imperative to probe more deeply into the character of contemporary Judaism, and to consider the question whether the development of the incarnational idea is conceivable within that context.

VI.  Fresh Probings As we turn to investigate the Jewish area, our enquiry needs to focus on a number of related questions: were Jews in fact totally unaffected by the kind of atmosphere depicted earlier? Were there not movements in Judaism analogous to Hellenistic mysticism and gnosis? Was Judaism committed to an unalloyed monotheism, or were there speculations about other supernatural beings? Were phrases like “son of God” always used with implications quite different from those in the pagan world? The last seems to be a good question with which to start. (a) Was the expression “Son of God” used in a totally different sense in a Jewish context? It was certainly not a description alien to Judaism, nor was it impossible for a Jew to envisage God addressing certain individuals as “son.” So many studies have been devoted to the title “Son of God” in the Old Testament and intertestamental literature that it seems best simply to summarize some of the more important points and comment on their implications. (1) Such expressions are commonly used in Jewish literature to describe Israel, and they appear in the Old Testament (e.g. 2 Sam 7:14 and Ps 2:7) as descriptions of the king. They possibly figured as a description of the ideal King-­ Messiah in pre-Christian expectation. This is clear in 2(4)Esdras 7:28, but this

55 Bousset,

Kyrios Christos, 146.

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text may not be unaffected by Christian influence; a text discovered at Qumran seems likely to settle this debated point, though it is very fragmentary: [But your son] shall be great upon the earth [O King! All (men) shall] make [peace], and all shall serve [him. He shall be called the son of] the [G]reat [God], and by his name shall he be named. He shall be hailed (as) the Son of God, and they shall call him the Son of the Most High… etc.

The square brackets indicate the uncertain and fragmentary character of the text, but as Fitzmyer comments, there is no doubt that the titles “Son of God” and “Son of the Most High” are applied to some human being in the apocalyptic setting of this text of the first century BCE.56 (2) In the intertestamental literature, the works of Philo and the rabbinic material, such expressions are used of the righteous and wise man, or of Israelites who do the will of God. “Be like a father to orphans … you will then be like a son of the Most High”; so reads the Greek text of Sirach 4:10 and the rediscovered Hebrew text reads “God shall call you Son.” (3) Such expressions are associated with certain rabbis, and in particular with Hanina ben Dosa, a miracle-working charismatic of first-century Galilee. It is this figure which provides G. Vermes with his illuminating parallel to Jesus: a heavenly voice referred to “my son, Hanina,” just as the heavenly voice at Jesus’s baptism designated him as “my beloved son.”57 This and other figures of Palestinian Judaism, like Honi the circle-drawer, bear some resemblances to the wonder-working θεῖος ἀνήρ discussed earlier, and with both types, terms appear which imply some kind of divine sonship. (4) In both the Old Testament and later Jewish literature such expressions are used in reference to heavenly, angelic beings and to supernatural mediators. Philo describes his Logos as Son of God and first-born. We shall be exploring these supernatural mediating figures further. In general it can be said that for Jews a son of God was a being of god-like qualities or one specially called and designated by God for a particular task. It is possible that we should draw a distinction between ideas about the Son of God and other sons of God, but if so, the distinction is not one of nature but one of function. The Son of God, whether human or angelic, would be the unique predestined fulfiller of God’s promises; but sonship could equally well belong to other angelic and human beings. God’s creatures were all regarded as potentially his sons, becoming so by response to his will and purpose. Certainly the idea that divine sonship meant that God was literally involved in a sexual-­ biological process was offensive to Jewish thought, however frequent in Hellenistic mythology. In Jewish traditions from the Old Testament on, there were miraculous birth-stories, but they did not posit the absence of a human father; 56  57 

Fitzmyer, “Qumran Aramaic.” G. Vermes, Jesus the Jew (London: Collins, 1973), particularly 206.

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rather the emphasis was upon the inability of the mother to bear a child without divine intervention. Two plausible hypotheses have been advanced for the appearance in the Christian birth-narratives of a form of miracle unprecedented in Jewish tradition: (1) Vermes has argued that “virgin” could well have originally meant one too young for child-bearing, just as Sarah, Hannah and Elizabeth were too old or infertile, and then the explicit denial of Joseph’s role is to be understood as a “paganising” development of the legend based on misunderstanding of the Greek word παρθένος (parthenos – maiden) in a narrowly, literal sense; 58 or (2) such a development is more often attributed to the belief that Isaiah 7:14 had been literally fulfilled, in which case a purely Jewish origin of the story is possible. Whatever the answer to that problem, it seems clear that even if direct pagan influence is impossible to substantiate, there are prima facie parallels, apart from legends of divine paternity, between the Jewish and Hellenistic treatment of both rulers, actual or ideal, and prophets, saints, charismatics or miracle-­ workers as “divine” or “sons of God.” (b) Were Jews unaffected by Hellenistic myths of apotheosis and deification? A number of hints suggest that some were not entirely impervious to the surrounding cultural atmosphere, though admittedly their tentative use of this sort of language was coupled by a certain embarrassment. At the same time, some indigenous development in this kind of direction seems to have been inspired by the biblical stories of the assumption of Enoch and Elijah directly to heaven. We may consider first the legends about Moses. In his Praeparatio Evangelica, Eusebius preserves some extensive fragments from Jewish apologists of pre-Christian times. These include quotations from a romance about Moses written by Artapanus in the first century BCE. Not only is Moses presented as a miracle-worker and law-giver, but he becomes the teacher of Orpheus and, “deemed by the priests (of Egypt) worthy to be honoured like a god, was named Hermes, because of his interpretation of hieroglyphics.”59 This tendency to treat Moses as a θεῖος ἀνήρ finds further confirmation in Josephus. Josephus fought for his country in the Jewish War 66–70, but then became convinced of the futility of the cause, gave assistance to the Romans and spent the rest of his life trying to explain the Jews to an unsympathetic Gentile audience. In his Antiquities, he describes Moses as last seen discoursing with, and about to embrace, Eleazar and Joshua, when “a cloud suddenly stood over him and he disappeared in a certain valley, although he wrote in the holy books that he died, which was done out of fear, lest they should venture to say that, because of his 58 Vermes,

Jesus, 218 ff. Praep. ev., 9.27, Greek text: Praeparatio Evangelica, ed. K. Mras and E. des Places, in Eusebius Werke, vol.  8.1 and 2, GCS (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1982 and 1983); Eusebii Preparatio Evangelica, 4 vols., ed. and trans. E. H. Gifford (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1903). 59 Eusebius,

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extraordinary virtue, he went to God.”60 Elsewhere Josephus mentions the fact that some people thought that Moses “had been taken to the divinity,”61 and the story is certainly reminiscent of the passing of Romulus. A little earlier than Josephus, we find similar hints in Philo, an Alexandrian Jew who remained loyal to his origins while deeply versed in Hellenistic philosophy. His Life of Moses ends with the suggestion that the account of Moses’s death appears in books he was supposed to have written himself because “when he was already being exalted … ready at the signal to direct his upward flight to heaven, the divine spirit fell upon him and he prophesied with discernment while still alive the story of his own death…”; his literal death and burial, contained in scripture, is married to an ascension described earlier in terms which are characteristically “intellectual” and yet seem to imply an exceptional translation: “the time came when he had to make his pilgrimage from earth to heaven, and leave this mortal life for immortality, summoned thither by the Father who resolved his twofold nature of soul and body into a single unity, transforming his whole being into mind, pure as the sunlight.”62 Such hints that Jewish understanding of Moses was in varying degrees affected by Hellenistic motifs might be attributed in the case of the writers mentioned to an apologetic interest. But there is also the apocalyptic work called The Assumption of Moses; what survives of the text is more like a Testament and it seems to assume that Moses died in the normal way, but there are patristic references to this work which suggest more explicit descriptions of an assumption to heaven. Besides this, there are a few signs in rabbinic material of a tradition that Moses ascended to heaven: “Some say Moses did not die, but stands and discharges above the (priestly) ministry”; “Three went up alive to heaven: Enoch, Moses and Elijah.”63 A later Hebrew book describes Moses’s transformation into an angel, following the pattern of the Enoch traditions which we shall examine shortly. Jewish speculation along these lines centred around the three characters just mentioned. In the case of Elijah the development seems to have been “indigenous” and very little trace of Hellenistic influence can be shown; yet the analogies remain striking. According to 2 Kings 2:11, Elijah ascended to heaven by chariot of fire and whirlwind. In two books of the Apocrypha the Elijah tradition is elaborated: according to 1 Maccabees 2:58 he was taken up into heaven because of his great zeal for the law, and in Sirach 48, we find a magnificent 60 Josephus, Ant., 4.8.48, Greek text and ET: The Jewish Antiquities, trans. H. St John Thackeray, 9 vols., LCL 242 and 490 (London: Heinemann and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1930), 281 (1934), 326 (1937), 365 and 489 (1943), 410 (1963), 433 and 456 (1965). 61 Josephus, Ant., 3.5.7. 62 Philo, Moses, 2.288–291, Greek text and ET: Life of Moses, trans. F. H. Colson, LCL 289 (London: Heinemann and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1935). 63  J. Jeremias, “Mōysēs,” TDNT 4:855.

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hymn addressed to Elijah, who is honoured as a miracle-worker, raising the dead and standing up against kings and princes. The most interesting point, however, is the hymn’s central section (Sir 48:9–10): “You who were taken up by a whirlwind of fire, in a chariot with horses of fire; you who are ready at the appointed time, it is written, to calm the wrath of God before it breaks out in fury … and to restore the tribes of Jacob.” This notion of Elijah’s return before the day of the Lord goes back to the prophet Malachi (Mal 4:5); and subsequently the phrase, “until Elijah comes” recurs as many as four times in the Mishnaic tractate, Baba Metzia, as well as elsewhere in Rabbinic literature. That Elijah lives as a supernatural being and can intervene on earth is assumed in the Babylonian Talmud, where he is often introduced into stories, sometimes in disguise to aid the oppressed people of God: e.g. according to b Taanith 22a, Rabbi Beroka Hozaah used to frequent the market-place at Be Lapat where Elijah often appeared to him, and there follows an example of an edifying discussion between the two concerning who will have a share in the world to come; and in the previous section of the same tract, a story is told about Elijah arriving in disguise to dissuade a council from deciding to exterminate the Jews. Such activities are those of angels or gods, and whether or not connections can be traced, the latter story has certain parallels with Homeric myths. For the history of speculation about Enoch we have more complete documentation in a series of Enoch-books, which belong to the world of apocalyptic and esoteric Jewish mysticism. It is perhaps significant that in the course of the ­series we move from the apocalyptic visions of the Ethiopic Book of Enoch (1 Enoch) to descriptions in the later texts of heavenly secrets which have a definite gnostic ring. This seems to support the view now frequently canvassed that Gnosticism, so far from being the “radical Hellenization of Christianity” as Harnack thought, in fact originated in Jewish circles. The esoteric tradition has left traces within the Talmud itself, where there are hints of secret and dangerous teachings about creation and the Merkabah, the chariot-throne of God first described in the visions of the prophet Ezekiel. 64 Further light has been thrown on these speculations by some relatively unknown and largely unpublished Hebrew texts of uncertain date,65 amongst which is to be found the so-called Hebrew Book of Enoch (3 Enoch), one of the few texts published with translation and full commentary.66 The difficulties in dating are illustrated by the fact that this text has been placed as early as the third century CE and as late as the eighth century.

64 

Hag. 11b, 13a, 14b. G. G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (Jerusalem: Schocken Books, 1941; New York: Schocken Books, 1946), ch.  2 ; and Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism and Talmudic Tradition (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1960). 66 Odeberg, 3 Enoch. 65 

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The development of the Enoch figure in the texts we have available is strongly suggestive of a kind of deification. According to Genesis 5:24 “Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him.” The apocalyptic book known as 1 Enoch is possibly pre-Christian; here Enoch becomes one who “saw the vision of the Holy One in the heavens” as well as other typically apocalyptic manifestations, and then eventually he is translated into the heaven of heavens where he saw the throne itself surrounded by angels, “the holy ones of God.” A slavonic text known as 2 Enoch, belonging probably to the beginning of the Christian era, develops his travels through the heavens in a more gnostic-mystical way and explicitly describes his transformation into an angel; but the most striking development is to be found in the Hebrew Book of Enoch. In this work “Metatron, the angel, the Prince of the Presence” leads Rabbi Ismael to a vision of the Merkabah and in response to his questions explains that he was once Enoch who was taken up on the wings of the Shekinah to the highest heaven where “the Holy One, blessed be he” transformed him into the greatest of the angels, a process described in graphic imagery, emphasizing his cosmic size, his garment of light, his crown of glory and his fiery nature. Thus, Metatron, a heavenly being of obscure name and origin, but one well-known to the bearers of rabbinic traditions, is identified in this text with the translated man, Enoch. However, for our purpose, it is not simply Enoch’s metamorphosis which is of interest, but the unusual relationship between Metatron and God himself. Metatron sits in heaven, unlike any other except God. The Rabbis played this down, suggesting that as heavenly scribe he had to sit; 67 but in 3 Enoch he sits on a throne which is described as “like the throne of glory.”68 In other respects too he appears accoutred like God, and he acts as God’s ruler over all the powers of heaven. All the other angels “fell prostrate when they saw me. And they were not able to behold me because of the majestic glory and beauty of the appearance of the shining light of the crown of glory upon my head.” God revealed all his secrets to Metatron, and “he called me ‘the lesser Jahweh’ in the presence of all his heavenly household; as it is written (Exod 23:21), ‘For my name is in him.’” Clearly such a picture of Metatron, along with his identification as the translated man Enoch, is remarkably close to Paul’s affirmations about Jesus, that he sits at God’s right hand (Rom 8:34) and that “God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name (i.e. God’s name), that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord (the title by which God is known and addressed), to the glory of God the Father” (Phil 2:9–11). However, when we read elsewhere in 3 Enoch that certain heavenly beings are exclud67 

68 

Hag. 15a. This and the following quotations will be found in 3 Enoch, 10–14.

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ed from Metatron’s jurisdiction, namely the “eight great princes, the honoured and revered ones who are called Jahweh by the name of their king” (i.e. probably archangels whose names are compounds of God’s name), we should perhaps hesitate to insist that the text provides an exact parallel. On the other hand, the story of Metatron’s dethronement, which we find in Rabbinic texts and also as an addition to the text of 3 Enoch, 69 while clearly intended to reduce the force of the Metatron speculation and eliminate its dangers, actually highlights its potential implications; for both versions associate Metatron’s dethronement with the account of an apostate rabbi who on seeing the Merkabah and Metatron enthroned in glory said, “Indeed, there are two Divine Powers in heaven.” Perhaps then we are justified after all in seeing here a close parallel to Christian affirmation about Jesus, all the more remarkable in what is clearly a post-­ Christian text, whatever its exact date. It suggests the presence of certain inherent tendencies which were usually suppressed in opposition to Christianity. So far our examination of Jewish sources suggests three things: (1) that, in spite of differences, there are parallels between the Jewish and Hellenistic use of phrases like “Son of God”; (2) that Hellenistic mythological motifs were on the verge of affecting the expressions of at least Greek-speaking Judaism, even though a certain reserve is persistently maintained; and (3) that some exceptional individuals ascended at least to angelic status; and this feature, I suggest, is more like pagan apotheosis than might appear at first sight. For pagan philosophers in this period regarded all gods, new or old, as lesser beings below the Supreme God in a heavenly hierarchy, and Jews believed likewise in a heavenly hierarchy of lesser beings, namely the angels, below their one and only God. The difference was to a fair extent one of terminology coupled with disagreement over whether the lower “deities” should be worshipped or not, and in this debate the Christian Origen upheld a more Jewish position than some of his fellow-believers when he affirmed that Christian worship, though offered through the Son, should be directed solely to the Father. (c) Speaking of angels, we are reminded that these supernatural beings were themselves described earlier as “sons of God.” The nature and function of these heavenly beings is clearly the next subject requiring examination. Throughout the Old Testament there are stories of God acting through angels or messengers; he is several times seen with a heavenly council (e.g. Ps 89:7 and Job 1) and monotheism was reached less by eliminating other divine beings than by subjugating them to Israel’s one, almighty God. By the time of Daniel and the intertestamental literature, an elaborate angelology with named archangels associated with particular functions is beginning to be established. The midrash on creation in the book of Jubilees makes room for the creation of the angelworld with a hierarchy of different ranks. A number of Old Testament passages 69 

Hag. 15a and 3 Enoch 16.

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were taken to refer to these beings as “sons of God” (e.g. Gen 6:2, 4; Deut 32:8; Ps 29:1), and 1 Enoch in particular makes constant reference to the angels as the holy sons of God or the children of heaven. In Jewish legend and apocalyptic speculation, these supernatural figures are envisaged as coming down to heaven, often in disguise as men. With the descent of Jupiter and Mercury to visit the unsuspecting Baucis and Philemon we may compare Abraham’s entertainment of divine guests (Gen 18); that this was understood, in the New Testament period, as an unperceived angelic visitation is indicated by, for example, Hebrews 13:2: “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” As an example of the kind of story developed, we may take the book of Tobit, a Jewish romance reflecting the conditions of the Babylonian Diaspora around 200 BCE, though purporting to be a tale of the exile centuries before. Tobit is depicted as a good, faithful Jew who had the misfortune to go blind. In response to prayer, God sent the angel Raphael to heal him (Tob 3:17), and also to succour an afflicted young woman who had seven times lost a husband on her wedding-night through the activity of a hostile demon. So it happened that Tobit decided to send his son on a journey to reclaim some money deposited years earlier, and Raphael accompanied him disguised as Azarias son of Ananias, a man hired as guide and servant (Tob 5:4). Through Raphael’s advice and help, Tobias claimed the young woman as wife and dealt with the demon; he then successfully accomplished his mission and returned to cure his father’s blindness. When Tobit and his son came to reward Azarias, he declared: “I am Raphael, one of the seven holy angels who present the prayers of the saints and enter into the glory of the Holy One” (Tob 12:15). The descent of heavenly beings to intervene in earthly affairs, often to render assistance, is clearly a feature of both pagan and Jewish legend, and certainly predates both the New Testament and the earliest traces of a gnostic descending redeemer.70 To dwell further upon the role of angels in apocalyptic and elsewhere clearly lies outside the scope of this chapter. However, it is important to consider the way in which angel-speculation is linked with the activity of God in the last days. In particular we may focus upon an interesting fragment from Qumran which has some remarkable connections with the New Testament, and with the Epistle to the Hebrews in particular. To the uninitiated reader, quotations from the text would be obscure and over-lengthy, so an interpretative summary will have to suffice. The central character of the piece is Melchizedek, who is described as “the heavenly one,” and as the one who executes God’s judgment. He judges Belial and takes vengeance on his wicked spirits, while being assisted by other “heavenly ones.” This inaugurates the time of salvation, and Melchizedek’s 70  That we do not need to posit gnostic sources for the descent-ascent pattern is argued by C. H. Talbert, “The Myth of a Descending-Ascending Redeemer in Mediterranean Antiquity,” NTS 22 (1976): 418–440, where further examples will be found.

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activity is portrayed, largely in texts and words drawn from Isaiah, as proclaiming liberty, making atonement for all the children of light and bringing good tidings to Zion. There are some grounds for linking this Melchizedek speculation with the archangel Michael; 71 but Fitzmyer has argued that the text seems to present a figure above the angels to whom God delegates his prerogatives of judgment and mercy on the great Day of Atonement at the end of time.72 There are parallels with the functions of Enoch and the Son of Man in the Ethiopic apocalypse. In both cases, a heavenly being becomes God’s vicegerent at the Last Judgment; in both cases speculation about an obscure human figure from the early part of Genesis is connected with one above angels and archangels. Perhaps it is not so surprising after all that the Epistle to the Hebrews can argue for the transcendent uniqueness of the one after the order of Melchizedek, the one superior to the angels, while insisting upon his perfect manhood; patristic exegesis remained uncertain whether the Melchizedek of Genesis was a human or angelic being.73 Two points seem important: (1) it is clear that eschatological speculation revolved around not just a human Messiah-Son of God, but also a possible supernatural agent, perhaps a superangelic Son of God or Son of Man who would act for God at the Final Judgment. What has happened in Christology is the merging of these two eschatological perspectives. (2) Some uncertainty as to whether this supernatural agent is an angel or more than an angel surrounds the Jewish texts, and this is paralleled both in Philo’s treatment of his Logos (see below) and in the persistent tendency of Christian texts to treat the Son of God or the Logos as an angel or archangel, a tendency which lasted right up to the Arian controversy. In the early Christian work The Shepherd of Hermas, there are six instead of seven archangels with a “mighty man in their midst,” namely the Son of God; and in a pseudo-Cyprianic treatise, the Lord is described as creating seven angels, one of whom he determined to make his son. Christology was certainly related in some way to Jewish angel-speculation.74 In fact, the closest parallel to Christian belief found anywhere belongs to this context. It is in a Jewish apocryphal work known as the Prayer of Joseph which is now lost to us apart from quotations in the works of Origen.75 In it Jacob says, “I, Jacob and Israel, who speak to you, am an angel of God and one of the principal spirits. I, Jacob, am called Jacob by men, but my name is Israel, for by God 71  M. de Jonge and A. S. van der Woude, “11Q Melchisedek and the New Testament,” NTS 12 (1996): 301–326. 72  J. A. Fitzmyer, “Further Light on Melchisedek from Qumran Cave 11,” JBL 86 (1967): 24–31, republished in Semitic Background: 245–267. 73  de Jonge and van der Woude, “11Q.” 74  J. Daniélou, The Theology of Jewish Christianity, vol.  1 of A History of Early Christian Doctrine, trans. J. A. Baker (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1964), 122–123, and all of ch.  4 : “The Trinity and Angelology.” 75 Origen, Comm. Jo., 2.31.

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was I called Israel (which means) ‘the man who sees God,’ because I am firstborn of all living things that receive their life from God.” By this complex claim, we are introduced to a being with angelic and human aspects, who is yet beyond the angels in being the first-born of God. There follows an extraordinary passage which seems to imply that in the famous wrestling-match at the brook Jabbok (Gen 32:24), two archangels Israel and Uriel, both in incarnate form and both apparently claiming to be Jacob, contended against each other. “Uriel, the angel of God, came out and said: I have come down upon earth and dwelt among men”; Jacob, however, asserted his superiority, unmasking Uriel and revealing himself as “Israel, the archangel of the power of the Lord and the ἀρχιστράτηγος (archistratēgos – top-general) among the sons of God … the first of those who serve before the face of the Lord.” Thus the human progenitor of the nation Israel is seen as an incarnation of a superangelic being. The parallel is all the more striking in view of the hints in the New Testament of an underlying assumption that Jesus summed up all that Israel was elected to be, and founded a new Israel, the church. (d) “The Christian hope has its roots in Palestine; Christian theology and above all Christology have theirs in Alexandria.”76 Such was the conclusion of A. D. Nock, one of the greatest experts in the religious scene of the Greco-­ Roman world. What led him to this judgment? Twice we have alluded to another heavenly being known as “Son of God,” namely Philo’s Logos. Philo, whose description of Moses we have already considered, was roughly contemporary with Paul, and like Paul, he wrote in Greek. His Judaism, though orthodox in practice, was theologically coloured by a sympathetic understanding of Greek philosophy and possibly Hellenistic mystery-­ religions. At the same time there are undoubted links with Palestinian traditions and rabbinic exegesis. That Judaism, in spite of its exclusiveness, could become considerably Hellenized in its thinking while still recognisably itself, is made patently clear by Philo’s works. Other evidence suggests that he should not be regarded as a totally isolated figure, but rather as the most outstanding example of a tradition of religious thinking and apologetic which had a wide currency in Greek-speaking Judaism outside Palestine. The Logos-doctrine of Philo is highly complex and it is impossible to do more than draw attention to a number of points which are particularly striking in relation to christological development. (1) The Logos doctrine entails a kind of binitarian view of God, an acknowledged distinction between God transcendent and God immanent. “When scripture says that God made man in the image of God, it means he made him in the image of the ‘second God’, who is his Logos. For nothing mortal can be made in

76 Nock,

Essays, 2:574.

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the likeness of the most High One and Father of the universe.”77 The intelligible world, Plato’s Ideas, came into being in the mind of God, and, as his Logos (Reason, Word), provided the pattern for creation; but the Logos is more than a pattern, since it is the immanent bond which pervades the whole and keeps the multifarious creation in an unbreakable unity.78 Thus the transcendent God is related to the world through the mediator, his Logos. (2) The Logos is not only “God” but also “Man,” and men aspire to be children of “God’s Man, who being the Word of the Eternal must himself be imperishable.”79 They who live in the knowledge of the One are rightly called “sons of God,” as Moses also acknowledges when he says, “You are sons of the Lord God” (Deut 14:1), “God, the one who begat you” (Deut 32:18), and “Is he not your father?” (Deut 32:6). But if there is any as yet unfit to be called a son of God, let him press to take his place under God’s first-born, the Word, who is the “eldest” [a word conveying both priority and status] of the angels, as it were an “archangel” [literally, the ruling angel].80

(3) This heavenly or ideal Man/Logos is the prime image of God who has direct access to realities rather than being dependent upon instruction. He therefore imparts revelation. He also acts as God’s “viceroy”; for God, the Shepherd, “leads his hallowed flock in accordance with right and law but setting over it his true Word and first-born son.”81 Philo’s writings were preserved and cherished by the church, and provided the inspiration for a sophisticated Christian philosophical theology – indeed, in many respects he certainly anticipated formal christological exposition. Even if he does not identify his heavenly Logos-Man with a particular historical figure – for all men participate in him in varying degrees, just as other particulars participate in a Platonic “idea,” yet he certainly provides a pre-Christian picture of a heavenly intermediary being of the kind Christians were to identify with ­Jesus. The frequent analogies to the language of the Johannine prologue and the Colossians hymn about the cosmic Christ have not passed unnoticed, and his participatory language is akin to Pauline and Johannine expressions of “adopted sonship,” “being in Christ,” “dwelling in him and he in us.” Yet it is impossible to establish that his writings were known to any of the authors of the New Tes77 Philo, Q.G., 9.6, Greek text and ET: Questions on Genesis, trans. Ralph Marcus, LCL 380 (London: Heinemann and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953). 78 Philo, Planting, 8–10, Greek text and ET: On Husbandry, Noah’s Work as a Planter, trans. F. H. Colson and G. H. Whitaker, LCL 247 (London: Heinemann and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1930); Flight, 112, Greek text and ET: On Flight and Finding, trans. F. H. Colson, LCL 275 (1934); Q.E., 2.118, Greek text and ET: Questions on Exodus, trans. Ralph Marcus, LCL 401 (1953). 79 Philo, Confusion, 41, Greek text and ET: On the Confusion of Tongues, trans. F. H. Colson and G. H. Whitaker, LCL 261 (1932). 80 Philo, Confusion, 145. 81 Philo, Planting, 50 ff.

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tament books (except possibly the author of Hebrews), and it is highly unlikely that the sophisticated philosophy of Philo himself had any direct influence on the early development of incarnational belief. Behind Philo, however, is the wider world of Hellenistic Judaism, a world of which we know tantalizingly little because most of the evidence has been lost. Yet it seems highly likely that Saul of Tarsus came under influences similar to those behind Philo, and in particular, both seem to have been inspired by the so-called “hypostatization” of Wisdom. In the book of Proverbs, alongside straightforward sayings suggesting the value of wisdom and knowledge, Wisdom appears in a strongly personified form, “crying aloud in the street…”, calling and rebuking men who refuse to follow her. For most of the book this seems to be merely a graphic way of speaking, and Wisdom is apparently contrasted with the strange woman, the harlot who leads young men astray, no doubt a personification of folly. In chapter 8, however, we seem to have something more. Wisdom again calls to men, but here what she calls is a long list of her virtues and accomplishments, and then a description of how she was possessed by the Lord in the beginning, how she was brought forth before creation, and acted as his “child” or perhaps “assistant” (the interpretation is uncertain) when he marked out the foundation of the earth. This is often regarded as still merely a graphic way of speaking, a view supported by parallel expressions in the book (e.g. 2:6, 3:9, etc.); yet the character of this poem is strongly suggestive of the “Isis-aretalogy,” texts in which the mystery-goddess Isis is depicted summoning men and proclaiming her own virtues and accomplishments in the first person. It is not without plausibility that W. L. Knox sees here an interpolation which was a deliberate attempt in the Ptolemaic period to baptize, as it were, into the Jewish traditions, the female figure of Isis with all her attractions. 82 Whatever its origins, this picture of Wisdom as issuing from God and acting as his agent is further developed in Sirach 24. Here she is created before all things, and in the congregation of thc Most High, she proclaims herself as dwelling in high places: “my throne is in the pillar of cloud.” The distinctive point in this aretalogy is her coming to dwell in Israel as the Torah. So far we have looked at material which is certainly Palestinian in origin, and where the implications of the personification can be variously assessed. By contrast, the Greek Wisdom of Solomon (Wis 7) takes up these traditions and turns Wisdom into a kind of Stoic Logos, the immanent Spirit of God, “pervading and penetrating all things by reason of her pureness,” the “breath of the power of the God, and a clear effluence of the glory of the almighty … an effulgence of everlasting light, an unspotted mirror of the working of God and an image of 82  W. L. Knox, “The Divine Wisdom,” JTS 38 (1937): 230–237; and St Paul and the Church of the Gentiles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1939), ch.  3.

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his goodness….” Some of these very phrases reappear in Hebrews 1:3 in relation to the Son. In this development it looks as though an attribute of God, his Wisdom, has become a quasi-independent being acting as God’s agent. It is clear that Philo’s Logos is of a similar character; God’s Mind or Reason is projected forth as his creative Word. But this kind of idea is not confined to Hellenistic Judaism. In rabbinic texts, Ben Sira’s identification of Wisdom and Torah is pursued, and Torah seems to become a “hypostatized” divine figure; God’s Name, his Memra (word), and above all his Shekinah (presence) are treated as somewhat indirect manifestations of his transcendent holiness, so much so that they almost receive an independent existence. Surprising as it is, such ideas seem not to have been regarded as an affront to monotheism; presumably prior to their association with the concrete figure of Jesus they were only dimly perceived as personal, and Jewish scholars can reasonably defend the rabbis from “Christianizing” interpretations. Yet, interestingly enough, some of the names of those concretely envisaged beings, the archangels, suggest the personification of divine attributes; Gabriel – might of God, Phanuel – face of God. From this material it is clear that for Jews speculation about quasi-divine mediators was “in the air.” What happened in Christology was that they were all superseded by the Risen Christ who thus inevitably became pre-existent from before the foundation of the world.

VII. Conclusion It has not been my intention to suggest that any of the evidence presented in this chapter, or indeed any of the theories outlined makes it possible to reconstruct a definitive account of the rise of incarnational belief in the early church. Subtle objections and rival interpretations of the texts are always possible. What I have tried to do is show that the cultural atmosphere of the ancient world, pervading not only pagan circles but also various Jewish traditions and, as far as we can tell, affecting many social and intellectual strata of society, was conducive to the development of this idea. It is to the general syncretistic state of religion in the relevant period that we must look for an explanation of the rise of this doctrine. So the only conclusion I wish to press is that the theological position discussed in this book does not depend upon any specific theory proving to be impervious to scholarly criticism. The specific theory to which this chapter was responding is a fascinating and plausible reconstruction if only because, more adequately than most other specific theories, it utilizes known influences on the early church at the time with which we are primarily concerned; but it is not indispensable for the general thesis that the idea of incarnation was culturally dependent. Indeed it should by now be apparent that some of the features of Samaritan theology to which Michael Goulder has drawn attention were in fact

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widespread elsewhere; for, as we have seen, insistence upon God’s transcendent remoteness can be paralleled in texts from Hellenistic and rabbinic Judaism; and the tendency to “hypostatize” God’s attributes, especially Wisdom, could produce a similar “binity” alongside the same protests on behalf of monotheism, as in Philo. In addition we may note that the sense that God had been absent for a long time was also felt by Jews of this period. For, like the Samaritans, the Sadducees rejected all books apart from the Pentateuch; and those who accepted further revelation in history believed that the Holy Spirit had departed from Israel after the last prophets, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi, or even that it had never been present in the Second Temple. 83 Many Jews, then, lived in hope of a God felt to be remote or absent; some looked for an imminent apocalyptic irruption, supposedly predicted in the distant past when prophecy was still alive; others were beginning to look for gnosis and spiritual revelations rather than intervention in history. In other words, Samaritanism shared certain tendencies of Jewish theology in the Hellenistic age; indeed, while admitting the obscurity of Samaritan origins, we may observe that a plausible case can be made for its appearance during the early Hellenistic period as one of the many forms of Judaism which began at this time to lead a tense and sometimes openly hostile co-existence (another example being the sect at Qumran).84 Hellenization of Judaism was not uniform, and the different groups reacted and developed in various ways. Indeed, it is perhaps a general point in favour of Michael Goulder’s position that the persistent accusations of Jews against the Samaritan sect was directed at its syncretistic character, a charge made all the more plausible if 2 Maccabees 6:2 is correct in suggesting that the Samaritans co-operated with Antiochus’s Hellenizing policy. For if this assessment is at all fair, it is not unlikely that Samaritans were at least partially the vehicle of syncretistic influences in the early church. For syncretism, both outside the confines of mainstream Judaism and in varying degrees within it, must be seen as the broader context within which specific theories need to be evaluated. There does not seem to be a single, exact analogy to the total Christian claim about Jesus in material which is definitely pre-Christian; full scale redeemer-myths are unquestionably found CE but not BCE. Yet it is surely true to say with A. D. Nock that “the impact of the figure of Jesus crystallized elements which were already there.”85 There seem to be four basic elements: (1) The use of phrases like “son of God”; such were undoubtedly current, though admittedly with a wide range of implications, and applied to both human and superhuman beings. 83 

E. Schweizer, “Pneuma,” TDNT 6:385 ff. R. J. Coggins, Samaritans and Jews: The Origins of Samaritanism Reconsidered (Oxford: Blackwell, 1975). 85 Nock, Essays, 2:932. 84 

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(2) The apotheosis or ascent of an exceptional man to the heavenly realm; we have been able to trace examples in both Greek and Jewish traditions. These two elements were brought together in the claim that Jesus was the Messiah-Son of God, risen from the dead and ascended to become God’s “righthand man” in heaven. (3) Belief in heavenly beings or intermediaries, some of whom might descend to succour men; one of whom might act as God’s vicegerent in judgment at the end of time; and the first of whom could have been God’s instrument in creation. Once the Risen Christ took his place in heaven, it is scarcely surprising that he ousted or demoted all these figures in the Christian imagination, while taking over many of their functions and thus becoming pre-existent. (4) The fourth essential element is the idea of the manifestation of the chief of these heavenly beings on earth in a genuine incarnation. Given the combination of the first three elements, it seems the natural and logical outcome. However, it is here that the analogies become inadequate. Pagan mythology could envisage a docetic incarnation; Jewish legend could envisage the coming of an angel in disguise. The association of historical or contemporary personages with the appearances of the gods was occasionally made, but hardly seems to have been taken seriously. Is it any wonder that the first Christian heresy was docetism? The distinctive characteristic of mainstream Christian belief is its inability to stray too far from the historical reality of Jesus of Nazareth, a man crucified under Pontius Pilate. The rapid appearance of Christian Gnosticism and the subsequent problems of defining Christology, problems which have never been entirely resolved, show that this anchorage in history, though constantly asserted, has been permanently insecure as long as the significance of this Jesus has been interpreted according to categories supplied by the supernatural speculations of the Greco-Roman world. Whether or not we can unearth the precise origins of incarnational belief, it is surely clear that it belongs naturally enough to a world in which supernatural ways of speaking seemed the highest and best expression of the significance and finality of the one they identified as God’s awaited Messiah and envoy.

Chapter 5

The Mark of the Nails* They were afraid with heart-bumping, palm-sweating, hair-tingling fright as they gazed at that dark-ghosting, spine-shivering, mouth-gaping cave empty! Weak and gullible women they’d seem. They’d come to the tomb … and they were afraid, afraid of a future of unknown fears. No more gentle tears! Where – where have they laid him? What – what more – done to abuse his body? They were afraid with death-whitening, jaw-dropping, stomach-caving dread. Is faith born of fear? Is Resurrection here? The End of the Gospel 1 It is Mark, of course, who notoriously ends his Gospel with fear: “οὐδενὶ οὐδὲν εἶπαν, ἐφοβοῦντο γάρ” (oudeni ouden eipan, ephobounto gar – they said nothing to anyone for they were afraid) (Mark 16:8). 2 Yet in Matthew, while there is also joy (Matt 28:8), the fear associated with the event is, by comparison with Mark, * 

Originally published in Resurrection: Essays in Honour of Leslie Houlden, ed. Stephen Barton and Graham Stanton (London: SPCK, 1994): 139–153. 1  The poem is my own. 2  There is, of course, debate about whether the original ending is lost, and that may be so. But it is conceivable that Mark wanted to end in mystery, given the “secrecy” motif and other features of the narrative; see also Robert Hamilton, “The Gospel of Mark: Parable of God Incarnate,” Theology 86 (1983): 438–441, where he argues that the Gospel of Mark has the overall character of parable in that it subverts its own good news, ending with this note of fear. In any case, for the purposes of this essay, it is assumed that a reading of the Gospel as ending at 16:8 is viable, and it is not necessary to establish authorial intention. The addition of the ending (16:9–20) at an early stage of textual transmission confirms the need to bring the story to closure and resolution, reducing the “fear” motif: cf. next paragraph of this chapter.

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heightened. The guards quake with fear (Matt 28:4). The women need immediate reassurance: “Don’t be afraid.” Rushing away to tell the news, they meet with Jesus: “Don’t be afraid” – the words are repeated (Matt 28:5, 10). Luke, too, speaks of the women being frightened and bowing their faces to the ground when the two figures appear at the empty tomb (Luke 24:5). The fear associated with the event of resurrection in the gospel narratives is not a feature that tends to be appropriated by believers meditating on the stories, and in a way that has ever been so. Already in Matthew’s version, a definite message about resurrection, obeisance and worship, as well as “great joy,” are features that have the effect of turning the empty fear of Mark into awe. In Luke, fright is linked with the seeing of apparitions and is soon turned to joy when the real Jesus is revealed (Luke 24:36–43). John speaks only of “fear of the Jews” (John 20:19). Believers have always found it hard to associate anything other than gladness and relief with the return of the Lord. John alone emphasizes the mark of the nails and the wound in the side, and in that Gospel’s narrative this seems at first sight but a guarantee, a sign that this is authentically Jesus… Characteristically, Leslie Houlden once protested at “the common tendency to see Jesus’s resurrection as somehow cancelling out his death and ensuring that the story has a happy ending.” His solution to the triumphalist focus on “the Risen Christ” was to take account of the whole story: “The career of Jesusas-a-whole forbids such easy slipping into the mood of spring…. On the basis of Jesus, it is an ultimate hope held to in the very teeth of suffering and diminution.”3 Two problems vis-à-vis the resurrection have preoccupied this age of uncertainty, and Houlden’s discussion bears witness to them both: (1) the question of historicity, factuality, what happened, the nature of the event; and (2) this business of triumphalism. The first problem is not the principal concern of this essay, though it may prove to bear on the debate about physical and spiritual. What is proposed is an approach to the second which is different but complementary to that proposed by Leslie Houlden. The starting-point of this reflection is the notion that literary texts, or indeed oral narratives, shape world-vision.4 We understand the world, indeed “create” our own story, through entering the stories we are told as children, the narratives we read as adolescents. Despite the style and genre of much analytical writing, whether in newspapers or scientific journals, we live a story-shaped existence and have a story-shaped identity. We conceive of our selves, and of others and our relationship with them, through the μίμησις (mimē sis – not so much 3 Leslie Houlden, Connections: The Integration of Theology and Faith (London: SCM Press, 1986), 150–151. 4  A useful discussion of this is found in Wayne C. Booth, The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), especially chs. 8–11. The emergence of the so-called “narrative theology” movement necessarily presupposes the same kind of stance.

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“imitation” as “representation”) of human existence in narrative, and then we experience “reality” through these narrative conceptions. The appropriation of the resurrection stories works at the level of narrative-shaping, and the tendency to encourage triumphalism that so concerns Leslie Houlden bears that out. So the perception that a particular story has the potential to shape our world immediately raises questions about the kind of “vision” incarnated in the narrative. Roughly speaking, one can observe in the structure of stories two fundamental views of life, the “tragic” and the “comic.” Both words may, of course, be used in a sensationalizing or trivializing popular sense, but we are concerned here not with everyday usage or with kitsch. The issue is this: does the resurrection mean, as some have suggested, that there can be no genuinely tragic vision within Christianity? Does it provide the “happy ending” that simply turns the Christian story into comedy? What I suggest is that inherent even in the New Testament resurrection stories is a deeply tragic element, captured in the response of fear, embodied in the mark of the nails. For in tragedy, as Nietzsche put it, one “stares at the inexplicable.”5

I.  Tragic Vision What constitutes the essence of tragedy is a much-discussed topic.6 Tragic narrative has a variety of characteristics, many peculiar to the insight of particular dramatists or narrators within particular cultural traditions: there are “tragic visions” of human existence, rather than a single tragic view.7 It is easier, then, to identify actual narratives as tragic than to come up with any generally applicable formula. Wisely, Cheryl Exum eschews offering “a theory of tragedy or an investigation of the genre as such,”8 and we will do likewise, instead tracing key elements in a “bridge” example. T. S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral is a modern tragedy written from within a Christian world-view yet modelled on classic Greek tragedy. The play opens 5  F. Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, trans. W. A. Haussmann (London: Allen & Unwin, 1909), 119. 6  The classic delineation of Greek tragedy is found in Aristotle’s Poetics, Greek text: Aristotle. Poetics, ed. D. W. Lucas (Oxford: Clarendon, 1968); ET: Stephen Halliwell, The Poetics of Aristotle: Translation and Commentary (London: Duckworth, 1987). But it soon becomes evident that his analysis is not universally applicable, not even to the classical tragedies of his own time and culture (see H. D. F Kitto, Greek Tragedy: A Literary Study, 2nd ed. (London: Methuen, 1950)), let alone modern tragedy. Cheryl Exum argues that despite the fact that Aristotelian categories do not apply to biblical material, the “tragic vision” nevertheless appears “in various biblical guises.” Cheryl J. Exum, Tragedy and Biblical Narrative (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), see opening chapter passim. 7  Raymond Williams, Modern Tragedy, rev. ed. (London: Verso, 1979) draws out the historical and cultural diversity of tragedy. 8 Exum, Tragedy, 2.

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with the Chorus full of foreboding and articulating one notion common to much tragic drama, namely that destiny is in God’s hands, not in the hands of human agents like statesmen who just plan and guess, pursuing their own aims and doing well or ill. The Chorus are the poor, who are not part of the action; they just wait and observe, representing ordinary people getting on with life, “living and partly living,” unable to face too much reality, just wanting peace. But by the end of the play they are praying for forgiveness – for they too are exposed as implicated. If we say that we have no sin, there is no health in us. The Knights who perpetrate the deed are full of self-justification, excuses, whitewashes, making out there were effectively no alternatives, as in all arguments for a just war, all acts of oppression, even little dishonesties… In matterof-fact prose that contrasts with the poetry of the rest of the play, they reveal their blindness to their own responsibility. An exposure, a judgment, is going on. But then there is the tragic hero, Thomas. Fully conscious of the possibilities, he faces up to the temptations of his position. Three temptations are obvious – the predictable ways of getting out of his vocation and responsibilities. The fourth is more interesting: it highlights the possibility that acceptance of vocation may itself be corrupt and self-seeking – to be the glorious martyr! How marvellous! Until purged of that tainted pride, Thomas cannot be the true martyr, whatever happens. What you are is more important than what you do. The temptation is to do the right thing but for the wrong reason – indeed, “sin grows with doing good.” The terrible truth emerges that our worst faults may be the inescapable obverse of our greatest virtues – more exposure of the ambiguities of human action and moral choice. Eliot offers in this presentation of Thomas à Beckett a challenge to the importance of historical fact. Truth is found rather in the mysterious depths that have to be explored through rituals acknowledging pollution and shame, and opening up the possibility of purgation. Cheryl Exum suggests that attention to examples of tragic narrative or drama shows time and again that “fate and flaw present an essential combination in tragedy.”9 The themes of doom or destiny recur, implying a “hostile transcendence,” a sense that the protagonist is caught up in things beyond his or her control, as does the exploration of faults in the great hero’s character, deeds that have a strange inevitability, and yet are the hero’s responsibility. Essential to the tragic, she thinks, is a noble struggle against catastrophe. “Tragedy is made possible when human freedom comes into conflict with the demands of the cosmic order.” So there is an issue about the possibility of tragedy without God. Martha Nussbaum’s book title The Fragility of Goodness shows that she would agree that the subject-matter of tragedy is the vulnerability of human 9 Exum,

Tragedy, 10.

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greatness, the contingencies and dilemmas of human existence.10 Her analysis, however, illuminates the “everydayness” of the dilemmas faced in Greek tragedy. With or without God, there is the interplay of luck and choice that we all recognize – and the paradox that in practice we hold people responsible for what they do even when the cards are stacked against them. A feature of some Greek tragedy is the sensitive exploration of impossible choices, where deeply held moral principles are in conflict and there is no right decision. Whatever choice is made, there will be guilt. Nussbaum, it would seem, does not require God for there to be tragedy.11 The effect of seeing tragedy in a theological frame, however, is that what Nussbaum would call “luck” becomes a sense of destiny.12 The interplay of “fate” and “flaw” and the heroic struggle against fate seem central, but the feature that Exum particularly highlights as the tragic sense of life is the acknowledgement of “the ultimate disharmony of existence,” a phrase she borrows from Jaspers: What distinguishes this vision from its opposite, the comic or classic vision, is that it lacks comedy’s restorative and palliative capacity. Comedy gives voice to a fundamental trust in life…. [It] may also embrace questions, doubts and ambiguities, but … it removes their terror. The tragic vision isolates the hero over against an arbitrary and capricious world, a world in which – to get to the crux of the matter – the problem of evil is irreducible and unresolvable into some larger, harmonious whole.13

Exum’s insistence on the tragic being irrational and inexplicable is in tension with her recognition that the very act of presenting it invests the unintelligible with some kind of meaning. “The representation, mimesis, of this vision in a particular literary work becomes an attempt to tame it by giving it aesthetic form.”14 It is precisely here that I would want to go beyond Exum and insist that tragedy is a creative, and therefore inherently redemptive, engagement with the mystery of the ambiguities and darkness of human existence. The drama or narrative is both revelatory of the hidden depths we prefer to keep veiled, and a performative act of resolution and reconciliation. In classical Athens, tragedy arose in a ritual context. The action, originally presenting the story in song and dance as part of a religious festival, gradually evolved into the classic dramatic shape. The presentation was a liturgy per-

10 Martha Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 11  In practice, of course, it is the gods who in Greek tragedy place conflicting obligations on human beings, but this simply heightens the helplessness of humans caught in the crossfire. 12  Whether tragedy is possible where a God of justice produces a vision so ordered and rational that retribution and reward is guaranteed is a serious issue beyond the scope of this essay. See discussion in Exum, Tragedy. 13 Exum, Tragedy, 5. 14 Exum, Tragedy, 5.

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formed before and on behalf of the whole community. When this is recognized as the context, Aristotle’s classic statement takes on new dimensions: Tragedy, then, is a representation of an action which is serious, complete and of a certain magnitude – in language which is garnished in various forms in its different parts – in the mode of dramatic enactment, not narrative – and through the arousal of pity and fear effecting the katharsis of such emotions….15

The post-Romantic era has tended to understand this in terms of a great “emotional steam-bath,” as the great director Peter Brook once put it,16 and its supposed effect has then become problematic.17 But if κάθαρσις (katharsis – purification or catharsis) is taken seriously in its religious context, it will be seen to have a rather different implication. As the anthropologist Mary Douglas explains in her book Purity and Danger, primitive peoples took things that were taboo, things like blood and death, and, by putting these fearful things into a ritual context, “sacralized” them, transformed them from being life-denying to life-affirming: “The special kind of treatment which some religions accord to anomalies and abominations to make them powerful for good, is like turning weeds and lawn cuttings into compost.”18 That is what sacrifice was all about: it took the taboo substance blood and turned it into a means of purification. What was involved was a shift in perspective as the taboo subject was handled and faced and put into another context. That too, I have previously suggested, is how tragedy works: it makes it possible for human beings to avoid escapism, to confront things they dare not face.19 Normally we cannot stand too much reality, but here we can. In great tragic drama we are enabled to face up to those things about the human condition we would rather forget or deny. 15 Aristotle, Poet., 6, ET quoted from Halliwell, The Poetics of Aristotle, 37; cf. his commentary on the passage, 88. 16  Peter Brook, The Empty Space (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1968). 17  See, e.g., Gilbert Norwood, Greek Tragedy, 4th ed. (London: Methuen, 1948), and Aristotle, Poet. 18  Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966). Every society, according to Mary Douglas, has purity regulations. Dirt implies “a set of ordered relations and contravention of that order…. Dirt is the by product of a systematic ordering and classification of matter, in so far as ordering involves rejecting inappropriate elements” (35). Culture provides the ordered categories within which members of a given society order ideas and values. But inevitably this gives rise to “anomalies.” The question is how does a society deal with anomalies and ambiguities. The desire for purity may lead to expulsion, but that kind of purity proves to be “hard and dead”; “purity is the enemy of change” (162). Ambiguity may produce laughter, revulsion or shock at different points and intensities, but it is also creative: the richness of poetry depends on ambiguity (37). There is power in the margins, the things that do not fit. So in primitive religions, it is not uncommon to find that one or other of the anomalies, a thing that is taboo, becomes in religious ritual the very thing that can produce cleansing and new life (163 ff.). 19  Frances Young, Face to Face: A Narrative Essay in the Theology of Suffering, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1990), 177; Young, Art of Performance, 188.

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Martha Nussbaum draws our attention to the theory of Burkert that tragedy originated from sacrifice.20 “The ceremony of animal sacrifice … expressed the awe and fear felt by this human community towards its own murderous possibilities.” By ritually killing an animal and surrounding this killing “with a ceremony indicative of the killers’ innocence and their respect for life,” the sacrificers both acknowledged and distanced themselves from their potential for violence. “It is the work of tragedy, song of the goat-sacrifice, to continue and deepen this function of ritual by bringing the hidden threat to light….” So Peter Brook suggests that there is “Holy Theatre.”21 “We are all aware that most of life escapes our senses. We know that the world of appearance is a crust – under the crust is the boiling matter we see if we peer into a volcano.” In theatre, the “invisible becomes visible,” we find liberation from our ordinary everyday selves. This is what makes “the theatre a holy place in which a greater reality could be found,” often in the paradox of a loss that is also gain. Great tragedy probes for the meaning behind it all. It exposes the truth about the human condition so that it may be faced and ritually dealt with. Is this not what we saw embodied in Eliot’s play? Nietzsche suggested that the tragic perception, “in order even to be endured, requires art as a safeguard and remedy.”22 He speaks of “the enormous power of tragedy, exciting, purifying, and disburdening the entire life of a people,”23 and of the transformative effect of tragedy as the spectator “shudders at the sufferings which will befall the hero, and yet anticipates therein a higher and much more over-powering joy. He sees more extensively and profoundly than ever, and yet wishes to be blind.”24 This “curious internal dissension” Nietzsche likens to the “wonderful significance of musical dissonance.” “The joyful sensation of dissonance in music” explains the origin of “the joy that the tragic myth excites.”25 So the shaping in art-form provides a context in which the dissonant chord is resolved into a harmonious cadence, and, as Raymond Williams put it, “the tragic action, in its deepest sense, is not the confirmation of disorder, but its experience, its comprehension and its resolution.”26

20 Nussbaum,

Fragility, 37. Empty Space, ch.  2 ; quotations from 42, 52, 54. 22 Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy, 119. 23 Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy, 159. 24 Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy, 168. 25 Nietszche, Birth of Tragedy, 183. 26 Williams, Modern Tragedy, 83. 21 Brook,

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II.  The Passion Narrative as Tragedy No-one who has had the privilege of sitting at the feet of Donald MacKinnon, as I have, could escape his persuasive insistence that the Christian story is more profound than the “historical failure of the traditional doctrines of atonement,” and that great tragic drama explores the depths of the problem of evil in a way that throws light on the cross.27 The victory of Jesus is ambiguous: increasingly one sees that the reality of Christ’s humanity resides precisely in the fact that as he lived he was confronted with real choices, fraught, in consequence of the way in which he chose, with disaster as well as achievement in their train.

The “actuality of irretrievable disaster” is presented in the Gospels. The victory “remains mysteriously and inescapably tragic.”28 If there were no resurrection in the aftermath, such a reading would be entirely persuasive. Mark’s Gospel, though its language is the crude rough Greek of a Palestinian, is written with unconscious literary art. The central figure of the drama foresees the destiny he has to face, struggles with it in Gethsemane, and then is progressively isolated, misunderstood, betrayed by a friend, denied by his right-hand man, despised, mocked, rejected, finally forsaken even by the God whose will he strove to perform. As the tragedies of the ancient world found meaning in the interplay of necessity and choice, so Mark makes it clear that this is the playing out of a destiny long foreshadowed – in ancient prophecies, in terrible tales like the sacrifice of Isaac – yet freely chosen. As in Eliot’s tragedy, all participants are exposed as implicated in the deed. The Epistle to the Hebrews, though reflecting on the event rather than narrating it, draws out other features classic in tragedy: the paradox of one innocent yet guilty, as the sacrificial victim is without blemish yet ritually bears the sin of the people; the πάθει μάθος (pathei mathos) – the “learning through suffering” that Greek tragedy explored; the greatness yet vulnerability of one who struggles with the contingencies of the human condition, sharing in human flesh and blood, praying with loud cries and tears, yet able to “sanctify” those who share his human nature. So the cross of Christ functions like tragedy. The hero is caught up in events over which he has no control, yet chooses to engage in the struggle. The ensuing drama exposes the reality of human sin, the insoluble conflicts that so often lead to the suffering of the innocent, the banishment and destruction of what is good, the mobilization of the political and religious structures to eliminate change or challenge. Christ is thrust “outside the camp,” banished like the scapegoat, destroyed so that purity could be maintained. All humanity is in27  Donald MacKinnon, Borderlands of Theology and Other Essays (London: Lutterworth, 1968), 100. 28  Donald MacKinnon, Explorations in Theology, vol.  5 (London: SCM Press, 1979), 194.

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volved in the shame of it. Yet the story of the cross (without reference to the resurrection) is redemptive. For the things we fear, the taboos of blood and death, the curse of the most cruel and despicable punishment devised by humanity, these are “sacralized,” put in a positive context in which they can be faced and not merely neutralized but overcome. Not for nothing did the medieval hymn sing “O felix culpa” – O fortunate fault – as the terror of guilt and sin was transfigured in the terror of the cross. The drama effects an exposure of the truth. It becomes a universal narrative, a story told by an inspired poet, not a mere chronicler or historian. As Aristotle put it, “poetry is both more philosophical and more serious than history, since poetry speaks more of universals, history of particulars.”29 The terrible truth of human complicity in evil, of goodness snuffed out, of God’s abandonment, is exposed and faced; faced as in a ritual context the thing that is taboo is turned into something holy, the sin we cannot bear to face is redeemed, the pollution we usually fail to observe is revealed, and κάθαρσις, in the sense of purification or atonement, is effected.

III.  The Resurrection in the Light of the Passion Does the resurrection undermine the force of the passion? Is it true that Christian hope renders Christian tragedy impossible? Of course, quite apart from the triumphalism of Christus Victor, the resurrection may be presented as a dramatic reversal: a deus ex machina, an intervening deity, miraculously sorts it all out, and a “comic” happy ending is appended to the passion. It may be suggested that, unlike the realistic “ordinariness” and ambiguity of the stories in the Hebrew Bible, which turn out to be as perplexing as real life, the New Testament provides closure, gives meaning and conclusion to things,30 and the resurrection is the chief purveyor of this sense of “rounding off.” None of this encourages the attributive “tragic.” Yet might it not be suggested that the Christian story is strangely capable of being read both as tragedy and as comedy? The “classic” resolution restores harmony, order, vision, and hope, after the reversal of the fall, failure, and fatality. The “recapitulation” of fall and redemption in early Christian theology would bear out the force of the classic or comic reading. The problem then is whether the tragic reading can hold. Somehow, despite The Marriage of Figaro, a tragi-comedy does full justice to neither form. So what I want to propose is the 29 Aristotle,

Poet., 9.41. Gabriel Josipovici, The Book of God: A Response to the Bible (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), 47: “The Christian order [of the canonical books] is one we find perfectly natural and easy to understand … partly because it corresponds to a profound need in each of us for closure and for a universe shaped according to a clearly comprehensible story.” 30 

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distinction yet coinherence of tragic and comic visions; one cannot “see” both at once, but they are genuine alternatives – like the famous duck-rabbit sketch. Each reading offers its own kind of resolution, and yet subverts the other.31 How, then, would the resurrection function in a tragic reading? Despite the tendency to “closure” in the New Testament, Josipovici notes how the gospel writers adopt different strategies “to avoid the trap into which the apocryphal gospels fall, of returning us to the world of fairy-tale from which the Passion had freed us.”32 He explores the Marcan ambiguities with which we began this essay. We might add that in the New Testament as a whole, so far from providing unambiguous resolution, the resurrection reopens the ambiguities and questions and tensions: those who triumphantly imagine the resurrection has happened already are apparently Paul’s opponents, while Paul himself speaks of being conformed to the sufferings of Christ, and struggles with the “now” and the “not yet” of new creation in Christ. There is a new beginning in the apparent ending, and for all the “fulfilments” of the New Testament, “closure” is not reached in the narrative: in the Book of Revelation, it remains a vision for the future. Nor is the resurrection a simple reversal, a restoration that puts things back as if nothing had happened. The tedious debate about whether it was physical or spiritual introduces an irrelevant dichotomy. No Christian believer would simply want to speak of resuscitation; every Christian believer would want to affirm transfiguration, metamorphosis of some kind. And it is this mystery that narrative and testimony struggles to convey. The marks of the nails remain and are somehow “transvalued.” It is perhaps John’s Gospel that most effectively holds together cross and resurrection, as the passion becomes the “hour of glory,” the pain, suffering, sin, guilt, destiny, darkness, vulnerability to death and the powers of evil, indeed the frighteningly inexplicable, becomes even more inexplicably the theophany, the blinding dazzling light of exposure, judgment, revelation. It is in tragedy rather than comedy that one expects to confront the mysterium tremendum et fascinans, the Holy One, to be moved with pity and terror, with awe and fear of the Lord. Which brings us back to the fact that these stories are not tales of joyful recognition and the restoration of normality. Jesus does not go off to Egypt, marry Mary Magdalene and live happily ever after! Mary is cruelly brushed off as she tries to make contact with the Jesus she knew: “Do not cling to me, for I have 31 Josipovici, Book of God, 307: “the peculiarity of the Bible is that it keeps calling into question our ability to make sense of our past, and of stories to explain ourselves or describe the world. There is, it is true, a strong tendency in Christianity, already evident in the New Testament, to search for the single story that will give shape to the world; but that tendency exists in tension with the sense, present in the Gospels as well as in much of the Hebrew Bible, that if there is such a story it is not one we will ever be able to know or tell.” Reading the Bible “will never be able to attain a universal perspective or come to an end.” 32 Josipovici, Book of God, 230.

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not yet ascended to the Father” (John 20:17). His presence with her and with the disciples is fraught with ambiguity, with an open and terrifying future, with insecurity. There is a hiddenness and awefulness that belies any sense of triumph. Pilate and the powers of oppression remain untouched, and whatever resolution there is, is like the mystery of tragic drama. Those who witness this passionate action are enabled to gaze on the reality of death and the reality of God, the taboo and terrifying reality of which humanity cannot bear too much. To develop Nietzsche’s image, the resurrection contains the tumult and dissonance of the passion in a kind of harmonic resolution, but the climax has a disturbing intensity, and the cadence a questioning quality – a note of awesome expectation, sending shivers down the spine.

Chapter 6

From Analysis to Overlay: A Sacramental Approach to Christology* I.  The complementarity of analysis and imagination Come with me in imagination to Pembrokeshire. We are walking the coast path. Impressive cliffs break off the end of a great ridge ahead. We pause at a stile and lean over, contemplating the awesome sight in front of us. One of our party is a geologist. She begins to talk about the layers of soft sedimentary rocks, the hard limestone above, the long process of weathering which has exposed the history of that bit of earth, the reason why there is an overhang there, with the lower softer rocks crumbling first. Her friend points out the twisting of the strata, a sudden fault-line, a dyke, all of which create the characteristic shapes in the headland. But his main interest is in the action of the sea, and it is the way the sea gouges out the weak points in the geological structure, and the motion of the tides and waves that he is able to expound. Our wonder is growing deeper, and the artist with us is enabled to grasp the whole and capture shapes and proportions with a fresh vitality, precisely because those so-called analytical scientists have both enhanced perception and communicated a deep sense of enthusiasm for the reality which in our different ways we are all contemplating. We begin to “know” that cliff through the integration of analysis and synthesis. Wisdom is reached when synthesis and analysis work together. Despite the science fiction dreams of creating artificial intelligence, the human mind does not work in algorithms like a computer. Arthur Koestler told the story of the development of science under the title The Sleepwalkers; 1 for great scientific breakthroughs have never come simply by one logical statement leading to another, but through insight, brilliant and unexpected correlations, intuitions, one might say. My husband used to say in his scientific research days, “I’ve had an idea.” That heralded weeks of work testing it out, but the point is made. Poets, *  This essay was originally published in Christ: The Sacramental Word. Incarnation, Sacrament and Poetry, ed. David Brown and Ann Loades (London: SPCK, 1996): 40–56. It was first delivered as the Gore Memorial Lecture at St Margaret’s, Westminster, and Birmingham Cathedral, November 1993, under the title, “Visions, Mirrors and Imprints: the Image of God in Human Form.” 1  Arthur Koestler, The Sleepwalkers (London: Hutchinson, 1959); cf. also Act of Creation.

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musicians, artists, sculptors, all know that creativity involves much more than feeling or intuition – they too have to engage the intellect in hard work, working out the “idea” that has come to them through careful technical or analytical engagement with their medium. There are profound analogies in the way all creative thought, artistic and scientific, is both “inspired” and the outcome of conscious mental discipline. One of the many tragic breakdowns in the way we twentieth-century people apprehend things is the perceived split between what we might call analytical and synthetic thinking, a split related to but not identical with that between fact and value to which Lesslie Newbigin and the “Gospel and our Culture” movement has drawn attention. As many react against our supposedly analytical culture, heart is contrasted with head, feeling with rationality, intuition with the intellectual, and the difference is sometimes even genderized, analysis being associated with science and masculinity, femininity with intuition, emotion, mysticism, poetry, synthesis. It has become fashionable to decry the dominance and oppression of the so-called “cerebral,” to reject objective analysis in favour of subjective and holistic apprehension. It is, of course, true that this kind of thing has fuelled the welcome renewal of interest in spirituality – not just in the churches, however, but in the New Age movement as well, and unfortunately it has also fostered an anti-intellectualism which will ultimately, I suggest, be very damaging for the defence of Christian truth. It has become associated with what one might almost dare to call the myth of the two halves of the brain: there certainly is scientific evidence that one side of the brain handles mathematics, logic, analysis, and the other, perception, artistic appreciation, intuition, and so on, but the reality is that if the two halves of the brain are not connected, the person is profoundly handicapped. In this climate, theology is often treated as cold, critical, objective, rational, analytical, distanced, even irrelevant. There is perhaps a little truth in the notion that theology is so-called “second order discourse‚” a rational account of prior faith or experience. But this distinction is based on another unfortunate split in modern apprehension. There is a very real sense in which theology at some level, so far from being second order discourse, is a prerequisite for faith. No specifically Christian experience is possible without prior knowledge of Christian doctrine – or, perhaps we might say, prior awareness of the Christian story which provides the narrative into which we are drawn, and through which we apprehend the meaning of our own stories, as we become believers. Experience is never discrete from the categories we use to understand or articulate what has happened to us. A good example is provided by Mother Julian of Norwich. Her visionary experience presupposes a search for understanding of the love of God through assimilation to the passion of Christ. In other words, it presupposes the Christian story, indeed the doctrines of the Trinity and of incarnation.

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Theology cannot, then, be dismissed as an ivory tower, rational, objective, critical endeavour more likely to destroy faith than anything else. Rather it is the lifeblood of the Christian life. My inaugural lecture in Birmingham was entitled “The Critic and the Visionary.”2 Both are required. Only a reintegration of paths presently perceived as split will enable us to find renewed confidence in the truth by which we live as Christians. The Christian life needs theo­ logy, and theology involves both analytical and synthetic thinking. In my lecture in honour of Charles Gore I wanted to celebrate the life and work of one who, despite being a bishop, remained a theologian. He knew that loving God with mind and heart meant being prepared to engage in tough thinking – in each generation it meant, to quote one of his titles, The Reconstruction of Belief; 3 for there is a necessary doctrinal task to be performed in every context, including each intellectual culture. It is impossible simply to repeat the past. For the language of the past, whether scriptural or credal, has to become intelligible in the present through a process of interpretation, exegesis, re-statement, even re-conception. So in honouring Gore I took up one of the central doctrinal issues which exercised, not only his mind, but that of most serious reflective Christians in every century, not least our own, namely the doctrine of incarnation. In exploring this, my preliminary remarks about analytical and synthetic thinking will become crucial to the argument.

II.  Analysis and the Chalcedonian definition The classic Chalcedonian definition of the person of Christ was arrived at by a process of debate and controversy leading up to, and settled at, the Council of the same name in 451 CE, though with some significant dissenters. The agreed statement (then, as now, an agreed statement was the fruit of such a synod!) affirmed that Jesus Christ was truly God and truly man. This was the true meaning of scripture and creed. It has been claimed, notably by John Hick, that the Chalcedonian definition is incoherent, a logical impossibility like the square circle. In his recent book, The Metaphor of God Incarnate, his position is a little more nuanced, but his essential charge remains: no one has ever satisfactorily given an account of what this statement means in practice.4 In this essay I want to hazard an account of Christian claims about Jesus which might go some way to making sense of them, at least for those of us who take seriously the notion that theology is faith seeking understanding and there are some “givens” with which we need to work. The classic definition is not, in my view, unthinkable or irrational, and furthermore it makes the right connec2 

“The Critic and the Visionary,” SJT 41 (1988): 297–312. Charles Gore, The Reconstruction of Belief (London: John Murray, 1922). 4  John Hick, The Metaphor of God Incarnate (London: SCM Press, 1993). 3 

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tions, because what we call Christology, the doctrine of Christ’s person, is inextricably bound up with all other doctrines, with Christian understanding of human nature, of creation and redemption, of God’s nature, of worship and spirituality. My suggestion will be that, while the traditional definition of the person of Christ belongs to the realm of analytical thinking, synthetic thinking is required to make sense of it. On the other hand, without the analytical definition, synthetic thinking would easily sink into pagan myth. So the dialectic between the two is vital for Christian understanding of Christ. It is when there is a divorce between spirituality and theology that the definition becomes apparently unintelligible and vulnerable to the attacks of those who claim either common sense or rationality. First then a few words about the definition and its important analytical thrust: Things or persons are necessarily defined over against other things or persons. To define is to determine boundaries. Like Adam naming the animals, a child points and names the things and persons in its environment. The way of differentiation, which is the beginning of analysis, is the only way to get to know things, to know others – even to know oneself. Until one learns a few names, it is hard to identify different birds or flowers. To see similarities and differences requires classification according to types, and the process of trying to identify by name leads to a much finer perception of the particular detailed characteristics of each one, as well as enabling recognition. Now ancient philosophy was dominated by the issue: What exactly is this? Is it to be defined in terms of the matter out of which it is composed? Or the particular characteristics that make it what it is and not something else? If the latter, is it the features it has in common with other examples of the same thing, or those which it distinctively has itself, in its particularity? This meant the question of a thing’s “being” or “substance” was the prime analytical question. There are those who have dismissed Chalcedon because it is framed in socalled out-dated “substance” language, or in static ontological terms. But early in my theological formation, I learned from Donald MacKinnon that that suggestion fails to grasp what “substance” is about. It is, as I have noted, a question about what exactly a thing is. I suppose we would put the same issues in terms of identity. It is naive to think that modern believers have never wondered about the identity of Jesus Christ, or been puzzled about the claim that he is to be identified as God and as man. Could a particular living creature be identified as both gnat and elephant? Chalcedon was about specifying the identity of Jesus Christ. The analytical argument reached what many have treated as impossible paradox for a number of reasons which I do not intend to go into or I should find myself offering a potted history of the formation of doctrine. What we do need to realize, however, is why the analytical process was so important. Ancient

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religion and philosophy did not make a clear distinction between Creator and creature, between the divine and the human. Nature was filled with mysterious divinities, and places felt to be holy were natural wonders, grottoes and woods, mountaintops, promontories. The gods were conceived and depicted in anthropomorphic terms – they were made in the image of humankind, male and female – and in mythology the boundaries were quite slippery. The gods were manifested in human form in many popular stories, and a common theory about the origin of the gods was that they were divinized supermen or heroes. More sophisticated philosophy also blurred the distinction between the divine and the universe. Stoicism was essentially pantheistic, the divine being identified as the rational order, the mind or spirit (Logos) which was fire, the basic element, the stuff at the heart of the universe. Platonism found reality not in material being, but in the “ideas” or “ideals” which shape the world; so Platonists could conceive of transcendent divine being, and their conceptuality became the natural ally of Christian theology, but they thought the human soul belonged to that transcendent spiritual world. My point is: everybody tended to assume in one way or another a kinship between the divine and the human, and confused created things with the divinity. For Christians, with their philosophical ideas radicalized by their Jewish heritage, the distinction between God the Creator and everything else became more and more important. Already in the epistles of St Paul we find attacks on those who “claiming to be wise, … became fools, and … exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles … and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen” (Rom 1:22–25). Such remained a key apologetic argument against idolatry and anthropomorphism. Pagan myths and idols were mocked. In more theoretical terms, the second century was crucial. Then explicit differentiation of the Christian position from pagan philosophies and gnostic heresies generated the following argument: God did not create the world out of the divine self by a process of emanation, otherwise everything would be God; nor did God create out of a pre-existent matter, because such a medium would have to be co-eternal with God and would therefore effectively be a second divine Being; therefore God must have created everything out of nothing. This was the initial move which was bound to lead to a radical distinction between God and every other existent thing, with every other existent thing being wholly dependent upon God’s will for its existence. So the grounding analytical principle was this: God was not to be confused with any other existent thing. God’s identity and the identity of everything else were defined by contrast with one another, by differentiation. No wonder critics of Christianity like Celsus could accuse the Christians of inconsistency when they worshipped as God a man who had recently lived and died in Pales-

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tine. But in the end it was not external pressure that led to Chalcedon’s definition. Rather it was the result of prolonged internal struggles which involved the exclusion of a number of so-called heretics, struggles arising from the tendency in Christian thought itself to confuse that fundamental distinction when it came to Jesus Christ. In the debates immediately preceding the Council, more than anything else it was concern to preserve the Godness of God, the “otherness” of the divine, that fuelled controversy. There was, then, a fundamental analytical distinction which was characteristic of Christianity over against the mythologies and religious assumptions of the ancient world which required the exclusion of inadequate accounts of the identity of Jesus Christ as either some kind of mediating being – neither fish nor fowl we might say – or as a confusion between God and humanity. I believe that that distinction remains vital for Christian theology. I believe also that the genuine humanness of Jesus needs preserving against the persistent tendency of popular Christianity to divinize him in a way analogous to pagan mythology – to that extent I cannot ever go back on what I argued in the The Myth of God Incarnate.5 The analytical process remains essential. To put it in the language of Chalcedon, there are two distinct Natures, divine and human, which we dare not confuse, yet we find, perhaps to our embarrassment, that we have to assert that Jesus Christ has to be identified as being wholly both.

III.  Synthesis and imagination in Paul So much for analysis – now what about synthesis? Let us return to the New Testament, and particularly the writings of St Paul. As we have seen, Paul the Jew takes the distinction I have mentioned for granted at one level, but at another level, I suggest, he thinks synthetically rather than analytically. There is a tendency for this to appear to lead to confusion if we press the logic of what we find. But I want to explore the idea that it is in the ambiguities produced by overlaying images and concepts that creative perceptions arise. For Paul, Christ is the image of God (2 Cor 4:4; Col 1:15). But the thrust of this is curiously double-edged. Certainly in the Colossians passage, the term is linked with divinity: although wisdom is not mentioned, most exegetes believe that scriptural depictions of God’s wisdom underlie this picture of the cosmic Christ, and there are other hints (e.g. 1 Cor 1:24; 8:6) that Paul saw Christ as embodying God’s own wisdom, as did the author of Hebrews and other New Testament writers such as the author of John’s Gospel. The divine Sonship of Christ is linked with this; for in this tradition, “wisdom” is God’s offspring, her nature is conceived as a reflection of God’s glory, as the imprint of God’s very 5 

Myth of God Incarnate, ed. Hick; see chs. 3 and 4 of the present volume.

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being (Heb 1:3) – not “mere likeness” but “faithful representation” – rather as we might say, “That child is the splitting image of its father.” But Paul is also acutely aware of the biblical understanding of humanity as made in the image of God. In fact, in 1 Corinthians 11:7, he almost casually uses the, for him unquestioned, fact that “man is the image and glory of God” as a premise in what has become a rather controversial discussion about gender relations. More often he understands Christ in terms of renewed humanity or re-created Adam, and as the means whereby the image of God is formed anew in those who are baptized into Christ and, whether male or female, take on Christ’s name and identity. Some obvious passages may be cited: For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family. (Rom 8:29) Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven. (1 Cor 15:49) … you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. (Col 3:9–10)

These provide the clues to understand that awkward but key verse at the end of 2 Corinthians 3: All of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the self-same image [my trans. and emphasis] from one degree of glory to another…. (2 Cor 3:18)

So the notion that Jesus Christ is the image of God cannot be logically pinned down. It is a statement about the perfect humanity, which God intended and Adam spoiled, being realized in Jesus. It is a statement about the possibility of our humanity being transformed so that it too becomes God’s image – the “selfsame image” as Christ. But it is also a statement about the immanence of the divine wisdom in all creation, about God’s self-revelation, about the presence of God’s own glory. The notion of God’s image is, we might say, a “synthetic” way of thinking. It involves metaphors about mirrors and reflections, about the imprint of a seal in wax – for it is by giving us the Spirit of Jesus in our hearts as a first instalment that God has anointed us and “sealed” us (2 Cor 1:21–22; Eph 1:13 speaks of being stamped with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit). If we take this metaphorical way of speaking seriously, we could say that Paul understood human nature to be stamped with the divine imprint, through and in Christ. The divine imprint is as real as the human wax. This is not by any means the only idea which is deeply ambiguous in Paul’s treatment of Christ, which is why discussion of how to interpret his Christo­ logy is never ending. It is hard sometimes to distinguish the Risen Christ and

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the Spirit, yet the notion that they are simply different ways of speaking about the same thing is not, I think, sustainable if we take what Paul says overall and in context. It is hard to know what is implied by the apparent transfer of God’s title, “Lord” (Κύριος – Kyrios), to Jesus. It seems that for Paul, Christ stands for God, yet is a kind of archetypal man, envisaged at God’s right hand. We could go on. But let me rather attempt to find ways of characterizing and illuminating this way of thinking more precisely.

IV.  An overlay of texts and images What I suggest is that Paul adopts a method of “overlay.” This is deeply rooted in his use of scripture. We may take 2 Corinthians 3 by way of example. We cannot deal here with every element in this complex passage; so despite the importance of this extraordinary accumulation of image and allusion for our purposes, we will have to content ourselves with the major lines of argument. Much ink has been spilled trying to trace Paul’s logic here – it scarcely follows the kind of logic we are used to. The key, I suggest, lies in a method of “overlaying” texts and images. The opening words and the preceding context indicate that Paul is on the spot. He begins by insisting that he does not need letters of recommendation – references or testimonials, if you like – because the Corinthians themselves are his testimonial. They constitute Christ’s letter, the letter prepared and delivered by Paul, who was the slave or servant charged with conveying the message on the master’s behalf (the conventional translations using “minister” carry all kinds of connotations these days which obscure what Paul must have had in mind). This document is written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. The “tablets of stone” alert us immediately to a complex biblical allusion. Paul refers to the two tablets of the covenant, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God (Exod 31:18; 32:15–16; Deut 9:10), and given on Sinai to Moses. He implies a quite audacious contrast between this and Christ’s letter written on hearts, which he has just identified with the Corinthians, and claimed as his testimonial. This he implicitly justifies by allusion to the prophecies of Ezekiel: 11:19 reads “I will give them one heart, and put a new spirit within them; I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh,” and the words are essentially repeated in 36:26. But altogether the contrast also implies an allusion to Jeremiah 31:31ff., the prophecy of a new covenant, when the law will be written on the heart and everybody will know the Lord. Already we can see texts being compounded and interpenetrated by Paul’s own situation. But we have hardly begun yet.

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In 3.5 Paul draws out the conclusion: his competence is not his own but God’s. God has made Paul the servant who delivers the new covenant, just as God made Moses the servant who delivered the covenant on tablets of stone. Now when Moses returned from Sinai, he had such “glory” on his face that the people could not look at it, and he had to veil it. According to Exodus 34:29‚ “the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God.” The people were afraid. He delivered the word of the Lord, and then put a veil over his face, which he removed each time “he went in before the Lord to speak with him” (Exod 34:34) until he came out again. Once he had told the Israelites the word of the Lord, he would put on the veil again. Using this story, Paul compares and contrasts the veiled glory of Moses with the openness and freedom of the gospel. He suggests that the veil was put on to conceal the fact that the glory of the old written covenant, with which Moses was identified, was to be abrogated. He then shifts the metaphor; the veil prevented the people from seeing the glory, and so Paul suggests that the veil is over the minds of everyone who reads the old covenant, and that that remains the case. The veil is only removed when one “turns to the Lord,” Paul’s phrase for Moses going in to speak with God. This phrase “turning to the Lord,” according to general usage in the scriptures, means repenting and returning to God and his covenant; Paul treats it as meaning much more particularly “turning to Christ,” so that Moses becomes the archetype of the Christian believer. 6 In Christ, then, the veil is removed: the scriptures are read with new eyes, the fulfilment is discerned. So in the course of Paul’s argument, not only are scriptural allusions compounded, but the reference of scripture becomes complex: the “Lord” somehow means the Lord who is God, the one and only God who revealed the divine self to Moses, and also the Lord Jesus Christ. But now another puzzling shift: “the Lord is the Spirit,” says Paul, “and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor 3:17). Exegetes used to worry about whether Paul really identified the Spirit with the Risen Christ, referred to here as “the Lord.” But it would seem that what the Greek rather cryptically expresses is something like this: when you read “the Lord,” you should understand that “turning to the Lord” means “receiving the new covenant in the Spirit.” In other words Paul is tying up the whole argument, and the whole argument depends on seeing his key texts not just as a collage, but as a synthetic whole in which they all penetrate and illuminate one another. And so the climax is the assertion that “we all” (presumably both Paul, the Moses-like servant who delivers the new covenant, and the Corinthians, the recipients of this new cove6  This observation I owe to Richard B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989). Chapter 4 of his book addresses itself to 2 Corinthians 3:1–4:6 with the issue of Paul’s hermeneutics to the fore. His understanding of the passage coheres with mine in almost every disputed point, so for a fuller treatment of the textual details I refer the reader to his chapter.

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nant in the Spirit), with faces that are unveiled, and therefore able not only to behold the glory of the Lord, but also to reflect it as Moses did, are being transformed from one degree of glory to another – for this is what the Lord effects through the Spirit, through the gift of the new covenant. That does not exhaust all the meaning in that final verse, to which we will return, but let me just underline the point of that fairly detailed exploration of a highly complex passage. Clearly what we have here is not analytical exegesis of written texts in their discrete integrity. It is like overlaying images so that they are all seen at once and so are seen differently. At the heart of this process is a kind of overlaying the God of the scriptures with Jesus Christ, so that Jesus Christ becomes the manifestation of that God, and an overlaying of Jesus Christ with the experience of the Spirit so that that experience becomes, not merely the continuing presence, but the transformative power of Jesus Christ, or indeed of God, in the lives of Christians. The “synthesis” means that distinctions are not removed, but a union which is a sort of coinherence is perceived.

V.  Synthesis and mysticism Now to penetrate that “overlay” we need to turn to the world of Jewish mysticism. When I was doing the research for The Myth of God Incarnate, Gershom Scholem had already demonstrated that the Hekhaloth texts were much earlier than had been supposed, and had linked the development of Jewish mystical reflection on the Creation and the Merkavah, the chariot-throne of God in Ezekiel 1, with apocalyptic literature and gnostic influences. In the last twenty years these researches have been taken much further by Jewish scholars such as Ithamar Gruenwald and Alan Segal.7 In a particularly significant book published in 1990, the latter argued that Paul provides our best evidence that already in the first century CE these mystical traditions were flourishing. From our point of view the important thing is that aspects of this mystical tradition illuminate Paul’s ambiguous or synthetic Christology. Clearly in these Jewish traditions meditation on certain key passages in Scripture was the generator of mystical experience. Segal writes: In the Hebrew Bible, God is sometimes described in human form. Exodus 23.21 mentions an angel who has the form of a man and who carries within him or represents ‘the name of God.’ A human figure on the divine throne is described in Ezekiel 1, Daniel 7, 7  See Scholem, Major Trends and Jewish Mysticism; Ithamar Gruenwald, Apocalyptic and Merkavah Mysticism (Leiden: Brill, 1980); also Christopher Rowland, The Open Heaven: A Study of Apocalyptic in Judaism and Early Christianity (London: SPCK, 1982); Alan F. Segal, Two Powers in Heaven: Rabbinic Reports about Christianity and Gnosticism (Leiden: Brill, 1977); Paul the Convert: The Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990).

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and Exodus 24, among other places, and was blended into a consistent picture of a principal mediator figure who, like the angel of the Lord in Exodus 23, embodied, personified, or carried the name of God, YHWH, the tetragrammaton…. Several Jewish traditions discuss the eikón or image of God as … an especially glorious and splendid form that humanity lost when Adam sinned. The lost ‘image and form of God’ (Gen 1.26) is thereafter associated with God’s human appearance in the Bible or with the description of the principal angel of God who carries God’s name. The human figure on the merkabah described by Ezekiel is called ‘the appearance of the likeness of the Glory of the Lord.’ Thus God’s Glory or Kavod can be a technical term for God’s human appearances…. 8

Later mystical writings speculated in extraordinary detail about the Shiur Komah, the “body of God,” but speculation about the human figure on God’s throne can be traced already in Hellenistic Jewish writings. What is clear is that such mystical writings presuppose God’s transcendence and “otherness” – even Moses could not see God for “no-one can see God and live” (cf. Exod 33:18–23). But in mystical thinking, God’s manifestation of his Glory in human or angelic form is accepted and meditated upon. “We do not know God himself, who is beyond our figuration,” writes Segal. “We only know his Glory, the form in which he chooses to reveal himself.”9 So the language of “image” and “likeness” conveys two important strands: the “visionary” nature of the experience and the fact that what is seen is an “appearance” of God’s Glory, not the divine self. Segal believes that Paul’s conversion-experience may well have been analogous to this. Ecstatic experience (whether in the body or out of the body Paul is not at all sure) is claimed in 2 Corinthians 12:1–9. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul adds himself to a list of those to whom the Risen Christ granted an appearance. In Galatians Paul states “God revealed his Son in me‚” (literal trans. Gal 1:16) and Acts 9:3 speaks of the blinding light that represents glory in theophanies. Paul claims to have gazed on the Glory, suggests Segal, and thus to have seen God’s self-manifestation as the angel or heavenly man on God’s throne or at God’s right hand, and he identifies this vision of God’s Glory in human form with the person of Jesus Christ. Associated with such visions was the idea of transformation, and as we have seen, transformation of human beings into God’s image through Christ is central to Paul’s expectations. The notion of “seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror‚” and so being “transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor 3:18 fits strikingly well with these visionary traditions). So Paul’s way of appropriating his experience of Christ may well have been in the language and categories of Jewish mystical exegesis of biblical theophanies, but this does not explain away his Christology. His visionary understanding was anchored to a particular human being, and its ethical consequences worked 8 Segal, 9 Segal,

Paul the Convert, 40–41. Paul the Convert, 52–53.

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out in the life of the Christian communities. It had its own particularity. As we saw earlier, it also had its own key scriptures giving it a distinct basis. All I am suggesting is that Jewish mystical texts help us to see how Paul could operate with what appear to be ambiguities, even inconsistencies, from an analytical point of view. I do not think it is an accident that Evelyn Underhill could describe the mystical sense in terms of the “synthetic.”10 Earlier I made a passing reference to Mother Julian of Norwich. She provides a wonderful illustration of the kind of synthesis or “overlay” I have been trying to describe. In one of her visions, Julian “saw” two people, a lord and his servant.11 The lord sent the servant off on an errand. The servant rushed off to do his master’s will, and without warning falls headlong into a deep ditch, and injures himself very badly. Though he groans and moans and cries and struggles he is quite unable to get up or help himself in any way. Julian notes that basically the servant wanted to do his master’s will, and has difficulty in finding fault with him. Meanwhile the lord was thinking of the well-earned rest and reward he would give the servant; his fall and subsequent suffering were to be transformed into great and superlative honour and everlasting joy. Julian spells out the obvious meaning: the servant stands for Adam or everyman. But then she sees other details, and realizes that the servant also represents the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity. When Adam fell, God’s Son fell too. Christ was united with Adam. The interpretation is detailed and allegorical, but at its root is this same process of “overlay.” It is the ability to discern the union-cum-distinction of all things, the potential for the created order to be overlayed or interpenetrated by what is other and so become its medium, that is characteristic of the mystic. To penetrate “synthetically” to the sacramental value of the creation as the vehicle of the divine is not ultimately to confuse Creator and created, but to hold in union two distinct identities. From less than a century before Chalcedon comes a Christian sermon (the first of the Pseudo-Macarian Homilies) which is based on Ezekiel 1, and takes a route similar to Merkavah mysticism. Ezekiel is described as having seen on God’s throne what appeared to be the likeness of a man, but this vision is a foreshadowing of a mystery only understood later, when Christ appeared. Another synthesis is mystically perceived as the chariot-throne is overlayed by Plato’s chariot-image of the soul, Christ becoming the Rider in the Chariot, the Christian the throne of God: The soul is completely illumined with the unspeakable beauty of the light of the face of Christ and is perfectly made a participator of the Holy Spirit. It is privileged to be the dwelling-place and the throne of God, all eye, all light, all face, all glory, all spirit, made 10 

Evelyn Underhill, in her classic study, Mysticism (London: Methuen, 1911). of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, trans. Clifton Walters (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966), ch.  51, 141–151. 11 Julian

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so by Christ who drives, guides, carries and supports the soul about and adorns and decorates the soul with his spiritual beauty.12

VI.  Sacramental interpenetration Much early Christian exegesis evidences the kind of synthetic overlaying of texts and experiences we have noted in Paul, together with spiritual reflection which is often described as mystical. This synthetic thinking co-existed with the analytical thrust that led to the Chalcedonian definition. Indeed, it presupposed sharp differentiation, as did the Jewish mystical traditions. It nevertheless envisaged the possibility of a sacramental interpenetration of those differentiated entities. Chalcedon worked in the end, I suggest, because the differentiation of Creator from creature meant that the divine nature was defined by contrast with created entities. So it did not suffer from the same limitations as the created entities we know. Place and shape, time and structure, and most certainly gender, were regarded as irrelevant to the nature of the divine Being which is totally “other,” and therefore there was no contradiction in the divine, as it were, occupying the same space as another entity. Divine being could be both differentiated from and mystically identified with another being. God could be envisaged as transcending human nature, but even so human nature could mirror God, receive God’s impress, while God could accommodate the divine self to human form, and express the divine communication in human terms. Through overlaying texts and visions, through the metaphor of the divine imprint, through a sense of interpenetration, mediation could be understood, not in terms of a “semi-divine” being, or a “mixture,” but in terms of the whole character of God being “imaged” in a wholly human medium. The structure of Christian belief, I suggest, demands such an account of the person of Christ, not least because, as I hinted at the beginning, it makes the right connections. Christ’s uniqueness is constituted by the fact that this “overlay” of divine and human was not in any sense “accidental”: here was not the “adoption” of “a” good man, or the mere inspiration of a prophet, but God’s will to stamp the divine imprint on human nature, to re-create the divine image in humanity. Christ is therefore unique, but not disconnected. Rather he is the “type” or “model” of human salvation through re-creation. The apparent paradox of two natures which coinhere without confusion, a natural impossibility which cannot be conceived either by the analogy of mixing wine and water or 12  Hom., 1.2, Greek text: Die 50 geistlichen Homilien des Makarios, ed. H. Dörries, E. Klostermann, and M. Kroeger, PTS 4 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1964); ET in Pseudo-­ Macarius: The Fifty Spiritual Homilies and the Great Letter, trans. George A. Moloney, CWS (New York: Paulist Press, 1992), 38.

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by combining sugar and flour, is the only way of expressing the identity and significance of Jesus Christ. An oscillation between the critic and the visionary, the analytic and synthetic mode of comprehension can alone do justice to the peculiar truth to which we as Christians bear testimony. The contemporary contemplative, Thomas Merton, writes: As a magnifying glass concentrates the rays of the sun into a little burning knot of heat that can set fire to a dry leaf or a piece of paper, so the mystery of Christ in the Gospel concentrates the rays of God’s light and fire to a point that sets fire to the spirit of man…. Through the glass of His incarnation He concentrates the rays of His divine Truth and Love upon us so that we feel the burn, and all mystical experience is communicated to men through the Man Christ.13

For Merton, the dogma of the unity without confusion of two natures is essential, but the outcome even more so: “it is the Spirit of God that must teach us who Christ is and transform us into other Christs.”14

13  Thomas Merton, Seeds of Contemplation, rev. ed. (Wheathampstead, Herts: Anthony Clark Books, 1972), 117. 14 Merton, Seeds of Contemplation, 122.

Chapter 7

Wisdom in the Apostolic Fathers and the New Testament* In many and various ways wisdom appears to be a key concept in the early church. By the time of Augustine, it has spiritual and intellectual connotations, as well as christological significance,1 both of these aspects of wisdom having roots in the Bible and earlier tradition. The figure of personified Wisdom, as described in Proverbs 8, was at the centre of the doctrinal controversy initiated by Arius in the fourth century.2 From the second century on, wisdom figured in gnostic myths, and so, being contested, was ripe for reclamation or resistance by those claiming to be orthodox. Scholarly literature suggests that in various ways wisdom is important in the New Testament. So it seemed a natural research question to ask: what about wisdom in the texts known as the Apostolic Fathers? 3 The results were a surprise. It may be that they demand a reassessment of some classic scholarly assumptions.

I.  The virtual absence of sophia The word σοφία (sophia – wisdom) is absent from the Didache, and its absence from 2 Clement, the Martyrdom of Polycarp, and the Epistle to Diognetus is also worth noting if, as convention would dictate, we count them among the Apostolic Fathers. Σοφία is almost entirely absent from the letters of Ignatius. *  Originally published in Trajectories through the New Testament and the Apostolic Fathers, ed. Andrew F. Gregory and Christopher M. Tuckett (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005): 85–104. 1  See my paper, “Wisdom in Augustine’s De Doctrina Christiana,” Studia Patristica 43 (2006): 323–327. Also, Carol Harrison, “Augustine, Wisdom and Classical Culture” in Where shall Wisdom be Found?, ed. S. C. Barton (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1999): 125–137. 2  See my article, “Proverbs 8 in Interpretation,” in Reading Texts, Seeking Wisdom, ed. Ford and Stanton. 3  Greek texts and ET: The Apostolic Fathers, vol.  1: 1 Clement, 2 Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, Didache, ed. and trans. Bart D. Ehrman, LCL 24 (London and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003); Vol. II: Epistle of Barnabas, Papias and Quadratus, Epistle to Diognetus, The Shepherd of Hermas, ed. and trans. Bart D. Ehrman, LCL 25 (London: Heinemann and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003); ET also in Early Christian Writings, trans. Maxwell Staniforth, rev. Andrew Louth (London: Penguin Classics, 1987).

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Virtually the only occasion when he uses a form of the word is in Smyrnians, 1, where God is described as “τὸν οὕτως ὑμᾶς σοφίσαντα” – (ton houtōs hymā s sophisanta – the one who has thus made you wise). The proof of this is said to be their firm faith “as if nailed to the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ.” One is tempted to wonder whether the expression is not reminiscent of 1 Corinthians 1:18 ff., where God’s wisdom is associated with the foolishness of the cross. In Ephesians,18, Ignatius certainly alludes to this passage: “Where is the wise? (ποῦ σοφός – pou sophos?) Where is the debater? Where is the boasting of those who are said to have understanding?” Polycarp’s Epistle to the Philippians provides only one instance. He claims (3.2) that he is writing at their invitation, because neither he nor any other like him is able to follow “τῇ σοφίᾳ τοῦ μακαρίου καὶ ἐνδόξου Παύλου” (tē (i) sophi ā (i) tou makariou kai endoxou Paulou – the wisdom of the blessed and glorious Paul), who when present taught the word of truth and when absent wrote letters, “from the study of which you will be able to build yourselves up into the faith given you.” The Shepherd likewise provides only one instance (Herm. Vis., 1.3): remembering the last words the lady read to him, he describes God as the one who by his mighty power and understanding created the world, and by his own wisdom (σοφία) and foresight created his Holy Church. There is a little more in 1 Clement. In urging humble-mindedness, he wrote: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, nor the strong in his strength, nor the rich in his riches; but let the one who boasts boast in the Lord” (13.1), so quoting Jeremiah 9:23–24 and recalling Paul in 1 Corinthians 1:31 and 2 Corinthians 10:17. In assembling a list of exemplary humble characters, the author mentions David (18.2–17) and quotes Psalm 51:1–17, which includes “you revealed to me the secrets of your wisdom.” So far, then, wisdom appears incidentally in scriptural quotations which are actually focusing on other things. In 1 Clement, 32 we find a statement again reminiscent of Paul: And so we, who have been called by his will through Jesus Christ, are not justified by ourselves, nor by our wisdom or understanding or piety or the works we do in holiness of heart, but through faith, by which Almighty God has justified all from the beginning.

And in 1 Clement, 38, in a series of exhortations, we read, “Let the wise display his wisdom not in words but in good deeds.” Such statements put wisdom, or rather the wise, in their place – so too, in 1 Clement, 48, where a person who is faithful, or who has the power to speak knowledge, or is wise in debating with words, or pure in deeds, is expected to be the more humble-minded the more great he seems. On the other hand, in 1 Clement, 39, a long quotation from Job includes the comment that “they died for lack of wisdom”; and eventually 1 Clement introduces a long quotation from Proverbs, spoken by what he calls “ἡ πανάρετος σοφία” (hē panaretos sophia – the all-perfect wisdom), which includes: “The evil will seek and not find me. For they hated wisdom, and did not

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choose the fear of the Lord” (1 Clem., 57.5, quoting Prov 1:23–33). Overall, it almost seems as if this long passage from Proverbs provides the “text” for the whole of the exhortation in this epistle. Clement goes on: “Let us be obedient to his most holy and glorious name, so escaping the threats spoken by wisdom to the unfaithful…” (58.1). In 1 Clement, wisdom is the fear of the Lord, and it is found in humility. Barnabas also refers to wisdom a number of times. He suggests (Barn., 5.3) that we should give great thanks to the Lord, because he has made known to us what has happened, made us wise (ἐσόφισεν – esophisen) for the present, and we are not without understanding for the future. Later (Barn., 6.10) he proclaims: “Blessed be our Lord who lays within us the foundation of wisdom (σοφία) and understanding of his secrets.” It would seem that this is insight into the prophetic, or christological, meaning of the scriptures, as he goes on: “For the prophet speaks a parable of the Lord – ‘Who shall understand, except the one who is wise (σοφός – sophos) and understanding and loving of his Lord?’” Right at the end, however, wisdom is associated with faithfulness and obedience, as the author signs off with a prayer that God might give the readers wisdom (σοφία), understanding, shrewdness, knowledge of his commandments and patience. This echoes words near the beginning, where fear and patience, together with long-suffering and continence, are described as helpers of our faith, with the added comment that as long as these stay focused on the Lord in purity, wisdom (σοφία), understanding, learning, and knowledge rejoice.

II.  A wider sapiential vocabulary? These latter lists of words associated with wisdom are important, and they alert us to pursue our researches further than mere use of the word conventionally translated “wisdom.” The opening of the book of Proverbs associates with “wisdom” a range of more or less synonymous words and ideas, and some of these are more prolific in the Apostolic Fathers than the sparse usage we have found by confining attention to σοφία. Daniel Harrington has noted the importance for understanding Qumran wisdom of what he calls the “sapiential vocabulary” provided by Proverbs, and lists from Proverbs 1:2–7 the following: “wisdom, instruction, understanding, wise dealing, righteousness, justice, equity, shrewdness, knowledge, prudence, learning, skill and so forth.”4 In addition he notes the importance of “fear of the Lord.” The LXX version of these verses in Proverbs alerts us to look for παιδεία (paideia – education or training), φρόνησις (phronē sis – intellect), δικαιοσύνη (dikaiosyne – righteousness), κρίμα (krima – 4  Daniel J. Harrington, Wisdom Texts from Qumran (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), 8.

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judgment, in the sense of assessment that is straight and true), πανουργία (panourgia – cleverness), αἴσθησις (aisthē sis – perception), ἔννοια (ennoia – thought), σύνεσις (synesis – understanding), and εὐσέβεια (eusebeia – godliness, piety). In addition, one might highlight again the definition of wisdom as “fear of the Lord,” and note that the wise person grasps the sense of a proverb or parable (παραβολή – parabolē in the Greek of the LXX, while the book of Proverbs is called παροιμίαι – paroimiai), a dark word (σκοτεινὸς λογός – skoteinos logos), and sayings of the wise and their riddles (αἰνίγματα – ainigmata). Pursuing all this in the Apostolic Fathers, we might find that the wider characterization of wisdom in Proverbs informs these texts, as it does those found at Qumran. For clearly the ethical dimension is paramount, and so is the discernment of the real intention of metaphorical and parabolic speech, at least in Barnabas. 1 Clement and Barnabas, however, remain the only significant texts for our enquiry. We find a few more hints where we found little or no reference to wisdom as such. Σύνεσις appears in Hermas (Herm. Sim., 9.22) as the opposite of foolishness, and in Ignatius it is something Polycarp should pray for (Pol., 1.3), as well to be φρόνιμος (phronimos – clever) as a serpent (clearly an allusion to the saying also found in the Gospels at Matthew 10:16). Both Hermas and the Didache address their advice Proverbs-like to “my child,” and the Didache links acceptable teaching to δικαιοσύνη and γνῶσις (gnōsis – knowledge) of the Lord. This draws on the lists of presumed synonyms we noted in Barnabas, though the constellation of words in Proverbs omits γνῶσις and includes παιδεία rather than διδαχή (didachē – teaching). We find occasional quotations and allusions to Proverbs and other wisdom texts in Hermas, as well as Ignatius, the letter of Polycarp and the Didache. Hermas is clear that “fear of the Lord” is fundamental: he develops the idea (Herm. Mand., 7) that there are two sorts of fear: fear of the devil and fear of the Lord, which is “powerful and great and glorious,” enabling you to avoid evil and do good. But overall there is very little apart from the presumption that the Two Ways in the Didache, not to mention other paraenetical collages, may owe something to sapiential traditions, and a few other marginal features which parallel things we shall note in 1 Clement.

III.  1 Clement The opening paragraphs of 1 Clement associate “perfect and secure knowledge (γνῶσις)” with a piety (εὐσέβεια) that is sober (σώφρων – sō phrō n) and modest (ἐπιεικής – epieikē s), having the commandments (προστάγματα – prostagmata) and ordinances (δικαιώματα – dikaiomata) of the Lord written on the tablet of their hearts. That last phrase comes from Proverbs 7:3, and the words used overlap with those in Proverbs 1:1–3, without reproducing the exact list. The recipients of the letter are told that once they were like that, but now the foolish have

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risen against the φρονίμοι, and because of this, righteousness is absent and each has deserted the “fear of God” (1 Clem., 3, 7). The foolish (ἄφρονες – aphrones) and mindless (ἀνοήτοι – anoē toi) are exalted and boast in the pride of their words rather than in God. They should display a pure lifestyle, with modesty in speech. So material similar to the Proverbs constellation is followed by a contrast between the wise and foolish such as characterizes chapters 1–9 of that biblical book. The polarisation of foolishness and fear of the Lord recurs in 1 Clement 21, where we also find the warning, so characteristic of the Pastorals and the Apostolic Fathers, that God is a searcher of thoughts and desires, a point grounded in a quotation from Proverbs 20:27: “The Spirit of the Lord is a lamp searching the inward parts.” God is so near that nothing of our thoughts or inner discussions escapes him. Gentleness of tongue is to be evident in silence. Παιδεία is to form children in the ways of humility and pure love before God, as well as fear of him. This letter focuses on instruction and training in the right way, again reflecting the thrust, if not the text, of Proverbs. In the following paragraph, for example, we are told that God calls us in these words: “Come, children, listen to me and I will teach you fear of the Lord” – and the rest of Psalm 34:11–17 follows, with the addition of Psalm 32:10 – psalm material that mirrors the characteristics of the “wisdom” of Proverbs in its suggestion that life and prosperity follow from fear of the Lord, which involves keeping the tongue from evil, doing good, and seeking peace, aware that the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears open to their prayers, while the face of the Lord is against those who do evil. The slip into Psalm 32 reinforces this by paralleling the quotation, Many are the torments of the wicked But mercy surrounds those who hope in the Lord,

with the verse from Psalm 34, The righteous has called to the Lord, and the Lord heard. And rescued him from all his troubles.

The explicit references to the Psalms are a clue to the source of another pervasive emphasis in this and other texts among the Apostolic Fathers, especially the Shepherd: namely, the insistence on a “single mind” (ἁπλῆ διανοία – haplē ­dianoia) and the avoidance of double-mindedness (μὴ διψυχῶμεν – mē dipsychō men). Yet it seems at first sight probable that the overall tradition of “wisdom” is what informs the notion of the mind being fixed on God, seeking the things that are well-pleasing and acceptable to God, following in the way of his truth, and casting away all unrighteousness and wickedness, greed, strife, bad habits and trickery, gossip and malice, pride and arrogance, hatred of God and love of empty glory, with lack of hospitality (1 Clem., 35). Through a check on where scriptural quotations come from, the presence of this “wisdom” character

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seems the more apparent: Proverbs, Job, Sirach, and Wisdom of Solomon are all utilized. However, the fact is that both the Psalms and the Law and the Prophets are quoted more frequently. The extent to which so many of the quotations seem to serve this overall “wisdom” outlook is interesting. You might say the scriptures are read for a paraenesis shaped by the wisdom traditions. Or is it rather that the generic distinctions so beloved of modern scholars were not explicit for the early Christians? 5 Anything that supported the ethical advice was exploited – the biblical narratives becoming models of good behaviours like repentance, or bad characteristics like jealousy and envy, alongside the use of maxims and commandments, and all exploited without differentiation. The overall perspective we have explored in 1 Clement has a theological dimension (1 Clem., 33, 60). It was by his infinite power that the Creator fixed the heavens, and by an understanding (σύνεσις) beyond our grasp that he set them in order. As for humankind, he shaped it in the stamp of his own image, as the best and greatest of his creatures according to his intellect (κατὰ διάνοιαν – kata dianoian). God is wise (σοφός) in his creating and understanding (συνετός – synetos) in establishing what has come into being, as well as faithful, righteous, and gracious. The paraenesis seeks to form divine qualities in believers, the object being to please God with lives lived in holiness, righteousness, faith, repentance, love, self-control, truth, patience, long-suffering, concord, peace, gentleness, humility. The basis of due order in worship and service is the fact that “we have looked into the depths of divine knowledge (τὰ βάθη τῆς θείας γνώσεως – ta bathē tē s theias gnōseōs)” (1 Clem., 40). It is through Christ that “we fix our gaze on the heights of heaven,” through him that “the eyes of our heart have been opened,” through him that “our foolish and darkened mind (ἡ ἀσύνετος καὶ ἐσκοτωμένη διάνοια – hē asynetos kai eskotō mē nē dianoia) blossoms towards the light,” through him that “the Master wished us to taste immortal knowledge (ἡ ἀθάνατος γνῶσις – hē athanatos gnōsis)” (1 Clem., 36). The way to salvation is through Jesus Christ. The strange thing is, however, that there is no trace of a Wisdom Christology in this letter.6 Christ is a model of the humble-mindedness the author wishes to 5  Cf. Stuart Weeks, “Wisdom in the Old Testament,” in Where shall Wisdom, ed. Barton: 19–30. He deconstructs the idea of the wisdom literature as a distinct biblical genre, suggesting that the “wisdom tradition” is a “modern construct” (21). We should also note, perhaps, the fact that the “sapiential texts” from Qumran, as well as those from Hellenistic Judaism, appear to conflate wisdom with Torah or halakah, while wisdom elements appear in the community “rule-books.” (See the essays by G. J. Brooke, D. J. Harrington, and C. Hempel in The Wisdom texts from Qumran and the Development of Sapiential Thought, ed. C. Hempel, A. Lange, and H. Lichtenberger, BETL 159 (Leuven: Peeters, 2002).) It is also well known that wisdom elements appear in apocalyptic. (See, e.g., the essays in the same volume by P. S. Alexander and L. T. Stuckenbruck, as well as those by L. T. Stuckenbruck and C. C. Rowland in Where shall Wisdom, ed. Barton.) 6 For fuller discussion of 1 Clement’s Christology, see Harold Bertram Bumpus, The Christological Awareness of Clement of Rome and its Sources (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-

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encourage, and Isaiah 53 is quoted at length to show that (1 Clem., 16). Soon after (1 Clem., 18) David fulfils the same role with a long quotation from Psalm 51, and between these two passages, the examples of Elijah, Elisha, and Ezekiel, Abraham, Job, and Moses are called in to make the same point, though all of these are said to be heralding the coming of Christ (1 Clem., 17). Mostly, the author appeals simply to the blood of Christ, poured out for our salvation (1 Clem., 7, 21, 49), to Christ as the defender and helper of our weakness (1 Clem., 36), or as our High Priest and guardian (1 Clem., 36, 59), through whom God chose us to be his own people (1 Clem., 64). God’s “beloved child,” Jesus Christ, called us from darkness to light, from ignorance to full knowledge (ἐπιγνῶσις – epignōsis) of the glory of his name (1 Clem., 59); through him, God taught us and sanctified us. Allusion to the teaching of Jesus is occasionally made, notably in 1 Clement 13: Be merciful that you may obtain mercy; forgive that you may be forgiven; as you do, so it will be done to you; as you give, so it will be given you; as you judge, so you will be judged; as you do good, so good will be done to you; by what measure you measure, it will be measured to you.

To this is added an exhortation to walk in obedience; and a quote from Isaiah is introduced with the words, “for the holy word says,” clearly meaning the scriptures. The Christology of 1 Clement gets nowhere near a Wisdom or Logos Christology – and this despite the evident knowledge of at least some Pauline Epistles, and the clear knowledge of Proverbs. So, among the Apostolic Fathers, 1 Clement is one of only two texts which use the “wisdom” word, σοφία, a certain amount. A wider trawl of sapiential vocabulary and characteristics increases the sense that 1 Clement is indebted to wisdom traditions. Yet the collages of scriptural allusions suggest that wisdom may not be identified as a particular genre, and there is no development of Christology in terms of the divine Wisdom.

IV.  The Epistle of Barnabas As we have already noted, Barnabas associates σοφία, σύνεσις, ἐπιστήμη (epistē mē – learning), and γνῶσις. Furthermore, this author links all of these virtually synonymous qualities with knowing the meaning of things, past, present, and future. Much of his treatise is engaged in interpreting what he identifies as prophetic words and signs. In the midst of this process, he inserts comments versity Press, 1972). This study draws attention to the narrowing of the range of christological titles in 1 Clement compared with the New Testament, and focuses on Clement’s use of κύριος (kyrios – Lord), together with the blood theme, the servant theme, and the High Priest theme. Overall, Clement’s Christology is characterized as functional.

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like “I write to you more simply so that you may understand (συνιῆτε – syni ē te)” (Barn., 6.5), or “Learn what knowledge (γνῶσις) says” (6.9), or “Blessed be our Lord, brothers, who has placed in us wisdom (σοφία) and understanding (νοῦς – nous) of his secrets” (6.10). Later certain Mosaic laws (called δόγματα (dogmata – teaching) by the author) are given allegorical interpretations, and in introducing them the author asserts that David was given knowledge (γνῶσις) of these three teachings, and proceeds to quote texts to show this. This is the way in which this author fulfils Proverbs’ interest in understanding the dark sayings of the wise. It would seem not to differentiate scriptural genres into law, prophecy, and wisdom. On the whole, scriptural allusions and references in this text are to the Law and the Prophets, and to the Psalms. There are a few quotations from Proverbs and possible allusions to the Wisdom of Solomon, but Isaiah is quoted against those who trust in their own understanding and learning. There is exhortation to practise the fear of the Lord, but to this is added the need to strive to keep his commandments – for he will judge without respect of persons (Barn., 4.11–12). Again, then, as in the case of 1 Clement, one must ask whether there is any conscious awareness of “wisdom” as a distinct genre. The Two Ways tradition would seem to confirm the sense that scripture is used in undifferentiated ways. The Way of Light (Barn., 19) clearly enjoins a pattern of life very similar to that recommended in 1 Clement, drawing upon a range of scriptural sources: in a rapid survey, we note it covers the following ground – to love and fear one’s Creator, to glorify one’s Redeemer, and not to take the Lord’s name in vain; to be simple in heart and not double-minded, to hate what is not pleasing to God, and to refuse to desert the commandments; to be humble-minded and not exalt oneself, avoid specified sexual sins, not bear malice, love one’s neighbour more than one’s own soul, not practise infanticide or covet one’s neighbours’ goods, not cause quarrels, and remember that God’s judgment is to be faced. The Way of the Black One is the converse – idolatry, for example, hypocrisy, double-heartedness, adultery, murder, pride, self-suffi­ciency, lack of fear of God. True, the Two Ways (both here and in the Didache) reflect the kind of moral dualism found in the wisdom texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls and adumbrated by the Proverbs contrast between Wisdom and Folly.7 True, it is Proverbs that speaks of walking in the way of the good and keeping to the paths of righteousness (Prov 2:20), and Barnabas sums up by saying “It is good to learn all the written ordinances (δικαιώματα) of the Lord and walk in them…. May God who rules the whole earth, give you wisdom, understanding, learning, knowledge of his ordinances, patience.” But surely it is the whole scriptural picture of God’s providential plans, prophetic utterances and commandments that Barnabas has in mind. Furthermore, both the Dead Sea Scrolls and these 7 Harrington,

Wisdom Texts, 34–35, 52 ff.

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texts from the Apostolic Fathers put their wisdom injunctions into an eschatological framework,8 which is not characteristic of the sapiential literature of the Bible, and implies a conflation of many genres. As in the case of 1 Clement, we find little trace of a Wisdom or Logos Christo­ logy in this text. The only hint is a reference to the “glory of Jesus, for all things are in him and for him” (Barn., 12.7), which is a statement very similar to those taken to imply a cosmic “wisdom” idea in the New Testament. However, there is no mention of wisdom, and the question is to what does the phrase “all things” refer? It could be all the riches of salvation in Christ. The following statement focuses on the fact that he is not to be seen “as son of man but as Son of God manifested in a type in the flesh”; but here and elsewhere in this epistle, the emphasis is on “types” of the cross. He endured corruption, so that we might be sanctified through his sprinkled blood and become heirs of the covenant (Barn., 5, passim; note the elaborate development of “types” of his sacrificial death, etc.). He is the Son of God, destined to judge the living and the dead, one who could not suffer except for our sakes (Barn., 7, passim; here the types of Isaac, the sin offering, and the Day of Atonement are developed, leading to the red heifer in Barn., 8). This elaborates the message stated from the beginning: our Lord Jesus Christ abolished sacrifice and brought a new law (2.6), a new covenant, sealed in our hearts (4.8). The people of the new covenant celebrate not on the sabbath but on the eighth day, when “Jesus rose from the dead, was made manifest and ascended to heaven” (15.9). When we received the remission of sins, we became new, created again from the beginning, and God truly dwells in us, as in a spiritual temple. In explaining how this happens, the author speaks of “his word of faith, the calling of his promise, the wisdom (σοφία) of his ordinances, the commandments of his teaching (διδαχή),” adding also the fact of his prophesying and dwelling in us, of his opening the door of the temple to those enslaved to sin and giving us repentance (Barn., 16). As elsewhere in the Apostolic Fathers, it is the saving work of Christ which takes centre stage, in a work that has ethical interest at its heart.

V.  Wisdom in the Apostolic Fathers: conclusion To sum up: even broadening our enquiry, wisdom seems a less than central interest in the Apostolic Fathers. There is little hint of any kind of Wisdom Christo­ logy. There is widespread use of sapiential vocabulary, some quotations and ­allusions to the wisdom literature, and the predominant interest is ethics. But “wisdom” is not the sole contributor to this. Where scripture is an important quarry, the Psalms and the Law and the Prophets are at least equally important, 8 Harrington,

Wisdom Texts, 51–52, 70–73. See also material cited in n.  4.

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and in Ignatius, scripture, like wisdom, features little, even in one place being played down: Christ is more important than the ancient texts (Phld., 8). In the light of this we might ask: Is it possible that, with regard to wisdom, too much has been read back into the New Testament from later perspectives?

VI.  Wisdom in Early Christianity Before we turn to the New Testament, it is worth asking a little more about those later perspectives. At what date can we trace a Wisdom Christology? Is there any evidence that wisdom as a genre was recognized, or even produced, by Christian authors? To take the second question first, two texts are significant: the Sentences of Sextus and the Teachings of Silvanus. Interestingly, both are to be found in the Nag Hammadi library, but whereas the Teachings of Silvanus is a new discovery, fuller versions of the Sentences of Sextus were already known in the original Greek, and in Latin, Syriac, Armenian, and Georgian translations.9 Neither has characteristics generally associated with Gnosticism, so both reinforce the point that the Nag Hammadi library is not to be regarded as a gnostic library as such; rather, it seems to be a collection of texts found spiritually congenial by Pachomian monks.10 Both texts resemble the wisdom literature in being collections of wise sayings or proverbs. However, parallels can also be cited with collections of maxims attributed to Pythagoras and other philosophers in the Greek tradition. Both works have been influenced by a blend of Stoicism and Platonism, but then the same could be said of the Wisdom of Solomon. The Sentences of Sextus is clearly a reworking of an earlier collection; its Christian character is somewhat veiled, though Origen and others seem to have known it as a Christian work. The Teachings of Silvanus show many remarkable parallels to Clement of Alexandria.11 Both would seem to have begun to circulate in the late second century, and both presuppose the view that Christianity is a philosophy, teaching the right way of life. Despite close parallels to Proverbs, Sirach, and the Wisdom of Solomon, there is not necessarily direct dependence on the biblical wisdom books. Wilken points out that “pithy and pointed sayings about fame or loquacity are as old as the human race… (They) are familiar in most cultures and are amply attested 9  For full discussion, see Henry Chadwick, The Sentences of Sextus, TS 5 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959); and R. L. Wilken, “Wisdom and Philosophy in Early Christianity,” in Aspects of Wisdom in Judaism and Early Christianity, ed. R. L. Wilken (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975): 148–168. 10  J. M. Robinson, introduction to The Nag Hammadi Library in English (Leiden: Brill, 1977): 1–25. 11  See J. Zandee, “The Teachings of Silvanus” and Clement of Alexandria: A New Document of Alexandrian Theology (Leiden: Ex Oriente Lux, 1977).

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from Greek and Latin antiquity.”12 Their existence suggests the development of Christian “wisdom literature” as the second century progressed – though probably under the influence of Hellenistic philosophy rather than conscious imitation of a recognised and distinct biblical genre. As for Wisdom Christology, we might presume that the Logos theology of Justin Martyr has Wisdom features. Interestingly, there is no explicit trace of this in the Apologies. However, in the Dialogue with Trypho 61, Proverbs 8:21– 36 is quoted in full, to justify the claim that, before all creatures, God begat a Beginning, and this is named by the Holy Spirit in scripture, now the Glory of the Lord, now the Son, now Wisdom, now an Angel, then God, and then Lord and Logos. This is confirmed by appeal to Genesis (Dial., 62): “Let us make man in our own image,” and “Behold, Adam has become as one of us.” Clearly there were at least two involved in the act of creation, and it was the one Solomon calls Wisdom, begotten as a Beginning before all creatures, whom God addressed. The Son of God, who is God’s Logos, is similarly identified with personified Wisdom in other apologists – Athenagoras and Theophilus, for example. It then becomes standard in the work of Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Tertullian, eventually being an unquestioned assumption at the time when the Proverbs text was catapulted into the centre of controversy because Arius took the words “The Lord created me as a beginning of his ways” literally, and argued that this socalled “Begotten” One was the first and greatest of the creatures.13 Wisdom Christology of a sort is present, then, from the mid-second century. We might note, however, that it arises explicitly from the process of searching the scriptures – prior to the development of a New Testament canon and without any obvious cross-reference to the texts that would eventually make up the New Testament – for passages illuminating the person of Christ. Furthermore, it is an element in building up a picture of the pre-existent Logos out of undifferentiated prophetic texts, rather than a discrete christological tradition. On the other hand, it must have been about the same time as Justin made this connection with Wisdom that Valentinus began to develop (or perhaps inspire the development of) 14 the myth of Sophia, which has such a central place in his version of Christian Gnosticism. Both imply recognition of Wisdom as a pre-existent heavenly being. Despite the negative evidence of the Apostolic Fathers, one might imagine that such notions did not spring up de novo in the mid-second century.

12 

Wilken, “Wisdom and Philosophy,” 149. See my article “Proverbs 8 in Interpretation.” 14  This caveat arises from the fact that the myth of Sophia does not appear in the Gospel of Truth and is attributed to Ptolemaeus by Irenaeus in Haer. 13 

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VII.  Reassessing Wisdom in the New Testament It is time to ask the question whether there needs to be a reassessment of wisdom in the New Testament as a result of these explorations.15 There are undoubtedly more uses of σοφία and related words in the New Testament than there are in the Apostolic Fathers. But before we turn to work through these in detail, a general comment seems apposite. As in the Apostolic Fathers, there are long passages of paraenesis in the New Testament. At one time it almost seemed appropriate to suggest that, since the Law no longer applied to Christians, the Christian way of life was shaped by collections of wisdom sayings. “Wisdom” seemed to explain the character of, for example, the Epistle of James. In the light of our findings concerning the Apostolic Fathers, I would like to suggest that this is too hasty a judgment, and this is confirmed by a quick glance at the range of scriptural allusions in the example already mentioned: James may contain quotations and allusions to Proverbs and Sirach, but there are just as many to the Psalms, and indeed to the Law. The same could be said about the ethical teaching at the end of Romans. Besides this, we should take account of the relatively recent reassessment of the Pauline literature, suggesting that it was the applicability of the ethnic marks of a Jew to Gentiles, rather than the commandments as such, that was at issue. Like that of the Apostolic Fathers, the paraenesis of the New Testament is taken from right across the scriptures, and it is as much to be regarded as divine commandments as moral advice, for obedience is expected. My first conclusion, then, is that, as in the Apostolic Fathers, so in the New Testament, there is no explicit recognition of a distinct wisdom genre. We should now examine the actual use of σοφία and its cognates.

VIII.  The Pauline Epistles It is, of course, the Pauline material which provides us with the most frequent usage, and most notably 1 Corinthians. In chapters 1–3 Paul protests that he was not sent to preach the gospel ἐν σοφίᾳ λόγου (en sophia(i) logou – with eloquent 15  For the current position, and corollaries drawn from it, see the essays by J. D. G Dunn, “Jesus: Teacher of Wisdom or Wisdom Incarnate?”, and S. C. Barton, “Gospel Wisdom” in Where shall Wisdom, ed. Barton: 75–92 and 93–110 respectively. A few sentences may be quoted here: “In [John’s] Gospel there is no doubt that Jesus is presented as Wisdom Incarnate” (77). “[I]n his use of this material [Q sayings] Matthew seems consciously to have edited it to present Jesus more in the person of or as the embodiment of divine Wisdom” (78). “At the heart of [Matthew’s] portrayal, Jesus’ identity as the wisdom of God is revealed uniquely and powerfully in a prayer-cum-invitation [=Matt 11:25–30], itself analogous to the words about wisdom in Sir 6:23ff and 51:2ff” (95–96). “If in Matthew, Jesus teaches the way of wisdom, in John much more explicitly he is the Way” (104).

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wisdom), quotes Isaiah 29:14: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,” and asks “Where is the wise one? … Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?”16 As we have seen, this negative evaluation of wisdom is taken up in the Apostolic Fathers – in Ignatius and especially 1 Clement. Paul goes on to say that God decided to save those who believe through the foolishness of preaching, because in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom. Not many wise are called, and the wise are shamed by what is foolish. The foolishness of preaching is about Christ crucified – foolishness to the Gentiles, yet, according to Paul, Christ the Wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom. Hays suggests that this is clearly irony, yet a few verses later Paul affirms that Christ Jesus became for us Wisdom from God. Now it is very easy to read a Wisdom Christology into such a direct identification of Christ with wisdom, especially in the light of later developments. But given that this does not happen in the Apostolic Fathers, yet there are there clear allusions to Paul’s perspectives in this epistle, is this justified? Maybe we need to bracket out our awareness of Colossians as we proceed with the Corinthian correspondence. As we move into 1 Corinthians 2, Paul continues to affirm that it was not with lofty words or wisdom that he proclaimed God’s mystery. His word or preaching was not characterized by the persuasive words of wisdom. The reason for this was to ensure that it was not on human wisdom that the listeners’ faith rested. Yet he did speak wisdom among the mature, wisdom not of this world, the wisdom of God in a mystery. So what is this wisdom? He says it was secret and hidden, decreed before the ages for our glory. He has already identified it as Christ crucified. So far from being a Wisdom Christology, this would seem to be reflection on the mysterious fact that the Messiah died, a foolish fact, an unexpected fact, but now affirmed to be within the divine foreknowledge and gracious provision for human salvation. Paul’s apostrophe to wisdom in Romans (11:33: “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!”) also occurs in a context where the inscrutability of God’s judgments and providential plans are in question. The association of wisdom and foresight that we noticed in Hermas (Herm. Vis., 1.3) may confirm this reading. No wonder Paul has to speak of these things in words taught by the Spirit, rather than words taught by human wisdom (2:13). Human wisdom, which finds these things incomprehensible, is foolishness with God: Job and the Psalms are called in to confirm this: “He catches the wise in their cleverness (πανουργία17)” and “the Lord knows the thoughts of the wise that they are fu16  For a full discussion of this passage, see R. B. Hays, “Wisdom according to Paul,” in Where shall Wisdom, ed. Barton: 111–123. Hays emphasizes the irony in this passage, and argues against there being a Wisdom Christology here. 17  All uses of πανουργία in the New Testament are negative in meaning – besides this, see 2 Cor 4:2; 11:3; Eph 4:14; Luke 20:23. Cf. πανοῦργος (panourgos – clever) in 2 Cor 12:16.

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tile” (1 Cor 3:19–20). In 2 Corinthians “fleshly wisdom” is contrasted with single-­mindedness, sincerity, and God’s grace (2 Cor 1:12). Yet, among the gifts given by the Spirit (1 Cor 12:8), Paul includes the word of wisdom and the word of knowledge. His interest in wisdom is highly paradoxical, because the cross is distinctly paradoxical, and God’s ways are beyond human comprehension. Yet the paradox of human wisdom is already to be found in the scriptures, and Paul exploits this, referring not only to the Psalms and wisdom literature but to the prophet Jeremiah: “Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord” alludes to a verse which begins “Do not let the wise boast in their wisdom” (Jer 9:23).18 So in the unquestionably authentic Pauline Epistles, where wisdom is explored explicitly, it is within the same range of use as that found in the Apos­tolic Fathers, and, as in their case, informed by the scriptures, Psalms and Prophets, as well as wisdom literature. One other passage, however, we cannot overlook, even though wisdom is not mentioned: namely 1 Corinthians 8:6: “But for us there is one God the Father, from whom are all things and we are for him, and one Lord Jesus Christ through whom are all things and we are through him.” This statement is often interpreted as if the relationship between God and Christ is being patterned on the personified Wisdom who is God’s instrument of creation (Prov 8). The cryptic use of prepositions means that the meaning can only be teased out by importing assumptions, and maybe “all things” (τὰ πάντα – ta panta) is not as transparent as is often assumed. Reading in the light of 1 Clement rather than Colossians, we might suggest that the one God the Father is the source of all (possibly all the riches of salvation, as I suggested in relation to Barnabas) and our goal, while the one Lord Jesus Christ is the means whereby all God’s purposes of salvation are effected and the one through whom we are called into those benefits. If the obscurities of 1 Corinthians 8:6 are discounted, it is clear that the references to wisdom in Ephesians and Colossians give us rather different material from that we have so far examined. Σοφία appears almost entirely in a positive light in Colossians. So 1:9: in prayers for the recipients, the request has been made that they be “filled with knowledge (ἐπίγνωσις – epignōsis) of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding (σύνεσις)”; 1:28: preaching Christ involves teaching everyone in all wisdom; 3:16: it is hoped that the word of Christ may dwell in them richly and they will teach one another in all wisdom; 4:5: they are to “walk in wisdom” with respect to outsiders. Only in one context does the word of wisdom appear as negative, identified with human commands and teachings (2:22–23).19 Christ is explicitly said to be the one “in whom all the 18  For the development of this ambivalence about wisdom in apocalyptic and the NT, see Christopher Rowland, “‘Sweet Science Reigns’: Divine and Human Wisdom in the Apocalyptic Tradition,” in Where shall Wisdom, ed. Barton: 61–74. 19  This passage seems to owe something to Gal 4:3, and shares some of the same difficult features for interpretation: e.g., to what does the phrase “elements of the world” refer?

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treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden” (2:3). In an earlier passage, which does not actually mention wisdom, it is suggested that “he is the image of the invisible God, the first born of all creation, for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created … he is before all things and all things hold together in him” (1:15–17).20 This certainly seems to express the content of Proverbs 8 in an allusive way, and it attributes this creative pre-existence to God’s “beloved Son” (1:13), who is “the head of the body, the church,” and the “first-born of the dead” (1:18). It would seem, then, that we have here the makings of an explicit Wisdom Christology, though we should perhaps take note of Robert Morgan’s caveat: “[T]hese Wisdom passages in the New Testament probably originated in liturgical contexts … This wisdom idea is mythos not logos, and therefore not, strictly speaking, a Christology which expresses conceptually what the myth narrates pictorially. The phrase “Wisdom Christology” is therefore potentially misleading, a product of a one-sidedly doctrinal emphasis in New Testament theology.”21

In Ephesians σοφία is apparently identified with revelation: 1:8 tells of the grace “which overflows on us, with all wisdom and insight (φρόνησις), making known (γνωρίσας – gnō risas) to us the mystery of his will”; 1:17 prays that God may give them the spirit of wisdom and (the spirit of) revelation in knowing (ἐπίγνωσις) him, so that the eyes of the heart, being enlightened, may know what is the hope of his calling (etc.); 3:10 wants the wisdom of God to be known to the rulers and powers in the heavens through the church – apparently picking up the notion in 1 Corinthians 2:8 that the rulers of this world did not know God’s wisdom. All of these statements could be interpreted in the same terms as 1 Corinthians (see above). Explicit Wisdom Christology is less evident than in Colossians, but the same generally positive use of σοφία distinguishes both from the Corinthian correspondence and the Apostolic Fathers. Perhaps we have stumbled on further evidence for suggesting that Colossians and Ephesians are postPauline.22 In any case, they seem not to be known to Ignatius, Polycarp, and Clement, even though these authors knew the Corinthian letters. Whatever their provenance, they apparently anticipate the development of Logos theology later in the second century, as well as the interest in Sophia found among Gnostics.

20  For a full discussion of this passage, see M. D. Hooker, “Where is Wisdom to be Found? Colossians 1:15–20 (1),” in Reading Texts, ed. Ford and Stanton: 116–128. 21  R. Morgan, “Jesus Christ, the Wisdom of God (2),” in Reading Texts, ed. Ford and Stanton, 29. 22  I should acknowledge that prior to this investigation I accepted Colossians as authentic, though doubted whether Ephesians was.

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IX.  Other New Testament Material So what about the rest of the New Testament? The cluster of sapiential vocabulary is scattered around the New Testament texts: σύνεσις and συνετός, φρόνησις and φρόνιμος, σοφία and σοφός, together with a fairly widespread assumption that “instruction” (παιδεία) is needed and righteousness the goal. Thus, 2 Timothy 2:7 suggests that the Lord will give Timothy understanding (σύνεσις) in all things, and that the scriptures are able to make you wise (σοφίσαι – sophisai) for salvation, because they are useful for the instruction (παιδεία) that leads to righteousness (3:15). According to Titus 2:12, the grace of God has appeared with salvation, “training (παιδεύουσα – paideuousa) us to renounce impiety and worldly passions” (cf. 1 Tim 1:20: to train not to blaspheme; 2 Tim 2:25: correcting (παιδεύων – paideuō n) opponents with gentleness). James encourages the reader to ask for wisdom if it is lacking (1:5). The question is posed (3:13): who is wise (σοφός) and understanding (ἐπιστήμων – epistē mō n) among you? The answer lies in the advice, “Let him show by a good life that his works are done with gentleness born of wisdom.” This is contrasted with ambition, boastfulness, and being false to the truth, which is then attributed to a wisdom that does not come down from above, but is earthly, natural (ψυχική – psychikē) and “demonic” (δαιμονιώδης – daimoni ōdē s). Wisdom from above is, first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to give way, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality or hypocrisy. It is associated with a harvest of righteousness. These ethical characteristics are reminiscent of what we have found in the Apostolic Fathers, and equally indebted to the whole range of scriptural material. 2 Peter 3:15 suggests that Paul wrote “according to the wisdom (σοφία) given him,” but denies following “cleverly devised (σεσοφισμένοις – sesophismenois) myths” in making known the coming of Jesus Christ (1:16). Acts indicates that those selected to be deacons were men full of the spirit and wisdom (σοφία), and that those who tried to argue with Stephen could not stand up to the wisdom and the spirit with which he spoke (6:3, 10). In Stephen’s speech, Joseph is enabled to win favour and show wisdom before Pharaoh (7:10), and Moses is said to have been instructed (ἐπαιδεύθη – epaideuthē) in all the wisdom of the Egyptians (7:22). Interestingly, Acts has no other passages which are of interest to our enquiries about wisdom, and apart from the Gospels this virtually exhausts our enquiry, though we should perhaps note that Revelation finds wisdom necessary in order to understand the number of the beast (13:18) and to interpret the seven heads (17:9), while including wisdom in its hymns: “Blessing and glory and wisdom … be to our God!” (7:12); “Worthy is the Lamb … to receive power and wealth and wisdom….” (5:12). In this apocalyptic work, wisdom is both attributed to God, and also associated with unpacking riddles, rather as it is in Barnabas. On the whole, these scattered references suggest a positive view

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of wisdom, and a link between wisdom and the scriptures. But again there is no hint of awareness of a distinct wisdom genre or indeed of Wisdom Christology. The one possible hint of a Wisdom Christology is to be found in Hebrews 1:3. Wisdom is again not explicitly mentioned (as in the cases already reviewed in 1 Corinthians 8:6 and Colossians 1:15–20), but language used of the all-­ pervading cosmic wisdom described in Wisdom 7 is transferred to “the Son,” through whom God made the ages, and who holds all things by the word of his power. This probably needs to be regarded, alongside Colossians, as an early expression of Wisdom Christology. Yet it is an intriguing observation that most of the passages which potentially articulate a Wisdom Christology fail to mention wisdom.

X.  The Gospels In the Synoptic Gospels people wonder about the σοφία given to Jesus (Mark 6:2, Matt 13:54); Luke suggests that Jesus grew in wisdom (Luke 2:40, 52), and people were amazed at Jesus’s understanding (σύνεσις) as a child (2:47). The queen of the south travelled far to listen to Solomon’s wisdom, but something greater than Solomon is here (Matt 12:42; Luke 11:31). Jesus promises to give “words and wisdom” to the disciples when they experience persecution (Luke 21:15). He advises people to be cunning (φρόνιμος) as serpents (Matt 10:16), and tells parables: about the cunning person who built his house on a rock, contrasted with the foolish who built on sand (Matt 7:24); about cunning and foolish virgins (Matt 25:1–12); about faithful and cunning slaves or stewards (Matt 24:45; Luke 12:42). Jesus also teaches in parables, which need interpretation and whose meaning is esoteric (Mark 4:10–13 and parallels), a reminder of the Proverbs assumption that wisdom involves perception of the meaning of parables and the dark sayings of the wise. Yet wisdom is hardly a discrete element in the complexity of the Jesus tradition. He is seer as well as sage.23 There are two perplexing statements in these Gospels: (1) “Wisdom is justified by her works” (Matt 11:19) or “by her children” (Luke 7:35); and (2) “For this reason even the Wisdom of God said, ‘I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and persecute’” (Luke 11:49). In the case of the latter, to posit a saying from a lost wisdom book seems wide of the mark, as also to suggest that Christ is identified without explanation as Wisdom. I would like to suggest that this text is best explained in the light of 1 Corinthians: the puzzle of the persecuted Messiah, put to death on a cross, is again in the background. 23  Ben Witherington III, Jesus the Sage (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994); idem, Jesus the Seer (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1999). Note the discussion in Dunn, “Jesus: Teacher of Wisdom or Wisdom Incarnate?” where the “eschatological plus” modifies the widespread acceptance of the Third Quest that Jesus was simply a teacher of wisdom.

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Paul had suggested that this unexpected outcome was to be seen as the wisdom of God, as something deep in the divine foreknowledge. Luke now relates it to the perennial persecution of the prophets evidenced in the scriptures, attributing to Jesus the thought we found in Paul – that God’s wisdom foresaw and foretold the crucifixion. If that explanation is right, then the other saying probably coheres with it. The oddity of Jesus’s behaviour if he is a holy man, and his difference from John the Baptist, is like the peculiarity of the crucified Messiah. The outcome – namely, the redemption realized as the outworking of God’s providential plan – justifies the notion that it all happened according to God’s wisdom. As far as the Gospels are concerned, there remain only the questions raised by the prologue of John’s Gospel and its precursor, the so-called Johannine Thunder­ bolt in the synoptic material (Matt 11:25–30; Luke 10:21–22). Both are again cases where wisdom is not explicit, but scriptural parallels have made an implicit association an attractive supposition. In the case of the passage in Matthew, attention is drawn to Sirach 51, a chapter which opens with thanksgiving similar to the words of Jesus, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth,” and later enjoins those who lack instruction to come to the author’s school, put on the yoke, and be willing to learn. This is taken to illuminate the words, “Come to me … Take my yoke upon you and learn of me,” and to imply that Jesus takes the place of Wisdom. This conflation of Wisdom with the Son of God presumably then informs the Logos Christology of the Johannine prologue. However, in the synoptic passage, there is, first, an emphasis very similar to that in 1 Corinthians – the revelation is denied to the wise and given to the humble­-minded – and, secondly, even if there is an allusion to Sirach 51, the invitation is to the teacher of wisdom, not Wisdom itself. True, that may be read in by associating it with Sirach 24, where Wisdom is personified as in Proverbs 8 and is then identified both with the creative Word of God and with Torah, but the point of the passage is surely that the Son is the best teacher available. The next question is how far the composer of the Johannine prologue might have made all the supposed associations. Maybe as much as, and no more than, the other passages we have noted which seemed to attach a creative and cosmic role to the pre-existent Christ but without mentioning wisdom. Already the Psalms had affirmed that “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made” (Ps 33:6), and the prophets spoke by the word of the Lord. If the thrust of the passage as a whole is to show that it was the mind and intention of God from the very beginning which was enfleshed in Jesus, then what the prologue is about is much the same as what we found in 1 Corinthians. Perhaps the apocalyptic notion of God’s plan being laid up in heaven to be revealed in God’s good time is more pertinent than “wisdom.”

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XI. Conclusion For many theologians and New Testament scholars, what I have offered will seem an extraordinarily minimalist reading of the New Testament material. To some extent it is true that I have sought to play down long-held scholarly assumptions as a kind of experiment. Of course, the New Testament texts had a future where maximal intertextual associations would make a full-bodied notion of the embodiment of God’s Wisdom in Jesus a core component in a richly layered Christology, and maybe the fact is that the Apostolic Fathers fall short of the depth already reached at an earlier date by Paul and other theologians such as the author of John’s Gospel. But, somewhat to my own astonishment, this exploration of wisdom in the Apostolic Fathers has provoked the question: to what extent do we owe this maximalist reading to later developments? Do we still too easily read back later doctrines into the earliest texts, even when overtly espousing the historico-critical method? Maybe we do. My minimalist reading is offered as a way of testing this possibility.

Chapter 8

The Gospels and the Development of Doctrine* I.  The Gospels in the Early Church Before we examine what impact the Gospels had on the development of doctrine, we need to explore the place of the Gospels in the church in the first centuries. By the end of the second century an established pattern had clearly developed: the four Gospels that we know as part of the New Testament canon were accepted as authoritative and read liturgically in most of the churches recognized by what would become the Christian mainstream. However, it is also clear that this was the result of some struggle over the issue, and that there are groups designated as heretical which have preferred gospels other than the four we know, or fixed on one of the four, or sought to create one out of the four. Irenaeus, bishop of Lyon at the end of the second century provides us with the arguments for the fourfold gospel and against other positions. Examining what he has to say, and what lay behind it, is instructive, if somewhat strange to our ways of thinking. For Irenaeus, the fourfold gospel is providential, corresponding, firstly, to the fourfold nature of the created universe: there are four regions of the world and four winds (using the same Greek word as for breath and spirit), so, as the church is scattered all over the world and her “pillar and ground” (1 Tim 3:15) is the gospel and the Spirit of life, it is fitting that she should have four pillars, breathing out immortality and reviving people in every place.1 Secondly, the fourfold gospel corresponds to the cherubim with four faces – the lion, the calf, the human, the eagle – each representing an aspect of the Logos (Word), namely, his kingship, his sacrifice, his first advent, and his gift of the Spirit. Irenaeus relates each Gospel to one of these, so beginning a long tradition of artistic and exegetical symbolism. Finally he notes the four covenants given to the human race: with Adam, with Noah, with Moses, and the new covenant in Christ. These analogies imply that the fourfoldness relates to underlying unities: the unity of the one church throughout the world, the unity of the one God who is enthroned upon the cherubim (Ps 80:1), the unity of the Son of God, the Logos, and finally the unity and continuity of God’s “economy,” that is, the way God *  Originally published in The Cambridge Companion to the Gospels, ed. Stephen Barton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006): 201–223. 1 Irenaeus, Haer., 3.11.8–9.

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orders his relations with the world in covenantal dispensations. But, for Irenaeus, such unities do not imply one gospel text, since there is a kind of givenness about the four. So firm is the ground on which the four Gospels rest, he says, that even the heretics start from these documents, as each tries to establish his own doctrine but is confuted by the gospel text itself. He claims that the Ebionites use only Matthew, and Marcion only a Luke he has mutilated; that adoptionists prefer Mark and Valentinians exploit John. Later he refers to Valentinian use of a work called the Gospel of Truth, which he roundly rejects, claiming that the four Gospels alone are reliable and true, and that they represent God’s harmonious arrangement of everything. All of this discussion presupposes that there is a close link between correct doctrine and the proper use and interpretation of the four Gospels together; yet it uses arguments which are extraneous to the Gospels themselves. It also implies the reception of the four Gospels as authoritative, while providing evidence that that reception was contested. Irenaeus indicates that the fourfold gospel is established as scripture alongside the Apostle (a collection of epistles), and matching the fivefold Law and the Prophets. But, as we shall see, his assumption that that was originally the case and that the heretics challenged an existing canon cannot be right. The status of the Gospels earlier in the second century needs to be investigated. If we go back to the beginning, we enter what has been termed a “tunnel period,” in which it is far from transparently clear what was happening to the Jesus traditions or the Gospels as such. New Testament scholarship has exercised much ingenuity in trying to piece together clues about the origins of the Gospels, the debates betraying how little is really certain. By Irenaeus’s time there was a general consensus that two were written by apostles, Matthew and John, and two by close associates of the apostles, Mark and Luke, but it is doubtful how secure the apostolic attributions are. Determining the dates of their composition is even more speculative, given the absence of any traditions and the evidence of mutual interaction in the composition of the first three Gospels, if not also of the fourth. Tradition had it that Matthew was the first to be written, but the biblical criticism of the modern period generally reached the consensus that Mark had priority. At what date the gospel texts were known and used is likewise contested, and this is the issue that we need to focus on for the purpose of this chapter. If the Gospels were not widely disseminated and known, how could they have influenced the development of doctrine at the time under discussion? The evidence we can muster is sparse and its interpretation contested. Apart from the writings of the New Testament itself, we have a group of works known as the Apostolic Fathers, variously dated to the late first and early second centuries, but their dating is subject to the same difficulties as dating the Gospels themselves. Like the New Testament epistles, these writings never explicitly quote from or even refer to written Gospels, though sayings and phrases often

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seem like allusions to them. So debate has raged as to whether these parallels arise because of a common oral tradition, or whether they imply direct knowledge of one or other of the gospel texts.2 The matter is not easily settled. Our conventions about acknowledging sources and quoting accurately were not operative in the ancient world – indeed, rhetorical textbooks advised a rather freer and more creative use of literary allusion. The reader can easily see the nature of the problem by turning to Romans 12–14. Paul never says that any of the sayings he uses comes from Jesus, and the majority of scholars now dismiss the idea that he knew the Sermon on the Mount or other written Gospels, yet time and again his words recall familiar gospel material. The case is much the same in the writings known as the Apostolic Fathers. Clearly, if the original reader knew that the author was alluding to the written Gospels, this would make a difference to the way the text was understood. But it could be that they were sharing the “in-language” of the community they belonged to, sayings current among them, phrases from their gatherings for worship, as seems most likely in the case of Paul. As indicated, scholars can be found arguing the case on either side, and we should not forget that Papias, bishop of Hierapolis and contemporary of Polycarp, the aged bishop who is reported to have known the apostle John, is said to have preferred the “living and abiding voice” to things written in books.3 It would seem that, despite apparently knowing the Gospels of Mark and Matthew, he regarded highly any kind of contact with the apostles, even if secondhand and mediated by oral tradition. So the debate is not easily settled. We remain, then, in the “tunnel period,” further tantalized by the discovery in Egypt of a papyrus fragment of the Gospel of John which is often dated to the first quarter of the second century, though it should more likely be placed at or somewhat before mid-century. This has certainly challenged some extreme theories about the late date of this Gospel, especially given the time needed for dissemination from wherever it was composed (probably Asia Minor or Syria) to the place where this fragment was found. It also suggests that the process of dissemination was remarkably fast. Maybe the churches in the major cities of the Mediterranean did generally have copies of the Gospels rather earlier than the actual evidence can prove. On the other hand, John’s Gospel in particular appears to have been problematic; for the discussion in Irenaeus’s work rather 2  Helmut Koester, Synoptische Überlieferung bei den apostolischen Vätern, Texte und Untersuchungen 65 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1957) argued for oral tradition and against knowledge of the texts. However, see The New Testament in Early Christianity, J. -M. Sevrin, ed. (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1989) and Édouard Massaux, The Influence of the Gospel of Saint Matthew on Christian Literature before Saint Irenaeus, trans. Norman J. Belval and Suzanne Hecht (French original 1950; ET Macon: Mercer University Press/Leuven: Peeters, 1993). 3 Eusebius, Hist. eccl., 3.39, Greek text: Eusebius Werke, vol 2: Kirchengeschichte, ed. E. Schwartz (Leipzig: Hinrich, 1908); ET in The History of the Church from Christ to Constantine, trans. G. A. Williamson, Penguin Classics (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965).

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suggests that he had to rescue it from the heretics, dispelling reservations about its use because Gnostics had found it congenial. He provides it with a pedigree, tracing back tradition through the aged bishop Polycarp: Polycarp had known the apostle John, and Irenaeus himself knew Polycarp.4 As for Papias, written material needed to have its authenticity confirmed by living contact, however indirect. The heretical use of the fourth Gospel is confirmed by Origen’s Commentary on John, which repeatedly refutes the exegesis of a Gnostic named Heracleon, who seems to have been the first to create a commentary on the Johannine text. The earliest reference to what could be gospel reading in church comes around mid-second century in the first Apology of Justin Martyr.5 Justin outlines a Christian meeting, largely to show how innocuous such meetings were. He refers to “memoirs” composed by the apostles, “which are called gospels.” These indicate that Jesus took bread and when he had given thanks, said, “Do this in remembrance of me.” Later he mentions that these memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read as long as time permits at the Sunday gathering. It seems most likely that it is to some or all of the four Gospels to which Justin refers here, but which Gospels did he know? In an earlier section of his Apology where he is explaining what Christ taught, he seems to be quoting the Sermon on the Mount, or sometimes the Lucan version of the same teaching.6 So in Justin’s time written texts of Christian origin are already being used within the church’s liturgical setting alongside the Greek version of the Jewish scriptures (the Septuagint), and these seem to include at least Matthew and Luke. It might be all four: for Tatian was a pupil of Justin, and it was Tatian who composed the Diatessaron (c. 175 CE), a harmony of the four Gospels. The existence of the Diatessaron is important from two different angles. On the one hand, it shows that the four were widely known and accepted as the authoritative texts; on the other hand, it demonstrates a certain embarrassment about this, and awareness of discrepancies – should not “the gospel” be one and consistent? By the time of Irenaeus there was resistance to the kind of tampering with the four that Tatian undertook, perhaps reinforced by the fact that by then he had been identified as a heretic. But meanwhile he had conducted missions in the Syriac-speaking areas on either side of the eastern border of the Roman Empire, and there the Syriac version of the Diatessaron became the most widely used gospel. In the fifth century we find the bishop of Cyrrhus, Theodoret, trying to establish the use of the four Gospels and stamp out the Diatessaron. But to return to the mid-second century, it is interesting that, though the four have primacy, there seems little inhibition about revising the texts into one harmonious whole. 4 Irenaeus,

Haer., 3.1.1, 3.3.4. 1 Apol., 66–67. 6 Justin, 1 Apol., 15. 5 Justin,

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Indeed, Tatian’s disquiet about the four, together with his willingness to be creative, is representative of attitudes in the mid-second century. For gospels, along with other narrative material, were multiplying in this period, while some groups, as indicated by Irenaeus, were restricting themselves to one gospel. It may be objected that such developments were largely countenanced among heretics, but it is not quite as simple as that. Hindsight so often provides the classifications – at the time it must have been much more difficult to discern where the truth lay. Indeed, orthodoxy often emerged in reaction to teaching that was rejected, and notorious heretics like Valentinus and Marcion were members of the church in Rome for some time before being excommunicated. The boundaries were not clear – they were being clarified. Besides, some of the narrative literature that was produced continued to have influence in the church even if not received into what became the canon of scripture: in particular this is true of the Protevangelium of James, which provided details about the Holy Family and the birth of Jesus, especially affirming Mary’s perpetual virginity. Other lost gospels, such as the Gospel of the Hebrews, were known to the Church Fathers and attributed to groups such as the Ebionites, who were probably Jewish Christian groups marginalized by the predominantly Gentile mainstream, and mistakenly vilified. Scholarship now knows more about the many eventually proscribed gospels because of the rediscovery of gnostic material at Nag Hammadi, and some scholars believe that the rediscovered Gospel of Thomas may well contain reliable traditions that are older than the canonical Gospels.7 Hindsight did indeed tend to label alternatives to the four as unorthodox. If we put ourselves back into the second century, then, there is a real question as to whether emerging doctrine determined which gospels were acceptable, or whether acceptable doctrine was derived from the gospels regarded as most reliable. The interaction was probably complex, though one suspects the former trend was dominant, not least because we have evidence of the use of the Gospel of Peter being discouraged after the bishop of Antioch, Serapion, discovered that it was not the innocent document he had supposed, but that the heretical doctrines of the docetists were to be found in it. 8

II.  Doctrine and Gospel One reason why there was an instinctive sense that the gospel should be one must have been that the word did not originally suggest a written text at all. In the New Testament the word means “good news,” and there is only one gospel, 7  See the references and discussion provided by Christopher Tuckett on pp.  128–130 of “Sources and Methods” in The Cambridge Companion to Jesus, ed. Markus Bockmuehl (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001): 121–137. 8 Eusebius, Hist. eccl., 6.12.

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that of Jesus Christ. This is what Paul repeatedly claims he preaches, condemning those who preach “another gospel” (Gal 1:6). In a number of places he provides a confessional summary of his gospel: to take but one example, “the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures, the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh, and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord…” (Rom 1:1–4). Interestingly, such confessions can be found, not only in the New Testament, but also in the Apostolic Fathers.9 This kind of summary provided the kernel of the one gospel, which, as Irenaeus would eventually argue, came in a fourfold form. It would appear that such statements are the distant precursors of creeds. What I want to suggest is that, particularly in the earliest stages, such statements were in practice more important for doctrinal development than the gospels themselves. What is doctrine? The word comes from the Latin, and both the Latin word doctrina and the Greek word δόγμα (dogma) simply mean “teaching.” Teaching was not characteristic of religion in the ancient world. Naturally it belonged to the world of education, and the climax of education for the élite was philosophy. So it is highly significant that Justin Martyr dressed and behaved as a Christian philosopher. In its socio-historical context, the early church was more like a school than a religion.10 Jews had already attracted some approval as philo­ sophers with a high moral standard. Synagogue and church alike were analogous to schools, teaching from a body of literature other than the classics of the Greco-Roman tradition, namely the Jewish scriptures. For the second-century church the significant body of literature remained the Septuagint. So it is particularly telling that Justin tells the story of Jesus Christ through prophecies in the Jewish scriptures, not from the Gospels.11 This might seem less generally important in light of an assertion of Ignatius, the early­ ­second-century bishop of Antioch (whose writings are included among the ­Apostolic Fathers): against those who would not believe a thing unless it was found in “our ancient records,” he had affirmed, “My records are Jesus Christ, and my sacrosanct records are His cross and death and resurrection, and the faith that comes through him.”12 But in fact that protest proves the point: the only recognized scriptures were the Jewish scriptures, and they were inter­ preted as containing the gospel. Christian teaching (=doctrine) was exposition of those scriptures so as to identify the one to whom they pointed. 9  See further below; also Frances Young, The Making of the Creeds (London: SCM Press, 1991), and J. N. D Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, 3rd ed. (London: Longman, 1972). 10  Religion meant the traditional obligations to civic and familial gods, practices carried out in domestic shrines and public temples without explicit doctrines, creeds or even morals. 11 Justin, 1 Apol., 32–53. 12 Ignatius, Phld., 8; ET quoted: Early Christian Writings, 95.

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That exposition was shaped by those summary confessions about Jesus Christ, malleable as they were. Ignatius, indeed, shows how they were easily adapted to exclude what was regarded as false teaching: “Be deaf when anyone speaks to you apart from Jesus Christ, who was of the stock of David, who was from Mary, who was truly born, ate and drank, was truly persecuted under Pontius Pilate, was truly crucified, and died in the sight of beings heavenly, earthly and under the earth, who was also truly raised from the dead, His Father raising him….”13 As in Paul’s summaries, the birth, death and resurrection are far more important than the teaching or miracle-working; but there is an added dimension – for apparently in some sense the reality of the incarnation is being contested, treated as a mirage or sham, perhaps. So the emphasis on that reality is reinforced. The summaries are becoming ways not merely of confessing the faith but safeguarding the principles at its heart. In this first stage of doctrinal development, then, the gospel texts seem to play little part, but the gospel in the form of confessional summary is key. In the following section we will explore the continued outworking of this as we look at creeds and the Gospels. We shall find that even when the four Gospels had been accepted as canon, and their texts quoted for doctrinal proof, the over­ arching sense of what scripture as a whole is about remains the most significant factor for doctrine, that sense being summed up in creeds – the successors to these confessions. However, after Irenaeus we can discern a new stage in doctrinal development. For now there is a recognized literary collection articulating the “New Covenant/Testament,” and balancing the “Old Covenant/Testament” enshrined in the Septuagint. This has become a “canon” or “benchmark,” the standard to which appeal will be made in future debate and controversy. Although the precise contents of that canon would remain fluid for a couple of centuries more, the place of the four Gospels within it would not be controversial again. Controversy about doctrine, however, would continue. Increasingly, as people were engaged in defending and making sense of the faith, all sides would claim to represent the tradition and would appeal to the text of scripture, including the Gospels. Doctrine would become increasingly defined in formulae directed at excluding what were judged to be erroneous interpretations of these benchmarks. The origin of creeds probably lies in the context of baptismal instruction and liturgy, but their precursors included statements used specifically for the purpose of safeguarding orthodoxy, and as time went on this function became increasingly important. If we are to consider how the Gospels affected the development of doctrine we must examine how they relate to the creeds.

13 Ignatius,

Trall., 9; ET quoted: Early Christian Writings, 82.

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III.  Creeds and Gospels The clearest statement about the relationship between scripture and creed is to be found in the Catechetical Orations of Cyril of Jerusalem in the fourth century. By this date learning a creed by heart and reciting it back to the catechist was a recognized element in the process of preparing for baptism. Cyril introduces the creed his catechumens are to learn by commenting: “Since all cannot read the scriptures, some being hindered from knowing them by lack of education, and others by want of leisure … we comprise the whole doctrine of the faith in a few lines.” He adds that these were to be committed to memory, treasured and safeguarded, because “it is not some human compilation, but consists of the most important points collected out of scripture.”14 Close inspection of the creeds, however, hardly suggests that that was literally how they took shape. The relationship with scripture is more problematic than that – there is nothing, for example, about the history of Israel as God’s chosen people, though God does appear as the creator of everything there is, and there is reference to the prophets. The relation with the Gospels is even more problematic. To all intents and purposes, there is nothing about the life and teaching of Jesus, the proclamation of the kingdom of God, or even the miracle-working. In fact the common elements in the various creeds of this date seem closer to the summary points in the early Christian confessions we were discussing before: they refer to Mary’s virginal conception, to the crucifixion under Pontius Pilate, to death, burial and resurrection, to ascension, sitting at God’s right-hand in heaven, and future judgment. They are coherent with the Gospels, but hardly derived from them. Prime emphasis is laid on the birth, death and exaltation of Christ Jesus, the Son of God. Irenaeus again provides us with key evidence. In his various works he offers us several summaries of the faith which he designates as “the Canon of Truth.” Slightly later we find similar material, often referred to as the “Rule of Faith,” in the works of Tertullian and Origen – these two represent both East and West in the early third century. All of them regard these summaries as statements of core Christian doctrine to be defended against heretics. Origen insists that all his theological explorations are consistent with this fundamental core. Yet the way these writers set out the Rule of Faith is remarkably flexible. No two accounts of it are identical. At the same time they often carry the set phrases familiar from the creeds and already traced in earlier second-century confessions, if not in the Pauline Epistles. All of this suggests a continuous tradition which originated independently of written texts, and which ultimately became the cri14  Cyril of Jerusalem, Catecheses, 5.12, Greek text: Migne, PG 33; ET: Catecheses, trans. Leo P. McCauley and Anthony A. Stephenson, FC, vol.  61 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1968).

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terion whereby the written texts of scripture, including the Gospels, were interpreted. Irenaeus’s doctrinal arguments demonstrate how and why this was important. Let us consider one of his descriptions of how scripture is distorted by the heretics: Such then is their system, which the prophets did not announce, the Lord did not teach, and the Apostles did not hand down; but which they boastfully declare that they understand better than others…. As the saying is, they attempt to make ropes of sand in applying the parables of the Lord, or prophetic utterances, or Apostolic statements to their plausible scheme, in order that they may have foundation for it. But they alter the scriptural context and connection, and dismember the truth as much as they can. By their perversions and changes, and by making one thing out of another, they deceive many with their specious adaptations of the oracles of the Lord. It is just as if there was a beautiful representation of a king made in a mosaic by a skilled artist, and one altered the arrangement of the pieces of stone into the shape of a dog or a fox, and then should assert that this was the original representation of a king. In much the same way they stitch together old wives’ tales, and wresting sayings and parables, however they may, from the context, attempt to fit the oracles of God into their myths.15

Later on, Irenaeus uses another analogy, the custom of composing “centos” of Homer – selected lines were taken out of context and strung together to make a new poem with a different plot. As Irenaeus points out, “Anyone who knew Homer would recognize the lines but not accept the story.” He implies that this is what heretics do with the scriptures. So he not only needs to argue for the unity of all the scriptures, holding together the gospel and the books of the Old Covenant, but he also needs a framework which demonstrates what the story­ line is, what is the overarching sense of scripture. The “Canon of Truth” pro­ vided the criterion of interpretation. The same principle applies with respect to creeds in the later period. During the Arian controversy, some complained that the term ὁμοούσιος (homoousios – of one substance) was not scriptural, but the use of the term in the Nicene creed was defended on the grounds that only this term would guarantee the right reading of scripture.16 It was necessary to have a grasp of what the whole gospel was about in order to read the Gospels appropriately. Many of the clauses which eventually found their way into the classic creeds are there because they incorporate traditional phrases which became prominent in the second century when the need was to defend, against the Gnostics and Marcion, first, the oneness of the one true God, who is creator of all as well as Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and, secondly, the reality of Christ’s human birth to Mary the Virgin and of his suffering and death by crucifixion. Indeed, not just the creeds but the very text of the Gospels betrays the effects of these 15 Irenaeus, 16 

Haer., 1.8.1. See further Young, Biblical Exegesis, ch.  2.

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second-century struggles, as Bart Ehrman has demonstrated in his book The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: 17 the state of flux in the second century explains some of the classic gospel variants, which emerge as the struggle with adoptionists, separationists and docetists was played out, subtle textual changes reinforcing the points that Jesus did not “become” Christ at the baptism by adoption, the divine Christ did not “forsake” the human Jesus on the cross, and the whole thing was no sham. These changes dominate the manuscript tradition. Yet it is more likely than not that they arose in the second century and were retained because they suited the emerging orthodox position. So again we find that, in the earliest period, doctrinal formulations shaped the Gospels rather than vice versa, and, even when the received text was fundamentally fixed, it remained true that interpretation of the Gospels was affected by doctrinal considerations. Now, however, the Gospels were themselves exploited to support positions argued for in doctrinal debate, and creeds provided both the criteria by which orthodox interpretation was identified and the overarching perspectives within which the Gospels were read.

IV.  The Gospels and Doctrinal Exegesis Systematic exegesis of scripture, in the form of commentaries or continuous homily series, does not appear until the emergence of Christian scholarship in the third century. Of the earliest biblical scholars, only the work of Origen survives in sufficient quantity to provide us with much access to methods and interests. From the fourth and fifth centuries, however, a mass of material is available, and eventually excerpts from the great patristic commentators were collected in catenae. This is not the place to explore such systematic exegesis as such. But discussion of the exegetical exploitation of the gospel texts in doctrinal controversy needs to be balanced with some observations about the interests of those for whom exegesis was the prime aim. Christian scholarship adopted the methods of exegesis developed in the schools of antiquity (grammatical, rhetorical and philosophical), where the reading of the classics was the medium of instruction. Learning to read texts written without word division or punctuation, and often composed in archaic language, meant that initially much attention was paid to the details of construal and vocabulary. Such attention to the text rapidly led to the identification of metaphors and figures of speech, meanings not “according to the letter.” For rhetorical purposes it was important to identify how the author had clothed his subject-matter in appropriate verbal dress, and to identify the use of allusion, 17  Bart D. Erhman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christo­ logical Controversies on the Text of the New Testament (New York and Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1993).

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explaining the classic myths, gods, heroes, events, places, etc. All of this generated the typical commentary note to assist the reader. But there was a universal interest in moving on from that to discuss the moral implications of the text, and, in the philosophical schools, to find their “dogmas” about life, the universe and everything, hidden in the classic texts, often by means of allegory. It is hardly surprising that Christian scholars, such as Origen, approached texts in the same way, transferring these methods to the body of literature adopted by the Christian church, namely the scriptures. Moral and doctrinal reading was entirely natural. Such reading was reinforced by the inherited tradition of reading the Old Testament prophecies as referring to the Christ or the new dispensation inaugurated by him. Christian teaching about God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, salvation and the way to live was the real meaning of the whole Bible, clothed in narratives and metaphors. Exactly how dogma was read out of scripture varied. There was a reaction against allegory in some quarters in the fourth century, but moral and doctrinal reading continued despite that. It is instructive to compare the exegeses of the feeding narratives by Origen (third-century allegorist) and John Chrysostom (late fourth-century anti-allegorist).18 Origen took the story of Christ’s feeding of the multitude as symbolic of spiritual feeding.19 The desert place represented the desert condition of the masses without the law and the word of God, and the disciples were given power to nourish the crowds with rational food. The five loaves and two fish symbolized scripture and the Logos. Chrysostom notes that Christ looked up to heaven to prove he is of the Father, and he used the loaves and fish, rather than creating food out of nothing, to stop the mouths of dualist heretics like Marcion and Manichaeus.20 He let the crowds become hungry, and only gave them loaves and fish, equally distributed, to teach the crowd humility, temperance and charity, and to have all things in common. He wanted to ensure they did not become slaves to the belly. Gospel commentaries from the fifth century are full of statements that we would regard as dogmatic. The atmosphere after Arius was such that commentators had to ensure that the texts were not being read wrongly. Indeed, Cyril of Alexandria’s commentary on John’s Gospel is avowedly looking for a “more dogmatic exegesis,” as he propounds orthodox interpretation and opposes heretical readings. This affects the whole approach adopted in the commentary. It was written prior to his bitter controversy with Nestorius over Christology and the appropriateness of calling Mary Theotokos, yet the issues that were to be focused then were already arising as the implications of the Nicene reaction to Arius were taken to heart. An example makes the point most easily. On John 18 

I reuse here an example given in Young, Biblical Exegesis, 162. Comm. Matt., 11.1–4. 20  John Chrysostom, Hom. Matt. 49 on Matt 14:19, Greek text: Migne, PG 58.496–497; ET in NPNF. 19 Origen,

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14:16–17, Cyril’s first comment arises from the promise of Jesus to pray to the Father: He mingles again the human with the divine and neither returns to the pure glory of the Godhead nor indeed dwells wholly on the human dimension, but in a manner which transcends reason yet at the same time is consistent with the union of the natures operates through both, seeing he is simultaneously both God and man. For he was God by nature, in virtue of being the fruit of the Father and reflection of his essence. On the other hand he was man in virtue of having become flesh. He therefore speaks both as God and as man at the same time, for in this way it was possible to observe properly the form of words appropriate to the dispensation of the flesh.21

Clearly doctrinal controversy shaped the questions that arose in relation to the gospel texts. With awareness of the impact of doctrinal controversy on exegesis of the Gospels in general, it is time to look at the use of the Gospels in the controversies which shaped such dogmatic exegesis. To what extent are the Gospels quoted and referred to? Did their overall narrative of the life and teaching of Jesus play any role? There is a sense in which the great arguments about Christology that took place in the fourth and fifth centuries were essentially exegetical debates. But it is important to realize that they were not focused exclusively on the gospels, but rather on the whole of scripture. The core proof-text for Arius seems to have been Proverbs 8:22: “The Lord created me a beginning of his ways.” Everybody agreed that this passage was about the pre-existent Christ, the Logos, the Word or Wisdom of God, through whom God created all things. Arius argued on the basis of this text that the Logos was a creature. Athanasius countered by trying to discern the “mind” of scripture as a whole and the general use of language in scripture as a whole. We can see gospel proof-texts figuring alongside others in this debate, but they appear far from dominant. Irenaeus’s legacy seems to remain fundamental. The unity of the Bible, the fact that the Word of God speaks about himself in the prophecies of the Old Testament, the Rule of Faith as the criterion for interpretation – all of these contribute to the way texts are used, together with the intertextuality developed by the scholarly exegetes for discerning the underlying sense of scripture as distinct from its surface meaning. We can see how these factors operate if we explore some of Athanasius’s ­anti-Arian writings. There is a brief treatise on the Nicene decrees (Defence of the Nicene Definition) which summarizes the arguments.22 There are the first two books of Against the Arians which systematically deal with key Arian claims and the texts on which they are based.23 Book 3 may not be authentic, and book 4 certainly is not, though the third book is important whether Atha21 

Cyril of Alexandria, Comm. Jo., 9.1. Decr., Greek text: Athanasius Werke II.1: Die Apologien: De Decretis ­Nicaenae Synodi, ed. H. -G. Opitz (Berlin and Leipzig: Walter de Gruyter, 1935–1941). 23 Athanasius, C. Ar., Greek text: Migne, PG 25–28. 22 Athanasius,

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nasian or not, and we will take it into consideration later. We may observe three general points: (1) The controversial texts that Athanasius sets out to discuss in Against the Arians 1 and 2 are Philippians 2:2–10; Psalm 45:7–8; Hebrews 1:4; 3:2; Acts 2:36; and Proverbs 8:22 (at great length). All these texts, as read by the early church, were about the pre-existent Logos or Son of God. The problem was they seemed to imply that the Son of God was “made” or appointed or exalted or created, not eternally and really Son of God. None are gospel texts. The Defence of the Nicene Definition discusses the different scriptural senses of the word “son,” drawing up collages of texts to distinguish between real sonship (Isaac being the son of Abraham), and the kind of sonship attributed to those who are obedient to God, or adopted by God, a sonship open to human creatures. The object is to establish the Logos’s real sonship of the Father, while explaining the texts that favour the Arian position as applying solely to the conditions of the incarnation. Gospel texts are not the principal focus in this general discussion about the meaning of the word. Scripture as a whole is the issue. (2) Athanasius has a series of favourite gospel texts that appear again and again, sometimes in collages of texts from all over scripture, sometimes singly in developing his argument. These are mainly Johannine. References to the prologue appear four times in the Defence, twelve times in book 1 of Against the Arians, and fifteen times in book 2, various verses being called upon at different times. Other Johannine texts that appear in the Defence and repeatedly in Against the Arians are John 10:30 (“I and the Father are one”); and John 14:9, 10–11 (“whoever has seen me has seen the Father”; “the Father who dwells in me”; “I am in the Father and the Father is in me”). In the more expansive exegetical discussions of Against the Arians, many more Johannine texts appear, notably some of the “I am” sayings, quotations from chapter 17 and references to other Johannine discourses about who Jesus is, such as appear in chapters 5 and 8. Favourites in the Synoptics are sparser, but include reference to the baptismal voice, to Peter’s confession, to the address of the Lord’s Prayer (“Our Father”), and to the passage in Matthew known today as the Johannine thunderbolt (Matt 11:27). (3) There is little reference to the details of Christ’s human life apart from summary statements about him being hungry and thirsty, needing to ask questions like where Lazarus lay, and his suffering. Arians had clearly used the human life to argue that the Son was a creature; so the implications of these things are debated. The general picture presented in the Gospels is implied by this, though the Gospels themselves play little part. The third book of Against the Arians presents a slightly different picture. To begin with, the texts under discussion are Johannine (14:10, 17:3, 10:30, 17:11). The Arians want to read these gospel texts as meaning that any human being can reach the same relationship with God as the Logos – by being obedient, they

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may be one with the Father. So there is a sustained argument for a distinction between the real Son of God and adopted sons of God. Then there is a switch to dealing with the incarnation as such, and gospel texts at last predominate. The difficulties highlighted by the texts quoted (and they are drawn from all over the Gospels) are (1) the Son’s reception of things from God, so implying he was not by nature from the Father (e.g. “all things were delivered to me by the Father” (Matt 11:27), and similar Johannine statements); (2) his human weakness, implying he was not the true “power” of the Father (as demonstrated by the troubling of his soul before the passion (John 12:27–28) and by the agony in Gethsemane, his fear, etc.); (3) his ignorance, implying he was not truly divine wisdom (examples include his asking questions at Caesarea Philippi, at the feeding of the multitude, etc.); and the problems that arise from his praying to the Father, his cry of dereliction on the cross, his not knowing the hour when the end will come, and so on. Suddenly details of the gospel narratives become the key focus of discussion. The solution is not by proof-text or exegesis. The argument is that you have to look at the whole intent of scripture to discern what all this is about. The Johannine prologue and Philippians 2:6–8 are quoted to provide an overall perspective. This is followed by stress on the soteriological imperative: he became human for our sake. The properties of the flesh are said to be his on account of his being in the flesh: hunger, thirst, suffering, being weary, and the like. The Logos bore our infirmities as his own, since the flesh was his. So when the flesh suffered, the Logos was not external to it; and when he did divinely his Father’s works, the flesh was not external; rather the body was his instrument or tool for doing them. Examples are given: when there was need to raise Peter’s motherin-law, who was sick of a fever, he stretched forth his hand humanly, but he stopped the illness divinely; in the case of the man born blind from birth, the spittle, which he produced from the flesh, was human, but he opened the eyes with the clay divinely; and in the case of Lazarus, he used a human voice as man, but divinely, as God, he raised Lazarus from the dead. Actual gospel narratives have now begun to figure large, but the exegesis is shaped contextually, by the questions raised in controversy rather than the narratives themselves. The rest of the book is an explanation of problem texts, and the whole either anticipates or reflects the christological struggles of the fifth century. In the Nestorian controversy the same kind of issue was sharpened up further: in the incarnation either the Logos underwent change or he seemed to. To avoid these alternatives, the so-called Antiochenes reinforced the distinction made in Against the Arians 3 between the Logos and the flesh – it was the humanity that experienced all the creaturely attributes of weakness, suffering, ignorance and so on. The so-called Alexandrians, however, insisted that, however mysterious and incomprehensible it might be, the subject of the narrative really was the Logos, who really was incarnate, accusing the others of teaching “two Sons,” the Son of

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David and the Son of God, and so dividing the Christ. The gospel narrative, summed up in the creeds, was in one sense at the heart of the debate. Key texts, however, were not confined to the Gospels. Hebrews provided contentious material about weakness. Philippians 2:7 was set against John 1:14: the way he “became flesh” was by “taking a body,” not by changing. The same Philippians text furnished the notion of κένωσις (kenōsis – self-emptying) as a way of maintaining the consistency of subject. What we see here is a process of deductive argument, based largely on a perception of what the whole story is about, a perception shaped by the Rule of Faith and summarized in the creeds, but also resting on long-standing intertextuality, the use of collages of texts to establish the under­lying scriptural meaning of words. The Gospels never stand alone. So was there no biographical interest in the early church? Did the Gospels not affect the development of doctrine simply by presenting the story of Jesus, so filling out a sense of his identity, his acts, his teaching, his example?

V.  Doctrine, the Gospels and the Biographical Imperative At one time it was fashionable to suggest that the Gospels were not biographies. More recent scholarship has refined that judgment – they were in many respects like ancient biographies, even if they did not provide the sort of material we need to write a biography of Jesus of the kind we would expect.24 That there was some biographical interest is further demonstrated by some of the apocryphal gospels and Acts, which again seem like ancient “novella,” and purport to give information, for example, about Jesus’s boyhood. The idea that the early church had no interest in most of the narrative and teaching material in the Gospels must be false. What has been challenged here is the simplistic notion that the Gospels had a direct and dramatic impact on the development of doctrine. Earlier, however, I mentioned the fact that δόγμα and doctrina simply mean “teaching.” The teaching of the early church was broad-ranging, like that of ancient philosophy. It embraced cosmology and natural science through its interest in creation (see Basil of Caesarea’s Homilies on the Hexaemeron, that is, the six days of creation).25 It included physiology as well as ethics in its anthropological thought (see Nemesius of Emesa, On the Nature of Man).26 And if we return from the cultured fourth century to the primitive second we quickly find 24  Richard A. Burridge, What are the Gospels? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 25  Greek text: Basilius von Caesaea, Homilien zum Hexaemeron, ed. E. Amand de Mendietta and S. Y. Rudberg, GCS (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1997); ET in NPNF and FC. 26  Greek text: Nemesius of Emesa, De Natura Hominis, ed. M. Morani (Leipzig: Teubner, 1987); ET in Cyril of Jerusalem and Nemesius of Emesa, trans. W. Telfer, LCC (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1955).

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that moral teaching about the proper “way of life,” coupled with appeal to the fact that God oversees everything, and all are accountable to God, is the predominant tone of the literature.27 Jesus Christ is presented as teacher and example, as revealer of God’s will for human beings. If we take seriously this broader meaning of doctrine, then clearly the teaching and character of Jesus have a fundamental importance. Whether the Gospels had a direct impact as early as the beginning of the second century is unclear for reasons stated earlier. The Apostolic Fathers produce collages of scriptural texts and gospel-like sayings, and may or may not have known the gospel texts. Oral tradition may have been more important in shaping the way of life taught in the church community and attributed to Jesus the teacher. However, by the middle of the second century we find Justin referring to the apostles’ “memoirs,” quoting from the Gospels we know, and insisting on the superiority of Jesus’s teaching to that of other wise men. “Brief and concise utterances fell from him, for he was no sophist, but his word was the power of God,” says Justin, introducing a string of quotes which are largely drawn from Matthew.28 The selection is interesting: the first group all support chastity; then love, even of enemies, support of the needy, and not being anxious about worldly things are urged by long quotes from the Sermon on the Mount. Patience, good works, not swearing, and civil obedience are likewise grounded in gospel sayings. Already the fact that Christians worship the maker of the universe only, and do so by spiritual, not animal, sacrifice, has been presented as coming from “our teacher,” Jesus Christ, who was born for this purpose and “was crucified under Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judaea in the time of Tiberius Caesar.”29 Furthermore, Justin shows interest in confirming the factuality of the story by other evidence, claiming that the birth of Jesus is evidenced in the tax declarations submitted under the procurator Quirinius and available at Rome for inspection, and that the Acts of Pilate confirm the miracles and details of the crucifixion.30 Similar interest in factuality is apparent in the works of Gaius, a churchman who wrote in Rome at the turn of the second century: according to Eusebius, he claimed in a Dialogue with Proclus, the leader of the Montanists, that he could point to the monuments of the victorious apostles, Peter and Paul, at the Vatican.31 By the third century, the techniques of rhetorical criticism were being employed by a scholar like Origen (for example) to assess the probability of gospel 27  See the Pastoral Epistles, the Apostolic Fathers and the apologists; and for discussion, Young, Theology of the Pastoral Letters. 28 Justin, 1 Apol., 14–17. 29 Justin, 1 Apol., 13. 30 Justin, 1 Apol., 34, 35 and 48. 31 Eusebius, Hist. eccl., 2.25.

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stories. In his exegesis he often develops a logic which leads to the conclusion that something was impossible and could not have happened. This then enabled him to say that the spiritual meaning was more important. There are some surprising cases: the cleansing of the Temple was “improbable” – not only is there the problem that the accounts do not tally, but how could unclean animals be sold in the Temple? How could a carpenter’s son have acted like that among myriads of people? The Son of God could hardly have taken a “scourge of cords,” surely? The point is the story is to be taken symbolically, and so the discrepancies between the Gospels have a spiritual purpose and are not damaging to Christian claims. In defending Christianity against Celsus, Origen uses the same techniques to demolish Celsus’s story that “the mother of Jesus was turned out by the carpenter who was betrothed to her, as she was convicted of adultery and had a child by a certain soldier named Panthera.”32 Then he builds on the fact that Celsus has effectively admitted that Joseph was not Jesus’s father, and mounts arguments for the appropriateness of the virginal conception in the case of Jesus. But when it comes to the baptism, which Celsus thinks is a fiction, Origen implicitly agrees – certainly the descent of the dove and the opening of the heavens were not perceptible to the senses. But of course the spiritual event happened. Debate about the factuality of the gospel narratives was clearly going on between the detractors and defenders of Christianity. Origen would not in the long run be representative of most Christians, since a more unquestioning assumption that the Gospels were reliable and the difficulties were not material would prevail, but he was a skilful debater with knowledge of the kind of “historical criticism” practised by ancient scholars of Homer and the classics.33 There was, then, some interest in the Gospels as historical documents, especially among apologists and scholars. Furthermore, from Origen on, the Gospels were a quarry for dogma in the sense of moral teaching, and moral teaching was read out of the gospel material systematically in the homiletic tradition, whether sayings, parables or actions. But this is to take dogma in its widest sense. As we have seen, in the development of doctrine in the narrower sense, it was the broad sweep of the story that really counted, the pattern of fall and redemption in the Bible as a whole, the recapitulation of Adam in Christ, and the contribution of the birth, suffering, death, resurrection and exaltation to that salvific process. The important thing was that these key events were real, had really happened, and really made us “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4).

32 Origen,

Cels., 1.32. two paragraphs are largely dependent on the work of R. M. Grant, whose book The Earliest Lives of Jesus (London: SPCK, 1961) explores the extent to which “historical criticism” was practised in the first centuries, especially by Origen, and deserves to be better known. 33  These

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VI. Conclusion The question all this leaves us with is whether a doctrinal reading of the Gospels is possible in an era when the “original meaning” has become paramount, and the quest of the historical Jesus the chief preoccupation of scholars, Christian and non-Christian. Can doctrine really sit light to these preoccupations, as it clearly did in the early church? Maybe the answer is that the early theologians had their eye on the ball. What really matters is not the historicity of this or that act or saying, but the over­ arching narrative. Doctrine provides concepts, abstractions, propositions which draw out the significance of the narrative, and doctrinal development therefore proceeded without reference to the historicity of every detail. Faith and discipleship, however, require the kind of fleshing out that presents us with a person who captures our imagination and calls us to follow. The fourfold gospel provides the rich texturing of testimony that is needed. What I am suggesting, then, is that a doctrinal reading would be a non-­ reductive reading. It would take seriously the confessional framework which sees Jesus as “the wholly human and visible icon of the wholly transcendent and invisible God,”34 recognizing that less paradoxical and more strictly historical attempts to characterize him necessarily reduce what he was. Straightforward accounts of his significance were invariably rejected as heresies. Such a doctrinal reading would be open to illumination from liturgical reading of the Gospels, and would avoid narrow definitions of Jesus Christ or his teachings. It would expect to find in the witness of the fourfold gospel a “thick” portrait of the historical figure whose presence stimulated the extraordinary christological formulations that emerged through the controversies of the first five centuries, and it would seek to discern in the texts the appropriate way of responding to his call in the radically changed circumstances of life in the twenty-­first century. By reading “ourselves” into the text, believers may accept the prophetic challenges he offered in his day as still pertinent, as well as discerning and receiving the divine gift of new life which is mediated through him. It was to safeguard the reality of human transformation through Christ that the Fathers fought over the doctrinal definitions. But, paradoxically, they affirmed God as indefinable, in order to protect God’s freedom and transcendence, the richness of God’s being and grace. Routine repetition of formulae or assertions of fact, historical or otherwise, cannot be true to the intent of that doctrinal tradition. Authentic doctrinal reading demands the recognition that there can be inappropriate precision. Rich understanding requires discernment of the transcendent within the kind of narrative and drama that presents us with 34  This beautifully economic characterization of the “two natures” doctrine comes from Markus Bockmuehl’s introduction to The Cambridge Companion to Jesus, 1.

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a character true to life, true to the circumstances of when and where he lived, true to the reality which we experience as made up of many particulars and revelatory of many facets of each person. Only through the fourfold gospel can the incarnation itself be enfleshed.

Chapter 9

John and the Synoptics: an historical problem or a theological opportunity? * The relationship between the Fourth Gospel and the other three Gospels, known as “synoptic,” has been a classic problem of modern New Testament scholarship. There are after all real difficulties – chronological, geographical, historical – arising from the differences between Matthew, Mark and Luke on the one hand and the Gospel of John on the other, and as long as reconstructing the life and teaching of Jesus dominated critical scholarship, these issues were paramount. Historicity reigned and every student had to face the issues. This essay suggests that in this so-called “postmodern” situation it might be possible to learn from the exegesis of the Church Fathers and see these challenges as a theological opportunity.

I.  Modernity Pinpoints the Challenges Modern study of the Gospels has been shaped by the drive to establish facts, which has characterized post-Enlightenment empiricism, whether in scientific or historical investigation. The “detective” model of research highlighted the problems of reconciling the accounts of Jesus’s life and teaching that the four Gospels offer. The desire was to establish the relationship between the sources, so as to identify the earliest and most reliable witness. Historicity and objectivity reigned supreme. The differences between John and the Synoptics became a prime issue. Of course, other factors contributed to the development of the so-called ­“historico-critical method.” From the time of the Renaissance there was renewed interest in the original languages of scripture, Hebrew and Greek, and in getting back behind the multiple manuscripts to the original. From the nineteenth century it was assumed that reading a text meant “thinking the author’s thoughts after him” – so primacy was given to authorial intention, and this meant establishing who the author was, with the time or occasion of the writing *  Originally published in Louvain Studies 33 (2008): 208–220. I was pleased to offer these reflections in the Festschrift volume for Father Kenneth Collins, who for so many years intrigued the students at the University of Birmingham by his approach to exegesis of the Gospels.

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and how it fitted into the author’s situation and purposes, so as to discern the original meaning. Then alongside this was the rise of what has been called “historical consciousness”: that is, the sense that back then was not the same as now – “the past is a foreign country.” Uncovering that other world where the author lived, becoming acquainted with the author’s context, cultural assumptions, influences, sources, through studying parallel literature which could illuminate what the author might have meant – all this became crucial. But the common factor was the belief that to understand is to reconstruct: the original meaning, or the literal meaning understood in those terms, is the starting point. It is, we might say, an entirely archaeological approach. So the differences between John and the Synoptics were highlighted and the main problems identified. The key issues may be listed in summary form as follows: – The Passover corresponds with the Last Supper in the Synoptics, but in John Jesus dies on the Day of Preparation, that is, the afternoon preceding the Passover meal. – The Cleansing of the Temple initiates the final week of Jesus’s life in the Synoptics, but in John it initiates his public ministry. – John’s Gospel presupposes three years of ministry and regular visits to Jerusalem for the principal Jewish feasts; the Synoptics have Jesus visit Jerusalem only for the Passover at which he is arrested, and are unclear about the span of his ministry. – The seven “signs” in John hardly overlap at all with the many miracles in the Synoptics, except for the Feeding of the Multitude and the associated story of Jesus walking on the water, and some analogies or connections with the healing of the paralytic and of the centurion’s servant/nobleman’s son; furthermore the Synoptics repudiate “signs.” – There is hardly any similarity in the reports of Jesus’s teaching: the Synoptics collect sayings and parables, John has long discourses and allegories. – The Synoptics maintain a certain “hiddenness” with regard to Jesus’s identity (especially Mark with its “Messianic Secret”), whereas in John there is no secret about his heavenly origin, which is proclaimed from the beginning. Thus the historico-critical method of modernity pinpoints the contrasts. But what did traditional exegesis do with this problem?

II.  John and the Synoptics in the Fathers The Church Fathers would not, of course, have conceived the problem in the same terms, but they were exercised by the fact that there were four rather than one Gospel, and some went to enormous lengths to document and explain the

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differences between them. Others simply ignored the issue; yet it was to John’s Gospel, rather than the others, that they predominantly turned for discerning doctrine about theological realities.

1.  One in Four The initial problem that the Fathers faced was why there should be more than one Gospel. After all, the word “gospel” simply meant the “good news,” and Paul had affirmed one gospel and criticized those who would present “another” (Gal 1:6). During the second century Tatian created one gospel by producing an amalgam – the Diatesseron. Writing towards the end of that century, Irenaeus makes it quite clear that the fourfold gospel is essential. For Irenaeus, this fourfold gospel is providential, corresponding, firstly, to the fourfold nature of the created universe: there are four regions of the world and four winds (using the same Greek word as for “breath” and “spirit”), so, as the church is scattered all over the world and her “pillar and ground” (1 Tim 3:15) is the gospel and the Spirit of life, it is fitting that she should have four pillars, breathing out immortality and reviving people in every place.1 Secondly, the fourfold gospel corresponds to the cherubim with four faces – the lion, the calf, the human, the eagle – each representing an aspect of the Logos (Word), namely, his kingship, his sacrifice, his first advent, and his gift of the Spirit. Irenaeus relates each Gospel to one of these, so beginning a long tradition of artistic and exegetical symbolism. Finally he notes the four covenants given to the human race: with Adam, with Noah, with Moses, and the new covenant in Christ. These analogies imply that the fourfoldness relates to underlying unities: the unity of the one church throughout the world, the unity of the one God who is enthroned upon the cherubim (Ps 80:1), the unity of the Son of God, the Logos, and finally the unity and continuity of God’s “economy,” that is, the way God orders his relations with the world in covenantal dispensations. But for Irenaeus such unities do not imply one gospel text, since there is a kind of givenness about the four. So firm is the ground on which the four Gospels rest, he says, that even the heretics start from these documents, as each tries to establish his own doctrine but is confuted by the gospel text itself. He claims that the Ebionites use only Matthew and Marcion only a Luke he has mutilated, that Adoptionists prefer Mark and Valentianians exploit John. Later he refers to Valentinian use of a work called the Gospel of Truth, which he roundly rejects, claiming that the four Gospels alone are reliable and true, and that they represent God’s harmonious arrangement of everything. 1 Irenaeus, Haer., 3.11.8–9. The next two paragraphs draw from my chapter, “The Gospels and the Development of Doctrine,” in Cambridge Companion to the Gospels; reproduced as ch.  8 of the present volume.

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This discussion implies the reception of four Gospels as authoritative, while providing evidence that that reception was contested. Irenaeus indicates that the fourfold gospel is established as scripture alongside the Apostle (a collection of epistles), and matching the fivefold Law and the Prophets. Thus the arrangement of the canon also confirms the appropriateness of a multiform gospel, though the gospel is one in itself. The concern about the relationship between the Gospels, then, is not at first focused on the questions about their historical consistency, but rather enables theological reflection on the nature of scripture and of revelation. The gospel comes to us under four aspects, but bound together by the one Spirit.

2.  John’s difference Irenaeus said that the fourth Gospel was like a flying eagle, so pointing to the gift of the Spirit hovering with its wings over the church. A little later Clement of Alexandria made his famous remark: “But, last of all, aware that the physical facts had been recorded in the Gospels, encouraged by his pupils and irresistibly moved by the Spirit, John wrote a spiritual Gospel.”2 Clement’s successor in Alexandria, Origen, would develop this so as to derive theological meaning from some of the specific differences between John and the Synoptics. Thus, the Synoptics describe Jesus as man, John as God: so there is no genealogy in John because Jesus as a divine being had no genealogy,3 and there is no temptation either because God cannot be tempted.4 The other Gospels did not plainly declare the Godhead as John did, for no-one can apprehend the meaning of it without lying on Jesus’s breast and receiving from him his mother, Mary, to be his mother (1.4(6).23). Origen distinguishes the “bodily” gospel, evident to the senses, from the eternal or spiritual gospel; this is what John presents to those with a will to understand, and the object of exegesis is to transform the one into the other, penetrating to the profundities of the Gospel’s meaning (1.8(10).44–45). Origen produced detailed commentaries on both Matthew and John. Though we do not have his works complete, there is plenty enough to alert us to the fact that he was well aware of the specific issues about reconciling John’s version with that of the other Gospels. Indeed, from time to time in both Commentaries, he writes out the corresponding but divergent texts one after the other. As examples of how he treats the problems, we shall work through book 6 of the John Commentary, where he sets out the differences in the accounts of John the 2  Reported by Eusebius, Hist. eccl., 6.14; ET quoted: Williamson, History of the Church, 254–255. 3 Origen, Comm. Jo., 1.4(6).21. Further references to the Commentary on John will be incorporated into the text of this paper. 4  This is noted in his works on Matthew and Luke: see Grant, Earliest Lives of Jesus, 62.

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Baptist, and book 10, where he does likewise with events at the opening of ­Jesus’s ministry and in particular the Cleansing of the Temple. Clearly Origen embarks on discussion of these matters with a determination to set out all the problems, so as to show no disagreement but harmony (6.24(14).127). He documents divergent details (6.31(16).158 ff.): in John, the Baptist claims to be the voice of one crying in the wilderness; in the other Gospels, the words do not appear on his lips, but are variously referenced by the evangelists, with other prophetic texts attached, and with abbreviations of the prophetic passages quoted – no more comment is offered here than the observation that this shows how the evangelists treated sayings of the prophets. A more extended discussion is provoked by John’s presentation of enquiries from priests and Levites, then from the Pharisees – such enquiries are not found in the other Gospels, which focus on the whole countryside turning out and responding to the Baptist’s call to repent and be baptized. Origen proceeds to work out an elaborate account of how the Matthaean words of rebuke are the Baptist’s response to the Pharisees, whereas Mark has no words of reproof, the Pharisees not being mentioned in his version. They are a different set of people from the crowds who did confess their sins; they are “vipers” because they did not confess their sins and came to baptism without believing in him. In similar fashion other aspects of the accounts are woven together to produce the desired harmony, while making a meaningful point about those who truly respond and believe and those who do not. Origen next compares the Baptist’s testimony to Jesus. Distinctive features of Matthew’s version are explained on the basis that he was writing in Hebrew for those of the circumcision who believed (6.32 (17).162 ff.). Origen is quite clear that the evangelists did not disagree because their memories were inaccurate: “believers cannot think that either of the evangelists made any mistake or misrepresentation” (6.34(18).171) – so the textual differences in reporting the saying of John the Baptist about being unable (Matthew), or unworthy (John), to carry (Matthew), or untie the thongs of (John), his sandals, must mean the Baptist said something twice which was similar but not the same. So the meanings of both versions he weaves together, taking a theological opportunity through teasing out the symbolism, and so again achieving harmony. It is a great thing, Origen thinks, to carry Jesus’s sandals, and to stoop down to the “bodily features of his mission” and untie the difficulties associated with his incarnation, and he proceeds to take the sandals as representing two descents – the incarnation and the descent to Hades. But Luke and John do not mention “stooping down”: maybe one who fixes his eyes on the height of the Logos’s exaltation can so loosen the sandals as to behold the Logos as he is, the Son of God, divested of inferior things (6.35(19).179). And there is a difference between being “able” and being “worthy” – maybe the Baptist became able, but was not yet entirely worthy (6.36 (20).180 ff.). So in John’s Gospel he perhaps received the gift of

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untying one sandal (in John the word for “sandal” appears in the singular), since he bears witness to the incarnation, but being in doubt about the future, he is not yet worthy to untie the other (6.37(21).184–187). In book 6, then, we see Origen harmonising the differences he highlights, and making theological capital out of the process of interpreting one version in terms of another. In book 10 we can observe another feature of Origen’s methods. In his discussion of exegetical method in his First Principles,5 Origen famously stated that, while most passages in scripture have a literal or historical sense, some simply do not, the Holy Spirit having worked impossibilities into the text so as to provoke the reader into searching for the deeper sense. The incompatibilities between John and the Synoptics he now acknowledges to fall into that bracket. There is no way of handling them without “anagogy,” and without looking very carefully so as to discern the intention of the different evangelists. The problem he faces in book 10 is not simply the fact that the Cleansing of the Temple falls at the beginning of John’s account of the ministry and at the end in the Synoptics. The beginning of the passage he is treating speaks of Jesus going down to Capernaum, and the other Gospels simply cannot fit with this statement: starting with the Temptation (which does not appear in John anyway), each of the other three sends him to Nazareth before Capernaum, and begins the account of his Galilaean ministry (10.1(1).3 ff.). In John, after Capernaum he goes to Jerusalem for the Passover, and meets Nicodemus. Then there is the difficulty that the Synoptics speak of Jesus’s ministry beginning after the Baptist was arrested, whereas John speaks of Jesus baptizing alongside the Baptist’s continuing activities (10.3(2).14). The only way of coping with these discrepancies is either to renounce the idea of finding all the Gospels true and just choosing one, or accepting all four and judge that their truth is not to be sought at the merely material level. That, of course, is Origen’s preferred option. He then goes on to draw a scenario which purports to explain how four inspired authors come up with inconsistencies. He invites us (10.4(3).15 ff.) to imagine several people who by the Spirit see God, know God’s words and sense God’s presence; they do so in different places and receive various different kinds of benefits. Each independently reports what he has seen in the Spirit, and they agree about something the Spirit said to them all, while differing in terms of their narratives about where or when it happened. Now anyone who imagines God is confined to a particular space or time will assume that they cannot all be right; but if the storytellers are really trying to convey by an image what they saw in their mind, then their common meaning would be found to show no disagreement (10.5(4).18). So it is with the four evangelists. They made use of 5  Greek text: Origenes Werke, De Principiis, ed. P. Koetschau (Leipzig: Hinrich, 1899); ET Origen. On First Principles, trans. G. W. Butterworth (London: SPCK, 1936).

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things done and said by Jesus for their purposes, and tacked on things revealed to them intellectually in a way that makes it seem as if they are describing sensible or material things. Origen refuses to condemn them even if, sometimes, they play a bit fast and loose with things that happened historically in order to serve their “mystical” ends. Of course, where possible they meant to serve the truth both materially and spiritually, but where it was not possible, the spiritual would have priority, the spiritual truth often being preserved, so to speak, in the material falsehood. So the apparent discrepancies in the Gospels are to be exploited for spiritual interpretation. In other words, they are a theological opportunity rather than a historical problem. In the light of this he returns to the difficulties he has identified. For some he offers no solution, for who is wise enough to learn all the things recorded in the four Gospels, understanding each incident and their connections (10.8(6).36)? He expends a lot of effort on the proper interpretation of Capernaum, challenging Heracleon’s comment that nothing is recorded as having happened there by drawing on the Synoptics to fill out John 2:12. We will focus, however, on his treatment of the Cleansing of the Temple. Once again he is meticulous in quoting each of the Gospels for comparison, and noting that in the Synoptics the story is linked with Jesus’s only visit to Jerusalem and the Triumphal Entry, which John also reports, but in John there are two visits widely separated from one another. He explicitly states that he finds it impossible for those who admit nothing but the history to show that these discrepant events are in harmony with one another (10.22(15).130). So he embarks on an interpretation which is symbolic through and through, pointing out the inherent improbabilities of the narrative, while acknowledging that the evangelist uses known practices to construct the story. Every soul with the capacity to perceive the things of the mind is a citizen of Jerusalem; the Temple is the church. Even in Jerusalem and the church there are some in sin, and Jesus drives them out. The animals for sacrifice are given symbolic meanings, and the deeper truth that material sacrifices are no longer needed is drawn out (10.23(16).131 ff.). He then looks in detail at the difficulties of taking Matthew’s version literally, with similar results, notably the suggestion that the two animals in Matthew’s Triumphal Entry represent the two testaments, Old and New (10.26 (17).152 ff.). Detailed comparisons between all four accounts, both of the Triumphal Entry and the Cleansing, lead to the conclusion that it is only by the anagogic method that the discrepancies can be satisfactorily resolved. Each evangelist ascribes to the Logos different modes of action, which are similarly effective for souls with different temperaments (10.31(18).199). For Origen everything in scripture that was an ἀπορία (aporia – a difficulty hard to explain) was a theological opportunity, a provocation by the Spirit to explore at greater depth and abandon the fruitless task of giving a literal interpretation, by which he meant one merely at the physical level of our historical

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life on earth. The differences between John and the Synoptics fell into the same category.

3.  Doctrinal Exegesis Writing some 200 years later than Origen, Cyril of Alexandria set out to write δογματικώτερα ἐξήγησις (dogmatikōtera exēgē sis – more doctrinal interpretation).6 In his Commentary on John, he assumes that the Gospel was directed against heresies, which either already existed or were foreseen. Cyril inherited the tradition that the purpose of the fourth Gospel was to be discerned by comparison and contrast with the other Gospels, but differences with the Synoptics he largely ignored on the basis that this final Gospel was intended to be a supplement, providing a more theological or spiritual understanding of Christ and of God’s purpose of human salvation through incarnation. The occasional cross references to the Synoptics serve those ends. Thus, commenting on John 1:15 (Comm. Jo., 1.9), “glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth,” Cyril notices Luke’s statement, “Jesus increased in wisdom and grace” (Luke 2:52); how can that which is full increase, he asks, or receive addition? His answer is that Luke cannot be suggesting that he increased in his being Word and God, but rather that observers of his works increased in their wonder and declared him more full of grace – in virtue of being God he was already perfect with regard to grace. Another example (Comm. Jo., 4.1) reveals another technique: discussing the words, “I came down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me” (John 6:38), Cyril cross refers Matthew 26:39, “Let this cup pass from me; nevertheless not as I will, but as Thou wilt.” The Word was God, Cyril affirms, and “could not cower before death”; but “having come to be in the flesh,” he allows himself to experience human fear in the face of mortality, in order to conquer it. “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak”: Cyril quotes Matthew again to confirm his christological reading of one Gospel in terms of the other. Matthew again assists Cyril’s reading of John (Comm. Jo., 4.2) when he notes that the words which Matthew reports at the Last Supper, “Take, eat” and “Take, drink,” were said to believers. The mystery to which John 6:53 refers (i.e. the words, “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood you have no life in you”) is not explained to those devoid of understanding, who reject faith without investigating it properly. Later in the same passage, Luke’s stories of healing (the daughter of the ruler of the synagogue) and raising from 6  Cyril of Alexandria, preface to Comm. Jo., Greek text: Migne, PG 73.15–16c; Sancti Patris Nostri Cyrilli Archiepiscopi Alexandrini in D. Joannis Evangelion, ed. P. E. Pusey (Oxford: Clarendon, 1872), 7; ET of selections of Cyril’s writings are in Norman Russell, Cyril of Alexandria (London: Routledge, 2000). Further references are incorporated into the text of this paper.

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the dead (the widow’s son at Nain) allow Cyril to highlight the “holy flesh” of the Saviour – he did not rely on word alone, but demonstrated by touch that his own body was life-giving. Cyril concentrates, then, on ways in which John helps to bring out the significance of events, and largely ignores the problems of chronology and the differences in detail.

III.  Can we Learn from the Fathers in the Postmodern Context? Many of the assumptions of modernity are breaking down in what has been called the “postmodern” context.7 The possibility of objectivity is questioned, given the impossibility of divesting the investigator of all presuppositions and the pluralism of perspectives which were, and are, present in interpreting the so-called facts. Challenges have been offered to the exclusively “archaeological” approach to meaning, which distanced the reader from the text. Meanwhile critical theory has changed the approach to texts across the whole field of literary studies, including biblical interpretation. Structuralism shifted the focus away from the original “authorial intention” – the French thinker Roland Barthes wrote a famous essay entitled, “The Death of the Author.” For a time, attention was given to analysis of the text in itself: for texts carry a surplus of meaning beyond what the author intended. Structuralism, however, soon gave way, via Derrida’s deconstruction, to interest in the reader: for texts have no reality until “re-played” through someone making sense of the black and white patterns on the paper – so the reader’s contribution, particularly to resolving the aporiai in the text, became paramount. It was then noticed that traditions of reading are formed in “reading communities,” that texts can acquire authority and “create worlds” – so, for example, the Bible has reinforced social orders which included slavery and patriarchy. The future of the text, its potential to generate new meaning, became important for interpretation, not just its past, or its background. Meanwhile hermeneutics had been attending to questions concerning the gap between the world of ancient texts and the world of the reader. Postmodernism is hard to define, but it certainly involves critique of modernity, and therefore has opened up the possibility that exegetes might look with greater sympathy on the contribution made by premodern exegetes. It seems to me that some of the points made in this brief sketch of postmodern interpretation enable us to draw on the Fathers, not slavishly but creatively. I will outline some points:

7  I eschew footnotes to this rapid summary of trends in the latter part of the twentieth century; postmodernism is a large and contested territory. See further ch.  1 above.

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– It is clear, surely, that what the Gospels are really about is a spiritual message, rather than the sort of careful historical record modernity has expected. These texts constantly point beyond themselves, and they do so in characteristically different ways. The postmodern critique enables an appreciation that the focus on historicity was a category mistake, and the Fathers’ approach to seeing theological opportunities in the differences might be re-minted for our own time. John’s insistence on beginning with eternity rather than a human genealogy makes it imperative to read these texts side by side with theological questions in mind. – Even without postmodernism’s attack on authorial intention, Gospel criticism had reached the point, through redaction-criticism, of recognizing that the four Gospels provide four different portraits or perspectives on an elusive personality. The truth about any person is not reducible to concrete facts or ipsissima verba, and the fourfold witness creates the possibility of a range of insights. Even detectives dealing with more concrete facts prefer multiple witnesses, which may corroborate or contradict or refine one another. As Origen saw, there is a fundamental unity, yet also four differing reports, and these can provide material for deeper and wider appreciation of the range of ways in which this figure meets the hopes and expectations of human hearts, and the many differing needs of human souls. – The Fathers suggest that the reader needs to be inspired, not just the author. It takes discernment to find deeper meanings, and there are two features of the biblical texts that lead that way – one is obvious symbolism, or figures of speech like metaphor, where the literal sense is by no means the prime, or even the real, meaning of the actual language employed, the other lies in the aporiai, the difficulties and inconsistencies, the impossibilities, the things in the text that make you think. Structuralism and deconstruction have each in their turn encouraged close attention to the text, its form and features, and its gaps or aporiai. Surely this might be an invitation to discover theological opportunities in the gaps and differences between John and the Synoptics, but in our own creative way. It is not implausible to suggest that liturgical considerations lay behind the great differences between the Synoptic and Johannine order, and to recall events in liturgical time is a very different kind of thing from recording events as history. Postmodern emphasis on the contribution of the reader surely allows a range of insights to come into play. – But reader-oriented criticism also encourages a plurality of meanings, and the possibility of the text having future meanings which could never have been envisaged originally. The Fathers, in their innocence, imagined the possibility of the author of John’s Gospel anticipating the need to confute heresies which arose later – or was it not innocence but rather confidence in the foresight of the real author, the Holy Spirit? Our postmodern recognition that multiple meanings will emerge in different contexts might allow us to affirm

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the possibility of the Word of God addressing different people through the same text, with outcomes that seem specific to particular situations quite different from the original setting. The differences between the Gospels could be seen as providential, in that John could be at the centre in the christological controversies of the fourth and fifth centuries, while the Synoptics could open up liberation theology in the twentieth. – Postmodernism, with its consciousness of pluralism and of the relativity of perspectives, has placed a good deal of emphasis on the “other” and the importance of differentiation and confrontation with the “other” for our own sense of identity. At this point we should note that postmodernism is after modernity, and there is no possibility of regaining premodern innocence. So the historico-critical paradigm remains important for reminding us that the Gospels are “other” – they come from an alien world, from a culture long since moribund and are written in a dead language. The differences between John and the Synoptics reflect some features of that alien culture, and provide keys to cross-cultural communication, to identifying different fundamental commitments and ways of understanding what we mean by truth. In this way they contest the fundamentalism that is the child of modernity, and which the Fathers would not recognize as providing true insight into the depth of what the Gospel is about.

Chapter 10

Rereading Jesus through rereading the Gospels Throughout my teaching career the course title which appeared in the syllabus of the degree programme to which I was expected to contribute was “The Life and Teaching of Jesus.” The title in itself thus implied the quest for the historical Jesus, though the course actually covered all aspects of modern gospel criticism. In this essay I want to underline the significance which that approach necessarily retains for Christian theology, whilst also setting it in a context which should create a shift in the gospel reader’s expectations and presuppositions. For texts yield very different fruits depending on the questions asked of them, and the extent to which we endeavour to control their reception. Should the Gospels be analysed as ancient texts offering material evidence for historical reconstruction according to a detective model and as providing clues from which causal explanations can be deduced? Or should we engage with the Gospels in ways that might potentially generate readings rich with resonances and so perhaps enable a more fertile rereading of Jesus? The question of genre lies at the heart of this enquiry. The reason for highlighting this question is, of course, the fact that genre shapes expectations: though often remarkably similar in narrative form, we do not expect to read a novel in the same way as a biography or history. New Testament criticism has of course long engaged with that issue, at one time claiming that “gospel” was a new literary genre without clear precedent. To some extent this facilitated the claim that the Gospels were never meant to be biographies, certainly not of the kind modern readers have come to expect, though more recently their character as biographies of the kind expected by ancient authors has been defended.1 Perhaps we should begin by exploring the generic expectations of the earliest gospel readers we can trace, in the hope that our discoveries might offer some perennially appropriate insights into how the gospel texts themselves asked to be approached.

1 Burridge,

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I.  Second-Century Reading Justin Martyr, writing in the mid-second century, mentions gospel texts: For the apostles, in the memoirs (ἀπομνημεύματα – apomnē meumata) they composed which are called Gospels, have passed on to us what was commanded them: that Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, said, “Do this in remembrance of me; this is my body”… (1 Apol., 66) And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gathered together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits… (1 Apol., 67) … We find it recorded in the memoirs of his apostles… (Dial., 100)

It would appear that Justin applies the term “gospel” to these memoirs somewhat tentatively.2 He often quotes words of Jesus without identifying his source, and his quotations provide evidence of a huge variety of text forms; 3 so debate about the format in which he received the gospel tradition has been inevitable. His pupil, Tatian, produced the Diatessaron, supposedly an amalgam of the four Gospels, harmonising the tradition – so Justin’s use of either oral tradition or such a harmony has been canvassed. What seems to be emerging, however, is a consensus that there were many manuscript memoirs of Jesus in circulation in the second century – “the written tradition was at its most fluid in the first century of its existence.”4 At the end of the century Irenaeus and Tertullian accused Marcion of mutilating the Gospel according to Luke.5 The latest detailed study of Marcion’s Gospel suggests, however, that he might have been using an earlier form of the text, and his Gospel must be “set against a wider backcloth of the transmission of Jesus traditions in the second century, both orally and in written form.”6 When Irenaeus and Tertullian wrote against Marcion, there were more or less authoritative text forms of four Gospels, but that seems not to have been the case earlier. Certainly what Justin is likely to have known were various codices containing manuscript records of apostles’ “memoirs,” rather than any kind of authorized collection. Yet the texts he had were read in liturgy alongside the prophets. This, I suggest, alerts us to important features of the Gospels as a genre, as well as to the manner of their reading within Christian tradition from the beginning. Several points are significant: 2  Judith M. Lieu, Marcion and the Making of a Heretic. God and Scripture in the Second Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 429. 3  David Parker, The Living Text of the New Testament (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 188. 4 Parker, Living Text, 200. 5 Irenaeus, Haer., 1.27.2; Tertullian, Marc., 4.2.2, Latin text and ET: Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem, ed. and trans. E. Evans, 2 vols., OECT (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972). 6 Lieu, Marcion, 209.

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– irrespective of authorship, sources, etc., the Gospels have always been received as “memoirs of the apostles” – they have always been read episodically – the principal reading context has always been liturgy – oral and written traditions were alike fluidly recalled and disseminated To sense the significance of these points, a number of observations are worth making: 1) It is worth noting that, even in an age of almost universal literacy and easily available printed texts, the gospel stories are still constantly retold, especially to children, in the narrator’s own words. Thus the influence of memory remains high in the transmission and reception of gospel material. That it was so from the beginning is evident, as is the fact that this had an effect on the written texts. David Parker notes the point that “it is of the essence of a manuscript tradition that every copy is different, both unique and imperfect,”7 and also underlines the reality that the early textual tradition displays extreme variation, by contrast with the transmission of the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible which “preserves the sacred writings with extraordinary accuracy.”8 Both oral and written traditions about Jesus were “free” for a remarkably long time and texts were long influenced by trusted oral sources which encouraged alterations or additions, of which the well-known pericope concerning the adulterous woman (John 7:53–8:11) is but the most notorious example. For Parker, “request for a single original text of the Gospels is driven by the same forces that have sought a single original saying of Jesus behind the different texts of different Gospels. Both quests are dubious.” Two much quoted comments from the early second century suggest that the early church did indeed value more highly than books the authentic voice of memory: I supposed that things out of books did not profit me so much as the utterances of a voice which liveth and abideth.9 Certain people declared in my hearing, “unless I can find a thing in our ancient records, I refuse to believe it in the Gospel”; and when I answered them that it is indeed in the ancient scriptures, they retorted “that has got to be proved.” But for my part, my records are Jesus Christ; for me the sacrosanct records are his cross and death and resurrection, and the faith that comes through him. And it is by these and by the help of your prayers, I am hoping to be justified.10

It is noticeable the extent to which, in the earliest Christian texts, allusion is made to apparently gospel material but so loosely that it is hard to decide whether the text of one or other Gospel is actually referred to or not. This is true of 7 Parker,

Living Text, 188. Living Text, 198. 9  Papias, quoted by Eusebius, Hist. eccl., 3.39. 10 Ignatius, Phld., 8. 8 Parker,

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the Apostolic Fathers, and indeed of the New Testament epistles themselves, and points to the early dominance of memories handed on. Even later, when written texts were certainly available, Justin’s descriptions of the teaching of Jesus prove the same point: he gathers together sayings on chastity, quoting them freely, probably from memory, slips on to sayings about repentance, love and praying for enemies, adds words about laying up treasure in heaven and being merciful as the Father is merciful. Here Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount might seem to be providing the teaching, but Justin does not follow the Matthaean order and often uses apparently Lucan wording. We could go on reviewing Justin’s compilation (1 Apol., 16–17), recognizing material from our own knowledge of the gospel texts but finding it is never quite the same. Memory is more significant than documentation. This living character of the process whereby oral traditions were formed and their continuity ensured by performance is also recognized by James D. G. Dunn in his comprehensive discussion in Jesus Remembered.11 2) We should consider further memory’s influence on the substance of the tradition; for to receive the gospel texts as memoirs carries with it implications for the nature of the contents. What memory does is to select what is memorable – what is selected is what has made an impact, especially if there is shock involved, or emotions engaged, or awareness dramatically changed. It is no wonder that compilations of memories of Jesus reached a climax with the hugely surprising, perplexing yet ultimately liberating story of the passion, nor that most of the incidents recalled were of apparently miraculous healings, nor that the teachings recollected included disturbingly fresh challenges to current religious practice and extraordinarily impossible demands, such as loving enemies. Striking anecdotes are always remembered rather than the humdrum passage of everyday routines, and those recounted tend to be the ones which especially capture the charisma of an exceptional personality – it is no accident that in the Gospels reactions to Jesus are expressed in the amazed question, “Who is this?” Of course, the anecdotes and sayings would inevitably be coloured by those contemporary cultural codes and resonances which shaped perceptions and ways of understanding. What is needed, however, is not necessarily a process of stripping these away to get at the bare facts, but rather imaginative cultural translation; for facts never appear without the dress of the interpretative medium of language, along with sign and symbol, image and myth. 3) The liturgical context reinforces the orality and the piecemeal, episodic character of gospel reading, and not just in the second century, of course, but throughout Christian history. We began with a couple of quotations from Justin, one of which demonstrated his explanatory use of the pericope describing 11  J. D. G Dunn, Jesus Remembered, vol.  1 of Christianity in the Making (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2003), 334.

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how Jesus took bread and wine, and said, “Do this in remembrance of me”: could there be a better example to endorse the key insights of form criticism? But if the transmission of the gospel material was principally in liturgy then there are more effects of which to take notice: theological presuppositions of the worshippers would be shaped by the reading, and conversely would shape the way the text was heard. The earliest Christian writings provide evidence not only for the affirmation of one Creator and Father of all, but for the extraordinary claim that nothing, not even one’s inner thoughts, is beyond God’s purview. Let us observe how close God is, and that none of our thoughts, none of the inner debates we have, escape his attention… For God is a searcher of thoughts and desires. (1 Clem., 21) Nothing escapes the Lord’s notice – indeed, even our hidden secrets are present to God. (Ignatius, Eph.,15)

Justin, too, affirming the one God, Creator of all (1 Apol., 10), Father and Lord of the universe (1 Apol., 41), emphasizes also that all are accountable to this God and nothing escapes God’s notice (1 Apol., 12). This context reinforced the memory that Jesus’s teaching focused on interiority, the thoughts and motivations behind actions, not merely forbidding murder but anger, not just adultery but lust (Matt 5:21–22, 27–28). What this generates for those early Christian writers is exhortation to “act in everything we do as if God were dwelling within us, so that we may be his temples” (Ignatius, Eph., 15). Awe and respect for the Lord is a beautiful thing, a real bonus, bringing salvation to all who live with that attitude, with pure mind and holy lifestyle. (1 Clem., 21)

Justin speaks of Christians offering thanksgivings for creation, for health, for the seasons, and presenting petitions for their future life (1 Apol., 13). They pray and fast, repenting of their sins and being born-again in baptism (1 Apol., 41). They gather together on Sunday, and in that context of prayer, eucharistic celebration and collections to help the needy, support widows and orphans, the sick and strangers, the gospel reading takes place. For everything God supplies, we bless the Creator of all through his Son, Jesus Christ, and through the Holy Spirit. (1 Apol., 67)

Such is the situation in which prayers through Jesus, even to Jesus, begin to seem natural. Already by 112 CE, the Roman Governor of Bithynia, Pliny, wrote to the Emperor Trajan saying of Christians, “It was their habit on a fixed day to assemble before daylight and sing a hymn to Christ as to God”.12 It has been suggested that the eucharistic prayer of Addai and Mari might go back as 12  Pliny the Younger, Letters, 10:96, Latin text: Letters, vol.  2 : Books 8–10, and Panegyricus, trans Betty Radice, LCL 59 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969).

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early as the second century, and this addresses directly the Lord who put on humanity: And with these heavenly powers we give Thee thanks, O my Lord, we also, thy unworthy, frail and miserable servants, because Thou hast dealt graciously with us in a way that cannot be repaid, in that Thou didst assume our humanity that Thou mightest restore us to life by Thy divinity.13

To hear the Gospels read in this setting is to attend to the text in a very different kind of way to that adopted by the so-called quest for the historical Jesus, which deliberately sought to tear away the veil of devotion and doctrine, probing behind the Gospels to rediscover the facts. How appropriate is this to the very nature of the Gospel texts? 4) Yet, as long as the Gospels were treated as memoirs, the birth, teaching, mighty acts, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus would be recalled as real happenings, not some kind of religious myth. Which brings us to a crucial observation: the early church sat no more lightly to the human story of Jesus than modern questers, though their reasons for doing so were doubtless quite different. One significant factor in retaining a grasp on the story of Jesus was the importance of his exemplary life and death: the Martyrdom of Polycarp tells a story modelled on the passion-narrative. Justin’s reason for his collection of Jesus’s teaching was to show it went beyond anything heard before; the claim to a superior ethic was grounded in the teaching and example of Jesus (1 Apol., 17). Ancient biographies were concerned to portray the character of the hero by telling the story of his words and deeds to encourage imitation of his virtues and promote his memory and reputation; this is surely what the Gospels were intended to do, at the very least.14 There was, however, another important driver for recalling the concrete reality of Christ’s human life, namely the rapid appearance of docetic versions of the Jesus-story. Concrete memories doubtless animated the immediate and robust reaction to groups of Christians who assumed Christ was really a supernatural being and not an ordinary human being at all. There were probably more than one kind of docetist: some seem to have thought that Christ came onto the human Jesus at his baptism and retreated prior to the crucifixion, appealing to the cry on the cross, “My power, my power, why hast now forsaken me?”; 15 others may have envisaged an angel dressed in human guise, such as found in the book of Tobit. Against those who claimed that “he suffered in phantom only,” however, Ignatius (Trall., 9–10) affirmed, that “He [Christ] was truly born, truly ate and drank, was truly persecuted 13 

51.

A. Gelston, The Eucharistic Prayer of Addai and Mari (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992),

14 Dunn, Jesus Remembered, 185, following D. Aune, The New Testament in its Literary Environment (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1987), chs. 1 and 2; and Burridge, What are the Gospels? 15  E.g. Cerinthus; see Irenaeus, Haer., 1.21.

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under Pontius Pilate, truly was crucified and died, and … truly raised from the dead,” his climax being the affirmation that “His Father raised him up, who will in like manner raise us up who believe in him.” The concrete story which Ignatius defended meant for him the imparting of true life to believers through Christ’s real sharing in human life and death. As he travels towards his own martyrdom he affirms that no-one would suffer martyrdom for a phantom; and for him, the eucharist is “the medicine of immortality” (Eph., 20.2). It was for docetic features that at least one gospel circulating in the second century was rejected. As Eusebius tells us (Hist. eccl., 6.12), Serapion of Antioch wrote a pamphlet entitled, “The so-called Gospel of Peter,” to refute the lies in that document: we hear that at first, Serapion confessed his failure to examine it, but when he went through the book he drew the conclusion that “while most of it accorded with the authentic teaching of the Saviour, some passages were spurious additions,” and these he traced to the “Docetae.” In the second century, then, there were factors driving a commitment to what we might describe as the historical Jesus. Behind this surely lay the very notion of memoir; implied within that was a trust in the original witnesses, but also more than mere attachment to bare fact. A plenitude of rich associations, meanings and resonances were integrally carried in corporately celebrated memorials.

II.  The Quest of the Historical Jesus and its implications for reading the Gospels Most students of the Gospels now approach them in a starkly different way. The story of the quest has been told many times, but it is worth picking out a few highlights in order to consider how the texts were being read and why this reading has been distorted, but also how it has proved capable of renewing the Christian reading of Jesus. Reimarus (1694 to 1768) is usually credited with stimulating the project by finding “cause to separate completely what the apostles say in their own writings from that which Jesus himself actually said and taught.”16 It was not difficult to show on the basis of the gospel sources that Jesus did not preach directly to Gentiles, did not institute the sacraments of baptism and eucharist, and did not teach Christian doctrines such as the atonement and the Trinity. Rather, he was a Jew who upheld the Law, called Jews to repentance, promising the arrival of their expected Messiah and the establishment of God’s kingdom in Jerusalem. Neither miracles nor prophetic fulfilment could prove Christianity was other than a fraud: the disciples stole Jesus’s body and out of disappointment at 16 Reimarus,

64.

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the failure of his mission, altered the entire doctrine. Such critique, based on discontinuity between what Jesus himself intended and the later mission of the apostles, not to mention subsequent development of doctrine, has kept on recurring in lesser and more radical forms, and is clearly dramatically different from a reading which takes the Gospels as fundamentally consisting of the “memoirs of the apostles,” thus presuming continuity. Now, however, it is widely recognized that the early church’s message was indeed about Jesus Christ, whereas Jesus himself focused on the kingdom of God and eschewed explicit claims concerning his own identity. Indeed, this perception must surely be deemed consonant with treating the Gospels as memoirs – for they inevitably focus on the charismatic figure who has had such impact as to generate such recollections. And as for claims – the repudiation of signs (Matt 12:38–39, 16:1– 4; Mark 8:11–12; Luke 11:16, 29–30), the accounts of the temptations, which seem to encapsulate at least Jesus’s refusal to adopt ways of power to further his mission, and the emphasis of the sayings tradition on servanthood are memories of Jesus which encourage that consistent feature of early Christian writings which puts emphasis on humility and self-deprecation – countercultural virtues given the drive for δόξα (doxa – personal glory) in Greco-Roman society – yet, for early Christians these were virtues clearly modelled on the one who emptied himself and took the way of the cross. That there was both reserve about Jesus’s own identity and something enigmatic about his words and ways should be judged to fit with the gospel depiction of the disciples’ puzzlement and slow progress towards understanding. Reimarus was indeed provocative, but what he provoked in the end might actually be a more sensitive reading than was possible while Christendom’s triumphalist presumptions held sway. Standing out among provocative figures of the nineteenth century is David Friedrich Strauss.17 Against previous attempts to rationalize the miracles and explain away supernatural intervention by distinguishing fact and interpretation, he claimed that, as it appears in the Gospels, the whole story of Jesus is thoroughly mythologized: facts and mythical features are inseparably intertwined, and myth completely overlays history. Although at first he emphasized Jesus’s apocalyptic system and messianic delusions, he later stressed his God-consciousness, thus finding perennial value at the heart of cultural patterns of thought long since outmoded. In response scholars such as Renan, Holtzman and Harnack, endeavouring to uncover a charismatic character capable of inspiring all that legendary gospel material, composed the so-called “liberal lives of Jesus.” The message of Jesus was identified as the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. Here was the supreme religious genius, a great moral personality attractive to nineteenth-century idealists. Yet inevitably this Jesus was 17  David Friedrich Strauss, The Life of Jesus Critically Examined, ed. P. C. Hodgson, trans. George Elliot, 2nd ed. (Ramsey, NJ: Sigler, 1994).

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abstracted from his first century Jewish context. Albert Schweitzer in 1906 in his now notorious book, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, demonstrated how the enterprise produced a series of projections onto the past: investigators saw their own faces reflected back from the bottom of a deep well.18 Jesus Schweitzer saw as a stranger: he comes to us as one unknown, he suggested, a prophet of the End who died disillusioned. What Schweitzer did, however, was to expose the presuppositions which led to readings of the Gospels which, it is obvious now, were ahistorical and minimalist. The kind of thing Strauss identified as the omni­present mythologizing could not be discarded so easily without violating the evidence. Yet the issues keep recurring: Bultmann’s programme of “de-­ mythologization” must be read against the background of Strauss’s work.19 Meanwhile, however, critical methods for analysing that evidence had begun to emerge and would dominate twentieth-century gospel study. Source criticism noted the Gospels’ dependence on one another – they were not independent witnesses. So careful detective analysis began. This determined that, contrary to long-standing tradition, Mark not Matthew was the earliest Gospel, and pretty much all of Mark was reproduced in the other so-called Synoptics. It also identified non-Markan material common to Matthew and Luke, the supposed common source being designated Q, and these conclusions were deemed to provide two early independent sources. Mark’s narrative became the framework for biographical reconstruction into which material from other sources could be integrated, further independent sources being traced by noting material exclusive to Matthew and Luke respectively. The extent to which John’s Gospel might contribute to this project was problematic, given its very different character, its obvious shaping in terms of theological perspective, and its alternative chronological framework. So Mark held the field, at least until it was fully recognized that Wrede’s detection of the Messianic Secret in Mark meant that even in the earliest Gospel the material had been shaped by the post-resurrection point of view.20 Later, redaction criticism would turn to identifying such distinctive features introduced into each Gospel by the editorial process. This enterprise, however, was dependent on the prior results of form criticism, a method which endeavoured to trace the forms which the material took in the course of oral transmission. Discrete sayings and pericopae were examined, so that parallels and tendencies could be mapped, a process leading to the radical conclusion that so much was modified by, or incorporated into, the tradition that almost nothing

18  Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus: a critical study of its progress from Reimarus to Wrede, trans. W. Montgomery, 2nd English ed. (London: Black, 1911). 19  E.g. R. Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology (New York: Scribners, 1958). 20  W. Wrede, The Messianic Secret, trans. James C. G. Grieg (Cambridge: James Clarke, 1971).

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could be regarded as going back to Jesus himself.21 In reaction to this, criteria were developed to determine authentic Jesus material, and the New Quest began endeavouring to set out what was distinctive, and what more was coherent with that distinctive core. But this too separated Jesus from his historical context. So a further quest began, trying to identify how Jesus appeared in the context of his time. This so-called Third Quest has produced a plethora of plausible but hypothetical Jesuses: for example, the Jewish holy man (Vermes); the rabbi (Chilton); the Pharisee (Maccoby); the Galilean peasant (Crossan and the Jesus seminar); the sage, the seer (Witherington); the prophet of the End-time (Sanders, Allison, Ehrman); the true Messiah (Wright).22 What is evident in this whole endeavour is a mindset informed by post-­ Enlightenment questioning of the perspectives and beliefs of those who told Jesus’s story, not least the belief in miracles and supernatural powers, and also by modernity’s awareness of historical “otherness” – the past is a foreign country. Inevitably this creates a hermeneutic of suspicion, the Gospels being read as sources providing data to be critically assessed for the purpose of identifying clues for getting behind the texts and enabling historical reconstruction. Nevertheless, in one respect the endeavour is of profound importance – it reaffirms the human, historical reality of the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth, a reality constantly under pressure from the power of post-resurrection Christian beliefs about him. It is for this reason that no New Testament scholar, no theologian, can avoid the challenge and the questions. In the modern intellectual environment apologetic motivations are a factor in the search for answers, not least because the obverse of the mindset outlined has been a refusal to accept that there are questions to be faced and a fundamentalist insistence that the Gospels be taken at face value. Surely, curiosity alone is enough to press the issues: what really happened? What was Jesus really like? What was his mission all about? And the very process of opening up such enquiries is itself a reaffirmation of that key element in Christian theology – the true, historical humanity of Jesus of Nazareth. No historical reconstruction can ever be definitive – it is always a matter of assessing probabilities. The probability that Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate is very high, and some attempts at reconstruction would take that as the 21 R. Bultmann, History of the Synoptic Tradition, trans. J. Marsh (Oxford: Blackwell, 1963). 22  G. Vermes, Jesus the Jew and The Religion of Jesus the Jew (London: SCM Press, 1993); B. Chilton, Rabbi Jesus: An Intimate Biography (New York: Doubleday, 2000); H. Maccoby, Jesus the Pharisee (London: SCM Press, 2003); J. D. Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001); Witherington III, Jesus the Sage; Jesus the Seer; E. P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (London: Penguin, 1993); D. C. Allison, Jesus of Nazareth: Millenarian Prophet (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998); Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millenium (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (London: SPCK, 1996).

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starting point.23 It is after all possible to look for reasons for that outcome, to ask why that was the reaction of the authorities to Jesus. Yet even that leads quickly to debates: crucifixion implies Roman action against him, but the Gospels suggest the prime movers were the Jewish authorities; and what exactly was the legal charge against him anyway? Probable answers can be deduced, though it is not my purpose to pursue such issues here. 24 Rather I wish to return our attention to the gospel texts as “memoirs,” as testimony to the extraordinary claims made by the followers of Jesus. It must be probable that Jesus himself and his teaching contributed to the generation of his disciples’ ideas about him and his significance, and now, to quote J. D. G Dunn, “Jesus can be perceived only through the impact he made on his first disciples (that is, their faith) which is the key to a historical recognition (and assessment) of that impact.”25 Thus, pursuing still the historical goal, Dunn looks for “the characteristic Jesus” while at the same time recognizing that there never were traditions unaffected by the impact of Jesus.26 The remarkable thing is the early date at which devotional response to Jesus can be traced – long before any dogma or doctrine was articulated, indeed, if the Pauline Epistles are taken into account, long before the Gospels were compiled. Yet stories were told, and memoirs were repeatedly rehearsed, then written down, compiled and read – texts which captured the memory of the human person who had had such an extraordinary impact that to the gospel reader, both ancient and modern, his story constantly shades into myth. 27 So how are the gospel texts which convey that story to be read?

III.  Reading for Resonances Memoirs are inevitably testimonies. It is an illusion that facts are discrete from the way the witnesses see, hear, grasp and understand what is going on. Furthermore, it is by hindsight that historic significance is discerned, not in 24-hour news bulletins. A full appreciation of these perspectives means a shift in approach: detective work is needed to uncover, not so much the underlying facts, but rather the resonances of meaning carried by the testimonies that make up the Gospels.

23 

E.g. Sanders, The Historical Figure. For my own attempt at a historical outline see the Prelude to The Cambridge History of Christianity, vol.  1: Origins to Constantine, ed. Margaret M. Mitchell and Frances M. Young (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006): 1–34. 25 Dunn, Remembering Jesus, 132. 26 Dunn, Remembering Jesus, 333. 27  I think of Celsus, as well as Strauss, as potentially typical. 24 

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To discern such resonances means imaginatively entering into the community’s in-group language. The nature of in-group language is well summarized by Dunn: It is generally recognised that when groups become established over a lengthy period they develop in effect their own identity- and boundary-forming language…. The whole point is that in in-group dialogue such inferences are not explained; on the contrary it is the recognition of the code word or allusion which gives the insider-language its bonding effect; to unpack the reference or allusion (for a stranger) in effect breaks the bond and lets the outsider into the group’s inner world. 28

Dunn’s immediate interest is that this explains the evident, yet anonymous, Jesus-­traditions found in the epistles of James and 1 Peter, not to mention in Paul’s Epistle to the Romans – though writing to a church he had never visited, Paul could assume a common body of tradition needing no explanation.29 Communities were bound together by the shared memory, constantly reiterated among themselves, not least in liturgy, and often in allusive ways. To descry the unspoken allusions is to enter their diverse, yet shared, testimony to Jesus and his significance. Several of my previous publications found elsewhere in this volume illustrate something of what is involved. The two chapters written for The Myth of God Incarnate (reproduced as chs. 3 and 4 above) explore the potential resonances of names, titles and categories used to characterize the significance of Jesus. The material gathered there, though couched in terms of a search for background and explanation, could be rewritten as providing clues to unspoken cultural resonances likely to be picked up by the earliest readers. A chapter from Meaning and Truth in 2 Corinthians (ch.  14 below) explores the unacknowledged allusions to Psalms and Prophets in the language of that Pauline epistle. A parallel exercise on the Gospels would surely be crucial for uncovering what some, if not all, the earliest readers heard, much of which may well pass us by. There can be no doubt that one impact Jesus had was to drive the earliest Christians back to the scriptures in a search for understanding. Many studies have addressed the issue of the Old Testament quotations and allusions in the New Testament. The hypothesis that testimonies drawn from the Jewish scriptures were collected in notebooks seems the more certain in the light of Skarsaune’s study of text forms in Justin: 30 generally speaking, he discovered, the same proof-texts are used in 1 Apology and the Dialogue with Trypho, but in the latter work they are quoted at greater length and, unlike in the former, in the LXX translation. Whichever version Justin quotes, he assumes fulfilment in Christ, and “often neglects discrepancies between his inherited exegesis and the 28 Dunn,

Remembering Jesus, 183. See further the appendix below. 30  O. Skarsaune, The Proof from Prophecy. A Study in Justin Martyr’s Proof-Text Tradition: Text-Type, Provenance, Theological Profile (Leiden: Brill, 1987). 29 

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LXX text he quotes. But sometimes he tries to adjust his interpretation to the LXX text.” This data suggests that the prophecies came to him first in Christian notebooks, but his longer quotations came from checking scrolls obtained from the synagogue, for sometimes he suspects Hebraising recensions. Undoubtedly collages of texts which recur in the New Testament are plausibly attributed to such collections of testimonies in notebooks, and there are important examples of such proof-texts to be found in the Gospels. As often already noted, the scriptures had become collections of oracles, pertinent prophetic sayings detachable from their original context, their fulfilment claimed in Christ. But there are also more subtle allusions, harder to uncover. If Justin’s Apology would tell the story of Jesus through fulfilled prophecies, he is to a fair extent anticipated by the gospel writers. The question is whether this has deeper implications than some kind of “mechanical fit” between a text-taken-as-prediction and a perceived particular outcome. It is Matthew who most obviously produces particular texts as oracles, claiming fulfilment and introducing them with a formula, such as, “This was to fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet” (Matt 2:15). The manner of Jesus’s birth happened so as to fulfil Isaiah 7:14: “Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him ‘Immanuel,’ which means ‘God is with us’” (Matt 1:22–23). The place of birth had to be Bethlehem because the prophet wrote: “And you, Bethlehem in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah: for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people, Israel” (Mic 5:2; Matt 2:5–6). The family escaped from Herod to Egypt to make what the Lord said through the prophet come true, “Out of Egypt I have called my son” (Hos 11:1; Matt 2:14–15). The innocents were murdered, and so what Jeremiah said came true, “A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children: she refused to be consoled because they are no more” (Jer 31:15; Matt 2:16–18). The return to Nazareth ensured the fulfilment of what the prophet said, “He will become a Nazorean.” The fact that this saying has never been traced in the scriptures only reinforces the point that appeal to presumed proof-texts, in this case some saying lodged in the memory and erroneously attributed to the prophets, constituted for this Gospel an underlying methodology: though concentrated in the birth narrative, the pattern of formula plus quotation occurs another half dozen times across this Gospel, even being introduced into Matthew’s Marcan source at 8:17, 13:35, 21:4 and 26:56. Other quotations occur without the formula, embedded in narrative or on the lips of Jesus. Explicit proof-texting, however, is enhanced by implicit resonances that go far deeper: Exodus motifs are found not only in the flight and return from Egypt, but in the parallel between Moses’s escape from the slaughter of the firstborn and Jesus’s escape from Herod’s massacre of Bethlehem’s male children. As we move on in the story, Jesus’s temptations in the wilderness subtly parallel

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the testing of the Israelites in the wilderness: they complained of hunger, received the gift of manna, but still complained and threatened to return to Egypt for decent food (Num 21:4–5); now Jesus is tested by hunger, but his word from Deuteronomy 8:3 implies obedience to God is what sustains him: “One does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” They tested God’s patience at Massah and Meribah, expecting divine protection and assistance (Exod 17:7; Ps 95:8–11); now the devil quotes Psalm 91, the promise of safety and security under God’s protection: “He will command his angels concerning you,” and “On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone,” but Jesus refuses to test God, again quoting Deuteronomy (6:16), “Do not put the Lord, your God, to the test,” a verse which in full adds, “as you did at Massah and Meribah.” Finally, Israel’s propensity to idolatry, exemplified in the Golden Calf, is suggested by Jesus’s use of Deuteronomy 6:13 to repel the devil’s attempt to bargain sovereignty over all the earth for worship of himself: “Worship the Lord, your God, and serve him only” is Jesus’s retort (Matt 4:10). Some would add that the view from the high mountain is meant to recall Moses’s panoramic view of the Promised Land, thus adding to other potential parallels with Moses in this Gospel, such as those already hinted at in the birth narrative and later the delivery of teaching on a mountain (Matt 5–7), perhaps paralleling Sinai and the giving of the Law. But the subtleties of the temptations may suggest not so much a “New Moses” Christology as a replay of the Exodus narrative in which Christ reverses the failures of Israel and, as the Matthaean baptism story suggests, “fulfils all righteousness” (Matt 3:15). Indeed, in this Gospel, as later in the Fathers, the baptism itself may hint at the Red Sea crossing, the moment of God’s endorsement at the start of the wilderness journey. This portrait of one who fulfilled God’s intentions as proclaimed in the words of scripture would seem to be enhanced by the concentration of fulfilled predictions and psalm allusions in the passion-story. Jesus faced tests of obedience and loyalty – indeed, the ultimate test in Gethsemane – as had Adam, and Abraham, and Israel in the wilderness, yet God’s will was accomplished. Thus, at a deep level the Gospel of Matthew, like the Epistle to the Hebrews, sees Jesus’s trials resonating with and reversing the scriptural story of Israel, a point perhaps anticipated from the beginning in the genealogy. The Matthaean account of the genesis of Jesus, the Messiah, naturally follows through David and the royal line; but it actually begins with the father of the nation, Abraham, and highlights moments of potentially shameful irregularity along the way: Judah, the father of Perez and Zarah by Tamar – his own daughter-in-law disguised as a prostitute (Gen 38); Salman, the father of Boaz by Rahab – the prostitute who received Joshua’s spies (Josh 2); Boaz, the father of Obed by Ruth – the Moabite foreigner (Ruth, passim); David, the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah, Bathsheba (2 Sam 11). Reading between the lines we might sense that Jesus is

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depicted as carrying in his lineage the signs of God’s capacity to redeem Israel’s harlotry, her repeated failure to be loyal to the God who called her to be God’s own people. There is a kind of subversion of Israel’s story going on, not only to explain the crucifixion, that unexpected outcome of the epiphany of Israel’s Messiah, but to anticipate Jesus’s identification with outsiders and with wrongdoers. The preaching of John the Baptist calls for repentance, and suggests that having Abraham as ancestor is nothing to rely on – for “God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham” (Matt 3:9). It has often been noted that Matthew’s Gospel, though more characteristically Jewish than the others, embraces the Gentile mission and suggests an interpretation of Torah which not only offers a critique of scribal teaching, but suggests Jeremiah’s new covenant written on the heart (Jer 31:31–34). Clearly this brief sketch of a single facet of potentially implicit associations in Matthew’s Gospel is but one example of how reading for resonances can suggest responses to the impact of Jesus. The essay on Luke later in this volume (ch.  22 below) implies further examples. John’s Gospel, however, is the one of the four which might prove most rewarding. For here both received traditions about Jesus and the scriptures have been so pondered as to be integrated into a fresh construal of both; the sources are not entirely explicit, yet to the initiated reader they provide the implicit key to what the story of Jesus is all about. The fourth Gospel is, like the first, in dialogue with Israel’s past, but, as in apocalypses, the stakes are raised – the drama is played out on the cosmic stage of God’s creation. Allusions to the scriptures and the re-minting of their symbols have often been remarked in John’s Gospel: the exodus motifs in chapter 6, the recasting of metaphors used in the prophets – vine and vineyard for Israel (e.g. Isa 5; John 15) and shepherds for her rulers (Ezek 34; John 10) – these are just the most obvious examples. To explore further the Johannine dialogue with Israel’s past, as well as with Jesus traditions such as are found in the Synoptic Gospels, we select two principal examples, the elaboration of the healing of the paralytic in John 5 and of the blind man in John 9, with some secondary reference to John 11, the raising of Lazarus. Both selected chapters open with healing stories reminiscent of Marcan narratives, but with significant differences. Whether or not the written text of Mark lies in the background, memory evokes resonances and reshapes the telling in ways that bring out the fresh insights of this gospel author. In neither story does Jesus simply respond to need or request, as in the Synoptics – rather he takes the initiative. In the first case a man paralysed for thirty-eight years has waited for potential healing beside the pool used to dip sheep in preparation for sacrifice: commentators emphasize the heightening of miracles in John – the chronic nature of the illness paralleling the insistence in chapter 9 that the man’s blindness was from birth. Few take seriously the possible allusion to Deuteronomy 2:14

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and the thirty-eight years of wilderness wanderings but, as already noticed in the earlier discussion of Matthew’s Gospel, those wilderness wanderings could be read as a time of disobedience and rebellion, and in both Marcan and Johannine versions of the story it appears that the man’s paralysis was not unconnected with the need for forgiveness of sin (Mark 2:5; John 5:14). In John’s version the man has no help (the Marcan paralytic has friends who get him to Jesus), so no hope of release – perhaps the sacrificial resonances of the location bear a deeper sense, suggesting the inadequacy of the old covenant’s provisions, in which case the patristic suggestion that the five porticoes represented the five books of the Law may not be as wide of the mark as most commentators now suggest (preferring to emphasize the location’s historicity, given the archaeo­ logical discovery of the double pool with five colonnades, four all around and one across the middle). After all, in the ensuing discussion the scriptures in general and Moses in particular become central. One begins to suspect that to dismiss these resonances diminishes the text’s potential. Again, surely in chapter 9 the blindness from birth is not just enhancing a miracle worker’s power: for this is no mere restoration of sight but a fresh act of creation, indeed, a clear case of doing the works of the Father, which is the key theme in both chapters (John 5:17; 5:19; 9:4). The movement from one parallel story to the other may be sensed in the symbolism of the two pools: the first pool, associated with temple and sacrifice, is ineffective, whereas washing in the second is what gives the man his sight – it is a kind of baptism enabling new creation. To grasp the resonances at work in both chapters, we need to consider those at work in chapter 5 quite carefully. The narrative is, more than meets the eye, the backcloth of the following argument, both foreshadowing the discussion of God’s works, namely, the divine prerogatives of giving life (the healing) and judging (overriding the sabbath), and also being part of God’s testimony that what Jesus is saying is true, a theme taken up again in chapter 9 where the once blind man affirms that Jesus must come from God since he has healed him (John 9:30–33). Commentators focus on the christological implications, but as already hinted it is also about the right interpretation of Israel’s past. By the end of the chapter Moses has come centre-stage. Those challenging Jesus fail to believe Moses, despite their commitment to searching the scriptures. The following chapter, possibly inserted at this point at a later stage in the final composition of this Gospel, explores further the right interpretation of the scriptures: like the two chapters we are focusing on, it begins with a story from the Jesus-­ tradition well-known from the other Gospels, namely the miraculous feeding of a crowd in the wilderness, recounting it with a similar mix of sameness and difference; then it brings out its significance for a radical rereading of Moses and the exodus, especially the gift of manna. But this rereading is already at work in chapter 5 through subtle use of allusion, both to the Pentateuch and to the Johannine prologue. According to Num-

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bers 16:28, Moses said, “This is how you shall know that the Lord has sent me to do all these works; it has not been of my own accord”: ἐπ᾽ ἐμαυτοῦ (ep’ emautou – of myself) appears in the LXX version on the lips of Moses and in John 5:19 and 30 on the lips of Jesus – in both cases attributing what each does to God, not themselves. Then, in John 5:37b we find, “You have never heard his voice or seen his form,” which may be an allusion to Deuteronomy 4:12 where Moses reminds Israel how they assembled at the foot of the mountain, how the Lord spoke out of the fire, and they heard his voice but saw no form. Two things might suggest caution here: the word translated “form” in each case is different (LXX ὁμοίωμα – homoiō ma; John εἶδος – eidos), and there is a direct contradiction over whether the voice was heard or not – though that might be deliberate, implying that the “Jews” are not even at the stage of the rebellious Israelites in the wilderness. Indeed, the exodus backcloth is surely confirmed if we pursue the implicit reference back to the prologue – explicit, indeed, in the appeal here to the testimony of John the Baptist (John 5:33–35). The sequence of the argument seems to be as follows: I make no claims for myself. John the Baptist testified to me, but human testimony only goes so far. As in the case of Moses the works I do guarantee that I come from God and do nothing of myself. Moses certainly heard God’s voice, for the Law was given through him (1:17); but even Moses was unable to see God’s face (Exod 33:20; John 1:18). Because you fail to understand Moses you do not even hear the voice of the Father, let alone see God; that is why you cannot discern the testimony of the Father on my behalf. So (as is stated clearly in 5:45) “Moses is your accuser” even though “Moses is the one on whom you have set your hope.” Tracing potential allusions to the scriptures in this way highlights the possibility that two further scriptural passages, presumably lodged in the recesses of the memory, hold significant keys to the underlying perspectives at work here. The first is Wisdom of Solomon chapter 2, potentially alluded to in John 5:18; for in Wisdom 2:16 the righteous man “boasts that God is his Father.” In this passage from Wisdom we find the ungodly reasoning unsoundly, summoning death by their words and deeds (Wis 1:16–2:1a). Let me sum up their views quickly in common maxims: they begin (2:1b–11) by expressing such sentiments as “Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die,” and progress to oppressing the poor and weak on the grounds that “Might is right”. They then turn on the righteous man …because he is inconvenient to us and opposes our actions; he reproaches us for sins against the law, and accuses us of sins against our training. He professes to have knowl-

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edge of God and calls himself a child (LXX παῖς – pais – child/servant/ apprentice) of the Lord. He became to us a reproof of our thoughts; the very sight of him is a burden to us, because his manner of life is unlike that of others, and his ways are strange…. [H]e boasts that God is his Father. Let us see if his words are true, and let us test what will happen at the end of his life; for if the righteous man is God’s child (LXX υἱός – huios – son), he will help him, and will deliver him from the hand of his adversaries. Let us test him with insult and torture, so that we may find out how gentle he is, and make trial of his forbearance. Let us condemn him to a shameful death, for, according to what he says, he will be protected. (Wis 2:12–20)

The text goes on to suggest that by this reasoning “they were led astray, for their wickedness blinded them, and they did not know the secret purposes of God.” This scenario seems played out in John’s Gospel, from chapter 5 on, as “the Jews started persecuting Jesus” (John 5:18) and making similar accusations against him. By the end of John 9 the Pharisees stand accused of being blind, and chapter 10 presumably associates them with the bad shepherds of Israel described in Ezekiel 34. Meanwhile Jesus is cast in the role of the righteous man, and in chapter 9 the blind man will appeal to the fact that God does not listen to sinners but to one who obeys his will, essentially attributing such righteousness to Jesus (John 9:31). This is a sentiment which resonates with many further scriptural texts (cf., e.g., Ps 66:18, Prov 15:8, 29). The second key text, I suggest, is Ezekiel 28. Here the Prince of Tyre is accused of making himself equal with God: …Because your heart is proud and you have said, “I am a god; I sit in the seat of the gods, in the heart of the seas,” yet you are a mortal, and no god. (Ezek 28:2b)

This introduction is followed by praise of the wisdom which brought about his prosperity – wealth, gold, silver – but “Your heart has become proud in your wealth”. So, God threatens to “bring strangers against you,” because “you compare your mind with the mind of God” (Ezek 28:5–6): Will you still say, “I am a god,” in the presence of those who kill you, though you are but a mortal, and no god, in the hands of those who wound you? (28:9)

Then the prophet calls for lamentation over the King of Tyre, and adds: Thus says the Lord God: You were the signet of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God… (28:12b–13)

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You were blameless in your ways from the day that you were created, until iniquity was found in you. In the abundance of your trade you were filled with violence, and you sinned; so I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God… (28:15–16a) Your heart was proud because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendour. (28:17a)

Not for nothing has this passage been associated with the Adamic myth: a human king claims the divine prerogatives of wisdom, perfection and eternal life, only to be proved mortal and die in his sins for claiming equality with God.31 John 5 reaches deeper levels when read as resonating that myth. So, here is Jesus overriding the sabbath. Sabbath rest was justified on the grounds that God rested from creation on the seventh day; but “he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep” (Ps 121:4) – commentators remind us that God’s continuing activity was an issue under discussion around this time. If God’s activity is constant, then of course God’s work can be done on the sabbath. So, to “the Jews” it appears that, like the King of Tyre, Jesus blasphemously claims equality with God; and like the righteous man in the Wisdom of Solomon, he claims God as his own Father. Like Moses, however, he does nothing “of himself” (5:19 and 30); but acts as an apprentice does, doing whatever his father does, learning the trade. Thus the pride and self-aggrandizement of the King of Tyre is reversed by the humble obedience of the truly righteous man who is the child of God. It is the nature of this relationship that enables Jesus to do works which belong to God alone – to exercise the divine prerogatives of passing judgment and giving life. Paradoxically his claim is not the blasphemous pride which the Jews imagine, but profound humility and submission to God’s will – surely this is the Johannine version of Jesus’s reticence about his identity apparent in the Synoptics. In the Adamic myth of the Ancient Near East, human claims to the divine attributes of wisdom and immortality constitute the core issue, and in the Genesis version the rebellious grasping of the first results in exclusion from the second. In the fourth Gospel, Jesus claims nothing for himself, and so is able to do the works of God and be in God’s image and likeness, as humanity was intended to be at the moment of creation. Though the Johannine Gospel never mentions Adam, it is perhaps not for nothing that Adam figures large as a contrast to Christ in the fifth-century commentary on John produced by Cyril of Alexan31  T. N. D Messinger, The Eden Narrative: A Literary and Religio-Historical Study of Genesis 2–3 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2007).

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dria.32 This might strike us as too Pauline a reading of the Gospel, but it is profoundly illuminating, and justifies my comment about John raising the stakes: the drama concerns more than Israel’s history – it has a cosmic dimension. The “world” is an ambiguous place in the Gospel of John. It is God’s own, yet so often opposed to God. This, coupled with the dualisms of light and darkness, death and life, makes the story one of confrontation as well as salvation, of judgment as well as new creation. What has gone wrong is precisely the outcome of eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, the claim to see, to have wisdom and knowledge, to deserve credit and glory, claims embodied in “the Jews” in chapter 5 and “the Pharisees” in chapter 9, and also resonating both with the story of Israel’s endemic idolatry and with that of humanity as a whole in Adam. What seems to have happened in early Christianity is a rereading of scripture from the beginning which enabled the discernment of the deep ambiguity just noted, the “gone-wrong-ness” of God’s creation from which salvation was required. In other words, as E. P. Sanders put it in his groundbreaking reinterpretation of Paul, the early Christians did not move from plight to solution, but from the solution in Christ to an understanding of the cosmic plight from which salvation was needed.33 For John’s Gospel the signs of humanity’s new creation are found in the recovery of wisdom through the granting of light to the blind man, and the recovery of life through the resurrection of Lazarus. Through Christ humankind becomes what it was created to be. These three signs, then, are potentially more closely related than meets the eye. Chapter 5 introduces the divine works of judgment and giving life as keys: in chapter 9 the light of the world enlightens, but also exposes and judges the blindness of Jesus’s opponents, while in chapter 11 life is given at the cost of ­Jesus’s life. Both effects are anticipated in the discourse of chapter 5. Though the works testify to Jesus these “signs” are not proofs of the kind demanded in the Synoptic Gospels (e.g. Matt 12:38–39, 16:1–4; Mark 8:11–12; Luke 11:16, 29– 30), but pointers to what is really going on, an invitation not merely to see but believe, to hear the resonances and grasp what is at stake. The fact that insight is required emerges from the curious progress of each narrative: in chapters 5 and 9 it is the person healed who is first confronted by the authorities, and neither can identify who Jesus is at that point. In chapter 9, however, we see how it gradually dawns on the blind man that the one who has given him sight must come from God, whatever the religious authorities say. The narrative seems to carry the implication that neither claims on Jesus’s part, nor some God-­ consciousness inaccessible to others, constitute what is really significant: rather it is the impact of Jesus, God seen and heard in him by those who respond to signs that lead to a truth hidden yet revealed. Here is a truly human being, so 32 Pusey, 33 

Cyrilli; selected passages in translation in Russell, Cyril of Alexandria. E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (London: SCM Press, 1977).

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extraordinary yet ordinary that the most religiously educated people conclude that he is a blasphemous deceiver, yet what has been discerned is that actually he embodies God’s creative intention for humankind so completely that in his obedient humility he is able not only to speak the very words of God but to do God’s own works, confronting all the darkness and gone-wrong-ness and creatively enabling God’s light and life to shine in the darkness. For those with eyes to see and ears to hear, the Gospel prologue resonates through narrative and discourse as the deep ground of a refrain giving glory to God, and God alone.

IV.  Rereading Jesus It is, of course, a potentially many layered metaphor we use when we speak of reading a person. In reading someone’s face or tone of voice we may be looking for outward signs of inward mood. By considering someone’s actions, involvement in events or impact on others, we may try to read character or intention. Discovering someone’s story – where they have come from, including parentage, education, relationships, etc. – we may not just apprehend how they have been shaped by such influences, but read in them certain inherited traits, even virtues or vices, of which they are themselves unconscious. In other words, when we speak of reading a person, we are looking for what lies behind that person’s deeds and words. The whole endeavour of a writer of a modern biography is to produce a plausible reading of some usually significant figure, and various bio­ graphies, though covering much of the same ground, may produce contrasting insights into that person, or bring out similar aspects in different ways. To read Jesus in that way, to get at his fundamental character and intention, is widely regarded as now impossible, given the nature of the source material. To set him plausibly in his context and reconstruct the core of his life and teaching may still seem a possible project, but the variety of outcomes not only confirms the general point about multiple insights emerging from multiple biographies, but also reveals the contested nature of the undertaking. So how could a return to the Gospels and a reading for resonances of the kind just undertaken, help us to read Jesus, taking us behind the search for ipsissima verba to the ipsissima vox, beyond the detection of authentic deeds and words to the essential character of this person Jesus, a person uniquely himself, as indeed every human being is? My thesis is that, without claiming cast iron certainty with respect to particular chapter and verse, but with imaginative yet faithful attention to the memoirs of the apostles, we can gain an impressionistic portrait which does indeed draw us closer to what Jesus was all about. The sceptic will doubtless judge the result is too close to church tradition and therefore unconvincing, but my response would be that the insights which formed church tradition must have had at least some basis somewhere. Furthermore, what we need, as acknowl-

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edged earlier, is not the stripping down of “demythologization,” but creative insight into the “cultural codes” of the Gospel material such that they may be “translated” and “transvalued” into other socio-cultural realities. The scriptural resonances noted in the Gospels, coupled with the omnipresent claims in early Christianity to the fulfilment of prophecy, may help to make sense of Jesus if we take hints from Paul’s sense of vocation. The formative role of the scriptures, and Paul’s perception of God’s immediate guidance, are explored in later chapters (chs. 12 & 14), and may provide a foil, both in the sense of complement and antithesis. That Jesus is to be read as likewise formed by his reading of the scriptures, and similarly motivated by a conviction that everything without exception is to be referred to God, is highly likely and rendered plausible for the period by the parallel case of Paul. Yet, it is the evidence for this – that is, the testimony to it built deep in the gospel tradition – which is generally dismissed as projected onto Jesus by early believers rather than deriving from Jesus himself. This assessment – the outcome of the quest and all the analysis briefly surveyed above – is apparently reinforced by what seems to be Jesus’s deliberate elusiveness, especially with respect to his identity. Parallels with Paul there may be, but there is also a fundamental contrast. For Paul desperately needed the affirmation afforded by his apprehension of a Jeremiah-like vocation – indeed, his personal neediness is evident in his desperate defence of his position, in his struggles for recognition and acceptance, in his anxious appeals to his own suffering, whereas Jesus was apparently without self-regard, indeed, entirely unself-interested and so able to give his entire attention to God and to others – he seems just to get on with what he has to do. By comparison with Jesus, then, “Paul’s embodiment of the gospel was ambiguous and flawed.”34 However, the question is this: Is the self-disregard just attributed to Jesus humanly conceivable? My contention would be that very occasionally we are granted awareness of a truly saintly person who historically displayed or presently displays, at least momentarily, exactly this capacity – to give utter and complete attention, without self-regard, to God or to another; furthermore, the ancient traditions of Christian asceticism at their best were and are attempts to articulate and then realize this lack of neediness in a Christ-like, unself-­ regarding way of life.35 What we may perceive in Jesus, then, is exactly what we found expressed in the Johannine discourse examined earlier: he does nothing “of himself,” but simply works the works of the Father. Although placed on the lips of Jesus this could certainly look like making outrageous claims, the real point is that there is neither self-conscious self-promotion nor self-effacement, the usual traps of false humility or false pride into which human gurus fall. In the Synoptic Gos34 

Young and Ford, Meaning and Truth, 220. Cf., e.g., Angela Tilby, The Seven Deadly Sins: Their Origin in the Spiritual Teaching of Evagrius the Hermit (London: SPCK, 2009). 35 

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pels this characteristic is captured in the so-called Messianic Secret, as well as in the stumbling way in which the disciples come to discern who Jesus is. Some of the many testimonies traced above, in chapter 3 of this collection, must surely have emerged as speculations during Jesus’s lifetime. The story of Peter’s confession captures the disciples’ affirmation of his Messiahship (Mark 8:27–33; Matt 16:13–23; Luke 9:18–22) – only to have it challenged and turned in a new direction: “Get behind me, Satan,” says the one who has rejected the temptation to use vocation as a method of self-serving, of seeking δόξα for himself, as is the norm. In the fourth Gospel (John 6:15) we are told that the people tried to take him by force and make him king, but he withdrew to the mountain by himself. The gospel stories of the triumphal entry into Jerusalem (Matt 21:1–9; Mark 11:1–11; Luke 19:28–40; John 12:12–19) subvert the expected warlike Messiah re-establishing the Davidic kingdom – in fulfilment of prophecy (Zech 9:9) he comes humble and riding on a donkey. Yet early Christians universally called him Christ (= Messiah, anointed One), affirming that despite his humility and rejection he was indeed the one promised, the anointed king in David’s line. Somehow his royalty is paradoxically seen in avoiding any of royalty’s normal trappings, never taking power or control, but pursuing the vocation which he discerned in the scriptures, to be a servant-king identified with the poor and outcast, to accept the persecution and suffering which, according to the scriptures, attends God’s servants, but above all to demonstrate through absolute trust in God that true righteousness transcends both the self-concern and the hypocrisy by which its pursuit is so often infected. God’s kingdom is his one focus, not his own role or position. To preach the kingdom of God, it seems, involves de-centring one’s own inclinations, interests or identity, and invoking an upside-down world, where the people blessed are the poor, those who mourn, the meek, the merciful, those who really care about righteousness, purity of heart and peace, and are persecuted for their commitment (Matt 5:3–12; Luke 6:20–23). To deny oneself means giving attention to others, not because they satisfy one’s own need for friendship or recognition, but because God sends rain on just and unjust alike (Matt 5:45). Those that the world excludes, denigrates or fears – the mad and those with disabilities, lepers and the sick, women and children, Samaritans and Gentiles, enemies and aliens, even the wicked and demon-possessed – such are to be welcomed, eaten with and listened to – for not even a sparrow falls “apart from your Father” (Matt 10:29). As remembered in the gospel traditions Jesus, through words, parables, signs and actions, subverts every identity-claim in the name of the one God, Creator and Father of all. And Paul, in the earliest Christian writings we possess, does the same: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus,” he writes, as the climax of an argument in which Abraham is claimed as the father of many nations (Gal 3:28) – indeed, from John the Baptist through Paul and the Gospels,

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the Jews are denied exclusive claim to their ancestor, Abraham. To see that God’s mercy embraces all of creation is to be led beyond the barriers which human beings create between one another, and to signpost the possibility that people can relate across difference without violence and defensiveness, blaming and shaming, prejudice and bigotry, aggression, competition and destructive rivalry. Jesus was not alone in summing up God’s Law in two commandments, “Love God” and “Love your neighbour” (Matt 22:37; Mark 12:28–34; cf. Luke 10:25–28); but he added, “Love your enemies” (Matt 5:43–44). Paul again provides some confirmation: for he too summed up the Law in terms of love of God and love of neighbour (Rom 13:9–10), and celebrated what that means in a poem about love which has often been recognized as effectively a portrait of Jesus (1 Cor 13). Christianity has never been tried, they say – certainly the followers of Jesus have hardly lived up to what comes across as lying at the heart of what Jesus was about. Struggling with his congregations Paul, time and again, reveals that he has grasped the radical critique Jesus has offered to the ways of the world36 – even the temptation to put the world to rights by using power and control has been set aside. Jesus makes God’s kingship surprising and potentially present. It does, of course, imply loyalty and obedience, but not enforced submission; rather it is an invitation to repent – that is, to turn around one’s whole perspective and approach – to receive grace, to rediscover the call to be God’s offspring, creatures made in God’s image, perfect as the Father in heaven is perfect (Matt 5:48). It is a summons to live in trust: to consider the lilies and the ravens and be anxious for nothing (Matt 6:25–34). God is discerned in the everyday: trees and fruit, birds and sheep, salt and light, builders and sowers, masters and servants, wedding feasts and business dealings. What Jesus presented was the challenge to live “in the light of the coming kingdom.”37 This God-focused and God-shaped manner of living Jesus himself embodied, defining what righteousness really is. So how is it that in the Gospels this apparently innocuous message is overshadowed by the dominance of the passion-narratives? The death of Jesus has so often been seen as a mark of the failure of his mission; the New Testament itself admits it was a “scandal” – a stumbling block, and the earliest extant depiction of the crucifixion is in fact a mocking caricature: a graffito depicting a crucified ass with the inscription “Alexamenos worships his god.” Yet, for creeds and gospel writers alike, the passion-story becomes the climax and centrepiece. How might this fact be read? And is it possible to trace what Jesus might have made of this outcome of his mission? In our account of him Jesus appears as one who has aligned himself completely with God’s purposes by rereading the purport of the scriptures: but this con36 

See further the appendix below. Remembering Jesus, 610.

37 Dunn,

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stantly divides people. It attracts and repels, exposing what is really in peoples’ hearts. Hypocrisy and outward conformity are challenged, vested interests confronted, people with influence made to feel uncomfortable. To break the sabbath, disregard purity regulations, eat with sinners and tax gatherers, challenge what went on in the temple,38 all in the name of God’s deeper demands was to court opposition. A prophet is not acceptable in his own country (Luke 4:24). Jesus surely died as a messianic pretender – he was not the only one in this period to attract followers who hoped for the restoration of the great days of King David.39 A few decades later the Roman authorities would root out all who could claim Davidic descent in an effort to prevent further demonstrations, freedom fighting and insurrection.40 There is supreme irony in the prophecy attributed to the high priest, Caiaphas in the fourth Gospel (John 11:50): “It is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.” The Jewish authorities were remembered as quite willing, so as to get the Roman authorities off their backs, to exaggerate the messianic overtones of what Jesus was up to: the charge posted on the cross was “King of the Jews,” and soldiers indulged in mocking horseplay inspired by the apparently ridiculous nature of the charge. Readings which make Jesus just a prophet, a sage, a holy man or philosopher cannot fully account for his politically motivated condemnation, nor for the political implications of the Latinate name for his followers – Χριστιανοί (Christianoi). The challenge of both the teaching and the person of Jesus, to let one’s life be ruled by God alone and entirely, meant potential conflict with both religious and political authorities, who sensed their power challenged.41 It is hardly surprising that Jesus would see himself in the line of prophets and servants of God who suffered rejection (Matt 21:23–27; Mark 11:27–33; Luke 20:1–8; Matt 23:29 ff.; Luke 11:47 ff., 13:33, etc.), especially in the light of what happened to John the Baptist. He could well have recognized and predicted his destiny from reading the times – martyrdom was already celebrated in stories from the Maccabean period.

38  This is not just substantiated by the incident of the Cleansing of the Temple, but by the likelihood that Jesus did speak against the Temple, even though the saying is attributed to false witnesses in the Synoptics: see Mark 13:2; John 2:19 and Gospel of Thomas, 71; cf. Mark 14:58, Matt 24:2, Luke 21:6. 39 Josephus, Ant., 20.97 (Theudas), J.W., 2.261 and Ant., 20.169–170 (an Egyptian who predicted the walls of Jerusalem would fall down to allow his entry into Jerusalem). 40  “After the capture of Jerusalem Vespasian issued an order that, to ensure no member of the royal house should be left among the Jews, all descendents of David should be rooted out”: from Hegesippus, as reported in Eusebius, Hist.eccl., 3.12. According to 3.19–20 Domitian ordered the execution of all who were of David’s line, and the descendents of Jude, Jesus’s brother, were caught up in the investigation. See further Richard Bauckham, Jude and the Relatives of Jesus (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1990). 41 Later in response to the demand to say, “Kyrios Caesar” (Lord Caesar), Christians would insist on “Lord Christ.”

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So what sense could he have made of the destiny he foresaw? A key element would have been his sense that scripture foreshadowed this, and the Gospels support this notion with quotation and allusion (e.g. “the stone which the builders rejected…” from Psalm 117:22–23; in Matthew 21:42; Mark 12:10–11; Luke 20:17). But an analogy with sacrifice is not unthinkable, given almost contemporary ways of writing about the Maccabean martyrs – total obedience to God, even unto death, Jesus could have envisaged as the supreme offering, fulfilling all he was called to be and to do.42 That he may well have done so is surely captured in the stories of what he did at Passover-time on the night in which he was betrayed. That the sacrificial death of Christ constituted a new Passover and the sealing of the new covenant was already apparent to Paul, and written into the accounts he and the gospel writers provide of a meal which was recalled in commemorative liturgy: “Do this in remembrance of me” was remembered as his dying wish. That Jesus himself supplanted the kingdom of God as the focus of early Christian belief is hardly surprising: he is remembered as the catalyst for a renewed Israel, fulfilling its vocation to the whole of God’s human creation, and this memory is reinforced not just by the sense that scriptures are fulfilled, but by contemporary “cultural codes” deriving from apocalyptic eschatology. What are we to make of the resurrection stories? On the one hand, they challenge an apocalyptic reading of the gospel story – for no apocalypse envisaged an individual resurrection ahead of the general resurrection of all humankind to face God’s judgement at the End of time. On the other hand, these stories clearly belong to the apocalyptic thought-world and, whatever actually happened, that world colours not only the Gospels but also much early Christian literature. The cosmic struggle between God and Satan provided an explanatory backcloth for the conflict and persecutions faced by Jesus and his followers. World history, beginning with Adam, offered a context in which Jesus’s preaching of the kingdom of God, together with miraculous signs and exorcisms, could be seen as the beginning of God’s final victory, and Christ’s dying and rising be conceived as the birth of the new creation. The tension between fulfilment now and expectation of final fulfilment in the immediate future runs right through the New Testament. Is it conceivable that Jesus could have initiated such speculations? He must surely have been aware of current apocalyptic hopes, and his use of the enigmatic title “Son of Man” could be an indication that he knew the Book of Daniel, though its use in the prophecies of Ezekiel might rather have been his source. Still, the Gospels do suggest that Jesus predicted an imminent crisis akin to the dénouement envisaged by apocalytic literature, and it is not altogether unlikely that he associated this with his own death. 42 

The Epistle to the Hebrews fills this out. See ch.  25 below.

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Is it possible to refresh the reading of these cultural codes, strange and often incredible as they are to most people today? In a way that is exactly what I hope my rereading of Jesus enables. The dark truth is that the world and its values resist the transformative reality of life entirely God-focused. Yet if God be God, such a life will ultimately be vindicated. Thus it is that the Gospels can become four complementary portraits of this Jesus, cartoons which bring out profound truths about the human condition, profiles to be read contemplatively – indeed, icons – images which draw us into their strange perspective and allow us to discern a transcendent dimension. There never will be a definitive biography – the attempts at a unified Diatesseron will always fail to replace the four Gospels identified as “memoirs of the apostles” capturing aspects of the ipsissima vox. Maybe no reader can read the Gospels properly until she has touched the hem of his garment and been healed; yet, it is by rereading the Gospels that Jesus can be reread time and again.

V.  Appendix: Traces of Jesus in the Pauline Corpus In Pauline scholarship the question how much Paul really knew or cared about the human, historical person of Jesus has been largely bypassed. For, on the surface of the texts, Paul’s dominant interest seems so obviously to be the identity of Christ, the Son of God, and the meaning of his death and resurrection: studies of Pauline Christology and soteriology abound, but what Paul has to say about Jesus, between his birth of a woman as a descendant of David and his death on the cross, seems minimal, as is also the case with the later creeds. My question here is whether we might find in the Pauline material more than meets the eye if we adopt a process of reading for resonances similar to that taken above, and take seriously the fact that in Paul’s epistles we have the earliest available evidence for Jesus and the movement his impact created. On three occasions only Paul appeals explicitly to words of the Lord, all in his first letter to the Corinthians: – at 7:10–11 he writes, “To the married I give this command – not I but the Lord – that the wife should not separate from her husband”; – at 9:14 he states that the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel; – in 11:23–26 we have the passage where Paul appeals to the tradition that “on the night when he was betrayed” the Lord Jesus took bread, gave thanks and broke it, saying, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me,” and likewise the cup, after supper, with the words, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”

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In each case variants of these traditions can be found in the Gospels. Unacknowledged but potential allusions to the gospel tradition are rather more widespread. In 1 Corinthians the most obvious example is at 13:2 which speaks of having faith so as to move mountains, which is echoed by Matthew 17:20. The references to sowing and reaping in chapter 9 recall the many gospel sayings and parables drawn from agriculture – seed and sowers, harvesting, trees bearing fruit, etc. Perhaps rather less obvious, yet suggestive, is 1 Corinthians 2:7, where Paul speaks of “God’s wisdom, secret and hidden, which God decreed before the ages”; Matthew 13:35, quoting Psalm 78:2, explains Jesus’s use of parables: “I will open my mouth to speak in parables; I will proclaim what has been hidden from the foundation of the world.” In 1 Thessalonians 5:2, 4, Paul suggests that the Day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night, the same idea being found also in Matthew 24:43 and Luke 12:39. In Colossians 2:22 purity regulations are treated as human commands, as they are also in Mark 7:7 and Matthew 15:9; while 3:13 urges readers to forgive each other as the Lord has forgiven them – surely the Lord’s Prayer, along with other sayings and parables, hover in the background (e.g. Matt 6:12, 14–15; 18:23–35). However it is in Romans, especially chapters 12–14, that we find the biggest concentration of such apparent allusions, doubtless because Paul was introducing himself to a church he did not found and wished to appeal indirectly to their common tradition and “in-language.”43 It is worth listing the most obvious connections to the gospel traditions; 44 the way in which they are often associated together in epistles and Gospels is noticeable. Rom 12:14: Bless those who persecute you… Rom 12:17: Do not repay evil for evil… Rom 12:18: Live peaceably with all…45 Rom 13:7: Pay taxes…/  pericope re Caesar’s coins Rom 14:10, 13 (cf. 2:1): Judge not … Rom 14:13: stumbling-block Rom 14:14: nothing unclean in itself

Luke 6:27–28; Matt 5:44 Luke 6:29; Matt 5:39 Mark 9:50 Mark 12:31 and //s Matt 7:1–2; Luke 6:37 Mark 9:42 and //s Mark 7:15

In the midst of this collage of potential Jesus-traditions we find the passage mentioned earlier where the Law is summed up in the two commandments “Love God” and “Love your neighbour” (Rom 13:8–10; Matt 22:34–39 & //s); and also a reference to the kingdom of God (Rom 14:17), the predominant theme of Jesus’s teaching in the Synoptic Gospels. Elsewhere in Romans we find Paul’s suggestion that by the Spirit we call “Abba, Father” and are children of God (Rom 8:15–17; also Gal 4:4–6), surely a recollection of Jesus’s usage. To these general themes we shall return, having completed this conspectus by one 43 Dunn,

Remembering Jesus, 183; cf. further above. Remembering Jesus, 182, n.  47 is my principal source. 45  NB the sayings in Rom 12:17–18 are paralleled in 1 Thess 5:13, 15. 44 Dunn,

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more intriguing reference: in Romans 1:16 Paul asserts that he is not ashamed of the gospel; in Mark 8:38 (cf. Luke 9:26) we find Jesus’s saying about “those who are ashamed of me and my works.” One suspects that more such links might be unearthed with more close reading. However, my interest now is to move beyond such allusions to deeper structural themes which suggest that Paul’s work resonates with the reading of Jesus offered above.

1.  Love Most notably in the Corinthian correspondence, but actually in epistle after epistle, Paul urgently deals with divisions in the Christian communities addressed, seeking reconciliation between rival factions, urging the end of dissensions, jealousy and anger, persuading the strong to support the weak, suggesting that accepting difference is essential to the proper working together of the body of Christ (1 Cor 12; Rom 12), and moving people beyond reliance on identities other than being clothed in Christ (Gal 3). All these emphases cohere with the kind of message attributed to Jesus in the sketch offered above. Love is Paul’s principal ethical theme and, as we noted already, for him it sums up the Law. A Jewish scholar once commented in my hearing that Paul meant that two-fold summary to supersede Torah, whereas Jesus, like other rabbis of the time, was summing up a Torah meant to be fully kept. However, this distinction may now appear less significant than it once did, given Sanders’s critique of the way Paul has been read since the Reformation.46 It was not that faith abrogated God’s commandments, Sanders argued, but that Gentiles did not need to take on the ethnic marks of the Jew (circumcision and dietary laws) before becoming a member of Christ. Jesus and Paul may not have been so far apart, after all. Indeed, in the traditions that lie behind the Gospels Jesus is presented as prophetically pointing to God’s fundamental intentions in giving the commandments, and as challenging both hypocrisy and outward conformity, especially to the minutiae of scribal rulings, without the heart’s commitment to love of God and neighbour. Paul the Pharisee joined his peers in persecuting the followers of this too radical Jesus, until his perspective on the matter was changed. It would seem that Jesus’s prophetic interiorization of God’s commandments is precisely what informs Paul’s ethics. Paul calls his converts to holiness and righteousness, summing up the intent of the Law in the love commands, as Jesus did. He speaks of the “obedience of faith” (Rom 1:16); and, when it comes to sexual ethics, idolatry and other norms, what he expects of Gentile converts is essentially the holiness and righteousness that comes from obedience to the fundamental elements of the Law (e.g. 1 Thess 4; 1 Cor 5–10). 46 Sanders,

Paul and Palestinian Judaism.

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Paul even claims that instinctively Gentiles keep the Law because it is written on their hearts: it is not enough to hear the Law – you have to do it to be righteous in God’s sight (Rom 2:13–16). Some, as already noted, have seen in Paul’s well-known description of love in 1 Corinthians 13 a portrait of Jesus. Constantly Paul invited his converts to imitate him as he imitates Christ, and to have the mind of Christ in their behaviour. That this meant two things is clear: (1) being willing to accept suffering, hardship and persecution for Christ’s sake (e.g. 2 Cor 4:7–10), a trait which remains core in the characterization of Paul in the (presumably post-Pauline) 2 Timothy; and (2) doing nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regarding “others as better than yourselves” (e.g. Phil 2:3). However ill we may judge that Paul himself managed to embody this humility, and despite the fact that in this Philippians passage it is exemplified not simply by the humiliation of the cross but apparently also by descent from heaven, nevertheless it is evident that these two features carry forward the reading of Jesus offered earlier.

2.  Abba, Father Twice Aramaic slips into Paul’s Greek: μαράνα θά (marana tha – Lord come – 1 Cor 16:22) was presumably a liturgical “catch-phrase,” rather like ἀμήν (amen), which passed from church to church and language to language as the church spread; and αββα (abba – Rom 8:15; Gal 4:6) was also presumably preserved in liturgy – for, as Paul’s usage makes clear, it belongs to the context of prayer. “Father” features prominently in the gospel accounts of Jesus’s teaching about God, above all in teaching his disciples to pray. That the Aramaic word was retained in a Greek environment strongly suggests that Paul gives us access to Jesus’s very own language. For the purpose of what I have called “reading Jesus,” the contexts in which Paul uses this Aramaism are likely to be significant. On the one hand, Paul states that those who pray with this address are through Christ adopted as God’s children, becoming heirs of the promises: and on the other, he indicates that they are enabled to pray thus through the spirit. Each of these points are given a Pauline spin, but at the same time confirm aspects of our previous reading of Jesus. For Gentiles to become children of God in the sense of becoming incorporated into God’s chosen people was bound to involve “adoption,” but Paul clearly sees adoption in a wider theological perspective. His rereading of scripture has discerned in Jesus Christ the reversal of Adam’s fall – to be in Christ rather than Adam meant adoption into the new humanity, becoming children of God in the way God intended from the beginning, Christ being the true Son of God (Rom 5:12–15; 1 Cor 15:21–22). One would hardly project that back as Jesus’s own idea, yet the portrait of Jesus for which we have argued might be confirmed in-

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directly by this idea of Paul’s. For it presumes that Jesus embodied the God-­ focused and God-shaped manner of living described, so defining what righte­ ousness really is; and also that Jesus himself presented the challenge to rely totally on the Father’s grace, to live with absolute trust in God’s mercy, and to be perfect as the Father in heaven is perfect. Thus, to pray to God as “Abba, Father” is to acknowledge one’s adoption into the way of Jesus, so as to become ἀγαπητοί Θεοῦ (agapē toi Theou – beloved of God) and ἁγίοι (hagioi – holy ones, saints) (Rom 1:7). To live according to the way of Jesus is enabled by the spirit. The word “spirit” (πνεῦμα – pneuma) is notoriously hard to pin down in Paul: sometimes it is clearly used of the human spirit, sometimes the divine spirit, and on occasion ambiguously (to retain this fluidity, I have eschewed using capital letters, so avoiding clear distinctions). At least once Paul refers to “the spirit of Christ” (Rom 8:9); in that context he is talking about Christ dwelling in believers, and the spirit being life because of righteousness – he contrasts being dead in sin. To live in the spirit of Christ is clearly to be adopted into his way, confirming the point made in the previous paragraph. Elsewhere (Gal 5:19–26), Paul lists works of the flesh as fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, insisting that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God; whereas, by contrast, the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-­ control. This would seem consonant with both the teaching and example of ­Jesus as previously read from the Gospels: believers are to live in the same spirit as Jesus did, a spirit of love, which rejects animosity and seeks to settle differences peaceably; they are to reflect the mind of Jesus and crucify the self-regard which focuses on one’s anxieties and ambitions. Once again, though couched in the typically Pauline framework of the contrast between flesh and spirit, what Paul is essentially capturing are the God-focused values we found embodied in Jesus’s life and teaching. The Pauline focus on the spirit is about enabling obedience from the heart. For it is not what goes into a person that defiles but what comes out, and the Gospel of Mark produces a list of things that overlaps with Paul’s “works of the flesh”: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly (Mark 7:15–23). Through Jesus, Paul thinks, the new covenant written on the heart (foreseen by Jeremiah) has become operative, is available for Jew and Gentile alike, breaking across boundaries, and makes possible the “obedience of faith”; yet Paul struggles with his communities to realize this. Fulfilment “now” but “not yet” runs all through the Pauline corpus, as it does through the Gospels. There may be relatively few clear references to the life and teaching of Jesus, and far more focus on what his birth, death and resurrection were all about, but Paul’s epistles, read perceptive-

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ly, reveal, behind his characteristic language and arguments, the very figure of Jesus we have earlier discerned behind the Gospels.

Section B

New Testament Epistles and their interpretation

Chapter 11

Notes on the Corinthian Correspondence* I.  Note 1. The Integrity of 1 Corinthians A number of well-known arguments have been advanced for the view that 1 Corinthians is not a unity. However, defenders of the integrity of the Epistle regard the onus of proof as being on those who favour partition-theories, chiefly on the ground that no plausible account has been given of how the “scrambling” took place, and it is inherently more probable that Paul wrote the epistle as it stands. They go on to claim that none of the alleged inconsistencies require partition to explain them, drawing attention to the circumstances under which Paul dictated the letter, the demands of his pastoral work and missionary activity, the need to earn his living, the period of time required to compose such a lengthy letter, the possibility of further news reaching him, of plans changing, etc. etc. Appeal is also made to the general character of the letter, which makes no attempt to deal with a connected theme, but is directed to a number of issues and problems arising in the life and worship of the church. It is relatively easy to account for most points along lines such as these. However, the extremely disjointed sequence of 1 Corinthians 8–11 seems to require a more elaborate explanation. It is generally recognized that it is in these chapters that the crux of the argument lies. There are two main problems: (1) 1 Corinthians 9 seems an irrelevant intrusion into the discussion of idolmeat; and (2) the discussion of idol-meat is inconsistent. 10:1–22 takes a rigorous stand against idolatry, affirming that communion with the daemons excludes a man from communion with Christ; whereas 1 Corinthians 8 and 10:23–11:1 admits that “idols are nothing” and that “all things are lawful,” while exhorting the reader to refrain from conscious eating of idol-meat for the sake of weaker consciences. As far as 1 Corinthians 9 is concerned, many have already pointed out that the opening question and the discussion in verses 12, 15–27, in fact link the topic of Paul’s rights as an apostle with the context in which it appears. The idea of moral freedom which has self-imposed limitations (like not hurting the conscience of weaker brethren) is illustrated by reference to Paul’s position as an Apostle. He has rights but does not claim them. It is true that defence against * 

Originally published in Studia Evangelica 7 (1982): 563–566.

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criticisms is certainly implied in this chapter, and Paul is not wholly successful in integrating this with his argument. Nevertheless the context provides the occasion. There remains the accusation that 10:1–22 is inconsistent with 8 and 10:23– 11:1. It must be admitted that Paul’s arguments depend on inconsistent premises, in spite of much the same practical conclusion being the outcome. Defenders of the integrity of the Epistle tackle this problem from various angles: 1. They assert that it all comes to the same in the end, so we might as well ignore the inconsistency. 2. They claim that Paul has to deal with different groups approaching the question with different preconceptions – by far the most common explanation. 3. They attempt to provide an exegesis which allows the chapters to stand as they are, for example: (i) there is a difference between simply eating, and eating in a particular context with a particular significance (in this case, idolatry); or (ii) the belief in demonic influence was universal and not regarded as detrimental to monotheism. So, “could not Paul have said, ‘Inside the church, idols are of course nothing, but outside they are powerful’?”1 Such approaches are useful up to a point but neither meets the full problem. What Paul “could have said” is not in fact what he did say and is highly conjectural; and the appeal to context cannot explain the inconsistent estimates of the significance of idols. When the plea is added that “Paul could be brilliantly inconsistent; he does not furnish a systematic theology, but throws out flashes of insight,” I can only agree. But what most commentators have failed to notice is that Paul is not alone in this particular inconsistency, though J. C. Hurd noted in passing that both theories, the non-existence of idols and their representation of the daemons, were current in Judaism.2 The purpose of this note is to show that the presuppositions at work in this passage can in fact be illuminated from early Christian apologetic literature. In Christian apologetic, Jewish scorn of idols made of wood, metal or stone by human craftsmen, scorn traditional since 2 Isaiah, is found as early as the sermon attributed to Paul in Acts 17; this implied that the idols were nothing. Yet the power of the daemons in the world was obvious, and in the struggle against idolatry and the local cults, Christians experienced their active opposition. In an age when supernatural causation was taken for granted, the pagan gods were regarded as evil daemons, the hosts of Satan, who deceived people into thinking they were gods worthy of worship. This general acceptance of the existence of evil daemons left Christians with an often unresolved conflict in their attitude to the pagan deities: they were powerful, yet at the same time, non-existent. It is instructive to note the attempts of the apologists to provide an 1  C. S. C Williams, “1 & 2 Corinthians” in Peake’s Commentary on the Bible, ed. Matthew Black and H. H. Rowley (London: Nelson, 1962), 958. 2  J. C. Hurd, The Origin of I Corinthians (London: SPCK, 1965), 134.

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explanation of the apparent inconsistency. Justin, for example, suggested that men made the images, which were indeed inanimate and lifeless, and called them gods, though in fact they had no power or even real existence. But although they were not in the form of God, they did have the form of wicked daemons who made use of them for their deceptive purposes.3 Clearly, if this was the status of the Greek gods they should not be worshipped, and the traditional sacrificial rites were not to be practised under any circumstances. Paul is merely the first of a long line of Christian writers to maintain the non-existence of idols and the necessity of avoiding contact with the daemons. Both came from his Jewish attitudes. Jewish apologetic and polemic had developed the argument that the idols were only artefacts and non-existent; Judaism demanded uncompromising loyalty to its God, and any hint of contact with pagan religion was interpreted as idolatry. Protest against pagan sacrificial rites was expressed by a refusal to eat idolmeat. According to Acts 15.20, abstention from idol-meat was specifically enjoined by the Apostolic Council. Whether or not there was a formal decree to this effect, such a prohibition became accepted as church practice. The Didache explicitly identified the eating of meat consecrated to pagan gods with idolatry itself,4 and when Trypho suggested that there were many who professed faith in Jesus and were considered Christians, yet claimed that there was no harm in eating meats sacrificed to idols, Justin replied that they only pretended to be Christians, and his words indicate that he regarded them as heretical.5 The fact that Paul had to argue the case against idol-meat is a strong reason for doubting whether any apostolic decree had been passed at this stage. 6 The important point, however, is the fact that his argument was one which apologists like Clement and Origen continued to use forcefully, in spite of the inconsistencies.7 The inconsistencies went unnoticed because they reflected the ambivalent but unquestioned presuppositions of Christians about the pagan gods. The argument depends at once on the non-existence of idols and their dangerous power in the world; the source of the meat is irrelevant if Christians are unaware of it, but any conscious condoning of paganism, not to mention conscious participation in a pagan festival, is unthinkable; it implies disloyalty to the one true God. Paul’s Jewishness is well-engrained, and this feature of Jewish exclusiveness remained an important characteristic of the Christian community.

3 Justin,

1 Apol., 9. Cf. Athenagoras, Leg., 26–7, and Origen, Cels., 7.62. 6.3, in The Apostolic Fathers, vol.  1, LCL 24. 5 Justin, Dial., 6. 6  Pace Hurd, Origin of I Corinthians. 7  Clement of Alexandria, Paed., ed. O. Stählin, L. Fruchtel, and U. Treu, GCS (Leipzig: Hinrich, 1905), 2.8, and Origen, Cels., 8.24, both paraphrase and quote Paul’s argument. 4 Did.

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The inconsistencies of this part of 1 Corinthians are not indications of a composite document, but of an attitude of mind which prevailed in the church throughout succeeding centuries.

II.  Note 2. The Christ-party Of necessity, this second note must be extremely brief. It is impossible to discuss in detail here the vast range of suggestions made for the identification of those claiming “I am of Christ.” My purpose is simply to draw attention to the existence of a clue to their identity in 2 Corinthians, previously noticed by Kirsopp Lake, but never given due consideration. 8 The clue is to be found in 2 Corinthians 10:7, where it is implied that Paul’s opponents are confident that they are Christ’s. When the various hints in 2 Corinthians 10–13 about the character of Paul’s opponents are collected together, the over-riding impression is, not that they were Judaizers or “Gnostics,” but that they were Palestinian Christians, personal enemies, jealous of Paul’s success and claiming contact with the earthly Jesus as well as post-resurrection revelations. Such is Kümmel’s conclusion, but he adds that there appears to be a new situation, different from that in 1 Corinthians.9 I suggest that they should rather be linked with the so-called “Christ-party.” The connections between 1 and 2 Corinthians should not be overlooked. Already in 1 Corinthians Paul’s apostleship is under attack: he notes in 1 Corinthians 3 and 15 respectively that he was commissioned by God and saw the Risen Christ, and he answers specific criticisms in passing in 1 Corinthians 9. It seems highly likely that the opposition which drove him to direct defence in 2 Corinthians 10–13 was already undermining his influence. In 1 Corinthians Paul deals with their counter-claims en passant and with tact: all divisive claims tending to disunity are mischievous, no matter on whose authority they are based, that of Paul, Apollos, Cephas or even Christ himself. So far the opposition does not require direct confrontation, but is simply one of a variety of problems that need discussion. By the time of 2 Corinthians, their attacks on Paul have made his relations with the church problematical, and entirely undermined his authority. Tact is now useless; confrontation is inevitable. It is particularly interesting, not only that 2 Corinthians implies that they are confident they are Christ’s while casting doubt on whether Paul is (10:7), but also that, as a result of their intervention, the Corinthians require proof that Christ is speaking in Paul (13:3). 8 

Kirsopp Lake, The Earlier Epistles of St Paul (London: Rivingtons, 1911), 128. W. G. Kümmel, Introduction to the New Testament, 14th ed., trans. A. J. Mattill, Jr., in collaboration with the author (London: SCM Press, 1966), 209. 9 

Chapter 12

Note on 2 Corinthians 1:17b* ἢ ἃ βουλεύομαι κατὰ σάρκα βουλεύομαι, ἵνα ᾖ παρ᾿ ἐμοὶ τὸ Ναὶ ναὶ καὶ τὸ Οὒ οὔ; (ē ha bouleuomai kata sarka bouleuomai, hina ē (i) par’ emoi to Nai nai kai to Ou ou? – or the things that I purpose, do I purpose according to the flesh, that with me there should be yea yea and nay nay?) I wish to suggest that the clause introduced by ἵνα (hina) in this verse has been almost invariably misunderstood, and that the sequence of thought in 2 Corinthians 1:15–22 has therefore been obscured.

I.  The present consensus (1) The English versions, though somewhat various, are nevertheless based upon a common tradition stemming from the literal word for word rendering of the AV, given above. The RV barely modifies this, but most modern versions, in order to bring out the sense that is assumed to lie behind this obscure statement, insert words which do not appear in the Greek text at all: RSV Do I make plans like a worldly man, ready to say Yes and No at once? GNB When I make my plans, do I make them for selfish motives, ready to say “Yes yes” and “No no” at the same time? JB Do you really think that when I am making plans, my motives are ordinary human ones, and that I say Yes yes and No no at the same time? NEB Or do I , when I frame my plans, frame them as a worldly man might, so that it should rest with me to say “yes” and “yes” and “no” and “no.”

The RSV follows the shorter text which does not double the ναί (nai – yes) and οὔ (ou – no). The NEB has a slightly different nuance which is the result of putting emphasis upon παρ᾿ ἐμοί (par’ emoi – with me): this is much closer to the sense which I propose, though the doubling of the longer text is still, I believe, misconstrued.

* 

Originally published in JTS NS 37 (1986): 404–415.

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(2) Modern commentators for the most part follow a common tradition of interpretation which is based upon the following assumptions, explicitly or implicitly: 1 (a) That the doubling in the text is purely for emphasis, and that the textual discrepancy is therefore insignificant (Plummer, Allo, Windisch explicitly note the emphasis; others assume it or follow the short text). (b) That the ἵνα-clause is epexegetic or consecutive rather than final – a perfectly valid assumption given the weakening of ἵνα in Hellenistic Greek (Plummer, Bachmann, Allo, Bultmann, Héring, Hughes, Barrett, Furnish). In spite of pleas from Moulton and Schlatter that it should be regarded as final,2 to insist on this seems forced. The natural assumption is that the ἵνα-clause explains κατὰ σάρκα βουλεύεσθαι (kata sarka bouleuesthai – to purpose according to the flesh), and this view is not contested here. 1  Commentators will be referred to by name only. The following commentaries have been consulted: A. Menzies, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians (London: Macmillan, 1912). A. Plummer, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Second Epistle of Saint Paul to the Corinthians, International Critical Commentary (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1915). P. Bachmann, Der zweite Brief des Paulus an die Korinther, Zahns Kommentar (Leipzig: Deichert, 1918). H. Windisch, Der zweite Korintherbrief, Meyers Kommentar (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1924; 1970). H. L. Goudge, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, Westminster Commentaries (London: Methuen, 1927). A. Schlatter, Paulus der Bote Jesu, eine Deutung seiner Briefe an die Korinther (Stuttgart: Calwer Vereinsbuchhandlung, 1934). E. -B. Allo, Saint Paul: Seconde Épître aux Corinthiens, 2nd ed. (Paris: J. Gabalda, 1956). R. H. Strachan, The Second Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, Moffatt New Testament Commentary (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1935). H. Lietzmann, rev. W. G. Kümmel, An die Korinther I–II, Handbuch zum Neuen Testament (Tübingen: J. C. Mohr (P. Siebeck), 1949). J. Héring, The Second Epistle of Saint Paul to the Corinthians, trans. A. W. Heathcote (London: Epworth, 1958). P. E. Hughes, Paul’s Second Epistle to the Corinthians, New London Commentary (London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1962). F. F. Bruce, 1 & 2 Corinthians, New Century Bible (London: Oliphants, 1971). C. K. Barrett, A Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, Black’s New Testament Commentaries (London: Black, 1973). R. Bultmann, rev. E. Dinkler, Der zweite Brief an die Korinther, Meyers Kommentar (Göttingen: Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht, 1976). V. P. Furnish, II Corinthians, The Anchor Bible (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984). 2  J. H. Moulton, Grammar of New Testament Greek, vol.   1 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1908), 210: Nigel Turner in his continuation of Moulton, vol.  3 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1963), 102, notes that this verse is controversial. F. Blass and A. Debrunner, A Greek Grammar of the New Testament and other Early Christian Literature, rev. and trans. Robert W. Funk (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961) do not rule out the possibility that it is final.

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(c) That the whole question is parallel to, and therefore epexegetic of, acting with ἐλαφρία (elaphria – levity) (2 Cor 1:17a). But it is not necessary to take the Greek in this way; Theodoret definitely states that Paul puts up two opposite possibilities for consideration, which goes to show that 1:17b could be an alternative to 1:17a.3 The assumption that it is not, is based in the first place on preconceived notions of what Paul means by operating κατὰ σάρκα, namely that it must mean unreliability, selfish calculation, lack of responsibility or settled principle (Plummer, Windisch, Lietzmann, Goudge, Héring, Bultmann, Barrett); and secondly, on unjustifiable assumptions about the sequence of thought in the overall context (see further below). (d) That 1:17b is clarified by 1:18 and 1:19 (Menzies, Bachmann, Lietzmann, Héring; presupposed by most others also), where ναὶ καὶ οὔ clearly belong together as the predicate. There is no good reason for assuming this; a reference back need not repeat precisely the construction used on the first occasion. The first statement must be comprehended in its own terms and its own context, and the nature of the back-reference be considered subsequently. (e) That τὸ Ναὶ ναὶ καὶ τὸ Οὒ οὔ must mean “Yes, yes and No no at the same time” or “in the same breath,” even though there is nothing whatever in the Greek to express that. Barrett admits that “these four words are essential to the argument but have to be introduced into the text,” as do Menzies and Lietzmann. Most commentators prefer to avoid making such a damaging admission and are content to assume it (Plummer, Goudge, Hughes, Bruce), as do the translators of most of the modern English versions also. (f) That the closely parallel verse in James 5:12 is totally different – in fact has the opposite sense; and that the other near parallel in Matthew 5:37 is also irrelevant, it being unlikely that Paul is referring to this dominical saying, except insofar as it confirms that doubling for emphasis was a characteristic idiom (Plummer, Windisch, Lietzmann, Héring, Bultmann, Bruce). (g) That there is a shift in the argument somewhere between 1:17 and 1:19. Many commentators fail to admit this openly, and offer paraphrases purporting to spell out a consistent flow of argument. Barrett is more honest: Paul’s “‘Yes yes’ and ‘No no’… lead him off on a theological digression,” even though in Barrett’s eyes it is an excusable one. It is true that van Unnik tackles this problem directly, attempting to explain the disjunction by reference to the Rabbinic type of argument kal wahōmēr, and highlighting the deliberate ambiguity of “our word” in 1:18; but he makes the same assumptions about 1:17 as most other commentators and his brilliant elucidation of 1:18–22 against a Semitic background does not entirely resolve the problem of coherence in the passage as a whole.4 3 Theodoret, 4 

Interpretatio Secundae Epistulae ad Corinthios, Migne, PG 82.381D–384A. W. C. van Unnik, “Reisepläne und Amen-sagen, Zusammenhang und Gedankenfolge in

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Thus it is generally agreed that Paul’s argument runs more or less like this: I planned to visit you on the way to Macedonia and on the way back. Was I vacillating when I wanted to do this? No of course not. I don’t act in a worldly way wanting to have things both ways, saying “yes” and “no” at the same time. I’m straightforward [cf. 1:12]. We’ve not been saying yes and no to you – God guarantees that. After all he has given a magnificent yes to all his promises in Christ.

This interpretation is unsatisfactory for the following reasons: (1) It treats 1:19–22 as a digression and not as an integral part of the argument. Paul is implicitly represented as turning the argument aside by embarking on a typical theological digression as a distraction, though most commentators manage to blur this consequence of their interpretation. (2) It fails to note that Paul admits that he did not fulfil his original intention (cf. 1:23), and therefore did say “yes” and “no” at the same time, a point he could hardly cover up by the kind of obfuscation assumed on the usual interpretation (Schlatter is the one commentator to do justice to this). (3) It necessitates putting words into the text, as Barrett at least openly admits; on this interpretation “at the same time” or some equivalent is essential to the argument but it is not there. The translation and interpretation which has become conventional is therefore highly unsatisfactory. Is it possible to do better?

II.  Towards a more satisfactory interpretation Two observations have led me to consider a different approach to the meaning of this verse: 1. παρ᾿ ἐμοί, literally “with me” or “beside me” bears something like the sense “in my hands,” and carries more weight in the sentence than has been generally recognized. If this is correct, to operate κατὰ σάρκα would be to imagine that “yes” and “no” depend upon oneself, as the NEB translators observed. 2. On the assumption that the text originally read τὸ Ναὶ ναὶ καὶ τὸ Οὒ οὔ, the most natural way of construing it, according to the conventions of Greek syntax, is to take τὸ Ναί as the subject and ναί without the article as the predicate, and similarly with τὸ Οὔ and οὔ. Thus we would render the clause as follows: so that with me yes might be yes and no no.

Giving due weight to the first point it might be rendered: so that it might rest in my hands that yes be yes and no be no,

or 2 Korinther 1:15–24,” in Studia Paulina in honorem J. de Zwaan, ed. W. C. van Unnik, Jan Nicolaas Sevenster, and C. K. Barrett (Haarlem: De Ervem F. Bohn N. V., 1953): 215–234.

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so that yes being yes and no being no depends on me.

If the shorter text is read the second of these observations becomes otiose, and the effect of the sentence is sharpened up, all the emphasis falling squarely on the idea that to make plans in a worldly way is to depend upon oneself not God – for παρ᾿ ἐμοί would then be predicative. There is a slight difficulty with this in the case of the longer form of text, since at first sight it does not seem easy to give due weight to both points at once, treating both παρ᾿ ἐμοί and the second ναί and οὔ as predicates. However, Greek frequently takes the copula for granted and it is possible to understand an unexpressed εἶναι (einai – to be). It is admittedly more awkward than the short text, but as we shall see, Chrysostom read it in this way. We may see an approximate parallel in 1 Corinthians 6:5: οὔτως οὐκ ἔνι ἐν ὑμῖν οὐδεὶς σοφός… (houtōs ouk eni en hū min oudeis sophos… – is there then no wise person among you…) Here the pronoun in the prepositional phrase is clearly internal to the verb and therefore its predicate; if σοφός (sophos – wise) is adjectival rather than nominal, it could be said to imply the ellision of the participle ὤν (on – being) and therefore be predicative. The two sentences are exactly parallel in word order. Clearly, in this second case there is no need to press the predicative value of σοφός, but in 2 Corinthians 1:17b, as we shall see, far better exegetical sense is achieved if these suggestions are followed. To these proposals some objections have already been made, notably in the more thorough German commentaries where all possibilities are canvassed.5 Before listing the arguments in favour of the position adopted, let me deal with these objections: 1. The emphatic position of παρ᾿ ἐμοί is denied by Bachmann with a reference to Blass-Debrunner §  472: “unemphatic pronouns tend to follow immediately on the verb, as do other parts of the sentence governed by the verb, especially when the subject is expanded.”6 Certainly there are examples of unemphatic pronouns following the verb in New Testament Greek, possibly under the influence of the Semitic use of suffixes.7 Yet recent studies suggest that generalizations about Greek word order are hazardous, 8 and this particular example is the 5  This way of construing the text is discussed in some of the commentaries consulted because it had been adopted by K. von Hofmann, Der zweite Brief an die Korinther, 2nd ed. (Nördlingen: C. H. Bock’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1877); and A. Schlatter, Der zweite Brief an die Korinther, Erläuterungen zum Neuen Testament 2 (Stuttgart: Calwer, 1909; 5th ed., 1928). (I have had access to neither of these works.) It also appears in T. Zahn’s influential Einleitung in das Neue Testament (Leipzig: Deichert); ET Introduction to the New Testament, trans. Melanchthon Williams Jacobus and C. S. Thayer, vol.  1 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1909), 324, 343 ff. German scholarship was, therefore, more aware of the possibilities. Plummer appears to allude to the discussion without making it clear to the uninitiated reader. The only English commentary to discuss the matter explicitly is Menzies. There are fuller discussions in Bachmann, Windisch, and Allo. 6  Quoted here from ET of Blass-Debrunner-Funk, Greek Grammar. 7 Turner, Grammar, 349. 8  J. D. Denniston, Greek Prose Style (Oxford: Clarendon, 1952); more especially, K. J. Do-

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more problematic since the verb is εἰμί (eimi – I am). Blass-Debrunner-Funk §  472 cites the example in Acts 27:2: ὄντος σὺν ἡμῖν Ἀριστάρχου Μακεδόνος Θεσσαλονικέως (ontos syn hē mī n Aristarchos Macedonos Thessalonikeōs – there being with us Aristarchos a Macedonian from Thessalonica). At first sight the parallel looks significant, but it is probably misleading – this is a genitive absolute and it is likely that the order here is determined by that feature. Older studies suggested that generally in Greek, “as contrasted with English, the emphasis tends to fall on the earlier rather than the later words: thus, in the matter of emphasis, Greek sentences are usually constructed on a diminuendo, English sentences on a crescendo principle.”9 If there is anything in this instinct, then παρ᾿ ἐμοί should after all be in a strong position. Given that we have access only to written texts, it is unlikely that subtleties like word emphasis can be definitively recovered, but some cases of Pauline usage may add to the case for regarding παρ᾿ ἐμοί as having weight. Take 1 Corinthians 1:30: ὅς ἐγενήθη σοφία ἡμῖν ἀπὸ Θεοῦ… (hos egenē thē sophia hē mī n apo Theou – who has become wisdom for us from God)

Here we see Paul following what appears to be conventional order with the pronoun delayed until after the complement. Compare 1 Corinthians 1:10: καὶ μὴ ᾖ ἐν ὑμῖν σχίσματα… (kai m ē ē (i) en hymī n schismata – and let there not be among you schisms)

Here it is quite plausible to suggest that ἐν ὑμῖν has been advanced before the subject precisely because it was intended to carry some emphasis. Ultimately, the proof of the point that παρ᾿ ἐμοί bears weight in the sentence lies not so much in the sentence structure as in the better exegetical sense it permits, but it is also worth noting that the phrase used is παρ᾿ ἐμοί rather than a simple genitive. The importance of παρ᾿ ἐμοί will be the greater if, as already suggested it proves to be not merely emphatic but predicative, as it certainly would be if the shorter text is read. 2. To take the second ναί and οὔ as predicates is dismissed on stylistic grounds by Windisch. He offers alternative ways in which he claims Paul would have put it if he intended to say this. But no satisfactory proof of this view is offered. ver, Greek Word Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960). These studies are concerned with classical and preclassical Greek, and there is some agreement that order is more stereotyped in Hellenistic Greek. But the kind of detailed analysis undertaken for the earlier period does not seem to have been done, and spot checks suggest that just as earlier generalizations about Greek word order have been called into question by Dover, so many standard comments about word order in the New Testament may prove to have rather shaky foundations. Nigel Turner quotes the same examples as Blass-Debrunner-Funk on this particular point, and therefore cannot be considered to have made much advance. 9  W. Rhys Roberts, introduction to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, On Literary Composition, being the Greek text of the De Compositione Verborum (London: Macmillan, 1910), 18, text and n.  3.

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Given the parallel in James 5:12 (which Windisch admits but dismisses), and the fact that Chrysostom and Theodoret clearly understood the construction in the way suggested (for these points see further below), Windisch’s objection can only appear unsubstantiated. 3. Other objections are made on exegetical grounds: e.g. Menzies states that the “second yes and second no cannot be predicates. To translate ‘so that my Yes should be yes, my No no’ would make the end of the verse contradict the beginning instead of proving it. This would show obstinacy not levity.” Bachmann suggests that to be consistent, making yes equal yes and no, no, is not naturally characterized as “fleshly behaviour”; the only way to take it is to assume fleshly obstinacy and obduracy, and if that is what the Corinthians accuse Paul of, it is inconsistent with the charge of ἐλαφρία. Plummer and Allo likewise insist that the charge is not one of inflexibility, Allo noting that the following verses put constancy not flexibility in relief. This is true, but Allo has failed to see the sequence of the argument and so drawn the wrong conclusions from the fact to which he draws attention. Indeed, all these objections depend upon the assumptions listed above, and fail to convince when the whole passage is seen in a different light. More substantial is Windisch’s point that if Paul intended to defend himself against the charge of inflexibility, he has done it so briefly and elusively that the reader could hardly be expected to grasp the point. But why the assumption that a different charge is in view, or that inflexibility is what this implies? To suggest that the opposite of fickleness, namely inflexibility or intransigence, is the only possible way of understanding 1:17b as an alternative, is again to let 1:17a influence the interpretation of 1:17b too much. It is possible to accept the syntactical point without reading that interpretation into it. A quite different way of understanding 1:17b as an alternative to 1:17a will be suggested below. For the present, note that the exegetical and contextual arguments are by no means conclusive. The weight of these objections has been so great that all more recent commentaries have simply followed the consensus about this passage,10 and most English commentators do not even raise the possibility of construing the sentence in the alternative way. However, the objections are not so compelling as to warrant this, and there are a number of good reasons for adopting the alternative rendering. Furthermore if it is adopted, the objections to the consensus view noted earlier are met. In support of the alternative view, the following considerations may be listed: 1. Syntactically it is the natural way of taking the sentence even in its longer form, as is proved by: (a) The fact that both Chrysostom and Theodoret understood it in this way; 11 10  Even Schlatter appears to have been won over. See n.  5 above and cf. Paulus der Bote Jesu on 1:17. 11  That Chrysostom did understand it in this way has been obscured for the English read-

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since they were reading their own language (perhaps in the case of Theodoret by education rather than birth), they would naturally presume the most obvious sense. Their exegetical conclusions will be considered later. It is significant that Theodoret is clearly not dependent on Chrysostom at this point and therefore constitutes an independent witness. (b) The very existence of the suggested emendation τὸ Ναὶ οὒ καὶ τὸ Οὒ ναί,12 an attempt to make more logical sense out of the passage which is based upon the assumption that the word with τό is the subject and the word without τό is the predicate. (c) The syntactically parallel case of James 5:12: ἤτω δὲ ὑμῶν τὸ Ναὶ ναὶ καὶ τὸ Οὒ οὔ. (ē tō de hȳ mī n to Nai nai kai to Ou ou. – Let your Yes be yes and your No be no.)

This is a closer parallel both in form and content than Matthew 5:37. If it is taken as a precise analogy, παρ᾿ ἐμοί would be equivalent to ὑμῶν, ᾖ the copula like ἤτω, τὸ Ναί the subject, ναί the complement and similarly with τὸ Οὔ and οὔ. If we are to give weight to παρ᾿ ἐμοἰ as suggested above, the analogy is not so precise, but still suggestive. So even if ναί and οὔ are doubled, what has been suggested is the most natural way of construing the sentence. 2. This way of construing the sentence obviates the necessity to insert words to make sense of the argument, a serious objection to the consensus view. 3. It is consistent with Paul’s admission that he did not come to Corinth. This failure, he implies, certainly does not indicate frivolousness (1:17a); but on the other hand, they should not expect an apostle to keep his schedules like a businessman (1:17b). He is a man under authority and not necessarily free to do what he would prefer to do. In other words, 1:17b is not epexegetic of 1:17a, but as noted by Theodoret and later by Schlatter, it is a different question. There is after all a change in tense from aorist to present (a point commented upon only by Plummer, who deduces that the second question is more comprehensive than the first and covers his life as a whole). 1:17b is not simply another way of expressing fickleness, but neither does it imply its opposite – intransigence. What is implied is not another charge from the Corinthians at all,13 but a hint from er by the fact that the NPNF translators did not notice this, and where the text is quoted, the AV version is reproduced. To prove the point I quote the NPNF translation of half a sentence from the comments on 1:18: “If after having promised, thou hast put off coming, and yea is not yea and nay is not nay with thee [my italics], but what thou sayest thou unsayest afterwards, as thou didst in the case of this journey….” My own translation of this appears in the text below, where the overall context of this half-sentence can be examined. 12  This is supported by no textual evidence at all, but cited in Nestlé-Aland as suggested by Markland, and discussed by Allo who refers to P. W. Schmiedel, Der Briefe an die Korinther, Hand-Kommentar 2:1, 2nd ed. (Freiburg: J. C. B. Mohr, 1892). 13  It may be objected that 10:2 suggests that Paul is replying to a Corinthian charge. However, it does not necessarily imply that. Throughout the epistle Paul is countering false con-

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Paul that they should not expect him to carry out his expressed intentions if they are overruled by God. The clause spells out (as generally agreed) what κατὰ σάρκα βουλεύεσθαι would be, but contrary to the unjustified assumptions of most commentators, those who operate κατὰ σάρκα, conforming to worldly standards and expectations, are precisely those who depend upon themselves and plan for the future without being open to unexpected promptings of the Spirit: it is after all “fleshly wisdom” that Paul is talking about (1:12). The wise after this world dare not be so irresponsible as to take no thought for the morrow. To operate κατὰ σάρκα, then, is to assume that one has power over one’s own life, “so that it might rest in my hands that yes be yes and no no.” On this interpretation, Paul is by implication admitting, as he does openly in 1:23, that he did change his mind. However, he is transferring the responsibility from himself, implying that it did not rest with him but with God. The simplicity and single-mindedness of 1:12 is not an immunity from changing his plans or revising his strategy, but that single-minded concentration upon God and his purposes which should have been obvious to his critics. (It is to Schlatter’s credit that he noticed this point, and held to it.) If there is any allusion to the dominical saying – which I doubt, not only because Paul cannot have been dependent upon the Gospel of Matthew and indeed what acquaintance he had with sayings-traditions appears less than intimate, but also because the point is quite different (the dominical saying is about sticking to plain “yes” and “no” and not swearing) – it makes no difference. Paul is simply affirming that in this case the whole matter of “yes” and “no” did not lie in his own hands – they were not “his,” because his wishes were overruled by God. That makes the following verses all the more essential. 4. For now 1:19–22 cannot be treated as a digression. It is essential to the argument and integrated closely into it. If the responsibility for the change in plans was not Paul’s but God’s, then God’s reliability is naturally called into question and the succeeding verses are there to defend it. If Paul is acting entirely under God, then God’s word itself has to be freed from the charge of fickleness. Notice that in 1:18 Paul slips from the 1st person singular to the 1st person plural, and who the “we” are is specified in 1:19. This shift is exceedingly important. “Our word” here is not Paul’s promise to come to Corinth but the word of preaching. When he speaks of his travel plans, Paul uses “I”; when he switches to “ours” he means the gospel, and he goes on to state that the gospel is all “yes.” So 1:19–22 belong fairly and squarely to the argument, which is not about Paul’s reliability as such, but rather about God’s reliability. In the light of this revised ceptions of how an Apostle should conduct himself, and he describes this in terms of acting κατὰ σάρκα. 10:2 could well be Paul’s own summary characterization of what some Corinthians think and not the phraseology of his opponents. Obsession with Paul’s opponents has, I think, distorted the reading of 2 Corinthians at a number of points, but this is not the place to make the case comprehensively.

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understanding of 1:17b, the illuminating exegetical study of van Unnik referred to earlier becomes all the more telling. 5. The suggestion that Paul is claiming by implication to be under the guidance of God and not to be self-sufficient accords with the entire thrust of his argument about the nature of apostleship in this epistle. The point has already been prepared in 1:9, and will be spelt out in 4:7 ff., 6:4 ff., 12:9–10, and 13:4. (Whether all these statements belong to the same letter does not affect the issue, since they certainly reflect Paul’s consistent position in relation to the Corinthian criticism of his apostleship.) Paul is not sufficient of himself and does not claim to be – his sufficiency is of God (3:5–6). The culmination of the immediate argument is Paul’s affirmation of God as the one who “guarantees us with you” (1:21). 6. Not only do Chrysostom and Theodoret support this way of construing the Greek, but each gives weight to part of the exegesis offered. Theodoret’s comments are exceedingly brief, but as already noted, he does recognize that two different issues are raised in 1:17 – the second question is not simply repeating the first in different words. The second issue, however, he misinterprets, taking it to imply an unrelenting pursuit of Paul’s own desires in preference to consulting the best interests of the Corinthians. There is something in the text to support this, namely Paul’s explanation of why he did not come in 2:1 ff.; but it runs into the same difficulties as the suggestion that it implies a charge of inflexibility, namely that the overall argument becomes disjointed. Chrysostom’s remarks are more apposite, and worth quoting more fully: 14 On 1:17: The fleshly man, that is the person rivetted to immediate issues and constantly occupied by them, the person outside the Spirit’s operation, can go off everywhere and wander where he will, but the Spirit’s attendant, led on and around by him, cannot be everywhere the master of his own mind, which he has made dependent upon authority from that source; but he submits to the same treatment as a well-tried slave, dragged around everywhere at his master’s beck and call and having no authority of his own, unable to take a rest, even a little one – a slave who has perhaps promised something to his fellow-­ slaves but then his master’s intentions are different and he cannot carry out his promise. This then is the sort of thing he means by “I do not make plans at the fleshly level”; I am not independent of the Spirit’s direction, nor do I have the authority to go where I want. For I am under the Paraclete’s rule and subject to his commands; by his decrees I am led on and around. This is why I could not come; it didn’t suit the Spirit. In Acts this sort of thing happened often; although he made up his mind to come, the Spirit bade him go elsewhere. So, he says, it was not because of my frivolousness [he means fickleness], that I did not come, but rather being subject to the Spirit, I obeyed him. 14  John Chrysostom, In Divi Pauli Epistolam ad Corinthios Posteriorem (30 Homilies), Greek text: Migne, PG 61.445–446; also in Johannis Chrysostomis Interpretatio Omnium Epistolarum Paulinarum, ed. F. Field, vol.  3, Bibliotheca Patrum (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1845), 37–38. The translation is my own.

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On 1:18: He neatly squashes an emerging objection to this effect: if you have promised and then put off coming and yes is not yes with you and no is not no, but what you say you afterwards reverse as you did in the case of your visit – then alas for us, what if this should have happened in the case of your preaching as well? So in case you were thinking this and getting upset, he says, “God is faithful, for our word to you was not yes and no.” With respect to the preaching, he says, this did not happen, but only in the case of the journeys and visits; in the preaching what we said remains firm and unshakable – for “word” here is what he calls the preaching. Then he produces an unanswerable point, referring everything to God. What he says is this: The promise to come was mine, and I made that promise off my own bat. The gospel is not mine, it isn’t even human, it’s God’s; and it is impossible for anything from God to be false.

To sum up, then, the neglected or rejected rendering of 2 Corinthians 1:17b which gives significance to παρ᾿ ἐμοί whichever text is read, and treats the second ναί and οὔ as predicative if the longer text is preferred, deserves reconsideration. Exegetically, it is far more satisfactory in that it discloses a coherent sequence of thought and a consistent argument which is appropriate to the overall context of the epistle; and Paul’s straightforwardness is vindicated after all. Confusion about the sequence of thought in 2 Corinthians 1:15–22 has been considerable, and has been exacerbated by unjustified assumptions about what Paul was getting at. This has led to consistent failure to do justice to Paul, who by implication has been misrepresented as one given to deliberate obfuscation in spite of his claim to be straightforward. My claim is that this rendering gives far better coherence. It might seem to authenticate the shorter text, though on the principle that the harder reading is more likely to be original, it may have the opposite effect. The rendering suggested is: – Either (adopting the longer text read by Chrysostom): “Or do I make plans at the human level so that yes being yes and no being no rests in my hands?” – Or (adopting the short text): “Or do I make plans at the human level so that “yes” and “no” rests in my hands?” The sequence of thought might be summarized as follows (by contrast with that given above): I planned to visit you on the way to Macedonia and on the way back. Do you imagine my wish to do this arose from fickleness? Or that I make my plans in a worldly way so that yes being yes and no being no depends on me? Neither is true. It is simply that I am single-minded in following God’s purposes. Not that God is changeable – as far as the gospel is concerned he is utterly reliable and has given a magnificent yes to all his promises in Christ.

Chapter 13

Paul’s Case for the Defence* In Meaning and Truth in 2 Corinthians, David Ford and I suggested that this epistle is to be read as a whole, contrary to the prevailing critical opinion. Such a position will need to be defended. Interestingly enough, an argument which goes beyond mere “instinct” was provided by our search for the proper genre of this letter. In 2 Corinthians 12:19 Paul suggests that his readers might think he had been making his apology. In 1 Corinthians 4:3, he had already shrugged off being judged by those he is addressing or any other human court; and in 4:5 he had appealed to them not to prejudge the issue, for everything would be brought to light when the Lord comes. Nevertheless in 1 Corinthians 9:3, he had introduced some points of self-defence by stating, “My apology to those condemning me is this.” In 2 Corinthians 1:14 he looks for their mutual recognition and pride in one another on judgment day, and later in 5:10 ff. associates the disclosure of all the truth before the judgment seat of Christ with the hope that the Corinthians will be persuaded of his transparent integrity. The law-court metaphor pervades his dealings with the Corinthians, and while he purports to be disinterested in their judgment in view of the final judgment of God, clearly he is anxious to convince them as well. These are some of the indications that point towards the conclusions of this chapter, namely that 2 Corinthians is to be construed as Paul’s apology in the quasi-technical sense of a “speech for the defence‚” an apologia in absentia for Paul’s style of mission. If this correctly identifies the genre, then we believe it also suggests an overall structure which demonstrates the unity of the epistle. On the basis of these conclusions, maybe we shall be able to discern enough about the situation in Corinth to appreciate the reasons for this impassioned plea, and so come to a better understanding of the text. As has been hinted in the last paragraph, there are strong reasons for thinking that the situation which called for this response already existed in Corinth when Paul wrote the first letter. If fresh interlopers, people not mentioned before the final chapters of 2 Corinthians, did arrive at some point, they merely exacerbated an already existing failure in mutual understanding. We think identifying them precisely is less important for understanding the epistle than would appear in most recent *  Originally published in Young and Ford, Meaning and Truth in 2 Corinthians: 27–59. All quotations in this and the following chapter are taken from the translation of 2 Corinthians made by the authors and published in the book cited.

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work on these epistles. They largely provide a foil for Paul’s exposition of his own style of apostleship. In 2 Corinthians, the issue is Paul himself. The letter is a letter of self-defence. So our positive argument is that the genre of 2 Corinthians, together with its structure, is that of an apologetic letter, and this demonstrates its unity. But first we must review and assess the strength of the case for partition.

I.  Are the objections to the unity of this letter cogent? The fundamental problem we face is that our view contradicts the consensus. While standard introductions to 2 Corinthians accept Pauline authorship without question, they are usually sceptical about its unity. Most students of the epistle therefore look at it with the weight of scholarly consensus affecting their attitude, not only because of its apparent authority, but because of its initial plausibility. There are a number of places where breaks in thought or mood seem to demand an explanation. It is therefore important to remind the reader that there is no textual evidence for partition theories, and the epistle was always treated as a unity until modern critics sharpened their tools. Furthermore, we may now be misled by the fact that most editions in which we read the text organize the material in such a way that the apparent breaks in sequence are reinforced. In fact the situation addressed appears to be the same throughout, and the themes and vocabulary also make the presumption of unity a natural starting point. It is often the case that assumptions made at the start affect the reading of the text, and our contention is that it has been worth seeing whether the assumption of unity makes sense. That the text can be read as having a unified thrust we had demonstrated in an earlier chapter, but so strong has been the attack on unity that the burden of proof appears to be on those who would defend it. It is therefore necessary to examine the particular arguments advanced with some care. Are the arguments against unity really cogent?

1.  2 Corinthians 10–13 The most generally agreed view has been described as the “four chapters hypothesis.” 2 Corinthians 10–13 seem markedly out of tune with all that has gone before. Whereas in 2 Corinthians 2 and 7 Paul seems, at least at first sight, to be overjoyed that the breach with the church has been made up, in 2 Corinthians 10–13 he is clearly in the thick of controversy, and he writes with great pain and passion. A so-called “stern letter” which we apparently do not possess, is referred to in 2 Corinthians 2:9 and 7:8. So, it is suggested, is it not likely that the final four chapters in fact belong to an earlier stage in the controversy and can

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be identified with this “stern letter”? Others detect problems with this view, and suggest that Paul’s optimism in the letter containing 2 Corinthians 2 and 7 proved groundless, and 10–13 belong to a subsequent letter. Certainly some explanation for the change of mood is demanded, and Lietzmann’s suggestion that Paul had a sleepless night is hardly sufficient to meet the case, quite apart from its speculative character.1 The fundamental difficulty has been reinforced by the discovery of (a) alleged contradictions between 2 Corinthians 1–9 and 10–13; by the claim that (b) particular words are used in different senses in the two parts of the epistle; by the suggestion that (c) certain passages in the early part of the letter presuppose the contents of the final chapters; and by the assertion that (d) a different situation is presupposed. These points have been subjected to careful examination by Bates and Stephenson, and it is hardly necessary to go over all the ground again.2 Let us just review each area of debate. (a) The claimed contradictions prove to be very slight, and most of them fall into the category of verbal contradictions which need not be fundamental, but simply the outcome of the change in mood, which is admitted. Paul is quite capable of self-contradiction at the surface level of the text, even if coherence can be discovered at a deeper level: e.g. in Romans 3 he appears to say a Jew has an advantage but a few verses later claims that the Jew has no advantage whatsoever; and in Romans 2 he claims that all are judged according to their deeds, which appears to contradict the thrust of the rest of his argument concerning justification by faith. Likewise in precisely that section of 2 Corinthians whose integrity is not generally questioned, we find the implication in 3:1 that he does not commend himself, the statement in 4:2 that he does, the statement in 5:12 that he does not, and the statement in 6:4 that he does. To apply strict logic to the fluctuating reactions of Paul (or indeed anyone else under pressure) is not satisfactory exegesis. The only fundamental contradiction remains the apparent words of approval in the early part of the letter and the severities of the last four chapters, but the seriousness of this can be exaggerated, and in any case, it only confirms the fundamental objection to integrity. It does not reinforce it. (b) The main example of words used in a different sense in the different parts of the epistle is the word “boasting.” It is used favourably in the first part of the epistle to express legitimate pride – the apostle’s legitimate pride in the church and the church’s legitimate pride in him; whereas in the last chapters the words are used in an unfavourable sense, and Paul claims to boast reluctantly. Again, if this is right, the change in mood is simply being confirmed. However, it is possible to dismiss this also on the grounds that it is scarcely an independent argument, and also to suggest that it misrepresents the facts. Paul’s use of the 1 Lietzmann,

An die Korinther, 139. W. H. Bates, “The Integrity of 2 Corinthians,” NTS 12 (1965): 56–69; A. M. G. Stephenson, “A Defence of the Integrity of 2 Corinthians,” in The Authorship and Integrity of the New Testament, SPCK Theological Collections 4 (London: SPCK, 1965): 82–97. 2 

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“boasting” and “exulting” terminology is a particularly fascinating aspect of his whole discussion.3 Suffice it to say here that even in 2 Corinthians 10–13, Paul uses it in favourable as well as unfavourable senses, notably at 10:17 and 11:18, where Paul clearly intends the quotation from scripture to imply “proper pride‚” and the contrast he draws is between exultation in worldly success and exultation in God. (c) The argument that some parts of 1–9 presuppose the contents of 10–13 is hard to sustain. Some who favour partition would certainly not wish to press this point, as noted above. A typical example which has an initial plausibility is the following: 13:10: I write these things in my absence, so that when I’m present I may not act drastically. 2:3: I wrote that (notorious letter) to avoid coming and being hurt by those who should make me rejoice…

But there is no necessity to think that each of these statements refer to the same letter. Most of the examples look convincing if the partition theory is already decided for, but they would not convince on their own. The references to Titus’s movements are another source of argument, perhaps suggesting that 10–13 must belong to a subsequent letter; but 12:18 need not necessarily be a back reference to 8:16 ff.; for there Titus is apparently to be accompanied by two other brothers, not one, and if we take the letter as a unity, 12:18 can easily refer to the trip Titus took which is mentioned in 2 Corinthians 2 and 7. Most of the points raised are inconclusive. (d) The final argument concerning the fact that a different situation is presupposed, refers not to the situation in Corinth itself‚ which everyone agrees has not changed between one part of the letter and another, but to Paul’s location. The first part of 2 Corinthians was written from Macedonia (7:5 ff.), but from a geographical point of view, 10:16 reads more naturally if written from Ephesus. Paul expresses an interest in going to the “parts beyond you” to evangelize, presumably referring to Rome and Spain, at least if one correlates this with what he says at the end of Romans. Not much confidence can be placed in this kind of argument given the extreme vagueness of the text and the hypothetical nature of any statements about the so-called “severe” letter. Ultimately, then, the only serious argument is the psychological one to which we will return.

2.  Other suspected dislocations Careful study of the text has proved that arguments based on presumed psychological or logical disconnections cannot stop here. Convinced by that first par3 

See further ch.  14 in this collection.

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tition, critics have gone on to find more, imagining this is the only way to deal with the difficulties. A useful account of the history of criticism is provided by Francis Watson.4 The difficulties may be presented as follows: (a) 6:14–17 appears uncompromising, presupposes a sharp dualism involving hostility to unbelievers, is inconsistent with attitudes Paul expresses elsewhere (in 1 Corinthians for example), and does not fit the context. These verses contain an exceptionally high number of hapax legomena (words that occur only once in Paul’s writings), and parallels with Qumran have sharpened the question whether these verses might not even be Pauline.5 It is generally agreed that a satisfactory explanation of their position here in 2 Corinthians has not been so far advanced. They are usually treated as an insertion. (b) 2:14–7:4 are suspect, partly because 2:13 appears to be picked up in 7:5 and the intervening material seems digressive if not unrelated, but also because these chapters presuppose continuing tension between Paul and the church, whereas peaceful reconciliation is the obvious background of 2 Corinthians 2 and 7. This section is not so violent as 10–13, but it is certainly controversial: Chrysostom notes the “covert rebukes” here. Collange assumes that this is a separate letter and in his study concentrates solely upon it. 6 In Bultmann’s scheme it is treated with 2 Corinthians 10–13 as Letter C, the interim letter.7 (c) 2 Corinthians 8 and 9 constitute the other notorious problem. Is not one or the other redundant? 2 Corinthians 9 begins by suggesting that it is superfluous to write about the collection, when Paul has apparently been writing about it for some time, and slightly different stages in the saga of the collection seem to be presupposed. For Bultmann, 2 Corinthians 9 belongs to Letter C, and 2 Corinthians 8 with the rump of 1–7 constitutes Letter D. So the more tests of coherence are stressed as arguments for disintegration, the more the epistle falls apart. The multiplication of partitions weakens the fundamental case if it is after all possible to discover an underlying coherence which superficial examination of the text has missed. It seems to us that such a coherence can be discovered in the epistle as a whole; however, let us briefly consider each case in turn:

4 Francis Watson, “2 Corinthians 10–13 and Paul’s Painful Letter,” JTS NS 35 (1984): 324–346. 5  J. A. Fitzmyer, “Qumran and the Interpolated Paragraph in 2 Cor. 6.14–7.1,” in Semitic Background: 205–217. On this section see also J. Lambrecht, “The Fragment 2 Cor 6:16–7:1. A Plea for its Authenticity,” in Miscellanea Neotestamentica 2, ed. T. Baarda, A. F. J. Klijn, W. C. van Unnik (Leiden: Brill, 1978): 143–161; M. E. Thrall, “The Problem of 2 Cor 6:14–7:1 in Some Recent Discussion,” NTS 24 (1977): 132–148; and Gordon D. Fee, “2 Corinthians 6:14–7:1 and Food Offered to Idols,” NTS 23 (1977): 140–161. 6  Jean-Francois Collange, Énigme de la deuxième épître de Paul aux Corinthiens: étude exégétique de 2 Cor. 2.14–7.4 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972). 7 Bultmann, zweite Brief, rev. Dinkler.

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Suppose 2 Corinthians 6:14–17 (a above) has nothing whatever to do with marriage to outsiders. The reference could be to the bad practice of yoking incompatible draught animals, say an ox and an ass, as forbidden in Deuteronomy 10:22. It is true that the LXX version of that text does not use ἑτερόζυγος (heterozugos – unequally yoked), whereas it is used in Leviticus 19:19, a prohibition on mating different kinds of animals. Even so, it is conceivable that this passage is a kind of catena of scriptural proofs that those who are not for us are against us. Paul is warning against association within the community with those who are disloyal. Does it not then follow directly on the previous appeal of Paul in 6:1, 11? This connection is obscured by the paragraph divisions in most texts, but it makes sense. The loyal and the disloyal cannot pull together. Suppose we further connect this with Paul’s terrible claim in 2:15–16 that his gospel divides people into the saved and the damned whether he likes it or not. It then fits into the whole argument of the epistle which is fundamentally about the necessity of accepting Paul or else… Suppose the reference here and in 4:4 is not to unbelievers, but to the unfaithful. Are not the unfaithful in the scriptures regarded as idolaters and adulterers? Does not that idea fit with Paul’s statement in 11:1–3: “I am jealous for you with God’s own jealousy; for I engaged you to one man, to give you away to Christ as a pure virgin; but I fear that just as the serpent deceived Eve with his cunning, so somehow your minds may be distracted from their single-minded commitment and dedication to Christ”? Could it not be that the sin Paul fears to find when he comes is the sin of apostasy, and that the problems of strife, jealousy, passions, disputes, slanders, tale-bearing, posturing, rebellion, impurity, adultery and perversion, which he anticipates in 12:20–21, fundamentally stem from their failure to receive Paul as the spokesman of God? This does not rule out the possibility that literal sexual offences have been committed – 1 Corinthians certainly presupposes that that is the case. But all this perversion may well have been seen by Paul as the natural result of apostasy (cf. Rom 1). It is not at all inconceivable that the actual idolatry implied in 1 Corinthians 8–10 was related in Paul’s mind to a failure in loyalty.8 In these verses Paul pulls together his challenge and backs it up with scripture: either they respond to him or else they are unequally yoked to the unfaithful. There is no possibility of communion between righteousness and wickedness. They have become the righteousness of God (5:21); but if they do not respond to his appeal, then they are destined to revert to the old order which is passing away. They will find themselves among the perishing. It is as serious as that. True apostles reflect the light of God’s glory (3:18) and communicate knowledge of it (4:6), so opponents belong to the realm of darkness. Those on Paul’s side are a temple of the living God, the others are effectively idol-­ 8  Fee, “Idols,” has a rather different view of this passage, but his treatment of idolatry is helpful.

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worshippers. This may be an idiosyncratic way of understanding “pollution‚” but it is not inconsistent with the warnings of the Old Testament prophets, nor with statements Paul makes elsewhere. What about the unpauline character of the vocabulary, and the Qumran connections? Surely the question is whether we are in a position to judge that Paul could not have written such a passage on the basis of the evidence we have. In fact Michael Newton has argued for its essentially Pauline character: “Paul’s Temple has no specific location but exists wherever the ‘saints’ are assembled together. Unlike Qumran, Paul does not consider that contact with outsiders conveys impurity, but he warns, in a manner which is similar to the Qumran covenanters, that contact with believers who have become impure is to be avoided.”9 Newton does not believe the passage belongs here, but it is far more difficult to give a sensible account of why this passage is in all the texts we possess if it were not there originally, than it is to suppose that Paul composed or borrowed this catena of biblical texts and allusions to apocalyptic writings to serve his purpose in this context. We suggest that the passage bears a profoundly relevant meaning in the context in which it is found. As for the last case, the chapters concerning the collection (c above), suppose one of the fundamental problems between the church and Paul revolves around the financing of his mission. There is plenty of evidence in both 1 and 2 Corinthians to support such a view: 1 Corinthians 9; 2 Corinthians 11:7–9; 12:16–18. Paul is clearly defensive when it comes to the question of money, and in these chapters he is careful to distance himself from handling the cash (see 8:20 ff.; 9:3–5). To suggest that it is superfluous to discuss it is a typical rhetorical trick, just as our “not to mention” is a deliberate device for mentioning it. It was recognized as such by Chrysostom, himself a professionally trained rhetorician. It is possible to read these chapters as a coherent entity without a sense of doing violence to the text, and if finance was one of the chief bones of contention, it is hardly surprising that so much space is devoted to it. There remains for discussion 2:14–7:4 (b above). This largely depends upon the argument that in 2 Corinthians 7 Paul continues the narrative about meeting Titus which is abruptly left off in 2 Corinthians 2, and it is therefore an intrusion. But even if we remove this section we are not left with a continuous narrative – in fact it is not a narrative at all. At each stage Paul draws attention to a particular point in the build-up of his argument. In 2 Corinthians 2, the mention of his desire to meet Titus is offered as proof of his love and concern for the church; in 2 Corinthians 7, he is reinforcing his appeal with expressions of confidence in them, confidence which rests upon good grounds given the news Titus has brought. (Watson makes similar, though not identical points.10) The se9  Michael Newton, The Concept of Purity at Qumran and in the Letters of Paul, SNTS Monograph Ser. 53 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). 10  Watson, “2 Corinthians.”

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quence of thought from the journey to Macedonia in 2:13 to God’s dragging him around in triumph in 2:14 can be explained in the light of a coherent exegesis of 1:15 ff.: introducing that journey takes him back to the fundamental point that in his travel plans he is not his own master, but entirely in the hands of God, the point of 1:17bff. according to our understanding. This was argued in the article which precedes this chapter in this collection. It is interesting that Bultmann notes that the phrase which begins 2:14 (Thanks be to God…) usually refers to what directly precedes, but because of his partition theories he has to say that here there is no such reference, since the context is lost. We believe that it does refer back to the immediately preceding material, and there is no break here, as so often supposed. Once this is admitted, namely that the sequence of thought is not impossible, indeed is clear, then the shakiness of the whole partition approach becomes apparent. There are many connections between this section and 2 Corinthians 10–13: e.g. the weakness of the apostle (4:7 ff. and 12:5 ff.), preaching and its effects, the justification of his apostleship and its style, “boasting,” self-commendation, etc., including a contrast with other apostles implied or overt. Indeed it is possible to argue (as Bates does) that 10–13 is a reiteration of what has gone before.11 In fact, 12:19 (whether we read πάλιν (palin – again) or πάλαι (palai – formerly)) refers to previous statements or arguments, and suggests that an earlier apologetic has been advanced which is now repeated. This implies that 10–13 is not the “severe letter‚” but the end of 2 Corinthians. Besides, even in the glowing chapters Paul is advancing justification for his behaviour, and the whole epistle seems to be written against a background of misunderstanding rather than total undoubted reconciliation. This is basically Bates’s case: the whole letter is one of strife and contention. Even the “apology” for having hurt them with his intervening letter does not give an inch. Bates explains the apparent break between 2 Corinthians 9 and 10 by a parallel with Galatians, arguing that Galatians 5 and 6 summarize in a more hard-hitting way the substance of what has gone before, perhaps being Paul’s “autograph” over against the work of his secretary. In the same way, 2 Corinthians 10–13 is a recapitulation of 2 Corinthians 1–9, and the epistle is a unity. Fundamentally we accept this assessment of the function of 10–13, but we believe we have a better explanation of its presence.

II.  What is the genre of 2 Corinthians? So far then we have suggested that the arguments for partition are not conclusive, even if they have an apparent cumulative force; rather it is possible to read the epistle as a unity, and it is justifiable since there is no textual evidence for partition. Now we wish to suggest a positive case for treating the epistle as a 11 

Bates, “Integrity.”

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unity, a case based upon a theory as to its genre, structure and purpose. Since Deissmann’s famous Light from the Ancient East (1910), it has been generally assumed that Paul’s letters are letters and not epistles – that is, non-literary occasional documents written in the heat of the moment, not public artificial literary productions.12� We do not question one aspect of these assumptions, namely that a letter like 2 Corinthians had an occasion, and that there are circumstances behind it known to Paul and his readers which are not readily accessible to us; to that extent it was a private letter not intended for publication. But we have come to the conclusion that the assumed corollaries of that do need to be questioned. The analogies to 2 Corinthians are not the brief non-literary papyri to which Deissmann drew attention, but certain “epistles” which he distinguished from those unselfconscious products. The closest analogy is in fact a letter purporting to be written by Demosthenes.13 Whether it is a genuine letter or the product of someone in the rhetorical schools does not really matter: it is in genre and structure similar to 2 Corinthians, and certainly existed at a date prior to Paul. We do not suggest that Paul knew this particular letter, but rather that it is typical of the kind of model which Paul could have had in mind as he wrote. Demosthenes’s letter is an apologetic speech in epistolary form. He is (or is supposed) to be in exile on the island of Calauria in 323 BCE, and he writes to the Council and people of Athens to plead for his own restoration. The striking thing about it is that he begins by commending the Athenians and treating his position as an exception to their usual scrupulous attention to evidence and fairness in judgment. Indeed, they owe it to themselves to reconsider his case. He goes on to speak of his own services to the city and to Greece in general – though with hesitation. He reviews the events which led to the present situation and enumerates points in his favour. He then answers the points against him. Finally he sums up his plea in far more passionate terms than he has dared to use earlier in the letter, appealing to the Athenians to save him, stressing his wrongs and pulling out all the stops. Superficially there is a striking resemblance to 2 Corinthians. Both are epistles, both are from men appealing to have their case reviewed, for both their case revolves around their relationship with and services to the community addressed – that is, they are apologetic appeals, in the ancient and proper sense of apology. Both begin by focusing on common ground, respect, mutual recognition assumed as the basis from which to make the case, both go over points for and against the pleader, reminiscing about services rendered, answering charges; and, assuming that 2 Corinthians is a unity, each ends with a passionate review of the material covered, in which tact and politeness gives way to hard-­ hitting emotion. 12 Deissmann,

Light. 2, Greek text and ET: Demosthenes, Letters, trans. N. W. De Witt and N. J. De Witt, LCL 374 (London: Heinemann and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1949). 13  Letter

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Now the supposed, or perhaps genuine, letter of Demosthenes is a superb little example of forensic speech in epistolary form. Whether you turn to Aristotle’s Rhetoric, the Lysias of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, or Quintilian’s Orator’s Education, you find the same structural outline.14 Aristotle, of course, long predates Paul, Dionysius functioned in Rome from 30 BCE, so slightly predates Paul, Quintilian wrote his large educational handbooks sometime later and was a younger contemporary of Paul. We do not suggest Paul knew of the writings of any of them but still these authors testify to the continuity of rhetorical conventions in the Greco-Roman culture of Paul’s world. The common structural outline was as follows:

1.  Introduction or exordium (προοίμιον – prooimion) Here it was regarded as important to win the attention and sympathy of the audience. Prejudices need to be removed, good-will elicited, the speaker must present himself as more fair-minded than the opposition (Dionysius). But direct appeal at this stage would suggest a “bad case” (Aristotle). The aim is to ensure attention and perhaps outline the salient points of the case, preparing the way for what is to come. The minds of the hearers are to be subtly influenced, so as to be stirred to an appropriate reaction, whether it be excitement, hope, fear or sympathy.

2.  The narrative (διήγησις – di ēgē sis) Usually, though not invariably, an account of the events leading to the court case would follow, and witnesses might be introduced to substantiate the version given. But this was not necessarily to be a consecutive or connected account – just enough to make the facts clear and demonstrate the standpoint of the speaker. He may admit the facts but seek to put them in a different light (Aristotle), indicating that his purpose has been misunderstood. Anyway the intent is to persuade the hearer to the speaker’s point of view. The narrative may not be included – it all depends what is appropriate in a given case; or it may shade into the proof.

3.  The proof(s) (πίστις – pistis) The proofs are regarded as the meat of the speech and would usually be backed up by witnesses in an actual court case. Proofs should demonstrate. They also 14 Aristotle, “Art” of Rhetoric, trans. J. H. Freese, LCL 193 (London: Heinemann and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1926); Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Lysias, trans. Stephen Usher, LCL 465 (London: Heinemann and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974); Quintilian, Orator’s Education.

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include refutations, replies to charges. It is not good form to enumerate points – indeed Quintilian gives the impression that flexibility is what makes a good orator, for a good orator knows the rules in order to play around with them. Digressions can be a useful diversion where the case is shaky. Aristotle, however, was more determined to ensure that proofs were logical, true and convincing. Dionysius distinguishes factual, emotional and moral proofs: by the first he meant deductions from facts, arguments from probability, the use of examples, etc., a whole collection of ways by which the actual evidence could be elevated to the status of positive proof; the emotional proofs were designed to arouse pity, exaggeration not being condemned; and the moral proofs were testimonies to character, past actions, principles, etc., which should make it implausible that the particular charges can be made to stick to the particular character charged.

4.  The peroration The conclusion is always contrasted with the exordium in emotional tone. It is basically a recapitulation of the principal points deliberately geared to excite emotion, to raise the sense of injustice, anger, jealousy, etc., and involves invocation of the gods, entreaties, tears, deliberate display and the excitement of passion in speaker and audience. What we suggest is that 2 Corinthians as a unity has essentially this structure. It begins with a tone of thanksgiving and emphasis on mutual encouragement. The body of the letter reviews the points over which there has been misunderstanding, and tries to put them in a different light. Factual, emotional and moral proofs are offered, and the language varies from appeal to threats to confident hope with clear and appropriate attention to the required effect on the “audience.” 2 Corinthians 10–13 is the emotional peroration recapitulating the proofs and arguments laid out in the body of the epistle. It is clear that “apologetic letters” were a recognized form in the period in which Paul wrote; for quite apart from the analogy with the letter of Demosthenes, [Pseudo-]Demetrius, writing on letter types about the first century BCE or CE, lists twenty-one of which the eighteenth is described thus: “The apologetic is the one which brings against charges the opposite arguments with proof.”15 2 Corinthians, we suggest, is an apologetic letter, and as a whole conforms to the structure that such a letter would be expected to take, provided we accept its unity.

15 For [Pseudo-]Demetrius, see A.  J. Malherbe, “Ancient Epistolary Theorists,” Ohio Journal of Religious Studies 5 (1977): 3–77, where the text of the Teubner Edition of V. Weichart (Leipzig, 1910) is reproduced and translated together with other relevant material, after a useful introduction.

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III.  Can objections to this theory be met? Certain objections to this proposal can be foreseen. Firstly there are Paul’s disclaimers: he is not a good speaker, not wise according to the wisdom of this world, nor does he use worldly techniques of persuasion (2 Cor 10:10 ff.; cf. 1 Cor 1:18 ff., especially 2:4). In 11:6 he describes himself as an ἰδιώτης (idiōtē s – private individual) in speech – which is usually taken to mean that he sees himself as a “layman” when it comes to the techniques of rhetorical speech-making. Paul does admit, however, that his letters are impressive, even if his personal presence was not (2 Cor 10:10). Perhaps this implies that those who read his letters out were able to make a more impressive rhetorical show than Paul could in person; 16 but at least that means the letters were well enough written for that effect to occur. Besides 2 Corinthians 12:19 does suggest that they might deduce from his letter that he was offering an apology in the technical sense of defending himself (ἀπολογούμεθα – apologoumetha). In his homilies, John Chrysostom, who at least up to a point seems to have recognized in Paul a fellow­rhetorician, comments: “having seated them on the judgment-seat he placed himself in the role of advocate. . .” and suggests that Paul makes a particular point because it is his “προοίμιον.”17 Several times in the homilies he suggests that Paul seems to be making his apology, and as we have already noted, he draws attention to the rhetorical trick at the beginning of 2 Corinthians 9. The fact is that Paul uses a number of the rhetorical conventions of his day – syncrisis or comparison, irony and parody, at least.18 Paul’s language, though not striving for the stylistic polish of contemporary rhetoric, with its cadences, rhythms, figures of speech, etc., is nevertheless the language of someone trying to create an effect, full of antitheses, repetitions, the language typical of public address, whether political or evangelistic. It had rhetorical power, as the Fathers recognized, even as they accepted Paul’s self-­ assessment, a “layman in speech” – this after all made its power all the more remarkable and attributable to the Holy Spirit! But it was not simply supernatural. Indeed, we have chosen to translate 11:6, “If my speech is idiosyncratic,” believing that the root meaning of ἴδιος (idios), “peculiar to oneself‚” may be the sense more appropriate to the context. Commentators have long recognized the tricks and conventions of the diatribe in his Epistle to the Romans.19 Even his 16  E. A. Judge, “Paul’s Boasting in Relation to Contemporary Professional Practice,” Australian Biblical Review 16 (1968): 37–50. 17 Chrysostom, In Epistolam ad Corinthios Posteriorem, Hom. 4, Migne, PG 61.418 and 422, NPNF 294, 297. 18 Furnish, 2 Corinthians; A. B. Spencer, “The Wise Fool (and the Foolish Wise): A Study of Irony in Paul,” Novum Testamentum 23 (1981): 349–360; C. Forbes, “Comparison, Self-Praise and Irony: Paul’s Boasting and the Conventions of Hellenistic Rhetoric,” NTS 32 (1986): 1–30. 19 Bultmann, zweite Brief, rev. Dinkler; S. K. Stowers, The Diatribe and Paul’s Letter to the Romans, SBL Dissertation 57 (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1981).

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disclaimers have parallels in Hellenistic rhetoric and philosophy – Betz has argued that here is a topos taken over from the Socratic tradition; certainly they are connected with Paul’s argument.�20 He cannot admit to using worldly techniques, whether they be those of commerce or propaganda. His wisdom is foolishness in the eyes of the world. So he cannot own up to using rhetorical skill. He just cannot help doing so. It is part of the cultural air he breathes. Or is it? A second objection might go like this: there is no sign in Paul’s epistles that he received a classical paideia, no references to classical literature, no hints he had any but Jewish schooling. This is true, but the force of these observations can be exaggerated. In the first place, Quintilian admitted a certain natural inevitability in rhetorical structure which meant it was reflected in the speeches of barbarians and the uneducated. George Kennedy, a specialist in classical rhetoric, argues that rhetoric is universal, and what the Greco-Roman rhetoricians did was simply to develop its theory to a high level of self-consciousness.21 Even if entirely unexposed to the influence of professional Greek educators, Paul could still have produced letters structured in a rhetorical way. But in fact, much recent scholarship points to the likelihood that Paul had some considerable grasp of the Greek culture in the midst of which he moved. We are becoming more and more aware of the fact that even Palestine was affected by Hellenizing influences, and even if Paul was sent to Jerusalem for his entire education, the pupils of Gamaliel received instruction in the wisdom of the Greeks.22 Whether Paul reached the higher levels of Greek education or not, he lived in an atmosphere in which there was a good deal of “filter down” effect. Untrained people were used to hearing speeches, and were as good judges of skill in this regard as untrained listeners now may be good judges of a performance of classical music. There is plenty of evidence that Paul had picked up the tags of Hellenistic literary culture.23 Furthermore he employs classical rhetorical comparisons, the athlete in 1 Corinthians 9:24 ff., for example, and the military analogy of 2 Corinthians 10:3–6. True, there are reasons for thinking that these did not come to him direct, but through the medium of Hellenistic Jewish commonplaces.24 But we should not underestimate the extent to which the synagogue 20  Judge, “Paul’s Boasting”; Forbes, “Comparison”; H. D. Betz, Der Apostel Paulus und die sokratische Tradition (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1972). 21  George Kennedy, Classical Rhetoric and its Christian and Secular Tradition from Ancient to Modern Times (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1980); apart from his other studies of rhetoric, note particularly New Testament Interpretation through Rhetorical Criticism (Chapel Hill, NC: University of Carolina Press, 1984). 22  Judge, “Paul’s Boasting”; Forbes, “Comparison”; M. Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism (London: SCM Press, 1974); A. J. Malherbe, Social Aspects of Early Christianity, 2nd enlarged ed. (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983). 23 Malherbe, Social Aspects. 24  V. C. Pfitzner, Paul and the Agon Motif (Leiden: Brill, 1967).

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had been influenced by the Hellenistic schools, nor the extent to which “models” were adopted by partly-Hellenized alien groups like the Jews and filled with Jewish rather than pagan content. Ezekiel the Tragedian had after all used the dramatic form and language of Aeschylus and Euripides to tell of the Exodus from Egypt.25 Studies of Paul’s own epistolary conventions reveal how daringly he adopted and adapted standard motifs. The greetings possibly follow earlier Semitic precedent, 26 yet they echo the conventional Greek χαιρεῖν (chairein – greeting) and the conventional Hebrew shalom in the phrase “grace and peace,” while being filled with Paul’s Christian emphases.27 The thanksgivings that regularly appear at the beginning of Paul’s letters have been shown to conform to Hellenistic epistolary convention, while being Jewish in their language28 – indeed, to be Hellenistic in structure while the contents were influenced by Jewish thought.29 Why should this sort of thing not be true of the structure of the epistle as a whole? 2 Corinthians, not unlike other Pauline letters, emerges as a fascinating example of Semitic and scriptural motifs (see below, ch.  14) finding expression in the Greek language and, we would argue, in a Greek form. Paul, like other Jews, has taken over the language and genre from the dominant Greek culture, but filled the conventional structures with allusions to the Bible rather than Homer. We would suggest that everything points to a remarkable confluence of cultural forms and language having contributed to Paul’s idiosyncratic writing. This confluence is further illustrated by the combination of stereotyped phrases Paul uses to characterize his opponents. In the following chapter we shall explore the Jewish contribution. Here we note a passage from the works of Dio Chrysostom which almost uncannily parallels what we have discovered to be Paul’s way of characterizing his own vocation in contrast to that of others: But to find a man who with purity and without guile speaks with a philosopher’s boldness, not for the sake of glory, nor making false pretensions for the sake of gain, but who stands ready out of goodwill and concern for his fellowman, if need be, to submit to ridicule and the uproar of the mob – to find such a man is not easy, but rather the good fortune of a very lucky city, so great is the dearth of noble independent souls, and such the abundance of flatterers, charlatans and sophists. In my own case I feel that I have chosen that role not of my own volition, but by the will of some deity…30 25 Hengel,

Judaism and Hellenism. See Furnish, 2 Corinthians. 27  W. G. Doty, Letters in Primitive Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1973); Judith M. Lieu, “‘Grace to You and Peace’: The Apostolic Greeting,” BJRL 68 (1985): 161–178. 28  P. Schubert, Form and Function of the Pauline Thanksgivings (Berlin: Töpelmann Verlag, 1939). 29  P. T. O’Brien, Introductory Thanksgiving in the Letters of Paul, Novum Testamentum Supplements 49 (Leiden: Brill, 1977). 30  A number of the Greek words in this passage are words used by Paul in 2 Corinthians: e.g. in the phrases, καθαρῶς καὶ ἀδόλως παρρησιαζόμενον, μήτι δόξης χαιρεῖν (katharō s kai ­adol ō s parrhē siazomenon, m ē ti doxē s charin – speaking with purity and without guile, not for 26 

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Even in his most fundamental self-understanding Paul reflected the ideals of his time, as well as biblical models (see further the next chapter). In fact, since developing our own view of the genre of 2 Corinthians, we have become aware of the considerable amount of work that has been done, particularly in the United States, which is consonant with this theory. H. D. Betz pioneered the “rhetorical criticism” of Paul with his work on Galatians.31 Already he had suggested that 2 Corinthians 10–13 is an apology in the Socratic tradition, in which Paul defends himself against classic charges against false philosophers and sorcerers. Much of the material Betz adduces is of interest and relevance to our case. More recently George Kennedy has assembled a kind of review volume on rhetorical criticism and the New Testament: 32 this work offers useful assessment of the work of Betz and others. But what Betz and Kennedy failed to appreciate is that this kind of approach might revolutionize our understanding of the structure of 2 Corinthians as a whole. Both are too wedded to the critical consensus. 2 Corinthians 10–13 are not so distinct in flavour or situation as Betz thought. That Bates noticed the similarity in the structure of Galatians and 2 Corinthians, and Betz made a similar case about Galatians, encourages us to believe that our theory about the structure of 2 Corinthians has a high degree of probability. It is also in line with J. P. Sampley’s initial study of Paul’s self-defence and Roman legal practice.33 Our conclusion is not that Paul was a Jewish Demosthenes, but that 2 Corinthians was self-consciously conceived as an apology according to the norms of the day. This theory accounts for the changes in emotional tone within the epistle, for it was written with a view to producing certain effects on the reader/ listener. It was aimed at persuading, and uses the arts of persuasion. Read in a linear way (Kennedy stresses the importance of reading ancient texts as speeches, and thus being able to appreciate their linear quality), the rhetorical shape of the whole can be observed. The fact that it opens with a tone of approval, in spite of underlying tensions which progressively emerge, fits with this fundamental purpose; so does the emotional ending. The spiralling arguments of the body of the letter can very easily be analysed into a series of apologetic proofs which conform to Quintilian’s view that they should be presented in a flexible sequence not according to some rigid enumeration. 2 Corinthians was written as an apologetic letter, and the text is a unity. the sake of glory); we are indebted to A. J. Malherbe, “‘Gentle as a Nurse’: the Cynic background to 1 Thessalonians 2,” Novum Testamentum 12 (1970): 203–217 for this reference. 31  H. D. Betz, “The Literary Composition and Function of Paul’s Letter to the Galatians,” NTS 21 (1975): 353–379; Commentary on Galatians, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979). 32 Kennedy, New Testament. 33  J. P. Sampley, “‘Before God I do not Lie’ (Gal 1:20): Paul’s Self-Defence in the Light of Roman Legal Praxis,” NTS 23 (1977): 477–481. Note also Stanley N. Olson, “Epistolary Uses of Expressions of Self-Confidence,” JBL 103 (1984): 585–597.

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Now this conclusion confirms the generally accepted view that the letter was written to defend Paul’s apostleship. This implies that charges had been brought against its validity. To what extent is it possible to reconstruct the situation that occasioned its composition, and how crucial is it to make that reconstruction if we are to understand this epistle?

IV.  What was the situation which gave rise to this apology? Clearly the need for this apology arose out of a particular situation. Allusion is made to the situation in the course of Paul’s argument. If the full meaning is to be understood we need to know what it is to which the text refers. This is why attempts to reconstruct the situation are not irrelevant to the process of exegesis. We cannot avoid the standard critical questions so often discussed in relation to the Corinthian epistles by claiming to focus on the text rather than its background, because the text poses the questions. At the same time, it is important to admit ignorance if ignorance is all we have. A great deal of exegesis falls into the trap of circularity: the text is used to reconstruct the situation and then the situation is used to interpret the text. In reaction against this, we have endeavoured to look at what Paul was saying and not be too concerned to deduce a precise reconstruction of what lies behind it. We have also come to the conclusion that a number of factors affected the way Paul perceived the situation and led him to characterize it in certain stereotyped ways. This reduces the possibility of drawing conclusions about the reality behind the text from the descriptions we find in Paul’s letters. And indeed, for the purpose of interpreting this text, it may be more important to understand how Paul saw the situation than to grasp what it really was. All too often scholars have been so preoccupied with reading between the lines for clues as to what was going on that they have failed to engage with what Paul has to say. For all these reasons we do not propose to go into elaborate discussion of the situation behind these epistles, but simply to try and draw out the minimum required to understand why Paul wrote to the church in the way in which he did, even if it means doing little more than stating the obvious, or even reverting to precritical commonsense positions. Nevertheless we recognize that at least this is essential. The text demands that the particularities of the situation be taken seriously. To find here “timeless truths” is to be unfaithful to the character of the text with which we have to deal. Even precritical commentators recognized that Paul is engaged here in a particular profound controversy, and found it necessary to determine what the “stern letter” was, who was the offender in 2 Corinthians 2, etc., in order to explain what was going on in the text. To get some perspective on what was going on in Corinth, it is essential, we believe, to note the intimate connections of theme and language between the

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two Corinthian epistles. Standard commentaries now seem to have reached a consensus that a radical change has taken place between the situation in 1 Corinthians and that in 2 Corinthians. The chief reason for this seems to be that everyone begins with 1 Corinthians, and faced by all the passages discussing various ethical and doctrinal points, deduces that the Corinthians were distracted by views of a gnostic kind. They then turn to 2 Corinthians and discover that rival apostles who do not appear to be gnostic but rather Jewish and conservative (Judaizers?) are maligning Paul’s apostleship and elevating their own authority. A new situation is thus deduced. However if we reverse the procedure and read 1 Corinthians in the light of 2 Corinthians the position appears very different. In 2 Corinthians 10:7, Paul comments that if anyone claims to be “of Christ” he should remember that he, Paul, is too. Turning back to 1 Corinthians we find this anticipated: for the first issue he tackles is the fact that different people in the church are claiming to be of Paul, or of Apollos, or of Cephas, or of Christ. This surely implies that Paul’s personal ascendancy in a church which he was responsible for founding, is already under attack, and that the names of other apostles, and even of Christ, are being appealed to against him. It need not imply that parties already exist, nor need it imply that any of these other apostles were actually present in Corinth, or had been, though Paul does seem to suggest later that Apollos had built on his foundations. What it does imply is that rumours were floating around in Corinth that Paul’s status and methods were inferior. Clearly contacts between Christians were frequent. Probably many of the early converts were involved in trade, like Aquila and Priscilla; and many more were part of the “Jewish network” with which Paul remained in close contact (Sanders has questioned the Acts record that he operated through it, believing that the agreement reported in Galatians was ethnographic rather than geographic; yet he stresses that Paul would not have received the thirty-nine lashes from synagogue authorities if he had not tried to remain a Jew – an apostate would be beyond the jurisdiction of the synagogue courts.34) It seems likely that through such contacts the Corinthians had begun to fear for their own position in relation to the wider Christian mission. In spite of the impression created by Acts, early missionary activity was not solely in the hands of Paul – the major churches of Antioch and Rome were founded by others. That Paul’s position was suspect in the wider Christian network is surely proved by the existence of the Epistle to the Romans, as well as passages in all the other genuine epistles, and hints in the book of Acts. 34  A. E. Harvey, “Forty Strokes Save One: Social Aspects of Judaizing and Apostasy,” in Alternative Approaches to New Testament Study, ed. A. E. Harvey (London: SPCK, 1985): 79–86; Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism.

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The Corinthians, having been converted by Paul, now find themselves contrasting him with the rather different style of Apollos, and begin to hear disturbing rumours of his lack of acceptance elsewhere. Cephas (Peter) is rumoured to be the real authority. Yet some remain loyal to Paul. Others, perhaps, try to transcend these personalia by claiming to be “of Christ.” What may well have crystallized these divisions in loyalty was a debate in the church about certain ethical and doctrinal differences in which it was proposed that an “official” letter be sent to Paul to enquire for his advice. Promptly alternatives were canvassed: Apollos is wiser and more reliable – why not write to him? The real authority is Peter – why not write to him? We’ve got the Spirit, why don’t we work it out for ourselves? (See 1 Cor 3:1–4, 18–23; 4:8, 10, etc.) Apparently Paul’s supporters won the day, and Stephanas and others take the letter to Paul (1 Cor 7:1; 16:15–18). But Chloe’s people (of whom we know nothing but who have been the subject of much imaginative speculation) have informed Paul of the debate. So before he answers the “official” letter, he has to clear the ground – a delicate matter, since he cannot simply back his own supporters without endangering the unity of the church.35 Already, then, Paul’s authority and style of apostleship are being questioned. Some people do not expect him to return to Corinth (1 Cor 4:18). Certainly they seem to have doubts about his standing in comparison with others. Also they contrast his lack of skill in public speaking with the competence of others (Apollos?), and his earning his own living as an artisan with the usual practice of travelling teachers who expected patronage, a practice adopted by other apostles who claimed hospitality and support on the strength of Jesus’s instructions as recorded in the mission discourses of the Gospels (Cephas? or some claiming to be “of Christ”?).36 1 Corinthians 1–4 and 9 anticipate a remarkable number of themes picked up again in 2 Corinthians: these we summarize in the appendix to this chapter. Paul does not yet feel he has to produce a full-blown apo­ logy; rather he handles the situation more obliquely, grateful that they have consulted him while pained at what is happening in the church. The root of the difficulties in Corinth is pride and jealousy. Paul’s insistence upon mutual respect, love and unity throughout the first epistle suggests that the real problems are to do with people priding themselves on spiritual achievements and looking down on those without the same insights. There does not really seem to be a coherent doctrinal opposition of one sort or another. Some of the disagreements may well have arisen from Paul’s own gospel of freedom from the law. Others may have emerged in different “house churches.” What Paul has to say suggests that he had not given strict guidance about ethical matters – we shall see why Paul has no halakah in the next chapter. His converts 35  N. A. Dahl, Studies in Paul: Theology for the Early Christian Mission (Minneapolis, MN: Augsberg, 1977). 36  G. Theissen, The Social Setting of Pauline Christianity (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1982).

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were to discover for themselves what living by the Spirit meant in terms of dayto-day practice. Social and ethnic differences, however, tended to undermine Paul’s idealism. In practice all kinds of realities “at the human level” (κατὰ σαρκά – kata sarka) impinged upon their attempts to live “according to the spirit” (κατὰ πνεῦμα – kata pneuma). We believe that Chrysostom was right to discern in Corinth not doctrinal problems, but moral and spiritual problems, a lack of humility, too much self-assertion, too little regard for the scruples of the “weaker” brethren. In these circumstances Paul subtly introduces as a model of mutual respect his own relationship with Apollos. The Corinthians may have set up unfortunate comparisons, but Paul refuses to exploit them to his own advantage. There are not to be divisions and jealousies among them. Chrysostom notes that in 1 Corinthians 4:6 Paul says: “These things I have transferred in a figure to myself and Apollos, that you may learn from us to live according to scripture and not be puffed up in favour of one against the other,” and suggests that this is a deliberate device. He avoids mentioning the rude dividers of the church, concealing them, as behind masks of a sort, with the names of the apostles. Chrysostom has perhaps seen something easily overlooked, even if his principal interest is to avoid imputing unseemly conflicts to the apostles he idealizes. Paul does not in the first epistle overtly defend himself, but seeks to move the community to greater mutual respect as well as to recognition of his own apostolic status, whatever his idiosyncrasies. His primary concern is to deal with the church’s internal disputes. But already the matters which will occasion the apology of 2 Corinthians are clouding his own relationship with the community. Now if this is right, and it has at least the merit of being based on the many observable anticipations of 2 Corinthians in the text of 1 Corinthians, then there are two consequences of great importance. Firstly, the suspicions of Paul and his need to apologize were not necessarily occasioned by the later arrival of interloping false apostles whom we eventually meet in 2 Corinthians 10–13. Whoever these people were, they were either already around at the time 1 Corinthians was written, or they were simply an irritant to an already existing situation. That there must have been interlopers of some sort becomes clear when finally Paul pulls out all the stops, apparently accusing others of poaching on his territory; but their importance lies in the threat they pose to the Corinthians’ relationship with Paul himself, rather than any discernible differences of doctrine. Although their effect upon the Corinthians is described in somewhat similar terms to the effect the Judaizers had on the Galatians, there is nothing to suggest that they were Judaizers, no hint of debate about the key issues of circumcision and law.37 The “false apostles” remain veiled behind stereotyped lan37  Pace Barrett, Second Epistle to the Corinthians, et al., this seems conclusive evidence that they were not like the Galatian Judaizers. However, the case presented by D. W. Oostendorp

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guage, much of which has the purpose of contrast with Paul’s methods and claims. Whoever they were, the threat to Paul’s acceptance in Corinth was apparently already around at the time 1 Corinthians was written. Another curious observation one may make is that in the attacks at the end of 2 Corinthians, Paul oscillates between the singular and the plural. It is possible that one interloper is being “generalized.” So perhaps the threat came from Cephas. Paul had after all fallen out with him in Antioch, according to Galatians, and the story of the conversion of Cornelius in Acts suggests that Peter may well have been a rival apostle to the Gentiles, in spite of the agreement reported by Paul that the “pillars” would concentrate on the circumcision while the gospel to the uncircumcised was entrusted to Paul. This agreement may well lie behind the awkward passage about “limits” in 2 Corinthians 10. It is understandable that Paul would endeavour to avoid outright conflict between himself and Peter for as long as possible. The unity of the church was a matter which greatly exercised him. Certainly until 2 Corinthians 10–13 direct confrontation with the opponent(s) is avoided, even in 2 Corinthians. Up to that point Paul builds upon the foundations already laid by 1 Corinthians: he is their father in Christ‚ the founder of the community, and no-one else can possibly claim that relationship. They have accepted his lead over the discipline of the offender. He can appeal to a basis of mutual belonging and support, even as he tries to respond to criticisms. Perhaps the reason for the anguish and the mystery is that the rival is no less than Peter. Perhaps he uses Apollos “in a figure” in 1 Corinthians to avoid facing the real challenge. (Barrett has traced all the specific clues that Peter may be the problem.) 38 In 2 Corinthians there are hints in what Paul claims for himself which may illuminate what his rival(s) claimed. They must have been Jews. They may well have been Palestinians. It is plausible to suggest that they knew the historical Jesus (11:22 ff.; 5:16 perhaps). They probably had letters of recommendation, and probably depended upon patronage and hospitality, unlike Paul. Some of this would fit the suggestion that Cephas is the interloper, as would the implication that someone has poached on Paul’s territory. However, it is equally possible that they are unknown travelling Christian preachers from Palestine who were claiming to be living in accordance with the instructions of Jesus (unlike Paul), while actually exploiting the Christian hospitality network, and therefore all the more likely to poach on already established communities rather than launching into new areas of mission. Certainly the later Didache, and other writings like Lucian’s satire, Peregrinus, presuppose the existence of travelling in Another Jesus (Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1967) is a good one, and might lead one to revise this opinion. 38 C. K. Barrett, “Cephas and Corinth,” in Abraham unser Vater: Festschrift für Otto Michel, ed. O. Betz, M. Hengel, and P. Schmidt (Leiden: Brill, 1963): 229–245. See also M. E. Thrall, “Super-Apostles, Servants of Christ, and Servants of Satan,” JSNT 6 (1980): 42–57.

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apostles dependent upon hospitality, which was a prime Christian virtue, easily abused.39 Such could well be the object of Paul’s attacks. It is possible that outsiders of this kind have exacerbated the rift between Paul and the church he founded in Corinth. It is possible that they have succeeded in turning Paul’s initial defence (as outlined in hints in 1 Corinthians) against himself. For in 1 Corinthians Paul contrasts himself and his way with the wisdom of the world, wisdom at the human level (κατὰ σαρκά); whereas in 2 Corinthians the charge of acting κατὰ σαρκά seems to be directed at Paul himself (10:2; 1:17b). This seems odd, since it appears to be Paul’s terminology in the first place. Perhaps it is Paul’s way of characterizing the charges against him which he imputes to the Corinthians, rather than their terminology. But it could be that the tables have been turned on Paul by the interlopers. Furthermore, in 1 Corinthians Paul claims apostleship indirectly by appealing to his vision of the risen Christ and placing himself alongside legitimate apostles like Cephas in the process. He does admit he is not sufficient to be called an apostle, and speaks of Christ appearing to him as to one untimely born (1 Cor 15:8–9), an amazing admission compared with remarks in 2 Corinthians (e.g. 2:17; 3:5); yet he confidently speaks of this vision and of the revelation he has received (1 Cor 1:7; 2:9–10). No-one else seems to be concerned about ­visions in 1 Corinthians. But in 2 Corinthians Paul hesitates to “boast” of his visions and revelations. He is finally compelled to, but recognizes that they are not “public.” He now prefers to take a pride in weaknesses which are obvious to all (2 Cor 12:5–7). Now according to Acts, the qualifications for an apostle (met by Matthias who replaced Judas among the Twelve) consist in having been amongst those who accompanied Jesus during his ministry, from the time of the baptism to his death, and also being a witness to the resurrection. Maybe these qualifications reflect a later perception, but it is curious that Paul seems to be up against people who suggest that he qualifies on neither count. Perhaps Paul has realized that claiming special revelations did not begin to persuade when others could claim the qualifications alluded to.40 Paul has to appeal to other “signs of an apostle” in 2 Corinthians, and play down his former reliance on claims to revelation because the argument was not effective, and had been turned against him by the interlopers. Thus it is that in 2 Corinthians he concentrates upon the outworking of death and resurrection in his ministry (also already anticipated in 1 Cor 4:9–13) as the principal sign of his genuine vocation to apostleship and reliance upon God. The claim to revelations originally comes, it seems, not from Paul’s opponents, but from Paul himself.

39 Theissen, 40 

Social Setting; Malherbe, Social Aspects. H. J. Schoeps, Paul, trans. Harold Knight (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1961).

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Now if these observations are correct, we may summarize our conclusions as follows – though the alternative proposed above might equally well be true: the interlopers claim to be Hebrews, Israelites, descendants from Abraham and servants of Christ (2 Cor 11:22). They may come from Palestine, though not necessarily – they may simply be Jews. Paul does regard them as having poached on his territory (2 Cor 10:12 ff.), and to be making invidious comparisons. It is possible that they claim to have known Jesus whereas Paul did not, thus fulfilling the one qualification which was not open to Paul (2 Cor 5:16 perhaps). It is plausible that they were carrying out their mission in accordance with the instructions of the gospel mission discourse tradition and that found in the Didache, moving from place to place expecting hospitality and living on trust (i.e. “by faith” and “according to the spirit,” not “according to the flesh”; though it should be noted that this terminology appears to be Paul’s, so either it was common Christian terminology about which the interpretation was being disputed, or it has been skilfully poached and turned against its originator). It is also possible that they claim to be “of Christ” in the sense of Mark 9:41.41 Paul needs to assert his own claim to be “of Christ.” But if so they must already have been around when 1 Corinthians was written, being the occasion of Paul’s remark about those claiming to be “of Christ” at that stage. There does not seem to be any need to link these interlopers with any particular doctrine, or with any particular anti-Pauline Judaizing movement. They are casual, and possibly as false as Lucian’s Peregrinus: Paul may not have misjudged the situation after all! They are a personal embarrassment to Paul, coming as they did into an already problematical situation. But how much do we really know about them? In Thessalonica he had already contrasted his own mode of operation with that of less scrupulous teachers (1 Thess 2:3–12), perhaps anticipating the sort of difficulties which did materialize in Corinth, though the implications of his remarks are far from clear. We have no reason to think there were interlopers in Thessalonica, and the “rivals” really do appear to be simply a foil for Paul’s call to appreciate and imitate his style of commitment. In both situations they are described in language traditional to conflict between “true philosophy” and “false” or “sorcerous” or “sophistical” rivals, cheating, watering down the wine, anxious to please.42 Paul also sees them in terms of the “tricksters” condemned in the Psalms (see the next chapter). In Corinth there do seem to be real competitors, whatever the situation in Thessalonica, and however stereotyped the language. But really we know very little about them apart from the fact that they are particularly embarrassing because Paul needs to maintain his principle of independence, so that no-one 41 Theissen, 42 

Social Setting. Malherbe, “Gentle as a Nurse.”

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can suspect him of getting anything out of preaching the gospel, at a time when he wishes to involve the Corinthians in the collection for the poor in Jerusalem. And he wants to be sufficiently confident of their understanding and loyalty to solicit their support for missions further west (2 Cor 10:15–16), as he had used the support of the Macedonian churches in his mission to Corinth (11:8–9). Paul’s embarrassment over the financial implications of all this is evident in a number of passages (e.g. arrangements not to handle the money himself in 2 Cor 8; and 12:14 ff.). Yet even though the false apostles exacerbate this financial problem, the question of Paul’s support had already arisen in Corinth (1 Cor 9). The problems about finance and patronage were initially generated in Corinth, just as most of the other charges against Paul were already hatching before the interlopers appeared. The issue of Paul’s eloquence, or rather lack of it, was raised by comparison with Apollos, not by the newcomers (1 Cor 1–2). Now if this close link between 1 and 2 Corinthians is right, the second consequence is that there is no reason for positing a lost letter between the two we possess. The previous letter referred to is 1 Corinthians, as Chrysostom and all the traditional exegetes assumed. Already the problems in Corinth cause Paul distress and anger, even if he deals with them diplomatically, as far as he can, in the letter itself. He probably made a visit to Corinth between writing the two letters, a visit referred to in 2 Corinthians 2:1, and implied also by 12:13 and 13:1, a visit that was by no means reassuring. Paul was somehow humiliated, and it was possible to contrast his powerful letters with his weak presence. The person referred to in 2 Corinthians 2 may well be the person who caused that humiliation. It is possible that when Titus went on Paul’s behalf (2 Cor 7:8), he carried a letter which we no longer possess, but the course of Paul’s relationship with the Corinthian church is now seen in a much simpler and more straightforward way, and we need not assume that the missing letter is a missing link, or that 2 Corinthians 10–13 must be it. Indeed, the substance of 10–13 must follow material in 1–9, and the unity of both epistles is more convincing than partition theories. Yet even this minimal attempt to reconstruct the situation has left us with most matters unsettled. There may have been a lost letter. The offender in 2 Corinthians 2 might be the interloper of 2 Corinthians 10 ff., or someone who has personally offended Paul, or possibly even the offender of 1 Corinthians 5 as traditional exegetes assumed – there is at least the connection that Satan appears in both contexts. We have made two quite different suggestions about the identity of Pauls opponents, each of which has a certain plausibility We have two possible understandings of what it was to claim to be “of Christ.” So how important is it to settle these questions in order to understand the text? Which questions really matter?

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V.  What critical conclusions matter in order to understand the text? At one level everything we can learn or deduce will increase our understanding of the text. If Paul is alluding to charges made by others and we do not detect this, we lose something. If we imagine he is when he is not, we may be misled.43 Many details are lost to us if the reference of the text is not clear. It would help enormously if we could settle what lies behind the claim and counter-claim to be “of Christ,” for example. On the other hand we surely have to recognize that in order to grasp the fundamental lines of Paul’s self-defence, we do not in fact need to know who his opponents were or what in fact they represented. All we need to know is what Paul thought of them. They appear because they have occasioned his apologetic appeal, and because they provide a contrast to his own aims, methods, self-­ understanding, etc. What the text is about is Paul, not his opponents, and its thrust is discernible without precise knowledge of the situation. It is possible to admit ignorance, and still make something of the text. At the same time it is important to grasp the fact that the text had an occasion, and addressed itself to a particular set of circumstances. It does not even claim to be a work of general and timeless relevance, as a work of philosophy might. It is earthed in particularities. If it speaks beyond its occasion, its importance may lie precisely in its resistance to detachment from the actual situation which produced it. Whatever theological contribution it makes, it demands that theology remain attached to particularities. Christianity is worked out in the midst of living in this world and struggling with relationships. However, one critical conclusion does seem particularly important to understanding the text. The purport of the text is enshrined in its “genre.” It makes a real difference whether a narrative is read as a novel or a biography. For this reason we regard it as important to try and establish the unity of 2 Corinthians as an apologetic letter, even while not regarding it as vital to reconstruct the precise circumstances that occasioned it. We need to listen to the text as Paul intended it to be heard. It is quite possible that Paul misjudged his “audience” and they did not hear it as he intended – how often that happens in our own experience! But it does seem possible to recognize Paul’s fundamental intention. He wishes to persuade the Corinthians that their doubts about him are unfounded: that he really is an apostle called of God, and that their reaction to him is of life and death significance. This in itself means that Paul will be “heard” differently by different readers. To some he will appear to have the ultimate humility: all is of God, nothing of himself. That is how Chrysostom read the text. To others he will appear to be 43 C. J. A. Hickling, “The Sequence of Thought in 2 Corinthians, Chapter 3,” NTS 21 (1974): 380–395, is a timely warning against seeing the opponents behind everything Paul says.

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making the most preposterous and arrogant claims – the very claim to be God’s spokesman is a terrible self-commendation, inviting suspicion. That is how Graham Shaw read Paul in his book The Cost of Authority.44 Paul’s appeal for recognition by the Corinthians in those particular circumstances long ago demands from readers of all time the same response. We are challenged by the text to make the same judgment: Was this man the spokesman of God as he claimed? Did he know what he was talking about? Or was he mad? This is not a question of purely historical interest. The text is earthed in historical particularities, but not confined to them. For the purpose of interpretation and response we cannot avoid the critical questions, but we can discern the fact that it is not equally important to settle every debate, especially when the establishment of plausible hypotheses distracts from what the text is really about, and involves the interpreter in inescapable circularities. We conclude that there is much we cannot know definitely about the occasion of 2 Corinthians, but that the thrust of Paul’s argument is clear, provided we take the text as a unity, and understand its genre as that of an apologetic letter.

VI.  Appendix: Thematic and verbal anticipations of 2 Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 1 Cor 1:1 1 Cor 1:5; 4:8 ff.

1 Cor 1:7–8 1 Cor 1:9 1 Cor 1:10 1 Cor 1:17 1 Cor 1:18, 24 1 Cor 1:15 1 Cor 1:26 1 Cor 2:1 ff. 1 Cor 2:5 1 Cor 2:6 1 Cor 1:29–31 1 Cor 1:30 1 Cor 2:3 ff. 44 

Paul’s self-designation as apostle through the will of God; cf. 2 Cor 1:1. Grace/riches imparted to the Corinthians. The apostle suffers/dies for the church to live/be rich; cf. 2 Cor 4:12, and the financial metaphors in 2 Cor 8 and 9. Anticipation of parousia and judgment; cf. 2 Cor 1:14. Also 1 Cor 3:13 and 4:4 ff. – the Day will reveal all; cf. 2 Cor 5:10 etc. The faithfulness of God; cf. 2 Cor 1:18. Appeal using παρακαλῶ (parakal ō); 2 Cor 1:3–8, etc. Weakness of word/cross; cf. 2 Cor 10:10 et al. Division of cross: weakness/foolishness v. power and wisdom; cf. 2 Cor 12:9–10; 4:7. Also the saved and the perishing in 2 Cor 2:14. Weakness of God stronger than men; cf. 2 Cor 13:3 ff. Those called not wise. Techniques of sophistry not used; 2 Cor 1:17; 10. Not wisdom of men but power of God. Nevertheless, has wisdom, but not wisdom of this age; cf. 2 Cor 11:6: has knowledge. Also 2 Cor 4:6 etc. Boasting in the Lord, including Jer quotation vs. boasting in men. Also 1 Cor 3:21; 4:8; cf. 2 Cor passim, especially 2 Cor 10:17. Righteousness of God; cf. 2 Cor 5:21. Weakness, trembling, fear of Paul in Corinth; cf. 2 Cor mult. loc.

G. Shaw, The Cost of Authority (London: SCM Press, 1983).

258 1 Cor 2:7–8 1 Cor 2:9–10 1 Cor 2:13 1 Cor 3:3

1 Cor 3:6, 7:9 1 Cor 3:16 1 Cor 3:8 1 Cor 4:3 1 Cor 4:10–13 1 Cor 4:15 1 Cor 4:18 1 Cor 4:21 1 Cor 5:1 ff.

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δόξα (doxa – glory), self-glory, Lord of glory; cf. 2 Cor 3. Revelation through Spirit; cf. 2 Cor 12:4. Judging the spiritual by the spiritual; 2 Cor 3 possibly. Corinthians accused of being σαρκικοί (sarkikoi – fleshly) cf. 2 Cor 3, and walking κατὰ ἄνθρωπον (kata anthrō pon – humanly); cf. the apparent charges against Paul in 2 Cor 1:17 and 2 Cor 10. Emphasis on God; cf. 2 Cor passim, especially chapters 1–4. Temple of the Spirit; cf. 2 Cor 6:16. Economy, reward, stewardship. Also 4:1 ff., and reference to collection at end of first epistle; cf. 2 Cor 8 and 9. The Corinthians judging Paul; cf. whole thrust of 2 Cor. Catalogue of hardships; cf. 2 Cor 4:7 ff.; 6:4 ff.; 11. Paul as founder of church; cf. 2 Cor 3. People do not expect Paul to come; cf. first criticism faced in 2 Cor. Paul coming with rod; cf. threats in 2 Cor, especially chs. 6 and 13. Paul giving judgment at a distance; cf. 2 Cor 2 and 13.

1 Cor 9 passim, especially the mention of his “apology to those who judge him,” and the defence of the policy of self-support by working with his hands. N.B. 9:15–17 includes “boasting.” The whole of 2 Cor is thus anticipated. There are also comparable lists of vices in 6:9–10 and 2 Cor 12:20 ff. It is difficult to determine how far these are to be taken metaphorically, as suggested for the passage in 2 Cor 6, i.e. as being related to the fundamental adultery of apostasy, and how far literally, given the case Paul faces in 1 Cor 5.

Chapter 14

The Biblical Roots of Paul’s Perceptions* We have argued that 2 Corinthians is Paul’s apology. The corollary is that the text’s primary purpose is self-explanation. We would therefore expect to have access here to Paul’s self-understanding. That is what the text is explicitly about. But of course, what a person consciously makes explicit about himself or herself, is not necessarily the whole story: other people may perceive aspects of character of which the person is unaware, and there may be unconscious elements at work, not immediately perceived either by the self or by the observer. This is true not only in cases of direct personal encounter, but also in encounter through what a person has written. Reading “between the lines” can sometimes be both justifiable and profitable for deeper understanding. It is not surprising, therefore, that in this century, psychological models have been exploited to try and interpret texts, including texts from the past. Paul has been a prime candidate for speculative psychologizing, given what is known about his dramatic conversion, and the fact that apparently we have access to his mind through personal letters. But reading between the lines may also be hopelessly erroneous. The problem about any approach to interpretation which uses models based on modern data is that it may distort material deriving from a very different culture. Models cannot simply be transferred from one culture to another because the basic presuppositions and assumptions of each may be profoundly different. Social relationships and individual self-perceptions are culturally formed. Neither Freud nor Marx, Piaget nor Weber, can be uncritically exploited to illuminate Paul and his contemporaries. The merit of Bruce Malina’s book, The New Testament World, is that it alerts us to the very different perspective needed to appreciate what New Testament texts meant in their original socio-cultural context where, for example, conscience was not regarded as an internal, psychological thing, but something to do with correct social relations: a “dyadic personality” exists in a complex web of social interactions, rather than as an internal “self” with its discrete story.1 On the other hand, such cultural contrasts can be exaggerated. We may consciously be individualists, but we are also “dyadic personalities,” profoundly * 

Originally published in Young and Ford, Meaning and Truth: 60–84. Malina, The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology (London: SCM Press, 1981). 1  Bruce

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dependent upon what others think of us, and on our roles and social relationships. Paul belonged to a less individualistic culture, yet he was certainly conscious of himself as an individual with a quite specific “call” – that is evident in the texts. Observations about cultural formation – the way in which relationships and social interaction, example and habits, the passing on of stories and the traditions of the “tribe,” universally give identity and “socialize” the individual – may help us to “read between the lines” in an appropriate way. So may analogous examples of cultural assimilation and cultural transformation – say, the personal tensions of a Westernized Indian. For like such a person Paul belonged to two converging worlds, and was formed by both. Paul also found himself obliged to relate to both those worlds in new ways because of his vocation and his new commitment. Consciously and unconsciously he was involved in rejecting and retaining elements from the cultures by which he was formed. It is possible to discern something of the conscious process on the surface of the text, and also the unconscious process by reading between the lines, provided we look for factors relevant to his cultural context, rather than impose modern psychological models. In the last chapter we suggested that a remarkable confluence of cultural forms and language had contributed to Paul’s idiosyncratic writing. There we were exploring the contribution of Hellenistic rhetorical structures and social norms, and we promised to explore the Jewish contribution here. This contribution can be seen at a quite superficial level. The Jewish greeting, shalō m (peace), is added to χάρις (charis – grace), which derived from the Greek convention of opening a letter with χαιρεῖν (chairein – greeting). The Greek custom of invoking the gods and giving thanks at the beginning of a letter is replaced in 2 Corinthians, alone of all Paul’s epistles, with a berakah form – the Jewish liturgical phraseology, “Blessed be God …”2 God is characterized as the Father of “mercies” or compassion, and the God of all “comfort” or encouragement: the Greek terms, οἰκτιρμός (oiktirmōs – compassion) and παράκλησις (paraklē sis – comfort), are reminiscent of the lament Psalms. Already scriptural terminology is noticeably important. Moving further into the text, we find the letter is punctuated, as are other Pauline texts, with liturgical outbursts (e.g. 2:14; 8:16; and probably liturgical material underlies such verses as 1:20–21), and quotations from scripture. In 2 Corinthians 3, if nowhere else, scriptural exegesis appears to constitute the method of argument. Scripture is not as constitutive of the argument, at least superficially, as it is in Galatians and Romans, but there is enough on the surface of the text to alert us to its importance. In 2 Corinthians 6, Paul’s direct appeal is made through the words of Isaiah 49:8: “at the acceptable time I heard you and on the day of salvation I helped you.” Scriptural tags are used in the collec2 O’Brien,

Introductory Thanksgivings.

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tion appeal at 8:15 and 9:9. The key text from Jeremiah, “Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord,” is quoted in 10:17. Assuming the unity of the text, there is also the concentration of scriptural quotations in 6:16–18. What we wish to suggest in this chapter is that these examples on the surface of the text may provide the clue to a much deeper level at which Paul’s entire outlook has been formed by “living in the Bible.” If in the last chapter we tried to indicate that Paul was more Hellenistic than is generally supposed, now we want to argue that he was more “biblical” than is generally supposed, and that this goes far beyond his explicit use of scripture. Indeed, we would speak of Paul’s “biblical spirituality.” If Dio provides a surprising philosophical parallel to Paul’s personal defence and sense of vocation, the language and content of that personal self-understanding was provided by the Psalms, the prophets, and the Wisdom literature, possibly to a greater extent than even Paul himself was aware. It is extremely doubtful whether his Corinthian converts ever realized it. But that does not mean that a deeper understanding of Paul and his meaning in this text is not accessible to someone who perceives this underlying dimension. There have been many studies of Paul’s use of scripture and his Jewish ways of thought. W. D. Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism (1958), was a pioneering study.3 A. T. Hanson’s Studies in Paul’s Technique and Theology (1974), pursued Paul’s methods of exegesis and argument, using parallels from the Targums and Midrash to illuminate the material.4 More recently E. P. Sanders has produced a major discussion of Paul’s debt to Judaism, and suggested a way of perceiving the nature of his reaction against it which is very different from the long-­ standing exegetical tradition that focuses on his supposed critique of “legalism.”5 Paul has come to be seen as a converted Rabbi whose use of scripture belongs to the rabbinic tradition. Now all this is very illuminating, and it serves to highlight for us the fact that our historico-critical methods of using the Bible are profoundly different from the way Paul approached his Bible. Our introductory paragraphs, however, should have indicated that we do not propose to advance a technical argument of that kind, or to try to establish a “hard case” which might be demonstrable in a conclusive kind of way. Rather we wish to share the insight that Paul’s self-­ understanding and his perception of what was going on in Corinth were grounded in a deep assimilation of certain parts of scripture and certain scriptural models. Paul is illuminated by the observation that he has “lived in the Bible” to the point where the Bible has formed his whole outlook on how the world is and what his place in it might be. Those who idly suppose that scripture is important only when Paul uses it in argument in Galatians and Romans have a superficial view of the situation. 3 

W. D. Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism, 2nd ed. (London: SPCK, 1958). A. T. Hanson, Studies in Paul’s Technique and Theology (London: SPCK, 1974). 5 Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism. 4 

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I.  The importance of the psalms In 2 Corinthians 4:7 ff. we have a crucial passage in which Paul reiterates a constant theme of the epistle: “we have this treasure in earthenware pots, in order that this extraordinary power may be God’s and not come from us.” Human weakness and mortality is to be affirmed so that there can be no doubt about the source of life and power (cf. 1:8–10; 6:9; 12:9–10; 13:3–4). Paul provides two reasons for his preposterous confidence in the face of apparent failure, struggle, weakness, persecution and so on. The first is on the surface of the text: “knowing that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus – for always we who live are being handed over to death for Jesus’s sake, so that Jesus’s life too might be made apparent in our body” (4:8–11, 14). Paul’s confidence explicitly depends upon the resurrection, as he has already indicated in 1:9, and will again in 13:4. The second reason is hidden in the midst of the first: in 2 Corinthians 4:13 Paul slips in the comment: “having the same spirit of faith [as the Psalmist], according to the text ‘I believed, therefore I spoke,’ we too believe and therefore also speak.” Presumably Paul interprets that “same faith” as being faith in the resurrection, since the two points are made in the same sentence, and do not appear on the surface of the text to be discrete points at all. But the quotation from the psalm proves to be the clue to the hidden dynamic at work – Paul’s confidence is the confidence expressed in the Psalms, so that the words of the Psalmist (Paul no doubt assumed one author, David) become the words of Paul himself. We have already noted that in 2 Corinthians 1 the language of the berakah is reminiscent of the language of the lament psalms. Now, however, it becomes possible to see how profoundly this self-understanding underlies everything Paul has said and is going to say. There are not many direct quotations or even fairly precise allusions. It would be impossible to prove close literary dependence. But the impact of reading the Septuagint (Greek) version of the Psalms with the Greek text of 2 Corinthians in mind is quite extraordinary. Paul would no doubt have been raised on the Psalms in the synagogue, though he may have used Hebrew in that context. Be that as it may, the language of the Psalms seems to have got into his bloodstream, and putting the Greek texts side by side makes this evident. In 2 Corinthians 4:13 Paul quotes what appears in the LXX as the opening words of Psalm 115 (116:10 in Hebrew and English: all references in the following discussion will be given in the LXX enumeration): “I have trusted (or believed), therefore I speak.” So, says Paul, we have believed and therefore we speak. Now that might appear to be that, but let us look at other phrases from the same psalm. It goes on:

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but I was deeply humiliated (ἐταπεινώθην – etapeinō thē n). I said in my ἔκστασις (ecstasis – confusion, ecstasy), Every man is false. I will receive the cup of salvation (σωτήριον – sō tē rion) and I will call upon the name of the Lord. Precious before the Lord is the death (θάνατος – thanatos) of his holy ones. O Lord, I am your servant/slave (δοῦλος – doulos).

The following points are worth noting: (1) It is evident that Paul has experienced, and faces the possibility of again experiencing, humiliation (2 Cor 11:7; 12:21). He knows that he appears ταπεινός (tapeinos – lowly, humble) to the Corinthians (10:1). He calls God the “one who encourages the downcast (ταπεινούς)” in 7:6. (2) Very shortly he will affirm that “if we were beside ourselves, it was for God” (5:13). Whether εἰ ἐξέστημεν (ei exestē men) refers to ecstasy, amazement or madness is a difficult question to settle. But there is a verbal parallel with the psalm. What the Psalmist discerns in his ἔκστασις is the falsehood of every man. Curiously enough Paul quotes these exact words, “every man is false,” in Romans 3:4 as part of his argument that all have fallen short of the glory of God. Could it not be that Paul’s ἔκστασις, his “madness” in the eyes of the Corinthians, is precisely the singleminded concentration on God which leads him to suspect falsehood in his opponents? Like the Psalmist and Elijah he feels that he alone is left as loyal prophet and apostle. (3) The word salvation (σωτήριον), although not very frequent in the epistle, nevertheless appears at crucial points, notably when Paul makes his direct appeal to the Corinthians at the beginning of 2 Corinthians 6, using the words of Isaiah. It was also there alongside παράκλησις (encouragement) in 1:6. (4) Paul has barely escaped death (1:8), and is aware of the fact that death is at work in him (4:12). We note the importance of the life out of death emphasis in this epistle. (5) Paul does not call himself the Lord’s slave (δοῦλος) in this epistle, but he does use the phrase “slave of Christ” elsewhere (Rom 1:1; Gal 1:10). In 2 Corinthians 6:4 he will use the phrase “servants of God” (διάκονοι – diakonoi), presumably plural because “we” in this epistle ambiguously refers to himself and his fellow-workers – the true apostles – or to himself as the typical true apostle. Whether the actual phrase is used or not, it is surely evident that the idea of being “God’s slave” is at the very basis of everything said in the epistle, and is surely implied by such texts as 2:14, assuming – rightly, I am sure – that it refers to Paul being carried around as a captive in God’s triumphal procession. Given these observations, one might almost claim that LXX Psalm 115 is the text of Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians.

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But the influence of the Psalms is not exhausted by that observation. The previous psalm (in fact, the earlier verses of the same psalm in the Hebrew enumeration, though not the LXX) contains the verse: The pangs of death surrounded me. The dangers of Hades found me. I found affliction (θλίψις – thlipsis) and pain.

It goes on to speak of God “saving my life,” rescuing “my life from death” and “my eyes from tears.” Humiliation is again mentioned. Earlier in the epistle Paul has hinted at his humiliation, spoken of his tears, and dwelt upon the encouragement in affliction (θλίψις) and rescue from death which he has received from God. If we move on, putting the Psalter and the epistle beside each other, more striking correspondences appear. In 6:9 Paul alludes to Psalm 117 (virtually the next psalm, since 116 is only four lines long). Paul writes: as dead yet – look! – we live, as punished (παιδευόμενοι – paideuomenoi – disciplined) yet not put to death…

The psalm says: I shall not die but live and tell the works of the Lord. With discipline the Lord disciplined me (ἐπαίδευσεν – epaideusen), and he did not hand me over to death.

Now if we look back over this, the second psalm to which Paul has clearly alluded, we find the following points: 1. In affliction (θλίψις), I called on the Lord (v. 5). 2. The Lord is my help (v. 6). 3. It is good to hope in the Lord (v. 9). 4. The voice of rejoicing and salvation in the tents of the righteous: the right hand of the Lord has worked power (δύναμις – dynamis).

Now Paul has just spoken (2 Cor 6:4; 6:7) of recommending himself as God’s minister, in the power (δύναμις) of God, and the themes of God’s power and his empowering of Paul will appear again in important contexts: 9:8; 10:4; 12:9– 10; 13:3–4. Needless to say, the other points are all relevant to material in this epistle. A few verses after alluding to Psalm 117, Paul alludes to Psalm 118. “Our heart is wide open,” he says, using the same words as the psalm (v. 32): “whenever you make my heart wide open.” Immediately before Paul has spoken of his mouth being open, a phrase found all over the Psalter. Frequently in this psalm, the Psalmist speaks of himself as God’s δοῦλος (slave), and of living through keeping God’s word. What encouraged (παρεκάλεσεν – parekalesen) the Psalmist in his humiliation (ταπείνωσις – tapeinōsis) was the fact that God’s word gave

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him life (v. 50). The Psalmist prays that God will teach him goodness, discipline and knowledge (γνῶσις – gnōsis) (v. 66). And in verses 130–1 we find: The revelation of your words sheds light and gives understanding to infants (νήπιοι – nē pioi). I have opened my mouth and drawn breath (πνεῦμα – pneuma) because I desire your commandments.

It is difficult to avoid relating these words to what Paul was saying previously about knowledge and enlightenment (4:6); and the Corinthians he treats as “infants” (νήπιοι) in 1 Corinthians (3:1). There too he stresses the prime importance of keeping the commandments of God (1 Cor 7:19); and, as we shall see, it is the obedience produced by the spirit (πνεῦμα) which makes the new covenant effective where the old simply led to condemnation. Many other allusions keep appearing, which seem to confirm the impression that this group of psalms is far more deeply embedded in Paul’s thought than the obvious allusions might suggest. It is interesting to note that Paul’s warnings about association with the unfaithful which immediately follow (2 Cor 6:14– 7:1) are not dissimilar to the distance the Psalmist puts between himself and those who act with iniquity (ἀνομία – anomia; cf. 2 Cor 6:14); and if we turn back a bit in the Psalter, we find expostulations against idolatry (Ps 113; cf. 2 Cor 6:16). Indeed in that psalm too we find material which now appears fascinatingly relevant: Not to us, O Lord, not to us but to your name, give glory for your mercy and your truth’s sake.

We have suggested that Paul is concerned with the question of true glory, the glory given to and received from God, rather than reputation among men. Paul is also conscious that his entire ministry depends upon the mercy of God (2 Cor 4:1). In other words, links with the Psalms do not begin with the explicit quotation of Psalm 115 in 4:13: Psalm 113 lies behind the previous section. Besides, in Psalm 111:3, δόξα (doxa – glory) and πλοῦτος (ploutos – riches) are said to be in his house and 111:4 speaks of light springing up in the darkness for the upright: although a different text is actually quoted, the reference to light can be paralleled in 2 Cor 4:6, while true δόξα has already been discussed and true riches will be the subject later. Moving back in the Psalter again, we find several references in Psalm 110 to the eternity of the covenant (διαθήκη – diathē kē), as well as other relevant points: He announced the strength of his works to his people to give them the inheritance of the nations (ἔθνων – ethnō n). The works of his hands are truth and judgment, all his commands are faithful (πισταί – pistai).

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Naturally enough Paul would read this in terms of the Gentiles (ἔθνη) inheriting the eternal covenant of the Spirit (2 Cor 3), along with God’s faithful keeping of his words of promise (1:18 ff.), his truth and his judgment (cf. 2 Cor 5:10 etc.). So far then we have found that Psalms 110–118 have a particular bearing on what Paul is saying in this epistle; it is perhaps not irrelevant to note that 112– 117 (= 113–118 Hebrew) are the Hallel Psalms traditionally used in the synagogue on the occasion of great festivals. Paul almost seems to follow themes in progression from a group of psalms of which the core might well be particularly familiar and significant to him. The correspondence is not close enough to suggest a deliberate modelling of his argument on these psalms, especially since he explicitly alludes to many other scriptural passages and rarely the psalms themselves. But there is enough to provide a clue to Paul’s profound dependence on the Psalter in his life of faith, worship and mission. If we were to range more widely over the Psalter, we would find more hints that this gives a quite fundamental insight into the basis of Paul’s assurance. Throughout the Psalter we find the language of hope, trust and confidence in the midst of affliction. The δόξα, γνῶσις and δύναμις of God (his glory, knowledge and power) is a principal concern of the Psalmist. Even more suggestive is the description of those who are wicked and cause oppression: they use trickery and speak with tricking lips (δολιοῦσιν – doliousin, Paul’s word in 2 Cor 4:2). By contrast the Psalmist speaks with boldness/freedom (παρρησιάσομαι – parrhē siasomai: Ps 11:6; 2 Cor 3:12). Exulting (καυχᾶσθαι – kauchā sthai) in the praise of the Lord appears in contrast to exulting/boasting in the wrong things (idols, riches, one’s own strength, etc.). There seems to be a deep correlation between the wicked in the Psalms and Paul’s opponents. Finally the Psalmist prays to be led in God’s way, anticipating Paul’s insistence that he follows where God leads. If, as is very probable, the Psalms were his lifelong prayerbook and hymnbook, it is scarcely surprising that they almost unconsciously moulded his spirituality, and as his focus shifted from Pharisaic ideology to apostolic vocation, so the words of the Psalms came to carry new meaning and significance for his life of faith.

II.  The importance of the prophets O God, I hoped in you, lest I should be for ever ashamed. In your righteousness, rescue and deliver me, Incline your ear to me and save me. My God, rescue me from the hand of the sinner, From the hand of the law-breaker and unrighteous. For you are my endurance, Lord; My hope is in the Lord from my youth. (Ps 70:1, 2, 4, 5)

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A typical lament psalm it seems, with all the resonances with 2 Corinthians we have been noticing. But the significant point is that it goes on: On you I have been fixed from the belly, From my mother’s womb you are my protector (LXX) (Heb: you are the one who took me from the womb).

Psalm 21:10–11 makes a similar point: You are the one who took me from the belly, My hope from the breasts of my mother. On you I was cast from the womb, From my mother’s womb you are my God.

This sense of destiny from birth is found also in the prophets. Probably the most well-known example is that of Jeremiah. At his call-vision he hears the words: Before you were formed, I knew you in the womb: and before you came out of the womb, I sanctified you, I appointed you a prophet for the nations (Gentiles).

A similar thought is found in Isaiah 49:1, 5, but for the moment let us reflect on the extraordinary number of correlations between Jeremiah and Paul’s own sense of call. It is in Galatians that Paul uses a phrase that picks up this sense of destiny from birth: he who set me apart from my mother’s womb and called me through his grace (Gal 1:15).

Is it not likely, then, that Jeremiah’s call to be a prophet to the nations affected Paul’s sense of call to be apostle to the Gentiles? In 2 Corinthians we find some confirmation that Jeremiah’s call-vision was significant for Paul. Jeremiah was set over nations and kingdoms to uproot and raze to the ground and destroy, and to build up and plant (LXX). Twice in 2 Corinthians Paul speaks of the authority he has been given “to build you up not tear you down” (10:8; 13:10) and he refers again to building up in 12:19. In 1 Corinthians he had spoken of himself planting and Apollos watering. The resonances and contrasts with Jeremiah are surely significant. In the book of Jeremiah, there are references back to this task of tearing down and building up in a number of highly significant places. Immediately before the well-known passage about the new covenant, which is indisputably significant for Paul in 2 Corinthians 3, we find a passage that reads as follows: Therefore, behold days are coming, says the Lord, and I will sow Israel and Judah, seed of men and seed of cattle. And it shall come to pass, as I have farmed them to destroy and bring evil, so I will farm them to build up and to plant, says the Lord (LXX Jer 38:27– 28).

Similarly in Jeremiah 24:6, the promise is given: and I will build up and I will surely not destroy and I will plant them and surely not pull them up.

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This passage goes on to speak of giving them “a heart so that they will know me, that I am the Lord, and they will be a people for me and I will be God for them, because they have turned to me with the whole of their heart.” This is an anticipation of the language in which the new covenant is described in Jeremiah 31:31 ff. (LXX 38:31, following the words quoted above). The new covenant will not be like the old one which they broke, but “I will put my laws in their mind and I will write them on their hearts, and I will be God for them and they will be a people for me.” One citizen will not have to teach another to know the Lord. For “they will all know me ….” Now the significance of these passages for Paul is without question. He is claiming to be the apostle of this very new covenant which Jeremiah heralded. The reason he needs no letters of introduction is that he is the ambassador entrusted with the new treaty document, and the new treaty is not written on paper or stone, but on the heart. He has already delivered it in Corinth, and what is written on their hearts is the guarantee of his apostleship (2 Cor 3:1–6). The new covenant means that with the gift of the Spirit they have knowledge of God and of his will; his laws are written on their hearts. Hence they are responsible for obeying God and Paul is not lord over their faith (1:24). On the other hand, their very doubts about Paul threaten their relationship with God. Since he is God’s spokesman, commissioned to deliver the message of reconciliation – “I will remember their sins no more” (LXX Jer 38:34) – if they turn their backs on him, they will find themselves faced with his authority to tear down: Behold, those whom I built up, I will tear down, and those whom I planted, I will pluck up (LXX Jer 51:34).

It is the last thing Paul wants to do, but he will do it if he has to, and they should not be too complacent because he did not manage to bring himself to it last time he came (2 Cor 13:1–10). Yet Jeremiah affirmed that the new covenant would be an eternal covenant which would not be taken away – that the fear of God would be given in their hearts so that they would not turn away from God (LXX Jer 39:40). Paul’s plea is urgent, and yet his confidence that in the end it will all come right, that God is the one who brings life out of death, encouragement in affliction and peace out of conflict, is rooted in his sense of the fulfilment of Jeremiah’s prophecy. In the end they will fully understand one another, and be proud of one another before the judgment seat of God. For they depend on Paul, the ambassador of God, and he depends on them, the fruit of his obedience to his call (2 Cor 1:13–14; 5:6–12). But the end is not yet, and meanwhile Paul faces false apostles just as Jeremiah faced false prophets. One cannot help feeling that it is no accident that just as the lament psalms were significant for Paul, so there are many connections between those psalms and Jeremiah. Some connections we noted at the beginning of this section, and others may be traced, especially in the passages known as Jeremi-

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ah’s confessions. He feels the whole world against him, and even doubts his vocation, cursing the day he was born. Did Paul ever have doubts? Sometimes it seems not, but suddenly at the beginning of 2 Corinthians 4, he mentions the mercy of God, and he seems aware of the terrible nature of a ministry which may bring death to the perishing – who is adequate for these things? Paul is perhaps not as insensitive as appears at first sight. And might it not be true that his anxiety about Corinth is an expression of his own self-doubt? If they do not respond, if they are not reconciled, if they do allow themselves to be led astray by the others, whoever they are, does this not mean Paul loses one “sign” of his apostleship? Perhaps, like Jeremiah, he cries out somewhat like the Psalmist, “Every man is false.” Yet ultimately, the doubt is not there, because of the certainty that fulfilment is taking place, and above all this is guaranteed by the resurrection of Christ. So Paul does not explicitly pick up Jeremiah’s laments. Yet there is one more significant link with Jeremiah: Paul’s key text on the subject of “boasting” comes from Jeremiah rather than the Psalms. The full text in the LXX of the passage Paul quotes in 2 Corinthians 10:17 is as follows: Let not the wise boast in wisdom, Let not the strong boast in strength, Let not the rich boast in riches, But let the one who boasts boast in this – To know and understand that I am the Lord Doing mercy and judgment and righteousness on the earth Because in these things is my will, says the Lord. (LXX Jer 9:23 ff.)

It seems particularly significant that Paul first referred to this passage in 1 Corinthians 1:31. There he sets up against the wisdom of the world the foolishness of God, and in fact later in the discussion accuses the Corinthians of being wise, rich, and strong, by contrast with himself. We are fools because of Christ, but you are wise in Christ; we are weak, but you are strong; you are honoured (ἔνδοξοι – endoxoi – glorified), we are dishonoured” (1 Cor 4:8, 10). Paul is here attacking their arrogance, and using irony to do so. Surely his picking on wisdom, riches and strength is a deliberate allusion to the Jeremiah passage, and we look in vain for precise information about the things the Corinthians took pride in. And surely the passage as a whole gives us useful insight into 2 Corinthians, where proper pride in the glory given by God, the wisdom given by God, the riches overflowing from God, the power of God made manifest in weakness is so persistently contrasted with improper pride, the wrong kind of “boasting,” the desire for worldly glory and success, watering the gospel down for the sake of cash, and claims to power and wisdom. Paul is determined to cut down the very basis of such false pride – this surely is the implication of 11:12, though few translations make it clear.

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Paul’s boast is in the Lord, in that single-minded concentration upon God which is the very basis of his ministry. It is almost as though he quotes Jeremiah’s words (LXX Jer 10:23): I know, Lord, that a man’s word is not his own; Nor does a man journey and plan his own way. 6

In fact, as Jeremiah pointed out (LXX Jer 17:5, 7), a man is cursed who has hope in man and relies on the flesh of his arm while his heart is turned away from God; whereas the man who trusts in the Lord is blessed, and the Lord will be his hope. He expects to be saved because God is his “boast” (καύχημα – kauchēma, v. 14). Surely the words of Jeremiah are deeply written into Paul’s self-­ understanding. In fact in the ensuing verses the prophet is asked, “Where is the word of the Lord”; and says in the LXX version, which is rather different from the Hebrew, “I did not tire from following after you and I did not desire the day of man. You stand by. What passes my lips is before your face.” This seems to be precisely what Paul is claiming about himself. Others demand proof that Christ speaks in him, but he knows that God is his “boast,” and his conscience is “open” to God to whom ultimately he is answerable. And still there are more connections. For in Jeremiah 21:8 we find: “Behold I set before you the way of life and the way of death.” As for Jeremiah, so for Paul, the demand made on the hearer is a life and death decision. For some he is a stench from death to death, for others a scent from life to life (2 Cor 2:16). The prophet Hananiah died after Jeremiah had prophesied against him – is Paul terrified of using the power to destroy because of that precedent? Is that one reason why the plea to his children in Corinth is so desperate? Is that why he did not dare to exercise that power on his first visit, and ends his letter with warnings about the power of Christ speaking in him? He would rather exercise the ministry of building up than tearing down, but like Jeremiah he is up against it. There are rivals who are false and whom God did not send (Jer 14:14 ff.). They have false visions and are full of deceit. Who among them has stood in the council of the Lord to perceive and hear his word? Let him who has the word of the Lord tell it faithfully (Jer 23:18, 28). The people of God have become adulterers, and even brothers are deceivers and slanderers (Jer 9:1–6). They refuse to know me, says the Lord. Now Jeremiah was not the first or last prophet to speak in those terms, and it is perhaps significant that Hosea and Ezekiel, like Jeremiah, are explicitly quoted in 2 Corinthians. For both, the adultery of Israel was a major theme: they are a rebellious people: they have eyes to see and do not see, ears to hear and do not hear (Ezek 12:2). Paul’s conviction that the eyes of the unfaithful have been blinded and that people will be condemned for not responding, is not unlike 6 

See further ch.  12 in this collection.

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such material, and just as Jeremiah had the power of life and death, so did Ezekiel (3:16 ff.; 11:13). In fact, Ezekiel is clearly important for Paul. A constant refrain in the book concerns the vision of the glory of God (Ezek 1:28; 3:23; 8:24; 39:21, 29; 43:1– 5). Of course Paul’s claim to have been caught up to the third heaven and to have heard “unutterable utterances, things that a human being may not speak” has apocalyptic parallels, but behind them are the visions of Ezekiel and the belief that the true prophet is admitted to the counsels of God (1 Kings 22). The Spirit is important to Ezekiel more than any other prophet: the Spirit tells the prophet to stand on his feet and not be afraid of hostile people to whom he has to proclaim the message (2:1 ff.). The urgency of Ezekiel’s message of doom in chapters 6 and 7 matches the urgency of Paul’s plea to the Corinthians. In 18:30, the call to repentance is about giving a new heart and spirit, tearing out the stony heart and giving a fleshy heart – a text clearly alluded to in 2 Corinthians 3:3. Ezekiel 37 contains the famous vision of resurrection in the valley of the dry bones, but also a passage about the covenant and holiness, one verse of which is quoted by Paul in 2 Corinthians 6:16: And I will give them a covenant of peace, an eternal covenant will be with them, and I will put my holy things in their midst for ever. And my dwelling-place will be with them, and I will be their God and they shall be my people. And the Gentiles shall know that I am the Lord who sanctifies them inasumuch as my holy things are in the midst of them for ever (Ezek 37:26–28).

Clearly reference to Ezekiel lies on the surface of Paul’s text, and this makes it the more likely that his warnings about the Day of the Lord, about false visions and false prophets, and his condemnation of God’s rebellious people may have affected Paul. Does not the background in Jeremiah and Ezekiel explain why Paul could regard the Mosaic covenant as a covenant of death and condemnation? For that is in fact what it had led to – the destruction of the exile. Now the new covenant of the Spirit had been delivered. It was to bring about life and new creation; yet somehow in the “between-times” before the End was consummated, destruction was still at work for those who proved unfaithful. And given the clear allusions to Ezekiel, as well as these dynamic parallels, perhaps we find here the clue to the mysterious “thorn in the flesh” (our “splinter under the skin”), the irritant about which Paul says he prayed three times, and got the reply, “My grace is sufficient for you” (2 Cor 12:7–9).7 The word is found in Ezekiel 28:24: 7  The traditional view is that the “thorn in the flesh” was some kind of ill-health, and there has been much speculation as to what it might have been. Already some have questioned this approach: see H. Clavier, “La Santé de l’Apôtre Paul,” in Studia Paulina, ed. van Unnik, Sevenster and Barrett: 66–82; and Ph. H. Menoud, “L’Écharde et l’Ange Satanique (2 Cor 12:7)” in Studia Paulina: 163–171.

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And there will no longer be a bitter splinter (σκόλοψ – skolops) and sharp thorn for the house of Israel among all the people dwelling around them who have treated them with contempt.

Behind this lies the text of Numbers 33:55: But if you do not destroy the inhabitants of the land from before your face, then those of them you let remain shall be as splinters in your eyes and javelins in your sides, and they will be enemies in the land where you dwell.

It is surely more than plausible to suggest that Paul’s thorn in the flesh was the irritation caused by the interlopers and unfaithful in his churches, who like the Canaanites of old tempted Israel to apostasy. It is after all a messenger of Satan, and Satan is all too capable of getting a toe-hold in the church (2:11), and of disguising himself as an angel of light (11:14). The other prophet Paul quotes in 2 Corinthians is Isaiah, and as in the case of the Psalms, we soon discover that the passages from which he quotes are of particular significance for the epistle as a whole. The words he uses in 2 Corinthians 6:2 come from a passage addressed to the Gentiles (Isa 49). The prophet claims to have been called from his mother’s womb, as Paul did (see above). God says: You are my slave (δοῦλος), and I will be glorified in you. The prophet says: I will be gathered and glorified before the Lord, and God is my strength. God says: Behold I have appointed you as a light to the Gentiles. God is described as “the one who has rescued you” (ῥυσάμενος – rhysamenos, as in 2 Cor 1:10). The Holy One of Israel is faithful (πιστός – pistos), and “chose you.” Then come the words quoted in 2 Corinthians 6:2: “At the acceptable time I heard you and on the day of salvation I helped you”; followed by “I gave you for a covenant for the Gentiles to restore the earth and inherit the inheritance of the desert, saying to those in chains: Come out, and to those in darkness to be unveiled.” The LXX could be interpreted by Paul not in terms of the restoration of Israel after the exile, but of the inheritance of the Gentiles, and the unveiling that occurs when one turns to the Lord. A few phrases later the LXX text says that “the one who has mercy” will “comfort” them (παρακάλεσαι), that they will come from afar, and God will have mercy on his people and “comfort” the downcast (ταπεινούς) of his people. In other words, we find yet another concentration of words and themes that are particularly significant for this epistle. The passage is among those we would call the Servant Songs, and it is interesting how many of these passages contain such significant material: the sense of election and destiny, the reliance upon God, the presence of the Spirit, the focus on the Gentiles. In 2 Corinthians 6:17, Paul apparently alludes to Isaiah 43:6: “Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the corners of the earth, all who are called by my name.” The previous verse says: “Be not afraid – for I am with you”; and the succeeding verses speak of the moulding of God’s servant and the gathering of the Gentiles. A bit fur-

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ther on God speaks of making all things new, a theme that returns in Isaiah 48:6 and 65:17, and may lie behind the “new creation” of 2 Corinthians 5:17. In fact what we know as Deutero- and Trito-Isaiah is full of suggestive material. The great opening cry, “Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people,” uses παρακαλεῖτε, of course; for the humiliation (ταπείνωσις) is over, and sin forgiven. The glory of the Lord is to be revealed; the glory of man is as the flower of the field. Salvation and proclamation of the good news is the theme of this passage. Isaiah 55 is another passage alluded to when Paul says, “the one who provides seed for the sower, will also provide bread for eating” (2 Cor 9:10), and again we find it is a significant passage: “Bend your ears and follow my paths. Hear me and your soul will live in good things, and I will make an eternal covenant with you. Behold I will give you as a witness to the Gentiles… My plans are not your plans, and my ways are not your ways.” There is simply too much material to survey in detail. And moving back into the earlier chapters of Isaiah, we find the same expressions about Israel’s harlotry, wickedness, faithlessness and rebellion as already noted in other prophets (e.g. Isa 1), alongside frequent reference to the glory and enlightenment of God, the need for knowledge of him (e.g. Isa 4:2–16; 6; 9; 12; 25, etc.). Those who make plans without God are condemned (Isa 30). The wisdom of the wise is to be destroyed (Isa 29:14). The pride of the high and mighty is to be brought low, and God alone is to be exalted (Isa 2:10–17). “My people will see the glory of the Lord… Be strong… Comfort those who are dispirited” (Isa 35:2–4). Is it not significant for 2 Corinthians that the Spirit of God that will rest on the stem of Jesse is the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, of counsel and might, and of knowledge (γνῶσις)? So we may conclude, surely, that Paul had assimilated much of the prophets, and his dependence upon them goes far beyond the specific quotations and allusions that he makes. From them he found the terms and ideas in which to interpret his own vocation and role. From them he learned to discern what was going on in the disturbed church at Corinth. From them he learned what his message had to be, a message of encouragement, and yet also coming with the tones of warning and appeal. As far as Paul was concerned, what was going on was a living out of the vision of the prophets as he became ambassador of the new covenant and preached good news to the Gentiles.

III.  The importance of the wisdom literature If one looks up a key word like “boast” (καuχᾶσθαι and related words) in the LXX concordance, it is interesting to discover that the bulk of significant references outside the Psalms and the key Jeremiah text occur in the wisdom literature.

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Who will boast of having a pure heart? Or who is bold enough to claim purity from sin?

asks Proverbs 20:9. Sirach warns about boasting in clothes or being proud on the day of glory (worldly success, presumably) (Sir 11:1–4). But wisdom is her own recommendation, and “exults” in the midst of her people. She opens her mouth in the ἐκκλησία (ecclē sia – assembly, church) of the Most High and boasts in the presence of his might (Sir 24:1–2). The person who applies himself to God’s Torah and searches out the wisdom of the ancients will be filled with a spirit of understanding, will give thanks to God in prayer, and will glory (boast) in the law of the Lord’s covenant (Sir 39:1–8). These are virtually the things Paul requires of the church. In celebrating Elijah’s feat, the author asks, “Who can boast like you?”; and Simon son of Onias, worshipping in the midst of the people, lifts his hands over the whole assembly of the sons of Israel to give the blessing of the Lord, and to “exult” in his name (Sir 50:20). There is an appropriate “boasting,” namely boasting in the Lord and not in one’s own wisdom. On the other hand, the wicked are tricksters and there is deceit in their lips – the Wisdom literature has much the same refrain as the Psalms. Those who do not think straight, lie in wait for the upright man, on the grounds that he opposes their doings, charges them with sin, considers them counterfeit, professes to have knowledge of God and be his child, boasting that God is his father; they test him with insults and torture, for their wickedness blinded them and they did not know God’s secrets. But the souls of the upright are in God’s hands (Wis 2:12–3.1). All wisdom comes from the Lord, and to fear the Lord is glory (δόξα) and exultation (καύχημα) (Sir 1:1, 11). So Do not exalt yourself, that you may not fall And bring disgrace upon yourself, And the Lord will reveal your hidden deeds And throw you down in the midst of the congregation, Because you did not come to the fear of the Lord, But your heart was full of deceit. (Sir 1:30)

Almost the first instruction in the Book of Wisdom (1.1) is to “think on the Lord in goodness, and seek him in singleness (ἁπλότης – haplotē s) of heart.” Once again we find Paul’s purposes, and his characterization of his opponents illuminated by writings that he probably regarded as scriptures. This is in fact another rich vein of material which it is impossible to exploit to the full here. Both the wisdom of Sirach and the Book of Wisdom illuminate Paul’s perceptions over and over again. Chapter 2 of Sirach is about trusting God in the midst of testing and affliction: if you are to serve the Lord, this is what you are to expect. Other passages speak of humiliation suffered for the sake of glory (Sir 20:11) and of the blessings that will come upon those who fear the Lord: he lifts up the soul and gives light to the eyes, and bestows healing and

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life – he is a mighty support, and the one who fears him will have no dread or fear, even though often in danger of death, since the Lord is his hope (Sir 34:12 ff.). A passage in the Book of Wisdom about the need for God’s Spirit to understand his counsels, and about the body’s earthly tent burdening the thoughtful mind (Wis 9:13 ff.) illuminates several passages in the Corinthian correspondence (eg. 1 Cor 2:11 ff.; 2 Cor 4:16 ff.). Sirach 24:15 speaks of wisdom giving off a perfume (ὀσμή – osmē) and a sweet smell (εὐωδία – euōdia), language used in 2 Corinthians 2:14–15 of God’s use of Paul to spread knowledge of Christ. That Paul identified Christ with wisdom, and wisdom is described as a mirror in the important passage in Wisdom 7, may well be significant for 2 Corinthians 3:18. These are just hints of how potentially significant these books are for understanding Paul. And 2 Corinthians itself provides the clues to the significance of the older wisdom book, Proverbs; for as every Greek Testament or Bible with references indicates, there are several quotations from the Book of Proverbs, notably in 2 Corinthians 8 and 9, and possible allusions elsewhere. Even without further examples or discussion, the influence of this literature on Paul can hardly be doubted.

IV.  Paul and the Scriptures Our survey of connections between Paul’s writings and the scriptures has been by no means exhaustive. But enough has been shown to document our case: Paul had “lived” in his Bible, used it in study, devotion and prayer, to the point where certain features of the scriptural material had come to mould his self-­ understanding and his discernment of what was going on in the conflict bet­ ween himself and the church at Corinth. But the most important part of the scriptures for a Jew, namely the Torah, we have not so far explored. One reason for this is that Paul and the law is such well-trodden ground and much has been written that need not be repeated. But scholars’ treatment of what Paul says about the law in 2 Corinthians is usually affected by conclusions reached through study of Romans. This, we believe, is unfortunate. In fact we think that careful study of 2 Corinthians might illuminate the argument of Romans in significant ways. Be that as it may, clearly some discussion of Paul’s perception of the law, and of his use of it as “scripture,” must be undertaken. Besides, it is passages in Torah, as well as the prophets, which provide the basis of his “midrash” in 2 Corinthians 3. 2 Corinthians 3 is a notoriously difficult passage to interpret, and apart from the commentaries, there have been a number of attempts to sort out the se-

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quence of thought in this passage.8 To these discussions we refer any serious student of the text. We also refer readers to other studies of Paul’s use of scripture for technical discussions of method. But there are a number of observations that can be made which bear upon the concerns of this chapter. Paul was deeply engrained in the scriptural material, and regarded it as Torah (revelation, teaching), even as he rejected the understanding of it with which he had grown up. This is clear from 2 Corinthians 3. For Paul the clue was provided by the prophets. The fact of the matter was that the covenant mediated by Moses had brought about destruction, death and the exile. This, rather than “legalism” and its consequences, is surely the implication of his phrases “the ministry of death” and “the ministry of condemnation.” The outworking of the old covenant was written in the pages of history, and the effects of its curses ran on into the present. The only solution to the problem of disobedience was a new covenant, a covenant written not on stone or in any other kind of document (a covenant was after all a legal instrument which might be recorded by inscription or in a sealed roll, and the latter could be carried like a letter and delivered by a servant or ambassador (διάκονος) – it is not surprising Paul gets tied up over stone tablets and ink when he has got in mind both letters of recommendation and the tablets given to Moses!). This new covenant would be written on the heart, which implies a fundamental re-creation of sinful humanity in the image of God, to be as it was intended to be, to be obedient to God’s will without conflict or distraction. But the fact that condemnation and death was the result of Moses’s covenant did not mean that it was not God’s covenant, or that it lacked God’s glory. For Paul, Moses’s covenant has been superseded, and yet in a real sense it has also found its true fulfilment. The covenant of the Spirit ensures that the will of God expressed in Moses’s covenant is actually carried out. Hearts have been remoulded. People do not need to teach each other any more what God’s will is, because they all know him (Jeremiah and Ezekiel). Rules and regulations are superseded by direct perception of the Spirit leading and guiding in the paths of righteousness. They do not need any halakah nor does Paul lord it over their faith. The mere fact that this covenant is written on their hearts is his authentication as apostle, as the one sent as ambassador to deliver the all important “document.” But this means that even more than Jeremiah, Moses is the figure on which Paul’s ministry is modelled; for like Moses he is God’s delegate, the spokesman sent with a covenant. Moses’s glory was true glory, but it was veiled. Skilfully Paul picks up and develops in midrashic fashion the story of Exodus 34. The people could not stand the reflected glory of God – that was why Moses’s face 8 See Hickling, “Sequence of Thought”; Morna Hooker, “Beyond the Things that are Written? St Paul’s Use of Scripture,” NTS 27 (1981): 295–309; and A. T. Hanson, “The Midrash in II Corinthians 3: A Reconsideration,” JSNT 9 (1980): 2–28.

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was veiled. But for Paul the veil is to conceal the fact that the glory was fading – the Mosaic covenant was on the way out – it has had its “end,” which implies both that it is obsolete and that it has found its fulfilment (we translate “outcome”). By contrast the glory of the apostles is constantly on the increase, as they reflect (or perhaps behold) the glory of the Lord and are more and more conformed to the image God intended – but I guess Paul means 2 Corinthians 3:18 to refer also to all those with the new covenant inscribed on their hearts; for the knowledge of God they have all received with that covenant has come to all because God “has shone on our hearts to (bring) the enlightenment (which is) the knowledge of God’s glory in the face of Christ” (2 Cor 4:6). Clearly Moses is the “type” or “model” of Paul’s role. Now Moses faced grumblers and doubters in the wilderness, as Paul did in Corinth, and Moses dismissed people from the camp to avoid pollution. Perhaps this is illuminating for understanding Paul. Certainly other details about Moses seem to be: with Moses God spoke “mouth to mouth, clearly and not in riddles; and he beheld the glory of the Lord” (Num 12:8). And “the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend” (Exod 33:11). That is παρρησία (parrhē sia – free speech, boldness in the very presence of God), something that current exaltation of Moses made much of (Philo, etc.). Yet Paul emphasizes the veil, rather as the author of John’s Gospel emphasizes the fact that “no one has ever seen God” – Moses only saw his backparts (John 1:18; Exod 33:18 ff.). The glory and παρρησία of the old covenant were real, and that is the kind of glory and boldness we also claim, says Paul; but it has been overwhelmingly superseded. So we boldly exercise the power of free speech without any veil. We have been open and straightforward in every particular. We have nothing to hide. With unveiled face we behold/reflect the glory of the Lord (the Moses parallels could support either interpretation). When Moses turned to the Lord, he removed the veil; so now turning to the Lord takes the veil off the old covenant. It is seen to be superseded by the covenant of the Spirit. It seems to us unlikely that in 2 Corinthians 3 Paul is answering claims or arguments of his opponents. It seems that here again we touch the roots of Paul’s self-understanding in his deep assimilation of the scriptures. The sense that the Word of God had begun to be fulfilled in Christ set loose a flood of creative insight, as Paul saw himself caught up in the fulfilment process. The scriptures were about what was going on, they were his guide and they gave him his prayers. Now it is true that Paul’s conscious use of scripture in argument, and his methods of interpretation, are often illuminated by rabbinic parallels, and by study of the methods of midrash, typology and allegory. But the consequence of that kind of technical study is often to distance Paul’s use of scripture from ours, and to raise serious questions abut the legitimacy of Paul’s hermeneutic. In the face of this, “liberal” critics are likely to conclude that we should not feel

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tied to Paul’s use of scripture; we are free to criticize it, and to observe its cultural conditioning. Conservative interpreters, who wish to take scripture more literally than Paul, tend to say that Paul’s “free” use of scripture according to the “spirit” not the “letter” was justified then, when the implications of the radical newness of Christ had to be worked out, but cannot be justified for us. It seems to us that neither conclusion is very satisfactory. What we have been observing in this chapter seems to us to provide a possible dynamic hermeneutic. Just as Paul’s sense of vocation led him to identify with figures in the scriptures, and to assimilate the words of scripture devotionally, to the point where they gave him discernment into his own situation, so we suggest it is possible for scripture to have such a creative bearing on the lives of believers in different ages, cultures and situations, not through some kind of search for mechanical correspondences, but by a two-way process of bringing a situation to bear on reading the Bible, and letting the language of the Bible provide a language for expressing and even discerning what is going on in the present. For Paul everything was to be made captive to Christ. In a similar way, text needs to be tested against text, and all needs to be subject to the Spirit of Christ. But the Spirit means freedom. The use of critical method, liberation from literalism, can make possible a more dynamic “living in the Bible”; for the new covenant is not based on the letter but on the Spirit.

Chapter 15

Understanding Romans in the Light of 2 Corinthians* The thesis of this paper is that conclusions reached in studying 2 Corinthians may profoundly affect the way Romans is read and interpreted – indeed, a number of difficulties in grasping the nub of Paul’s argument may be resolved if we come to Romans with the insight into Paul’s thinking that 2 Corinthians provides. The argument depends upon the findings reported in the author’s joint work with David Ford, Meaning and Truth in 2 Corinthians: for convenience the most relevant of these will be outlined first.

I.  2 Corinthians 1. The very personal nature of this epistle should help us to discern what made Paul tick. This is the more likely if, as we have argued, the epistle was a unity, and its genre is apology, in other words, the work is a “defence”-speech in letter form. Even if our theory of genre and structure is not accepted, it is still clear that Paul is defending his apostleship. Scholarship has paid enormous attention to the situation which called forth such an emotional apology, concentrating especially on the question of the identity of Paul’s opponents. We suggested that what we find in 2 Corinthians is a stereotypical presentation which hardly justifies the elaborate theories constructed. What matters is that it is possible to see the main line of Paul’s argument without that. The epistle is to be treated as Paul’s account of what apostleship means to him. 2. 2 Corinthians, we suggested, is about two related things: the glory of God and the reputation of Paul. The Greek word δόξα (doxa) means opinion, reputation, glory in the sense of honour among men. The Hebrew word translated by δόξα in the Septuagint has a root meaning “weight,” and so refers to a person’s substance, reputation, glory, honour. (It is intriguing that in 2 Corinthians 5:17, Paul uses the phrase “eternal weight of glory.”) In the Hebrew bible, the glory of God may signify the praises of men, the hallowing of God’s name, etc.; but it also refers to the glory issuing from God, the dazzling glory appearing in theophanies or the glory imparted to Moses which made his face shine. Such glory, * 

Originally published in SJT 43 (1990): 433–446.

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according to Paul, transforms apostles and/or believers. Paul is concerned to contrast the proper glory imparted by God with reputation among men, the glory given by public recognition – κενοδοξία (kenodoxia – vainglory), as later Christian preachers like Chrysostom would call it. It is true that the word δόξα itself mostly appears in chapters 3–4; nevertheless this observation is justified by the fact that καυχῶμαι (kauchō mai), καύχησις (kauchē sis), καύχημα (kauchēma) occur throughout. These words (in the form of noun or verb) may be translated in a variety of ways, “boast” being the most common, but AV has “glory,” and John Wesley chose “rejoice”; basically they imply “taking a pride in,” “exulting.” It is possible to take a proper or improper (foolish) pride in something; it is possible to boast appropriately or inappropriately, as Paul notes in 10:17: “Let him who prides himself on anything, pride himself on the Lord.” For Paul this provides the fundamental contrast between himself and his rivals. 3. Proper pride means dependence on God, not on oneself – operating κατὰ πνεῦμα (kata pneuma – according to the Spirit). Sufficiency is of God. Paul makes much of relying on God rather than oneself. The power of God is evident in the weakness of the Apostle. Improper pride means glorying in one’s own techniques, gifts or attainments – operating κατὰ σάρκα (kata sarka – according to human norms), making use of patronage, trafficking, advertising, providing credentials, exploiting one’s background, one’s Jewish descent, etc. – in fact, taking a pride in anything other than God and his call. Of course one cannot help being human – we all walk in the flesh, but that does not mean walking according to flesh (10:3). No compromise is possible with human techniques of ensuring or claiming success, human wisdom though it be (N.B. 1:12 – not in “fleshly wisdom” but in the grace of God). Paul contrasts his single-minded concentration on God with cheating and self-deception, the opponents being a foil to bring out the kind of glory sought among men and the kind of glory imparted by God. Paul will not operate according to the patronage system, or spread the Gospel as a commercial enterprise. He stands against the norms for religious philosophers, and earned the same contempt as the Cynics. It is noticeable that he is extremely careful when it comes to handling money: he distances himself from the collection, which is misunderstood; his own finance and his claim to self-support are an issue. He is suspected of being two-faced. The Corinthians have a model of a religious teacher, and Paul does not conform to it. To compound it all he is unreliable and doesn’t turn up when he said he would. In fact these suspicions of Paul are already around at the time of writing 1 Corinthians – either the opponents were already there in Corinth, whoever they were, or they have aggravated an already existing situation. Paul’s apology is related to a crisis in relationship between himself and the Corinthian church. The focus is on Paul rather than his opponents. The need to re-establish the relationship leads Paul to oscillate between carrots and sticks, patient exposition and violent emotional appeal. The letter is an exposition of his own role and methods, fo-

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cusing on his single-minded concentration on his vocation, his openness and transparency if only they will open their hearts to him and acknowledge it. The focus on God who called and empowers him leads him to boast in weakness, not in any powers of his own. 4. The signs of Paul’s apostleship are the existence of the new covenant community in Corinth and Paul’s sufferings for the Gospel. No other signs are acceptable, not spiritual displays, nor visions which cannot be publically confirmed, nor written guarantees of genuineness. The Corinthians demand proof from him, but they are asking for the wrong kind of proof. In fact they are under judgment themselves: dire are the warnings that if they do not accept God’s ambassador (i.e. Paul), they may find they have accepted the grace of God in vain. Paul definitely will take action against the sin in Corinth when he comes, however much he has tried to encourage mutual understanding and acceptance before – indeed, in spite of having been humiliated last time he came. In fact Paul stresses the divisiveness of the Gospel (2:15), and we suspect here and in 4:4 “unbelievers” means the “unfaithful,” not just those who fail to respond initially; we also suspect that 6:14 ff. should be viewed in a similar light. The consequences of rejecting Paul are desperately serious. Over the whole letter hangs the final judgment of God when all will become plain. Paul is most anxious that by then they will have established mutual understanding. They depend on him as the ambassador who brought the new treaty document; he depends on them for proof that he carried out his mission. Their interdependence is under threat by the crisis in the relationship – and that is what makes the tone so urgent, and gives the epistle its emotional intensities and contradictions. 5. There are important clues to Paul’s self-understanding in this letter, notably in the biblical allusions. The psalms are most significant: 1 Paul was steeped in the psalms, and sees the whole crisis and his whole purpose in terms of a spirituality moulded by constant use of psalms material. The “lament” psalms provide the language Paul uses about his humiliation and his confidence. The psalms are all about the glory and power of God, about God saving his servants from affliction and death, about knowledge of God, about obedience and faithfulness against the odds. The psalms speak of God’s encouragement (comfort) not only in the face of death and affliction, but before enemies and “tricksters.” Much of Paul’s vocabulary in this letter echoes the LXX psalms. Then there are the prophets, especially Jeremiah. It is from Jeremiah that the text about proper and improper boasting comes. In Galatians 1:15 Paul describes his so-called “conversion” in terms of Jeremiah’s call-vision, and the significance of that is confirmed by 2 Corinthians. Jeremiah was set over the nations (Gentiles) to uproot and raze to the ground and destroy, and to build up and plant (LXX): twice in 2 Corinthians, Paul speaks of the authority he has 1 

For documentation see ch.  14 in the present volume.

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been given “to build you up not tear you down” (10:8, 13:10), and again of building up in 12:19. In 1 Corinthians, he spoke of himself “planting” (and Apollos watering). There are many other allusions, to Jeremiah in particular – though also to other prophets. Particularly important is the “new covenant” passage in Jeremiah 31:31 ff., clearly alluded to in 2 Corinthians 3. This is the basis of Paul’s understanding of his vocation. Moses was the διάκονος (diakonos) of the old covenant, the “servant” or letter-bearer who delivered it to the people, Paul is the διάκονος of the new covenant prophesied by Jeremiah. This covenant, Jeremiah said, was to be written on the heart and no-one would need to teach anyone else: this explains why Paul has no halakah. It is also significant that Jeremiah had to struggle against false prophets; for Paul too knows the problem of how to convince others that he is the true spokesman of God. Jeremiah’s sufferings illuminate Paul’s appeal to his sufferings for the Gospel: they are the mark of the true prophet. All the evidence cannot be adduced here, but here are two final examples: (1) It is interesting to compare Jeremiah 10:23 (LXX) “I know, Lord, that a man’s way is not his own; nor does a man journey and plan his own way” with Paul’s explanation of his change in plans in 2 Corinthians 1:17 ff. as interpreted by John Chrysostom: Paul implies that it is not his responsibility because he is led around by the Spirit of God.2 (2) Surely the following could be the text on which the whole letter is a commentary: “a man is cursed who has hope in man and relies on the flesh of his arm while his heart is turned away from God; whereas the man who trusts in the Lord is blessed, and the Lord will be his hope. He expects to be saved because the Lord is his boast” (LXX Jer 17:5, 7, 14 summarized somewhat). So, to sum up: The clue to Paul is a sense of vocation which produces total reliance on God. God is responsible for “comfort” in affliction, life out of death, strength in weakness, etc. Paul is “carted around” in God’s triumphal procession as a martyr-sacrifice (2:14). He is not responsible for his own travel-plans: he only carries out the plan/destiny for which God has marked him out, living according to the Spirit, delivering the new covenant-document like an ambassador; yet it is not a document, rather it generates new creation by being written on the heart. So converts too live according to the “spirit” not the “letter,” but that implies responding to God and living in obedience to him, despite the fact that the End is not yet. In principle the obedience of faith is effected by the downpayment of the Spirit, but in practice, as the anxious pleading of the letter shows, the struggle goes on, not least in the life of the church.

2 

See ch.  12 in the present volume.

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II. Romans Some points of connection between Romans and the Corinthian letters are obvious, most obvious of all the parallel “body” passages in Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12. I am not really concerned to spell out that kind of observation, but to reread some of the classic problem texts in Romans from the perspective given by the sort of insights into Paul provided by 2 Corinthians in particular. 1. Romans 8:28–30 can provide us with a convenient starting-place. Here, at the climax of the section marked as chapter 8, Paul speaks of those called according to God’s plan or purpose, those foreknown and set apart in advance to be made in the image (συμμόρφους – symmorphous) of his Son’s image (εἰκόνος – eikonos). We may compare 2 Corinthians 3:18: We [probably referring to apostles, but perhaps all Christians] are being made in the image (μεταμορφούμεθα – metamorphoumetha) of the very same image (εἰκόνα – eikona, presumably referring to Christ) by beholding/reflecting God in a mirror. In the Romans passage Paul goes on to say that those set apart are called, those called are justified, and those justified are glorified. In 2 Corinthians 3 he has been speaking of the glory imparted by God to Moses, and the even greater glory which comes with the new covenant. In Romans Paul is surely generalising his own sense of vocation. His call came not because he deserved it, as a reward for his goodness or faithfulness – rather the opposite. It was surprising and paradoxical, a sovereign act of God’s will, of his sheer grace and mercy. It was also predetermined: “he who set me apart from my mother’s womb and called me through his grace.” Like Paul, Christian believers are picked out to play a role in the plan of God – the idea of election is fundamental. Justification happens as a corollary of election – vocation is the primary idea. Christian vocation is to transfer from the old (Adamic) order in which the image of God is marred to the new order in which in Christ the image of God is restored: they are to be conformed to the image of Christ, so as to become the first-fruits of the new creation. The climax is their glorification, their receiving the right kind of glory, the glory imparted by God. The outburst of praise and joy at the end of the chapter (Rom 8: 31 ff.) is the natural response of wonder at God’s choice – why me? What a privilege! If we are on God’s side, ultimate victory is bound to come our way. The passage encapsulates that confidence of Paul in the face of affliction, opposition, etc. found in those remarkable catalogues of sufferings in 2 Corinthians. There is even a quotation from the Psalms: Psalm 44:22, recalling the nearness of death, and the life out of death theme that pervades 2 Corinthians. The old order is characterized by “flesh,” the new order by “spirit.” The argument of the early part of Romans 8 is much illuminated by 2 Corinthians 3, and the key texts alluded to there: i.e. the new covenant of Jeremiah 31:31 ff. which

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is based on the Spirit in the heart rather the letter inscribed on stone, and Ezekiel’s references to a new spirit within, fleshy hearts in place of stony hearts, hearts malleable and responsive to imprint of God’s will. The old covenant had in fact, as a matter of history, led to condemnation and death: as Jeremiah and Ezekiel had experienced, judgment, the curses of the covenant, had come into effect at the exile. They had seen that only re-creation could enable obedience, the writing of the law within, so that all would know God. Paul understands the outpouring of the Spirit through Christ as the initiation of this new covenant, of which he is ambassador: now the promise to forgive iniquity and remember sin no more has been fulfilled – this is the message of reconciliation (2 Cor 5:19). There is an amnesty, the offer of a new “treaty” between God and his people, and the offer is for all people, Gentiles included. In this way the just requirement of the law is fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit (Rom 8:4). Everyone who responds to the message is called into the new order. It is not yet fully available – the Spirit is a downpayment, which enables us to regard the present as a “slight momentary affliction” compared with the “eternal weight of glory” to be received at the End. The parallels between 2 Corinthians 4:16 ff. and Romans 8:18 ff. should not be overlooked: Paul speaks of a glory yet to be revealed when the sons of God are revealed, that is those who are to be conformed to the image of his Son (cf. above on 2 Cor 3:18 and Rom 8:29 ff.), and of the Spirit interceding “between the times.” The eschatology of 2 Corinthians 5:1–10 illuminates Romans 8:21–23. Yet belonging to the new order demands that the methods and standards of the old order be left behind, and sin is out of the question (Rom 6); the new covenant in the heart and the gift of the Spirit ensures the obedience of faith (Rom 1:5). As for Jeremiah and Ezekiel, so for Paul obedience has become natural because of the re-creation of hearts. In Christ, there is new creation. Just as 2 Corinthians repudiates κατὰ σάρκα, so in Romans Paul speaks of obedience κατὰ πνεῦμα and the end of life κατὰ σάρκα. The law attempted to bring obedience; it was in itself holy and just and good, but it could not effect obedience without the Spirit. The impotence of the law was surely not perceived as a result of Paul’s pre-conversion struggles, as has so often been suggested, but rather arose out of the conviction that the promises of the new covenant in the heart had been fulfilled. The law could not effect obedience because of the weakness of the flesh – the marred human level of the old order (cf. Rom 8:3). Only complete dependence upon the power of God could effect the possibility of transcending the weakness of flesh: “we have this treasure in earthen vessels to show power belongs to God and not to ourselves” (2 Cor 4:7). The new order is now possible because sin in the flesh has been overcome. “I will remember their sin no more,” said Jeremiah: Romans 3:21 ff. and 5:6 are commentaries on how that had become true, as is 2 Corinthians 5:21, a verse

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which surely explains Romans 8:3: the true image of God enters the old order, the realm of sin and death and effects an “exchange,” releasing those who are to be conformed to his image to enter the realm of God’s righteousness. Now we live “between the times,” “in the flesh” but not “according to the flesh” (8:4). 2 Corinthians 10:4 repudiates the weapons of the flesh and 2 Corinthians 1:17 ff. suggests not planning according to the flesh but under God’s immediate direction. So according to Romans 8:4 ff., those with the Spirit cannot think the things of the flesh: thinking/living according to the flesh, or at human level without the Spirit, produces death, but thinking/living according to the Spirit brings life and peace. Obedience to God is “natural” κατὰ πνεῦμα but impossible κατὰ σάρκα (8:8). When in Romans 8:10 Paul speaks of the body being dead because of sin, but “your spirits” being alive through righteousness, we are reminded of the way death is at work in Paul’s life, but life is communicated to the Corinthians (2 Cor 4:12), and of the resurrection guaranteeing power in weakness, affliction, death, etc. (2 Cor passim). Romans 8:11 sums up the whole nub of Paul’s argument, and its significance becomes apparent when we come to the Romans text from 2 Corinthians. The power of the resurrection will be effective, and is already at work, and yet the struggle with the old order is not yet over – that is what Romans 7 is about: sin and righteousness, flesh and Spirit, vie with one another “between the times.” The “helplessness” referred to in Romans 5:6 (while we were yet helpless, Christ died for the ungodly) is the “weakness” of the flesh sold under sin. In Romans 4, Abraham’s faith is faith that God can bring life out of death. Reliance on God’s power to bring life out of death, the personal dynamic of Paul’s apostleship in 2 Corinthians (e.g. 1:9), is the basis of Romans’ assurance of justification and eventual salvation. When in Romans 8:14 ff. Paul speaks of the spirit of adoption, it seems likely that he has in mind the adoption of those who were “not my people” but are called “my people” (the text from Hosea is quoted in Romans 9:25 ff.). The Gentiles become children of God, heirs of the promises, under the new covenant. Then through sufferings they are brought to glory, the proper glory imparted by God – not achieved or inherited at human level. So my basic thesis is this: Romans is about vocation, about the obedience of faith, about setting out and following the call of God, against the odds. 2. This being so, Sanders is right to insist that Paul’s argument in Romans is not primarily driven by the issue of legalism or “self-righteousness” (though I would not dismiss the traditional “legalism” issue as entirely irrelevant as Sanders does – see further below).3 As Sanders suggests, Paul’s position is “dispensational,” though I would put it more in terms of “new covenant.” I would also suggest that “justification” is more incidental to Paul’s argument than has gen3 

E. P. Sanders, Paul, the Law and the Jewish People (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983).

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erally been assumed: his position is a generalisation of his experience of vocation to all believers. This is how Abraham becomes the model of faith. If he had had “works,” he would have had something to take a pride in – καύχημα, but it would have been the wrong sort of pride because it was not pride in the Lord. The new covenant is based simply on a trust that is prepared to risk all and believe that God is able to fulfil his promises and “justify the ungodly” by putting a new heart and spirit in them as Ezekiel and Jeremiah predicted: then their sin will be remembered no more. The climax of chapter 4 is Abraham’s belief that he would be the father of many nations (= Gentiles), despite the fact that he had no hope of being a father given the “deadness of Sarah’s womb” and the fact that he was as good as dead himself. Nevertheless he retained his faith in God’s promise, so becoming the paradigm of faith that God can bring life out of death. We may compare the death-resurrection pattern of so much of 2 Corinthians: this was essentially Paul’s faith. This kind of faith is obedience, total obedience to the call of God. In 2 Corinthians, Paul claims to be directed by God, carried around a prisoner in his victory-procession, not self-directed any more, and in Romans this becomes the principle of the Christian life. Naturally this idea of faith as response to God’s call means that it is not a case of rules to be kept – such concerns are irrelevant. What Paul is talking about is a deep conversion or re-creation so that people know God in the heart and always do his will. So rules and regulations become irrelevant, and that is why Paul has no halakah, as Sanders noted. On the other hand it cannot mean antinomianism; for it must mean a more radical obedience. It may mean the believer/apostle being “unpredictable” (as is also implied by the Johannine description of “one born of the Spirit,” cf. John 3:8). It certainly upholds Torah (Rom 3:31), while going way beyond it. It in fact demonstrates the true meaning and fulfilment of Torah (note the ambiguity of τέλος (telos – end or fulfilment) in Romans 10 and 2 Corinthians 3). Obedience and following one’s vocation takes place as the Spirit converts the σάρξ (sarx – flesh). It is all of grace because it only happens as God’s election, as new creation, takes place: it truly is something we cannot do for ourselves. It means reliance on God and God alone. To this extent, I believe Sanders has overdone his attack on “legalism” and the long-standing exegesis of Romans based on that tradition. It is true that Paul does not explicitly speak of people boasting in their self-righteous achievements, and to tar all Pharisees with the legalistic brush is undoubtedly to misrepresent. Yet the kernel of Paul’s position is summed up in the Jeremiah text he quotes in 2 Corinthians: let him who boasts, boast in the Lord. If the law becomes something to boast of, it detracts from that total reliance on God. As in 2 Corinthians Paul can use these words in two senses, false boasting and proper boasting: rejoicing in the hope of God’s glory, and boasting in sufferings (5:2)

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is appropriate. Boasting in God through our Lord Jesus Christ (5:10) is appropriate. Paul has his boast in Christ Jesus (15:17) – he can be proud of his ministry, simply because it is totally grounded in God. But boasting in Jewishness, or the law, or good works as one’s own achievements – that is the wrong kind of boast. It is a kind of idolatry, and just like boasting in wisdom, visions, or whatever, or just like the self-commendation condemned in 2 Corinthians, it conflicts with faith in God. The criticism of “works-righteousness” is implicit if not explicit. 3. It is important to note the extent to which the “glory” of God is a concern in Romans: in 1:23 the glory of God is exchanged for images; in 3:23 all have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory. In 2:7 and 10, those who seek glory and honour by well-doing will receive eternal life, glory, honour and peace; in 5:2 we rejoice in the hope of sharing God’s glory. In Romans 8, present sufferings are not to be compared with glory to be revealed, and so on…. Proper glory comes through God’s call – it is imparted by his vocation. Such a perception drawn from study of 2 Corinthians integrates the whole theological argument of Romans. 4. Perhaps now we can usefully return to our starting-point in chapter 8:28–30, and examine the sequel in chapters 9–11. Vocation is the key: selection has happened all through Israel’s history. Isaac was “called,” and so the children according to “promise” become the children of God, not the children according to the flesh (compare the Sarah/Hagar typology in Galatians 5:21 ff.). In 9:11–12 “works” are contrasted not with faith but with “call.” This so-called “predestination” is exactly like that sense of destiny which comes with the call (of Paul in Galatians 1:15 and Jeremiah in 1:5, see above), the sense that God had lined one up for a particular role in the history of salvation. Of course the hard thing in these chapters is the hardening or blinding of those not called, but already in 2 Corinthians Paul has dared to speak of the “divisiveness” of the Gospel and the blinding of the “unfaithful.” It is in fact a frequent topic in the New Testament, notoriously so in Mark 4 and John 12. Paul is not alone in seeing a terrible process of discrimination going on, and referring to stumbling-blocks and using prophetic texts like Isaiah 6:9–10 to explain what is happening. It is important to note that in Romans 11:8–10 it is God who is responsible for the blinding, and we find prophetic and psalm texts in a cluster, as in 2 Corinthians 6:14 ff. God’s “glory” may be dazzling to the point of blinding the ἄπιστοι ( apistoi – unfaithful or unbelieving). In the light of these considerations we would argue that 2 Corinthians 4:4 (the God of this world) should probably be read as referring to the God of the scriptures. Romans 11:22 speaks of the goodness and severity of God: the possibility of cutting off is real for Christians, and that was what Paul had feared for the Corinthians. The revelation of the wrath of God and the righteousness of God in early chapters of Romans are surely two sides of the same coin. God’s righteousness

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and faithfulness is proved in the fulfilment of his promises, especially his promises to Abraham, who was to be the father of many nations, that is, the Gentile faithful, and his promises to Hosea, Jeremiah and Ezekiel concerning a new covenant or will (διαθήκη – diathē kē), whereby the Gentiles become heirs by grace and adoption. But that fulfilment involves the winding up of the old order, the playing out of God’s wrath and judgment which was also predicted by the prophets. The old covenant had been broken, so its curses must come into play. 5. These observations lead us to the exegetical difficulties of Romans 2: can Paul’s statement that everyone is judged by the law be consistent with his insistence on justification by faith? Some Gentiles keep the law, he claims. The Jews he accuses of not doing so. Sanders is surely right that most of the white-­washing explanations offered by commentators are not satisfactory. He is also right that Paul’s statements here are fundamental to the sequence of his argument, and cannot be excised (as O’Neill once suggested in his Pelican Commentary4). Paul needs to prove that the old order is hopelessly under wrath in order to proclaim the message that the new order has come into being. But it is a bit desperate to suggest that these sentiments are not Paul’s really but belong to Hellenistic ­synagogue preaching. There is little doubt that Paul did exploit such traditions, but if he used the material he must surely have meant it in some sense. The perspective of 2 Corinthians allows us to see this against the background provided by the prophets: the covenant had indeed been broken. The law had indeed been powerless to prevent the apostasy and idolatry of the historical ­Israel. Israel’s harlotry had led to the exile (and in 2 Corinthians Paul shows himself fearful that the church, the virgin newly betrothed to Christ by a new covenant, was in danger of similar seduction). Paul, instructed by the exilic prophets, could see that the claimed superiority of the Jew, Jewish reliance on the law, on being the chosen people, on the old covenant, was the wrong sort of basis for their claims: they had no leg to stand on because they clearly had dishonoured God, the name of God had been blasphemed among the nations as Isaiah and Ezekiel had indicated. Paul exploits the prophetic denunciations. The question of “blamelessness” according to the law is not what he is concerned with here. Rather he draws on the prophetic judgment of Israel on the basis of the law, accepting that the covenant curses have been brought into play, universalizing this. He recognizes that the Gentiles are in an equivalent impasse, since potentially they knew the glory of God but…. Paul’s basic position is that only the new covenant, the gift of the Spirit, grace, vocation, can effect the radical re-creation, that change of heart which alone suffices. 2 Corinthians 3 is vital to grasping his line of argument in the early part of Romans. Paul can commend Gentiles over against Jews because the law writ4  J. C. O’Neill, Paul’s Letter to the Romans, Pelican New Testament Commentaries (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975).

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ten on the heart is more effective than the written code, and he sees it happening among Gentiles. I used to find unconvincing the suggestion that Paul was referring to Christians in Romans 2, but my mind has been changed! What Paul is talking about is the effectiveness of the new covenant written on the heart, and the law by which all will be judged is the fundamental will of God revealed in Torah and in creation, but only effectively obeyed by the community of the new covenant. The goodness of God was meant to lead to repentance, but hardness of heart led instead to condemnation. In 2:6–7 we find the same recognition of a drastic discrimination process going on as we have found in the later chapters and in 2 Corinthians. In the end, on the basis of scripture – in fact the very Psalm quoted in 2 Corinthians 4 – Paul argues that none are righteous. The saved are those who are willing to respond to the call of God, risk all in a radical obedience, based on sheer trust and reliance upon him, and receive the gift of the Spirit, the radical renewal and re-creation of the heart. So again the key to Paul’s thought proves to be his experience of vocation to be God’s ambassador delivering the new covenant.

Chapter 16

The Pastoral Epistles and the Ethics of Reading* The enquiry undertaken in this paper was stimulated by George Steiner’s book, Real Presences, subtitled, Is there anything in what we say? 1 The context of his essay is the present intellectual scene in the humanities: the breakdown of that romantic/historical approach to literature and the arts which may be summed up in the phrase “thinking the author’s thoughts after him”; the advent of the New Criticism, then of structuralism; the development of deconstruction and theories of reader reception. The resultant fascination with critical theory means that it is not just the intention of the author, or even the possibility of “dialogue” with the author, that has been lost, but the very possibility of meaning and communication. Yet, says Steiner, “no serious writer, composer, painter has ever doubted … that his work bears on good and evil…. A message is being sent: to a purpose.” “But the problem I wish to clarify,” he continues, “is a more particular one, often unobserved. It is not so much the morality or amorality of the work of meaning and of art. It is that of the ethics of its reception”.2 The presence of the “other” impinging upon us requires our respect and attention or, as Steiner puts it, a certain tact, welcome, civility, courtesy. The etiquette of courtesy “organizes” our meetings with the “other.” So, he suggests, an initial act of trust underlies all language, aesthetics, history, politics… Our response is a moral act for which we are responsible. In the case of great works of art, “it is on our capacities for welcome or refusal, for response or imperception, that their own necessities of echo and of presence largely depend.”3 So my basic question is: How are we to receive or read in an ethically responsible way texts we have learned to believe are pseudonymous? Has the scholarly consensus and what has been called the hermeneutic of suspicion destroyed the possibility of welcoming the Pastorals with courtesy, of beginning without distrust? I will eventually turn to the specific case, but first let us explore this ethics of reception a little further.

* 

Originally published in JSNT 45 (1992): 105–120. Steiner, Real Presences: Is There Anything in What We Say? (London: Faber & Faber, 1989). 2 Steiner, Real Presences, 145. 3 Steiner, Real Presences, 145–148. 1  George

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Steiner’s approach was anticipated in the work of the American literary scholar, Wayne Booth. His important book, The Company we Keep, was twenty years in formation. To begin with doubt is to destroy the datum, he suggests,4 and he contrasts “analyzing texts” with “reading stories,” reclaiming the traditional notion that actually we read for the sake of personal improvement – we expect to be changed by what we read, as people have been since classical times, indeed in every age until recently literary theory encouraged us to believe that we should keep a critical distance. Booth treats friendship as the principal metaphor of reading. The burden of his book is a rehabilitation of ethical criticism. Among theologians, the writer who has tackled the ethics of reading is Werner Jeanrond.5 After exploring the hermeneutics of Hans Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur, and the reading theories of Wolfgang Iser and Stanley Fish, he states, “No reading is ethically neutral, since every reading represents an answer to a textual claim, an answer which may be responsible or irresponsible.”6 He sees the reading of a text as “a dynamic process which remains in principle open-­ ended,” for the reader does more than decipher signs printed on paper: reading always involves the projection of a new image of reality to which both the text and the reader contribute.7 “The reader enables the text to influence his/her situation,” yet not uncritically. Criticism, or assessment, is what allows the text to speak in the best possible manner and “for this purpose, to orient the indivi­ dual reader and the reading community in relation to self-criticism and criticism of content.”8 The point that responsible reading involves criticism, not just in the sense of articulating and analysing response so as to increase reading competence, but also in the sense of judgment/assessment, Wayne Booth emphasizes too. We discriminate between our friends, after all. Respect for the “other” involves the articulation of difference. “Courtesy” towards the text does not require capitulation. Indeed, readers have responsibilities not only to the text (or – Booth does not hesitate to suggest – the author), but also to themselves: I serve myself best, as reader, when I both honor an author’s offering for what it is, in its full “otherness” from me, and take an active critical stance against what seem to me its errors or excesses.9

(Perhaps we should note that throughout his discussion of the ethics of reading, Booth has difficult questions such as pornography and censorship in the back of his mind: he is not just concerned with classics.) 4 Booth,

Company, 32. Jeanrond, Text and Interpretation as Categories of Theological Thinking, trans. T. J. Wilson (Dublin: Gill & MacMillan, 1988). 6 Jeanrond, Text and Interpretation, 128. 7 Jeanrond, Text and Interpretation, 104. 8 Jeanrond, Text and Interpretation, 113. 9 Booth, Company, 135. 5  Werner

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It seems that respect for the “other” and respect for the “self” are involved in responsible reading, and this means the articulation of “difference.” It is time we turned to the Pastoral Epistles with these perspectives informing our reading, and it would seem that the articulation of differences might be a good place to start. As soon as we begin to read, we note that the stated reader is Timothy or Titus. “I” or “we” are apparently not implied by the text. So to put the question in the simplest and most direct way possible: can we read responsibly a text which belongs to another’s private correspondence? Further reading of these texts soon legitimates our involvement, however. The content of these letters is clearly not meant to be private. The subject matter concerns the proper public ordering of a community, and therefore these documents were from the beginning public documents and meant to be so. So, to identify the implied readership, as distinct from the stated readership, is to envisage a Christian community somewhere, sometime (the texts might offer clues, but they are not explicit) in the first (or possibly second) century. “We,” the present readers, are not part of that community. Can we responsibly read texts if we are not the implied readership? Clearly we can and do, but the distinction between the implied reader and the actual reader should enable us to grasp the importance of what Jeanrond has called “reading genres.”10 In the case of a modern novel, the implied reader is likely to be much closer to the actual reader than in the case before us – although identity will never be exact: for example, the implied reader might be one who can spot the allusions to Shakespeare or the Beatles, and the actual reader might lack the knowledge or experience to be capable of doing so. The closeness of identity, however, usually ensures that the implied function of reading the novel is approximately the same for text and reader, and so there is but one “reading mode” implied. For a biblical text, however, Jeanrond can point to several “reading genres” that relate to the function of reading such a text, or the use to which the text is being put: When, for example, a letter of St Paul is sent by post to a community, it is in the first place the function of communication which stands in the foreground. If, on the other hand, one reads out the same text at a liturgical service, what stands in the foreground is the religious teaching character. The same text can again be studied as a document of its time, its documentary function is accentuated in this case.11

On this analysis, then, it would seem that, until recently, biblical criticism had become wedded to the “documentary” reading mode: hence, in reaction, the welcome given to the new “literary” methods. But when Jowett in Essays and Reviews controversially argued that the Bible should be read like any other literature, he did not envisage such a narrowing 10 Jeanrond, 11 Jeanrond,

Text and Interpretation, 117. Text and Interpretation, 117.

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historical or documentary outcome.12 Espousing the kind of philological and historical reading then current in standard classical education – the Bible was to be read like Sophocles and Plato – did not rule out appropriation by the reader, since the “romantic” view that one could and should “think an author’s thoughts after him” was firmly entrenched. So, to learn the language of the author and enter into the author’s mind was the route to grasping meaning. For Jowett this was the answer to the false multiplication of senses and to spurious and divisive doctrinal readings, and he was confident that this historical principle would validate the sublimity of scripture and release its transcendent quality, recognizing that there are depths which to the author may be “but half revealed.”13 One hundred and thirty or so years later we have become disillusioned, not just because of the breakdown of the romantic reading, but also because there has been no agreement about the “original meaning,” any more than there was about the proper doctrinal reading. Furthermore, the practice of historical reading has both highlighted the problems of identifying the “original author” of many biblical texts and caused scholars to adopt the documentary reading mode, increasingly attempting to reconstruct the original situation and context rather than reading the text as addressed to readers who were expected to respond. To return to the Pastorals, what is the appropriate “reading mode” for “us,” readers here and now who are not identical to the implied readers in the texts? Clearly, reading them as historical documents is an important possibility, and recent attempts at sociological study of the Pauline communities and their institutionalization do exactly that, as have earlier studies concerned with the church order, setting, authorship, the identity of the implied opposition and so forth. But such reading tends to analyse and exploit texts rather than read and assimilate them: the dynamic balance of an ethical reading as outlined earlier is missing. Another of Jeanrond’s possibilities presents itself, namely to read them as ­liturgical/canonical texts within a reading community claiming a certain continuity with the original reading community. This possibility, while undoubtedly legitimate, falls, I suggest, into a somewhat special category, and inspection of the current lectionary of the joint liturgical group proves that such reading is successful largely because it is selective of passages which are acceptable to the current reading community – in other words such reading is rarely capable of a responsible reading of whole texts. To explore a canonical reading would take another paper, but I will return to the liturgical reading now and again as we proceed. The third possibility is to respond to the text imaginatively as it asks to be read. That is, to read it as a communication to implied readers, taking seriously 12  B. Jowett, “On the Interpretation of Scripture,” in Essays and Reviews (London: John W. Parker, 1860): 330–433. 13  Jowett, “Interpretation,” 380.

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what the implied author wishes to communicate, so being open to the courteous and sympathetic reception of the “other,” while being free to retain a certain critical distance. In this way there is a dialectic between the response of the implied readers and our actual response, and both critical assessment and responsible appropriation become genuine possibilities. It is this third possibility which seems to me to constitute an “ethical reading,” since it respects what Wayne Booth calls the ethos of the text, while allowing readers to recognize their “double” identity and their consequent responsibilities to themselves as well as to the author/text. It is not exactly any of Jeanrond’s reading genres, but, so far from reading genres constituting a hierarchy, as he suggests,14 I think in practice I shall show that an ethical reading of this kind requires an appropriate interaction between the different reading genres he isolates. So far then we have been focusing on the first area of “difference” which needs to be articulated and clarified, namely the implied and actual readership. There is a sense in which the reading strategy proposed by attending to this necessitates something similar to Ricoeur’s method of “entering the world of the text,” and that introduces the second major area of “difference” that needs to be articulated. The text implies a whole “world” of assumptions and cultural norms which present readers share only partially or not at all. (That, of course, is common to all acts of reading in the sense that the implied author of a text inhabits or creates a “metaphoric” or “symbolic world” of meaning which is likely not to have the same identical boundaries as the reader’s symbolic world.) In the case of the Pastorals, that “other world” is not exactly like the world of fictional narrative. An extreme example of such an imaginative world would be Watership Down,15 which invites the reader to accompany the implied author into a very strange, and largely self-contained, world of the imagination in which remarkably realistic rabbits behave remarkably like human beings in human societies. To enter the “world” of the Pastorals is not like that. Yet it is to enter a fictional world in two senses: the sense in which all our “worlds” are sociolinguistic interpretative constructs, and in the sense that the responsible reader has to reconstruct in the imagination a situation that is not existent. To do so responsibly requires the interaction of the text-content, which evokes its world, with other accumulated data from the historical world from which the text comes. The success of the operation will depend to a considerable extent on the knowledge and imaginative capacity of the interpreter, a competence which can be constantly improved by learning and practice. Thus, reading as historical document is part of reading responsibly (as I said, the reading modes need to inform one another!). 14 Jeanrond, 15 

Text and Interpretation, 117. Richard Adams, Watership Down (London: Collings, 1972).

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Four areas of “difference” between the world of the Pastorals and our world can be usefully articulated, although to do justice to any of them lies outside the scope of this paper. Yet the articulation of these “differences” may be precisely what creates the potential for sympathetic engagement, imaginative identity and sensitive criticism, so it must be attempted, however sketchily. The first area I wish to highlight is the difference in the reading process. For most people today reading is a private activity, but it seems that in the ancient world, even though one might read privately in a study, that process was usually rehearsal for public recitation. Reading was a performance of dramatic quality; writing was only a way of recording the voice, the spoken word. Even a letter was treated as a way of making an absent person present. All texts from the ancient world were meant to be persuasive documents, and authors were concerned about getting the best reception – they were audience-­ oriented. So, texts were rhetorical pieces addressed to an audience, intended to move that audience and effect a result. An ethical reading that respects the “other­ness” of these texts requires that we listen to what they have to say, allow ourselves to identify with the implied audience and be open to persuasion ­rather than be critically distanced. So, here the reading mode comes close to what Jeanrond calls the liturgical reading genre. Yet audiences in most contexts reserve the right to disagree – even heckle – and insofar as we are not actually the implied readership, we may need to oscillate between sympathy and distance. So, the character of the reading-process to which these texts belonged reinforces two points already made: these texts are public documents, and an ethical reading requires both criticism and respect. Secondly, these texts both imply and seek to foster certain kinds of social relationships within the “hearing” community, and between that community and the outside world. Unless we take seriously the historical enterprise to uncover that context, we cannot enter into an informed relationship with the text. Recent work highlights the nature of the Greco-Roman household and the ana­ logy between the organization of the early church and such a household. This is reflected clearly in the duty-codes of these texts, essentially household-codes adapted to church use, with a strong emphasis on a good church overseer having to have the same qualities as the head of a household. We can understand the concern of a marginalized group to avoid contention and disruption of the basic social unit, and the need to be accepted as respectable by the neighbours. There may be both defensive and missionary motives at work in the attempt to order the community as the household of God. All these points have been discussed in the scholarly literature and would repay closer investigation if there were space here.16 16  Recent relevant studies include: R. E. Brown, The Churches the Apostles Left Behind (New York: Paulist Press, 1984); M. Y. MacDonald, The Pauline Churches: A Socio-Historical Study of Institutionalization in the Pauline and Deutero-Pauline Writings (Cambridge: Cam-

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What has been overlooked in these discussions is, I suggest, the influence of synagogues, which were also often adapted households. It is a common observation that new religious movements ape older styles of organization: the New Age movement has produced bishops! The history of the synagogue is itself somewhat problematic, but it must have predated the arrival of the church, and in some sense provided a model. It is perhaps no surprise to find that women have acceptable, although well-defined, roles in a society conceived as a household (however patriarchally structured from our perspective), whereas synagogue influence might encourage the view that the praying quorum consists only of adult males, each of whom is a bar mitzvah. And the vexed question of the relationship between the often (but, I suggest, erroneously) identified ἐπίσκοπος (episkopos) in the singular, and the plural πρεσβύτεροι (presbyteroi) may well be illuminated by analogy with the chazan ha-knesset who organized the meeting for prayer and the senior members of the community who represented the Jewish community in the civic life of the locality and generally exercised leadership. However, leaving further pursuit of these questions to other occasions, the point of raising them here is simply to signal the impossibility of too straightforward an application to the actual readers here and now of the advice given in these texts to their implied readership. The implied readers belonged to a different social world. The third area of difference relates to this, in that the sociology of knowledge has alerted us to the social dimension of all understanding and belief. However, it is important to specify the unarticulated or implied beliefs and assumptions “incarnated” in the sociolinguistic community to which both implied author and implied readers belonged. Some of these, like belief in God, some of us may share. The reading community may claim to have a certain continuity with the original community that received these texts. Yet there may well be subtle differences in the resonances even of those ideas or beliefs we think we share, and there will be some hard, if not impossible, texts for present readers (e.g. 1 Tim 2:11–15). This leads us into the fourth distinguishable area of difference, namely the articulated beliefs, ideas, norms, standards, advice, warnings and the like, which constitute the content of the text, and which an ethical reading requires us to hear sympathetically, but perhaps not adopt uncritically. The further we get into this process of articulating differences in order to enter the world of the text, the more we have to recognize that just as important as the reading genre is the text genre. Taking the text-type of the documents bridge University Press, 1988); P. A. Towner, The Goal of our Instruction: The Structure of Theology and Ethics in the Pastoral Epistles, JSNT Suppl. 34 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1989); D. C. Verner, The Household of God: The Social World of the Pastoral Epistles, SBLDS 71 (Chico, CA: SBL, 1983).

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under discussion at face value, we have letters. The stated author of these letters is Paul, who addresses the stated reader, Timothy or Titus. The different, implied readership has already been noted: these are in some sense public community documents, not private letters. What about the implied author? The mere fact of these texts being letters implies Paul’s absence, and the written text becomes a way of evoking his presence. How long or how distant has Paul’s absence been? Timothy and Titus are recognized as those who bear his mantle and his authority, and they in turn give authority to the ἐπίσκοπος, the deacons and the presbyters, whose functions and character form a principal concern in the body of the letters. The letters would appear to be indirectly addressed to communities in order to confirm the authoritative position of their leaders as inheritors of the tradition and authority of Paul. So, the text-type slips from the surface genre of personal letter, to the implied genre of manual of instruction. Furthermore, the need for this manual seems to relate to an implied, specific crisis, a situation in which that tradition is under threat from teachers of “gnosis falsely so-called.” The manual aims at establishing an enduring order for the preservation of this authoritative tradition in the face of such threats. Thus, an ethical reading requires the placing of these texts in a plausible narrative, the implied narrative of events that caused these texts to be authored. Only as the reader is drawn into such an implied narrative can a truly sympathetic reading occur. What I have indicated so far strongly suggests that such an implied narrative involves the absence of the stated author, and a crisis in a community which looks to the stated author as probably founder, certainly hero, undoubtedly authority. The texts are rooted in a social situation. An ethical reading demands that that situation be taken with the utmost seriousness. But does it demand Pauline authorship? Could it not be that here too is an important area of “difference” to be articulated? In the modern world, pseudonymity easily gets associated with deception (although we accept quite willingly the notion of a “pen name”). But suppose the fear of admitting that Paul was not the actual author of these texts is a modern “culture-specific”, linked with our excessive individualism and worship of creative originality. The ancient world was far more interested in tradition than novelty, which was one of the problems faced by the promulgators of this “new superstition”, Christianity. Ancient wisdom was valued rather than creative genius, and the great work of art was far greater than its often anonymous creator. There are enough analogies from that culture to make it entirely plausible that an anonymous disciple or anonymous disciples took on the persona of Paul in order to preserve what they believed to be the genuine Pauline tradition in a situation in which it was under threat. In fact we have several examples of exactly that among

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the apocryphal literature: for example, the third epistle to the Corinthians in the Acts of Paul, and the Epistle to the Laodiceans. The implied narrative and the implied readership seem to demand an implied author other than the stated author, and a truly ethical reading, which takes seriously the ethos of the text, requires us to recognize that, if we are to respect the text’s true “otherness.” The problem for us is the consequent loss of respect for these texts in the eyes of modern readers, who are immediately made suspicious if the possibility of pseudonymity is proposed. So, quite apart from the fundamentalist reaction, in much modern scholarship the Pastorals have become a sad fall-away from the great theology of Paul, and merely provide examples of the loss of a charismatic dynamic in the process of institutionalization, rather than seeming texts worth reading for their inspirational qualities. An ethical reading should perhaps redress that insult. Let us then agree that an ethical reading, which respects the claim of these texts, requires us to recognize that they fit into an implied narrative in which (1) the surface text-type is not its implied text-type, the letter-form having become “classic” for early Christian communication, doubly convenient in this case because it makes a figure of the past still accessible; (2) the readership implied is not the stated recipients; and (3) the implied author is not the stated author. What then is the rhetoric of these texts? How are we, the present readers, to respond to them? The rhetorical dynamic of texts is based in the interaction between speaker, hearer and subject matter, and each of these poles was subject to analysis in the ancient rhetorical textbooks which were used in schools to train effective public speakers. Methods of argument related to each pole. The so-called “logical” arguments related to the subject matter (λόγος – logos) and were intended to convince of its truth and rightness. The so-called “ethical” arguments were designed to create an atmosphere of trust in the speaker, to substantiate a claim to be listened to on the basis of the speaker’s ἦθος (ē thos – his character, habits and so forth).17 The so-called “pathetic” arguments were intended to move the hearer, to stimulate πάθος (pathos), such as sympathy with a defendant in court so as to acquit, or enthusiasm for taking a corporate decision like declaring war. The response of the hearer was an essential part of the intention: rhetoric was called the art of persuasion, and assent to the speaker’s viewpoint was its aim. To analyse the rhetorical dynamics of the Pastorals presupposes, therefore, the whole of our previous discussion, and can conveniently be set out in a diagram in which each pole has three possible “levels,” roughly similar to Jeanrond’s three reading genres, all of which may interact with one another, while some oscillation between levels one and two is apparent in the text itself. 17  Here the term “ethical” is being used in a technical sense within rhetorical convention, not as previously in discussing “ethical reading,” where normal English usage suggests the sense.

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ē thos = the speaker’s authority   1. Paul   2.  the community leader   3. God

pistis = proof, conviction

logos = content & arguments as   1. letter   2.  manual of instruction   3. scripture

pathos = readers’ response   1. Timothy/Titus   2. the community of the second or first century CE   3.  the church universal

The time has come to do some reading, in other words to consider some passages in the light of all this.

1.  Titus 3:4–8a The “saying you can trust” formula seems to alert the implied readers to reliable bits of tradition, and what we have here is itself somewhat formulaic – a summary of the essential gospel. It is a popular expression of Paul’s doctrine of grace, although not expressed in his characteristic language. It is linked with the “bath of re-birth,” an un-Pauline phrase, somewhat like the language of contemporary mystery religions but clearly referring to baptism and having entirely Christian associations if you consider other streams of New Testament tradition (e.g. the dialogue with Nicodemus in John 3). The rhetoric works at levels 2 and 3; it is a bit artificial at level 1, but is clearly the way the complicated Paul was simplified for general consumption. That should command respect. A Christian reader easily identifies with the text and, in a mission situation, others might be persuadable.

2.  1 Timothy 6:11–16 This reads as direct address to a church leader, which can work rhetorically at all three levels. Christ is the example put before the leader by the one who gives the charge. It is easy to imagine Paul saying this to Timothy, with the same words applying also at levels 2 and 3, although, as women take leadership posi-

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tions in churches, the third level becomes increasingly problematic unless broadened to include women alongside the “man of God.” Yet the idea of Christ’s testimony before Pilate is closer to martyr exhortations in the wider church than anything we find in authentic Pauline literature; and the final doxology clearly comes from liturgical traditions used in the implied community and is not characteristically Pauline. What should be noted, however, is that an ethical reading of the text demands that we allow ourselves to imagine what it would mean for a church leader to be persuaded by this rhetoric and to live that way, rather than focusing solely on the difficulties of Pauline authorship. What is noticeable is that most of the passages actually used in the current lectionaries fall into these categories: they work at levels 2 and 3, while fitting more or less easily into the “fictional” surface text-type, with its stated author and reader. But let us now consider passages which exploit the character of the “speaker” or stated author, therefore challenging the suggestion that the surface-­ presen­tation of the text has fictional elements. These are the “ethical” arguments in the rhetorical sense of the term, establishing the character and authority of the persuader.

3.  1 Timothy 1:12–17 Here is a Paul we recognize, testifying to his call to apostleship and hinting that his converts should imitate him – or is it? There is a subtle and interesting shift. Paul has become the typical Gentile “sinner”, his sin exemplified in his past persecution of the church, a theme deeply important to the narrator of Acts but not to the authentic Paul of the epistles. Paul is set before us as the converted sinner, exemplifying the sure tradition (“the saying you may trust”) that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Yes, the theme of God’s grace and patience is Pauline, but here is the great theme of Paul’s theology couched in popular slogan, not Pauline argument, simply to be accepted and not fought for with passion. So how are we to account for the first person testimony? In the apocryphal work known as the Acts of Peter, Peter is presented as preacher, and in first person testimony he sets himself forth similarly as the great sinner who denied Christ and was forgiven. As time passes, both Peter and Paul become idealized model Christians, who embody the gospel (cf. 1:16, “that I might be typical”), and whose personal testimony is imaginatively set before the church as a pattern, in a way that would subsequently become typical of evangelical preaching. Large sections of 2 Timothy seem to be of this character, but one further example must suffice.

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4.  Titus 3:3 Here Paul is depicted as identifying himself with the situation of the implied readers who have been converted in ways he has not. He was a Pharisee of the Pharisees, blameless according to the law (Phil 3:5–6), not one lost in folly and disobedience, a slave to passions and pleasures and so on. What we find in the Pastorals, then, is the portrait of a model figure, who is clearly the authoritative leader with the charisma to persuade the implied readers. It is not an entirely false picture, but it is idealized, and its rhetorical function is to authorize the authors, together with the network of church leaders who inherit Paul’s mantle. But not just to authorize: rather, to persuade others to follow the hard path of suffering and persecution Paul once took for the sake of the gospel. Much of the text is implicitly about change, conversion, transformation, a new way of life into which the implied readers have been taken up, and which they are to preserve by following the advice given in the letters. The rhetoric of these texts requires us to attend to their persuasive voice, not just to exploit them as historical documents, and that is what an ethical reading would seek to do. The rhetoric of these epistles may enable us, then, to respond positively to their persuasive message and to respect their claim to attention. However, if we turn to passages that do not appear in the lectionaries, the “otherness” of their differences might well demand a process of ethical or ideological criticism in the “judgment” sense, rather than wholehearted response. Surely the perspective of those household codes turned church codes enjoins culture-specific duties on church members and church leaders. They are, after all, illuminated by other ancient texts characterizing, for example, the good general. Surely they belong to level 2 only. Let us consider an example.

5.  1 Timothy 3:2–7 In such a passage the content will certainly appear differently depending upon reading mode. Managing a household is a different thing in the case of the modern nuclear family from the kind of social unit the implied author and readers knew, an extended kinship network, with servants and slaves, tenants and workers, and clients – a large subset of the city or state. Nor is it likely that a recent convert would get rapid preferment in our post-Christian world. And yet, do we not in fact have here an important set of qualities, many of which are not simply culture-bound? The ways in which a bishop may develop an upright and inoffensive character or lifestyle may in practice be somewhat different in different communities at different points in history, yet the language is “translatable,” even if it loses some dimensions in a “foreign” socio­ linguistic setting.

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Furthermore, the interaction of conventional and specifically Christian standards, which may be observed by an informed reading at level 2, may provide interesting analogies for the development of analogous codes of practice in the Christianity of a different social world, thus enabling a creative reading at level 3 which may go beyond the text, but remain within its spirit. In conclusion, I suggest that an ethical reading of the Pastoral Epistles is pos­ sible, even if we accept their pseudonymity. Such a reading will involve both respect for texts that have in fact mediated the Pauline tradition to the later church, and responsible assessment of their content from the present readers’ perspective, as distinct from that of the implied readers. So this ethical reading will attend to the following questions: 1. To what extent is the claim of these texts that they pass on the authoritative tradition of Paul valid? In what ways is that tradition appropriately developed further for a new situation? 2. In what ways do these texts confirm or challenge communities/churches which now claim to be in the same tradition? What is acceptable straightforwardly as advice? What needs rethinking in a different sociocultural milieu? How is the ethos of these texts to affect the ethos of these communities? What inspires to radical reform? In other words, a responsible reading must involve attention both to past meaning and future potential. And maybe then the suspicion or neglect with which these little letters have been treated will be superseded by a recognition of their power to transform, to communicate Paul’s gospel in simple summary slogans, to motivate mission, to confirm Christian identity and even, with some critical adaptation, to structure positively relationships within the church.

Chapter 17

The Non-Pauline Letters* The non-Pauline Letters – what do we mean by that description? The negative suggests that we are dealing with somewhat marginalized texts compared with Paul. Many of our texts have indeed become cinderellas, though one comes from a theologian worthy to rank alongside Paul and “John‚” and the rest are increasingly seen as intriguing, for they enable access to the development of diverse traditions within early Christianity.1 Comparing and contrasting these makes study of these apparent “oddments” rewarding. For this reason we shall keep them all in play alongside one another. But first to identify them. Associated with the Pauline tradition, but definitely to be distinguished from Paul’s work, is the Epistle to the Hebrews.2 Even if ascribed to Paul in the process of canonization, this work does not bear his name, and the church of the third century CE knew not whence it came: one suggested Barnabas (Tertullian), one supposed Paul had written it in Hebrew and Luke translated it (Clement of Alexandria), one knew that Clement of Rome had been suggested but concluded that only God knows the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews (Origen). Modern scholarship has canvassed these ancient suggestions and others. The most plausible case can be made for Apollos, a person associated with the Pauline mission, though possibly in tension with it (1 Cor 1:12; 3:4 ff.; 16:12). Acts 18:24 ff. informs us that Apollos came from Alexandria, was a Jew with skill in interpreting the scriptures, and that he was “eloquent‚” which probably means that he had a Greek rhetorical education: such features fit the implied author of this text. But why should the name be missing? Was it because the author was a woman, say Priscilla? We are in the realm of guesswork, and Origen’s view must surely prevail. It would be helpful to be clearer about the date of Hebrews – is it contemporary with Paul? or does it belong to the next generation? There is substantial *  Originally published in The Cambridge Companion to Biblical Interpretation, ed. John Barton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998): 276–304. 1  For further reading and bibliography, see the relevant volumes in the Cambridge series on New Testament Theology edited by J. D. G. Dunn: Barnabas Lindars, The Theology of the Letter to the Hebrews (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Andrew Chester and Ralph P. Martin, The Theology of the Letters of James, Peter and Jude (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Young, Theology of the Pastoral Letters. 2  For serious further study, H. W. Attridge, Commentary on Hebrews, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1989) is recommended.

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consensus among scholars that the so-called Pastoral Epistles (1 and 2 Timothy and Titus) represent the Pauline tradition beyond Paul.3 Controversy has surrounded the question where authentic Paul ends and pseudonymous writing begins. Increasingly, however, attention is claimed by the implications of that debate: can we trace the development of the Pauline tradition through his followers to a subsequent generation? It is assumed here that the Pastorals are intended to make the absent Paul present in a crisis later and different from those which beset Paul in his own lifetime. The Epistle of James is a text which seems to emerge from a group that had difficulty with Paul.4 Again the question of authorship and date remains unsettled. Is this the most primitive Christian writing, barely different from Judaism, perhaps coming from James, the brother of the Lord and leader of the Jerusalem Church? Or is it from a generation after Paul, reacting against Gentile Christianity, reflecting the traditions of Palestinian Christianity and using the name of James to give it authority? The canonical status of this text remained doubtful in the fourth century CE, and here we assume that the work is pseudonymous, though that does not lessen its importance. For we take it to represent a form of Jewish Christianity which had a character unlike that of the Pauline tradition. Jude is another letter claiming to be associated with a member of the family of Jesus; 5 its authenticity has recently been argued very powerfully. 6 This is not necessarily threatened by its intriguing overlaps with 2 Peter, a letter which has every appearance of being pseudonymous, since the latter probably borrowed from the former. The authenticity of 1 Peter has also been plausibly defended.7 Once again we are faced with enormous uncertainties about date and origin. Are these three letters a group representing an identifiable tradition within the early Christian movement? Or do they have disparate origins? The tradition(s) represented in these letters perhaps challenge the recent tendency to differentiate between different forms of early Christianity, since there are links with the 3  For serious further study, the commentary by Martin Dibelius, Commentary on the Pastoral Epistles, rev. Hans Conzelmann, trans. Philip Buttolph and Adela Yarbro, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1972) remains the most comprehensive. Recent sociological studies have made a difference to the discussion, however, and the bibliography in Young, Theology of the Pastoral Letters should be consulted. 4  For further study, see Sophie Laws, A Commentary on the Epistle of James, Black New Testament Commentaries (London: Black, 1980). 5  For further study of Jude and 2 Peter, see Richard Bauckham, Commentary on Jude and 2 Peter, The Word Biblical Commentary (Waco, TX: Word, 1983). 6 Bauckham, Jude and the Relatives of Jesus; cf. his previously published commentary cited in previous note. Bauckham examines the evidence for the continuing influence of the Holy Family in Palestinian Christianity, and shows how the epistle’s exegesis parallels that found in Jewish apocryphal literature. The case mounted has considerable force. If accepted, we must suppose that 2 Peter used Jude at a later date to challenge different opponents, and the position adopted in this chapter would need modification. 7  For further study, J. N. D. Kelly’s commentary, Commentary on 1 Peter, Black New Testament Commentaries (London: Black, 1969) remains the fullest available in English.

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Pauline stream as well as others. But the basic position of this study is that the non-Pauline letters reveal not a clear mainstream but several parallel and interconnecting rivulets. In some ways the discussion we are embarking upon is impoverished by not including the Johannine Epistles, a group of letters which represent a distinctive tradition which is usefully compared and contrasted with those that concern us. Some of the same issues appear: questions about uniting and ordering the church community, about resisting distortions of the tradition, about where authority lies, about Christian lifestyle. The suggestion here is that they belong alongside the non-Pauline Epistles being discussed in this chapter, as witnesses to the pressures being exerted on the several diverse traditions of the churches in, say, the late first century. Assuming that kind of context for all these documents clearly implies their pseudonymity. The non-Pauline Letters – why are these texts in the form of epistles? This question is not posed simply because it is fashionable to ask literary questions. The issue concerns the extent to which the letter form is artificially adopted as the appropriate genre. 8 Everyone agrees that the letters of Paul were real letters, written in real situations. It is questionable how far the texts that concern us here are really letters in that sense. Hebrews bears no name because it does not open with an epistolary address. The only reason for supposing that this text is a letter is that it ends like one. After an elaborate blessing which sounds as if it comes from a liturgical context, we suddenly find personal references and greetings. These mention Timothy, “our brother‚” and “those from Italy,” providing the only clues as to the source or destination of this text. But being tacked on, as it were, these sentences stimulate other questions: was this text originally a sermon? How did it come to have a letter-ending but no opening greetings? By contrast, the Pastorals introduce themselves as letters sent by Paul to Timothy and Titus. Intriguingly the Twelve Tribes of the Dispersion are the designated recipients of the greetings sent by a James so well known that he apparently needs no introduction beyond his claim to be “a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.” Jude and Peter address recipients in a manner very similar to Paul. There is no doubt that these texts claim to be letters. Yet are they? The very similarity to Paul’s greetings makes one suspicious. Letters in every culture follow conventions. In Greek letters, the opening form was “X to Y greeting (χαιρεῖν – chairein)”; in Jewish letters, “peace” (shalom) replaced “greeting.” Paul seems to have forged his own, very significant, adaptation of both these forms: “grace” (χάρις – charis) and “peace.”9 The combination of “grace 8  9 

On the literary genre, see Stowers, Letter Writing. Lieu, “‘Grace to you and Peace’.”

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and peace” with the occasional addition of “mercy‚” is subsequently found in most Christian letters, including 1 and 2 Peter, Jude and 2 John. James, with the normal Greek χαιρεῖν, is the exception that proves the rule. Two possibilities, not necessarily mutually exclusive, are suggested by this: that Paul initiated a tradition that rapidly spread for all Christian communications by letter; or that Paul’s letters came to provide models for Christian literature, and validated the adoption of the letter genre for the expression of Christian teaching in writing. Like these works, the so-called Apostolic Fathers are mostly in the form of letters.10� Suspicion is also aroused by the addressees in James, the Twelve Tribes of the Diaspora (Dispersion). The endless scholarly speculation about this is hardly necessary.11 There had not been twelve tribes since 721 BCE; the Diaspora of the Jews was only of the two tribes that had made up the kingdom of Judah. So in James the “twelve” must be an eschatological symbol, presumably referring to Christian communities scattered all over the then known world, which, analogously to Diaspora Jews, adopted the identity of aliens and exiles from the kingdom (of heaven) to which they truly belonged. (This may be confirmed by comparing 1 Peter, which addresses Christians as “the exiles of the Diaspora” in various provinces of Asia Minor.) James is situationless – unless it is the very first encyclical! So are Jude and 2 Peter: they address “those called,” or “those who have received a faith‚” with totally unspecific further descriptions. 1 Peter alone of these letters seems to envisage particular recipients and a specific situation. So are most of these texts artificial letters? One suspects that may well be the case, and that would confirm their pseudonymity. But to accept that is not to dismiss them as “forgeries.” Rather it confirms their importance as community documents. The genuine Pauline Letters usually associate others with Paul in their writing and reveal their role in the creation and maintenance of community networks. Such networks continued to flourish as these “aliens” in the Greco-Roman world faced new situations – of persecution, of divergence which they interpreted as betrayal. The communities needed to confirm the authority of their leaders as heirs of the apostles, authenticate the traditions they had received, identify and exclude the troublemakers. This is the context within which most of these non-Pauline letters probably emerged. Modern scholarship has been preoccupied with how this non-Pauline material relates to Paul. In the case of James the problem was set by Luther who regarded James as a “right strawy epistle‚” scarcely different from Judaism. As10  The texts usually designated by this term are 1 and 2 Clement; the seven letters of Ignatius to the Ephesians, Magnesians, Trallians, Romans, Philadelphians, Smyrnaeans and Polycarp; the letter of Polycarp to the Philippians; The Didache or Teaching of the twelve Apostles; and the Epistle of Barnabas. They are readily available in English translation in the Penguin Classics, Staniforth and Louth Early Christian Writings. 11  It has become a standard issue discussed in commentaries and studies, to which the reader is referred if further discussion is sought.

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suming that “justification by faith” was the core of Paulinism, and taking it that James challenged that with “justification by works,” the conclusion was obvious. Those who respected its canonical status were exercised by the task of reconciling James with Paul. James is clearly concerned with “practical Christianity.” Pure religion is caring for orphans and widows, and keeping oneself unstained by the world (1:26); faith is demonstrated by action (2:14–17). Abraham was justified by works when he offered his son Isaac on the altar (2:21). James takes this as the proper exposition of Paul’s proof-text, “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness” (Gen 15:6, cf. Rom 4:3), namely that works demonstrate faith (2:23–4). It looks like contradiction (compare in particular Rom 3:28 and Jas 2:24), and yet closer inspection suggests a dialogue of the deaf. For James, faith is mere assent: “even the demons believe and they shudder!” (2:19). For Paul, however, faith includes behaviour – love and good works (Rom 12), putting on Christ (e.g. Rom 12:14), sinlessness (Rom 6). So how is this discussion related to Paul’s? Most have concluded that James had not read Paul but was reacting to hearsay, perhaps even to post-Pauline antinomians a generation later. Some have pleaded for the pre-Pauline dating of James, either Paul being the respondent, or each discussing different issues independently. What difference might be made to this discussion by the emerging new under­standing of Paul?12 Paul, it is now suggested, rejected not “good works” but the imposition on Gentile converts of “works of the law,” or the ethnic marks of a Jew such as circumcision, dietary laws, sabbath-keeping. In other words, the issue for Paul concerned the terms on which Gentiles were to be accepted into an essentially Jewish community, not the question how an introspective individual is to make up for a guilty conscience, as first Augustine and then Luther imagined.13 Now if that is so, it is quite evident that James is oblivious of the problem. Relations between rich and poor, rather than Jew and Gentile, are his concern, and the law, for James, is the law of liberty (1:25; 2:12), which is not to be an object of criticism (4:11–12), but is the criterion of divine judgment (2:10, 13; 4:12, etc.). James’s readers are to keep the “royal” (βασιλικόν – basilikon) law, which “according to the scripture” is “Love your neighbour as yourself” (2:8): does James mean the summing up of the whole law in Leviticus (19:18)? Or could it be the “Messianic” law or the law of the Kingdom he is thinking of? 12  Cf. James Dunn, “The Pauline Letters,” in The Cambridge Companion to Biblical Interpretation, ed. Barton: 276–289. Reassessment of Paul’s theology began with the work of Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism. A good discussion of the issues will be found in J. D. G. Dunn, The Parting of the Ways between Christianity and Judaism and their Significance for the Character of Christianity (London: SCM Press, 1991). 13  The classic article is K. Stendahl, “The Introspective Conscience of the West‚” Harvard Theological Review 56 (1963): 199–215; republished in Paul Among Jews and Gentiles (London: SCM Press, 1977): 78–96.

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Whatever the answer, there are deep correspondences between James and the Gospel of Matthew (see especially Matt 5:17–48). “Matthew” accepts Gentiles, but speaks with the voice of a Jewish Messianic sect, shaped by a prophetic interiorizing of the demands for obedience and purity which radicalizes rather than rejects all the provisions for law-keeping. Maybe this tradition is given voice in James too. Maybe there is the same slightly nervous edge to James’s discussion of a false faith that fails to issue in charity as we find in “Matthew’s” assertion that not a jot or tittle of the law will pass away. The controversies that beset Paul are beyond their horizon, let alone addressed. For them, Christian faith simply fulfils rather than challenges the Jewish tradition. The shift in Pauline scholarship should also transform the perception of how the Pastorals relate to the rest of the Pauline material. The apparent emphasis on works rather than faith was one factor contributing to the conclusion that these texts were not authentically Pauline. That argument now seems misplaced. Yet their post-Pauline character remains evident in the loss of concern with the major issues that Paul faced. Here we seem to hear the voice of the Gentile Christian community: law is irrelevant, except for keeping criminals in check (1 Tim 1:8 ff.). But Christian lifestyle is a matter of central importance. The pattern of Christian lifestyle is spelt out in the Pastorals by developing the “household codes” found in Colossians (3:18–4:1) and Ephesians (5:22– 6:9). The church is understood as God’s household (1 Tim 3:15), so that the traditional pattern of exhortation to husbands and wives, children and parents, masters and slaves, is reshaped. Discussion of the deportment of men and women at prayer (1 Tim 2) is followed by character sketches (3:1–13) of the proper overseer (ἐπίσκοπος – episkopos) and servant (διάκονος – diakonos); later (4:6, 4:12, 5:21–22) “Timothy” is told how to be a good “διάκονος” for the “brothers,” despite his youth, and instructed to address senior men in the community as if they were his father, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters. Instructions follow about widows (5:3–16) and senior men (πρεσβύτεροι – presbyteroi) (5:17–20), and about slaves (6:1–2). (My summary is deliberately phrased to show the ambiguities between the household terminology and later Christian titles for ministerial office.) Clearly the household code is developing into an ecclesiastical canon, but there are tensions both between the language of familial relationships and that implying a hierarchy of domestic attendants, and between advice to “literal” slaves and instructions to the “servants” of God. Clearly development is taking place within the Pauline churches, and this is motivated by the desire to preserve the Pauline tradition in the face of false interpretations of it. 2 Timothy, seemingly Paul’s last testament before giving his life, appears as the centrepiece of a tripartite work which invests the leaders of the next generation with Paul’s authority. Paul has become the model convert and the model martyr. Christians are to be loyal to Christ Jesus, the one who has come to

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provide cleansing from worldly passions and new birth, and who will return as king to vindicate them and reward their endurance. These epistles seem to imply a certain parody of the Caesar-cult – certainly the theological and christological language is rather different from that of the genuine Paulines. Yet for all the differences, these letters would become the lens through which Paul would be read at least until the time of Augustine. Hebrews has a different relationship again with the Pauline material. The letter develops certain generative ideas in Pauline theology, particularly the notion that Jeremiah’s prophecy of a new covenant has been fulfilled in Christ. Yet, as we shall see, it has its own hermeneutic which, for all the connections, is often quite unlike that of Paul. Most intriguing is the question how 1 Peter relates to the Pauline tradition. Not only is the Pauline greeting adopted, but phrases of a Pauline character are embedded in a text which has never had a Pauline attribution nor any overt connection with Paul – indeed is attributed to the apostle with whom, according to Galatians, Paul fell out! In particular, this epistle has a “household code” very like those found in Colossians, Ephesians and the Pastorals. A form-­critical approach to 1 Peter reveals patterns of catechetical teaching and liturgical formulae.14 Thus the similarities with Paul are probably to be attributed to Christian “in-language.” This kind of analysis suggests that this epistle, like the ­others considered here, probably belongs to the second generation’s concern to transmit the tradition of the apostles. It seems, then, that with these non-Pauline Epistles a new stage has been reached: firstly, in many cases the problem the churches now face is how to distinguish false teaching from true. For some warnings suffice, for others the answer is to do with authority structures, the authorized transmission of tradition from the apostles to the next troubled generation. The clues to the identity of these rival teachers seem to point to what scholars have labelled “Gnosticism‚” and it is perhaps significant that gnostic teachers would later claim an apostolic origin for their esoteric teachings – a battle of traditions is emerging.15 Secondly, many of these documents reflect a situation in which Christians, subject to persecution and suspicion, respond by taking on an identity which is neither Jewish 14  Form criticism was interestingly used by E. G. Selwyn in his Commentary on 1 Peter (London: Macmillan, 1946); curiously he combined this with a defence of Petrine authorship. 15  New Testament scholarship was dominated by questions concerning the origins and influence of Gnosticism for most of the twentieth century. Contrasting views may be faced by consulting Kurt Rudolph, Gnosis, trans. R. McL. Wilson (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1983), and Simone Pétrement, A Separate God: The Christian Origins of Gnosticism, trans. Carol Harrison (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1991). Rowland, The Open Heaven provides another perspective which indicates the possibility of a link between apocalyptic literature and Gnosticism, a view which I have favoured since reading R. M. Grant, Gnosticism and Early Christianity (New York: Columbia and Oxford University Press, 1966); cf. my discussion in Young, Theology of the Pastoral Letters.

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nor Gentile – the jibe that they are a “Third Race” and the claim to supersede Judaism have their seeds here. Internal and external pressures issue in a concern with “lifestyle‚” how Christians were to live in the world. The Pastorals demonstrate well how this new stage is continuous with what has gone before. Already in Paul’s day there were internal controversies, and incipient Gnosticism has been suspected in Paul’s Corinth.16 Connections with earlier Pauline material lend plausibility to continued pleas for the authenticity of the Pastorals. However, the opening of 1 Timothy immediately sets a tone different from before: “Timothy” has been told to stay in Ephesus to ensure that certain people do not “teach differently” (ἑτεροδιδασκαλεῖν – heterodidaskalein is a neologism), or promulgate myths and endless genealogies. Here there is no sustained argument against the ideas rejected, so reconstruction is difficult. But further hints suggest that extreme asceticism, implying the devaluing of creation and a radical challenge to social norms, is allied with speculation about the cosmos and its origins akin to the kind of thing found in apocryphal and apocalyptic texts; such may well have contributed to the formation of second-­ century gnostic systems. The response in the Pastorals is to reaffirm the slogans of the Pauline tradition, and endeavour to order the church institutionally so that its life and its ethics are grounded in conventional order and morality – hence their “patriarchal” appearance. Similar problems appear in Jude, whose only concern is to warn the readers against people who are described as having wormed their way in though really the enemies of religion, denying Christ by perverting free grace into a justification of moral licence. Again it is difficult to reconstruct precisely what is at stake, but it seems that the flouting of social convention is described as immorality and treated as fulfilling eschatological prophecies of the terrible things that will happen before the End. The warnings of judgment reappear in 2 Peter’s rehash of Jude. Here, as in the Pastorals, the Christian message is contrasted with “myths” (1:16), the opponents appear not to understand that creation is God’s (3:5 ff.) and the false teachers are depicted as in it for the money (2:3; cf. 2 Tim 3:1 ff.). It is possible that 2 Peter reuses Jude against a different foe, anti-­ heretical polemic tarring various opponents with the same brush. But overall the impression is of similar issues being approached in different ways, as the Pastorals use institutional authority to confirm a conservative view of tradition and the Jude/Peter material confronts the problem with scriptural exegesis and eschatological warning. “Antinomianism” is a term used to describe the concern of many of these texts, including James. Whatever the date and provenance of James and Jude, a perceived breakdown in accepted behaviour, a willingness to denigrate “bod16  The classic study is Walter Schmithals, Gnosticism in Corinth (Nashville: Abingdon, 1971).

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ies” and earthly relationships, a failure of community spirit, love and charity, has justified this characterization. James would seem to attribute the breakdown to Paul’s own teaching, whereas the Pastorals present Paul as its opponent – after all, he had himself confronted those who argued “all things are lawful” (1 Cor) and “the more sin, the more grace” (Rom). It seems most likely that we are dealing with post-Pauline struggles. For some of these texts, however, the main concern is persecution – even false teaching may be chiefly problematic because it draws the wrong sort of attention to the Christian movement: 2 Timothy, exhorting its readers not to be ashamed of those who suffer for the gospel, is set at the heart of a work which endeavours to order Christian groups in such a way as to gain a good reputation with outsiders. For a long time, critics have passed on the accepted notion that in the Pastorals Christians are becoming “bourgeois” and settling down in the world, but the texts gainsay this view. Rather they appear to be reacting against radical forms of Christianity which challenged social norms and so endangered adherents to the faith of Christ. 1 Peter most obviously confronts the issue of persecution. Readiness to stand firm and suffer for the gospel is commended as a way of being refined through trials and as imitation of Christ. A baptismal rite has been suggested by the liturgical rhythms of the language, one scholar even suggesting that here is an early Paschal liturgy dressed up as a letter.17 That seems anachronistic; but still dying and rising with Christ is a clear focus. Suffering is to be endured “for the name‚” but Christians must not incur criminal charges before authorities established by God to maintain law and order. Household codes spell out a conventional, ethical lifestyle, as in the Pastorals; and as in the Pastorals also, life is lived in a waiting period, under the eyes of God, expecting divine judgment. Hebrews, too, seems to be encouraging Christians to stand firm in the face of potential crisis. The readers have not yet suffered to the extent of shedding blood; they should expect God to discipline those he loves. Significantly, both Hebrews and 1 Peter appropriate for the Christian community the identity of the chosen people of God, offering encouragement and hope through reference to the Jewish scriptures. For Hebrews, Christians are the people of the new covenant, while for 1 Peter, those who once were “not my people” have become the “chosen race, royal priesthood, holy nation” of Exodus 19:6. Taken together with the language of aliens, exiles and Diaspora noted earlier, we can see the fateful delineation of Christian identity over against the Jewish people, with all its potential for canonizing later Christian anti-semitism. A new stage has been reached. 17  F. C. Cross, 1 Peter. A Paschal Liturgy (London: Mowbray, 1954). Cf. F. W. Beare, Commentary on I Peter (Oxford: Blackwell, 1947); he adopts this theory and identifies the context of 1 Peter with persecution under Trajan.

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The texts under consideration have their own “hermeneutic.” Our approach to writings which have themselves become canonical has tended to treat them as merely historical documents. Could Christian readers of our own time learn from them about how to handle scripture? Until recently such a question would have been unthinkable. It was assumed that modern understanding of the Bible had been dramatically enhanced through the development of the historico-­ critical method, and that ancient readings were misguided by allegory. Now that we are more self-conscious about different reader responses and the “infinity” of linguistic meaning, maybe we should cease to be so superior. But first, what can we discern about the “intertextuality” of these texts themselves?18 Most use the scriptures as prophetic and exemplary, making them their own, reading themselves into the texts, though surprisingly not the Pastorals. Notoriously they contain the first clear statement (2 Tim 3:16) about the importance of scripture in the life of the church: “All inspired scripture is also useful for instruction, rebuke, reformation, and training in righteousness.”19 Along with other directions that “Timothy” devote himself to the public reading of scripture (1 Tim 4:13), the strong impression is created that these texts rely for teaching on a body of literature respected as the Word of God. Yet there is remarkably little reference, quotation or allusion to the scriptures themselves, the only quote being one that could have been lifted from Paul’s writings (1 Tim 5:18, cf. 1 Cor 9:9). The author does not know the scriptures as Paul did. The intertextuality of others of these texts is much more profound. Jude’s warnings are accompanied with reminders of the Exodus, Sodom and Gomorrah, Cain, Balaam and Korah, and in speaking of the Archangel Michael in dispute with the devil over Moses’s body, or of Enoch prophesying, clearly reflect post-biblical developments found in apocalyptic and apocryphal writings. 2 Peter introduces Noah and the Flood, and spells out some of Jude’s allusions more explicitly. For these texts, past accounts of false prophets and of God’s judgment become vivid “types” of what is at stake in the present. The most sustained biblical reflection is found in the Epistle to the Hebrews – in fact this could be described as largely a christological exegesis of the scriptures, explaining how the sacred texts point beyond the covenant with the Jews 18  This term has become standard in recent literary theory since its introduction by Roland Barthes. Most texts depend in some sense on previous texts, if not quoting them then taking them over more subtly, presuming them, whether alluding openly or darkly, or subverting them. This is especially the case when previous texts have a “canonical” status. In biblical studies important works influenced by this observation are Michael Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985) and Hays, Echoes of Scripture. 19  There is some dispute as to whether “θεόπνευστος” (theopneustos – inspired) is an attributive or predicative adjective (i.e. whether we should read “all inspired scripture is useful” or “all scripture is inspired and useful.”) It seems most likely to be the former according to usual Greek conventions, but the insertion of καί (kai – “and” or “also”) between the two adjectives (θεόπνευστος and ὠφέλιμος (ō phelimos – useful) makes the matter hard to settle. Many English versions take the opposite view to that adopted in the translation here.

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to a new dispensation in Christ. The centrepiece is the full quotation of Jeremiah’s prediction of a new covenant (Jer 31:31 ff.; Heb 8). The earthly temple and the ritual provisions of the old covenant are understood to be a shadowy symbol of the true temple in the heavens. As the high priest entered the Holy of Holies once a year on the Day of Atonement with the blood of sacrificial victims, so Christ has entered heaven once for all with his own sacrificial blood, and his blood sealed this new covenant as blood had sealed the covenant with Moses. Around this core idea are woven many detailed correlations and associations with other scriptural texts. Typical allegorical ploys feed an argument which is usually described as “typological,” but the thrust of which is to encourage the readers to persevere, because they have a “better covenant” and a “better high priest.” The scriptures also provide catalogues of examples of faith and perseverance, and proverbial sayings about God testing those who are “his sons.” The readers are encouraged to think they are on a new exodus journey, that a sabbath rest awaits them, that they are to come not to the terrors of Mount Sinai but to Mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem, if only they are not disobedient as their Israelite predecessors were in the desert. By comparison, 1 Peter appears a less coherent reflection, more dependent on “proof-texts” brought together in collages, often based on the association of catch-words. But that may be to underestimate the extent to which Hebrews uses similar techniques and 1 Peter has an underlying perspective which is less explicit. For both, the church communities take up the identity and the story of Israel; this is the basis on which warnings, encouragement, “types” and prophecies can be abstracted and woven into narrative patterns and exhortations that give meaning to the situations in which readers find themselves. The Epistle of James highlights the fact that for the Christians of this period there was no “New Testament” as a canonized text: most explicit examples are drawn from the Jewish scriptures. Yet to conclude that it is a Jewish document barely does justice to the parallels with Gospel sayings, especially the many apparent allusions to Matthew’s Gospel. It is unlikely that this constitutes “intertextuality”; rather we observe the interplay of oral traditions about the teaching of a barely mentioned Jesus with the established canon of sacred writings. The only case of intertextual reference to writings which became the New Testament is 2 Peter’s reference to Paul’s writings. Paul is described as “our dear friend and brother” and what he wrote to the readers “with the wisdom God gave him” is endorsed, but what follows is a warning: “[his letters] contain some obscure passages, which the ignorant and unstable misinterpret to their own ruin” (3:15–16). Paul is a contested inheritance and Christian writings, though respected, have not yet reached the status of scripture (the apparently clear reference to “the rest of the scriptures” in 3:16 is the product of translation: the

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Greek is ambiguous, normally meaning “writings‚” though acquiring specialized overtones in Jewish and Christian usage). Thus a variety of ways of relating to “scripture” can be discerned in these texts, but what they have in common is a rereading of scripture in the light of Christ, an “application” of scripture to their own situation, and an expectation that scripture both teaches the way of life and makes sense of their current struggles. There is an awareness that scripture’s meaning shifts in the light of Christ, and that contention surrounds the interpretation of scripture, indeed of the Christian traditions they have inherited. It is this which may enable us to address the question of how we appropriate these non-Pauline Epistles. What they represent to us is a stage in the life of the church in which there were both internal and external struggles to establish Christian identity and the right mode of being in the world. Their social and cultural situation was very different from our own and any present appropriation will have to take account of such differences – hence the attention here to their “writing-context.” But in a sense, as canon, they authorize Christians of subsequent generations and different worlds to continue the search for a proper expression of Christian identity and lifestyle in ever-­ changing conditions, and provide certain pointers. Fundamental would seem to be the affirmation of this world as God’s created order in which obedience to God’s moral standards, as adumbrated in Israel’s story and the teaching of Jesus Christ, is the special responsibility of those called and chosen to be God’s people. Such a stance has implications which cannot be realized simply by taking over the solutions offered in these texts in an unquestioning way. Hierarchical structures, patriarchal assumptions and other culture-bound elements frame their answers; we shall have to struggle to find ours in a post-Christian world.

Section C

The Nature of Scripture

Chapter 18

Interpretative Genres and the Inevitability of Pluralism* I The commentary is an awkward sort of thing. In the lecture on which this paper is based, I confessed not only that I had failed to write a commentary, but also that I had never succeeded in reading one from cover to cover. Nevertheless, I have spent much time of recent years trying to articulate what goes on in the exegetical process, particularly in the practice of the church Fathers. So I set out to engage in something of an overview of the activities involved in interpretation, in particular to consider how these are affected by the “genre,” not of the text being interpreted, but of the interpretative discourse, written or oral. For interpretation is done not just in commentaries, but also in theme-studies, pulpits, ecclesiastical documents, and so on. I suspect that this is one important clue to the question of how different kinds of exegesis emerge, and so different meanings of texts. Scholars of a previous generation would hardly have recognized the problem. They knew what a commentary was, and what kind of meaning the responsible interpreter was looking for. Someone like T. W. Manson stood for the optimistic view that by using the right tools it was possible to reconstruct and interpret the message of Jesus, that it could be shown that Paul deliberately wrote a manifesto for circulation around the churches, and that that theology, once understood through historical research, had an abiding relevance. He was a man of faith who enabled faith to be enhanced by approaching interpretation through the then contemporary methods and rationality. We are now in a very different situation. Theologians have accused biblical scholars of arriving only at archaeological meanings with no contemporary relevance. Furthermore, the modernist paradigm, with its historicist presuppositions and its confidence in scientific objectivity, is breaking up as postmodernist philosophies highlight the illusion that there could ever be fact without interpretation. Reader-oriented criticisms still provoke sceptical reactions, for many are still anxious not to open the flood-gates to subjectivity; but both liberal and *  This paper was initially drafted for a seminar at the British SNTS Conference in Exeter 1992, subsequently recast for the Manson Memorial Lecture in the University of Manchester in 1993, and revised for publication in JSNT 59 (1995): 93–110.

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fundamentalist interpretations can now be seen to be trapped in a set of assumptions about fact, event, language and reality, which belong to the modernist phase. We have become aware that traditions of interpretation are grounded in socio-linguistic communities – we are not just being “subjective” but are recognizing that every one of us sees the world through categories provided by the language community in which we have grown up and been educated. We cannot escape bringing presuppositions to any interpretative task. Because there is a pluralism of language communities, so there must be a pluralism of interpretations. The single objective meaning is not possible: there are bound to be multiple meanings. Like many others, I would confess to being not wholly reconstructed and committed to this new world, for the discipline of trying to decide what the text is likely to have meant to the original language community from which it issued still seems to me to be exegetically important.1 For the language of the text belongs to a particular community at a particular time just as much as that of the interpreter, and language users are endeavouring to communicate, so that their intentions, however difficult to determine, are not irrelevant to the question of meaning. However, the so-called historico-critical method is being relativized, 2 and, as indicated, what I want to do here is to show how understanding of a text is affected by the kind of interpretation the interpreter sets out to do, the occasion and context of the act of interpretation, the kind of interpretative genre one seeks to work in. I suspect that Manson would welcome these apparent attacks upon his method and approach: for I am sure he would be sufficiently alive intellectually to realize that there is a new context in which we have to function. My attempt to understand the genesis of different exegeses through considering the genre of the interpretative discourse has some similarities with Werner Jeanrond’s attempt to distinguish different reading genres: We can read a text with different interests, i.e. we can place it in a particular functional framework. When, for example, a letter of Paul is sent by post to a community, it is in the first place the function of communication which stands in the foreground. If, on the other hand, one reads out the same text at a liturgical service, what stands in the foreground is the religious teaching character. The same text again can be studied as a document of its time, its documentary function is accentuated in this case.3

It is not, of course, very likely that Paul made use of a postal service and Jeanrond is anachronistic in his way of putting it, but the point is made. Jeanrond here is interested in the way reading implicitly treats the text being interpreted 1 

See, e.g., ch.  1 of my book, Art of Performance. See, e.g., the Manson Memorial lecture by my predecessor in the Edward Cadbury Chair at Birmingham, J. G. Davies, “Subjectivity and Objectivity in Biblical Exegesis,” BJRL 66 (1983): 44–53. More recently see P. Joyce, “First among Equals: The Historico-Critical Approach in the Marketplace of Methods,” in Porter et al., Crossing the Boundaries: 17–27. 3  W. Jeanrond, Text and Interpretation, 117. 2 

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as belonging to a particular genre. My concern is similar, though not with the genre attributed to the text by the reader; rather it is the interpretative discourse adopted by the interpreter, whether the interpretation is offered in commentary form, or as a sermon or homily, or as a theme-study, or a church document. The principal focus will be the commentary, since this “awkward sort of thing” can provide a useful standard for comparison and contrast.

II Some things can only be understood by reference to what lies behind them, and I am more and more certain that that is the case with a commentary. We need to go back to the Greco-Roman world where Hypomnē mata, or Commentarii were marginal notes or reminders. Their origin lay in the oral activity of reading texts in the schools – in the initial stages of education with the grammaticus, and then the more advanced stages with the rhetor and, possibly, the philosopher. Those educated in the Classics will remember the relatively slim volume containing a classical text, with an introduction and “back-notes.” The biblical commentary has “growed like Topsy” by comparison – but to understand its curious character necessitates articulating something about the ancient art of learning to read intelligently. So we go to school with Quintilian and others.4 The class is faced with a manuscript in which word-division and punctuation is lacking. “Correct reading precedes interpretation,” says Quintilian. Textual questions would arise as handwritten copies were found not to tally; questions of sentence construal would be pressing if the natural word-divisions and the shape of the sentence were not obvious. Sometimes spurious material would need excising – tampering with texts is something much discussed in ancient literature. The text was like a tape in the sense that it recorded speech; it was like a musical score in the sense that it had to be “realized” to be heard. Some of the matters discussed in commentaries emerge from the need to “read” the text aloud correctly. An awful lot of that discussion is these days short-circuited or pre-empted by the decisions of editors. With “Aland” in our hands, we only discuss notorious textual difficulties, and more popular commentaries do not even bother with that. But sometimes there are real issues for meaning: the question whether suchand-such is to be taken as a statement or a question may prove crucial. From the level of “reading,” we turn to the level of “grammar” in the ancient sense. The linguistic aspect of the text required comment and explanation since much classical literature was very ancient and contained unfamiliar words and forms. Questions of parsing and vocabulary were bound to occupy the class, as 4 

See further my article, “The Rhetorical Schools.”

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were parts of speech, conjugation, and so on. The observation of style was encouraged, since ultimately the pupil was preparing to imitate the styles of various kinds of literature – a feature of classical education that was alive until comparatively recently, but I guess the traditions of prose composition have died in the era of Classical Studies. For the pupil’s practical benefit, the ancient teacher would distinguish good and bad effects in combinations of syllables, rhythm, and so on, and also note and discuss metaphor, simile, onomatopoea and other verbal effects or figures of speech. It was in the process of explaining words, especially archaic words, that etymology flourished, and etymology, coupled with the interpretation of metaphor, encouraged the development of allegory. This “grammatical” process has left its mark on the commentary. Most commentaries are for readers without Greek, so they supply explanations of words and their connections, double senses, derivations, and so on. Ancient commentators would compile collections of instances of word-usage to establish the Homeric or biblical sense of a word – and modern commentators still use cross-reference in this way. Notes are provided on potential range of meaning, ambiguity, difficulty of understanding a rare word, or of finding adequate translation equivalents. The main difference is that allegory is not encouraged. Everything surveyed so far may be described as methodikē . In addition, ancient teachers discussed the historikē . The word historia means “investigation,” and the enquiry concerned the unexplained allusions in the text. Ancient literature was not only intertextual, full of clever allusions for the hearer to spot and applaud, but in fact implied a whole culture, a vast mythology, a heritage of classical texts from the past. The stories implicit in texts had to be unpacked for the novice – the schoolchildren had to grow in their cultural “know-how.” So allusion to myths, gods, heroes, legends, histories, all these stimulated investigation and explanation. Quintilian warns that there should not be too much information in too much detail or in too many ancient versions – the mind must not be swamped, and he suggests that commentaries are full of such erudition of marginal usefulness. However, places, dates, genealogies, characters, actions and events, whether historical or mythological, require explanation, and this, of course, is also the kind of material which weighs down biblical commentaries. There is a telling Peanuts cartoon about Christmas: “Beth-lehem” may mean “House of Bread,” but what’s in the presents is of more immediate interest! In the ancient world, then, exegesis was made up of explanatory notes of many kinds, though basically falling within the categories of methodikē and historikē . It is not surprising then that Quasten could describe Origen’s commentaries as “a strange mixture of philological, textual, historical, etymological notes and theological and philosophical observations.”5 We have inherited this. It constitutes the tradition of philological scholarship, but it also explains three 5 Quasten,

Patrology, 2:45–48.

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things about the curious commentary form. (1) A commentary is piecemeal, an arbitrary collection of observations about many different kinds of things in texts, ordered not by “type” but by the order in which they happen to arise in the material of the text itself. (2) A commentary is problem-oriented, and while commentaries will overlap and redundantly repeat comment on classic difficulties, what else appears depends on the judgment of the commentator as to what is problematic. (3) A commentary takes up and deals with problems raised by earlier commentators. All this means that commentaries have no coherence except that of the text itself – they are not meant to be “read” but to be consulted in the process of engaging with the text. It also means that where the meaning is obvious there is no comment, and so the commentary may seriously distort the reading of the text by distracting from what it is really about to what the commentator finds problematic. Theodore of Mopsuestia specifically stated that the exegete’s task is “to explain words that most people find difficult,” whereas the preacher’s task is “to reflect also on words that are perfectly clear and speak about them.”6 Two other factors, however, ameliorate this piecemeal problem-oriented character of the commentary, namely the provision of paraphrase and summary. 1. Paraphrase is the outcome of the overlap of exegesis and hermeneia. The Greek word, ἑρμηνεία (hermeneia), of course, implied both translation and interpretation. Translation means the rendering of a λόγος (logos) in a different λόγος, and by λόγος we mean any utterance, a word, a sentence, an argument, a story. If interpretation did not require movement from one language to another, it invariably meant paraphrase. To understand something obscure, what one tries to do is substitute another linguistic expression for it (as in a dictionary). Insofar as this is done not only at the level of the word, but at the level of sentences or paragraphs, the process of interpretation reaches beyond merely piecemeal notes to the provision of a “Targum”: an interpretative substitute for the text, which reflects the text’s coherence. Interpretative debate will then be about rival forms of substitution or paraphrase, since synonyms are rarely exact substitutes, and paraphrase can bring out a variety of nuances. There can be no final definitive herm ē neia. The possibilities of translation and paraphrase are open-ended, simply because of the flexibility of language (some have spoken of the “infinity” of language7). It is because it engages both the critical and the imaginative mind that the process of translation is endlessly fascinating. Commentaries may well incorporate a good deal of paraphrastic translation, even if they are commenting on a particular “authorized” rendering rather than the original Greek. 6  7 

Quoted by M. F. Wiles, “Theodore of Mopsuestia,” 491. E.g. Steiner, Real Presences.

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2. Summary derives from the activities of the rhetorical schools. In learning to compose, the pupil had to distinguish ὁ πραγματικός τόπος (ho pragmatikos topos, or in Latin, rē s) and ὁ λεκτικός τόπος (ho lektikos topos) or ὀνόματα (onomata, or in Latin, verba), that is the subject matter and the style. The wording and style was universally understood as the clothing of the subject matter, and one great concern was that the style should be appropriate to the subject in hand. The whole, by the way, was “audience-oriented” in the sense that the author’s intention was to produce the right effect on the hearer – to persuade. “Reader-response” is merely the modern recognition of an ancient rhetorical truth, except that the author attempted to manipulate that response, so the distinction between reader-response and authorial intention was not so sharp as in modern methodological discussion. But to return to the main point, the rhetorician read texts as exemplary for composition, and therefore one purpose was to distinguish between style and subject matter. Εὕρεσις (heuresis or inventio in Latin) was directed towards establishing the argument of one’s composition; so the question of the “hypo­ thesis” of the text was inevitably under consideration. Ancient commentaries, like modern commentaries, would use précis to summarize the “hypothesis” in introducing a section of text or a text as a whole. This feature counterbalanced, and still counterbalances, the “piecemeal” and problem-oriented character of the notes. It also encourages attention to the shape and structure of the text, attempts being made to see how the argument progresses, how it is divided into coherent sections, where paragraphs begin and end, and what role these parts play in the whole. This kind of analysis involves even more judgment on the part of the commentator. It requires the discernment of what is most important and most coherent. The modern commentator’s mind, by the way, is likely to have a rather different sense of coherence, sequence and structure from that of an ancient author. We ought perhaps to be cautious about the discovery of supposed incoherences by modern critics sitting at desks in their studies. If authors of realistic novels sometimes write mistakes into their narratives, how much more the speaker of ancient times whose audience heard the text in sequence and could not leaf back to check up on things! Attempts to find coherence can sometimes feed the ­problem-oriented character of the commentary. I suggest that rhetorical criticism has at least the advantage of attempting to discover how ancient authors, readers and hearers perceived such things, and might therefore produce less arbitrary readings. This is an example of how historically informed exegesis may have an advantage. But however much that remains the case, the thrust of what has been said about the nature of the commentary genre is to put a large onus on the judgment of the commentator. And this, surely, is the basic reason for differences in exegesis. In different cultural and intellectual situations commentators have differed, and still differ

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to a greater or lesser extent, as to the prime problems to be addressed, and the kind of coherence to be sought. Modern commentators find historical problems (in our sense of historical), ancient commentators found doctrinal or spiritual problems. The sense of what the problem is determines the line of investigation and the type of deduction made from the text. So commentary is inevitably affected by shifts in interest. In exploring what the term Commentarius meant for sixteenth-century theologians, Kenneth Hagan reached the conclusion that there was no clear understanding of what constituted a commentary over against annotations, expositions, paraphrases and so forth, but it is possible to distinguish three forms of interpretation, which he named “sacred page,” “sacred doctrine” and “sacred letter.”8 It turns out that these are three different kinds of exegetical interest. “Sacred page” represents the monastic interest in scripture as issuing directly from God and intended to elucidate the pilgrim’s journey to God. Commentary on scripture was meant to provide the theology which undergirded the discipline of which the final goal was the beatific vision. Scholastic exegesis, however, was interested in “sacred doctrine”: exegesis was to contribute to understanding the faith of the church. Then, with the coming of the printing press and the Renaissance, there was a shift to the “sacred letter.” The philosophy of Christ sought in scripture and classical literature by one such as Erasmus was to lead to piety, morality and justice – better society, church, education and government. In Hagan’s view the methods of Christian humanism that developed at this point have dominated the commentary form since. From the point of view of this paper, Hagan’s analysis simply confirms that what one finds in commentaries is ultimately determined by the judgment of the commentator, judgment which is informed by traditions of interpretation, by theological interests and by the particular features of the text which the commentator finds problematical. The commentary, then, embraces a multitude of tasks, and works at a multitude of levels, from straight bits of useful fact, such as identifying a quotation, to vast hypothetical constructions purporting to provide the background context, religious ideas, authorial intentions or structural patterns that explain the text. This variety of tasks and levels explains the oddity of the genre, and the difficulty the reader has in reading such a work. It is partly designed to be read and to provide an overall interpretation, it is partly designed to be consulted. Strategies have to be developed to use a commentary usefully.

8 

Hagan, “Commentarius.”

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III The greatest virtue of the commentary is the attention it implies to the text itself in sequence. Such too was the virtue of sets of homilies, the fruit of the practice of reading through a particular book of the Bible and commenting on it sequentially over a period of time. Ὁμιλία (homilia) meant “converse” or “intercourse.” In the early church such a “talk” was delivered sitting down, a clue that, even more closely than the commentary, the homily had its genesis in the transference of the oral study of a text in school to the church context. The Latin equivalent was sermo, hence our English “sermon.” The difference between the commentary and the homily sequence is well captured in that sentence of Theodore of Mopsuestia already referred to: “I judge the exegete’s task to be to explain words that most people find difficult; it is the preacher’s task to reflect also on words that are perfectly clear and speak about them.”9 In other words, the commentator struggles with problems, the expositor teases out the thrust of the text. In the ancient world there were connections, since both homily and commentary had roots in school practice. Thus, some technical grammatical points would be addressed, but, generally speaking, only if they provided a vehicle for moral or spiritual reflection. Etymology would often be exploited for the sake of moral or spiritual allegory, as would the discernment of metaphor and other figures of speech. But largely, the homily focused on moral instruction in the way the schools too had discussed the morals of the classical texts which they studied. In response to the challenge of philosophers like Plato, moral criticism had long been exercised. Alongside commending exemplary deeds while condemning or allegorizing improper acts, this encouraged the search for the “moral” of the text. The early Christians approached scripture in a similar way. The Bible provided the key to the right way of life. Sometimes, through the art of moral criticism, its crudity had to be explained and a more elevated sense discovered, but its heroes were found to be exemplary, its precepts were to be put into practice. The homily genre encouraged the paraenetic use of scripture, which was far more all-pervasive than most studies of patristic exegesis suggest.10 Like the commentary, an exegetical series had the virtue of following through a text, even if the text was to some extent broken up and its coherence lost in paraenetic digressions or spiritual allegory.

9 

Wiles, “Theodore of Mopsuestia,” 491. This point was developed in my Speaker’s Lectures in the University of Oxford, 1991– 1993, now published as Biblical Exegesis. The lectures undertook a reappraisal of patristic exegesis, and the rest of this paper owes a good deal to ideas developed in the process of research done for those lectures, though adapted to what is often described as the postmodern situation. 10 

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In practice the interpretation of scripture continues to take place predominantly in the context of worship, a point to which I will return. Once exegetical or expository preaching was a valued art. Now, one fears, it is largely a lost art. The gap between professional commentary and pulpit homily has become a yawning chasm, and few people really know their Bibles. But so much for the moment on the subject of genres that preserve the sequence of the text. There are other interpretative genres, and these, I suggest, are much more influential on the form of preaching in the modem church.

IV Perhaps the most common and most widely appreciated form of interpretative writing now is the theme-study. This is not a complete novelty, but has precedents in ancient treatises on prayer, or virginity, or the incomprehensibility of God. That comment indicates the extent to which current interests determine the themes chosen. In the last few decades there has been a perceptible shift, from studies concerned with faith or eternal life or Christological titles, to themes such as riches and poverty, women in the early church, and suchlike, as the perception of important background or content has shifted from the history of ideas to social analysis, from dogma to praxis. Even more than the commentary, theme-studies are affected by the vagaries of theological fashion. The main feature of theme-studies is their inherently deductive quality. The process of assembling texts to illustrate themes not only affects the stance from which exegesis is offered, and frequently leads to conclusions about meaning which would not be so convincing if the matter were considered in context, but also imposes a framework on the material. If that is not purely the creature of the interpreter’s imagination or immediate concern, it is in some sense deduced from the perceived thrust of the text and its interests. In principle this procedure seems little different in method or rationality from the process whereby Christian doctrine was deduced from scripture in the fourth and fifth centuries. Questions to which the texts were not addressed are posed in each case, and answers required from material whose import was different. In fact, what “theologies” or “ethics” of the New Testament are really teasing out is often a whole lot of prior assumptions not explicitly articulated in the texts at all but taken for granted. And so, what might be described as the most prized interpretative genre proves to encourage the process of shifting focus from the text itself, either to what lies ahead of the text or to what lies behind it. It is no wonder that so often students learn all about the New Testament without actually knowing the texts at all. The distillation of meaning in learnable and coherent packages has the effect of encouraging this.

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However, having damned theme-studies with faint praise, we should perhaps acknowledge that interpretation is bound to produce a kind of metatext which is not the text, and this is not without its uses. The deductive process often has the merit of quoting actual texts and not simply offering paraphrase like the commentary, though that may, of course, degenerate into the citation of prooftexts if not handled with subtlety. If with quotation there is a loss of context, there may also be a gain in focused attention, and ideally all criticism is a process of inviting back to a classic text with a new perspective, so that other features of the text become noticeable. Awareness of thematic connections or internal contradictions, and the grasp of cultural and social resonances, all these assist the reader in entering the world of the text with greater understanding, to “hear” more as the text is read, just as analysis of a symphony opens the ear to more than the dominant melody. In the end texts die from being ignored, not from being exploited in ways that may eventually be judged inappropriate.

V That general judgment also justifies the other increasingly common scholarly genre, namely the literary-critical study.11 Of course, biblical scholars have always had literary interests; the very roots of biblical scholarship, as we have seen, lie in the same soil as classical philology, and questions of authorship, style, historical background, and so on, used to constitute the subject matter of literary criticism. But the dominance of apologetic and historical interests certainly suppressed interest in matters such as the nature of narrative, plot, characterization, roles, structure, and the particular biblical devices for, and the manner of, representation, or mimesis, of reality. Literary critics like Northrop Frye, Frank Kermode and others have given us a salutary reminder that the ­Bible is not just scripture but a universal “classic.” And some observations are highly enlightening: character, for example, is presented in word and dialogue, rather than physical descriptions, and what a difference that observation makes to our perceptive reading of biblical narrative as different from the modern novel, as does the recognition that sequence is not dominated by conceptions of cause and effect in ways we expect, and so on. But much literary criticism is a sophisticated development of ancient interests in style, figures of speech, narrative strategies, the art of communication, the skills of presentation for effect. And therefore its audience will be limited. For, whether we like it or not, the Bible is largely read not as literature for enjoyment, entertainment or escapism, or for its deep interest as mimesis of hu11  The developing bibliography in this area is sufficiently well known and so vast that I eschew footnoting these fairly rapid remarks on the subject.

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man life in all its dilemmas, ambiguities and tragedies. People generally go elsewhere for that. The Bible is read much more for the lessons it teaches and the beliefs it inspires.

VI The most pervasive interpretative genres are those that provide the deductive exegesis which enables people to affirm that “this” is what the Bible says about “that.” Such genres must claim a little of our attention. Two seem to me to stand out: the church report and the sermon. Confronted with a theological or ethical controversy, or the need to consolidate agreed belief in a situation that threatens traditional formulae, churches (or other kinds of Christian groups or parties) attempt to draw up statements and, almost without fail, they will have a section which specifically sets out what is regarded as biblical teaching on the subject, or if it is a matter not addressed explicitly by the Bible, what might be deduced from the Bible which would provide principles applicable to the issue in view. The agenda is often set from a position right outside the biblical texts and their concerns, or if it happens to be a perennial moral or theological issue, it has arisen in a new situation which raises difficult hermeneutical questions. For example, recent issues are, on the one hand, the ordination of women and the acceptance of homosexuals, and on the other, the biblical teaching on the Holy Spirit. The first is an agenda raised by the modern secular social context, the second has been posed by the charismatic movement, perhaps with ana­ logies in the earlier history of the church, such as the Montanist movement. The potential for exploiting the text by selection and interpretation to suit the desired end is clearly considerable. The classic hermeneutical questions about cross-cultural applicability are posed in an acute and highly practical way. But what should be observed is that the supposition that the Bible be called in at all affects the implied genre of the biblical text: the interpretative genre requires a kind of legal ruling. Though the theme-study may be moving in this direction, this is quite different from the interpretative genres of commentary or literary-­ critical appraisal: these at least accord some initial autonomy to the text itself, its language, themes, character, style, interests, varied genres and so on, for they begin with the text, not with the interpreter’s vested interest. In the case of the church report, a definitive answer is required for an extra-biblical question. It is in this interpretative context that the notion of “canon” really counts: the “rule” or “measure” of truth or law is somehow to be provided by this collection of texts. Text may be weighed against text in the process of deduction. What may be sought is the “mind of scripture” rather than a “proof-text.” Scholarship may guide the process and hermeneutical method may be attended to: church

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leaders like to think they are responsible people! But is it reasonable to expect that the answers sought can be supplied by scholars producing other kinds of interpretative material? It is important to recognize and articulate the fact that this deductive process is a key element in use of the Bible, and that it turns the canon into something like the American Constitution. Like the Supreme Court, the church cannot avoid arriving at new legal rulings. Christianity is no different in this respect from Judaism and Islam. Despite the impression often given, it is not straightforwardly the case that, as it appropriated the Jewish scriptures, Christianity replaced legal interpretation with prophetic interpretation. Rather, a literature of ecclesiastical canons began to grow which provided the Christian equivalent of the Jewish halakah, and the earliest examples of the literature like the Didache, the Didascalia and the Apostolic Constitutions contain a great deal of ethical and paraenetical material which is essentially presented as collages of scriptural allusions and quotations of texts. The scriptures were expected to map out the Christian way of life, and order the community and its hierarchy. Articulating how they did so involved a process of selection and deduction. The situation is no different now, and perhaps one of the most deeply dividing things in the modern church relates to the question of how rulings are to be arrived at. The historico-critical method can hardly be expected to provide the answer. Nor can conclusions reached when working in other interpretative genres be expected to supply either answers or criteria.

VII The sermon may be seen to relate to the homily rather as the theme-study relates to the commentary. Despite the (dying?) convention of hanging a sermon on a text, usually it is the theme that matters. In the kerygmatic traditions of Protestant preaching, the sermon develops some aspect of the gospel; in other traditions, it becomes a thematic spiritual meditation or moral discourse. Within different traditions, the extent to which the theme remains grounded in biblical texts and the extent to which it spins off into contemporary application and illustration will vary. But most traditions expect some sense of relevance and practical application, the defence of a belief or the establishment of a moral principle. As in the case of the homily, the question of the relationship between study and pulpit is a serious issue. Preachers are trained in current exegetical methods with the expectation that this will affect their preaching. However, preaching and scholarly research would appear to be different interpretative genres, and many preachers have instinctively felt that and abandoned their “ivory tower” training once they have been faced with a congregation. So this much-discussed problem in modern biblical interpretation can now be seen to lie in the area of

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appropriate transference of insight from one genre to another. Traditionally, certainly in the patristic period, the same person embodied scholarly interest and preacher’s concern. Commentary would gather more problem-oriented notes, treatise would argue from the Bible, homily and sermon would focus more on paraenesis and the spiritual journey. But the lines were not so clearly demarcated as to exclude vast areas of overlap, and commentary and treatise were meant to inform oral communication. Theology, spirituality and philology were integrally related to one another. Hagan’s analysis of sixteenth-century “types” gives us some clue, perhaps, as to how the genres became so differentiated as to be virtually divorced. Perhaps what we need is the recognition that scholarship and preaching are not related like master and slave, or even teacher and pupil. They each have their appropriate context and conventions. Those of us who operate in both should become more self-conscious of the differences, rather than less. Neither scholarship nor preaching should be blamed for not being what the other is. The extent to which the one can inform the other could then be explored more creatively.

VIII Perhaps it is the case that the sermon should be closely related, not to the commentary, but to another interpretative genre, the one most easily overlooked, that of hymnography, liturgy and prayer. Worship is after all the context of the sermon. Of course, liturgy, prayer and hymnography are not self-consciously interpretative in the sense of the others considered here. Nevertheless, the use of the Bible in worship involves implicit interpretation. Two processes may be distinguished: the first is simple take-over. Congregations adopt and use the Lord’s Prayer, the Psalms, and other scriptural prayers, blessings and doxologies, either whole or in part. People make the words their own, by singing or saying them. This involves unconscious interpretation: the users assume that the words mean what they wish them to mean, investing them with their own concerns and context. This is especially evident in the development of charismatic choruses which simply take over and repeat words of scripture, often from the old Authorized Version. The built-in interpretation is inexplicit and unconscious but undoubtedly there. Without it, such use of scriptural language produces a sense of discomfort and alienation, a feeling that “This is not my language,” “I don’t understand it.” That feeling is clearly widespread, and has produced an increasing trend towards modernizing the language of liturgy and the use of a variety of translations of the Bible. The consequence is an increasing loss of intertextual resonances, failure to identify the scriptural source, and even less awareness of the interpretative issues.

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The second process we may call the cento or collage, the creation of a new prayer text out of phrases and sentences which have their origin in the Bible, or the incorporation of scriptural allusion into a fresh composition indebted to, or even compounded from, biblical language. This has been a perennial process, from the prayer at the end of 1 Clement to traditional non-conformist extempore prayer resonating with phrases from the King James Version, from the hymns of Ephrem Syrus to Charles Wesley via the Orthodox liturgies and Luther. In whatever age and culture, this has always involved an important process of appropriation to new cultural forms, and therefore these worship texts are very important hermeneutically. They have deeply affected the way the scriptures have been heard and assimilated by believers. In those traditions which are creative and lively, new forms have emerged involving constant theological reminting. At the heart of all this has been the use of symbolism, enabling links in narrative and imagery of a typological kind, so that believers are drawn into the biblical story and find there their identity. Art and music have significantly contributed to, and reinforced, this powerful hermeneutic. The modern church shows a good deal of imaginative creativity, yet it has also experienced deep loss. It needs a rediscovery of the kind of language and connections which are only recoverable through typology and allegory. It needs a recognition that the language of worship has to be learned, that it involves a process of enculturation so that intertextuality can find response in the participant, that spirituality is deepened by making strange worlds one’s own, by expanding linguistic and symbolic possibilities.

IX The theme of this paper has infinite possibilities, it would seem, but time and space is finite. Even so, let me just pose the question whether systematic theo­ logy should be regarded as an interpretative genre? Certainly in the patristic church doctrinal debate was conducted by deduction from scripture texts. True, both then and now, contemporary intellectual frameworks have provided the questions, the problems that need to be addressed, and traditional doctrine now provides the material to be thought through afresh. But I suspect that systematic theology needs to rediscover its role of biblical interpretation. Systematic theo­logians’ hearts may fail, and the faces of scholars trained in historico-­ critical research may blanch. But if so, the latter have failed to grasp the extent to which the procedures of their own discipline have been affected by the demands of contemporary rationality, and the former the extent to which their subject matter has been shaped by deductions from scripture.

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X My principal conclusion is this: it is advisable for any interpreter to engage in a range of interpretative genres. The plenitude of meaning in scripture exceeds the bounds of our interpretative genres, each of which has limitations. Understanding, I suggest, comes from a dialectic between “inside” and “outside” positions, an oscillation between objectivity and subjectivity, empathy and suspicion. There also needs to be a dialectic between giving primacy to the text, the careful observation of its inner dynamics, the attempt to “hear” it, and giving primacy to its readers, their problems of appropriation, their sense of alienation, their unconscious domestication of the text. This dialectic is encouraged by engaging in different genres of interpretation, as is the possibility of imaginative expansion of both reader and text. Biblical hermeneutics is enriched by a variety of interpretative genres which ensure that contributions are made by historian and poet, linguist and preacher, critic and visionary, all of whom will discern different things in the text. Like all postmodernist approaches, this raises questions about unity, the unity of scripture, of meaning, of the mind of the interpreter, of the community which interprets. Our deep instinct to seek for the definitive meaning is hard to evacuate. At this point I can hardly embark on the philosophical questions raised by pluralism, or discuss whether any meaning or truth can be privileged. The fact is, of course, that each of us assumes that the world is as “I” see it! But then if my mind is creative and responsive I do not see it today as I saw it twenty years ago. And does not each hear the Word of God in his or her own language because God has taken the risk of accommodating the divine self to the limitations of human existence, including its diverse cultures and languages? The mistake has been to expect that there can be a final solution for all time in this changing world to the issue of how the diversity of the Bible, the diversity of its own genres and languages and viewpoints, is to be conceived as a unity with a definable unitive theological position. The Word of God comes in due season, and with that we must be content.

Chapter 19

Augustine’s Hermeneutics and Postmodern Criticism* The case has been made that Augustine anticipated postmodern criticism. Umberto Eco apparently wrote, “Textual semiotics and contemporary hermeneutics still move along the main lines set down by Augustine, even when they are secularized semiotics or hermeneutics, even when they do not recognize their origin, and even when they look upon a worldly poetic text as sacred and a repository of infinite wisdom.”1 This essay, however, will argue (1) that there is a fundamental difference between Augustine’s sense of the relative and indirect reception of truth by the human mind and postmodern relativism, which questions the possibility of truth; and (2) Augustine’s hermeneutics must first be seen as “other” and “strange,” and only then appropriated in a context that is both similar to, and different from, his world of understanding. In order to demonstrate these conclusions, I will first sketch the characteristics of postmodern criticism and then consider Augustine’s work in his context – the classical and Christian heritage of interpretation. Finally, I will identify the similarities and differences between Augustine’s hermeneutics and postmodernity.

I.  What is postmodern criticism? Postmodernism – characterized as a reaction to modernity – has taken various forms, some mutually contradictory, and has substantially impacted on all disciplines of the humanities and social sciences as well as theology. To draw out its principal features, we need to sketch the characteristics of the modernism against which it reacts, especially with regard the interpretation of texts.2 * 

Originally published in Interpretation 58 (2004): 42–55. by Luigi Alici, “Sign and Language,” in the Introduction to Saint Augustine, Teaching Christianity, trans. E. Hill, The Works of Saint Augustine 1.11, ed. John E. Rotelle (New York: New City, 1996), 50, n.  72. Others who make similar claims may be traced in the notes and bibliography of R. A. Markus, Signs and Meanings. World and Text in Ancient Christianity (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1996). 2  In producing these sketches I eschew detailed footnotes. A useful collection of texts may be found in David Lodge, ed., Modern Criticism and Theory. A Reader (Harlow: Longman, 1988). 1  Quoted

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Modern literary interpretation was a response to several influences: (1) post-­ Enlightenment scientific success encouraged emphasis on objectivity, on identifying facts behind interpretations, objective realities rather than subjective viewpoints; (2) scepticism about pre-Enlightenment understanding of the world generated a sense of historical distance and leaned towards historically sensitive, critical reading of texts from the past; (3) emphasis on individual achievement, on the great genius, and on originality, focused attention on the author. Modern criticism thus sought to illuminate texts by uncovering the author’s biography and intention in historical context, so as to “think the author’s thoughts after him.” Since the original meaning was the real meaning, the dating and setting of a work was fundamental to its interpretation. The search for sources, or for the original events behind the text, became paramount, these events being judged plausible (or not) in the light of the overarching scientific account of how the world works. Supernatural causes were bracketed out. This historico-critical method was the key to meaning. The postmodern reaction began with structuralism. Structuralist hermeneutics depended upon an analogy with linguistics, particularly the linguistic theories of Ferdinand de Saussure. Significant was Saussure’s distinction between the diachronic and the synchronic. It had been assumed that meanings could be uncovered by digging into the history and derivation of words (they were “diachronic”); Saussure pointed out that meanings are actually generated through the relationships of words in sentences at the point of utterance or composition (they are “synchronic”). Adapted from linguistics, hermeneutics challenged the “search for sources” approach to textual analysis. A second significant point derived from Saussure was the arbitrary nature of linguistic signs, and the primacy of signifiers over the signified. This generated “semiotics” (and led to interest in Augustine’s discussion of “signs”). But what stimulated structuralism proper was the distinction that Saussure made between langue and parole: the difference between language as an overall structural form, an idealized system, and the many particular utterances that may be generated in the language. “Binary oppositions” characterized these idealized structures. Transferred to narrative, this kind of analysis led to the identification of a limited number of plot structures, and the analysis of each story in terms of these idealized schemata. Such underlying structural “meaning” is ahistorical. Attention shifted from the author to the text. Indeed, Roland Barthes produced a famous essay entitled, “The Death of the Author,”3 thus highlighting a wider trend. Countering modernity, authorial intention gave way to an emphasis on the text’s autonomy. The author loses control over the text once it is published, and the work becomes a generator of new meanings. Furthermore, the historical background is de-centred, and the world 3 

Barthes, “Death of the Author.”

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behind the text holds no importance. The world in front of the text – the text’s capacity to generate fresh response – is significant. Future meaning is never simply a repetition of the past; it arises from the potential of the autonomous text to produce multiple meanings within multiple contexts. Great literature is pluri­ vocal. There is a surplus of possibility in its language, its figures of speech and its many voices. Multiple meanings became inevitable when the focus shifted toward the primacy of the reader. Deconstruction drew attention to the fact that the text is nothing more than black marks on the page until a reader seeks its meaning. Making sense, however, involves unconsciously importing cultural assumptions and linguistic associations. Gaps, in fact, are essential to literary texts, generating suspense, interest, and surprise. Rather than being problems to be eliminated, gaps are catalysts for interpretation. So deconstruction focuses on these gaps in the text, what Derrida called the aporias, borrowing the Greek word that Augustine’s predecessor Origen had used for all the puzzles presented to the reader of the Bible. The tendency to systematize and homogenize is to be resisted. Indeed, reader response theory shows how, for a single reader, the meaning is different on different reading occasions, and how the text is a mirror in which we see ourselves, rather than a window into another mind. A complete account of meaning is neither possible nor desirable. Nevertheless, language is earthed in a socio-cultural community, and ancient texts are set firmly in the different cultural context of the past. Social anthropo­ logy has placed emphasis on the strangeness of those past worlds that generated texts we still read. As readers, we engage with the “other” in order to discover ourselves as different. The notion of a “totalising discourse,” socially generated and assimilated, within which everything is understood, has emerged alongside the recognition of reading communities with traditions of interpretation that go unquestioned until confronted by another world of understanding. This has placed both the production and reception of texts in social locations. It makes self-conscious the social location of the interpreter, as well as the different ­social-linguistic communities in which the text has found meaning. It has exposed, for example, the patriarchal context of the biblical texts and the ways in which the Bible has reinforced patriarchal and slave-owning societies in their practices. Feminist hermeneutics engenders a suspicion of texts that bear such social power and urges the interpreter to retrieve aspects of those texts that do not apparently conform to the patriarchal norm in order to legitimize different social norms. Texts do not simply reflect social realities – they create them. The interest in discourse has also led to renewed focus on rhetoric and poetics, thus generating discussions of metaphor and other figures of speech. Indeed, implied in much of

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postmodern theory is a gap between the word and the world.4 Structuralism encouraged the notion that language, like mathematics, is a self-referential ­system of signs; myths and literary texts are taken to be manifestations of the system, divorced from any necessary connection with external reality. Post-­ structuralist views have often reinforced this gap between reality and language. Naïve literary realism has been rejected, and the referential aspect of language and the “mimetic” or representational quality of texts have become problematic. Some would speak of the essential metaphoricity of all language, so evacuating literalness of any sense. For Derrida, “difference” is constitutive of existence as well as linguistic structures, and différance ensures the deferral of meaning. The challenge to modernity is clear. Text and reader replace the author. The future of the text is more important than its background; and reading communities permit the text to generate social worlds. Social location replaces objective fact. Meaning is elusive. However, if there is nothing but the shifting paradigms of successive societies, if there is no rationality that is not culturally relative, only a plurality of meanings, where is truth? What is the difference between history and fiction? What criteria can distinguish between valid and invalid interpretation? Postmodernism likes to speak of “play,” for all we can do is “play” with texts, “play” with ideas, choosing the game to enjoy, joining the consumer society in the supermarket of life’s options!

II.  The socio-cultural location of Augustine’s Christian Instruction5 Augustine differentiated what he did in the Christian Instruction from the rhetorical culture of the ancient world. This differentiation, however, was within a shared milieu. The roots of Augustine’s discussion lie in the socio-cultural community in which he was educated. 6 Augustine attempted to build a career as a rhetor – indeed, it was a move to advance his rhetorical career on a wider stage that led him to leave North Africa for Italy where he came under the influences that led to his conversion. As pupil and teacher, he must have learned and utilized the standard topics and methods of the rhetorical schools. The means of achieving rhetorical prowess, that is, speaking persuasively to a public audience, was practice-based learning, in4  Much of this paragraph is taken from my paper, “From Suspicion and Sociology to Spirituality: on Method, Hermeneutics and Appropriation with Respect to Patristic Material,” Studia Patristica 29 (1997): 421–435; reproduced as ch. VII in Exegesis and Theology. Elsewhere I have also drawn from this earlier account of postmodern trends. 5  References are incorporated in the text with the conventional abbreviation, Doctr. Chr. 6  Much of the following discussion of the rhetorical schools is drawn from Young, Biblical Exegesis.

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formed by immersion in classical literature. Textbooks helped to specify the rules to which experts worked, though Augustine expressed a common sentiment when he claimed that inspiration is more important to art than learned techniques (e.g. Doctr. Chr., 4.4). We will consider three aspects of this educational process in relation to Augustine’s Christian Instruction: (1) rhetorical theories of communication, (2) the school approach to exegesis of literary texts, and (3) rhetorical analysis of the relationship between content and style.

1.  Rhetorical theories of communication Rhetorical theory was about communication, and ancient theory was sophisticated. In order to achieve πίστις (pistis, the Greek for “persuasion”, though it is usually translated “faith” when it appears in the New Testament), three things were required: (1) the author had to have a character and lifestyle (in Greek, ἦθος – ē thos) that inspired confidence in his trustworthiness and authority; (2) the content or argument (λόγος – logos) had to be convincing; and (3) the audience had to be swayed (πάθος – pathos, often translated “suffering,” but meaning any kind of reaction to external stimulus).7 It is instructive to read book 4 of Christian Instruction in the light of this context. Augustine had now reached the point of discussing the communication of scripture’s meaning, an undertaking he had promised at the beginning, but apparently undertaken only after the thirty-year hiatus in the work’s composition. He refused to give the rules of rhetoric he once learned and taught in the secular schools. This is not because he disparaged them – indeed no-one would have suggested that truth should stand there without any weapons of defence in the face of falsehood. But these rules could be learned elsewhere, and simply reading or listening to skilled speakers was sufficient. Yet the next subject to which Augustine turned was the need for selecting different styles of speech depending on the desired effect on the audience (Doctr. Chr., 4:6). He was well aware of the need to generate the right response – pathos. Is the audience to be instructed, or to be moved into acting on what they already know? Wit, elegance, and feeling will contribute to success, he suggested. Wisdom, however, was more important. Here, Augustine’s remarks acknowledged the importance of the speaker’s authority and character (ē thos). The person communicating the meaning of scripture must be deeply familiar with scripture. In addition, the communicator must combine wisdom and eloquence (Doctr. Chr., 4.8), and Augustine proceeded to provide examples of two biblical 7  See earlier expositions in chs. 1 and 16. The Greek forms are given here in a summary of that common rhetorical tradition originating in Greek, following our usual convention in this volume. Augustine, however, would have received rhetorical traditions in Latin. Subsequent references use the transliterated forms in partial recognition that this is not Augustine’s terminology, though this analysis illuminates what he writes.

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authors who combined those gifts: Paul (Doctr. Chr., 4.11–13) and Amos (Doctr. Chr., 4.16–20). To the sophisticated and educated person Augustine acknowledged that the biblical texts could appear crude and lacking in rhetorical finesse, and that he had to answer those who lightly dismiss the scriptural authors for failing to exhibit the eloquence of which these people are too fond (Doctr. Chr., 4.14). Augustine himself shifted from scorning these authors for their lack of style to recognizing that their authority rested on their wisdom. Later, he presented further passages from Paul, as well as quotations from Cyprian and Ambrose, to illustrate different styles (Doctr. Chr., 4.39–50). But the point here is that he shared an interest in the authority of the author. Augustine protested that he was not discussing ways of pleasing an audience (Doctr. Chr., 4.25). Rather he is focused on how to teach those who want to learn. Yet he quoted “an eloquent man,” Cicero (Doctr. Chr., 4.27). You should speak “so as to teach, to delight, to sway,” adding: “Teaching your audience is a matter of necessity, delighting them a matter of being agreeable, swaying them a matter of victory.” For Augustine, “teaching” was found in the things said, that is, the content (cf. the remarks on logos above), whereas “delighting” and “swaying” are found in the way of saying them. He emphasized the latter’s importance in order to hold attention and to move the hearer to action. Just as he is delighted if you speak agreeably, so in the same way he is swayed if he loves what you promise him, fears what you threaten him with, hates what you find fault with, embraces what you commend to him, deplores what you strongly insist is deplorable; if he rejoices over what you declare to be matter for gladness, feels intense pity for those whom your words present to his very eyes as objects of pity, shuns those who in terrifying tones you proclaim are to be avoided; and anything else that can be done by eloquence in the grand manner to move the spirits of the listeners, not to know what is to be done, but to do what they already know is to be done. (Doctr. Chr., 4.27) 8

Even so, Augustine clarified that the matter must convince by being true and therefore delightful. Content and style together create the response. Furthermore, he later insisted that the author’s manner of life carries most weight (Doctr. Chr., 4.59). So pathos, logos and ē thos effect pistis: Augustine may not have explicitly spelt this out, but his description of effective communication assumes this pattern throughout, and despite disclaimers, betrays the socio-­ cultural location of his entire approach.

2.  Exegesis of literary texts If the aim of rhetorical education is effective public speaking, the means of acquiring these skills is the study of texts. As we have seen, Augustine recommended Christian models. Despite his introduction of novelties, the most obvi8 

ET quoted is that of Hill in St Augustine. Teaching Christianity.

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ous being his substitution of biblical literature for the classical texts, his discussion of the language and interpretation of scripture draws upon the conventional methods of literary analysis practised in the grammatical and rhetorical schools. We can observe his location in this socio-cultural context by outlining the exegetical techniques of the schools. This is not quite as easy as it might seem, however, since rhetorical education was conducted orally and left unrecorded. However, a sketch is provided in Quintilian’s work, The Orator’s Education, a Latin textbook written in the late first century but based on the traditions long since recorded in Greek works beginning with Aristotle. Unlike most, Quintilian does not just take for granted what went on in the elementary stages, and so provided the only existing account we have of the use of literature in the schools.9 Correct reading precedes interpretation, according to Quintilian, but correct reading requires an interpretative process. In ancient manuscripts, words were not divided, there was minimal punctuation, and copies contained different wording. Teachers had to establish an agreed-upon text and reject spurious material. Then followed discussion about how to read the text – occasionally there were ambiguities about word division or where sentences began and ended. All reading was oral in the ancient world, a kind of performance, so questions about where the stress should come were important. Once the correct reading had been determined, the next step was to attend to the language. In Quintilian’s view, this often required considerable scholarship because much literature contained unfamiliar, archaic words and forms. The class had to concentrate on vocabulary and parsing, construing sentences and identifying figures of speech. The origin and meaning of names was a fascination for the ancients, and tracing etymologies was important to this linguistic level of analysis. Quintilian regretted that many teachers, rushing to matters of style, failed to pay enough attention to these preliminary foundations. But since composition was the ultimate goal, one of the reasons for studying literature was to accumulate experiences of different styles to emulate. Teachers would point out “sublime” vocabulary and felicitous word combinations, as well as barbarisms, grammatical solecisms, and ugly combinations of syllables. Foreign words were explained, metaphor and archaisms elucidated, and ornamental devices noted. All this constitutes examination of the “letter”; Quintilian’s word methodike reflects the Greek term, τὸ μεθοδικόν – to methodikon. The other aspect of school exposition was explaining the stories, unpacking allusions to classical myths, gods, heroes, legends, histories – Quintilian warns against swamping the student with too much detail! His word for this is historike, reflecting the Greek term τὸ ἱστορικόν – to historikon. Neither means 9 My discussion of Quintilian is based on earlier publications: Young, “Rhetorical Schools” and Biblical Exegesis, 77–79. See also ch.  1 above.

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what we understand as historico-critical exegesis, though there may be some overlap where questions of authorship and background are discussed. The Greek word ἱστορία (historia) primarily means “investigation,” and this kind of analysis investigates all kinds of information that will illuminate the text. This may be astronomical, geographical, or mathematical, to name a few. Now let us consider Augustine’s Christian Instruction against this background. We have already observed his production of models from Christian authors in book 4. The two previous books indicate his debt to other aspects of school exegesis. In book 2, Augustine does not follow Quintilian by going through the systematic steps of exegesis, methodike and historike. However, he recognizes the need to determine which books are significant (Doctr. Chr., 2.12–13) and to unravel their obscurities (from Doctr. Chr., 2.14 on). He has chosen to treat language as a system of signs, and he recognizes that some scriptural signs are unknown or ambiguous. That is partly because of the problems of translation (Doctr. Chr., 2.16–22). Resolving what is meant requires either a knowledge of the original languages, or if that is not possible, careful comparison of different versions. In discussing different versions, he recommends the “word-for-word” kind of translation because that limits the freedom or mistakes of the translator, recognizing, however, that not just words, but often whole phrases, cannot be rendered literally into another language. He discusses solecisms and barbarisms, and then moves on to the issue of figures of speech, or what he calls “metaphorical signs” (Doctr. Chr., 2.23). Etymology elucidates many unknown names, he suggests. Elsewhere, he acknowledges the need for accurate copies of texts (Doctr. Chr., 3.1). All this is standard application of Quintilian’s methodike to the particular problems of the Latin scriptures. But the discussion of metaphorical signs leads naturally to the need for information that helps the reader grasp the point of the figures employed. Now (throughout the rest of book 2) the importance of exegesis historike comes to the fore. Augustine contends that one needs knowledge of natural history to discern features of animals, stones, herbs, or other things; otherwise the reader will not discern the point of the comparisons drawn in scripture. One needs to understand numerology to unpack the symbolic meanings of numbers in the sacred books. Secular knowledge, deployed in scriptural exegesis, is differentiated from pagan superstition. History and astronomy are discussed; medicine, agriculture, seamanship, and sports are mentioned. The rules of logic and of discourse are given lengthy treatment.10 Thus book 2 shows how the whole gamut of school practices needs to be employed to elucidate unknown signs. 10  Frederick van Fleteren, in his article “Augustine, Neoplatonism and the Liberal Arts” in De doctrina christiana. A Classic of Western Culture, ed. Duane W. H. Arnold and Pamela Bright (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995): 14–24, suggests that Augustine’s interest in the liberal arts was at first indebted to Porphyry – the liberal arts were seen as a means of intellectual purification – but by the time of the De doctrina, he had “a program

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In book 3, Augustine introduces discussion of ambiguous signs and of criteria for resolving the ambiguities. The problems he raises are standard aspects of exegesis methodike, involving punctuation or tone of voice or grammatical construction. For example, some place a full stop or period incorrectly in the opening of John’s Gospel, reading, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and God was. The Word was in the beginning with God” (Doctr. Chr., 3.3). Augustine sees this as a deliberate misreading by heretics to avoid saying the Word was God. The criterion for correct reading is the Rule of Faith. As for tone of voice, Augustine offers Romans 8:33–34: is “God who justifies them” an answer to the preceding question, “Who will bring an accusation against God’s chosen ones?” or a second question expecting the answer “No, of course not” (Doctr. Chr., 3.6)? The first construal is clearly contradictory and nonsense. Augustine concludes that it is difficult to find any ambiguity in the literal meaning that is not resolvable from either context (which reveals the author’s intention), or from comparison of different versions, or from examination of the original language (Doctr. Chr., 3.8). Augustine then moves from ambiguities in relation to the letter to ambiguities in metaphorical language by introducing a long discussion of the figural meaning of scripture. Literalists are accused of treating “signs” as “things.” Under­lying Augustine’s treatment is the same approach as that of Origen, the first great biblical exegete. The identification of metaphor and figures of speech, not to mention ambiguities and difficulties (aporias) in the text (i.e., activities that are a standard part of exegesis methodike) provides the stimulus to search for the deeper meaning of the text. Like Origen, Augustine wants to avoid ­slavery to the letter, which was attributed to the Jews. “Carnal signs” are meant to point to “spiritual realities” (Doctr. Chr., 3.12). Nevertheless, Augustine guarded against treating literal, proper statements as if they were figurative. The criteria for making these distinctions derive from the Rule of Faith and the ­moral imperatives of loving God and one’s neighbour (Doctr. Chr., 3.14–15); for these are the “things” to which the “signs” of scripture point, as book 1 had already asserted. Be that as it may, the immediate point is that Augustine did utilize the conventions of school exegesis as a basis for his hermeneutical theory. We soon reach the seam between Augustine’s early draft of the De doctrina and his completion of the work thirty years later (Doctr. Chr., 3.36). He briefly notes other features of metaphorical language, such as its lack of consistent reference (the “lion of Judah” is Christ, but the devil also “goes about roaring like a lion”), and then comments that the scriptural authors used “tropes” (= turns, figures of speech) far more than one might expect. Educated readers will notice of his own,” whereby “secular learning is to be used by the Christian for the interpretation of the Scriptures.” His interesting discussion needs modifying to take account of the standard use of the liberal arts in exegesis in the rhetorical schools and in previous Christian exegesis of the scriptures, notably that of Origen.

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these, but it is not his intention here to spell them all out as if he were teaching the art of grammar – although he does allude to allegory, enigma, and parable (things actually mentioned in scripture), as well as metaphor, catachresis and irony, pointing out that all these occur in common speech. As illustration of the figurative sense of scripture, Augustine then reviews the Rules of Tyconius (from Doctr. Chr., 3.42). What Tyconius and Augustine have in common is a programme of reading scripture as referring prophetically to Christ and the church, a tradition inherited from the earliest Christian hermeneutics of the Jewish scriptures.11 Perhaps Augustine’s ecclesiastical responsibilities have shifted his understanding of the “spiritual” meaning of scripture from a kind of Neoplatonic transcendence discovered through allegory, and still reflected in the first draft of Christian Instruction, to a more “typological” understanding.12 It remains true, however, that the socio-cultural location of Augustine’s hermeneutics throughout all four books of the complete work is found in his adaptation of the tradition of exegesis developed for the reading of classical literature to the needs of a Christian culture built upon the books of the Bible.

3.  Content and style Both the aim and the content of literary classics were assumed to be moral.13 Because Plato had attacked the poets as morally subversive, much effort had been expended to extract acceptable moral advice from the texts: Plutarch’s essays, On the Education of Children and How the Young should Study Poetry,14 demonstrate how text was critically weighed against text, how ethical instruction was found in tales and myths, and how the inextricable mixture of good and bad in poetry was taken to be true to life and therefore useful for exercising moral discrimination. The intention of the author was assumed to be the production of a moral response. Most interpretation was anachronistic to the extent that there was little awareness of any possible distinction between authorial intention and the interpreter’s moral discernment. This is how Augustine came to insist that the moral intent of scripture lies in the double dominical command, to love God and love one’s neighbour, and all interpretative problems were to be solved by appeal to these moral criteria. It also illuminates his insistence that 11  There has been considerable debate recently about what Tyconius meant and how Augustine misreads his work. See some of the articles in Augustine and the Bible, ed. and trans. Pamela Bright (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999; translations are from the French edition, Éditions Beauchesne, 1986). 12  See Luigi Alici, “Sign and Language”; also Frederick van Fleteren, “St. Augustine.” 13  I again draw from my book, Biblical Exegesis, 81. 14  Latin text and ET: Plutarch, Moralia I, On the education of children and How the young should study poetry, trans. Frank Cole Babbitt, LCL 197 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1927).

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moral commands in scripture are to be taken literally, and the task of the Christian teacher is to sway people to action in this respect. A fundamental distinction was made by rhetoricians between subject-matter and wording.15 The first embraced the content and line of argument that resulted from the orator’s εὕρεσις (heuresis (Greek) or inventio (Latin)), words which basically mean “discovery,” but in this context have the sense of the “conception” of the whole. The latter concerned the verbal dress (vocabulary and style) in which the former was outfitted. It was important to observe the author’s choice and execution of a style appropriate or inappropriate to the subject matter. Augustine’s discussion of styles in book 4 at times betrays this background, though he hardly addresses the issue explicitly. The important point to note, however, is that this distinction could be employed as a hermeneutical device. Origen had applied this principle to explore the fundamental unity of biblical revelation, looking for the σκοπός (skopos or aim) of the Holy Spirit, which lay behind the verbal diversity, even contradictions, which appear on the surface of the biblical text.16 Augustine’s distinction between “signs” and “things” would also seem to reflect this rhetorical distinction,17 and his procedure of explicating in book 1, the “things” (res) of scripture and then turning, in books 2 and 3, to questions of language and the exegesis of scriptural forms of expression. Book 1 is about the subject matter of scripture, discerned by exploring its overall conception and intent (its heuresis or inventio), whereas the later books attend to the verbal attire. This background also explains Augustine’s attitude to authorial intent. The reader should be able to discover the thoughts and will of the authors of divine scripture (Doctr. Chr., 2.6; cf. 1.40), but he adds, “and through them to discover the will of God.” This “will of God” reaches the reader in several ways. Signs on the page may reflect the spoken utterances of the authors, and God may have directed what these human authors had to say. But human beings communicate the thoughts in their minds through language, and discord in speech, as well as in thoughts and ambitions, was humanity’s reward for impiety (Doctr. Chr., 2.4–5). So there are the problems of translation, though translation into a variety of other languages enables the worldwide dissemination of the written scriptures for the salvation of the nations. The interpreter needs keys to unlock “the will of God” from the texts, not least because of this complex process of dissemination. When discussing the interpretation of figurative signs in later additions to his work, Augustine admits (Doctr. Chr., 3.38) the possibility of multiple meanings 15 

Biblical Exegesis, 35 and 81. Biblical Exegesis, 21 ff. 17  This is recognized also by Christoph Schäublin in his article, “De doctrina christiana. A Classic of Western Culture?” in Arnold and Bright, ed., De doctrina christiana: 47–67. This article is worth reading for other aspects of Augustine’s debt to the rhetorical schools. 16 

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and suggests that one cannot necessarily determine what the writer intended. However, he accepts this possibility as long as the exegesis is in line with other passages of scripture and corresponds with the truth. The author might have foreseen the meaning attributed to the text, and certainly the Spirit of God who produced the texts through him foresaw, or even provided for, the future discernment of this interpretation. Augustine does treat “our authors” as authors, rather than as mere channels of the Holy Spirit, but then he has to attribute to them the moral intent he attributes to scripture as a whole. Once again the discussion in book 1 is vital to the rest of this work, and it is inappropriate to assimilate Augustine’s view of authorial intent to contemporary notions. We conclude, then, that Augustine passed on the knowledge, judgments, and conceptual framework of ancient culture to the following centuries because he adopted them as a matter of course and used them freely – often implicitly, and even in cases where he believed he should have distanced himself from them.18 His discussion belongs to the socio-cultural locus of ancient rhetorical criticism.

III.  Augustine and Postmodern Criticism: the reference of the text Augustine’s hermeneutics is both strange and familiar. It belongs to the world of ancient rhetorical criticism, not to postmodernism. Yet that in itself encourages comparison, for postmodern criticism has sought to reclaim rhetoric and poetics. Rhetoric and literary criticism have always been concerned with metaphor and figures of speech. But, postmodern literary criticism is distinctive in its emphasis on multiple meanings and reader-response, as well as on the performative intent of texts and the ways in which texts shape the future. For Augustine, the purpose of reading and communicating scripture was to transform lives, and he was aware of the possibility that future interpreters could extract meaning beyond what the author consciously intended. But it is Augustine’s “semiotics” that has most attracted the interest of postmodern critics. “Augustine is widely said to be the first to have integrated the theory of language – ‘fifteen centuries before De Saussure’ – into that of the sign.”19 A good case can also be made that Augustine anticipated postmodern emphasis on interpretative communities – certainly he recognized the social location of language.20

18 

Schäublin, “Classic?” 61. R. A. Markus, with reference to U. Eco and others, “Signs, Communication, and Communities in Augustine’s De doctrina christiana,” in Arnold and Bright, ed., De doctrina christiana, 97. 20  Markus, “Signs” for further discussion. 19 

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Augustine’s theory of signs was treated fully elsewhere in the journal issue where this article originally appeared.21 However, with regard to postmodernism, its most interesting aspect lies in its relationship to his recognition that different socio-linguistic communities use different languages. The existence of many forms of speech and the need for translation means that there is nothing “natural” about the linguistic sign. There is no natural connection between a word and the object to which it refers, because Greek and Latin use different words for the same object. So even “literal” language is relative. Metaphor and figures of speech render language even less direct. Augustine’s discussion in books 2 and 3 is concerned with signs as “signifiers.” It almost provokes George Steiner’s challenging question to postmodernists: “is there anything in what we say?”22 But this is also a short-sighted reading of Augustine. For it is not just words that signify; “things” may also be signifiers. And what both signify are realities – “things” or “deeds” (res or facta). Indeed, the criteria for deciding whether a sign has been interpreted rightly are found in the “things” set out in book 1. Unlike postmodern critics, Augustine cared about whether the signs found in the text are just signs, or are referential to the world outside the text. Augustine’s procedure “stipulates in advance what the terminus of the scriptural signs is and thus establishes the control in the light of which we are to interpret those signs. Augustine’s is not, then, a neutral or disinterested concern with signs and signification.”23 “Once we know what Scripture signifies, we can discern whether its locutions are figurative or not in any given case.”24 What scripture signifies is determined in advance rather than through the analysis of its complex system of signification. Augustine was not the only church Father to recognize the difficulty of expressing in human language the realities that matter.25 Gregory of Nyssa had already protested against the notion that it was possible to offer a linguistic definition of God. To define is to determine boundaries and, in the case of God, to reduce the infinite to the compass of the creaturely human mind. No language is adequate to the reality of God. Yet God chose to accommodate the divine self to the human level – in the language of scripture and in the incarnation. Ephrem the Syrian 26 has an amusing analogy to God’s accommodation: to teach a parrot to talk, one may cover one’s face with a mirror so that the parrot sees 21  See Rebecca Hardon Weaver, “Reading the Signs. Guidance for the Pilgrim Community,” Interpretation 58 (2004): 28–41. 22 Steiner, Real Presences. 23  William S. Babcock, “Caritas and Signification” in Arnold and Bright, ed., De doctrina christiana, 147. 24  Babcock, “Caritas,” 155. 25  For the points made in this paragraph, see further Biblical Exegesis, 140–152. 26  Hymn 31: 6–7, On Faith. Syriac text: Des heiligen Ephraem des Syrers Hymnen de Fide, ed. E. Beck, CSCO 154–155 (Leeven: Peeters, 1955).

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the reflection and imagines it is communicating with one of its own kind. For Ephrem, the process of divine self-revelation takes place primarily in the incarnation but is paralleled by God’s “incarnation in language,” in the types and symbols present in nature as well as in scripture. God clothes the divine self in “our metaphors.” Thus theology relativizes language. Most important for Augustine was the fact that theology relativizes the self. Augustine takes for granted a reader’s response as correct or incorrect as long as it conforms to the double dominical command: does this reading bring about love of God and love of neighbour? The whole point of scripture is the conversion of human souls.27 We mortals no longer make judgments about truth and meaning; rather, the truth and meaning of God judges us and transforms us. Such a standpoint could hardly be entertained by postmodern criticism. The postmodern era has challenged the claim to a neutral, objective stance, and asserted that all is relative – thus allowing no place for the possibility of truth, least of all a truth beyond us, a truth that relativizes us. Postmodernity reduces us to “playing” with the text. Such a stance would be inconceivable to Augustine, who clearly viewed scripture as the means of God’s communication, even despite the sometimes difficult and complex process of accessing it. He thought that the “light-minded” reader would mistake the meaning, or not even be able to guess at a wrong meaning, since the fog that some biblical passages are wrapped in is so dense (Doctr. Chr., 2.7). Divine providence is found in even the scriptural conundrums. Their purpose is not just to save the intelligence from boredom but also to break the reader’s pride with hard labour. “He explained that the labor of puzzling out the meaning of a difficult passage brings readers to acknowledge their intellectual limitations and prepares them to submit to divine authority.”28 It is not just over issues of knowledge and truth that Augustine would part company with postmodern criticism. He would also have difficulty with its moral relativism, even though he accepts the fact that “right conduct,” like speech, is subject to convention. People judge the deeds of others according to the customs of their own society (Doctr. Chr., 3.15), he insisted, and we should be careful to take account of place, time and person in deciding whether the patriarchs’ polygamy, for example, is a problem that requires figurative interpretation (Doctr. Chr., 3.19). He thus admits moral relativism. But, in the end, he argues that there is absolute right or justice, appealing to the golden rule: do to others what you would have them do to you. This maxim, he suggests, can suffer no variation through diversity of national customs (Doctr. Chr., 3.22). Thus Augustine adopted the moral scepticism of the ancient academics, 29 but in 27  J. Patout Burns, “Delighting the Spirit: Augustine’s Practice of Figurative Interpretation,” in Arnold and Bright, ed., De doctrina christiana: 182–194. 28  J. Patout Burns, “Delighting,” 185. 29  Schäublin, “Classic?”

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the end thought they went too far. He appealed to the fundamental content of scripture: the “things” of scripture are love of God and love of neighbour. These are absolutes for Augustine. Postmoderns, like the academic-sceptics of antiquity, have no absolutes. For Augustine, the whole purpose of scripture is to move those who read it to conversion, which happens through the breaking of pride and through progress towards loving God for God’s sake, enjoying (not using) God. Humility is demonstrated in the act of Wisdom becoming human in Christ, and this kenosis is replicated in the reader of scripture who interprets its meaning correctly. “The one message of the divine rhetorician remains constant,” whatever the “hermeneutical evasions of readers.”30 “Scripture teaches nothing but charity, nor condemns anything except cupidity, and in this way shapes human life” (Doctr. Chr., 3.15). The “things” of scripture matter. Augustine must be rescued from postmodern critics who think otherwise.

30  David Dawson, “Sign, Allegory, and the Motions of the Soul,” in Arnold and Bright, ed., De doctrina christiana, 134. The ensuing quotation is given in the form quoted by Dawson.

Chapter 20

Books and their “aura”: the functions of written texts in Judaism, Paganism and Christianity during the First Centuries CE* Just occasionally in a lifetime of scholarship there occur memorable moments of illumination. By way of introduction to this paper, I wish to share three such moments, each significant for my understanding of the issues surrounding scriptural authority in developing Christianity. Possibly the most significant was an observation made in a seminar, rather casually, by a Jewish colleague.1 He noted that the act of processing the Torah scrolls around the synagogue was analogous to the way in which an idol was processed at pagan festivals. Reflection on that remark, of course, leads to other observations: such pagan ceremonial would appear to be the precursor of other rituals, such as Southern European festivals in which images of the Virgin are processed, or the processing and incensing of the Gospel prior to its reading in Catholic rites, though that could have come about more indirectly via synagogue practice. Be that as it may, what we should consider here is the potential implications for Judaism within the Greco-Roman environment. We may be fairly confident, I think, that this practice goes back to that period, given the fact that Judaism has also conserved the practice of ceremonial reading from scrolls, even though rolls gave way to codices a millennium and a half ago. Altogether we may conclude, I think, that the practice of processing the scrolls implies that the Word of God in scripture was, consciously or unconsciously, judged the equivalent in Judaism to the representation of the divine in images in other traditions, and so given the same ritual honour. It is that point we should keep in focus. Another memorable moment came somewhat earlier with the impact of reading an old classic, Edwin Hatch’s late nineteenth-century work, The Influence *  Originally published in Religious Identity and the Problem of Historical Foundation: The Foundational Character of Authoritative Sources in the History of Christianity and Judaism, ed. Judith Frishman, Willemien Otten, and Gerard Rouwhorst, Jewish and Christian Perspectives Series (Leiden: Brill, 2004): 535–552. 1  This was Dr Martin Goodman, now of the University of Oxford. I may inadvertently have misrepresented his remark, and take full responsibility while acknowledging the source of this observation.

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of Greek Ideas on Christianity.2 I don’t think he actually used the word “aura,” but it’s that word which has summed up the point in my memory. What he insists upon is the respect that ancient written texts received, precisely because they seemed to defy mortality. Miraculously, even though no longer present, the absent authors of the past could still speak and their wisdom was available for subsequent generations. When you couple with that the tendencies in Rome’s classical period to feel that novelty was suspect and ancient tradition held the key to truth, you can see how this would conspire to enhance the importance of ancient classics passed down over generations and conserved in written form. I would identify as a third important moment my discovery of what I will call the conundrum of early Christian preference for the codex.3 The fact seems to be that our earliest surviving remnants of early Christian texts came from codices, that is, they are papyri which were folded to make pages of a primitive book of the kind we know, not pasted together into the standard format for literary texts, namely the scroll. Now the extraordinary thing is that Christian texts show this preference from the beginning, indeed, a century or more earlier than the switch took place for other texts – and as we have noted, for the Jewish scriptures the switch never took place in the context of ritual reading of scripture in the synagogue. The conundrum lies in the question why, and most text-critical scholars have focused on that issue, coming up with various theories. It was certainly handier for reference and for carriage, and the early collection of testimonies may have contributed to the preference. There may have been significant exemplars, such as an early collection of apostolic letters or a gospel, which stimulated this.4 But for my purposes the point lies not so much in the search for explanation as in the extraordinary implications of this. True it’s partly about social setting: the early Christians were not on the whole members of the literary élite, and codices were the standard format for notebooks and business records. But it also bespeaks an attitude diametrically opposed to that in synagogues – books have lost their “aura” and their sacredness and have been reduced to highly practical aids to activities. Their principal function is witness to Christ. This being the case the interesting question is how they regained status

2 This work was republished in 1957 as a Harper Torchbook (New York: Harper and Brothers); Hatch’s Hibbert Lectures of 1888 were edited from the unfinished manuscript by A. M. Fairbairn and published posthumously by Williams and Norgate, London. 3  C. H. Roberts, “The Codex,” Proceedings of the British Academy 40 (1954): 169–204; (with T. H. Skeat), The Birth of the Codex (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983); “Books in the Greco-Roman world and in the New Testament,” in The Cambridge History of the Bible, vol.  1, ed. P. R. Ackroyd and C. F. Evans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970): 48–66. 4  Roberts changed his mind several times; for further discussion now see Harry Y. Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church. A history of early Christian texts (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995).

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and whether they really became scriptural canon in a way comparable with the Jewish scriptures. Each of these three moments makes a point about the authoritative status of written texts in Judaism, Paganism and Christianity during the first centuries CE. They also made me realize that issues of canon and scriptural authority in the crucial period when the concept of “the Bible” emerged cannot be addressed without paying attention to the production and use of books at the time. And that question immediately raises further issues about circulation, literacy, and the social and cultural functions of books, not to mention letters, which were clearly the predominant early Christian genre. It’s all too easy for even the most respected scholars to harbour unquestioned assumptions on the basis of their own experience, and most easily dominant have been those presuppositions associated with their own reading and writing practice – this despite an awareness of the fact that the invention of printing lies between now and then. One example of such “jumping to conclusions” will illustrate my point. Deissmann, with that classic Light from the Ancient East, persuaded more than one generation of scholars that Paul’s letters were like the casual or circumstantial correspondence that had turned up among papyrus finds in Egypt, and they were never meant for publication.5 But what did publication mean? Will his distinction between literary and non-literary letters really hold? Might it not be more likely, as Harry Gamble has argued, that Paul himself ensured that his letters were copied, circulated, collected and passed around the networks of churches he’d established? 6 Be that as it may, it is clearly important, if we are to understand how the scriptures became authoritative in Christianity, to trace the similarities and differences between the functions, status, use and interpretation of books in different groups in the formative period. Effectively we have already distinguished three key groupings, the three ways of Paganism (or Hellenism as the Greek term would have it), Judaism and Christianity.7 I shall use the Greek form of each term in order to remind us that we are talking of what I might call ethnic and cultural blocks rather than religions. I will take each in turn.

I.  Ἑλληνισμός – Hellenismos To understand religion in the ancient world is a hard task, simply because Christianity has so shifted and shaped our perceptions of what a religion is that it is hard to interpret what material we have, saturated as it is with assumptions we 5 Deissmann,

Light. Books and Readers. 7  In what follows I shall be briefly re-presenting some of the results of research done for my book, Biblical Exegesis; further discussion and documentation will be found there. 6 Gamble,

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do not share. 8 But let me hazard a sketch. What constituted religion across the Roman Empire was a plethora of traditional local practices, in the home and family, in clubs and associations, in the civic arena, at regional holy sites, all deeply embedded in ancient ethnic customs, yet embraced within the Roman imperial framework. Εὐσέβεια (eusebeia) or pietas meant the respect for the gods, ancestors, parents, etc., which was embodied in such practices; superstition was over-doing it by embracing many untraditional practices from foreign neighbours as a kind of insurance policy. Magic and oriental mysteries had a certain attraction, but were also treated with suspicion. There was no official doctrine or dogma, no belief system or creed, no books exclusively containing religious truth and used in religious ceremonies. So you could privately think what you liked as long as you carried out the appropriate duties, and were not seen to undermine the important social cement and moral sanction such practices helped to sustain.9 Books of philosophy or revelation might contain religious material but circulated through networks or schools, not religious organisations. Collections of oracles were in circulation – clearly they had a religious origin, but they were in no sense “official” or particularly associated with religious practices or institutions. Books belonged to contexts other than religion. The élite certainly had libraries and owned books. They were valuable cultural objects, and literary circles met to read and discuss, exchange texts for copying, and share their own compositions.10 All reading was aloud, even private reading; Ambrose caused consternation by reading to himself with only his lips moving and no sound! All written texts were an “inscription of the spoken word”; 11 letters made an absent person present,12 and public reading was essentially a performance of the text, as well as the way of publication. With no printing, books simply circulated through private copying and were subject to corruption, deliberate or not – the author having little control over his composition. There was a book trade, but the significance of it can easily be over-estimated, as can the level of literacy.13 The principal context in which books were used was education.14 Here there was a “canon” of classics, which constituted the core of the curriculum and 8  I owe this remark to my colleague, Ken Dowden, of the Classics Dept. in the University of Birmingham. 9 Cicero, Nat d., is the classic exposition of this view, Latin text and ET: De Natura Deorum, trans. H. Rackham, LCL 268 (London: Heinemann and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1933). 10  See discussions in works listed above, note 3, and Gamble, Books and Readers. 11 Gamble, Books and Readers, 204. 12 Stowers, Letter Writing. 13 Gamble, Books and Readers; cf. William V. Harris, Ancient Literacy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989). 14  The classic study of ancient education is H. -I. Marrou, L’histoire de l’éducation dans l’antiquité (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1948); ET George Lamb (New York: Sheed and Ward,

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carried the culture. The basic patterns of education lasted over centuries, forged among the Greeks, adopted by the Romans, passed down to the nineteenth century even, via the medieval University. Literature was at the heart of the enterprise. First with the grammaticus the classics were used as a basis for learning to read and understand texts whose language was somewhat removed from the everyday, often archaic and written without word division or punctuation – so that the very act of reading, always aloud, was an act of interpretation. There would be much explanatory comment as well as discussion about how to con­ iffered. strue the text, or even which was the correct reading where manuscripts d Through the commentary on allusions to events in history or myth, youngsters were initiated into the traditional stories of the culture, the legends of heroes, the exploits of the gods. Since philosophy, notably Plato, had offered a moral critique of the gods as depicted in mythology, school exegesis developed ways of using these stories as moral exemplars, or of neutralising their obvious meaning so as to derive moral exhortation from them. Plutarch provides us with telling discussions of the issues surrounding the moral use of the traditional literary canon for educating the young.15 The student progressed from the grammaticus to the rhetor and learned composition and declamation, literature still providing the core of the curriculum, being a source of rhetorical quotation and allusion as well as providing exemplars and imaginary cases or situations to address. Some would eventually progress further to the philosopher, and increasingly here too the appeal was to texts from the past, carefully reinterpreted for a new situation but treated as containing perennial wisdom. Eventually Homer joined Plato as the source for Neoplatonists of philosophical theology as well as of physics, metaphysics and ethics.16 By the turn of the eras it was already widely held that the wisdom of the ancients was expressed in symbol and allegory. The job of interpretation was subtle and demanding. Hatch’s observations about written texts capture the cultural significance they had in the Greco-Roman world. I now quote his own description of the matter: The fact that certain signs, of little or no meaning in themselves, could communicate what a man felt or thought, not only to the generation of his fellows, but also to the generations that came afterwards, threw a kind of glamour over written words…. In the case of the ancient poets, especially Homer, this glamour of written words was accompanied, and perhaps preceded by two other feelings. The one was the reverence for antiquity. The 1956); see Young, “Rhetorical Schools,” and Young, Biblical Exegesis. An important source is Quintilian, Orator’s Education. 15 Plutarch, Education of children and How the young should study poetry. 16  Robert Lamberton, Homer the Theologian. Neoplatonist Allegorical Reading and the Growth of the Epic Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986).

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voice of the past … came from the age of the heroes who had become divinities…. The other was the belief in inspiration. With the glamour of writing was blended the glamour of rhythm and melody. When the gods spoke they spoke in verse. The poets sang under the impulse of a divine enthusiasm…. The combination of these three feelings … tended to give the writings of the ancient poets a unique value. It lifted them above the limitations of place and time and circumstance. The verses of Homer were not simply the utterances of a particular person with a particular meaning for a particular time. They had a universal validity. They were the voice of an undying wisdom.17

Herein lay the authority of books. They constituted the legacy of inspired seers. They provided illumination and wisdom. All truth could be found, with the right skilled exegetical methods, in Homer or in Plato. Educated people began to assume that everything to do with religion was symbolic, and all religious practices were mysteries pointing beyond themselves, in the same way as mythology and literature told stories, which darkly conveyed deeper truths.18 It was a relatively short step for books to become magic objects from which omens might be sought: both Homer and Virgil would be opened at random to find the answer to a personal dilemma. Bibliomancy joined other ways of seeking insight into fate.19

II.  Ἰουδαϊσμός – Ioudaismos Over the centuries Egyptian gods, Greek gods and Roman gods had been assimilated to one another, along with practices associated with their worship. Syncretism was a positive unifying movement, encouraged by a philosophy which tended to think of the divine as something single to which the pluralism of religious practices pointed in different ways. The trouble with Ἰουδαϊσμός was its exclusivity and refusal to join in this ecumenical movement. Reinforced by their history, loyal Jews, as distinct from assimilating Jews, refused to have any truck with anything that implied apostasy from the one true God, and they cherished their distinct identity through adherence to the Torah and their badge of circumcision.20 Some in the Hellenistic world respected them.21 They were at times regarded as philosophers with a commitment to monotheism and morality. Officially 17 Hatch,

Influence, 50–52. various essays on religious themes again provide good examples: Moralia V, On Isis and Osiris et al., trans. Frank Cole Babbitt, LCL 306 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936). 19 Gamble, Books and Readers, 240. 20  For an overview, see Lee I. Levine, Judaism and Hellenism in Antiquity (Peabody, MA: Hendriksen, 1998); a potentially large bibliography includes the classic by Emil Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, new ed., ed. Geza Vermes, Fergus Millar, and Matthew Black (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1979). 21  Aristotle is the most frequently cited case. 18  Plutarch’s

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they were accepted as an ethnic group with particular ancient practices, which under Roman law had as much right to exist and preserve their traditions as any other, and this was reinforced by the fact that there was an old treaty between Rome and the Maccabees when they formed an alliance against the Syrian Hellenistic dynasty.22 But the diaspora of Jewish communities in the cities of the Mediterranean seaboard meant that they lived alongside citizens who found their refusal to assimilate disturbing. Especially in Alexandria, but by no means exclusively, Jews found themselves faced with anti-Semitism and subject to riot and pogrom.23 Until the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE Jewish religious rites were comparable with those of others: there was a Temple at which sacrifices took place and where people gathered for festivals, undertaking pilgrimage to do so. But there being only the one Temple in Jerusalem, cultural and religious life for Jews largely revolved around the local synagogue.24 Here, apart from prayer, typical religious practices were less evident than the reading of books. Indeed, the community gathering place doubled as school and worship centre, and books had a key role in both activities. It would appear that literacy was much wider among the Jewish people, and both Philo and Josephus compare synagogues to schools. Josephus indicates that the weekly gathering was for “the learning of our customs and Law.”25 Thus books preserved the traditions of Jewish culture, as they did for Hellenism. But the holy writings were taken to contain the essentials of traditional Jewish religion, thus having a religious role they lacked in Hellenism. The actual practice of sacrifice was replaced by reading about it, and finding ways of spiritualising it in fasting, prayer and meditation.26 Indeed, the Torah constituted the revelation, mediation and teaching of their God, and its precepts were to be practised. So accuracy in reading and reproduction was vital: where a Greco-Roman reader might perform from memory, the ritual reading of Torah seems always to have been with the eyes on the text, and there was tight internal control over its wording and production – this was never done by dictation, always by meticulous copying from a master-roll.27 To study Torah was an act of piety; to practise its precepts to obey God. Translating “Torah” into Greek as νομός (nomos – law) carried implications: it meant Moses was parallel to Solon, the legendary Athenian Law-giver, providing a constitution and legal code for his people. But for Jews Torah always meant more than that. In their prayer-houses, the ritual reading of scripture enabled the hearing of God’s 22 Schürer,

History, 1:171–172. H. I. Bell, Jews and Christians in Egypt (London: British Museum, 1924). 24  The bibliography on the synagogue is vast. There is useful material and bibliography in Schürer, History, vol.  2, and L. I. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000). 25 Gamble, Books and Readers, 7 and 191, quoting Josephus, Ant., 16.43. 26  See Young, Sacrificial Ideas. 27 Gamble, Books and Readers, 78. 23 

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Word in a direct way. So, as we’ve already noted, the scrolls themselves acquired “aura” – indeed, sacredness – within the worship of the synagogues; and eventually the moveable chest of books was replaced by a permanent architectural feature for housing the scrolls, known as the “ark of holiness.”28 Yet inevitably interpretation was required. In many of the synagogue schools, the young would learn to read the unpointed Hebrew text, an act that in itself carried the traditional construal of the text as well as the customary chant. In the synagogue service, an interpretative Targum would be offered, possibly a sermon commentary. In the context of the Hellenistic world, however, it would appear that the Greek version of the scriptures was often alone read. Besides, Jewish scholars learned from the scholarly traditions of Hellenism. For the ­Alexandrian Philo this is obvious, but those in the rabbinic tradition seem also to have developed their methods under Hellenistic influence. The extent to which that is true is debated. With respect to the middot (the exegetical rules which guided Jewish exegetical traditions), Daube is said 29 to have “convincingly argued that all these rules reflect the logic and methods of Hellenistic grammar and forensic rhetoric.”30 Daube’s position is indeed somewhat more extreme than that of Lieberman,31 but there is a sense in which they reached a similar nuanced position: Jewish interpretation had ancient traditional roots, but responded to the Hellenistic environment by systematizing these traditions in a rationalistic way. But this influence was not just in rules of exegesis: Lieberman demonstrates remarkable parallels in the activity of book production and the circulation of texts, with scribes and Alexandrian scholars developing similar systems of critical marks. He also shows how the techniques of haggadah parallel Hellenistic works concerned with the interpretation of dreams: games like Gematria, whereby the numeric value of letters were computed to derive symbolic meanings, and other tricks for interpreting riddles, were, he suggests, very ancient, but systematized under the influence of the Greeks. Symbolism and parable were likewise features of Jewish interpretation. Jewish apologists presented their literature as parallel to that of the Greeks, with similar genres: law-books, history, poetry, collections of oracles, books of wisdom and philosophy. Interpreters like Philo brought the techniques of the Hellenistic schools to bear on Jewish literature, just as philosophers did with Homer. And yet there was always an extra dimension. Torah, with its halakhic interpretation, shaped the lives of God’s people, and lay at the heart of their religious practices and traditions, in ways that were not paralleled in Hellenism. 28 Gamble,

Books and Readers, 190–191. K. Froehlich, Biblical Interpretation in the Early Church (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), 4. 30  David Daube, “Rabbinic Methods of Interpretation and Hellenistic Rhetoric,” Hebrew Union College Annual 22 (1949): 239–264. 31  Saul Lieberman, Hellenism in Jewish Palestine (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1950). 29 

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Rabbis might debate interpretation, and appeal to the oral Torah could override the books, but it remains the case that books had acquired in Judaism an authority and a sacred “aura” that transcends the general “aura” of respect accorded them in the Greco-Roman world.

III.  Χριστιανισμός – Christianismos The earliest Christians were Jews. We might expect that they were literate, but not necessarily that they possessed copies of the scriptures – though they would certainly be used to hearing and reading them in the synagogues. We would expect that they would respect the scriptures in much the way just described. But Jews were a people, and as with any society, there was much pluralism within an essentially identifiable common framework. Even in Palestine, some were more Hellenised than others; and there were different sects and parties, which Josephus could parallel with the different philosophical schools in Hellenism. The earliest Christians were a new group, which clearly interpreted the scriptures as largely a collection of prophesies and oracles, which they claimed had been fulfilled in Christ. But they also argued over the implications of this. If Acts presents the arguments as a relatively peaceful debate, resolved by compromise, the Pauline Epistles, especially Galatians, suggest it was not so easy as that! The situation was no mere theoretical debate: it centred on the immediate and practical question whether non-Jews had to become Jews in order fully to join the Jesus movement – in other words be circumcised and keep Torah. I need not rehearse what all theological students must have grappled with in their New Testament study. But I would draw your attention to the implications. The debate was about books and their interpretation. Books had authority to determine how people lived, what practices they adopted. Fulfilment did not necessarily mean annulment. Moses was not necessarily superseded by one who fulfilled the prophecies. I once heard a Rabbi from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem argue that, when Jesus summed up the Law and the Prophets in the two famous dominical commands, he did not mean that they constituted the whole of the Law and made the rest irrelevant – like other Rabbis producing such a summary, he meant the whole Law remained valid; whereas Paul, using the same summary in Romans, did mean that these new commandments superseded the Torah. There has, of course, been a major debate triggered by E. P. Sanders as to the exact implication of Paul’s arguments.32 But whatever the conclusion, the Paul32 Sanders, Palestinian Judaism; cf. J.  D. G. Dunn, Jesus, Paul and the Law (London: SPCK, 1990); and Dunn, Parting of the Ways.

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ine Epistles are a testimony to the authority of books and the crucial importance of their interpretation. His use of proof-texts is clear as the issues are argued out (Galatians, Romans); his allusions to scripture are all-pervasive and subtle in those epistles which are less directly argumentative (e.g. the Corinthian correspondence).33 He assumes that non-Jewish readers are persuadable with a rhetoric grounded in this “foreign” literature. The authority of Torah as God’s revelation is not questioned; rather a new key to understanding that revelation is advanced, namely Christ. So what has happened a century later? Jews generally have rejected this novel form of their tradition. The majority of Christians are non-Jewish converts. This in itself probably means a lower level of literacy, and raises questions about the availability of the scriptures in full, official copies. The Jewish scriptures have in practice become a collection of oracles pointing to Christ. Key prooftexts appear to have been abstracted from the scriptures and passed down in testimony-books, presented in notebooks or codices, listed out of context with their Christian fulfilment implicit or explicit, and apparently subjected to the vagaries of memory and casual translation, so that textually they do not exactly conform to the LXX or any other known version. This conclusion derives from close study of the text of Justin Martyr’s quotations. Skarsaune found two forms of text in Justin’s work, both of which, since he makes comments on the basis of each, must be original to his texts rather than introduced by copyists.34 Generally speaking the same proof-texts are used in the Apology and in the Dialogue with Trypho, but in the latter work they are quoted at greater length and, unlike in the former, in the LXX version. The christological meaning Justin takes for granted, whichever version he quotes, and in the Dialogue, he “often neglects discrepancies between his inherited exegesis and the LXX text he quotes. But sometimes he tries to adjust his interpretation to the LXX text.”35 So Skarsaune argues that Justin must have received his testimonies in a text-form traditional to Christianity, along with the christo­ logical interpretation of each; and, interestingly, Justin appears to have believed this to be the LXX, but in fact it was not. When Justin quotes longer versions, which do correspond with the LXX, he treats these texts as “Jewish.” This full text Justin got from a scroll, Skarsaune suggests, and at this date such scroll texts originated from Jews. So Justin suspected “hebraising” recensions. The source of the variant text, to which Justin accords greater authority, would appear to have been one or more testimony-books, to which the legend concerning the origin of the LXX , which we know from the Letter to Aristeas, had been at33  See my chapter in Meaning and Truth in 2 Corinthians, reproduced as ch.  14 in this volume. 34 Skarsaune, Proof. 35 Skarsaune, Proof, 90.

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tached. The supposition is that Justin knew as authoritative a codex or codices containing Christianising Targums. It’s important to note the connection here with my earlier observations about Christian use of the codex rather than the scroll. “Aura” is associated for Christians with Christ. Books have a secondary “aura” insofar as they point to Christ. Christ has become God’s revelation, and this affects the way the Law and the Prophets are received. Yet in the mid-second century, the Jewish scriptures, directly or indirectly received, remain the authoritative books for the Christian communities; there are as yet no others. There is then a curious endorsement here of the old tag that Christians constituted a “third race.”36 Sharing characteristics with the post-Temple Jewish community, Christians ceased to be recognizable as practising a religion. They had no temples or sacrifice, and they refused conformity with traditional local customs on the grounds that they were idolatrous. It is clear from their writings that the Apologists had to meet the charge of atheism; they attempt to turn it aside, and plead for their recognition as a particular ἔθνος (ethnos – people), with traditional religious practices like everyone else.37 But they can only do this by claiming to be the true fulfilment of Judaism, which Jews deny.38 Their attitude to books is at this stage indicative of their distinctiveness with respect to both Ἑλληνισμός and Ἰουδαϊσμός: books are key to their religious culture, like Judaism, unlike Hellenism, but books have not exactly retained their sacred “aura” – it’s all more ambiguous. As Ignatius put it earlier in the century: Certain people declared in my hearing, “Unless I can find a thing in our ancient records, I refuse to believe it in the Gospel”; and when I assured them that it is indeed in the ancient scriptures, they retorted, “That has got to be proved.” But for my part, my records are Jesus Christ; for me the sacrosanct records are His cross and death and resurrection, and the faith that comes through Him. And it is by these, and by the help of your prayers, that I am hoping to be justified.39

The phrase translated “sacrosanct records” (τὰ ἄθικτα ἀρχεῖα – ta athikta archeia) is a remarkable echo of the rabbinic definition of sacred books as those which “defile the hands.” Clearly Ignatius is referring to the written scriptures of the Jews when he speaks of the “ancient records.” So the gospel, long before written gospels were current, has for Ignatius superseded the scriptures. In fact, Jesus Christ constitutes the scriptures. Perhaps it is not surprising that Papias pre36  The classic study is found in Adolf Harnack, The Mission and Expansion of Christianity, trans. James Moffatt (London: Williams and Norgate, 1908), 1:180. 37 Athenagoras, Leg., is perhaps the clearest example, the whole work being structured around this plea. 38 Justin, Dial., is probably best understood as an attempt to establish this apologetic argument. See my discussion in “Greek Apologists of the Second Century,” in Apologetics in the Roman Empire. Pagans, Jews and Christians, ed. Mark Edwards, Martin Goodman, and Simon Price (Oxford: Clarendon, 1999). 39 Ignatius, Phld., 8.

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ferred the “living voice” to things out of books.40 For the word written and, no doubt, read, one way or another in Christian assemblies, had become written testimony which simply confirmed the oral testimony. It could be recorded in notebooks, for easy reference; it could be carried and concealed if necessary. It is the key to Christ. Yet clearly the ancient scriptures have been relativized. Nevertheless, as is well known, Justin provides evidence that at their gatherings Christians read from “the memoirs of the apostles” or “the writings of the prophets” (in whatever form these came to him), and for Justin, the argument from prophecy was the most convincing proof of Christianity. Around the same time, however, Marcion notoriously raised serious questions about the place of the Jewish scriptures in Christian tradition and, apparently, elevated versions of key Christian writings (the Pauline Epistles and the Lucan Gospel) to scriptural status in their stead. Almost certainly this was a key factor in stimulating serious development of a canon of scriptures within the Christian tradition. Maybe it was not the only one: 41 maybe Montanism, with its claims to a “new prophecy” and new outpouring of the Spirit, with new oracles, created a need to establish an authoritative record of the historic revelation; maybe a multiplication of new gospels and Acts claiming to derive from the apostles necessitated the establishment of a list of those that were used most widely as ancient and authentic. Time was in any case passing, and the “living voice” of the apostles was receding. By the end of the second century Irenaeus and others are producing canonical lists, which show that churches are using the Law and the Prophets, as well as the Psalms and other texts which eventually make up the LXX canon, as an Old Testament, with a New Testament comprising Gospel and Apostle – Gospel being the four canonical Gospels and Apostle including a collection of Pauline Epistles. This canon constitutes the books read at Christian gatherings for worship. The question is how early was the reading of scripture established as essential to Christian gatherings for worship. Most of our explicit evidence comes from the second century; the earliest reference is 1 Timothy 4:13. But, as Gamble has argued, the implicit evidence is considerable.42 The Pauline communities are presumed to have knowledge of the scriptures. These communities grew up, it would seem, in the shadow of the synagogue, and it is most likely they followed synagogue practices. The fact that by the mid-second century prayer, scripture-­ reading and homily are established as part of the Christian liturgy suggests synagogue influence, which almost certainly came with the initial converts.43 It seems also that Paul expected his letters to be read in a liturgical setting. As we 40 Eusebius,

Hist eccl., 3.39. von Campenhausen, The Formation of the Christian Bible, trans. J. A. Baker (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1972). 42 Gamble, Books and Readers, 211 ff. 43  See also James Tunstead Burtchaell, From Synagogue to Church. Public Services and 41 Hans

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have seen, access to whole texts may not always have been easy, but reading texts seems nevertheless to have been central from the beginning, whether at a eucharistic gathering or on another occasion modelled on synagogue practice. The later development of the canon flows from this public reading, and public reading would appear to be the source from which authority was increasingly attributed to books in the Christian community. Christian biblical scholarship begins to flower in the following century, notably with Origen in Alexandria, a centre of both Greek and Jewish scholarship.44 Now full texts are being used and versions compared (N.B. the Hexapla). Commentaries begin to be produced. Exegetical techniques are borrowed from Greeks and Jews. Jewish attitudes to the text are being expressed – the author of the scriptures is God the Holy Spirit, and so they cannot err. If there seem to be contradictions, one must search for the Holy Spirit’s intent. Problems are there to stimulate a search for deeper meanings. Symbolism and allegory become rife. But still the core Christian approach to what are now the Old Testament texts remains the same. The authority of the books lies in their testimony to Christ, the fact that they point to Christ – in many and various ways they prophesy Christ – the subject of these texts is Christ, and the search for Christ in every detail becomes the principal mode of exegesis. From this kind of focus comes the characteristic Christian approach to the writings they had taken over from the Jewish tradition, namely “typology.” There has been a debate in twentieth-century scholarship about the nature and source of typology, but the conclusions I have reached provide an excellent illustration of the major points of this paper.45 In the first place there clearly is Jewish precedent for typology. Fishbane has demonstrated the importance of inner biblical typologies, and many narrative features in the Gospels, as well as allusions found in other early Christian texts, imply typological associations with biblical narratives.46 The assumption is that there are prefigurations of eschatological events in stories from the past – Jesus provides manna in the wilderness, baptism is a kind of Red Sea crossing, the Passover lamb prefigures the sacrificial death of Christ, Moses’s raised arms enabled victory over Amalek and Christians will conquer the devil through the arms of Christ raised on the cross. This kind of prophetic typology is not paralleled in Hellenistic exegesis. Yet the notion that moral types were provided by the characters in literature was deeply engrained in the exegesis practised in the rhetorical schools. Christian typological exegesis owes much to both Jewish and Hellenistic precedents. Not only Offices in the Earliest Christian Communities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 44  The bibliography on Origen is vast. For the points made here see my discussion in Biblical Exegesis. 45  Apart from the discussions in Biblical Exegesis, see Young, “Typology.” 46 Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation.

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is Christ typified in the narratives of the Old Testament, but so also is the way of life expected of Christians. The church becomes the new Israel. The whole of the new dispensation can be read out of the sacred texts Christians have taken over from their Jewish origins. So we may need to conclude that in the first century or so of the Christian movement books had a rather ambiguous place. Christian use of the codex suggests a rather pragmatic approach, a reduction in sacred “aura” and authority when compared with Judaism; and the majority of Gentile converts had no obligations to the Torah. Yet for all kinds of reasons, cultural and historical pressures meant the reinstatement of books at the heart of the church’s life. All along there were probably readings from books at Christian assemblies, accompanied by interpretation, as in the synagogue. It became vital to agree on the approved list of authoritative texts to be used for that purpose, to distinguish between the foundation documents, we might say, and the increasing number of documents masquerading as such, not least so as to provide criteria for testing novel interpretations or disturbing new prophecies. Yet the prime authority lay, not inherently in the texts, but in Christ, and so in the role of the authorized list as key to Christ. The canon of scriptural texts, which first appears listed in its generally accepted form in the writings of Athanasius in the fourth century, included the LXX version of the Law and the Prophets, with a range of other writings, including those known since the Reformation as the Apocrypha, as well as those accepted in the so-called New Testament. This canon was established by the Christian church. It was not simply inherited from the Jews with some Christian writings added. Contemporaneously the Rabbis were listing authorized books for the Jewish tradition, and it was only at the Reformation that comparison with the Hebrew Bible of the synagogue reduced the canonical status of those texts often now treated as intertestamental. For the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic traditions, these so-called deutero-canonical books remain fully canonical. By the fourth century all these scriptural texts were interpreted by methods borrowed from both Judaism and Hellenism, and they had authority in ways also borrowed from both traditions. We will conclude by attempting to list the functions of books in the developed Christianity of the fourth and fifth centuries, and so sense again wherein their authority lay. (1) Scripture testified to the overarching plan of God, revealed through prophecy and fulfilment, the movement from Old to New Testament, and on to Final Judgment. (2) Scripture revealed God’s will: maybe Christian believers did not have to follow Jewish Torah, but from the beginning the way of life expected of Christians was spelled out in paraenetic collages of sayings and instruction. The epistles, the Apostolic Fathers and other texts show that Christ was presented as a

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moral educator, as a teacher of wisdom, as revealing the way which was God’s will. Scriptural sayings provided practical ethics. (3) Scripture provided the “constitution” of the church – its foundational documents. A work like the Apostolic Constitutions shows not only how scriptural texts were exploited to build up a picture of what the apostles intended, but also how continuity with what had been outlined in scripture was developed into institutional norms. This applied to governance and ministerial offices, to liturgical practices, and to the moral life of individual believers. (4) Scripture was the revelation of God in Christ. So it was the source of doctrine. As beliefs were argued about, different proposals were tested against scripture. Proof-text was ranged against proof-text. The overarching intent (σκοπός – skopos) or mind (διάνοια – dianoia) of scripture was ranged against particular proof-texts. The criteria for determining the truth revealed in Christ were provided by scripture. It is important not to assume that this implies a literal reading of scripture. Christians were acting like philosophers in finding truth in revered texts by interpretation, often by inference or by finding deeper meaning through symbol. (5) Most significantly, the reading of scripture lay at the heart of liturgy, and in this context, homilies distilled from the texts the dogmatic, moral, ecclesiastical meaning which was authoritative. This context gave sacred authority to such interpretation. The books themselves increasingly acquired the sacred “aura” they had in the synagogue. The Gospel came to be processed with candles and incense. Scripture became a kind of “ikon” – an image mediating the reality and truth of God.

Chapter 21

Did Luke think he was writing scripture? The previous chapter should alert the reader to the fact that the title of this piece asks a question which is not straightforward: even if he did think he was writing scripture, how might scripture be conceived by this gospel-author? The only way to get an answer is to examine the external and internal evidence which provoked the question in the first place. Towards the end of the second century, we find Irenaeus in one sentence apparently paralleling the writings of the evangelists and apostles with the Law and the Prophets and treating them all as scripture.1 All were collections of texts, the Law consisting of the five books of Moses, while the Prophets included what we might call the history books as well as the Psalms, along with Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel and the Twelve; the (one) Gospel was fourfold, as Irenaeus was at pains to make clear, 2 and the Apostle included Acts with the epistles.3 In Irenaeus the material seems to be organized according to usage in the church, and in opposition to the use of other books, as well as to misreadings of the total collection according to an “hypothesis” other than the Rule of Faith. He accused his opponents of taking apart a fine mosaic depicting a king and rearranging the pieces into the portrait of a fox.4 He likened what they did with scripture to the literary conceit of using lines abstracted from Homer to create a new narrative so effective that anyone would think it was Homer, unless they knew the original plot.5 For him the plot of scripture was summed up in the Rule of Faith or Canon of Truth, a threefold confession which anticipated in many respects the later creeds, and this was the key to finding in all the scriptures consistently the portrait of Christ the King. 1 Irenaeus,

Haer., 1.3.6. I suggest that the preface to book 5 should be interpreted in the light of this earlier reference, and not as in von Campenhausen, Formation, 191. Throughout Haer. Gospels and epistles are quoted alongside Law and Prophets, and apparently included in the designation “scriptures.” Although insisting on the apostolic provenance of the Gospels (Mark being linked with Peter and Luke with Paul), the term “apostolic writings” is only used of the epistles: von Campenhausen, Formation, 206. 2 Irenaeus, Haer., 3.1.1; 3.11.8. 3  Irenaeus insists (Haer., 3.13.1 and elsewhere in book 3) on using Acts to show that there were more apostles than just Paul, just as he insists there are four Gospels not just one. He doubtless has Marcion in mind. 4 Irenaeus, Haer., 1.8.1. 5 Irenaeus, Haer., 1.9.4.

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Arranging Christian writings thus in blocks, alongside the blocks of the ancient scriptures, was to make a statement and a claim, though it is unlikely that the word διαθήκη (diathē kē – covenant or testament) was as yet applied to these collections of books. 6 A generation or so earlier we find Marcion had a Gospel and an Apostolicon.7 It seems that he had something like what we know as the Gospel of Luke and some Pauline Epistles; it was important that there was one Gospel because Paul had protested against the Galatians turning to “another gospel.” Exactly what scriptures Marcion had is not entirely clear: that has to be reconstructed from hostile reports, notably from Tertullian’s large treatise against Marcion. Both Irenaeus and Tertullian thought Marcion had expurgated the Gospel of Luke because he had a different text from their own version, but the magisterial study of Marcion recently published by Judith Lieu suggests that it is more likely that Marcion’s version was one of a variety of gospel texts circulating in the mid-second century; following David Parker, she accepts that the gospel texts were only fixed gradually, and only ever to some extent, as long as they were in manuscript form. 8 The immediate point, however, is this: that the notion of Gospel plus Apostolicon is clearly traceable before Irenaeus. Indeed, Tatian apparently not only produced one Gospel by harmonising the four, but also edited the Pauline Epistles.9 So my question is this: was the idea around, perhaps even pre-Marcion,10 that the “new covenant” should have its own books parallel to those of the “old covenant”? And did Luke, or may be the final editor of canonical Luke-Acts (let us call him “Luke” in future) set out to establish a Gospel plus Apostolicon parallel to the Law and Prophets? Is that why he put together two volumes? I suggest that there is a prima facie case that the answer might be “Yes.” After all, there is evidence that the Pauline Epistles, like John’s Gospel, were controversial in the second century,11 and some have suggested that Acts deliberately presents an alternative, more acceptable Paul, hero of the Gentile mission, as indeed do the Pastorals.12 Again, is “canonical Luke” an early attempt to produce one harmonised Gospel? The Lucan preface claims the use of sources, and New Testament criticism has identified at least the use of Mark, and perhaps Matthew, or maybe 6  Irenaeus speaks of old and new covenant alike coming from God, but seems to use the word as in the New Testament, not as a term designating books, though books are what he quotes to prove his argument that both come from the one God: Haer., 4.9.1; 4.32–33. Cf. von Campenhausen, Formation, 188 ff. 7 Lieu, Marcion. 8 Parker, Living Text. 9 Eusebius, Hist. eccl., 4.29.6; von Campenhausen, Formation, 179. 10  von Campenhausen, Formation, would deny this, making Marcion the innovator. 11  Note 2 Peter 3:16. Cf. Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Paul: Gnostic Exegesis of the Pauline Epistles (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975); D. R. MacDonald, The Legend and the Apostle: The Battle for Paul in Story and Canon (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1983). 12  E.g. C. K. Barrett, “Pauline Controversies in the Post-Pauline Period,” NTS 20.3 (1974): 229–245; Young, Theology of the Pastoral Letters.

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a Matthaean source (Q). Perhaps “Luke” intended to produce one received Gospel, followed by an Apostolicon, in other words what we know as the Acts of the Apostles. If so, he quite possibly conceived it as parallel to the Law and Prophets, and we could say that he did think he was writing scripture. This possibility probably implies that Luke-Acts, at least in more or less its canonical form, should be dated rather later than has generally been thought, though much of the material doubtless circulated earlier among the “memoirs of the apostles.”13 The notorious textual variations in the Lucan passion-narrative14 suggest continuing editorial activity as this “primitive canon” was brought together to form a fourfold Gospel, and Acts joined the epistles. The transmission of the material in the second century was clearly far from fixed, and that accords with the point made in the previous chapter that scripture was in a sense demoted, only to be recharged with significance as testimony to Christ. To write LukeActs was to contribute to exactly that process – the revalidation of books as sacred testimony, Gospel and Apostolicon paralleling Law and Prophets. Internal evidence could support the view that “Luke” intended to write scripture. We will examine five pointers to this possibility: (1) It has often been noted how the remarkable birth-narrative in the Lucan Gospel is written in the style of the LXX. It was not, apparently, in Marcion’s Gospel, and may be regarded as wonderfully adapted to show continuity with the Jewish scriptures.15 The double story of the birth of John and of Jesus both parallels and subverts scriptural narratives: parallels narratives of barren women miraculously giving birth, notably the aged Sarah, or Hannah – for Mary’s song parallels Hannah’s song and Elizabeth is barren, but also subverts such stories, given that Mary is a young maiden, most likely pre-menstrual.16 Herein lies the novelty, and doubtless an implicit sign of new creation: for in Luke 1:35 the Holy Spirit overshadows Mary as the Spirit hovered over the chaos waters in Genesis. The notion of new creation is also possibly present in an implied reference to the eschatological image of the woman in labour: 17 for the prophets a woman labouring but failing to produce was a sign of God’s judgment (Jer 4:31; Mic 4:10, 5:3; Isa 13:8), yet in Isaiah 42:14–16 we find God labouring to bring new life to birth, to bring a new people into being; and in the New Testament the image recurs in Romans 8:22 – creation groaning in labour for its redemption, in Mark 13:8 – where apocalyptic wars, earthquakes and famines are described as the first pangs of childbirth, and in John 16:21–22 which uses the 13 

Justin’s phrase – cf. discussion in ch.  10 above. See Parker, Living Text. 15 Lieu, Marcion, 201–202, referring to John Knox, Marcion and the New Testament (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942). 16  G. Vermes, Jesus the Jew, and The Nativity: History and Legend (London: Penguin, 2006). 17  See further ch.  3, “The Woman in Travail,” in my book, Can These Dry Bones Live? (London: SCM Press, 1982). 14 

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image of successful birth to capture the disciples’ future shift from sorrow to joy. Revelation’s vision of a woman about to give birth (12:1–6), and then her son being snatched up to God so as not to be consumed by a dragon, must owe much to such scriptural precedent. But have both the book of Revelation and Luke’s Gospel conflated this eschatological birth with Mary giving birth to the new humanity in Jesus? 18 Neither is entirely implausible. In the case of Luke’s Gospel, we find omitted the Marcan allusion to this image in the eschatological discourse (Mark 13:8). Be that as it may, for “Luke” the birth narrative is surely the genesis of the new creation, paralleling the creation account of Genesis. (2) Next comes Adam. Where Matthew uses a genealogy to prove Jesus was son of David, the Lucan version traces his lineage back beyond David, ending up “son of Adam, son of God.” The implication would seem to be along the lines sketched by Paul, to be picked up by Justin and worked out later by Irenaeus in his exposition of “recapitulation”: as in Adam all die, in Christ are all made alive (1 Cor 15:21–22, cf. Rom 5:12–19). Adam was meant to be God’s representative on earth, God’s image and likeness: Christ actually is the son of God Adam was meant to be. “Luke” rubs home the significance of those final names in the genealogy through the voice at the baptism, the temptations (“if you are the son of God…”), the cries of demons, the offering of forgiveness (God alone can forgive), the calming of the storm, and so on. However, the position of the genealogy, between the voice at the baptism and the temptations, is perhaps the sharpest indicator – designated son of God, like Adam, Jesus then faces a parallel test, succeeding where Adam failed. All of this is further illustration of how the early Christians radically reread the scriptures in the light of Christ, and discovered there the plight of all humankind to which Christ was the solution. “You will be sons of the most high God” is a statement made in relation to loving enemies (Luke 6:35): for “Luke,” as for Paul and others, Christ was not just the Jewish Messiah, but the saviour of the whole human race – Gentiles carry huge significance in this Gospel and particularly in Acts. Jesus was humanity as it was meant to be – a new Genesis for the whole human race. (3) The new Genesis is followed by a new Exodus. The word, ἔξοδος (exodos), appears in the Lucan account of the transfiguration (9:31), a story which recalls the journey through the wilderness, the holy mountain, Sinai/Horeb, Moses and Elijah, the Law and the Prophets. But the exodus of which they spoke is clearly the journey Jesus is about to make to Jerusalem, a journey which “Luke” keeps in the readers’ minds amidst the episodic material that follows (see 9:51, 53; 13:22, 33 ff.; 17:11; 18:31), and which thus provides the framework for much of the teaching of Jesus which “Luke” records, as the Exodus did for the giving of the Law. It is not inconceivable, however, that for “Luke,” as for the Epistle 18  For discussion of Revelation see John McHugh, The Mother of Jesus in the New Testament (London: DLT, 1975), 404–408.

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to the Hebrews, the Exodus journey is conceived, not just as going up to Jerusalem, but as the way Jesus took through death to life (the story’s climax is the taking of Jesus to heaven: 24:51). (4) It has often been noted that the Holy Spirit is a feature of the Lucan Gospel, for example: – 1:15: John to be filled with the Holy Spirit. – 1:35: as already noted, here the Spirit overshadows Mary. – 1:41 and 67: Elizabeth and Zechariah are each filled with the Spirit and make inspired declarations. – 2:25–27: the Holy Spirit was with Simeon and led him to the temple. – 3:16: John predicts baptism with the Holy Spirit. – 3:22: the Spirit comes upon Jesus at the baptism. – 4:1: Jesus, full of the Spirit, is led by the Spirit to the desert. – 4:14: Jesus returns to Galilee and the power of the Holy Spirit is with him. – 10:21: Jesus filled with the Spirit gives thanks. – 11:13: God will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask. – 12:10: a word against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. – 12:12: the Holy Spirit will give words to those persecuted. Thus the opening of the Gospel, not to mention Acts with its story of Pentecost, makes it clear that a new outbreak of the Spirit is at work in the events described. Prophecy, and so the scriptures, were inspired by the Spirit, and here there is a renewal of prophecy in this new outpouring of the Spirit, and so also by implication in the record of these events – in other words, “Luke” is writing new scriptures inspired by the Spirit. (5) The fulfilment theme is strongly present in Luke. The Emmaus story (Luke 24:13–35) is climactic and programmatic, and reinforced at the end by Luke 24:44 ff. The first full narrative of the Gospel in Luke 4:16–21 is likewise a programmatic opening of Jesus’s ministry. Key statements include: – Luke 4:21: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” – after Jesus has read Isaiah 61:1–2. – Luke 24:27: Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures. – Luke 24:44: “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you – that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” To these general affirmations are appended scriptural examples or comments which show

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– that the Gentiles are included: Elijah was sent, not to widows in Israel, but to one at the Zarephath in Sidon, and the only leper Elisha cleansed was Naaman the Syrian. (Luke 4:25–27) – that the Messiah would suffer first and then enter his glory. (Luke 24:26) – that these points are what the scriptures demonstrate: N.B. Luke 24:44: “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” Elsewhere too there are hints of fulfilment – in typological parallels, for example, such as those between the widow’s son at Nain and the widow’s son raised by Elijah. But there are also disputes about the Law, as in the other Gospels. So the question is: is this a new teaching other than that of Moses, or is the real meaning of Moses to be found in the good news of the kingdom? One could argue that here is a new teaching surpassing the old, enshrined in a new scripture which displaces the old – this is the traditional understanding of Marcion’s view. But Luke-Acts in its canonical form insists on fulfilment rather than displacement. The above five observations arising from internal evidence do seem to reinforce the suggestive external evidence from which we began. It thus seems plausible to argue that “Luke” intended to write scripture, and in its final form his Gospel plus Apostolicon was not intended to replace but to sit alongside the Jewish scriptures, as scriptures interpreting scripture. However, thus to answer the opening question in the affirmative is not to contradict the findings of the previous chapter. In the Christian communities where the works would be used, the texts, old and new, were read in Greek, and neither the reading nor the transcription of the text was ever as carefully guarded as the Hebrew was conserved by Jews – the text-critical evidence is clear on this point. In the end, it was not the books which had primacy, but Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour, the one to whom all the scriptures, old and new, gave witness in their diverse ways.

Chapter 22

The “Mind” of Scripture: Theological Readings of the Bible in the Fathers*

“The mind (διάνοια – dianoia) of scripture” is a phrase borrowed from the anti-­ Arian works of Athanasius. This paper will take that phrase as its launching-­ pad, exploring first the patristic appeal to the overall sense or unified aim of scripture, particularly in the contexts of doctrinal or exegetical controversy. By now in full flight, the discussion will survey the terrain from a different vantage-­ point, considering the ways in which one of Fathers offered a dogmatic or theological exegesis of scriptural texts. By then modern exegetes and theologians will be well aware of living on another planet – the question of differing intellectual contexts will have to be explored, before considering whether any kind of appropriation across such distances is possible, let alone fruitful. Rather than engaging in new research, the article largely re-presents previous work in a more reflective and systematic mode.

I.  The sense behind the wording Ancient rhetorical theory distinguished between what was to be said and how it was to be expressed.1 The important thing was to determine the most appropriate style, once the nature of the subject-matter or argument had been discovered (a process known as εὕρεσις – heuresis in Greek, inventio in Latin). The fact that the same thing can be said in many different ways was an observation derived from ἑρμηνεία (hermeneia) – an activity which might involve either translation from one language to another or interpretation through re-expressing something in a different way. Rhetorical theory capitalized on this fact that language is relative. Furthermore, prior to engaging for themselves in composition, school students would spend many years reading, and engaging in rhetorical analysis

*  Originally published as “The ‘Mind’ of Scripture: Theological Readings of the Bible in the Fathers,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 7 (2005): 126–141. 1  This section represents material from previous studies: Young, Art of Performance, chs. 2 and 3; Biblical Exegesis; “The Fourth Century Reaction against Allegory,” Studia Patristica 30 (1997): 120–125; “Proverbs 8.”

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of, the classics. Thus exegesis of texts would attend to the appropriateness of the author’s “wording” for the “sense” to be conveyed. This, I have suggested, is the cultural background to the appeal to the “mind” of scripture made by Athanasius in dealing with the way in which Arius read Proverbs 8:22 and other texts: you cannot take “the Lord created me” according to the letter and assume it is a statement about the origin of the Logos when it is clear that the rest of scripture has another sense. In the Defence of the Nicene Definition Athanasius seeks to answer the charge that the Nicene Council had introduced non-scriptural ideas in espousing words and phrases like ὁμοούσιος or ἐξ οὐσίας (ex ousias – from the substance). He insists that the bishops were obliged to collect the “mind” of scripture and restate it in these non-scriptural formulae. Those who agree the sense should subscribe to this wording, even if the expressions used are not, in so many words, in the scriptures. Clearly he was aware of the distinction in question. For Athanasius discernment of the mind of scripture meant discovering its underlying coherence, its unitive testimony to the one true Son of God; and that involved what we might call a critical stance towards a literalizing view of religious language. This is clear from his argumentation in the Defence of the Nicene Definition and the Orations against the Arians.2 On the one hand, it was important to assemble catalogues of texts to show the scriptural ways in which terms were used (a procedure parallel to the normal custom of interpreting Homer by appeal to Homer); on the other hand, respect for the normal “earthly” meaning of words had also to be accompanied by modification or elevation of the sense as appropriate to its theological context. Thus, he argued (Decr., 6–12) that in scripture we find two different usages of the word “son”: (1) anyone obedient to God’s commandments is God’s son (Deut 13:18–14:1), and this sonship by adoption and grace is confirmed in the New Testament; (2) many examples of natural sons may be cited, such as Isaac being the son of Abraham. The Arians claim that only the first sense belongs to the Son of God incarnate in Jesus Christ – so that he is no different from the rest of us, despite their claim that he is a creature but not as one of the creatures. Having exposed at length the illogicality of their position, he argues that the only alternative is to take the second meaning. However, it is impossible to draw an exact analogy between the way Isaac is son of Abraham and the manner of God’s generation of his Son: one must avoid conceiving of the things of God in a human way, and ascribing aspects of human nature to God; for this is to mix wine with water. This theme is developed in some detail – there can be no “effluence” of the immaterial, nor can one partition what is uncompounded; such properties belong to physical bodies, and are entirely inappropriate to the divine. This “otherness” of God, along with genuine derivation of the Son from 2 

See also above ch.  8.

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the Father’s οὐσία (ousia – being or substance), is confirmed by cross-references to scriptural texts. So the assumption is that the whole argument is scriptural, even though it may be evident to us that certain theological (or philosophical) assumptions have been imported. The difficulties of Proverbs 8:22 are tackled in similar ways (Decr., 13–14; C. Ar., 2), Athanasius insisting that 8:25 has the primary word, γέννᾳ (genna(i) – begat), and that the ἔκτισεν (ektisen – created) of 8:22 must refer to the incarnation. Other texts again support this reading: “The Lord created me a beginning of his ways” is equivalent to “The Father prepared me a body,” both syntactically and theologically. Athanasius eventually arrives at a classic distinction which he regards as fundamental to scripture: God’s offspring (γέννημα – gennē ma) was begotten but then made, made flesh for our salvation in the Economy, ­whereas creatures (ποιήματα – poē mata) were made and then begotten through Christ, becoming sons by grace. The Arians resort to the words of scripture, and do not see the “mind” (νούς – nous) in those words (C. Ar., 1.52). Athanasius accuses them of laying down their own impiety as a kind of canon, and twisting all the divine oracles into accordance with it. That is very close to the way in which Irenaeus had tackled the Gnostics. This and other precedents will provide further illumination. Indeed, Irenaeus had likewise accused the Gnostics of twisting scripture into conformity with their views, suggesting that they were trying to make ropes of sand as they applied the parables of the Lord, or prophetic sayings, or apostolic statements to their plausible schemes. It was just as if there was a beautiful representation of a king made in a mosaic by a skilled artist, but they altered the arrangement of the pieces into the shape of a dog or a fox. The problem lay in wresting material from context, he suggests, rather like those who composed centos – new poems with new plots produced by stitching together lines and half-lines of Homer. Anyone who knew Homer would recognize the lines but not accept the story, he suggests (Haer., 1.8.1; 9.4). So anyone who has a proper sense of the overall plot of scripture will immediately see how the Gnostics twist the text. With a single volume comprising the whole Bible held easily in one hand, we have to make a leap of the imagination to realize that, for Irenaeus, distinguishing the scrolls or codices that were part of authorized scripture from those which were not had physical implications. Nor was it so easy to assume the unity of scripture when you were faced with a diverse library of physically separate texts. The first list of New Testament books that exactly corresponds to what is now generally accepted is to be found in the writings of Athanasius, a century and a half later than Irenaeus. Yet Irenaeus conceives of the whole Bible as a single narrative with an overarching plot. The fault of the Gnostics is not just being open to texts which Irenaeus does not recognize, or like Marcion rejecting texts he does; even more problematic is the way they read the texts. For

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Irenaeus, what scripture is about is given by the Rule of Faith. The plot begins with creation, continues with God’s providential intentions to re-create, as intimated by the prophets, and ends with the consummation of God’s purpose already begun in Christ. Without that key you cannot get the sense of scripture right. Or to put it in another way (though strictly for Irenaeus it is anachronistic) – the whole of scripture is summarized in the creed, as Cyril of Jerusalem would later assert. Another precedent is found in the work of Origen. Like Athanasius he is aware of the difference between the wording and the intent. The very existence of metaphor and other figures of speech is enough to alert the reader to the need to go beyond the wording. Indeed, the wording may be impossible or misleading. The ἀπορίαι (aporiai – aporias) in the text point to its lack of transparency. The wording is merely the vehicle for the σκοπός (skopos – intent) or νοῦς of the Holy Spirit, and sometimes the Holy Spirit made difficulties in order to stimulate the interpreter to search for the appropriate sense. Hence the need for allegory, a practice for which Origen had warrants in a series of repeatedly quoted scriptural texts (e.g. Gal 4:24). The stereotypical account of Origen’s hermeneutics (based on his discussion in First Principles3) exaggerates the extent to which he denigrated the “literal” meaning, without fully grasping the fact that it was taking linguistic analysis seriously which led him to insist on the necessity of spiritual meanings. There could be many different meanings, since the text could apply to many different people at different stages of illumination. Yet scripture was a unity for Origen too. The unity of scripture lay in the intent of the Holy Spirit to point to the truth that is in Christ, and that meant it was possible for the allegorical tradition to create vast catenae of texts to illustrate the biblical meaning of words, and to look for consistencies in biblical symbolism. Potentially the wording of the text always pointed beyond itself. There was, of course, a reaction against the allegorical method roughly contemporaneous with Athanasius’s later years. Beginning with Eustathius, the protest against Origen’s allegory was developed by the so-called Antiochene School, Diodore of Tarsus, Theodore of Mopsuestia, John Chrysostom, and Theodoret. Some have seized upon this as an anticipation of the historical approach to scripture espoused by modern scholars. The fact is, however, that their concept of “history” was shaped by ancient scholarship, and their primary concern in protesting against Origen was to preserve the overarching story of the Rule of Faith.4 Eustathius’s treatise On the Witch of Endor and against Origen illuminates this.5 Origen had apparently made various deductions about the resurrection from the return of Samuel from the grave, which was effected by 3 Origen,

Princ., 4. For further exposition of the differences see Young, Biblical Exegesis. 5 Eustathius, On the Witch of Endor and against Origen, Greek text: Contra Origenem et de engastrimytho, Migne, PG 18.613–674. 4 

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the witch consulted by Saul. Eustathius accuses Origen of taking the wording too seriously. Against this, he essentially appeals to the narrative logic of the story: the witch (in Greek ἐγγαστρίμυθος – engastrimythos, which he interprets as “generator of myths in her inwards”) played upon the mad mind of Saul so that he seemed to see Samuel – so Samuel did not come up from Hades at all, and it is inappropriate to make deductions about the resurrection. Eustathius regards it as scandalous to take this story literally (i.e. according to the letter or wording) and allegorize other key biblical narratives, citing Moses’s account of creation, paradise and many other things, including the gospel narratives. The “spiritualizing” of salvation history was what they objected to. Time and again the objection to allegory was its challenge to the stories of creation and paradise, or its undermining of the resurrection of the body or the coming kingdom of God. The attack on allegory coincided with the Origenist controversy of the fourth century, and the struggle with the Anthropomorphites. It was not history as such that they were interested in but realism, materialism, and the sanctity of bodily existence. They cared about the narrative logic of the whole biblical text, especially the beginning and the ending of the overarching story. This was not to be treated as a mirage or parable. Yet Diodore was as concerned to explain the talking serpent as ever Origen was – the speaker was of course the devil in serpent’s clothing. You have to look for the sense behind the wording. Hidden among the volumes of Migne is a small hermeneutical handbook by one Adrianos, entitled Isagōgē ad sacras scripturas (Introduction to the holy scriptures).6 It clearly belongs to the Antiochene tradition. Like Eustathius, Adrianos thinks the διάνοια must be grounded in the ἀκολουθία (akolouthia – sequence) of the narrative – otherwise, the interpreter is blown about like a steersman failing to fix on his goal. The διάνοια of the words must be earthed in the order found in the body of the text, and θεωρία (theō ria – insight into deeper meaning) must be grounded in the shape (σχῆμα – schē ma) of that body. In other words the διάνοια must correspond with the ὑπόθεσις (hypothesis – argument) of the wording’s syntax and the narrative logic of the whole. Like Athanasius, he insists that one must begin with the normal sense of words, but then get a sure grasp of scriptural idioms – the characteristic ways of speech found in the scriptural texts. His opening section had already concerned itself with the διάνοια of scripture. There he enquired how God’s ἐνέργειαι (energeiai – activities) are presented in terms of human characteristics – in other words how the anthropomorphic language of scripture relates to the underlying sense. No more than Origen does he take literally references to God’s eyes, mouth, hands, feet, anger or passions, nor indeed to God sitting, walking, or being clothed. Yet he never employs the term “allegory” to describe what he is doing. Even the re6 

Greek text: Migne, PG 98.1273–1312.

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action against allegory recognized that because of its theological subject-matter, scriptural language must always be pointing beyond itself. The interpreter has to move behind the wording to the “mind” or “sense” of scripture. Although couched in slightly different terms, the same fundamental point is made by Augustine in his Christian Instruction.7 Rather than speaking of the sense and wording, he uses the Latin words res (things) and signa (signs). He broadens the context of the discussion from mere linguistics to all kinds of things that signify, such as smoke indicating fire; but his point concerns the way things point to something else, and he applies this to scripture in much the same way as the interpretative tradition we have already been looking at. This is hardly surprising since Augustine was shaped by the same traditions of grammar and rhetoric. He too is looking for the subject-matter behind the verbal expression. He too writes at length (two whole books) about the problems of interpreting the “signs,” or wording, of the scriptures. He begins by setting out the subject-matter (or hypothesis) of scripture as a whole, because he too believes that the wording can only be read aright if the interpretation conforms to this underlying unitive subject-matter. For Augustine the heart of scripture lies in the double commandment – to love God and love your neighbour. But if we read the first book of Christian Instruction we soon discover that that implies reading the scriptures in terms of the doctrine of the Trinity and the overarching narrative of fall and redemption, into which the readers themselves are drawn. As in the case of the Greek tradition on which we have principally focused, so in Augustine, it is vital to ascertain what scripture is about overall in order to read its many parts, to grasp its “sense” so as to appreciate what its “wording” is getting at. So the doctrinal tradition provides the principal criterion for interpretation – and that leads us into the second angle of enquiry.

II.  A “more dogmatic” exegesis? Cyril of Alexandria promised “a more dogmatic exegesis” in his Commentary on John. So this should provide a good starting-point for exploring theological or doctrinal readings of the Bible in the exegesis of the Fathers. What, then, were the methodological procedures whereby the biblical text was made to carry doctrinal weight? I think four techniques can be discerned: (1) Perceived difficulties in the text are allowed to trigger discussion of possible misunderstandings. Cyril’s Commentary on John is universally understood to predate the Nestorian controversy. It has polemical elements, but it is not a polemical work. Yet 7 

See further ch.  19 above.

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from time to time he acknowledges that the narrative of the Gospel itself poses problems for faith. In John 6:38, for example, an apparent contrast is drawn between the will of the one who came down from heaven and the Father who sent him. Cyril confesses that this passage could seem “something of a trap.”8 He cross-references Matthew 26:39, “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt,” and then comments: That the Word was God, immortal and incorruptible, and by nature Life in itself who could not cower before death, is I think abundantly clear to all. Nevertheless, having come to be in the flesh, he allows himself to experience the things proper to the flesh, and consequently, when death is at the door, to cower before it, that he might appear to be a real human being … Do you see how weak human nature is, even in Christ himself, when it relies on its own powers? Through the Word that is united with it, the flesh is brought back to a courage befitting God.

Later in the commentary, on John 12:27, he clarifies this further: “it was absolutely essential that … he should show himself to be a human being, not in mere appearance or by some fiction, but rather a natural and true human being born of a woman and bearing every human characteristic except sin alone.” This was precisely so that human emotions, like fear and timidity, could be “transformed in Christ … For it was in this way and in no other that the mode of healing passed over into ourselves too.” Throughout this and other discussions, Cyril demonstrates the point that the Logos was the subject of the incarnate experiences, and that he voluntarily under­goes limitation and fear, temptation and suffering for our sake. Thus, for example, he glosses “Glorify thy Son” with “Allow me to suffer in a voluntary fashion”: for the Evangelist calls the cross “glory,” and “the Father did not give up his Son without premeditation, but advisedly for the life of the world.” It has been noted that Cyril is a better exegete than the Antiochenes9 – not least, I suggest, because their constant separation of the Natures disrupts the flow of the gospel narrative, whereas Cyril’s kenoticism allows a better grasp of the story. What emerges in the Commentary frequently anticipates christological concerns that will predominate in the subsequent controversy, but here they are 8  For the convenience of those who might like to follow this up, I am using Russell, Cyril of Alexandria, and confining myself to comments on the extracts therein. 9  See Weinandy in The Theology of St Cyril of Alexandria. A Critical Appreciation, ed. Thomas G. Weinandy and Daniel A. Keating (London: T&T Clark / Continuum, 2003), 31, note: “J. J. O’Keefe argues, rightly I believe, that Cyril was more faithful to the New Testament proclamation than were the Antiochenes. Unlike the Antiochenes he fashioned his philosophical concepts to be in conformity with biblical narrative. ‘The Antiochene position interprets the text in the light of philosophy, the Alexandrian position interprets the philosophy in the light of the text’ (‘Kenosis or Impassibility: Cyril of Alexandria and Theodoret of Cyrus on the Problem of Divine Pathos’, Studia Patristica 32 (1997), 365). In the end Cyril was not only the better theologian, but, contrary to common scholarly opinion, he was equally the better exegete.”

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rooted in the text, partly by thus taking seriously the thrust of the gospel narrative, partly by means of the other techniques still to be noted. (2) Doctrinal concerns are attributed to the author. Cyril repeatedly demonstrates his interest in teasing out what the Evangelist intended: he “intensifies his plea that the world did not recognize who it was that was bringing light,” he suggests on John 1:11, continuing, “Having prepared the ground very carefully, he embarks on his account of the Incarnation and gradually works his way down from pure theology to an exposition of the dispensation in the flesh which the Son brought about for our sake.” Here, then, Cyril attributes the classic distinction between θεολογία (theologia – reflection on God in his own Being) and οἰκονομία (oikonomia – reflection on God’s activity in the world) to the Evangelist. Later, on 1:13, he says, Note how cautious the blessed Evangelist is in his choice of words. His caution was necessary, for he was intending to say that those who have believed have been born of God, and he did not want anyone to think that they were literally produced from the essence of God the Father, thereby making them indistinguishable from the Only-begotten one … Once the Evangelist had said that power was given to them to become children of God by him who is Son by nature, and had therefore implied that they became children of God “by adoption and grace,” he could then proceed without danger to add that they were “born of God.”

For Cyril, the Evangelist is aware of the possible dangers of Arian misinterpretation, and chooses his words accordingly, allusion then being made to those who allege falsely that the Holy Spirit, like the Only-begotten one, is created, excluding them from consubstantiality with God. But Cyril soon realizes he is embarking on a digression and returns to the text, John 1:14: “With this verse the Evangelist enters explicitly upon his discourse on the Incarnation.” Commenting on the fact that the Evangelist speaks of the Word becoming “flesh” rather than “man,” he suggests that “that which was most endangered in us should be the more urgently restored … It was necessary for the affected part to obtain release from evil.” He continues: That, in my opinion, is the most probable reason why the holy Evangelist, indicating the whole living being by the part affected, says that the Word of God became flesh. It is so that we might see side by side the wound together with the remedy … that which was bereft of life together with him who is the provider of life. He does not say that Word came into flesh; he says that he became flesh in order to exclude any idea of a relative indwelling, as in the case of the prophets and the other saints. He really did become flesh, that is to say, a human being, as I have just explained.

Now he assumes that the Evangelist anticipates what Cyril believes is the problem with the Christology of some of his fourth-century contemporaries, anticipating a point he drove home time and again in the subsequent Nestorian controversy.

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If this seems anachronistic, there are two things to bear in mind. The first is that the literary criticism of the ancient world was universally anachronistic, failing to distinguish the sense the interpreter found from the possible meanings the author could have had in mind centuries before. The second is the point already discussed at length: exegesis assumed it could trace the “mind” behind the wording, and this was invariably without question assumed to be the sense intended by the author. Which naturally leads into the next observable technique. (3) Cross-references are made to discern the overall “mind” or “sense” intended by the biblical authors. Here we shall avoid detailed exemplification which could take a long time! Suffice it to say that Cyril’s whole approach to the text was shaped by the already well-rehearsed assumptions that scripture was a unity, and that the wording was intended to point beyond itself to the underlying meaning or overall truth being expressed. To bring this out meant cross-referencing over the whole of scripture, and subjecting earthly language to theological critique. So Paul is used to interpret John without embarrassment, as is the Old Testament. In the very passages from which we have already quoted, Cyril repeatedly instances other texts to make his point, and we saw earlier how the exegetical move he made on John 1:13 was anticipated in Athanasius’s more systematic argument (that is, the point about the difference between a son proper and a son by adoption). The more one reads Cyril, the more one realizes that the twin pressures of wrong (or heretical) deductions from specific proof-texts and the unitive plot of the creed shape the kind of exegetical comments he makes. So whether we attend to theological exegesis or hermeneutical theory in the Fathers, we are looking at the same terrain from a different perspective. The exegetical perspective is, however, an illuminating one. For the christological issues are here placed within a whole “ecology” of theological understanding through the reading of scripture, with attention both to its narrative thrust and to its characteristic vocabulary, illuminated by the technique of cross-referencing. (4) The text is constantly related to the overarching story of redemption, and to the listener’s participation in that. The sense of being taken up into the whole story of fall and redemption, signified time and again through the “types” of scripture, informs Cyril’s theo­ logy.10 His Old Testament exegesis is fascinating: the movement from fall into sin, through repentance, to renewal through God’s grace becomes a universal paradigm, traced out in one narrative after another (Abraham, the Exodus) and applied to “us”; for each of us are instances of the universal story of the human 10  See further my essay “Theotokos: Mary and the Pattern of Fall and Redemption in the Theology of Cyril of Alexandria” in Cyril of Alexandria, ed. Weinandy and Keating, 55–74. Other essays in this volume are illuminating for our discussion, especially those by Robert Louis Wilken, Thomas G. Weinandy, and Daniel A. Keating.

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race. It is not hard to see that what happened to Adam, happens to each of us, Cyril suggests.11 This perspective is constantly in the background of his Johannine exegesis. One explicit example must suffice – from his comments on John 1:12: There was no other way for us who have borne the image of the man of dust to escape corruption, unless the beauty of the image of the man of heaven is imprinted upon us through our having been called to sonship [cf. 1 Cor 15:49, and incidentally note the importance of cross-referencing!] … For scarcely do we thus recover the ancient beauty of our nature, and are conformed to that divine nature, than we become superior to the evils which arose from the Fall.

As for our participation in this, on John 6:35 we are told that “something … is hidden in these words which calls for explanation.” The Only-begotten “does not make his discourse … at all clear, veiling it somewhat and keeping it free from self-advertisement.” But by stating that “he who comes to me shall never be hungry,” Christ promises nothing corruptible, but rather the eucharistic reception of the holy flesh and blood, which restores man wholly to incorruption, so that he has no further need of those things that keep death away from the flesh, by which I mean food and drink … [T]he holy body of Christ endows those who receive it with life and keeps us incorrupt when it is mingled with our bodies. For … it is the body of him who is Life by nature, since it has within itself the entire power of the Word that is united with it, and is endowed with his qualities, or rather is filled with his energy, through which all things are given life and maintained in being.

This reflection provides the occasion for a warning against missing communion, since this is the way to overcome the deceits of the devil and become partakers of the divine nature, a warning reiterated when Cyril comments on the text, “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you do not have eternal life in you” (John 6:53): For those who do not receive Jesus through the sacrament will continue to remain utterly bereft of any share in the life of holiness and blessedness and without any taste of it whatsoever … [H]is holy body is … life-giving, for it has been … ineffably united with the Word that gives life to all things.

So the union of divine and human in Christ is mediated to us through the eucharist, and our salvation depends upon that union. Cyril clearly believes that this is the sense behind the words, and, incidentally, in the light of this his passionate opposition to Nestorius can be explained.12 Christology is no abstract theory. It undergirds the means of grace whereby we share in the redemption. It 11  Cyril of Alexandria, On Adoration in Spirit and Truth, Greek text: De Adoratione in Spiritu et Veritate, Migne, PG 68.148. 12  Cf. Henry Chadwick, “Eucharist and Christology in the Nestorian Controversy,” JTS NS 2 (1951):145–164.

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is because of this that the “holy body” is reckoned to be his and “is thought of as one with him,” says Cyril. For after the Incarnation they are not divisible, except insofar as one knows that the Word that came from the Father and the temple that came from the Virgin are not identical in nature.

It could be argued that Cyril’s early engagement with biblical exegesis shaped his whole way of thinking. Where the Antiochenes insisted on distinguishing the Two Natures, Cyril insisted on the coherence of the gospel narrative and its outline in the creeds. The subject of the incarnate experiences was the Logos, who emptied himself, chose to “fall” into our condition so as to redeem, and to raise the whole human race to the glory God had intended. He “appears to fall short of God’s majesty by becoming a fully human being,” but is in no way diminished by this chosen path of humiliation. “He brought himself down to that which he was not for our sake” (on John 17:11). Cyril’s “more dogmatic” reading of scripture rings true to the overarching story of fall and redemption, and so teases out the “mind” of scripture behind the wording. So approaching the subject through exegetical rather than controversial material we find the same deep set of presuppositions about the way theology informs the reading of the Bible, and the Bible shapes theology in a mutually inter­active way.

III.  The Bible and theology: then and now Commenting on Cyril’s christological understanding of the Old Testament, Robert Wilken writes as follows: Through history Christ transforms history, and after his coming a strictly historical interpretation of the Old Testament is anachronistic. For the Scriptures can no longer be interpreted as one interprets other documents from the past, setting things in historical context, deciding what came earlier and what later, relating things to what went before or followed afterward. Now interpretation must begin at the center which is also the beginning and the end, with Christ who is Alpha and the Omega. Christ imposes a new order on the scriptures.13

This highlights the fundamental difference between a patristic approach to the relation between theology and the Bible and the transformed intellectual context in which we have to consider the question. Modernity has meant a loss of innocence, largely through the development of historical consciousness, and postmodernism cannot simply revert to the innocence prior to modernity – to 13  Robert Louis Wilken, “Cyril as Interpreter of the Old Testament,” in Cyril of Alexandria, ed. Weinandy and Keating, 21.

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obscurantism. Let us set out a quick sketch of the principal consequences, beginning with the most obvious: – We recognize that it is anachronistic to assume that what are evidently later doctrinal concerns correspond with the intention of the author. We are culturally suspicious of timeless truths. – Historical consciousness has made it impossible to assume a common “mind” running across documents deriving from many different historical contexts. We think it is inappropriate to interpret John by Paul, and even more inappropriate to interpret Proverbs or Isaiah in the light of Christ. Ironically now that we have the whole Bible in a single book, we are culturally driven towards analysis! We see the assumption of the Bible’s unity as the construct that it is, and we would find it difficult to assert that the doctrinal tradition is the principal criterion for biblical interpretation. – The pressures of our culture have reduced our spiritual horizons. The modern “earth-bound” approach to the texts focuses primarily on the “letter” or “wording,” and its historical context. “Spiritual” or doctrinal readings are regarded with suspicion. Deductions are made, usually of a historical kind, on the basis of literal reading. Interpreters then divide on the question how far we should still follow ethical injunctions that come from a different “world,” and to what extent we may regard as “mythological” whatever sits badly with modern (scientific) understanding of the way things are. (Here I hint at what fundamentalists and historico-critics have in common over against the assumptions of the Fathers. It is intriguing, by the way, that the Antiochenes, so often regarded as the exegetes who took history seriously in the ancient world, affirmed the importance of not allegorizing away Adam and Eve and the serpent – precisely the kind of thing that non-fundamentalist modern readers would consign to the category of “myth” and “allegorize” into a “truth” about the human condition rather than “historical fact.”) – Post-holocaust embarrassment about supersessionism reinforces the historico-­ critical rejection of traditional prophetic and christological readings of what Christians call the Old Testament. In the postmodern era, we are acutely aware of the social locus of both text and reader. If we reject patristic anti-­ Judaism (the all-pervasive aspect of Cyril’s exegesis which I did not illustrate), can we really adopt any other feature of their reading of scripture? Willy-nilly it is all inter-related. There is, then, a crucial gap between us and the Fathers, a radical disjunction between modern (and postmodern) biblical scholarship and the reading of scripture that produced the doctrinal legacy that systematic theologians attempt to clarify or interpret for the (post)modern world. How are we to deal with this? To sharpen up the issue: Does the Bible teach orthodox trinitarian dogma? Au-

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gustine and Cyril could presume so, but no modern biblical scholar would. Yet the systematic theologian will carry on as if it did not matter, or assume that the development of doctrine was a logical outworking of scripture, a justifiable “future” of the text, or in some way providentially continuous with scripture. In crucial ways, however, Christian doctrine could be said to depend upon the Christian supersessionist reading of the Jewish scriptures: both the defence and refutation of Arianism depended much on the christological reading of Proverbs, Genesis, and other Old Testament texts. Is it enough to put doctrinal development into a cubby-hole alongside biblical criticism and let modern historical criticism deal with both? This is surely unsatisfactory, since the outcome of doctrinal controversy in the ancient church was settled by reference to scripture, and orthodox doctrine was taken to be the real meaning of the Bible. Our dilemma then is that doctrine emerged out of a patristic reading of scripture which is now regarded as historically anachronistic, and even politically incorrect. Liturgical renewal and ecumenism have benefited from shared historico-­ critical approaches to scripture. So has Christian-Jewish dialogue. What about systematic theology? Systematic theology has attempted to take account of modern historical studies of the Bible and patristics – yet surely what it needs is an acceptable approach to doctrinal reading. It needs to justify the orthodox doctrine it interprets as an appropriate reading of scripture within our very different intellectual context. Our exposition of how the Fathers discerned the “mind” of scripture acknowledged that unconsciously they imported extraneous assumptions. Modern historico-critics were likewise often blind to the cultural baggage of presuppositions they carried. Maybe we are now more self-­ conscious about the fact that theology, whether biblical or systematic, implies a dialectical engagement with the world, society and its culture as faith seeks understanding, and so cannot be conducted without presuppositions, and cannot be divorced from historical change. Does this mean that it is impossible for us to appropriate anything from the Fathers which would enable a “more dogmatic” reading of scripture for the twenty-first century?

IV.  Learning from the past – and improving on it? The following suggestions are intended to provoke discussion, not provide exhaustive prescriptions; but here some areas for further reflection. (1) We should, I think, learn from the Fathers that the analysis and historical work of biblical scholarship must be balanced by an overarching theological framework, which sets the parameters for Christian reading if biblical interpretation is to be Christian, let alone doctrinal. The merit of canon-criticism was that it sought to find a unity in scripture, but it set about it without explicit reference to an external framework such as the

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creed. Without reference to the traditions of how to read the Bible Christianly, we conjure up the same possibilities of twisting it to suit our own ideas, as did the Gnostics, Arians and others – at least in the eyes of Irenaeus and Athanasius. It is no accident that the sola scriptura slogan of the Reformation has produced the fissiparousness of Protestantism. Scripture is part of tradition, and engagement with the doctrinal legacy is important for reading scripture as Christian scripture. Doctrine has primacy over biblical criticism. Serious work needs to be done to think through how this is to be done, given the challenges outlined in the previous section of this article. Yet surely Christianity, as distinct from biblical scholarship, reads the Bible in terms of the overarching narrative of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation – of God’s constant engagement with the world to redeem, to turn chaos into creation, to bring good out of evil, a divine work supremely effected through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, but already adumbrated in the story of Israel, and replayed in the lives and history of those who follow Christ and are endowed with the Holy Spirit. This highlights certain features of the biblical narrative as constitutive of its overarching plot. It can be characterized as a selective reading, and therefore a framework imposed from “outside” (or rather by the orthodox Christian community), but a doctrinal reading is impossible without it. It is surely the function of systematic theology to keep on critically and constructively engaging with this vital framework within which scripture is read.14 (2) The Fathers were agreed, whether practitioners of allegory or not, that the “wording” points beyond itself to another dimension of reality. We could probably learn from this, too. Postmodern hermeneutics has challenged the exclusively historical concerns of modern biblical scholarship – though there is still much resistance, and we still live with its legacy, namely the reactive fundamentalism that splits every denomination. We still need to grapple with the complexities and limitations of human language, and recognize that appeal simply to the “literal” sense is problematic. So maybe there is here a challenge to recognize, as the fourth-century Fathers did, that there is a vast difference between our creaturely being and the Being of God. Is the frequently heard appeal to a “personal God” a bit too close to anthropomorphism for the Fathers? The traditions of Western theism have possibly never been sufficiently apophatic, always liable to objectify the language we use about God, rather than taking it that it points beyond itself. Certainly Western liturgies have never put the apophatic tradition at their heart and celebrated God’s mystery in the way Eastern liturgies do. This fact dangerously encourages literalism in popular Christianity, and in the atheist reaction against it. If the 14  At the SST conference, the rather defensive reaction to the challenge presented in this paper did not successfully identify this as the role of systematic theology. It is sharpened up here in response to that discussion.

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text always points beyond itself, do we not need a theological critique of the human language within which the inexpressible is expressed? (3) The Fathers insist that the Word is in the words, and the intent of the Word is to engage with human beings wherever they are, whatever their historical or cultural context, whatever their spiritual maturity. The text comes alive in the lives of people who respond to it. That means that there will be multiple meanings, multiple insights, as multiple readers engage with the text (a good postmodern observation, as well as a patristic practice). But undergirding these multiple meanings is the “mind” of the Holy Spirit – the intent that each and every reader should be taken up into the divine project of renewal and re-creation. So by their fruits we shall know what are valid readings. Such readings provide a warrant for a way of life. The “intent” of scripture is transformation and growth to maturity – in other words, spirituality and ethics. (4) The Fathers were clear that this Word within the words gave the Bible its unity, but the Word was not always easy to discern, and to discover this the reader not only needed to work at it, but also to be inspired! So there may be another doctrinal conclusion to be drawn. Just as the Fathers were forced to speak of the One Christ in Two Natures, so we may need to speak of the One Bible in Two Natures: the Word of God and the words of human authors, inseparable and coinherent, therefore often hard to distinguish. Despite that, in the period after modernity’s historical consciousness, we may be able to take even more seriously than the Fathers the divine engagement with, and mediation through, the messiness of human life and history.

V.  Final words from Ephrem the Syrian Ephrem spoke of scripture as an inexhaustible fountain; a single utterance has more in it than we can discover: For we leave behind in it far more than we take from it, like thirsty people drinking from a fountain … God has hidden within His word all sorts of treasures, so that each of us can be enriched by it … Anyone who encounters Scripture should not suppose that the single one of its riches that he has found is the only one to exist; rather, he should realize that he himself is only capable of discovering one out of the many riches which exist in it. Nor because Scripture has enriched him, should the reader impoverish it … A thirsty person rejoices because he has drunk: he is not grieved because he proved incapable of drinking the fountain dry.15 15  I am indebted to Sebastian Brock for a recognition of the significance of Ephrem, and for his gift of his little book, The Luminous Eye: The Spiritual World Vision of St Ephrem, Placid Lectures (CIIS, Rome, 1985), from which all translations are taken; quotations from Ephrem’s Commentary on the Diatesseron and Hymn 31 On Faith.

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Yet this does not mean that scripture can mean anything, or that anyone can see how the words point to the Word. The eye of the beholder needs to be clear: The Scriptures are placed there like a mirror: He whose eye is luminous beholds there the image of reality.

The reader needs to be inspired, and informed by the overarching story of God’s engagement with his creatures, as fall and redemption are played out time and again. Recognizing that if God had not wished to disclose himself to us “there would not have been anything in creation able to elucidate anything at all about him,” Ephrem virtually spoke of an incarnation in language parallel to the incarnation in Jesus Christ: He clothed Himself in our language, so that He might clothe us in His mode of Life. He asked for our form and put this on, And then, as a father with his children, He spoke with our childish state.

The repeated refrain of this hymn is: “Blessed is He who has appeared to our human race under so many metaphors.” The scripture is a network of types and symbols, to which the interpretative key is Christ. A renewal of that kind of perspective might open up the possibility of a rich doctrinal reading of scripture. But we shall have to learn not simply to repeat what the Fathers did, but to re-forge it for a different world.

Chapter 23

The Trinity and the New Testament* When Thou, O Lord, was baptized in the Jordan, The worship of the Trinity was made manifest. For the voice of the Father bore witness unto Thee, Calling Thee the beloved Son, And the Spirit, in the form of a dove, Confirmed his word as sure and steadfast. O Christ our God, who has appeared and enlightened the world, Glory to Thee.

So runs the troparion for Epiphany in the Eastern Orthodox tradition. But in scholarly circles no-one has imagined for a very long time that such a revelation might have been in the minds of any of the gospel writers as they told the story of the baptism. The modern consciousness of historical difference has excluded such dogmatic readings. Speaking of those texts in the New Testament where Christ is associated with pre-existent wisdom, Robert Morgan has said: “these passages are part of the scriptural foundations of Christian belief, but they contribute to theology indirectly, by quickening the Christian imagination that reads Scripture to strengthen its faith, and is then better equipped to build its theology on what the myth and other New Testament materials are getting at….”1 He suggests that these passages probably originated in liturgical contexts, that they should not be treated as expressing a fully worked out incarnational theology, and that to speak of a “Wisdom-Christology” is “potentially misleading, a product of a one-sidedly doctrinal emphasis in New Testament theology.” He goes on: “When this “makes doctrine out of what is not doctrine” [a quotation from Wrede] and turns myth into metaphysics instead of interpreting these texts in accordance with their intention to celebrate Jesus as the saving revelation of God, rather than define his nature, it is open to the charge of misreading the New Testament. Finding the later doctrine of pre-existence or incarnation in these hymnic passages is anachronistic and involves a category mistake.” *  Originally published in The Nature of New Testament Theology: Essays in Honour of Robert Morgan, ed. Christopher Rowland and Christopher Tuckett (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006): 286–305. How to speak of “New Testament theology” responsibly in the changed circumstances outlined was Bob Morgan’s persistent enquiry, and it was a privilege to join in honouring him by making this contribution to the discussion. 1  Robert Morgan, “Wisdom of God (2),” in Reading Texts, ed. Ford and Stanton: 22–37.

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This critique is offered to contemporary New Testament scholarship, implying that despite 200 years of historico-critical endeavour it is still affected by anachronistic readings. Interestingly Morgan’s position here is reinforced by my own recent researches into wisdom in the Apostolic Fathers – Wisdom-­ Christology is notable for its absence from these texts, and the first unam­ biguous indication of anything like a Wisdom-Christology is to be found in the works of Justin Martyr who conflates passages like Proverbs 8:22–31 with the Johannine prologue and Stoic philosophy.2 Be that as it may, if Morgan takes such a radical view of “doctrinal reading” with respect to Christology, how much more would he say this of later trinitarian doctrine! The troparion with which we began comes from a liturgical context; it is the voice of the church “celebrating Jesus,” and “talking of God by interpreting these texts.” This constitutes Christian theological interpretation of scripture, according to Morgan. He points out the weaknesses both of doctrinal proof-­ texting and of “pure history” for Christian theological interpretation, calling instead for a literary type of theological interpretation, and for “living the life, which includes singing the songs … and reading the scriptures” in liturgy. On the other hand, he remains committed to historical enquiry and the search for authorial intention as “the best control against arbitrary interpretations which do violence to a text by imposing the interpreter’s beliefs on it.” So is historical radicalism to outlaw the troparion’s celebratory and liturgical reading of the baptism as an epiphany of the Trinity? The topic I was asked to tackle was “New Testament theology from the perspective of emerging trinitarian theology.” This seems to presuppose a developmental model: from the perspective of this later developed doctrine the embryonic character of New Testament theology becomes apparent. This way of conceiving the relationship between doctrine and scripture is widespread, but it is an assumption I want to challenge. What I hope to do is to explore another approach to the relationship, which may be seen as taking forward some of Morgan’s own proposals, though not uncritically. For it is still worth asking whether trinitarian theology does or does not actually reflect the implications of the New Testament.

I.  The “emergence” of trinitarian theology Trinitarian theology is the product of exegesis of the biblical texts, refined by debate and argument, and rhetorically celebrated in liturgy. It is “discourse,” a way of talking about God, and discourse does not develop like an oak tree 2  Young, “Wisdom,” in New Testament and the Apostolic Fathers, ed. Gregory and Tuckett: 85–104; reproduced as ch.  7 of the present volume.

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growing from an acorn – it did not evolve from a “primitive” to a more “mature” form, and there was nothing inevitable about it. These evolutionary models are as all-pervasive in our intellectual climate as Platonism was in the days of Origen, and their cultural locus needs to be exposed. They may appear convenient for those who want to make Christian doctrine historically relative, or those who by hindsight want to see the process teleologically – even as providentially guided; but they obscure the way in which the doctrine “emerged.” The doctrine of the Trinity is the outcome of reading the scriptural texts with particular questions in mind, questions which do not seem to have occurred to the earliest Christians at all, questions generated by the socio-political context in which the Church Fathers found themselves. To that extent it is a conceptual super­ structure built on the foundations of the New Testament. Rather than using organic metaphors, we need to take seriously the dialectical process of shaping the building blocks, and the factors which contributed to that shaping. To undertake that task is to be disturbed. There are two reasons for this. The first is that Christian doctrine begins to look as if it might simply be the product of particular cultural pressures – the Neoplatonic trinity, for example, parallels the Christian Trinity and is a response to many of the same intellectual questions. The second is that the reading of scripture on which the eventual doctrinal edifice depends is profoundly different from anything modern scholars would regard as valid. Systematic theology, by simply accepting the traditions of Christian doctrine and trying to make them intellectually plausible in our (post)modern world, conveniently overlooks the shaky foundations on which the doctrinal tradition rests, at least from the point of view of the different intellectual world in which we operate. This is not an easy challenge to which to respond.3 Yet in the end the Fathers may well contribute some crucial pointers towards the theological reading of scripture which Morgan wants to discover. We will take a look at two moments in early Christian history which were vital for the formation of Christianity’s distinct discourse about God. In the process we will observe how the Fathers created a discourse in need of ever more refined specificity; and how they found balance by oscillation between one pole and another of what the biblical “data” seemed to require.

1.  The Monarchian controversies Christian discourse focused on God’s μοναρχία (monarchia – single rule) throughout the second century. The one true God, the Creator and Sovereign of all, is the “overseer” of all, even the thoughts in a person’s heart, and to this God all will be accountable. Such is the theology already found in the Pastoral 3  As proved by the debate in response to my paper on “The ‘Mind’ of Scripture – theological readings of the Bible in the Fathers” at the Society for the Study of Theology conference, 2004; the paper itself is reproduced as ch.  22 of the present volume.

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Epistles and the Apostolic Fathers. It is expressed liturgically in Melito’s Peri Pascha. It figures large in apologetic – Justin, Tatian, Athenagoras and Theophilus, all alike contrast this one God with the polytheism of the religious world of the Roman Empire. It also informed resistance to gnostic fragmentation of the divine.4 Emphasis on God’s oneness had a profoundly moral thrust, with the spectre of ultimate judgment to the fore; but it was also of fundamental cosmological significance, and questions about creation were primary in this period.5 It was in the second century that various challenges to biblical perspectives were presented. The predominant outlook tended to regard the material world as inferior to the spiritual world, and God as too transcendent to be too directly involved in creation. Gnosticism took this to further extremes, treating the material world as the product of a fallen Demiurge, and salvation as escape from matter. In Platonic philosophy there was a debate about whether the creation is eternal, the myth of the Timaeus articulating the constant relationship of agent, material and design (= form or idea), or whether cosmological origins were to be attributed to a Demiurge creating what now exists through the shaping of pre-existent matter. These ideas impinged on the Christian claims about God’s μοναρχία, and before the century was out the radical doctrine of creation “out of nothing” had been asserted. If Justin could align the Genesis account with the Timaeus, and imply that God ordering chaos was the Demiurge creating out of pre-existent matter, Theophilus would assert that God’s creative activity did not require any pre-existent medium – indeed, it was precisely this that distinguished God’s power from that of a human craftsman. Tertullian summed it all up: God could not create out of the divine self, or everything would be divine; God could not create out of eternal matter, or there would be a second divine entity (note that μοναρχία can refer either to a single sovereignty or to a single source or first principle); so God must have created “out of nothing.”6 The consequence of this universal insistence on the uniqueness of God the Creator was a liturgical rhetoric which sounds “modalist,” if we may use an anachronistic term. There was a delight in the paradoxes implied by the notion of incarnation: the invisible is seen, the impassible suffers, and the immortal 4  Reinhard M. Hübner, Der paradox Eine. Antignostischer Monarchianismus im zweiten Jahrhundert (Leiden: Brill, 1999). 5 Gerhard May, Creatio ex nihilo. The doctrine of “Creation out of Nothing” in Early Christian Thought, trans. A. S. Worrall (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994); Arnold Ehrhardt, The Beginning: a study in the Greek philosophical approach to the concept of creation from Anaximander to St. John (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1968); Frances Young, “‘Creatio ex nihilo’: a context for the Emergence of the Christian Doctrine of Creation,” SJT 44 (1991): 139–151; republished as ch. XVI in Exegesis and Theology. 6 Tertullian, Herm., Latin text: Contre Hermogène, ed. and French trans. F. Chabot, SC 439 (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1999); ET The Treatise against Hermogenes, trans. J. H. Waszinck, ACW 24 (New York: Newman Press, 1956).

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dies. It has been argued that second-century theology was fundamentally monarchian,7 despite the many accounts which suggest that the development of Logos theology produced a binitarian theology.8 This is probably an overstatement; at least one function of the Logos doctrine was to give an account of God’s creative and saving activity which did not compromise divine transcendence, and Justin had even used the phrase, “a second god.” It might be better to say that the logical challenges of Christian devotion to Christ alongside their explicit monotheism had barely been articulated.9 It was opponents who perceived the problems, Jews who accused Christians of blasphemy and critics like Celsus, who may have been reacting against the position of Justin: If these people worshipped no other god but one, perhaps they would have a valid argument against the others. But in fact they worship to an extravagant degree this man who appeared recently, and yet think it is not inconsistent with monotheism if they also worship his servant.10

Towards the end of the century such issues surfaced within the Christian community in the so-called Monarchian controversies. Both sides claimed that the scriptures and Christian teachers of the past supported their own view, probably with some justification. The issues had not been explicit before, but the charge of “ditheism” seems to have provoked a reaction against Logos theology. So when these questions became explicit, what manner of arguments were deployed? And what were the drivers on each side? In the main their arguments are of a kind that Morgan would doubtless characterize as “proof-texting,” proof-texting moreover which draws across the whole of the scriptures without distinguishing historical or authorial sources, Old and New Testament. Yet interestingly the “drivers” may put this conclusion into a different perspective. Modern historical scholarship has distinguished two forms of Monarchianism, so-called “dynamic” and “modalist” types. The first argued that Jesus was a human being “empowered” by God; the second that Father, Son and Spirit were different “modes” of the one God. According to Novatian, both had noticed that it is written that there is only one God; 11 and it is perhaps significant that the teaching of someone like Paul of Samosata may well have evidenced 7 Hübner,

Der paradox Eine. The thrust of Logos theology prior to the questions raised by the Monarchians is hard to assess: e.g. Theophilus’s view is interpreted as “monarchian” by D. S. Wallace-Hadrill, Christian Antioch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982) and Hübner, Der paradox Eine; and as “subordinationist” by Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines. 9  The basic argument of Larry Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003), I accept – the earliest Christians show cultic devotion to the resurrected Jesus without accepting that this challenged their essential monotheism. 10  Quoted by Origen, Cels., 8.12. 11 Novatian, On the Trinity, 30, Greek text: De Trinitate, ed. G. F. Diercks, CCL (Turnhout: Brepols, 1972); ET Novatian, The Trinity et al., ed. and trans. R. J. DeSimone, in FC 67 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1974). 8 

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aspects of both. The argument with the modalists is best documented,12 and here a series of texts keep recurring: Exodus 20:3 – “You shall have no other gods but me”; Isaiah 44:6 – “I am the first and the last, and besides me there is no other.” Of particular importance was Baruch 3:35–37: “This is our God. No other will be compared to him. He found out the whole way of knowledge and gave it to Jacob his son and to Israel who is his beloved. Afterwards he was seen on earth and conversed with men.” From this Noetus apparently deduced that the God who is the one alone was subsequently seen and talked with human beings, and so felt himself bound to “submit to suffering” the single God that exists.13 The modalists also appealed to various New Testament texts: John 14:11 – “Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me?”; John 10:30 – “I and the Father are one”; and Romans 9:5, which seemed to describe Christ as God over all. Those responding to this appeal to texts resort to other texts, of course. But what lies behind the proof-texting? Clearly the Monarchians were driven by the second-century arguments for monotheism, both apologetic and anti-gnostic. If God is the sole Creator, providentially engaged with the world he has created, what is so difficult about extending that engagement to the incarnation? The doctrine of creation is already counter-cultural in the sense that the involvement of the transcendent God with matter was widely regarded as impossible. So why not Patripassianism? Isn’t this what the liturgical paradoxes express? It is interesting that modern theology has often challenged the Fathers on precisely this point. What the Monarchians wanted to preserve was the sense that it really is the one true God who is at work in the whole story. Callistus is presented as teaching that the Logos himself is Son and himself Father, being one indivisible Spirit; the Father is not one person and the Son another, but they are one and the same, all things, transcendent and immanent, being full of the divine Spirit.14 The Spirit which became incarnate in the Virgin’s womb was not different from the Father. Exactly such argumentation, together with the same prooftexts, has been advanced in the twentieth century by Oneness Pentecostals in their reaction against a trinitarianism that appeared tritheistic. The Monarchi12  Though there are grave critical difficulties in attributing some of the crucial texts. The debate in Rome is documented by Hippolytus, Haer. (The Refutation of all Heresies, attributed to Hippolytus, Greek text: Refutatio omnium haeresium, ed. M. Markovich, PTS 25 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1986), ET in ANCL), and the arguments are developed in Against Noetus (Greek text: Contra Noetum, ed. and trans. R. Butterworth (London: Heythrop College, 1977)), another text whose provenance is disputed. The most recent discussion (1) attributes Against Noetus to Hippolytus the martyr, who died with Pontianus, dating it later than Tertullian Prax., Latin text and ET: Tertullian’s Treatise against Praxeas, ed. and trans. E. Evans (London: SPCK, 1948); (2) argues that The Refutation is earlier, takes a different theological position from Against Noetus and is not by Hippolytus but a member of his “school.” See Allen Brent, Hippolytus and the Roman Church in the Third Century (Leiden: Brill, 1995). 13 Hippolytus, Against Noetus, 2.5. 14 Hippolytus, Haer., book 9.

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ans accused “Hippolytus” and his followers of being Ditheists. Surely the drivers have a profound validity in terms of presenting the thrust of the overall biblical witness: what happened in the “New Testament” is the work of the one true God to which the “Old Testament” bears witness. If this is true of those who became treated as heretics, what of those who proved to be history’s winners? What drove them to oppose these “Monarchianisms”? How did they build their conceptual superstructure on scripture? Certainly they had competing proof-texts, but there were more fundamental concerns. Tertullian betrays some of his with that classic remark, “They crucify the Father and put the Paraclete to flight!”15 The rhetoric shows that he thought the reaction to this would be shock and horror! He could not conceive of the transcendent God submitting to suffering. How could the immortal die, let alone be born? Such questions would go on haunting Christian teachers and splitting the church for centuries to come, especially as the divinity of the Logos incarnate in Jesus was unequivocally affirmed in the post-Nicene context. But meanwhile Tertullian’s solution is to claim that the incarnate Logos makes it possible for the invisible to be seen. The Logos is God, but the “dispensation” of God allows for a kind of buffer. Equally important for Tertullian is recognition of the activity of the Spirit in the church – he is by now a Montanist (though that could well mean he still belongs to the “mainstream” church in Carthage, just as charismatics continue to belong to “mainstream” denominations these days). The great driver for Tertullian is to find concepts that allow God’s transcendence to be secure while divine immanence and activity in the world is still affirmed. Distinctions are important, but so is continuity. Tertullian would deny any intention to preach two or three gods rather than one. Tertullian has in common with Hippolytus this appeal to the “dispensation” or “economy” of God. They mean God’s providential arrangements (οἰκονομία, oikonomia – household management) in relation to the created order. This, they suggest, disposes unity into trinity, creating a plurality without division. Tertullian draws attention to the one empire, and the fact that, without the sovereignty being divided, the emperor may still share the one sovereignty with his son as agent – even noting that provincial governors do not detract from the single monarchy, so that the analogy is extended to the angels and not just the Son and the Spirit! If, as Brent has suggested, the imperial cult provides the background to Callistus’s favourable views of Monarchianism, this might be a good ad hominem argument.16 Be that as it may, it certainly reveals the cultural embedding of the arguments. Of course, μοναρχία may well imply “single ἀρχή (archē),” not only as “rule,” but as “first principle,” “source,” “origin,” or “be15 Tertullian,

Prax., 1. Brent, The Imperial Cult and the Development of Church Order. Concepts and Images of Authority in Paganism and Early Christianity before the Age of Cyprian (Leiden: Brill, 1999). 16  Allen

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ginning.” And this is where the opponents of Monarchianism show their consistency. Creation is no more the direct involvement of the transcendent God with matter than is incarnation. The Logos and Spirit, as Irenaeus had suggested, are the “two hands” of God, so to speak, the instruments through which God handles creation at arms’ length, as it were. There is ultimately one ἀρχή of everything, as the apologists argued, namely the one Creator God. But divine “dispensation” disposes the unity into trinity. It is no wonder that this is often called “economic trinitarianism.” But all this sounds as if the principal drivers were philosophical rather than exegetical considerations. I suspect that is too simple a view. The second-­century legacy was a discourse honed by the need to defend the scriptures as well as the oneness of God. The Gnostics and Marcion had in their several ways challenged the assumption that the Jewish scriptures spoke of the same God as Jesus Christ. The argument came down to the question what overarching story was to be told, which texts were to be used, and how were the diverse texts of scripture to be related to the whole. Irenaeus had already insisted that the Rule of Faith or Canon of Truth provided the interpretative key, and this Rule of Faith, though a malleable summary appearing in different forms in the works of Irenaeus, Tertullian and Origen, has a consistent three-fold shape, just as baptismal questions and creeds would have: God the Creator; Christ Jesus, the Son of God who became incarnate for our salvation; and the Holy Spirit, who foretold in the prophets all that God would do in Christ. Scripture is to be read according to this pattern17 – hence the christological reading of the “Old Testament,” which is crucial to the doctrine of the Trinity, and the point at which modern exegetes part company decisively with patristic hermeneutics. The arguments about scripture in the Monarchian controversies did not proceed simply by proof-texting. The question was how you expounded the texts you quoted, and one of the most important techniques was the adducing of texts from elsewhere so that a collage of witness was built up. The legacy of Justin Martyr was important: he had justified with a catena of texts the claim that before all creatures God begat a Beginning, which is now named in scripture as the Glory of the Lord, now the Son, now Wisdom, now Angel, then God, then Lord and Logos.18 Appeal is then made to Genesis: “Let us make man in our own image”; “Behold Adam has become as one of us.” Clearly two were involved in creation, and the one addressed is the one Solomon calls Wisdom, begotten as a Beginning before all creatures. This kind of approach is taken up by Tertullian and amplified, for example with reference to 1 Corinthians 15:27– 8, which speaks of the Son reigning until God has put all his enemies under his feet, and then being subjected himself so that God may be all in all – clearly 17 Young, 18 

Art of Performance and Biblical Exegesis. Justin Martyr, Dial., 61–62.

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there are two sharing the “monarchy” as well as the act of creation.19 John’s Gospel is also exploited to demonstrate the dispensation whereby there are two, yet “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). Hippolytus insists that texts must be put in context – a good exegetical principle, yet applied in ways that few would commend today.20 Tackling the Monarchian proof-texts – including such passages as that mentioned from Baruch – he suggests that other indications in the passages point to Jesus Christ, confirming this by cross-references. His peroration is telling, celebrating the Word who is at the Father’s side and whom the Father sent for the salvation of humanity. The Word is the one proclaimed through the Law and the Prophets, the one who became the “new man” from the virgin and the Holy Spirit, not disowning what was human about himself – hungry, exhausted, weary, thirsty, troubled when he prays, sleeping on a pillow, sweating in agony and wanting release from suffering, betrayed, flogged, mocked, bowing his head and breathing his last. He took upon himself our infirmities, as Isaiah had said. But he was raised from the dead, and is himself the Resurrection and the Life. He was carolled by angels and gazed on by shepherds, received God’s witness, “This is my beloved Son,” changed water into wine, reproved the sea, raised Lazarus, forgave sins. “This is God become man on our behalf – he to whom the Father subjected all things. To him be glory and power as well as to the Father and the Holy Spirit in the Holy Church, both now and always and from age to age. Amen.” The motivations were both exegetical and liturgical. The conceptual discourse was driven by the need to articulate the devotional discourse in the face of challenging questions. But was this “ditheism,” as the Monarchians claimed? It was of course the concept of the Logos, borrowed and developed from philosophy but validated by the prologue to the Gospel of John, that enabled the opponents of Monarchianism to give a reasoned account. As Tertullian puts it, God was alone, yet not alone, because he had his Logos within, and this “Reason” became “Discourse” when God spoke and so created.21 Thus there was the Word, the Son, a Person, another beside God, yet never separated from God, and of the same “substance,” as the shoot is “son of the root,” the river “son of the spring,” the beam “son of the sun.” The Son is not other than the Father by diversity but by distribution, not by division but by distinction, and there is a third, the Holy Spirit making up this relationship. This is the vital “economy,” which must be affirmed alongside the oneness of God. But holding that delicate balance would prove difficult as new questions were raised. The discourse would require further shaping and refining. We turn to the second important moment of challenge which exposed the difficulties inherent in the sort of settlement reached in response to Monarchianism. 19 Tertullian,

Prax., 5–8. Against Noetus, 4.7. 21 Tertullian, Prax., 5–8. 20 Hippolytus,

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2.  The Arian Controversy Hierarchy was built into pre-Nicene discourse. The Logos and the Spirit mediated the transcendent God, providing the vital link between the Creator and created things – indeed constituted the divine spirit and wisdom inherent in the human creation, as well as the divine order and rationality built into the universe by the Creator. So in Christ the impossible was possible: the invisible was made visible, the untouchable was touched, the impassible became passible and the immortal died. In Origen’s version of Logos theology the multiplicity of ἐπίνοιαι (epinoiai) that belong to the one Son of God implicitly make him the “One-Many” which Middle Platonism canvassed as the “Indefinite Dyad” required for the One to generate the diversity of the Many. The Logos is thus one with the Father, and yet not so – if not a second god, at least a secondary being though derived from the Father. To some extent that secondariness was counter­ acted by the notion of eternal generation – Origen’s argument that, for the unchangeable God to be Father, he must always have had a Son; but its force was somewhat undermined by the parallel argument that for the unchangeable God to be Creator creation must be eternal. If some degree of hierarchy is implicit in “economic trinitarianism,” this is notably the case in Origen’s version of it. Whatever else was going on in the Arian controversy, its effect was to expose and put in question this implicit hierarchy. Arius shared with other Christian teachers a belief in the pre-existent divine Logos through whom God created everything.22 He understood that Christ was the incarnation of this pre-existent Logos or Wisdom of God. Nobody questioned the long-established view that Proverbs 8:22–31 was about this pre-existent Wisdom or Logos. The argument about Arius’s motivations or background is probably beside the point: like the Monarchians he wanted to be true to the biblical tradition that there is only one God, and easily attracted the accusation, as they did, of being over-reliant on logic and syllogisms, while in fact taking certain texts of scripture with the utmost seriousness. As read since Justin Martyr, Proverbs 8:22 stated that “the Lord created me a Beginning of his ways” and went on to speak of Wisdom as the one who pre-existed everything else and was God’s co-creator. Arius deduced that the Logos was the first and greatest of God’s creatures, through whom God created everything else. There was only one being that had never come into being (or was “ingenerate” – ἀγένητος (agenē tos)), namely the one and only God. The Son was the “only-­ begotten” (μονογενής (monogenē s) and therefore γενητός (genē tos – generated); the Proverbs passage used both “begat” (γέννᾳ, genna(i)) and “created” (ἔκτισεν, ektisen), which Arius took to be synonyms. The combination of scriptural exegesis, monotheistic assumptions and logical deductions was typical of Christian 22  See further Frances Young, From Nicaea to Chalcedon (London: SCM Press, 1983, 2nd ed., 2010), and “Proverbs 8.”

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discourse in this period, and the same combination would characterize the reply to Arius. From the standpoint of modern biblical criticism, neither side had satisfactory arguments for the superstructure they built. Arius was probably reacting against a statement made by his bishop that appeared “Sabellian” – by now the accepted label for all forms of “modalist” doctrine. In order to counter this he emphasized the “secondary” and mediating character of the Logos. Athanasius, on whose writings we principally depend for discerning the issues at stake, counters with his own exegetical and logical armoury. He recognizes that Arius’s position cuts the Logos off from God – the Logos is God’s creature, not the Logos of the divine self, and so Wisdom is not God’s own Wisdom either. Arius has produced two Wisdoms and two Logoi, and the Logos incarnate in Jesus is created out of nothing like all other creatures, potentially changeable, not necessarily sinless, only Son of God by grace not nature. Maybe that was one thing Arius sought – a Saviour who had to struggle alongside the rest of us, genuinely tempted and tried in all points. 23 But for many Christians this undermined the possibility of salvation being guaranteed, and for Athanasius the imparting of divine life to those adopted as sons through the true Son Jesus Christ was rendered impossible. One way or another the substantial relationship of Son and Father had to be reasserted. The Nicene Creed resorted to ὁμοούσιος (homoousios – of one substance) – a non-scriptural term, because Arius would accept anything couched only in biblical language. Athanasius is at pains to argue that only thus could the “mind” or “sense” of scripture be maintained.24 So once again appeal is made to some overarching view of what scripture is about. True this is backed up by examination of the scriptural sense of particular words, and by drawing up collages of texts to establish this. There is a good deal of what might be described as proof-texting, as well as some very dubious exegesis, not least with respect to Proverbs 8:22–31. Athanasius wants to assert that the verb “created” is used of the incarnation, whereas “begat” is used of the Son’s generation from the Father, a proposal which does violence to the sequence of the Proverbs text – even if modern readers were prepared to allow the simple identification of Wisdom in this passage with the pre-existent Logos who became incarnate in Jesus depicted in John 1, which is not very likely! Arius had also appealed to gospel texts to show the “creaturely” character of the Logos – he was tired, ignorant, changeable, and passible. Athanasius has to distinguish between texts which speak of the Logos qua human being and those which clearly point to his divine nature, with some rather disjunctive effects – on one occasion he (or almost certainly someone writing in his name) is even led to suggest that the Logos “imitated” our condition – a docetic hostage to doctrinal 23  Robert C. Gregg and Dennis E. Groh, Early Arianism: A View of Salvation (London: SCM Press, 1981). 24 Athanasius, Decr.

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fortune! 25 It is easy to dismiss all this as imposing a predetermined doctrine on the biblical material. Yet this was the manner in which trinitarian theology was arrived at. Discourse was honed and refined in the context of controversy, and matters of exegesis were at the heart of the debates. It is important to recognize that the exegetical arguments can all be illuminated by comparison with the procedures accepted in the schools of the Greco-­ Roman world 26 – in other words they belong to a particular intellectual culture. All education in the Roman world was based on literature and its interpretation, whether the ultimate aim was rhetorical prowess or philosophical competence. Christians were using the same tools to produce teaching from their texts as everyone else was using to find, say, Neo-platonic philosophy in Homer. Homer was used to interpret Homer, in the sense of establishing Homeric vocabulary and its sense by cross-referencing. Rhetoricians learned to determine the subject-­matter or argument behind the wording; for necessarily there were many different ways in which something could be said, and the style should be appropriate to the topic. Trinitarian theology was genuinely an attempt to uncover the truth about God inadequately articulated in human language; for God had accommodated the divine self to our linguistic and conceptual limitations in scripture, just as the Logos had accommodated himself to our physical limitations in the incarnation. So the task of exegesis was to uncover the “mind” of scripture or the “intent” of the Spirit, and to create a discourse adequate to articulating that. If Hanson called it “the search for the Christian doctrine of God”27 – a significant move on from the “development” model – we may need to go further and describe it as a process of creative construction, or as Morgan suggests, of building on the foundation provided by the New Testament.

II.  New Testament Theology and the Trinity The questions that now arise are these: Does this particular construction permit a better view of what the New Testament is about; or does the New Testament rather provide a “foundation” on which a variety of different edifices might be built? And is this particular building a Tower of Babel – an hybristic attempt to define God, or indeed an imposition of false categories on the New Testament? But first we might ask: Is Morgan’s category of “myth” a better rhetorical category for New Testament discourse than doctrine, and does that mean that it is inappropriate to look at the theology of the New Testament from the perspective of emerging trinitarian theology? 25 Athanasius,

C.Ar., 3.57. See further Young, Biblical Exegesis. 27  R. P. C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God. The Arian Controversy 318–381 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988). 26 

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1.  New Testament theology – “myth,” “doctrine,” or what? All words carry baggage, which makes this question particularly ambiguous. What Morgan wishes to say is that there is no worked-out conception of a Wisdom-­ Christology in the New Testament, treating “doctrine” as propositional and metaphysical, the kind of discourse whose articulation we have traced. But there is plenty of “doctrine” in the New Testament if we give the word its original force; and replacing it with “myth” may not do much to clarify the situation. The Latin-derived word “doctrine,” like its parallel “dogma” from the equivalent Greek, simply means “teaching.” The context in which such words have their currency was and is the world of education – schools, primary, secondary, tertiary, now; then, grammatical, rhetorical, and philosophical. Schools often engaged in teaching of a moral and religious kind, but teaching was not generally associated with religious activities as such in the Greco-Roman world. The earliest churches may have had some similarities to collegia, which had a religious aspect,28 but generally speaking their activities were more like those of synagogues.29 Synagogues, like schools, were the carriers of culture, Jewish in this case rather than Greco-Roman, and both did this through the interpretation of texts. So synagogue and church had many features akin to a school, especially their focus on morality, and recommending a way of life on the basis of the texts studied.30 The church offered exegetical comment on the scriptures in the light of what had happened recently through Jesus Christ, and exhortation to a particular lifestyle based on this exegesis of scripture and its fulfilment in Christ. This constituted the teaching of this school-like community. Not for nothing are the followers of Jesus called “disciples”: Jesus is consistently presented as a teacher with his circle of pupils. The New Testament is full of this kind of “doctrine.” Explicit teaching in the New Testament concerns practical issues: what are the commandments that should be followed by believers? But behind this teaching lies a set of theological assumptions providing the warrants. The overriding perspective is that the God of the scriptures has decisively acted in Jesus Christ 28  The social parallels to the early church have been discussed since Wayne A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983). For an overview, see Richard S. Ascough, “Greco-Roman Philosophic, Religious and Voluntary Associations,” in Community Formation in the Early Church and in the Church Today, ed. Richard N. Longenecker (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2002): 3–19. Collegia, philosophical schools and synagogues were often gatherings in private houses, like the early church. 29 Alan F. Segal, “The Jewish Experience: Temple, Synagogue, Home and Fraternal Groups,” in Community Formation, ed. Longenecker: 20–35. 30  The school-like character of early Christianity is now widely accepted; see e.g. Peter Lampe, From Paul to Valentinus: Christians at Rome in the first Two Centuries, trans. Michael Steinhauser (London: T&T Clark/Continuum, 2003); Brent, Hippolytus, especially 402 ff.

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and imparted the Spirit to the community of the “new covenant,” writing the law on their hearts. Much of this is illuminated by assuming that the eschatological outlook of apocalyptic writings has shaped the mindset of the earliest believers, who see the scriptures fulfilled in recent events. Whether we call this “myth” or not is a moot question – “myth” has proved to be a word which introduces obfuscation rather than clarity.31 Maybe “rhetoric” would capture the distinction from “philosophy” which Morgan seems to need. What we certainly see is an ever-increasing conglomeration of ideas, roles, symbols, prophecies, whether found in the Jewish scriptures or traceable in other literature from approximately the same era, all overlaying one another as they are exploited to draw out the significance of Jesus Christ.32 In other words we have the kind of discourse which needs, as Morgan suggests, a literary hermeneutic: it appeals to the imagination, it provides creative insight, it stimulates to action, it does not systematize, it is doxological. If Christian discourse later refined and honed the underlying sense of all this, shifting the discourse from the rhetoric of apocalyptic prophecy and cultic celebration to philosophy, logic and metaphysics, it is nevertheless interesting that triadic formulae already appear to have been used, especially in liturgical contexts. We undoubtedly have the curious phenomenon of a group of people who offer cultic devotion to Jesus, while believing they remain within the monotheistic traditions of Judaism; 33 or, as Morgan puts it, “this conviction that in having to do with Jesus we are having to do with God is what all New Testament Christology and subsequent orthodoxy are getting at.”34 So the other questions come into play. Is “emerging trinitarian theology” a valid perspective from which to view New Testament theology?

2.  A clearer view? The debates which generated the discourse of trinitarian theology certainly show that different edifices could be built on the foundation of the New Testament. Deductive processes actually produced (and as some of my asides indicated, still produce) a variety of models: as different issues were raised and different considerations came into play, we can trace oscillation from one point to another on a kind of spectrum of thought. But the “orthodox” voices consistently appeal to a unitive narrative or “mind” of scripture, recognizing that the overall thrust is more important than discrete proof-texts, while also seeking to 31 

Cf. the response to Myth, ed. Hick. Young, “Cloud of Witnesses” and “Two Roots?” in Myth, ed. Hick, reproduced as chs. 3 and 4 of the present volume; and “From Analysis to Overlay” in Sacramental Word, ed. Brown and Loades, reproduced as ch.  8 of the present volume. 33  Cf. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ, for justification of this statement, though its expression is in fact an anachronistic shorthand – “monotheism” being a word devised in the eighteenth century! 34  Morgan, “Wisdom of God (2),” in Reading Texts, ed. Ford and Stanton, 36. 32 

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be true to the confession of the church in its liturgical life, a life in which the texts were read and interpreted for the needs of the time. It is therefore not implausible that their reading more faithfully represents the thrust of New Testament theology. I would argue that the New Testament consistently presents the activity of Christ and the Spirit as the work of the one true God of the Law and the Prophets, Psalms and Wisdom. Under pressure that relationship had to be articulated in ways that the New Testament writers themselves had not envisaged,35 but it was always there, at least in narrative form. The new formulation may appear to depend on proof-texting and on the christological reading of the “Old Testament,” but surely there are other ways of conceiving that fundamental sense of the underlying unity of God’s purpose, and indeed of the scriptures, which may cut more ice in our different cultural environment.36 Trinitarian theology is sometimes treated as if it intended to produce a definition of God. One of the most liberating aspects of studying the texts written to oppose the neo-Arian Eunomius is the discovery that this is fundamentally erroneous.37 It was Eunomius who insisted that God is knowable – indeed, completely comprehensible because he is a simple unity. God is always and absolutely one, remaining uniformly and unchangeably God, never becoming sometimes one and sometimes another, nor changing from being what he is, never separated or divided into more. The defining characteristic of this God is ἀγενησία (agenē sia), which means that the Supreme and Absolute One is isolated from the second and third, which came after and are therefore inferior. The hierarchical view is reasserted on the basis of defining God as the one and only being that has not come into being. By contrast for Gregory of Nyssa God is infinite – without boundaries and therefore indefinable, in principle beyond our comprehension. To say otherwise is to reduce God to the size of our own creaturely minds. This perception lay at 35  “The loyal and uncritical repetition of formulae is seen to be inadequate as a means of securing continuity at anything more than a formal level; Scripture and tradition require to be read in a way that brings out their strangeness, their non-obvious and non-contemporary qualities, in order that they may be read both freshly and truthfully from one generation to another.” So Rowan Williams in the “Postscript (Theological)” to his book, Arius. Heresy and Tradition (London: Darton Longman & Todd, 1987). That theology is necessary, because new questions demand new thinking and so new exegesis, would appear to be the thrust of his argument, as of this essay. From the perspective of the fresh questions, a clearer view of the theological implications of the New Testament may well be possible. 36  It is along these lines that an answer needs to be developed to the challenge I presented to systematic theologians at SST – cf. note 3 above. Christian reading of scripture presupposes the acceptance of a framework of “doctrine,” and the fruitful interaction between that sense of the thrust of the biblical witness with what is actually found in the text. 37  Fundamental here is Gregory of Nyssa, Against Eunomius, Greek text: Gregorii Nysseni opera, vols. 1 and 2, ed. W. Jaeger et al. (Leiden: Brill, 1960); ET in NPNF; but cf. also John Chrysostom’s homilies, On God’s Incomprehensibility, Greek text: De Incomprehensibilitate Dei, Migne, PG 48.701B–748D; Jean Chrysostome, Sur l’incomprehensibilité de Dieu, ed. and trans. R. Flacelière, SC 28 (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1950); ET in FC.

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the heart of his spirituality – no finite mind can ever grasp the infinite God, so there is a constant journey of apprehension. Knowledge of God requires intellectual humility, a kenosis modelled on that of Christ – only this produces the true theologian. No “names” are adequate to God. Yet the language used in scripture is not arbitrary. God accommodates the divine self to our limitations. So we have to stretch our language and conceptions beyond their earthly meanings, and even then only catch a glimpse of the outskirts of his ways. What we do see, however, through creation, through scripture, is the common will and activity of Father, Son and Spirit, all three subjects belonging to the same indivisible, incomposite and infinite Godhead. Θεολογία (Theologia) is literally mind-blowing – speculation about inner-trinitarian relations is always to be restrained by awareness of our creaturely incapacity; while God’s οἰκονομία (oikonomia), the divine outpouring of love and grace, is perceptible and converting. Scripture contributes both to the constraints on speculation and to the stimulation of endless creative possibilities. The poetry of Ephrem makes very similar moves: 38 In the case of the Godhead, what created being is able to investigate Him? For there is a great chasm between him and the Creator…

But God clothed the divine self in the metaphors and types of scripture: He clothed himself in our language, so that He might clothe us In his mode of life… It is our metaphors that He put on… The Divine Being that in all things is exalted above all things In his love bent down from on high and acquired from us our own habits…

Trinity and incarnation are expressions of wonder and response to the gracious saving kenosis to which scripture bears witness. So the Cappadocians and Ephrem the Syrian, not to mention John Chrysostom whose homilies on God’s incomprehensibility bring the discourse right into the context of preaching and worship, celebrate God’s indefinability. I would argue that in the process of opposing Eunomius they produce a theology which does indeed allow better insight into what the New Testament is all about – certainly better than their opponents. They allow the categories of human conceptuality and limitations of language to be challenged, in the light of what the New Testament proclaims. They reflect the “intent” of New Testament theo­logy in seeing that “doctrine” provides warrant for a way of life in response to the saving grace of God. They produced the outline of a model that has proved constantly fruitful and generative over the centuries of Christian devotion and reading of scripture. They permitted a thousand flowers to bloom, and it is a wise insight that sets beauty alongside goodness and truth. 38 

Quoted from Brock, The Luminous Eye, 44 and 49.

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Morgan insists on the historical meaning as a criterion by which anachronistic and inappropriate readings of New Testament theology are to be avoided. But quite apart from the practical difficulties of ever producing definitive historical meaning, there is no presuppositionless interpretation; and if the New Testament is to be read Christianly, we need to take seriously the hermeneutical principal that the future meaning of the text is as significant as its past meaning. Ancient rhetorical theory suggested that πίστις (pistis – which means “persuasion” as well as “faith”) is produced by the interaction of the ἦθος (ē thos) of the speaker (the authority given by good character), the λόγος (logos) of the speech (that is, the validity of the argument) and the πάθος (pathos) of the audience (the way the hearers are swayed and moved to action).39 This three-way approach to the interaction of author, text and reader perhaps provides a hermeneutical model for the complex interactions involved in reading New Testament theo­ logy from later perspectives. It may be true that only hindsight uncovers the true significance of things, and that a better view emerges from climbing the ladder or ascending the mountain – along with the vertigo of standing on the cliff and attempting to “see” God in the Cloud of the Presence. It was Gregory of Nyssa who particularly developed the mountain imagery for the theological and spiritual journey, and I guess that he and others who articulated the trinitarian doctrine were in fact doing what Morgan recommends: discovering the truth through living the life, singing the songs and reading the scriptures. What they perceived was a “theodrama”40 with three characters and one action. This was the revelation incarnated in stories like the baptism. So Christians sing, When Thou, O Lord, was baptized in the Jordan, The worship of the Trinity was made manifest. For the voice of the Father bore witness unto Thee, Calling Thee the beloved Son, And the Spirit, in the form of a dove, Confirmed his word as sure and steadfast. O Christ our God, who has appeared and enlightened the world, Glory to Thee.

39 

40 

For an interesting development of this see Kinneavy, Rhetorical Origins. To borrow a term from Hans Urs von Balthasar.

Chapter 24

Sacred text and the transcendence of tradition: the Bible in a pluralist Society* My title and subtitle break down into four themes: sacred scriptures in general; the Bible in particular; the transcendence of tradition; and our pluralist society. I shall explore each in turn here, though not in that order; I begin with the context in which we find ourselves.

I.  Pluralist society A Methodist theologian from Singapore, in a book published in 1990, wrote as follows: It is a pluralistic world. We can sing about the reality of pluralism. There is a variety of people and cultures. People are identified with race, religion, and nation. Cultures are distinguished by time periods and places in the world. Pluralism is unavoidable. This is a rainbow society.1

He suggests that in this situation “we have a tendency to isolate ourselves” because we are more comfortable with those we know, those who are like us. He also observes that those who are powerful face the temptation to eradicate or dominate those who are different. A monolithic society discourages dissent; so pluralism is essential for a truly political society. That is something brought home to me with some force in 1993, when I was involved in the World Faith and Order Conference in Santiago di Compostela. I shall never forget the session given over to Spanish Protestants to tell their story. Under Franco they had not been allowed to exist. This was a graphic reminder of the importance of the long battles for religious freedom which have taken place in European history. It was even a challenge to my long-held ecumenical hopes for a united church: would not institutional unity be a recipe for religious totalitarianism? In the evening, however, the Roman Catholic Franciscans in Santiago lent their basilica to the Spanish Protestants, so that they could *  Originally published in Liberating Texts: Sacred Scriptures in Public Life, ed. Sebastian C. H. Kim and Jonathan Draper (London: SPCK, 2008): 75–98. 1  Yap Kim Hao, Doing Theology in a Pluralistic World (Singapore: The Methodist Book Room, 1990).

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break bread with their brothers and sisters from across the globe. That ecclesiastical hospitality seemed a deeply significant sign of hope. Any monolithic society discourages dissent, and pluralism is indeed essential for a truly political society. But it requires respect for the “other,” even hospitality, rather than mere tolerance, let alone suppression! Without pluralism there is no true democracy. But it demands that we break out of our isolation and engage in the public realm with those who are different. Retreat into mutually hostile camps, or the attempt to establish boundaries that are not porous, generates the partitions which have proved dubious ways of settling twentieth-century conflicts, creating oppressed minorities and even leading to ethnic cleansing. I think of Northern Ireland, the former Yugoslavia, Cyprus, Sri Lanka, Israel/Palestine. Lebanon and Iraq are examples of fractured societies without partition. Pluralist societies are not comfortable places to be, but they are better than ethnocentric enclaves, or an imposed uniformity. In nearly all of the cases mentioned the situation has been compounded by differences in religion. The resurgence of religion in the former Soviet bloc has not helped to create pluralist societies in which differences are negotiated. I have been privileged to visit both Belgrade and Moscow. In Moscow the civic authorities have rebuilt in precise replica the cathedral put up to celebrate victory over Napoleon; Stalin had had it razed to the ground and replaced it by a swimming pool. The suppression of religion under communism has meant that its resurgence tends to create another monolithic society in which religion is annexed to nationalist identity. The same is true in Serbia. Religion has reinforced the desire to expunge difference – and so as elsewhere it has contributed to oppression and violence. It is not surprising, then, that people increasingly perceive religion as a source of conflict. A Guardian/ICM poll at the end of 2006 showed that 82 percent of respondents said that faith causes division and tension, though 57 percent still think religion a force for good. Only 17 percent regarded Britain as Christian country; 62 percent saw Britain as a religious country of many faiths. If pluralism is to be valued, then the faith traditions clearly need to find ways of negotiating with one another. That is, unless religion is just eliminated. According to another Guardian piece, People’s fascination for religion and superstition will disappear within a few decades as television and the internet make it easier to get information, and scientists get closer to discovering a final theory of everything…. Philosopher Daniel Denett (sic) believes that within 25 years religion will command little of the awe it seems to instil today. The spread of information … will “gently, irresistibly, undermine the mindsets requisite for religious fanaticism and intolerance.”2 2  Report by Alok Jha (science correspondent), “No religion and an end to war: how thinkers see the future,” Guardian Newspaper, 1 January 2004.

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For a long time the leading academics and intellectuals in this country have tended to regard religion as passé, and the poll quoted above revealed that 15 percent of respondents thought most people here do not believe in a god, and that only 33 percent claim to be religious. All the subtle anti-religious trends in our society may ultimately be more effective in suppressing religion than the state atheism of the former Soviet Union. Certainly western Christianity seems increasingly weakened, and in Britain a far higher proportion of immigrants practise their religion than the indigenous population, as the same poll confirmed. But some of this is surely due to western consumerism and individualism. The postmodern assumption is that both modern science and the religions offer competing “grand narratives” explaining life, the universe, and everything – so you can choose between them, or be sceptical of them all and do your own thing. This has created a society in which the public realm is itself endangered. Politics, like religion, is overwhelmed by entertainment 24/7. Lack of commitment to anything and the primacy of choice exclude things, like relationships and religion, which require time and depth. Many have never given their children the opportunity to know what it means to be religious, imagining they can make their own choice when they grow up – religion has been privatized as a personal matter. But faiths are not the kind of thing you can line up on a supermarket shelf. Most opinion-formers in our society clearly have no real knowledge or understanding of Christianity, or indeed of any other religious faith. In the new millennium, the apparent power of religion has caught commentators by surprise, and most movers and shakers are profoundly resistant to the idea that religion should have any role at all in the public sphere. So religious communities feel like oppressed minorities, as the monolithic secular society ridicules their beliefs and values. They become the more defensively aggressive and conservative in the face of this reality, retreating into the safety of their isolation while occasionally lashing out against trends in society they judge to be immoral. This is one of the factors in the rise of fundamentalisms, and precisely the opposite of what a pluralist society needs if it is to work effectively. So to sum up this admittedly brief and inadequate survey: religion is perceived to be divisive; the majority are not religious; but a pluralist society is a public good; and for it to work it needs readiness to respect difference. Such is the context in which we are considering the place of sacred texts. It is a world in which people presume competition between the different sacred texts of different religious communities. It is a situation where the majority have little knowledge of any sacred text, where literary and artistic culture is barely touched by the Bible, despite its deep influence in this country over past centuries, and where there is no place for scriptures in the public realm, since politics and religion are supposed to be kept well apart. So there is a serious question whether any sacred texts could, or indeed should, have any influence at all on public life

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in general; and that question might seem exacerbated by the nature of sacred texts.

II.  The nature of sacred texts In the ancient world books seemed to defy mortality, allowing the absent authors of the past to speak in the present and impart wisdom for subsequent generations – they had an “aura.” By contrast, in our society, books are two-apenny (or two-for-one!) and some think they will soon be superseded by new technologies. While the past may be turned into a theme park by the heritage industry, it is hardly regarded as offering much wisdom for our future, or change-oriented, culture. One reason why religions seem passé is their continued devotion to ancient books; in honouring particular books or collections of books, even giving them the status of holy objects, the major religions appear to live in the culture of antiquity rather than the modern (or postmodern) world. Furthermore, as holy objects, the scriptures each belong to a particular religious tradition. Sacred texts are sacred because they are “themselves” in the context of liturgy, prayer, and worship. Let us consider a few snapshots. (1) The story is told of a poor, illiterate Indian woman. She would spread out her prayermat, then take the Qur’an and hold it to her heart. “She would then recall, crying like a child, that moment when the Voice repeatedly said to the Prophet in the cave of Hera: Read, Read in the Name of the Lord. And the Prophet had said in utter helplessness: I cannot read.” She would then go to the prayer-mat, lift the Qur’an above her head, and say, “O Book! You are above my understanding. My head is nothing more than a place whereupon you rest.” Then, sitting on the prayer-mat, she would open the book, and follow the text with her finger, starting where she had left off the day before. What transpired between the book and that touch, and what knowledge passed, without any meditation or conscious thought, directly into her soul, only the Qur’an and that strange reciter could know. The entire world stood still at this amazing recital without words, without meaning, without knowledge. With that touch a unity was established between her and the Qur’an. At that moment she had passed into a state of total identity with the word of God.3

(2) In a Buddhist monastery in Tibet, not so long ago, I watched monks, in their saffron robes, bent double, passing around three sides of their shrine, underneath huge cupboards which contained the Buddhist scriptures. They were literally and physically passing under their sacred texts, thus enacting their 3  Hasan Askari, Alone to Alone: From Awareness to Vision (Leeds: Seven Mirrors, 1991), 113; quoted by Tim Winter, “Readings of the ‘Reading’,” in Scriptures in Dialogue: Christians and Muslims studying the Bible and Qur’ān together, ed. Michael Ipgrave (London: Church House Publishing, 2004): 50–55.

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spiritual submission to the texts. (3) The final snapshot is of Christian churches, in many of which the Gospel-book is processed, often with incense, before being read publicly. In Roman antiquity that is what people did with the images of the gods. Still in Mediterranean Catholic countries images of the Blessed Virgin Mary are processed at her festivals in this way. In Jewish synagogues the scrolls of Torah are likewise processed. Sacred texts stand in the place of sacred images as the mediators of the divine. In every one of these cases it is not the content of the text that is directly in play. Rather, the physical object itself is venerated as holy, as mediating something that has an absolute claim over the worshipper. That is what a sacred text is. It is no ordinary book to read casually, like a novel, or even a work of philo­ sophy. An absolute claim that these texts are authoritative, at least for those who accept the claim, means there is a tendency for them to become fixed in form. In another Buddhist monastery in Tibet, I saw the ancient blocks from which the scriptures are printed. This block printing goes back centuries before the invention of printing in the West. Movable type has never been introduced for these scriptures. Every page is a separately carved block, carefully stacked in the right order from time immemorial. In a Jewish synagogue pride of place is given to the Ark of the Covenant, in which are stored the sacred scrolls, from which the Torah is read. The switch from scrolls to the book format took place in the third and fourth centuries of the Christian era. But in Judaism, scrolls, written by hand, in Hebrew, remain the form of the text for liturgical purposes. The physical act of writing a new Torah is an act of deep religious meaning; every detail must be reproduced with absolute faithfulness and without error. Despite its diffusion across the globe among many different ethnic and linguistic communities, the Qur’an is always recited in Arabic – strictly speaking it cannot be translated since translation is an act of interpretation. Some Muslims learn the whole Arabic text by heart: this oral transmission surely helps to guarantee the fixity of the text, for it is virtually impossible to modify a text that is lovingly cherished in the hearts of many. At the same time, the Qur’an itself speaks of the Lord teaching “with the pen,” and the writing down of the divine revelation in the Book means that calligraphy has been, and still is, one of the most valued of Islamic arts. Several traditional writing styles are used, but the text itself, they say, has been transcribed without alteration. Some anomalies in the text are supposed to go back to the Companions of the Prophet who memorized the original revelations, and they remain there because the text is unalterable.4 Christianity might seem the exception that proves the rule. From the earliest times there have been versions of the scriptures in languages other than the original Greek of the 4  Sayyid Siddiq Hasan, Reflections on the Collection of the Qur’ān, trans. A. R. Kidwai (Birmingham: Qur’ānic Arabic Foundation, 1999).

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New Testament and the Septuagint version of the Old Testament: Syriac, Latin, Coptic, Armenian, Georgian, and so on. But the same tendency can be seen in the persistence of the Latin version in Roman Catholicism into the twentieth century, or Old Slavonic in the Russian Orthodox Church to this day, and the Authorized Version among some evangelical and Pentecostal Christians. But while the form of a sacred text remains unchanged, the very authoritative nature of the text generates debate about meaning. Exegesis is a contested area. In the same Buddhist monastery where the scriptures were printed in the traditional way, I witnessed the ancient practice of dispute. In a particular spot, beside the main temple, at a set time, the monks would gather and pair off. One would set out a hypothesis; the other would listen and then respond with a contrary thesis. This would be accompanied with stamping and physical expressions of determined claims to be right. The very same week that Saddam Hussein’s statue was torn to the ground in Baghdad, I was in Qatar, engaged in a conference with Muslim scholars, studying the Bible and the Qur’an side by side. It was the second “Building Bridges Seminar” chaired by former Archbishops of Canterbury.5 Much of the time was spent in small study groups. What impressed me was the way in which both Muslim and Christian scholars were able to say that some interpreters took a text this way, others understood it that way. Both communities were drawing on centuries of scholarly activity in which the exegesis of the sacred text was subject to debate, and reasoned arguments were advanced for understanding it one way or another. Then again, because the text is authoritative, most religions have authorized interpreters to expound the text for those who have not spent time studying it, whether because they conduct the business of the world or because they are illiterate. When Jews, Christians or Muslims gather for worship, the text is not just read or recited, but there is a homily or sermon, expounding the text and applying it to the lives that the congregation live. For these sacred texts set out the right way of life for the believer who accepts their absolute claim. Not surprisingly, there are different interpretative traditions within each religion, different interpretative communities or, to use a Christian term, different denominations. So the more one characterizes sacred texts, the more they seem bound by the communities that cherish them, and confined to their sacred locations, their rituals, their participating persons. Does not this captivity mean that sacred texts cannot possibly make any contribution to the public realm? The perception that it is the sacred texts which offer competing and incompatible “grand narratives” that contribute to the conflict of religions may seem confirmed. Their very antiquity, and the conservatism that traps them in ancient traditions, even ancient languages, surely disqualifies them from having any wider impact 5 

The proceedings of the second were published in Scriptures in Dialogue, ed. Ipgrave.

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on a society that seeks innovation above all else, not to mention instant gratification, or at least immediate communication. My argument so far would seem to point to profoundly negative conclusions. But hidden within it are seeds of hope, which I hope to draw out below. What I want to do is to uncover the implicit ways in which sacred texts point beyond themselves, and so to the possibility of the transcendence of tradition. As a Christian I shall explore the ways in which the Bible challenges us to engage with the “other” with hospitality and respect. I shall refer to the work of progressive Muslims exploring the same agenda with respect to the Qur’an. 6 I shall suggest that each religious community has the potential to discover its own place in the rainbow society of pluralism if it becomes more responsive to its own sacred texts. So sacred texts will prove to have a crucial role in a pluralist society, which is far removed from the assumption that they are just competing and incompatible claims to truth. If allowed to, they can challenge and transform the outlook of their own adherents, so as to make them better citizens of a pluralist world. Furthermore, we can find within the various sacred texts common insights into the human condition, which can contribute to those values which permit a pluralist society to function. In pursuing this line of thinking I turn first to the Bible.

III.  The Bible and its attitudes to the “other” 7 What Christians call the Old Testament may be described as the library of Jewish classics. It encompasses stories about national origins, religious and social laws, more than one version of early Jewish history, together with poetry and literature. It is therefore specific to a particular nation and its self-con­sciousness. There were originally twelve tribes of Israel in a confederation, whose common history included the Exodus from Egypt and the occupation of the Promised Land. By the time the scriptures were put together, ten tribes had been lost and only the Judeans remained. By the time the New Testament came into being, the Jews were scattered all over the then known world, but retained their common identity, written as it was into their sacred literature. A key element in their story is their election by “the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,” who gave no name other than “I am what I am” (or “I will be what I will be”). This God entered into a covenant with them: “If you obey my voice 6  Progressive Muslims on Justice, Gender, and Pluralism, ed. Omid Safi (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2003); also The Muslim World, an academic journal published by Hartford Seminary, Connecticut, since 1911, particularly a special issue devoted to the contributions of a Turkish thinker, Fethullah Gulen, 95.3 (July 2005). 7  In this section I have here borrowed from and adapted the lecture I gave in Qatar, published in Scriptures in Dialogue, ed. Ipgrave.

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and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples” (Exod 19:5). But it is also deeply written into these scriptures that this God is the God of all the earth. The very words just quoted continue: “Indeed the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.” The chosen people have a role in the purposes of the one God of the whole world. So the Bible begins with God’s act of creation. One might speak of a tension between universalism and particularity being written deep into what Christians call the Old Testament; alternatively one might discern in this the way that the universal God chooses to engage with the creation, namely through particularities. The history of the chosen nation records warfare with “others,” with the expectation that God is on their side. Yet the notion of God’s universal oversight had an impact on the nationalist tendencies of the biblical material. We may note the challenge offered by the prophets, who suggested that God’s judgment on the people for not keeping the covenant would take the form of their conquest by the Assyrians, then the Babylonians. A generation or two after the capture of Jerusalem, the exiles in Babylon were told that God would now restore them to their land, and the agent would be Cyrus the Persian, who is even described (in Isa 45) as God’s anointed one (= Messiah). Even those who do not know God may act on God’s behalf. In the Law revealed through Moses to the people, the stranger residing among the Israelites has a special place. Although not part of the covenant-people, the “gē rim” (Hebrew for “resident aliens”) should be treated with respect, protected against injustice and violence, and have the same privilege of rest on the sabbath (Exod 20:10; 23:12). “A curse upon the one who withholds justice from the gē r, the orphan and the widow…” (Deut 27:19). Again like widows and orphans, the gē r has a right to the gleanings from grain, olive and grape harvests (Deut 24:19). The gē rim are included in festivals, and were to be provided with food and clothing (Deut 16:11; 10:18). “You shall not wrong a gē r, or be hard upon him; you were yourselves gē rim in Egypt” (Exod 22:21); “You shall not oppress the gē r for you know how it feels to be a gē r; you were gē rim yourselves in Egypt” (Exod 23:9). The Israelite has the soul of the gē r, we might say. Key figures, such as Abraham and Elijah, are depicted as gē rim. Even God appears as a gē r in Jeremiah 14:8. So despite the nationalist focus of much of the material in the so-called Old Testament, there are features which encourage openness. Furthermore, two books, Ruth and Jonah, specifically challenge exclusiveness. Ruth was the foreign daughter-in-law of an Israelite living abroad. The story tells of her determination to stay with her mother-in-law, Naomi, even when, after the death of her husband and two sons, Naomi decides to return to Israel. Ruth, the gē r, gleans the fields of a relative, who eventually takes her in marriage. There is no sign of embarrassment at the fact that the great king David was descended from this foreigner. However, exclusiveness clearly hardened in

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a later period, and the story of Jonah was the response. Jonah is the unwilling prophet who runs away from God’s call. The call is to go to Nineveh, the capital city of the most powerful of Israel’s enemies. Eventually Nineveh repents in response to his reluctant preaching, so God spares the city, and Jonah is completely put out! The book of Jonah appears amongst the books of the Twelve Prophets, but it is a strange book beside them: the foreign city, unlike Israel, repents when a prophet is sent; and God is merciful to foreigners, where Israel faced destruction as result of God’s judgment. It would seem to be more like a satire than a history. This seems to be confirmed by the extraordinary incident whereby Jonah is swallowed and regurgitated by a whale. A strong feature of the whole text is its affirmation of God’s sovereignty over all of creation. We could continue with exploration of the so-called “wisdom” traditions in the Bible, texts which show deep connections with the general wisdom of the Ancient Near East and the Hellenistic world, 8 but let us now turn to the New Testament. This presupposes the One God, Creator of all, and the story of this God’s engagement with humanity through the chosen people of God, claiming that the church is now the true people of God: You are the chosen race, the King’s priests, the holy nation, God’s own people, chosen to proclaim the wonderful acts of God, who called you out of darkness into his own marvellous light. At one time you were not God’s people, but now you are his people; at one time you did not know God’s mercy, but now you have received his mercy. (1 Peter 2:9–10, GNB)

Such ideas were to have the legacy of supersessionism – the view that Christianity superseded Judaism. New boundaries were being established, even as old ones were challenged. The question whether Jesus was a Jewish prophet, sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matt 15:24), or brought a revelation to non-Jewish peoples (the Gentiles), was one of the most contested issues in early Christianity, and the New Testament bears the marks of this argument. The earliest Christian documents we have are the epistles of St Paul. Two of these at least (arguably more) are preoccupied with the questions raised by the conversion of nonJews. Paul argues strongly that Gentiles should not be required to take on the ethnic marks of a Jew in order to become members of the believing community. He was clearly up against strong opponents who argued that salvation through Christ presupposed being a loyal Jew, and therefore the Jewish identity-markers of circumcision and keeping Torah should be required, just as if they were proselytes to Judaism. So, on the one hand, the mission to Gentiles implies that the gospel is universal and not confined to Jews; on the other hand it encourages a 8  This is in fact treated elsewhere in the volume where this chapter was originally published: David F. Ford, “God and our public life: a scriptural wisdom,” in Liberating Texts, ed. Kim and Draper: 29–56.

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strong differentiation between those who accept the gospel message and become believers and those, whether Jews or Gentiles, who do not. Nevertheless, for the Pauline tradition, it is really important that a new humanity has been forged in Christ in which the old divisions between Jews and Gentiles have been healed and transformed. Jesus himself, a Jew in a Jewish society, is depicted in the Gospels as breaking across boundaries. A brief catalogue would include the following: the core commandments of Jesus are to love God and love our neighbours – indeed, even to love our enemies. Jesus clearly welcomed people who were marginalized in his society, such as women, children, even lepers and some who were regarded as sinners by the religious leaders of the time. He told parables about welcoming outsiders to the feast of the Kingdom. Many stories indicate the openness of Jesus to people usually treated with suspicion because they were non-Jews: for example, the parable of the Good Samaritan, or the healing of the servant of the Roman centurion – a Gentile. Jesus told people not to judge others, in case they were judged by God. Jesus told his disciples not to stop someone driving out demons in his name, even though he did not belong to the group of the disciples, because “whoever is not against you is for you.” According to some versions of the story Jesus “cleansed the Temple” for the sake of Gentiles, protesting “It is written in the scriptures that God said, ‘My Temple will be called a house of prayer for the people of all nations.’ But you have turned it into a den of thieves” (Matt 21:13; Mark 11:17; Luke 19:46). In the Gospel of John, however, there is one definitive verse which, for many Christian believers, indicates that only through Christ is salvation possible. According to John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life; no-one comes to the Father but by me.” Many Christians simply take the statement at face value as the authoritative word of Jesus, but maybe a different perspective results from setting it in context. The statement appears in the so-called “farewell discourses.” Here Jesus is presented as speaking to the disciples alone, that is, to those who will recognize him as coming from the Father, and later on, when the Spirit has led them into all truth, will understand the message of the gospel as a whole, namely, that he is the ­Logos/Word of God, an idea explored at the very beginning of the Gospel. The opening words of the prologue of John’s Gospel assert that God was in the beginning, picking up the very first words of the Bible. The biblical claim about the one true God, who is the Creator of all that is, thus provides the fundamental perspective. The Word is with God, indeed is God – for it was through him that everything was made. Life is in him, and life is light for humankind. Of course, this universal, divine Word is the way, the truth and the life, for all human creatures. According to the prologue, however, the light shone in the darkness, and the darkness could not grasp it. The true light enlightens everybody. It was in the world, and the world came into being through it, but the world didn’t recognize it. In this way the prologue sketches the drama of the

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story to follow. The Word of the Lord came to prophets, who were rejected. The Word of the Lord came in person, and was rejected. God’s wisdom may be universal, but it is also contested. The prologue thus grapples with the tension between the particular manifestation of the Word in Jesus Christ and the universal presence of God’s Wisdom in all creation. Jesus is not the exclusive presence of the Logos, rather the full embodiment of that Word which was already present in the prophets, and in all wise men and women of every culture. In the second century, Christian apologists, such as Justin Martyr, would claim that Jesus was the fulfilment of both prophecy and philosophy – affirming the presence of the Logos in Socrates as well as Isaiah. Christ is the way, the truth and life to which all philosophy, all religion, points. The Bible encourages believers to find their identity and the meaning of their lives in its overarching story; but it also challenges them to recognize that their God is the God of the whole universe, and that they cannot confine God to their own community – indeed, the challenge is to perceive, in all humility, that God has always been at work among those who are outside the boundaries of the community. Within the Christian community the interpretation of the ­Bible is contested. Yet surely history has shown that in new situations new meanings may be discerned: slavery was once thought to be endorsed by the Bible, but hardly any more. Pluralism requires those of us who honour the Bible to explore its dynamics with these new questions, and discover its potential to hold together, on the one hand, the truths that make believers free and, on the other, the wider perspective that encourages believers to engage fruitfully with those who are different, to confront narrow fundamentalisms and transcend their traditions.

IV.  The transcendence of tradition Christians are not alone in engaging in that process. You may recall the publication of Jonathan Sacks’s book, The Dignity of Difference, which caused great controversy within his own community, as is typical for such prophetic voices.9 The former Chief Rabbi showed us all the value of pluralism, building his case from the Hebrew Bible. Within Islam, too, there is the same kind of development: At the heart of a progressive Muslim interpretation is a simple yet radical idea: every human life, female and male, Muslim and non-Muslim, rich or poor, ‘Northern’ or ‘Southern’, has exactly the same intrinsic worth… because, as the Qur’an reminds us, each of us has the breath of God who breathed into our being.10 9 Jonathan Sacks, The Dignity of Difference: How to Avoid the Clash of Civilizations (London: Continuum, 2002). 10  Progressive Muslims, ed. Safi, 3.

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It is the Qur’an, “not some contemporary ideology such as Marxism,” which drives progressive Muslims: Ours is a relentless effort to submit the human will to the Divine in a way that affirms the common humanity of all God’s creation. We conceive of a way of being Muslim that engages and affirms the humanity of all human beings, that actively holds all of us responsible for a fair and just distribution of God-given natural resources, and that seeks to live in harmony with the natural world.

Serious engagement with the textual resources of the Islamic tradition is vital for this project, they insist.11 Otherwise this is just giving an “Islamic veneer” to “programs for social reform [which] could just as easily come from Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Secular Humanist, or agnostic progressives.” They insist that human rights may be “derived from the Qur’an and the Sunnah [the way of the Prophet],” which “lend themselves to arguments favoring democratic forms of governments, pluralistic societies and schemes of human rights.”12 From this base they not only challenge the arrogance of modernity, evident in current US foreign policy, but also expose the failure of Muslim societies to create the justice and pluralism implicit in the Qur’an. They even insist that when confronted by contemporary tragedies, whether in Bosnia, Palestine, Gujarat or Kashmir, Muslims should be as concerned for non-Muslims as they are for fellow believers.13 Many have drawn our attention to the positive statements made about Jews and Christians in the Qur’an, and told traditional stories of how the “people of the Book” were welcomed and embraced by Muhammad, despite the critique of Jews and Christians also offered in the scriptures and traditions of Islam.14 There is a tension between inclusiveness and exclusiveness here, not dissimilar to that traced in the Bible. In Islam too, then, the interpretation of the sacred text is contested. Yet there are those who point to the ways in which tradition may be transcended. Within Christianity, two things, one ancient and one recent, may provide a double foundation for building transcendence of tradition. The recent development is found in an important shift in the approach to interpretation. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries arguments about the Bible tended to be focused particularly on the original or historical meaning, or on the facts behind the text. In our postmodern world, however, the focus has shifted, from the past to the future of the text. The admittedly contested implications of the text for current moral questions, such as homosexuality, abortion, euthanasia, even the ordination of women, have a more vital and immediate resonance than the “quest for the historical Jesus,” old or new. Modernity differentiated be11 

Progressive Muslims, ed. Safi, 7. Progressive Muslims, ed. Safi, 292. 13  Progressive Muslims, ed. Safi, 329; cf. The Muslim World 95.3 (July 2005), 449. 14  Progressive Muslims, ed. Safi, 252–255; cf. Scriptures in Dialogue, ed. Ipgrave, 115–118. 12 

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tween the culture of the present and that of the past in which the scriptures were composed; now these postmodern questions demand that we explore how one might distinguish culturally conditioned aspects of the text and the core thrust of what the Bible is about. There is a sense in which I have already exemplified that procedure in exploring the Bible and its attitudes to the “other.” But I mentioned a double foundation for building transcendence of tradition; the ancient element is in deeply traditional theological perspectives, too easily overlooked. “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isa 55:8–9). This was a favourite text among the church Fathers who insisted that God’s essence is beyond our understanding, especially against those heretics who wanted to define God rather too precisely; if you can define the infinite God you have set boundaries around divinity and reduced God to the size of your own mind, they insisted. The only reason we know anything about God is because God has accommodated the divine self to our level, not only in what Christians call the incarnation, but also by clothing the divine Word in human words, by using metaphors and symbols that point beyond themselves to the divine. Religious language is always human language stretched to express things beyond our comprehension, dimly perceived through analogy, and only partially understood. All revelation, then, is culturally conditioned. Interpretation constantly has to wrestle with the tension between the particularity of sacred texts and the universal perspective implicit in them. The mode of divine mediation seems to be particularity, as God addresses particular people in particular situations; perhaps we too easily absolutize the particulars through which the mediation occurs. With this overarching perspective Christians may wish to embrace in their own way two well-known parables from the East, where different religious traditions have lived, for the most part peacefully, side by side for centuries: first, the story of the blind men and the elephant, one blind man feeling the tail and suggesting an elephant is a bell-pull, another feeling a leg and suggesting it is a tree, another feeling the trunk and deciding it is a hose-pipe; second, the picture of a mountain, and people going up by different paths on different sides of the mountain, and so seeing different views, and indeed seeing the mountain differently, but it is the same mountain. Both stories imply a certain relativism, but they also presuppose that there is a single reality which is actually perceived differently by the different witnesses. The relativism of limited creatures is another way of expressing humility before the transcendent divine. A Turkish scholar, Fethullah Gulen, once wrote: Regardless of how their adherents implement their faith in their daily lives, such generally accepted values as love, respect, tolerance, forgiveness, mercy, human rights, peace, brotherhood, and freedom are all values exalted by religion. Most of these values are accorded the highest precedence in the messages brought by Moses, Jesus, and Muham-

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mad, upon them be peace, as well as in the messages of Buddha and even Zarathustra, Lao-Tzu, Confucius, and the Hindu prophets.15

It is extremely important that such words come from the non-western world, because in our post-colonial world it is too easy, when appeal is made to universal values, for westerners to be heard as imposing their values on others. Indeed, the listing of such values may, of course, conceal very different connotations in different cultures. Yet we need the kind of dialogue that both reveals and refines such common ideals. They are essential for our pluralist world. We need more than mere tolerance, which implies each group keeping themselves to themselves and not causing trouble! We should note three points.16 First, pluralism is not simply the same thing as diversity. One may have people from different religious and ethnic backgrounds present in one place, but unless they are involved in an active engagement with one another, there is no pluralism. In other words, pluralism is not and cannot be a non-participant sport. Second, the goal of pluralism is not simply “tolerance” of the other, but rather an active attempt to arrive at an understanding. The very language of tolerance in fact keeps us from the kind of engagement we are speaking of here. One can tolerate a neighbour about whom one remains thoroughly ignorant. That stance, while no doubt preferable to outright conflict, is still far from genuine pluralism. Third, pluralism is not the same thing as relativism. Far from simply ignoring the profound differences among religious traditions, a genuine pluralistic perspective would be committed to engaging the very differences that we have, to gain a deeper sense of each other’s commitments. The three points just outlined come from a Muslim’s summary of points made in a book called A New Religious America: How a Christian Country Has Now Become The World’s Most Religiously Diverse Nation.17 As we in Britain grapple with similar developments, let us recognize that our sacred texts, which could so easily cement our mutual isolation, might in fact become the greatest resource for mutual engagement and a discovery of common values which could contribute to the proper pluralism of the public realm. Let the former Chief Rabbi have the final word: Pluralism is a form of hope, because it is founded in the understanding that precisely because we are different, each of us has something unique to contribute to the shared project of which we are a part…. There are multiple universes of wisdom, each capturing something of the radiance of being and refracting it into the lives of its followers, none refuting or excluding the others, each as it were the native language of its followers, but combining in a hymn of glory to the creator.18 15 

The Muslim World 95.3 (July 2005), 376. Progressive Muslims, ed. Safi, 252. 17  Diana Eck, A New Religious America: How a Christian Country Has Now Become the World’s Most Religiously Diverse Nation (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001). 18 Sacks, Dignity of Difference, 203–204. 16 

Section D

Concluding Hermeneutical Exercise

Chapter 25

The Dynamics of Interpretation: Jesus and Scripture in Hebrews It has been suggested that “academic interest in Hebrews during the modern period has lagged behind research into the ‘Jesus of history,’ the Gospels and Paul,” a fact explained by “the lack of consensus on most historical questions.”1 The epistle remains a riddle, because everything about its historical origin is in question, not least its authorship. Its anonymity, literary isolation (we are unaware of any other document from this author), and the indefiniteness of its historical location (before or after 70 CE? in Rome or Palestine or somewhere else?) and audience (Jews, Gentiles or both?) have meant that it has not served well as a marker of any particular stratum of Christianity. Moreover its thickly cultic expression of theology, and a quite distinctive strand of theology at that, has heightened the hermeneutical problems. 2

What I want to suggest in this chapter is that approaching Hebrews with a different set of questions, we may unlock some of the epistle’s meaning and potential, and also rediscover some traditional hermeneutical models – for Hebrews is itself a text which engages in the dynamics of interpretation. Connoisseurs will recognize in the following analyses some debts to postmodern criticism, though this is in no sense an attempt to apply one or more particular methods which are derived from the variety of reactions to modernity and captured in that umbrella term. Nevertheless, the following trends have contributed to the approach adopted: – a focus on the text itself, with greater interest in the structure and rhetoric of its argument than its author’s original situation, or sources; – a readiness to explore the surplus of meaning carried by language, to take figures of speech as potentially generative of multiple senses, and so the text both in part and whole as possibly carrying new connotations; – a willingness to respond ethically to the text’s “otherness,” both respecting difference and being challenged by it; 1  Jon C. Laansma, “Hebrews: Yesterday, Today, and Future; An Illustrative Survey, Diagnosis, Prescription,” in Christology, Hermeneutics and Hebrews. Profiles from the History of Interpretation, ed. Jon C. Laansma and Daniel J. Treier (London: T&T Clark/Continuum, 2012), 2 and n.  6. 2  Laansma, “Hebrews: Yesterday, Today and Future,” 23.

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– an interest in hearing what the “implied reader” was meant to hear, and figuring out how actual readers might respond; – a recognition that interpreters belong to reading communities, and that these shape “interpretative traditions,” which themselves arise from the community’s presuppositions and prior expectations concerning the import of the text, as well as the kind of questions asked of it; – a shift from the past of the text (its background, original intention, etc.) to its present impact and future influence. My aim, then, is to engage with the work known as the Epistle to the Hebrews informed by postmodern approaches of that kind, so as to reassess its inner hermeneutical procedures, as its argument draws upon and interprets the then known scriptures so as to uncover their true sense in relation to Jesus, and conversely draws upon and interprets the person, life and death of Jesus by relating him to scripture. Perceptions of neither, I suggest, are left unchanged by this process nor can an engaged reader escape the text’s challenges unaffected.

I.  Text and reader in Hebrews’ scriptural hermeneutics “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.” The implied reader, or rather hearers – for, whether the text was originally preached as a homily, or as a letter read out loud, it would have been heard – the one addressed is expected to hear this plea as a word for “today,” for now, directly and immediately; yet these are recognizably words from scripture – indeed explicitly stated as coming from David, and therefore from the Psalms. The significance for Hebrews’ hermeneutics of that direct address should not be underestimated. To analyse the use of the “Old Testament” in the epistle is to objectify something which belongs in a very different category. For, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And before him no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render account. (4:12–13)

So, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.” This direct “today” comes both as the climax and the entry-point of an argument designed to demonstrate this immediacy by drawing past narrative into the present, inviting the hearers to reimagine themselves in the story. It begins (3:7 ff.) with a quotation of the final verses of Psalm 95: to “harden your hearts” is to act “as in the rebellion, as on the day of testing in the wilderness.” Thus, the Exodus narrative is a reminder of present potential to repeat the ancestors’ mistake of putting God to the test, and so risk the same angry response:

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Therefore I was angry with that generation, and I said, “They always go astray in their hearts, and they have not known my ways.” As in my anger I swore, “They will not enter my rest.”

“Today” means now – there remains a possibility of turning away from the living God; but it also means that the possibility of entering “my rest” also remains. The rebellious people who left Egypt under the leadership of Moses were the ones who were disobedient and were refused entry to his rest. So to others hearing this word, the rest is still open. God’s sabbath is available to believers – it was ordained at the foundation of the world, but the very denial of it to Joshua shows it still remains for God’s people. The Promised Land still lies ahead, so the hearer must be sure not to repeat what happened before. The central motif of the scriptures is transmuted into present exhortation; yet it is more than that, it is vision and meaning, making sense of the hearers’ present and future. It is too easy to dismiss it as mere metaphor to call life a journey. To name it “typology” classifies it, but does not begin to capture what it means genuinely to live “within” scripture in this way. It tames that two-edged sword, which exposes where the hearers stand, while offering incentive to persevere in the way of Christ. For, what becomes clear in the next verses is that Jesus has taken this new Exodus before anyone else. He has passed through the heavens as pioneer of the way to that promised sabbath-rest. Characterized earlier (2:10–18) as persisting through suffering, as made perfect so as to bring others to glory, and as not ashamed to call others his brothers and sisters, he took the way before them, so as to free them from the power of death – indeed he was tested by what he suffered, and so is able to help those tested on the way (2:18; 4:15). So those who follow need to strive to enter the rest (4:11), and go on to perfection (6:1), hoping in Jesus, the forerunner on our behalf (6:19). He has entered heaven itself (9:24), and so “we have confidence” to enter the sanctuary, to go through the veil/curtain into God’s true house, by the new and living way Jesus has opened for us (10:19–20). To persevere in faith is to look to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith (12:2). The Exodus-motif, despite all the other things going on around it in this text, lies at the core of its argument, and the whole point is that the struggles of the journey, and the promise of its pursuit, are a present reality, made both more real and more possible by Jesus, the forerunner. Thus in the rhetorical dynamic of this text, both Jesus and scripture present the implied hearer with the same immediate demand and inspiration. Both constitute the word of God addressed directly to those addressed by the text itself. So there is no hermeneutical gap to be bridged, no self-conscious interpretative process or method to be followed. So the implied hearers become incorporated into the long line of the faithful in generation after generation. Examples of faithful perseverance, whose stories

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scripture records, become not merely past models now to be emulated, but also a “cloud of witnesses” (Heb 11–12:2). The contemporaneity of scripture is thus reinforced as the list leads up to the climactic example, Jesus. The journey leads, not to the terrors of Sinai, but to the city of God, the heavenly Jerusalem (Heb 12:18–22). So here and now response to the warnings is urged.

II.  Jesus and scripture The argument of this text, then, is that the possibility of a renewed Exodus journey to the true heavenly Jerusalem has been opened up by Jesus. To make this argument involves a two-way dynamic, on the one hand, setting scripture and Jesus in opposition, to show the ineffectiveness of the ways and means set out the first time in scripture, and, on the other hand, to draw out from scripture the models that demonstrate the identity of Jesus and the effectiveness of these old yet re-minted coins for purchasing the promised prize of salvation. The key text for effecting this is Jeremiah 31:31–34, which the epistle quotes in full in chapter 8, commenting, “In speaking of the new covenant, he has made the first one obsolete.” The two-way dynamic, however, is still implicit. For the model of a covenant made on an Exodus journey remains, and yet is transformed. This covenant effectively produces righteousness and perfection because it is written on hearts and minds not tablets of stone. Those who make the journey, therefore, will join “the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven,” and “the spirits of the righteous made perfect” (12:23). So the binary interaction of old and new covenant runs right through the argument of the text, evoking parallel yet superior features of the new. Jesus illuminates the true meaning of scripture, while scripture identifies Jesus. The old covenant was mediated, according to current beliefs at the time, by angels through Moses; thus, it is imperative for the argument of the epistle that the new mediator’s superiority to both is established, and the authority for that must be found in scripture for, as the word of God, scripture reveals the patterns of God’s dealings with the people, now fulfilled in Jesus, while also exposing the failings or inadequacies of the past. What is often treated rather casually as “proof-texting” is in fact the discovery of a new reference for key scriptural statements, a rereading of predominantly familiar psalms with new import, and the construction of a subtle argument based on such a reading. The first line of argument stems from the messianic claim, which is largely implicit, no doubt because the implied readers would be very familiar with it: Psalm 2:7 is alluded to in the gospel stories of the baptism of Jesus, and that is the quote from which the argument starts. Hebrews 1:5 adds to it words from 2 Samuel 7:14, thus ensuring that the Sonship attributed to Jesus is the same as that given to David. But then we find Psalm 45:6–7 speaks of one anointed by

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God who loved righteousness and whose throne will be eternal: clearly this anointed king is both modelled on David, and trumps him. Jesus as Davidic Messiah is God’s eternal Son, involved in creation and enduring to the end, ever the same, as Psalm 102:25–7 demonstrates (Heb 1:10–12). Another psalm-text, also found elsewhere in the New Testament, reinforces the point: “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool…” (Ps 110:1: cf. Mark 12:35– 37). But the whole point of rehearsing this scriptural argument concerning the Sonship of Jesus is made explicit by the questions at the beginning and the end of the passage: to what angel did God ever address that first or last familiar quotation? Jesus not merely trumps David but even the angels. This thrust is made clearer by the insertion along the way of statements about the angels: they are just God’s servants – indeed, a scriptural word is found which is taken to suggest that they are to worship the Son. By the end of the chapter they are described as “sent to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation” – angels are merely the servants of the readers if they persevere on the journey to salvation. Yet, even though mere servants, the covenant they mediated led to grave penalties if transgressed. All the more reason for not neglecting this newly mediated covenant, brought to effect through the Son. Eventually, the superiority of Jesus to Moses would have to be established as well (Heb 3:2–6). Moses, also, was a servant, and was faithful in God’s house (Num 12:7), as was Jesus. But the difference between them is that the builder of the house has more glory. God is the builder of all things; Moses was faithful as a servant in God’s house, and Christ as a Son. To hope in Christ is to be in God’s house. The new covenant he mediated is greater than that mediated by angels through Moses. Such complex interaction between scripture and Jesus permeates this epistle. Before reaching the argument about Moses (which would introduce the immediacy of the call to do better than those he led through the wilderness, explored in the previous section), the unique mediatorial role of the Son has been teased out further. The generative text is another Psalm, one which again hinges on the status of angels. Psalm 8:4–6 is quoted in full (Heb 2:6–8). Human beings were made a little lower than the angels, but it was to humans not angels that God subjected all creation. Read straightforwardly this hardly seems to fit the way things are; but, the argument goes, “we do see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honour.” This glory and honour, the epistle states, is because of the suffering of death, the tasting of death on behalf of everyone. The pattern of humiliation and consequent glory found in Philippians 2:5–11, possibly an early Christian hymn, is read into Psalm 8, but this epistle capitalizes on the Psalm to draw out the utter identification of the Son with humankind. To bring many children to glory the pioneer is made perfect through suffering. God is Father of all; so Christ is not ashamed to call humans his siblings – a

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point established by quoting Psalm 22:22 and Isaiah 8:17–18; furthermore, he shared in the flesh and blood of human nature precisely so as to effect on behalf of all the journey through suffering and death, and bring them to freedom. That was why he had to become completely human – to become a high priest able to offer an atoning sacrifice, and able through experience of testing to help those tested. The point is that the death of Christ was a sacrifice which both ensured that “I will remember their sin no more” (Jer 31:34), and established the new covenant written on the heart. This has nothing to do with angels, but everything to do with the salvation of Abraham’s children. Once again the dynamic interaction between scripture and Jesus, and Jesus and scripture, is profound, each being illuminated by the other in such a way as to generate new meanings. Furthermore, this summary sets the agenda for the detailed arguments that follow in the body of the epistle. These we will not pursue in detail here, as this continuing dynamic between Jesus and scripture will be consistently evident as we proceed, approaching the text from a slightly different perspective.

III.  The formation of reading communities Hearing attentively the interpretative rhetoric of this text would create a reading community which identified itself as descended from Abraham, and read its formative canon, the Jewish scriptures, as always pointing beyond itself. The law and the prophets, they discovered, had a future as texts shaping them into a new religious community, one no longer dependent on sacrifice and priesthood for its access to God, yet still wedded to the memory of such God-ordained means of relating to God and offering worship. These were now re-validated as a way of reading the significance of the death of Jesus Christ, Son of God. Whatever the immediate circumstances of this epistle, it was penned in a socio-­cultural context in which sacrifice and offerings, brought to a temple and presented through the offices of priests, was the only known way of worshipping or influencing divine beings who had power over the lives of individuals and communities. For Jews of the Diaspora such rituals were remote, since the Jerusalem temple was the only authorized sanctuary, and it is possible that it had already been destroyed by the Romans, if the epistle post-dates 70 CE. Yet for Jews it remained a dream, and a pilgrimage destination, an ideal never really replaced by synagogue worship. For the reading community implied by this epistle, however, the provisions for worship ordained by God in the law, though critiqued in the prophets, were to remain significant as a shadow and copy of what was to come. They pointed beyond themselves, and their meaning came to fruition in the light of Jesus, while conversely they gave meaning to the unexpected death of the Messiah. It was the texts which remain significant, not the ritual practices they prescribed.

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For this reading community two key principles would guide the way the ritual laws were to be read. The first is found in Hebrews 9:22: “Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.” This, surely, was a way of reading Leviticus 17:11. It was just taken for granted that blood-rites effect forgiveness because God had said, “I have given it to you for making atonement for your lives on the altar.” For this reading community, however, the need for constant repetition undermined this effectiveness; whereas the blood of Christ, offered once for all, effectively dealt with former transgressions, so that the new covenant written on the heart could come into effect. The principle enshrined in the texts was accepted, but the texts pointed beyond themselves. The second key principle is found in the quotation of Psalm 40:6–8 in Hebrews 10:5–7: as the prophets had repeatedly suggested, God did not want or need sacrifice – what God required was obedience to the covenant. A slightly reworded Psalm 40 permits the total obedience of Jesus to be seen in the offering of his body – the Hebrew original spoke of “ears” being dug out, a way of suggesting obedience, but the quotation of the psalm in Hebrews speaks of a “body” being prepared; this may be the outcome of a confusion between “ὦτα” (ōta – ears) and “σῶμα” (sō ma – body) in the Greek text of the psalm. Be that as it may, the nub of the quotation concerns obedience to God’s will, and in the wording adopted, suggests obedience unto death. Thus the offering of the body of Jesus becomes the sacrifice to end all sacrifices. This reading community, as already noted, accepted the tradition that Psalm 110 referred to the Messiah, Son of God, whose throne was eternal (Heb 1:13); and now this very psalm enabled further insight into the identity of Jesus. In Hebrews 5:5–6, to the traditionally used messianic word from Psalm 2:7 the epistle adds Psalm 110:4, “You are a priest for ever, according to the order of Melchizedek.” Thus, the King-Messiah tradition is wedded to the notion of priesthood, a point reinforced by the etymological interpretation of Melchizedek as “King of righteousness,” and the observation that he was, according to Genesis, King of Salem, which means “peace.” The very idea of priesthood naturally integrates with the sacrifice theme, and also, if less obviously, with the theme of Christ journeying through the veil of the Temple to the true Holy of Holies – for it was the high priest entering the Holy of Holies once a year on the Day of Atonement which provided the scriptural pattern which could now be read as pointing forward to this new reality. Thus, Christ the Priest-King became the subject of this remarkable conflation of motifs, all focused in the new covenant he brought into effect and sealed in his blood. The reading community created by this epistle thus reread its scriptures in the light of Jesus. He became, not only their leader and pioneer, but a priest able to share their struggles because he shared their human nature, yet was superior to the old priests in offering a sacrifice of total obedience and needing no sin-offering to cover sins of his own.

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The reading community just sketched not only read those ancient scriptures, but also, of course, read Hebrews, and within a generation or so the epistle would itself come to be read as scripture. Whether that is already so in Hermas and 1 Clement is disputed, but Hebrews does appear to be echoed in both, and is perhaps reinterpreted by both.3 The Shepherd of Hermas, for example, validates second repentance, whereas Hebrews 6 seems to rule it out. Here we will focus on 1 Clement, of which Eusebius wrote: “In it he gives many thoughts from the Epistle to the Hebrews and even quotes verbally when using certain passages from it.”4 This is perhaps a slight overstatement, but with its “striking parallels and possible allusions”5 something of how the interpretative community in Rome read the epistle may be revealed, especially what elements in it were found important. Four aspects of Hebrews’ argument lurk behind the text of 1 Clement. The first parallels are found in the exhortations to obedience, where exemplars from scripture are produced in the manner of Hebrews chapter 11. Enoch is followed by Noah, then Abraham at some length, and later Rahab. The lack of close verbal parallels may make this less significant than might appear – it could have been a traditional motif. The same might be said of the parallel between 1 Clement 56.3 and Hebrews 12:6, where Proverbs 3:12 is quoted: “For the Lord disciplines those he loves, and chastises every child whom he accepts,” especially as 1 Clement pairs it with Psalm 118:18 rather than Proverbs 3:11, but some influence is made more likely by the other two instances. The first is found in 1 Clement 36, where Jesus Christ is first described as “the high priest of our offerings and the help of our weakness,” and then his superiority to the angels is attested with the phrase “ἀπαύγασμα τῆς μεγαλωσύνης” (apaugasma tē s megalōsynē s – reflection of the majesty), a phrase reminiscent of words used in Hebrews 1:3 but in a new configuration; we also find here quotation of Psalm 104:4, Psalm 2:7 and Psalm 110:1 – all used in Hebrews chapter 1. What is different in 1 Clement is a concentration on the revelatory outcome: through him we fix our gaze on the heights of heaven, through him we see the reflection of his faultless lofty countenance, through him the eyes of our hearts were opened, through him our foolish and darkened understanding blossoms towards the light, through him the Master (= God) willed that we should taste the immortal knowledge…. 6

That kind of revelation is not a primary concern of the Hebrews text, but it gives a new future to the text in a socio-cultural context where knowledge of God 3  See D. Jeffrey Bingham, “Irenaeus and Hebrews,” in Christology, Hermeneutics, and Hebrews: 48–73. 4 Eusebius, Hist. eccl., 3.38. 5  Quoted by Bingham, “Irenaeus and Hebrews,” 49, from A. F. Gregory, “1 Clement and the Writings That Later Formed the New Testament,” in New Testament and the Apostolic Fathers, ed. Gregory and Tuckett, 152. 6  1 Clem., 36.2.

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was clearly important. The shift thus allows us to understand something of where the reading community represented by 1 Clement was coming from. Furthermore, there may be an allusion to the Eden story in the phrase “the immortal knowledge.” Adam wrongly attempted to grasp this, but salvation through Christ grants this knowledge by grace. Hebrews’ distinctive interests are being drawn into relationship with other aspects of early Christian rereading of the scriptures. The final contact between 1 Clement and Hebrews is found in the passage where the author is obviously attempting to sort out problems in the church community in Corinth, to which he is writing. He wants order in the community re-established, and takes it that obedience to God’s commands in scripture is the right way to order the Christian community. Scripture appoints offerings and services for worship, with fixed times and hours, with the high priest, priests and Levites appointed to their proper services.7 Sacrifices are only offered in Jerusalem, but it remains important “to be well pleasing to God,” each “in his own rank.” The apostles received the gospel from the Lord Jesus Christ, who was sent from God, and they appointed bishops and deacons.8 Their appointment of bishops is then paralleled with Moses, who is described as “a faithful servant in all his house,” an allusion to the same text (Num 12:7) as is quoted in Hebrews 3:5. But Moses had to deal with jealousy among the tribes over the priesthood, and the apostles knew there would be strife for the title of bishop. So they made provision for an approved succession.9 1 Clement has much else to say about Moses, and the significance of the Hebrews parallel may again be somewhat dubious. But given the apparent usage earlier, the possible reminiscence here even more sharply reveals a reading with a very different primary interest. 1 Clement takes seriously Moses’ reception and writing down of “all the injunctions which were given him,” and also “the other prophets” who followed and bore witness to “the laws which he had given,” and finds these to be models to ensure no disorder in the church.10 Like Hebrews this text uses scripture to address the current situation, but the social location of interpretation is different, and reading the same texts finds within them a quite different import. This kind of shift can be further illustrated by reviewing the possible allusions to Hebrews traced in Irenaeus’s Against Heresies in the article by Jeffrey Bingham.11 He notes that according to Eusebius Irenaeus mentioned the epistle in a collection of addresses now no longer extant.12 Scholarship has been divided on the extent to which Hebrews can be traced in Against Heresies, but Bing7 

1 Clem., 40. 1 Clem., 41–42. 9  1 Clem., 43–44. 10  1 Clem., 43. 11  Bingham, “Irenaeus and Hebrews.” 12 Eusebius, Hist. eccl., 5.20. 8 

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ham’s case is that the virtual absence of direct quotation and allusion does not signify lack of knowledge – for Hebrews is traceable in other ways. It “served … as a mine of riches for his polemic.” This being the case we are bound to find adaptation of Hebrews’ material to a new context. New meanings emerge as a text is remembered in a new socio-cultural environment. Bingham’s first example provides clear evidence of this. Words from Hebrews 1:3, “by the word of his power,” are slipped into a striking passage on the Creator God.13 Against the gnostic characterization of the Demiurge, Irenaeus insists that the Father creates through his Word and Wisdom, and the Hebrews text is the only biblical text alluded to in this passage. Elsewhere the first chapter of Hebrews fits alongside the Johannine prologue and other biblical testimonies to make the same point. Attention is drawn to Irenaeus’s use of the same cluster of scriptural quotations as are found in Hebrews chapter 1 to establish that the titles “God” and “Lord” have only been used of the “Son.”14 Irenaeus is less concerned about the angels, because the issue is not the mediators of the law but the competing gods and lords of gnostic myth and polytheistic paganism. The interpretative community reads the text in a new situation and its meaning is extended to that new context. Irenaeus, like 1 Clement, speaks of Moses as “the faithful servant,” picking up Numbers 12:7. Bingham makes a strong case for Irenaeus’s usage coming via Hebrews. His full description of Moses is “the faithful servant and a prophet of God”; 15 but Numbers 12:6–8 contrasts Moses with prophets – God’s communication with prophets is via visions and dreams, whereas with Moses God spoke face to face. It is in Hebrews that Moses is both faithful servant and prophet (Heb 3:5). Again polemic against gnostic systems and pagan idolatry adopts Hebrews, but with a new sense: for whereas Hebrews subordinated Moses and the law to Jesus and the new covenant, Irenaeus appeals to the authority of Moses to establish the one Creator God. Not that new and old covenant were not significant for Irenaeus, but where Hebrews allows scripture and Jesus mutually to interact so as to explain the true meaning each of the other, Irenaeus has a dispensational understanding of the relationship between old and new. This would become the fundamental way in which patristic exegetes approached the law, as within the Christian scriptural canon the “Old Testament” was understood as foreshadowing and prophesying what came to fruition in the “New Testament.” Hebrews provided the classic text for this new one-way hermeneutic whereby Christ threw backlight on the old scriptures. That text was Hebrews 8:5, already, it seems, understood by Irenaeus to this effect. The “outward purifications” followed by the Jews he 13 Irenaeus,

Haer., 2.30.9. Haer., 3.6.1. 15 Irenaeus, Haer., 2.2.5 and 3.6.5. 14 Irenaeus,

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describes as “observances” which “had been given as a type of future things.”16 Using language that echoes Hebrews’ description of the law as “a shadow of the good things to come” (Heb 10:1), he suggests that eternal things were outlined/ shadowed by the temporal and the heavenly by the earthly. More than once Irenaeus cites Exodus 25:40, “See that you make everything according to the pattern which was shown you on the mountain,” which is the basis of Hebrews’ assertion that the earthly priests serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly sanctuary (Heb 8:5).17 For Irenaeus this “informs a paradigm for understanding the differences between old, new and eschatological.”18 As is well known, Irenaeus’s hermeneutical overview of the scriptures involved a reading in terms of God’s purposes from beginning to end, via fall and redemption, played out through the recapitulation of Adam’s disobedience through the obedience of Jesus. This becomes the framework for two intriguing adaptations of Hebrews: (1) In Against Heresies 3.22.4 Mary is said to have “become the source of salvation, both to herself and the whole human race.” Bingham states: Here we can see how Irenaeus has read, employed, and extended the words of Heb. 5.8–9. There we read: although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered; and being made perfect he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him.19

The connections made by Hebrews between salvation and Jesus’s obedience are transferred to Mary, and illuminated by Irenaeus’s understanding of the recapitulation of the disobedience of Adam and Eve in the obedience of Jesus and Mary. (2) In Against Heresies 4.38 Irenaeus cites 1 Corinthians 3:2, linking it with Hebrews 5:12–14 by allusion, to explain why God could not grant perfection from the beginning: humans were immature and needed milk before solid food. “The apostle had the power to give them strong meat, but they were not capable of receiving it, because they had feeble and untrained faculties” – the last phrase reflecting Hebrews’ phrase (5.14): “τὰ αἰσθητηρία γεγυμνασμένα” (ta aisthē tē ria gegymnasmena – faculties stripped for action). Irenaeus takes the “strong meat” to mean the Spirit, and Bingham notes that in Hebrews 6:4 “partakers of the Holy Spirit” are described as having “tasted the goodness of the word of God.” From these texts Irenaeus develops a progression from immaturity to maturity, described by Bingham thus: “He, who was the perfect bread of the Father, offered himself to us as milk [because we were] as infants” … we nursed “from the breast of his flesh,” so that by this “course of

16 Irenaeus,

Haer., 4.11.1. Haer., 4.14.3; 4.19.1; 5.35.2. 18  Bingham, “Irenaeus and Hebrews,” 67. 19  Bingham, “Irenaeus and Hebrews,” 62. 17 Irenaeus,

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milk nourishment” we might “become accustomed to eat and drink the Word of God,” and might be able to receive and “contain” the Spirit, the “bread of immortality.”20

Bingham also finds other possibilities of allusion to Hebrews beyond the selection offered here and concludes by suggesting that “Scripture has become such a part of thought and life through memory and rumination that it shows itself without pomp … Allusions, rather than indicating the incidental function of Scripture, indicate its normative place…” But they are “selected from a pool,” and so are “windows into prominent cultural values.” We would add surely that the embedding of these allusions in Irenaeus’s polemic also shows how the text was being read in an interpretative community different from, though in continuity with, the original readership. The text is not just rehearsed but generates new meanings in this new socio-cultural situation. Through reception history we could further trace the way in which Hebrews itself would become scripture for a community moving through history, no longer reading in the same socio-cultural context as the first readers, but reading and remembering the text in new environments and asking new questions. Differing social locations of interpretation could be illustrated further by the contrast between (1) the christological focus of patristic approaches to the epistle as captured in my first published article (ch.  2 in this volume), and (2) the preoccupation of modernist interpretation with the mysteries of its authorship, date, actual recipients, context, cultural background, etc. In the first case, the epistle was a mine for producing evidence to clarify doctrines concerning the nature of Christ, at a time when specifying that was controversial and the excavators were bishops and scholars of the church. In the second case the epistle was a historical document to be set in the right historical context by academic researchers in the intellectual context of the modern university. In this chapter, the epistle is approached from perspectives informed by certain postmodern trends, though not dismissive of the historical locus of the epistle’s composition, at least in broad terms, since we remain aware that the past is another country. The socio-cultural locus of this project might be described as lying between or across the academy and the church. For its underlying presupposition is that something might be learnt about the dynamics of biblical interpretation in the present for reading communities with both ecclesial and academic interests.

IV.  Learning to read scripture from Hebrews and its interpreters The underlying presupposition of this project has been that it might have bearings on a Christian hermeneutic of scripture for the present, not only because Hebrews is itself now within the Christian biblical canon, but also because it is 20 

Bingham, “Irenaeus and Hebrews,” 64.

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itself claiming to unpack the meaning of texts already treated as scripture, and so might provide models for accessing the whole Bible. What conclusions might we draw? We begin where we began, that is, by noticing Hebrews’ assumptions concerning the immediacy of the scriptural text for the reader. Modernity may seem to have destroyed that innocence; for we are indeed aware that the past is another country. But has it? Certainly an ethical reading, as defined in an earlier piece in this collection (ch.  16), involves awareness of the differences between the world of the text and our own world – the hermeneutical gap. But that gap might work the other way round: instead of us exercising critical superiority over the text, we might, on the one hand, allow the text to challenge our world and, on the other, imaginatively and empathetically enter into that other world of the text and come away with changed perspectives. Is that not what individual readers regularly do with texts – especially but not exclusively novels – namely, enter into worlds of human experience not known before? The imagination needs to be retuned, of course, by sensitive attention to the appropriateness or otherwise of our own presuppositions and the text’s otherness, but to return to the key metaphor at the heart of Hebrews’ sense of immediacy is surely not beyond the bounds of possibility. To speak of life as a journey may be banal, but that very banality could enable immediate empathy with the challenge that Hebrews offers. The reasons why perseverance in the Christian way remains tough now may be quite different, but it is hardly a problem for present believers to hear the urgency of Hebrews’ appeal that “today” remains critical: following in the line of God’s faithful over the generations constitutes the fundamental call of this text, and indeed of the scriptures to which it appeals. To read so straightforwardly may at first sight seem a return to naiveté; yet it happens constantly wherever there is regular reading of scripture in the context of church congregations. There the possibility of reclaiming such immediacy is both normal and vital – for “the Word of God is living and active…” (Heb 4:12–13). It is also normal to recall exemplars of faithful living from scriptural narratives, just as Hebrews, 1 Clement and others down the ages have done. For present readers a further motif in Hebrews may enhance this journey metaphor, namely, the call to progress from immaturity to perfection, a move which involves probing greater depths of meaning so as to build on the basic foundations a more secure grasp of what the Christian way is all about, thus delivering better outcomes (Heb 5:11–6:6). Here, indeed, the dynamics of interpretation might suggest a new and indeed different future for the text, just as it did for Irenaeus. Moral autonomy is the mark of maturity today. For us, slavish obedience is linked with immaturity, whereas Hebrews appears to put all the weight on obedience to God being the mark of perfection. Maybe, however, Hebrews invites us, implicitly if not explicitly, to reflect that the whole point of the new covenant, written on the heart not on tablets of stone, is not slavish

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obedience to rules; rather it involves willing response to the grace of God, enabling a change of heart, respect for the way of life embodied in Jesus, an honouring of God’s will to create a community of love, mutuality and collaboration. Mature persons accord dignity to one another by receiving from each other, not by exercising autonomous control. If Jesus “learnt obedience through what he suffered” (Heb 5:8), we too learn and grow through a response to life’s exigencies shaped by the same unself-regarding commitment to the love for others demanded by God’s love (cf. ch.  10 in this collection). That is one example of moving beyond the text as it stands and discerning new possibilities by reading from the perspective of a different socio-cultural setting. But appropriation of the biblical themes most central to Hebrews’ understanding of Jesus Christ raises more difficult questions. Sacrifice, priesthood, and covenant hardly carry the same resonances in a culture from which actual sacrificial rites have long since disappeared, priests no longer have as their principal function the slaughter and preparation of animals for offering on the altar, and covenant is barely in use outside legal contexts. So far from these core practices rendering the text immediate or contemporaneous they may rather tend to obscure its meaning – for all kinds of meanings and assumptions may erroneously be projected back onto these old, largely disused terms. On the one hand, in post-Reformation controversies concerning priesthood, eucharist, and atonement, presuppositions about what sacrifice meant have fed into dogma and cause division; on the other hand, early modern encounters with so-called primitive societies practising sacrifice, alongside the post-Renaissance dominance in education of the classical literature of antiquity in which sacrifice is ubiquitous, have fuelled psychological and anthropological interest in finding a grand theory for this apparently once universal practice.21 Hebrews challenges most such theories, for there is nothing in this text that implies that sacrifice is about violence, as Girard and others have maintained, nor that it is about costly giving up, as popular usage suggests, nor that it is about placating God’s wrath, as some atonement theories suggest. Indeed despite its emphasis on sin offerings and atonement, Hebrews says nothing about substitution nor about scapegoats, these commonly used keys to understanding atoning sacrifice; rather, as already noted, Hebrews simply accepts that the ritual sacrifices prescribed in the law constituted a God-given system for maintaining the covenant relationship by dealing with infringements and re-establishing communion. This divine gift, the text argues, has been overtaken by an even more extraordinary divine gift, namely, the coming of the Son of God who as priest-victim offered his own body, effectively purifying hearts and consciences with his own life-blood – the ordained means of atonement (Lev 17:11/Heb 9:22), and thus mediating the 21  For further discussion see my book, Construing the Cross: Type, Sign, Symbol, Word, Action (London: SPCK, 2016), ch.  2 ; cf. Julia Meszaros and Johannes Zachhuber, ed., Sacrifice and Modern Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

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new covenant relationship. Hebrews needs no grand theory of sacrifice and, like the prophets, rejects the idea that God needs or requires such offerings. Whether or not the elaborate exploration of ways in which Jesus fulfilled the types and shadows of scripture makes much sense to most believers today, the fundamental message of God’s gift of grace in Jesus Christ and the call to become part of God’s people, bonded with God and one another in a new relationship of ­“covenant-love” is what enables perseverance in the journey of faith, and the community’s passage through ever-changing historical circumstances. Present believers do belong to such a covenant community and are reminded of it every time they celebrate the eucharist. Hebrews may not explicitly refer to eucharistic practice, but the future of the epistle lay within the scriptural canon of churches which regularly do celebrate this liturgical memorial of Christ’s death, identifying the cup as the new covenant in his blood. It was/is inevitable that this should impact on the reading of this epistle, and that the epistle should inform understanding of eucharistic practice. As in Hebrews, in the eucharistic re-presentation of his sacrificial death Christ is present as both priest and victim, offering his own body and blood as the means of nurturing the communion or covenant-bond between God and God’s people. But the liturgy moves beyond Hebrews when, taught by other canonical texts, it discerns the body of Christ in bread and wine and identifies the congregation as Christ’s body with many members. It also gives the Hebrews text a new future when it takes over its typological association of priesthood with Christ, and stretches it to suggest that the presiding minister at the liturgy is to be understood as a type of Christ, so fulfilling a priestly role, a typology which must surely be balanced by the priesthood of God’s people (1 Peter 2:5), the body of Christ (1 Cor 12). The dynamics of canonical interpretation make all kinds of associations and representations meaningful, enabling entry into the world of scripture. All of this present liturgical reality should surely encourage a re-evaluation of the images and symbols drawn from that world. Call it typology and the whole argument is rendered implausible to most readers today; yet the dynamic interaction of Jesus and scripture which we traced in the text of Hebrews can surely help to revalidate for us the unity of the scriptures. For grasping the meaning of Jesus and of his death on the cross has always come better through multilayered symbols than concepts and propositions.22 Hebrews, more than any other New Testament text, presents us with the paradox of the Creator of all sharing in human temptations and struggles. The humanness of Jesus is vividly affirmed, and it is as a human being, tested and tried but faithful unto death, that Jesus becomes our pioneer and leader. This is surely an aspect easily appropriated by those shaped by focus on Christ’s humanity, or the mindset of modernity (cf. essays in section A). Yet Hebrews, like Irenae22 Young,

Construing the Cross.

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us, recognizes that the one made a little lower than the angels and identified with humankind is not some kind of demi-god or intermediary being. It is the one and only transcendent Creator God who is glimpsed through this human life – indeed it is God’s word which is communicated both in scripture and through the one who lived and died as God’s Son. It is tempting to suggest that the text of Hebrews justifies the kind of sacramental Christology earlier spelt out in chapter 6, though it is hardly made explicit. Rather what Hebrews does is arrive at its paradoxical Christology through profound meditation on scripture as a whole. As God’s word, scripture points beyond our world, yet tells the story of God’s gracious yet disciplinary accompaniment of God’s own people through history, and somehow this reaches its climax in Jesus Christ. The traditional language of prophetic fulfilment and Messiahship may be read in new ways – that is what Hebrews did for its readership, and that is what we need to do for the sake of growing to mature faith, learning to worship in spirit and in truth, and discovering the deeper dynamics of scriptural interpretation. Appropriating Hebrews enables the appropriation of the whole Bible.

V.  Final Word A meditation on “ἀπαύγασμα τῆς δόξης” (apaugasma tē s doxē s – radiance/reflection of God’s glory): Memory is crucial to dynamics of interpretation such as these. As Bingham suggested concerning Irenaeus, allusions to texts suggest not merely scripture’s “normative place,” but that “scripture has become such a part of thought and life through memory and rumination that it shows itself without pomp.” It is when phrases and narratives are lodged deep in memory that the mind is enabled to grasp associations and discern deeper resonances. To celebrate my three score years and ten I undertook a trek up Sinai to raise money for a disability charity – one motivation being to visit crucial sites I had never before had the opportunity to see. A day’s hike through the desert, which enabled the guide to judge the capacity of the participants to make the climb the next day, brought us to a Bedouin eco-village, where we ate out round a campfire under the stars, and slept on the ground in dark stone huts built on the model of Bedouin tents. There I lay unable to sleep, my body-clock not adapted to the time-zone, and in the blackness of the night found memory facilitating a long and increasingly intense meditation, broken only by stepping outside to witness myriads of stars in the night sky, and later the desert lit silver by the moon. The meditation revolved around the notion of glory, beginning with Moses, who spoke with God face to face as a man speaks with his friend (Exod 33:11), yet could not see God’s glory, because no-one can see God and live (Exod 33:20)

Chapter 25:  The Dynamics of Interpretation: Jesus and Scripture in Hebrews

439

– Moses was protected from the dazzle of uncreated light, as attractive and destructive as a lamp to moths; for God placed him in the cleft of the rock and put a hand over him as he passed by – Moses could only see God’s back parts (Exod 33:21–23). Yet when he returned from the mountain, his face shone with such glory he had to put a veil over it (Exod 34:29–35). My mind turned to Paul’s appropriation of these texts in 2 Corinthians 3, to the contrast between Moses and the only-begotten Son in the Johannine prologue (John 1:17–18), to the stories of Jesus’s transfiguration, and so to Elijah – yes, it was to the same mountain that Elijah fled, and God was not in the storm, the earthquake or the fire, but in the sound of silence, the still, small voice, directing him to go back, to stop imagining he was the only one left and face up to the future (1 Kings 19). The disciples wanted to build shelters to stay on the glorious high place with Moses and Elijah and Jesus transfigured, but Jesus led them back to the pressures down below. Shifting memory returned to Paul’s confidence that with unveiled faces we see/reflect Christ’s glory, and are all being transformed into the self-same image [of God]. In a state of some exhilaration, sleep was slow coming. Next day we visited St Catherine’s monastery, and I was reminded that the church was dedicated to the transfiguration – there in the apse is one of the oldest icons of that gospel story. We climbed the mountain, and partway up came across Elijah’s basin. My night-time meditation lived with me on the summit as at sunset faces were lit with the sinking sun’s oblique glow, and the joy and peace of having got there. Then the party snaked down the mountainside through the blackness, the path lit by a magical twisting line of mingling torchlight. And the word came to me: “You go on pilgrimage to find God in the everyday struggle back home.” No-one has ever seen God, but the only Son who is in the bosom of the ­Father, has given an account of God – he has provided an exegesis (ἐξηγήσατο – exēgē sato, John 1:18) of the biblical narratives which enables us to know something of God’s identity, and to become part of the covenant people travelling through history with scripture as a guide-map to the journey. He is the radiance/the reflection of God’s glory, the one who leads us safely into the true holy of holies, the very presence of God. Hebrews helps us to discern these biblical dynamics.

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Young, Frances, “The Fourth Century Reaction against Allegory,” Studia Patristica 30 (1997): 120–125; reproduced as ch. V in Exegesis and Theology. Young, Frances, “Typology,” in Porter et al., Crossing the Boundaries: 29–48. Young, Frances, “Greek Apologists of the Second Century,” in Apologetics in the Roman Empire. Pagans, Jews and Christians, ed. Mark Edwards, Martin Goodman, and Simon Price (Oxford: Clarendon, 1999): 81–104. Young, Frances, “The Interpretation of Scripture,” in The First Christian Theologians, ed. G. R. Evans (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004): 24–38. Young, Frances, “Wisdom in Augustine’s De Doctrina Christiana,” Studia Patristica 43 (2006): 323–327. Zahn, T., Einleitung in das Neue Testament (Leipzig: Deichert); ET Introduction to the New Testament, trans. Melanchthon Williams Jacobus and C. S. Thayer, vol.  1 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1909). Zandee, J., “The Teachings of Silvanus” and Clement of Alexandria: A New Document of Alexandrian Theology (Leiden: Ex Oriente Lux, 1977). Zimmerli, W., and J. Jeremias, The Servant of God (London: SCM Press, 1957).

Index of Biblical and other Ancient Sources including References Old Testament (Hebrew Bible and Septuagint) Genesis *

141, 201, 369, 370, 385, 396, 429 5:24 95 6:2 97 14:18–20 14, 98 15:6 309 18 97 32:34 99 38 196 Exodus *

17, 370–371, 381, 413, 425–426 17:7 196 19:5 414 19:6 313 20:3 394 20:10 414 22:21 414 23 127 23:9 414 23:12 414 95, 126 23:21 24 127 25:40 433 31:18 124 32:15–16 124 277, 438 33:11 33:18 277 33:18–23 127 33:20 199, 438 33:21–23 439 34 276

34:29 125 34:29–35 439 34:34 125 Leviticus * 309 429, 436 17:11 19:19 238 Numbers 12:6–8 432 427, 431–432 12:7 12:8 277 16:28 198 21:4–5 196 33:55 272 Deuteronomy 2:14 197 4:12 199 6:13 196 6:16 196 8:3 196 9:10 124 10:18 414 10:22 238 13:18–14:1 374 14:1 100 16:11 414 24:19 414 27:19 414 32:6 100 32:8 97 32:18 100

460

Index of Biblical and other Ancient Sources including References

Joshua 2 196 Ruth *

196, 414

2 Samuel 7:14 426 11 196 1 Kings 19 439 22 271 2 Kings 2:11 93 7:14 90, Job * 132, 136, 137, 143 1 96 Psalms *

17, 44, 136, 138–139, 142, 143, 144, 194, 254, 260–262, 264, 268–269, 272–274, 331, 362, 367, 371, 403, 424, 426 2:7 90, 426, 429, 430 8 30, 427 8:4–6 427 11:6 266 21:10–11 267 22:22 428 29:1 97 32 135 32:10 135 33:6 148 34 135 34:11–17 135 40 429 40:6–8 429 44:22 283 45:6–7 426 45:7–8 163 51 137 51:1–17 132 66:18 200

70:1 266 70:2 266 70:4 266 70:5 266 78:2 210 151, 173 80:1 89:7 96 91 196 95 424 95:8–11 196 102:25–27 427 104:4 430 110 265, 429 110:1 427, 430 110:4 429 110–118 266 111:3 265 111:4 265 112–117 266 113 265 262, 263, 265 115 116 264 262, 289 116:10 117 264 117:22–23 208 117:50 265 117:66 265 117:130–131 265 118:18 430 118:32 264 121:4 201 Proverbs *

133, 136, 137–138, 140, 142, 275, 384–385 1–9 135 1:1–3 134 1:2–7 133 1:13 145 1:18 145 1:23–33 132–133 2:6 101 2:20 138 3:9 101 3:11 430 3:12 430 7:3 134 8 101, 131, 141, 144, 145, 148, 373, 398

Index of Biblical and other Ancient Sources including References

8:21–36 141 4, 19, 162–163, 374–375 8:22 8:22–31 49, 390, 398–399 8:25 375 15:8 200 15:29 200 20:9 274 20:27 135 Song of Songs * 16 Isaiah *

98, 137–138, 218, 272–273, 288, 367, 384, 397, 417 1 273 2:10–17 273 4:2–16 273 4:6 273 4:9 273 4:12 273 4:25 273 5 197 6:9–10 287 92, 195 7:14 8:17–18 428 13:8 369 29:14 143, 273 30 273 35:2–4 273 42:14–16 369 43:6 272 44:6 394 45 414 48:6 273 49 272 49:1 267 49:5 267 49:8 260 44, 66, 137 53 55 273 55:8–9 419 61:1–2 371 65:17 273 Jeremiah *

66, 204, 213, 261, 267–271, 273, 276, 281, 284, 288, 311, 367

461

1:5 287 4:31 369 9:1–6 270 132, 144, 269 9:23–24 270, 282 10:23 14:14 270 17:5 270, 282 17:7 270, 282 17:14 270, 282 21:8 270 23:18 270 23:28 270 24:6 267 31:15 195 31:31ff 124, 268, 282–283, 314 31:31–34 197, 426 31:34 428 38:27–28 267 38:31 268 38:34 268 39:40 268 51:34 268 Ezekiel *

137, 208, 270, 276, 284, 288, 367 1 126, 128 1:28 271 2:1 271 3:16 271 3:23 271 6 271 7 271 8:24 271 11:19 124 12:2 270 18:30 271 28 200 28:5–6 200 28:9 200 28:12b-13 200 28:15–16a 201 28:17a 201 28:24 271 197, 200 34 36:26 124 37 271 37:26–28 271

462

Index of Biblical and other Ancient Sources including References

39:21 271 39:29 271 43:1–5 271 Daniel * 66, 96, 208, 367 7 126 Hosea * 270, 285, 288 11:1 195 Amos * 340 Jonah * 414–415 Micah 4:10 369 5:2 195 Haggai * 103 Zechariah * 103 9:9 205 Malachi * 103 4:5 94

OT Apocryphal/ Deuterocanonical Books OT Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books * 90, 96 Assumption of Moses * 93 Baruch * 397 3:35–37 394

1 Enoch (Ethiopic Enoch) 94–95, 97–98 * 2 Enoch (Slavonic Enoch) * 95 3 Enoch * 73, 94, 95 10–14 95 16 96 2 (4) Esdras 7:28 90 Maccabees *

89, 207–208, 357

1 Maccabees * 2:58

93

2 Maccabees * 6:2

103

Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) 4, 136, 140, 142, 274 * 1:1 274 1:4 49 1:30 274 2 274 4:10 91 6:23ff 142 11 274 11:1–4 274 20:11 274 24 101, 148 24:1–2 274 24:3 49 24:15 275 34:12 275 39:1–8 274 48 93 48:9–10 94 50:20 274 51 148 51:2ff 142 Tobit *

97, 188

Index of Biblical and other Ancient Sources including References

3:17 97 5:4 97 12:15 97 Wisdom 4, 136, 138, 140, 274 * 1:1 274 1:16–2:1a 199 2 199 2:1b-11 199 2:12–20 200 2:16 199 101, 147, 275 7 7:25–26 49 9:13 275

New Testament Matthew *

152–153, 166, 171, 173–174, 186, 191, 196, 229, 314, 362, 367, 368, 370 1:22–23 195 2:5–6 195 2:14–15 195 2:15 195 2:16–18 195 3:9 197 3:15 196 4:10 196 5–7 196 5:3–12 205 5:21–22 187 5:27–28 187 5:37 223, 228 5:39 210 5:43–44 206 5:44 210 5:45 205 5:48 206 6:12 210 6:14–15 210 6:25–34 206 7:1–2 210 7:24 147 8:17 195 10:16 147

463

10:29 205 11:19 147 11:25–30 142, 148 11:27 163–164 12:28 46 190, 202 12:38–39 12:42 147 195, 210 13:35 13:54 147 14:19 161 15:9 210 15:24 415 190, 202 16:1–4 16:13–23 205 17:20 210 18:23–35 210 21:1–9 205 21:4 195 21:13 416 21:23–27 207 21:42 47, 208 22:34–39 210 23:29 207 22:37 206 24:2 207 24:43 210 24:45 147 25:1–12 147 178, 379 26:39 26:56 195 28:4 106 28:5 106 28:8 105 28:10 106 Mark *

86, 112, 152–153, 171, 173, 191, 197, 213, 362, 367–368 1:15 46 2:5 198 4 287 4:10–13 147 6:2 147 7:7 210 7:15 210 7:15–23 213 8:11–12 190, 202 8:27ff 46, 205

464

Index of Biblical and other Ancient Sources including References

8:33 46 46, 211 8:38 9:41 254 9:42 210 9:50 210 11:1–11 205 11:17 416 11:27–33 207 12:10 47 12:10–11 208 12:28–34 206 12:31 210 12:35–37 427 13:2 207 13:8 369–370 14:58 207 16:8 105 Luke *

7, 148, 152, 171, 184, 191, 197, 305, 362, 367–372 1:15 371 1:35 369, 371 1:41 371 1:67 371 2:25–27 371 2:40 147 2:47 147 147, 178 2:52 3:16 371 3:22 371 4:1 371 4:14 371 4:16–21 371 4:21 371 4:24 207 4:25–27 373 6:20–23 205 6:27–28 210 6:29 210 6:35 370 6:37 210 7:35 147 9:18–22 205 9:26 211 9:31 370 9:51 370 9:53 370

10:21 371 10:21–22 148 10:25–28 206 11:13 371 11:16, 29–30 190, 202 11:31 147 11:47 207 11:49 147 12:10 371 12:12 371 12:39 210 12:42 147 13:22 370 13:33ff 370 17:11 370 17:20 46 18:31 370 19:28–40 205 19:46 416 20:1–8 207 20:17 208 20:17–18 47 20:23 143 21:6 207 21:15 147 24:5 106 24:13–35 371 24:26 372 24:27 371 24:36–43 106 24:44ff 371–372 John *

4, 16, 17, 42, 46, 48, 114, 122, 142, 152–153, 171–181, 191, 197, 362, 367–368, 381, 384, 392, 397 1:1 343 1:1–18 100, 148, 164–165, 390, 399, 416, 432 1:11 380 1:12 382 1:13 380–381 1:14 380 1:15 178 1:17 199, 439 1:18 199, 277, 439

Index of Biblical and other Ancient Sources including References

2:12 177 2:19 207 3 300 3:8 286 24 4:9 163, 197, 198, 200–202 5 5:14 198 5:17 198 5:18 199–200 198, 199, 201 5:19 5:30 199, 201 5:33–35 199 5:37b 199 5:45 199 6 197 6:15 205 6:35 382 6:38 178, 379 6:53 178, 382 7:53–8:11 185 8 163 197–198, 200, 202 9 9:4 198 9:31 200 197, 200 10 10:30 163, 394, 397 11 197, 202 11:50 207 12 287 12:12–19 205 164, 379 12:27–28 14:6 416 14:9 163 14:10–11 163 14:11 394 14:16–17 161–162 15 197 16:21–22 369 17 163 17:3 163 17:11 163, 383 20:17 115 20:19 106 Acts *

249, 252, 301, 359, 362, 367–372 2:36 163

465

4:11 47 5:38–39 74 6:3 146 6:10 146 7:10 146 7:22 146 9:3 127 14:11ff 82 15:20 219 17 218 18:24ff 305 Romans *

5, 142, 194, 210, 244, 249, 260–261, 275, 279–289, 313, 359–360 1 238 1:1 263 1:1–4 156 1:3 50 1:5 284 1:7 213 1:16 211 1:22–25 121 1:23 287 235, 288, 289 2 2:6–7 289 2:7 287 2:10 287 2:13–16 212 3 235 3:21ff 284 3:23 287 3:28 309 3:31 286 4 285, 286 4:3 309 5:2 287 5:6 284–285 5:12–15 212 5:12–19 370 49, 284, 309 6 7 285 8 283, 287 8:3 49, 50, 284–285 8:4 284–285 8:8 285 8:9 213

466

Index of Biblical and other Ancient Sources including References

8:10 285 8:11 285 8:14ff 50, 285 8:15 212 8:15–17 210 8:17 50 8:18 284 8:21–23 284 8:22 369 283, 287 8:28–30 8:29 50, 123, 284 8:31ff 283 8:32 50 8:33–34 343 48, 95 8:34 9–11 287 50, 394 9:5 9:11–12 287 9:25ff 285 9:33 47 10 286 10:9 48 11:8–10 287 11:22 287 11:33 143 12 49, 211, 283, 309 12–14 153, 210 12:14 210, 309 12:17 210 12:18 210 13:7 210 13:8–10 210 13:9–10 206 14:10 210 14:13 210 14:14 210 14:17 210 1 Corinthians * 145, 147–148, 210, 217–220, 237, 238–239, 249, 252–253, 255, 257, 267, 280, 282, 313, 360 1–2 255 1–3 142 1–4 250 1:1 257 1:5 257

1:7 253 1:7–8 257 1:9 257 226, 257 1:10 1:12 305 1:15 257 1:17 257 132, 244, 257 1:18ff 1:24 122, 257 1:26 257 1:29–31 257 226, 257 1:30 1:31 132, 269 2 143 2:1 257 2:3 257 2:4 244 2:5 257 2:6 257 2:7 210, 258 145, 258 2:8 2:9–10 253, 258 2:11 275 143, 258 2:13 3 220 3:1 265 3:1–4 250 3:3 258 3:4ff 305 3:6 258 3:8 258 3:13 257 3:16 258 3:18–23 250 3:19–20 144 3:21 257 3:23 49 4:1 258 233, 258 4:3 4:4 257 4:5 233 4:6 251 4:8 250, 257, 269 4:9–13 253, 258 4:10 269, 4:15 258 4:18 250, 258 4:21 258

Index of Biblical and other Ancient Sources including References

5 255, 258 5–10 211 5:1 258 6:5 225 6:9–10 258 7:1 250 7:9 258 7:10–11 209 7:19 265 8 218 8–11 217, 238 8:5–6 48, 49, 122 8:6 144, 147 9 210, 217, 220, 239, 250, 255, 258 9:3 233 9:9 314 9:12 217 9:14 209 217, 258 9:15–27 9:24 245 10 250 10:1–22 217–218 10:23–11:1 218 11:3 49 11:7 123 11:23–26 209 12 49, 211, 283, 437 12:3 48, 86 12:8 144, 13 206, 212 13:2 210 15 127, 220 15:8–9 253 15:21–22 212, 370 15:25ff 49 15:27–28 396 15:48 50 15:49 123, 382 16:12 305 16:15–18 250 16:22 212 2 Corinthians * 5, 217–220, 229, 233, 239, 241, 243, 247, 249, 251–254, 256–259, 262, 267, 269–270, 272–273, 275, 279–289, 360

467

1 262 1–4 258 235–236, 240, 255 1–9 1:1 257 1:3–8 257 1:6 263 1:8 263 1:8–10 262 230, 262, 285 1:9 1:10 272 144, 229, 280 1:12 1:13–14 268 1:14 233, 257 1:15 240 1:15–22 221, 231 1:15–24 224 1:17a 223, 227–228, 230, 257–258, 282, 285 1:17b 221–231, 240, 253, 257–258, 282, 285 1:18 223, 229, 231, 257, 266 1:18–22 223 223, 229 1:19 1:19–22 224, 229, 229 1:20–21 260 1:21 230 1:21–22 123 224, 229 1:23 1:24 268 1:30 49 234–237, 239, 248, 255, 2 258 2:1 230, 255 2:3 236 2:9 234 2:11 272 2:13 237, 240 2:14 240, 257, 260, 263, 282 2:14–15 275 2:14–7:4 237, 239 2:15 281 2:15–16 238 2:16 270 2:17 253 124, 258, 260, 266–267, 3 275–277, 280, 282–283, 286, 288, 439 3:1 235

468

Index of Biblical and other Ancient Sources including References

3:1–6 268 3:1–4:6 125 3:3 271 125, 253 3:5 3:5–6 230 3:12 266 3:17 125 3:18 123, 127, 238, 275, 277, 283–284 4 269, 280, 289 4:1 265 143, 235, 266 4:2 4:4 49, 122, 238, 281, 287 4:6 238, 257, 265, 277 4:7 230, 240, 257–258, 262, 284 4:7–10 212 4:8–11 262 263, 285 4:12 4:13 262 4:14 262 275, 284 4:16 5:1–10 284 5:2 286 5:6–12 268 5:10 233, 257, 266, 287 5:12 235 5:13 263 252, 254 5:16 5:17 49, 273, 279 5:18–19 51 5:19 284 5:21 48, 49, 238, 257, 284 6 258, 260, 263 6:1 238 6:2 272 6:4 230, 235, 258, 263–264 6:7 264 6:9 262, 264 6:11 238 6:14 281, 287 6:14–17 237–238 6:14–7:1 265 6:16 258, 265, 271 6:16–18 261 6:17 272 7 234–235, 237, 239 7:5 236–237

7:6 263 7:8 234, 255 8 237, 255, 257–258, 275 8:9 49 8:15 261 236, 260 8:16 8:20 239 237, 240, 244, 257–258, 9 275 9:3–5 239 9:8 264 9:9 261 9:10 273 240, 252, 255, 257–258 10 10–13 220, 234–237, 240, 243, 247, 251–252, 255 10:1 263 228–229, 253 10:2 10:3 280 10:3–6 245 264, 285 10:4 10:7 220, 249 10:8 267, 282 10:10 244, 257 10:12 254 10:15–16 255 10:16 236 132, 236, 257, 261, 269, 10:17 280 11 258 11:1–3 238 11:6 244, 257 11:7 263 11:7–9 239 11:8–9 255 11:12 269 11:14 272 11:18 236 252, 254 11:22 12:1–9 127 12:4 258 12:5 240 12:5–7 253 12:7–9 271 230, 257, 262, 264 12:9–10 12:13 255 12:14 255 12:16 143

Index of Biblical and other Ancient Sources including References

12:16–18 239 12:18 236 12:19 233, 240, 244, 267, 282 12:20 258 12:20–21 238 12:21 263 13 258 13:1 255 13:1–10 268 220, 257, 262–263 13:3 13:4 230, 262–263 13:10 236, 267, 282 14 194 15:17 287 Galatians *

247, 249, 252, 260–261, 311, 359–360, 368 1:6 156, 173 1:10 263 1:15 281, 287 1:16 127 2:20 49 3 211 3:13 48 3:28 205 4:3 144 4:4 50 4:4–6 210 4:4–7 50 4:6 212 4:7 50 4:24 376 5 240 5:19–26 213 5:21ff 287 6 240 Ephesians * 145, 311 1:5 50 1:5–12 50 1:8 145 1:13 123 1:17 145 3:10 145 3:19 50 4:14 143

469

5:22 310 6:9 310 Philippians * 212 2:2–10 163 2:3 212 2:5ff 49 2:5–11 427 2:6 49, 50 2:6–8 164 2:7 165 2:8 49 50, 95 2:9ff 2:11 48 3:5–6 302 Colossians * 49, 143, 144–145, 147, 301 1:9 144 49, 50, 122 1:15 1:15–17 145 49, 100, 147 1:15–20 1:18 50 1:19 50 1:20 49 1:28 144 2:3 145 2:22 210 2:22–23 144 2:9 50 3:9–10 123 3:13 210 3:16 144 3:18–4:1 310 4:5 144 1 Thessalonians 1:8 48 2 247 2:3–12 254 4 211 5:2 48, 210 5:4 210 5:13 210 5:15 210 2 Thessalonians 1:12 50

470

Index of Biblical and other Ancient Sources including References

1 Timothy *

6, 291–303, 306–307, 311, 312–313, 368, 391 1:8ff 310 1:12–17 301 1:16 301 2 310 2:11–15 297 3:1–13 310 3:2–7 302 3:15 151, 173, 310 4:6 310 4:12 310 4:13 314, 362 5:3–16 310 5:17–20 310 5:18 314 5:21–22 310 6:1–2 310 6:11–16 300 2 Timothy *

6, 212, 291–303, 306–307, 310, 311, 312–313, 368, 391 2:7 146 3:1ff 312 3:16 314 Titus *

6, 291–303, 306–307, 311, 312–313, 368, 391 2:12 146 2:13 50 3:3 302 3:4–8a 300 Hebrews *

2, 6, 7, 14, 27–39, 47, 97–98, 101, 112, 122, 165, 196, 208, 305, 307, 311, 313–315, 371, 423–439 1 430, 432 1:3 28, 102, 123, 147, 430, 432 1:4 163 1:5 426 1:10 47 1:10–12 427 1:13 429

2:6–8 427 2:6–18 30, 32, 47 2:9 32, 35, 47 2:10 35 2:10–18 425 31, 33–34 2:17 2:18 31, 33–34, 425 3:1 29 3:2 163 3:2–6 427 3:5 431–432 3:7ff 424 4:11 425 24, 424, 435 4:12 4:12–13 424 4:13 435 4:14 34 32–33, 34, 425 4:15 5:5–6 429 5:8 436 5:8–9 433 5:11–6:6 435 5:12–14 433 6 430 6:1 425 6:4 433 6:19 425 7:27 31 8 315, 426 8:5 432–433 429, 436 9:22 9:24 425 10:1 433 10:19–20 425 11 430 12:2 425 12:6 430 12:23 426 13:2 97 James *

6, 142, 194, 306–309, 312–313, 315 1:5 146 1:25 309 1:26 309 2:8 309 2:10 309

Index of Biblical and other Ancient Sources including References

2:12 309 2:13 309 2:14–17 309 2:19 309 2:21 309 2:23–24 309 2:24 309 3:13 146 4:11–12 309 4:12 309 5:12 223, 227–228 1 Peter *

6, 194, 306–308, 311, 313, 315 2:5 437 2:6–8 47 2:9–10 415 2 Peter * 6, 306–308, 312, 314–315 1:4 167 1:16 146, 312 2:3 312 3:5ff 312 3:15 146, 315 3:16 315, 368 Johannine Epistles * 42, 307 2 John * 308 Jude *

306–308, 312, 314

Revelation * 114 5:12 146 7:12 146 12:1–6 370 13:18 146 17:9 146

471

New Testament Apocrypha 3 Corinthians * 299 Acts of Paul * 299 Acts of Peter * 301 Laodiceans * 299

Other Jewish Literature Josephus 92–93, 359–360 * Jewish Antiquities 3.5.7 93 4.8.48 92 16.43 357 20.97 207 20.169–170 207 Jewish War 2.261 207 7.10.1 85 Jubilees * 96 Letter to Aristeas * 360 Old Testament Pseudepigrapha * 90 Philo *

54, 91, 99, 101–103, 277, 357–358 On Flight and Finding 112 100 On Planting 8–10 100 50ff. 100

472

Index of Biblical and other Ancient Sources including References

On the Confusion of Tongues 41 100 145 100 On the Life of Moses 99 2.288–291 93 Questions and Answers on Exodus 2.118 100 Questions and Answers on Genesis 9.6 98, 100 Qumran (Dead Sea Scrolls) * 17, 73, 91, 97, 103, 133–134, 136, 138, 237, 239 11 Q 13 (11Q Melchizedek) 98 Rabbinic and later Jewish texts Hekhaloch * 126 Midrash * 261, 275–277 Talmud * 73, 94–96 Targum * 15, 261, 323, 358, 361

Athanasius *

19, 28, 55, 57–58, 162, 364, 373–375, 376–377, 381, 386 Defense of the Nicene Definition * 162–163, 374, 399 6–12 374 13–14 375 On the Incarnation 54.3 57 Orations Against the Arians * 57, 374 1–2 163 1.52 375 2 375 3 163–164 3.57 57, 162, 400 Athenagoras * 75, 141, 392 Legatio * 361 26 75 26–27 219 Augustine *

Early Christian Authors & Texts Adrianos Introduction to the Holy Scriptures * 377 Ambrose * 340 Anaximander * 392 Apollinarius * 30, 354 Apostolic Constitutions * 330, 365 Apostolic Fathers * 4, 131, 133, 186, 364, 392

6, 19, 55, 79, 309, 311, 335–349, 385 Christian Instruction * 19, 131, 338–346 Book 1 343, 345–347, 378 1.40 345 Book 2 342, 345, 347 2.4–5 345 2.6 345 2.7 348 2.12–13 342 2.14 342 2.6–22 342 2.23 342 Book 3 343, 345, 347 3.1 342 3.3 343 3.6 343 3.8 343 3.12 343 3.14–15 343 3.15 348–349 3.19 348

Index of Biblical and other Ancient Sources including References

3.22 348 3.36 343 3.38 345 3.42 344 339, 342, 345 Book 4 4.4 339 4.6 339 4.8 339 4.11–13 340 4.14 340 4.16–20 340 4.25 340 4.27 340 4.39–50 340 4.59 340 Confessions 7.9 55 Barnabas *

82, 134, 137, 144, 146, 305, 308 2.6 139 4.8 139 4.11–12 138 5 139 5.3 133 6.10 133 7 139 8 139 12.7 139 15.9 139 16 139 19 138 Basil of Caesarea * 404 Homilies on the Hexaemeron * 165 On the Holy Spirit 18.44–45 59 Clement of Alexandria * 53, 141, 174, 305 Paedagogus 2.8 219 Stromateis 4.25 55 7.14 53

473

7.31 53 7.33 53 Clement of Rome 145, 305, 430 * 134, 136, 138–139, 1 Clement 143–144, 308, 332, 430–432, 435 3.7 135 7 137 13 137 13.1 132 16 137 17 137 18 137 18:2–17 132 21 137, 187 32 132 33 136 35 135 137, 430 36 36.2 430 38 132 39 132 40 136, 431 41–42 431 43 431 43–44 431 48 132 49 137 56.3 430 57.5 133 58.1 133 59 137 60 136 64 137 2 Clement *

131, 308

Cyprian *

340, 395

Cyril of Alexandria * 31, 33–34, 36–39, 59, 140, 201, 379, 382–385 Commentary on Hebrews * 27–32, 36–37

474

Index of Biblical and other Ancient Sources including References

Commentary on John 161, 178, 378, 380 * 4.1 178 4.2 178 9.1 162 19 178 Commentary on Matthew * 379 Cyril of Jerusalem * 376 Catechetical Orations 5.12 158 Didachē * 134, 252, 254, 308, 330 6.3 219 Didaskalia * 330 [To] Diognetus * 131 Ephrem Syrus * 8, 332, 347, 387–388, 404 Eusebius of Caesarea * 59, 79 Ecclesiastical History 2.25 166 3.12 207 3.19–20 207 3.38 430 3.39 153, 185, 362 4.29.6 368 5.20 431 6.12 155, 189 6.14 174 Life of Constantine 3.15 59 4.29 59 Preparation for the Gospel * 73 9.27 92 Eustathius * 376–377

On the Witch of Endor and Against Origen * 376 Gregory of Nazianzus * 404 Orations 2.41 60 Gregory of Nyssa * 347, 404–405 Against Eunomius * 403 1.19 59 Life of Moses * 16 Hippolytus * 395, 401 Against Noetus 2.5 394 4.7 397 Refutation of all Heresies 9 394 Ignatius (of Antioch) * 131, 140, 143, 145, 156 Ephesians * 308 15 187 18 132 20.2 189 Magnesians * 308 Philadelphians * 308 8 140, 156, 185, 361 Romans * 308 1.3 134 Smyrnaeans * 308 1 132 To Polycarp * 308 Trallians * 308 9 157 9–10 188

Index of Biblical and other Ancient Sources including References

475

Irenaeus of Lyon 18, 152–153, 155, 174, 362, * 367–368, 370, 375, 386, 396, 430–435, 437–438 Against the Heresies 141, 431 * 1.3.6 367 1.8.1 159, 367, 375 1.9.4 367 1.19 55 1.21 188 1.27.2 184 2.2.5 432 2.30.9 432 3 367 3.1.1 154, 367 3.3.4 154 3.6.1 432 3.6.5 432 151, 173, 367 3.11.8–9 3.13.1 367 3.22.4 433 4.9.1 368 4.11.1 433 4.14.3 433 4.19.1 433 4.32–33 368 4.38 433 5 367 5.35.2 433 9.4 375

Justin Martyr * 87, 141, 156, 186, 194, 360, 362, 369–370, 390, 392–393, 417, I Apology 87, 141, 194–195, 360, 396, * 398 9 219 10 187 12 187 166, 187 13 14–17 166 17 188 15 154 16–17 186 32–53 156 34–35 166 41 187 48 166 66–67 154, 184 67 187 Dialogue with Trypho * 4, 54, 194, 360–361 6 219 61 141 62 141 100 184

John Chrysostom * 2, 33–34, 36–37, 39, 59, 225, 227–228, 231, 237, 239, 251, 255–256, 280, 282, 376 Homilies on 2 Corinthians * 230, 244 Homilies on Hebrews * 27–9, 32, 33–37 Homilies on Matthew 49 161 On God’s Incomprehensibility * 403–404

Martyrdom of Polycarp * 131, 188 8 86

Marcion Apostolicon * 368

Melito of Sardis Peri Pascha * 392 Nag Hammadi Library * 155 Gospel of the Hebrews * 155 Gospel of Peter * 155 Gospel of Thomas * 155 71 207

476

Index of Biblical and other Ancient Sources including References

Gospel of Truth 141, 152, 173 * Teachings of Silvanus * 140 Nemesius of Emesa On the Nature of Man * 165 Novatian On the Trinity 30 393 Origen *

14, 16, 17, 53, 73, 74, 75, 79, 96, 140–141, 158, 160, 166, 174, 178, 180, 322, 337, 343, 345, 363, 376–377, 396, 398

Against Celsus * 78–79, 83, 305 1.32 167 1.37 75 1.57 74 3.24 75 5.1 75 5.45 53 6.11 74 6.64 54 7.9 74 8.2 53 53, 393 8.12 8.24 219 Commentary on John * 154, 174–176 1.20 55 2.31 98 6 175–176 10 175–177 Commentary on Matthew 10.7–10 14 11.1–4 161 Hexapla * 363 First Principles * 176, 376 Papias of Hierapolis

*

153–154, 185, 361

Polycarp * 134, 145, 153–154 Philippians * 308 3.2 132 Protevangelium of James * 155 Pseudo-Macarius Homilies * 128 1.2 129 Sentences of Sextus * 140 Serapion of Antioch 155, 189 * Shepherd of Hermas * 98, 135, 430 Mandate 7 134 Similitude 9.22 134 Vision(s) 1.3 132, 143, Tatian * Diatessaron *

154–155, 368, 392 154, 173, 184

Tertullian * 38, 141, 158, 305, 368, 396 Against Hermogenes * 392 Against Marcion 4.2.2 184 Against Praxeas * 394 1 395 5–8 397 Theodore of Mopsuestia * 323, 376

Index of Biblical and other Ancient Sources including References

Commentary on John * 14 Fragments on Hebrews * 27, 35

Demosthenes * 247 Letter 2 * 241, 243

Theodoret of Cyrrhus 28–29, 36–37, 39, 154, * 227–228, 230, 376, 379 Commentary on Hebrews * 27–8, 34–36 Interpretation of 1 Timothy * 56 Interpretation of 2 Corinthians * 223

Dio Chrysostom 246, 261 *

Theophilus of Alexandria * 59, 141, 392 Theophylactus Exposition on Hebrews * 27

Greek and Roman Authors Aelian Historical Miscellany * 80 Aeschylus * 246 Aristotle * 79, 80, 243, 341, 356 Art of Rhetoric * 242 Poetics * 107 6 110 9.41 112 Cicero 83, 340, 354 * Letter to his brother Quintus 1.1.7 83 On the Nature of the gods * 354

477

Diogenes Laertius * 79–80 Lives of the Philosophers * 79 3.2.1 79 8.1.4–5 80 8.1.11 80 8.2.66 80 8.2.68 80 8.2.69 80 8.5.59ff 80 8.5.70 80 Dionysius of Halicarnassus Lysias * 242 Empedocles * 80 Euripides * 246 Homer *

13, 16, 86, 94, 159, 167, 246, 322, 355–356, 358, 367, 374–375, 400

Horace Odes 1.2 83 Iamblichus Life of Pythagoras * 80 Livy * 88 History of Rome 1.4 82 1.16 82

478

Index of Biblical and other Ancient Sources including References

Lucian of Samosata 77, 80 * Alexander (of Abonuteichos) the False Prophet * 75, 77 8–9 77 11 77 40 77 The Passing of Peregrinus (Proteus) 75–76, 252, 254 * 4 76–77 11–16 76 29 76 39 76 40 76 Marcus Aurelius Meditations 5.27 53 5.33 53 7.9 53 Maximus of Tyre Dissertations 9 53 39.5 53 Ovid Metamorphoses 8.626–721 82

Pliny, the younger * 187 Plotinus * 54–55 Plutarch * 80–82 How the Young Should Study Poetry * 344, 355 Moralia I * 344 Moralia V, On Isis and Osiris * 356 On the Education of Children * 344, 355 Table Talk 8.1.2 81 The Life of Alexander 2 81 2–3 81 27 81, 87 Porphyry * 342 On Abstinence 2.34–39 53 Pseudo-Demetrius * 243

Philostratus * 80 The Life of Apollonius of Tyana * 77–79 1.2 78 1.4 78 1.6 78 8.7 78 8.30ff 78

Pythagoras * 80

Plato *

Seneca * 87 Pumpkinification of Claudius * 83

75, 79–81, 100, 128, 294, 326, 344, 355–356

Republic 509B 54 Timaeus * 392

Quintilian *

243, 245, 247, 321–322, 341–342 The Orator’s Education 242, 341, 355 * 1.4–9 13

Sophocles * 294

Index of Biblical and other Ancient Sources including References

Tyconius * 344

Inscriptions & ostraca * 75, 85

Virgil * 356 Eclogues 4 83

Medieval authors

Other Ancient Sources Papyri * 85 Oxyrhynchus papyri * 84

Beckett, Thomas à * 108 Julian of Norwich * 71, 118, 128

479

Index of Modern Authors Ackroyd, P. R.  15, 352 Adams, Richard  295 Aland, Kurt  228, 321 Alexander, P. S.  136 Alici, Luigi  335, 344 Allison, D. C.  192 Allo, E.-B.  222, 224, 227–228 Armstrong, A. H.  54 Arnold, Duane W. H.  342, 345–346, 348–349 Ascough, Richard S.  401 Askari, Hasan  410 Attridge, H. W.  305 Baarda, T.  237 Babbitt, Frank Cole  344, 356 Babcock, William S.  347 Bachmann, P.  222–224, 227 Backus, I  15 Baker, John Austin  98, 362 Balthasar, Hans Urs von  405 Barrett, C. K.  49, 222–224, 251–252, 271, 368 Barthes, Roland  20, 179, 314, 336 Bartholomew, Craig  20 Barton, John  136, 305, 309 Barton, Stephen C.  105, 131, 142–144, 151 Bates, W. H.  235, 240 Bauckham, Richard  207, 306 Beare, F. W.  313 Beck, E.  347 Bell, H. I.  357 Belval, Norman J.  153 Berlioz, Hector  65 Betz, H. D.  245, 247 Betz, O.  252 Bieler, L.  86 Bingham, D. Jeffrey  430–431, 433–434

Black, Matthew  218, 356 Blass, Friedrich  222, 224, 226 Bockmuehl, Markus  155, 168 Booth, Wayne C.  106, 292, 295 Bornkamm, G.  45 Bouffartigue, Jean  53 Bousset, W.  44, 89–90 Bowden, John  86 Brandon, S. G. F.  69 Brent, Allen  394–395, 401 Bright, Pamela  342, 344–346, 348–349 Brock, Sebastian  387, 404 Brodie, Thomas  9 Bromiley, G. W.  87 Brook, Peter  110–111 Brooke, G.J.  136 Brown, David  117, 402 Brown, R. E.  296 Bruce, F. F.  222–223 Bultmann, Rudolf  45, 191–192, 222–223, 237, 240, 244 Bumpus, Harold Bertram  136 Burkert, Walter  111 Burnet, I.  54 Burns, J. Patout  348 Burridge, Richard A.  165, 183 Burtchaell, James Tunstead  362 Butler, H. E.,  13 Butterworth, G. W.  176 Butterworth, R.  394 Buttolph, Philip  306 Campenhausen, Hans von  362, 367, 368 Cellini, Benvenuto  61 Chabot, F.  392 Chadwick, Henry  53, 54, 73, 140, 382 Chester, Andrew  305 Chilton, Bruce  192 Clavier, H.  271

Index of Modern Authors

Clement, P. A.  81 Coggins, R. J.  103 Collange, Jean-François  237 Collins, Kenneth William  171 Colson, F. H.  93, 100 Conzelmann, Hans  306 Cross, F. C.  313 Crossan, J. D.  192 Cullmann, Oscar  43, 48 Dahl, N. A.  250 Daube, David  358 Davies, J. G.  320 Davies, W. D.  45, 261 Dawson, David  349 Debrunner, Albert  222, 224, 226 Deissmann, Adolf  84, 241, 353 Dennett, Daniel  408 Denniston, J. D.  224 Derrida, Jacques  179, 337–338 DeSimone, R. J.  393 Dibelius, Martin  306 Diercks, G. F.  393 Dinkler, E.  222 Dodd, C. H.  46 Dörries, H.  129 Doty, W. G.  246 Douglas, Mary  110 Dover, K. J.  225 Dowden, Ken  354 Downing, J.  44 Draper, Jonathan  407, 415 Dunn, James D. G.  142, 186, 188, 193–194, 206, 210, 305, 309, 359 Eck, Diana  420 Eco, Umberto  335, 346 Edwards, Mark  361 Ehrhardt, Arnold  392 Ehrman, Bart D.  131, 160, 192 Eliot, T. S.  107, 111–112 Elliot, George  190 Evans, C. F.  15, 352 Evans, E.  394 Evans, G.R.  9 Exum, Cheryl  107–109 Fairbairn, A. M.  352

481

Falls, Thomas B.  87 Farmer, H. H.  38 Fee, Gordon D.  237–238 Field, F.  230 Fish, Stanley  292 Fishbane, Michael  314, 363 Fitzmyer, J. A.  43, 91, 98, 237 Flacelière, R.  403 Fleteren, Frederick van  342, 344 Forbes, C.  244–245 Ford, David  5, 19, 131, 145, 204, 233, 259, 279, 402, 415 Foster, B. O.  82 Fraser, R. S.  189 Freese, J. H.  242 Freud, Sigmund  259 Frishman, Judith  351 Froelich, K.  358 Früchtel, L.  53, 219 Frye, Northrop  328 Fuller, R. H.  43, 45–46 Funk, Robert W.  222, 225–226 Furnish, V. P.  222, 244, 246 Gadamer, Hans  292 Gamble, Harry Y.  352–354, 356–358, 362 Gelston, A.  188 Gifford, E. H.  73, 92 Goodenough, E. R.  53 Goodman, Martin  351, 361 Goold, G. P.  82 Gore, Charles  119 Goudge, H. L.  222–223 Goulder, Michael  18, 45, 73, 102–103 Grant, Robert M.  167, 174, 311 Green, R. P. H.  19 Gregg, Robert C.  399 Gregory, Andrew F.  131, 390, 430 Grieg, James C. G.  191 Grillmeier, Aloys  57 Groh, Dennis E.  399 Gruenwald, Ithamar  126 Gulen, Fethullah  413, 419 Hagan, Kenneth  15, 325, 331 Halliwell, Stephen  107, 110 Hamilton, Robert  105

482

Index of Modern Authors

Hammon, A. M.  77 Hammond, Carolyn J.-B.  55 Hanson, A. T.  66, 72, 261, 276 Hanson, R. P. C  400 Hao, Yap Kim  407 Harmon, A. M.  76 Harnack, Adolf von  94, 190, 361 Harrington, Daniel J.  133, 136, 138–139 Harris, William V.  354 Harrison, Carol  131, 311 Hartog, Paul  86 Harvey, A. E.  249 Harvey, W. W.  55 Hasan, Sayyid Siddiq  411 Hatch, Edwin  351, 355–356 Hays, Richard B.  125, 143, 314 Healey, F. G.  38 Heathcote, A. W.  222 Hecht, Suzanne  153 Helmbold, W. C.  81 Hempel, C.  136 Hengel, Martin  86, 245–246, 252 Héring, J.  222–223 Hick, John  2, 3, 41, 73, 119, 122, 402 Hickling, Colin J. A.  256, 276 Higgins, A. J. B.  44–45 Higman, F.  15 Hill, E.  335, 345, Hodgson, P. C.  190 Hoffmann, K. von  225 Holtzman, Oskar  190 Hooker, Morna D.  44, 145, 276 Houlden, J. Leslie  43, 105–107 Hübner, Reinhard M.  392–393 Hughes, P. E.  222–223 Hurd, J. C.  218–219 Hurtado, Larry  393, 402 Ipgrave, Michael  410, 412–413, 418 Iser, Wolfgang  292 Jacobus, Melanchthon Williams  225 Jaeger, W.  59, 403 Jaspers, Karl  109 Jeanrond, Werner  292–296, 299, 320 Jeremias, Joachim  44, 93 Jha, Alok  408 Jones, Christopher P.  78

Jonge, M. de  98 Josipovici, Gabriel  113–114 Jowett, B.  293–294 Joyce, Paul  18, 320 Judge, E. A.  244–245 Keating, Daniel A.  379, 381, 383 Kelly, J. N. D.  53, 56, 59, 156, 306, 393 Kennedy, George  245, 247 Kermode, Frank  328 Kidwai, A. R.  411 Kim, Sebastian C. H.  407, 415 Kinneavey, James L.  21, 405 Kittel, G.  87 Kitto, H. D. F.  107 Klijn, A. F. J.  237 Klostermann, E.  14, 129 Knight, Harold  253 Knox, John  369 Knox, W. L.  101 Koester, Helmut  153 Koestler, Arthur  63, 117 Koetschau, P.  53, 176 Kroeger, M.  129 Kümmel, W. G.  220, 222 Laansma, Jon C.  423 Lake, Kirsopp  220 Lamb, George  354 Lamberton, Robert  355 Lambrecht, J.  237 Lampe, Peter  401 Lange, A.  136 Laws, Sophie  306 Leivestad, R.  43 Leloir, L.  8 Levine, Lee I.  356–357 Lichtenberger, H.  136 Lieberman, Saul  358 Lietzmann, H.  222–223, 235 Lieu, Judith  184, 246, 307, 368–369 Lilla, S. R. C.  54–55 Lindars, Barnabas  42, 47, 305 Loades, Ann  117, 402 Lodge, David  20, 335 Longenecker, Richard N.  402 Louth, Andrew  18, 131 Lucas, D. W.  107

Index of Modern Authors

Maccoby, H.  192 McCauley, Leo P.  158 McCullough, J. Cecil  9 MacDonald, D. R.  368 MacDonald, M. Y.  296 McHugh, John  370 Mackinnon, Donald M.  27, 112, 120 Malherbe, A. J.  243, 245, 247, 254 Malina, Bruce  259 Maloney, George A.  129 Manson, T. W.  319–320 Marcus, Ralph A.  100, 335, 346 Markland (sic) 228 Markovich, M.  54, 87, 394 Marrou, H.-I.  354 Martin, J.  19 Martin, Ralph P.  305 Martini, Cardinal Carlo Maria  23 Marx, Karl  259 Massaux, Edouard  153 Mattill, A. J., Jr.  220 May, Gerhard  392 Meeks, Wayne A.  401 Mendietta, E. Amand de  165 Menoud, Ph. H.  271 Menzies, A.  222–225, 227 Merton, Thomas  130 Messinger, T. N. D.  201 Meszaros, Julia  436 Millar, Fergus  356 Miller, Frank Justus  82 Minar, Edwin L.  81 Mitchell, Mary  193 Moffatt, James  361 Montefiore, Hugh W.  38 Montgomery, W.  191 Morani, M.  165 Morgan, Robert  145, 389, 400–402, 405 Moule, Charles F. D.  27, 47 Moulton, J. H.  222 Mras, K.  92 Nestle, Eberhard  228 Newbigin, Lesslie  118 Newton, Michael  239 Nietzsche, Friedrich  107, 111, 115 Nock, A. D.  74, 82, 85, 99, 103 Norwood, Gilbert  110 Nussbaum, Martha  108–109, 111

483

O’Brien, P. T.  246, 260 O’Keefe, J. J.  379 O’Neill, J. C.  288 Odeberg, Hugo  94 Olson, Stanley N.  247 Oostendorp, D. W.  251 Orten, David E.  18 Osborn, E. F.  54, 55 Otten, Willemien  351 Pagels, Elaine  368 Parker, David  184–185, 368–369 Patillon, M.  53 Perrin, Bernadotte  81 Pétrement, Simone  311 Pfitzner, V. C.  245 Piaget, Jean  259 Pittenger, Norman  38 Places, E. des  92 Plummer, A.  222–223, 227, 228 Porter, Stanley E.  18 Prestige, G. L.  53, 54, 56 Preuschen, E.  55 Price, Simon  361 Prusche, B.  59 Pusey, P. E.  27, 30–32, 36–37, 178, 202 Quasten, J.  14, 322 Rackham, H.  354 Radice, Betty  187 Reimarus, Hermann S.  189 Renan, Ernest  190 Richard, M.  57 Richardson, C. C.  55 Ricks, R. D.  79 Ricoeur, Paul  292, 295 Rist, J. M.  54 Roberts, C. H.  352 Roberts, W. Rhys  226 Robinson, J. M.  140 Robinson, John A. T.  38, 62 Rotelle, John E.  335 Rouwhorst, Gerard  351 Rowland, Christopher C.  126, 136, 144, 311, 389 Rowley, H. H.  218 Rudberg, S. Y.  165

484

Index of Modern Authors

Rudolph, Kurt  311 Russell, Norman  178, 379 Sacks, Jonathan  417, 420 Safi, Omid  413, 417–418 Sampley, J. P.  247 Sandbach, F. H.  81 Sanders, E. P.  192–193, 202, 211, 249, 261, 285–286, 288, 309, 359 Saussure, Ferdinand de  336 Schäublin, Christoph  345–346, 348 Schlatter, A.  222, 225, 227–229 Schmiedel, P. W.  228 Schmidt, P.  252 Schmithals, Walter  312 Schoedel, William R.  75 Schoeps, H. J.  253 Scholem, Gershom G.  94, 126 Schubert, P.  246 Schürer, Emil  356–357 Schwartz, E.  153 Schweitzer, Albert  191 Schweizer, E.  103 Segal, Alan F.  126–127, 401 Segonds, Alain-Philippe  53 Selwyn, E. G.  311 Sevenster, Jan Nicolaas  224, 271 Sevrin, J. -M.  153 Shakespeare, William  293 Shaw, Graham  257 Simon, M.  87 Skarsaune, O.  194, 360 Skeat, T. H.  352 Smart, Ninian  38 Spencer, A. B.  244 Staab, K.  27, 35 Stählin, O.  53, 219 Staniforth, Maxwell  131 Stanton, Graham  19, 105, 131, 145, 402 Stead, G. C.  56 Steiner, George  291–292, 323, 347 Steinhauser, Michael  401 Stendahl, K.  309 Stephenson, A. M. G.  235 Stephenson, Anthony A.  158 Stewart, Zeph  74 Stowers, S. K.  244, 307, 354 Strachan, L. R. M.  84

Strachan, R. H.  222 Strauss, David F.  190–191, 193 Stuckenbruck, L. T.  136 Talbert, C. H.  87, 97, 189 Teal, Andrew  398 Telfer, W.  165 Thackeray, H. St John  85, 93 Thayer, C. S.  225 Theissen, G.  250, 253–254 Thompson, Robert W.  55 Thrall, M. E.  237, 252 Tilby, Angela  204 Tödt, H.  44 Towner, P. A.  297 Toynbee, Arnold  87 Treacy, Bernard  9 Treier, Daniel J.  423 Treu, U.  53, 219 Trocmé, E.  47 Tuckett, Christopher  131, 155, 389–390, 430 Turner, Nigel  222, 225–226 Underhill, Evelyn  128 Unnik, W. C. van  223–224, 230, 237, 271 Usher, Stephen  242 Vanier, Jean  20 Vermes, Geza  43, 91–92, 192, 356, 369 Verner, D. C.  297 Von Martitz, W.  87

Wallace-Hadrill, D. S.  393 Waszinck, J. H.  392 Watson, Francis  237, 239 Watts, William  55 Weaver, Rebecca Hardon  347 Weber, Max  259 Weeks, Stuart  136 Weichart, V.  243 Weinandy, Thomas G.  379, 381, 383 Wesley, John  280 Whitaker, G. H.  100 Wiles, Maurice  14, 27, 37, 323, 326 Wilken, Robert Louis  140–141, 381, 383 Williams, C. S. C.  218

Index of Modern Authors

Williams, Raymond  107, 111 Williams, Rowan  9, 403 Williamson, G. A.  153, 174 Wilson, Nigel  80 Wilson, R. McL.  311 Windisch, H.  222–227 Winkelmann, F.  59 Winter, Tim  410 Witherington III, Ben  147, 192 Wolfson, H. A.  53 Worrall, A. Stanley  392 Woude, A. S. van der  98 Wrede, W.  191, 389 Wright, N. T.  192 Yarbro, Adela  306

485

Young, Frances  1, 2, 5, 9, 18, 19, 20, 21, 44, 55, 105, 110, 117, 119, 122, 141, 151, 156, 159, 161, 166, 171, 173, 179, 183, 193–194, 204, 233, 259, 279, 291, 305–306, 311, 319–320, 326, 335, 338, 341, 344–345, 347, 353, 355, 357, 360–361, 363, 368–369, 373, 376, 381, 390–392, 396, 398, 400, 402, 436–437 Zachhuber, Johannes  436 Zahn, T.  225 Zandee, J.  140 Zimmerli, W.  44 Zwaan, J. de  224

Index of Subjects Abba  212–213 Abnormality 64 Abortion 418 Abraham  31, 137, 163, 196–197, 205–206, 254, 285–286, 288, 309, 374, 381, 413–414, 428, 430 Absolute  348–349, 403 Abstract 382 Academy  8, 291, 409, 434 Accident(s) 65 Accommodation  55, 333, 347, 419 Accompaniment 438 Accountable  187, 404 Action  309, 436 Adam  30, 66, 120, 123, 127–128, 151, 173, 196, 201–202, 208, 212, 283, 370, 382, 384, 433 Addai 187 Address, addressing  425 Adoption (as sons)  49, 57, 100, 129, 163–164, 212–213, 285, 288, 380, 399 Adoptionism, adoptionist  49, 160, 173, 381 Adultery  138, 167, 187, 213, 238, 258, 270 Advent 151 Advocate 71 Aesthetic(s) 291 Affliction  264, 266, 268, 274, 281–282 Africa 338 Agenētos (underived)/Agenēsia  56, 398, 403 Aggression, aggressive  409 Agnostic 418 Alexamenos (graffito)  206 Alexander of Abonuteichos  75, 78 Alexander the Great  81–82, 85, 87 Alexandria, Alexandrian  19, 27–28, 30, 36, 39, 57–59, 99, 164, 305, 357–358, 363

Alien(s)  205, 313, 331, 333, 414 Allegory  12, 14, 16, 17, 18, 128, 138, 161, 172, 277, 314–315, 322, 326, 332, 344, 349, 363, 373, 376–378, 384, 386 Allusion  124, 160, 194–195, 197, 248, 262, 264, 314, 322, 330, 332, 341, 355, 429–432, 434 Altar 436 Amalek 363 Ambassador  268, 276, 281–282, 289 Ambiguity  3, 109, 112, 114–115, 123, 126, 128, 322, 329, 343 Ambition 212–213 American Constitution  330 Amphictione 75 Amusement 347 Anachronism, anachronistic  381, 384–385, 390, 402, 405 Anagogy  17, 18, 176–177 Analogy  30, 32, 39, 64–65, 67, 72, 87, 129, 172, 208, 241, 243, 303, 336, 419 Analysis, analytical  3, 19, 20, 117, 119–120, 122, 126, 129, 292, 324, 327–328, 336, 339, 384–385, 402 Ancient 362 Anecdote 186 Angel(s), archangel(s)  28, 36, 91, 94–96, 98–100, 102, 127, 141, 188, 196, 272, 314, 395–397, 426–427, 430, 438 Anger  35, 187, 211, 213, 243, 377, 424–425 Animal(s)  177, 238 Annul, annulment  359 Anoint, anointed  426 Anthropology, anthropological  165, 337, 436 Anthropomorphic, anthropomorphism  38–39, 65, 71–72, 121, 377, 386 Anti-intellectual(ism) 118

Index of Subjects

Antinomianism 312 Antioch, Antiochene  27–29, 32, 36–39, 57–58, 164, 249, 252, 376–377, 379, 383–384 Antiochus (IV Epiphanes)  103 Antiquity  160, 355, 361, 410, 412, 436 Anti-Semitic, anti-Semitism  313, 357 Anxiety, anxious  166, 213 Apathēs 34–35 Aphrodite 84 Apocalyptic  17, 46, 91, 94–95, 103, 126, 148, 190, 197, 208, 239, 314, 369, 402 Apocrypha, apocryphal  98, 114, 165, 300–301, 314, 364 Apollinarius, Apollinarian  30 Apollo  75, 77, 80, 85 Apollonius (of Tyana)  77–78 Apollos  249–252, 255, 267, 282, 305 Apology, apologist(s), apologetic  12, 52, 75, 121, 167, 218–219, 233–234, 240–241, 243–244, 247–248, 250–251, 256–259, 279–280, 328, 358, 361, 394, 396, 417 Apophatic  20, 386 Aporia(i)  16, 17, 177, 179–180, 337, 343, 376 Apostasy  238, 249, 258, 272, 288, 356 Apostle, apostolic  6, 29, 152, 159, 189, 217, 230, 234, 238, 240, 251–253, 256, 266, 268–269, 277, 279–281, 285, 308, 311, 352, 362, 365, 367, 375, 390, 431, 433 Apostolicon  368–369 Apotheōsis, deification  76–77, 80, 83, 87, 95–96, 104 Appeal 280 Appearance  111, 379 Appropriation  294, 316, 332–333, 338, 439 Aquila 249 Arabic 411 Aramaic  43, 212 Archaeology  11, 20, 75, 85, 172, 179, 319 Archangel, see Angel Archē  395–396 Archetype  50, 67, 89 Ares 84

487

Argument  260, 277, 299–300, 323–324, 339, 345 Arian, Arians, Arius  19, 28, 30, 56–58, 98, 131, 141, 159, 161–163, 373–374, 380, 385–386, 398–400, 403 Ariston 75 Ark  358, 411 Arm(s) 363 Armenia(n) 412 Arrogance 257 Art  68, 112, 118, 151, 173, 291, 332, 409, 411 Ascension  94, 104, 158 Ascetic(al)  16, 78, 312 Asclepius  75, 77, 84, 87 Assembly 364 Assimilation  277–278, 356 Assumption(s)  320, 353, 435–436 Assyrians 414 Astronomy, astronomical  342 Atheism, atheist  12, 361, 386, 409 Athens  109, 241 Athlete  32, 245 Atonement  3, 39, 41, 64–65, 72, 98, 112–113, 189, 315, 428–429, 436 Atreptos, see Unchangeable Attention 302–303 Attribution 195 Audience  296, 324, 339–340, 405 Augustus 82–85 Aura  351–365, 410 Authentic, authenticity  362 Author, authorial intent  10, 20, 22, 171, 179–180, 185, 294, 298–299, 314, 325, 328, 336, 338, 340, 344, 345–346, 352, 363, 369, 384, 387, 390, 4o5, 423–424, 434 Authority  7, 21, 50, 152, 174, 193, 250, 257, 267, 300–303, 307, 310–312, 339–340, 353, 356, 359–365, 395, 411 -412, 426, 432 Authorized Version (King James Version)  331–332, 412 Avarice 213 Awe  71, 106, 115, 187, 408 Babel 400 Babylonians 414

488

Index of Subjects

Background 328 Baghdad 412 Balaam 314 Baptism  17, 37, 48, 91, 157, 160, 163, 167, 175, 187–188, 196, 198, 253, 300, 311, 313, 363, 370–371, 389, 405 Bar Mitzvah  297 Barren 369 Basilides 55 Baucis 82 Be Lapat  94 Beam (of the sun)  397 Beatific 325 Beatles, The  293 Beauty, Beautiful  128–129, 382, 404 Become, becoming  380 Bedouin 438 Beget, begotten see also genna, gennēma  375, 381, 396, 398–399 Beginning  141, 383, 396, 398 Behaviour 312 Being, ousia  72, 129, 168, 375, 386 Belgrade 408 Belial 97 Belief(s)  329, 409, 416 Belly 267 Berakah  260, 262 Beroka Hozaah  94 Bethlehem 195 Betrayal  112, 209, 397 Beyond (-Being)  54, 71, 348 Bible, biblical  341, 373–388, 392, 399–400, 407–420, 435 Bibliomancy 356 Binary  336, 426 Binitarian 393 Biography  42, 165, 183, 188, 191, 203, 209, 256, 336 Birmingham  119, 171, 320, 411 Birth  157, 159, 167, 188, 369–370, 380 Bishop(s)  297–298, 302, 431 Bithynia 187 Black magic  78 Black Theology  68 Blameless 201 Blasphemy 393 Blessing  307, 411 Blindness  197–198, 202, 419

Blood  30–31, 74, 110, 112–113, 137, 139, 178, 209, 315, 382, 428–429, 437 Boast  132, 235–236, 258, 261, 269–270, 274, 280–281, 287 Body  58, 164–165, 174–175, 184, 189, 209, 275, 283, 375, 377, 382–383, 429, 437 Body of Christ, see also Church Bold, boldness  277 Book(s)  354, 357, 359, 362–364, 369, 410, 418 Boredom 348 Bosnia 418 Boundaries  120, 347, 408 Bourgeois 313 Brahman(s) 78 Brain 118 Bread  184, 187, 408, 433, 437 Breast(s)  267, 433 Breath, breathe  397, 417 Britain  409, 420 Brother(hood)  190, 315, 419 Buddha, Buddhist  410–412, 418, 420 Build 282 Burial 158 Caesar/Julius Caesar  48, 83–86, 207, 311 Caesarea Philippi  164 Caiaphas 207 Cain 314 Calauria 241 Calf (Golden)  173, 196 Call 260 Calligraphy 411 Callistus 394 Calm, calming  370 Calvary 64 Canaan(-ite) 272 Canon, canonical  7, 19, 22, 141, 157–159, 294, 305, 309–310, 314–316, 329–330, 353–354, 362–364, 367, 369, 375, 385, 432, 434, 437 Canterbury 412 Capernaum 176–177 Cappadocian 71 Carousing 213 Carthage 395

Index of Subjects

Catachresis 344 Catechesis  158, 311, Categories  51–52, 58, 60, 320 Catena, catenae  376, 396 Catharsis, katharsis  3, 35, 110, 113 Catherine (St)  439 Catholic, see Roman Catholic Celebrate, celebration  389 Celsus  121, 193, 393 Censorship 292 Cento  332, 375 Ceremony (-ies)  543 Cerinthus 188 Chalcedon, Chalcedonian definition  27, 58, 119–120, 122, 128–129 Chain of Being  55 Change  33, 54–55, 57, 112, 164, 399, 410 Chaos  369, 386, 392 Character, characterization  203, 243, 302, 322, 328–329, 339, 405 Charism, Charisma  186, 190, 299, 329, 395 Charity  161, 166, 313, 349 Chastity  166, 186 Chazan ha-Knesset 297 Cherubim 173 Chief Rabbi  417, 420 Child(-ren)  200, 205, 212, 310, 380, 416 Chloë 250 Choice  112, 409, 414 Christ see Jesus (Christ) Christian(-ity)  6, 12, 24, 298, 303, 305–306, 313, 316, 326, 330, 351–365, 362, 368, 372, 385–386, 389, 391–393, 395, 399–400, 402, 404–405, 409–412, 415, 417–418, 423, 427, 435 Christocentric, Christocentricity  51– 52, 386 Christology  2, 3, 4, 19, 27–39, 41, 43, 47, 49, 51–2, 55–62, 67–70, 72, 84, 86–89, 98–99–100, 102, 104, 117, 120, 123, 126–127, 133, 136–137, 139, 140–141, 143, 145, 147, 160–161–162, 168, 178, 181, 190, 194, 196, 209, 311, 314, 327, 360, 379–385, 389–390, 396, 401–403, 434, 438 Christomorphic, Christomorphism  39 Christus Victor 113

489

Chronology  89, 171, 179, 191 Church, ecclesia, body of Christ  6, 8, 17, 22, 49, 99–100, 132, 156, 202, 210, 220, 239, 249, 272, 274, 282, 288, 294, 297, 300, 302–303, 307, 314–315, 319, 329, 364–365, 391, 401, 403, 411, 419, 431, 434 Circumcision  175, 211, 252, 356, 359, 415 City, civic  302, 354, 426 Classical, Classics  339, 341, 352, 354, 374, 436 Classification 120 Claudius 83 Cleansing  172, 175, 177 Cleft 439 Closure 114 Codex, codices  13, 352, 361–362, 364, 375 Coherence, coinherence  6, 15, 114, 129, 192, 231, 237, 239, 323–324, 325–326, 374, 383, 387 Coins 75 Collaboration 436 Collage  125, 165, 195, 210, 315, 330, 332, 364, 396 Collection(s) 187 Collegia  401 Combine, combination  130 Comedy, comic  107, 109, 113 Comfort  260, 272–273, 282, 408 Commandment(s)  138, 206, 211, 265 Commentary  6, 14, 15, 160, 249, 319, 321, 323, 325, 331, 363 Commerce  245, 280 Commitment  254, 260, 409 Communication  181, 291, 294–295, 320, 328, 339–340, 345–346, 348, 355, 413 Communion  48, 217, 238, 382, 436–437 Communism 408 Community, communities  20, 90, 110, 128, 179, 194, 219, 241, 251–252, 293–294, 296–297, 300–301, 303, 308, 313, 320, 330, 333, 337–338, 346, 363, 372, 401, 409, 412–413, 417, 424, 428–431, 434, 436 Compassion 260 Complicity 113

490

Index of Subjects

Composition  341, 355 Comprehensible 403 Conceit 212 Concept(s) 168 Condemnation, condemned  33, 200, 265, 270, 276, 284 Confession  4, 41, 269 Confidence  262, 266, 281, 339 Conflict  33, 38, 208, 252, 268, 359, 408, 412 Conformity  207, 211 Confucius 420 Confusion  3, 129–130, 231 Congregation  274, 412 Connection  118, 347 Conscience  217, 436 Conservative(s)  11, 21, 62, 409, 412 Consistency 376 Constantine (Emperor)  59 Constantinople 59 Constitution  357, 365 Construct  295, 384, 400, 437 Consubstantial, consubstantiality, see homoousios Consumerism 409 Consummation 386 Contemporary 426 Content  300, 339–340, 345, 349 Context  6, 59, 172, 180, 316, 325, 327, 329, 331, 337, 375, 387, 428, 430, 434 Continuity  190, 365, 369, 395 Control 213 Controversy  248, 306, 310, 312, 329, 378, 380, 398 Convention  307, 312–313, 331 Conversion  68, 286, 302, 310, 338, 348–349, 360 Conviction, Pistis, see Faith Convince, convincing  339–340 Coptic 412 Copy, copying, copyist  357, 433 Corinth  85, 248–255, 261, 263, 268, 270, 273, 275, 277, 280–281, 287, 312, 431 Correlation 117 Correspondence  278, 346, 353 Corruption, corruptible  382 Cosmology  165, 392 Court 330

Courtesy 291 Covenant  51, 124–125, 126, 139, 151, 173, 197–198, 208–209, 213, 265–266, 268, 271–273, 276–277, 281–286, 288–289, 311, 313, 315, 368, 402, 413, 414, 426–429, 432, 435–437, 439 Covet 138 Creation, Creator, creativity  19, 32, 49, 56–57, 58, 60, 62–63, 66–67, 91, 94, 96, 100, 104, 109, 114, 117–118, 121, 128–129, 136, 138, 158–159, 163, 165, 187, 197–198, 202–203, 205–206, 208, 256, 271, 273, 284, 286, 301, 312, 316, 332, 369, 374–377, 380, 385–386, 391–392, 394, 396–399, 402, 404, 410, 414–418, 420, 427, 432, 437–438 Credibility 77 Creed(s)  4, 19, 68, 157–159, 165, 206, 376, 381, 383, 386, 399 Crisis  280, 281 Critical, criticism  118–119, 183, 234, 278, 292, 293, 297, 302, 314, 319, 323, 326, 329, 333, 335–349, 381, 385, 399, 423 Cross, crucifixion  31–33, 58, 61, 65, 67, 76, 104, 112–114, 132, 139, 143–144, 148 156, 158–159, 164, 185, 188–189, 193, 197, 206, 209, 212, 361, 363, 395, 436–437 Cross-references 381 Crude 340 Cruelty  67, 113 Cult, cultic  76, 395, 402 Culture  1, 11, 12, 44, 52, 58, 60–62, 68, 70, 72, 74, 102, 118–119, 172, 181, 186, 194, 204, 208–209, 245, 259–260, 278, 298, 302–303, 316, 322, 324, 329, 332–333, 337–338, 344, 346, 353, 355, 361, 384–385, 387, 395, 401, 407, 409–410, 419, 428, 430, 432, 434 Cup  178, 209, 437 Cupidity 349 Curse  30, 48, 269 Custom(s) 348 Cynic  247, 280 Cyprus 408 Cyrus the Persian  414

Index of Subjects

Damnation, damned  238 Dance 109 Danger 110 Darkness  64, 109, 114, 202–203, 238, 265, 415 David (King)  132, 156–157, 165, 196, 205, 207, 209, 262, 370, 414, 426–427 Day  48, 172, 210, 315, 424 Deacon(s)  146, 298, 431 Death  30, 32–33, 38, 49, 66–67, 74, 78, 80, 85, 87–88, 94, 110, 113–115, 156–159, 167, 178, 179, 185, 189, 202, 207–209, 213, 253, 263–264, 269–271, 275–256, 281–282, 284–286, 309, 361, 371, 379, 414, 424, 427–429, 437 Debate 359 Decay 64 Deceit(s) 213 Declamation 355 Deconstruct(-ion)  179–180, 291, 337 Deduction 330 Deed(s) 348 Defence  256, 258, 261 Definition  58, 120, 347, 389, 403 Deification, see apotheōsis Delight(-ful) 340 Demiurge  392, 432 Democracy 408 Demon, dæmon(s)  78, 217–219, 309, 370, 416 Demythologization  191, 204 Denomination(s) 412 Dependent 260 Dereliction 164 Derivation 336 Descent 212 Description 63 Desert  17, 371 Desire 187 Despise, despised  112 Destiny  63, 89, 91, 108–109, 112, 114, 272, 287 Destruction 276 Deus ex machina  113 Development  59–60, 151, 157, 168, 190, 385, 400 Devil  33, 134, 196, 314, 343, 363, 377, 382

491

Devotion  71, 88, 188, 193, 275, 278, 393, 397 Diachronic 336 Dialectic(al)  120, 295, 333, 385 Dialogue  291, 309, 328, 385, 413, 420 Dianoia, see Mind Diaspora  307–308, 313, 357, 428 Diatessaron  209, 387 Diet, dietary (laws)  211 Difference, differentiation  120, 129, 292–293, 295, 408–409, 417, 420, 423 Difficulty 378 Dignity  29, 417, 420 Dikaiosynē, see Righteousness Dilemma 329 Diocletian 79 Diodore of Tarsus  376–377 Dionysus  82, 84, 87 Direct, direction  425 Disability, handicap  118, 205 Disagree(ment) 296 Disaster 112 Discernment  180, 324, 344, 374, Discipleship, discipline  168, 252, 264–265, 298, 313, 325, 401, 430, 438 Discomfort 331 Discourse(s)  172, 319, 321, 330, 397, 399–400 Discrepancy  177, 194 Discrimination  287, 292 Disgrace 274 Disharmony 109 Dishonest, dishonesty  108 Dishonour 269 Disintegration 237 Disjunction 384 Disobedience  276, 302, 433 Dispensation  315, 395, 432 Displacement 372 Dissent, dissention(s)  213, 408 Dissonance  111, 115 Distance 296 Distinction  114, 192, 383, 395, 397 Distribute, distribution  397 Ditheism  393, 397 Diversity  307, 333, 345, 375, 396–398, 420 Divine men, theos anēr  86–8, 91, 127

492

Index of Subjects

Divinity  3, 29–30, 33, 35–36, 41, 51, 57, 60, 74, 77–78, 80, 86, 121, 129, 160, 164, 167, 341, 355–356, 382, 392, 395, 398–399, 418 Divinization, theopoiēsis (see also apotheōsis)  3, 30, 36, 80, 121, 167 Division  42, 211, 250, 395, 397, 408–409 Docetic, Docetism  33, 38, 57–59, 62, 65, 74, 104, 155, 160, 188–189, 399 Doctrine, doctrinal  7, 9, 12, 15, 16, 18–20, 23, 24, 59, 65, 71, 73, 118–119, 151–152, 155–158, 160, 165, 168, 173, 178, 188–189, 190, 193, 249, 254, 294, 325, 327, 354, 365, 373, 378, 380, 384–386, 388–391, 399–401, 403, 434 Document(s) 383, Dogma(s), dogmatic (see also Doctrine)  12, 41–42, 69–70, 161–162, 165, 167, 193, 327, 354, 365, 378, 383–385, 389, 401, Domination, dominate  407 Dositheus 74 Doubt 292 Dove  167, 389, 405 Doxology  301, 402 Drama  3, 108–110, 112–113, 115, 296 Dream(s) 358 Drink  382, 434 Drunkenness 213 Dualism  55, 202, 237 Dwelling  187, 213 Dyad, dyadic  259 Dynamic(s)  333, 393, 423–439 Eagle 173 Ear(s) 429 Earth, earthly  433 Earthquake  369, 439 East  353, 364, 389, 419 Eat 434 Ebionites  152, 155, 173 Ecology 381 Economy, oikonomia  28, 34, 55, 173, 375, 395–398, 404 Ecstasy 263 Ecumenical, ecumenism  68, 356, 407 Eden  200, 431

Education  133–135, 156, 158, 294, 340, 354, 365, 400–401, 436 Effulgence 101 Ego 30 Egypt, Egyptian  78, 81, 84, 114, 195, 246, 356, 413–414, 425 Election  272, 283, 286 Elegance 339 Elephant 419 Elijah  94, 137, 263, 274, 370, 372, 414, 439 Elisha  137, 372 Elizabeth 371 Eloquence 339–340 Emanation  54, 121 Emmaus 371 Emotion  241, 243, 379 Empathy  333, 435 Empedocles 78 Empire, Imperial  395 Empiricism 171 Emulate, emulation  341 Encourage, encouragement  243, 281, 313 End 383 Endurance  33, 266, 313, 427 Enemy  69, 186, 205–206, 281, 370, 416, 427 Energeia(-i)  377 Engage, engagement  420 Enigma  190, 344 Enlightenment  171, 192, 273, 336, 389 Enmity 213 Enoch  314, 430 Enquiry 14 Enterprise 280 Entertainment 409 Enthusiasm 117 Entreaties 243 Environment  120, 432 Envy  136, 213 Ephesus 312 Epicurean 77 Epinoia  398 Epiphany, see manifest Episodic 186 Eradicate 407 Erasmus  10, 15, 325

Index of Subjects

Eschatology, eschatological  46, 51, 70, 98, 139, 192, 208, 284, 308, 312, 363, 369–370, 402, 433 Esoteric  88, 94, 147 Essence, essential  28–29, 34, 55, 57, 162 Eternity  19, 180, 398 Ethics  12, 16, 21, 127, 136, 165, 211, 249–250, 291, 295, 297–299, 301–303, 313, 327, 329–330, 355, 365, 384, 387, 435 Ethnic, ethnicity  211, 249, 251, 309, 353–354, 361, 408, 420 Ēthos  21, 299–300, 339–340, 405 Etna 80 Etymology  13–14, 322, 326, 341–342, 429 Eucharist  17, 65, 154, 187, 363, 382, 436–437 Eunomius 403–404 Europe 70 Eusebeia 354 Euthanasia 418 Evangelism, evangelist, evangelistic  176, 244, 367, 412 Eve  238, 384, 433 Evil  34, 45, 55, 56, 59, 61–62, 64–67, 109, 112–114, 132, 134, 291, 380, 386 Evolution, evolutionary  71 Ex Nihilo, see Out of Nothing Exaltation  48, 158, 163, 167 Example 213 Excite, exciting  111, 242 Exclude, exclusion  205 Exegesis  1, 2, 6, 7, 12–18, 27, 33, 52, 57, 89, 99, 119, 125–127, 151, 156, 160, 162, 167, 172–174, 176, 178, 194, 218, 226, 235, 248, 312, 314, 319–320, 323–325, 330, 338–341–342, 346, 353, 355, 358, 360, 363, 373, 378, 381, 383, 390, 396–401, 412, 432, 439 Exemplary, exemplar  32, 166 Exhort(-ation)  425, 430 Exile  276, 284, 288 Existence  67, 109 Exodus, the  195, 314–315 Exorcism(s)  45, 208 Exordium 243 Expectation  115, 183

493

Experience  32–34, 57, 60, 66, 70, 107, 111, 435 Expiation 30 Explain, explanation  341 Exposition  280, 325, 327 Exult  236, 266 Face(s)  126, 128, 203, 276–277, 438 Fact(s)  3, 16, 188, 193, 243, 336, 347 Faction(s) 213 Fail(ure)  67, 113, 262 Faith, conviction, pistis  22, 51, 60–63, 65, 76, 118, 132–133, 168, 185, 211, 213, 231, 235, 242, 262, 266, 268, 273, 276, 281–286, 300, 309–310, 315, 327, 339–340, 405, 408, 427, 435, 438 Fall  113, 378, 381–383, 386, 433 False teaching, falsehood  6, 263, 282, 311, 313, 361 Familiarity  71, 346 Family 354 Famine 369 Fanaticism  69, 408 Fast  187, 357 Fate 356 Father (God the)  28, 31, 36, 51, 64, 71, 91, 95–96, 100, 115, 144, 159, 162, 164, 178, 187, 189–190, 198, 199, 205–206, 210, 213, 347, 379, 383, 389, 394–395, 397–398, 405, 416, 427, 433 Fathers, the Christian  7, 12, 59–60, 62, 67, 196, 319, 373–388, 390–391, 394, 419 Fear  33, 105–106, 113, 133, 135, 138, 164, 178, 205, 242, 272, 275, 379 Feeding (0f the multitude)  172 Feeling 118 Female  205, 417 Feminism, feminist  337 Fiction 338 Figaro, Marriage of 113 Figure (of speech), figurative  251–252, 341, 343, 345–347, 376, 423 Finance  239, 255 Fire 76 First Cause  71 Firstborn 426 Five, fivefold  174, 181

494

Index of Subjects

Flesh  28–32, 34, 37, 112, 139, 144, 156, 162, 164–165, 178–179, 221, 223, 230, 251, 253–254, 270–271, 280, 282–286, 375, 380, 382, 428, 433 Flog, flogged  397 Flood 314 Folly, foolishness  101, 132, 134–135, 143, 213, 302 Food  218, 382 Foreign 415 Foreknowledge 148 Forensic 242 Forerunner 425 Foreshadow 432 Forgery 308 Forgive, forgiveness  36, 45, 66, 137, 284, 370, 371–372, 419, 429 Form  199, 412 Form Criticism, form-critical  42, 180, 191, 311 Formula of Reunion  59, Fornication 213 Forsake, forsaken  112 Fortune telling  77 Fountain 387 Four, fourfold  151–152, 172–174, 176, 180, 181, 184 Four senses (of Scripture)  9 Framework 385–386 Franciscan 407 Franco 407 Fraud 74 Freedom, see Liberation, liberty Friend, friendship  292, 315, 438 Fruit 210 Fulfillment  194–195, 213, 276–277, 288, 359, 361, 364, 371–372 Function(s)  36–37, 71, 91 Fundamentalism, fundamentalist(s)  11, 181, 192, 299, 320, 384, 386, 409, 417 Future  405, 424 Gabriel 102 Galatia 251 Galilee 371 Gamaliel (test)  74, 245 Gay  21, 418 Gematria 358

Gems 75 Gender  118, 123, 129, 413 Genealogy  174, 180, 312, 322, 370 Generation  374, 398, 425 Generosity 213 Genna(i), gennēma  375, 398 Genre  13, 22, 138–140, 142, 147, 183–184, 233, 240–241, 247, 256, 279, 293, 295, 297–298, 307, 319–333, 353, 389 Gentile(s), goyim  51, 79, 84, 89, 197, 205, 211–212, 252, 266–267, 272–273, 281, 284–286, 288–289, 301, 306, 309–310, 312, 364, 368, 372, 415–416, 423 Gentle(-ness)  135, 146, 200, 213 Geography  14, 249, 342 Georgia(-n) 412 Gēr, gērim  414 Gethsemane  164, 196 Gift 436 Glory, glorification  33, 44, 65, 95, 114, 123, 125–128, 137, 141, 143, 162, 178, 190, 203, 238, 246, 265, 269, 273–274, 276–277, 279–281, 283–285, 287, 372, 379, 383, 396, 405, 420, 427, 438–439 Glycon 77 Gnostic(s), Gnosis  18, 49, 51, 54–55, 88–90, 94–95, 103–104, 121, 131, 134, 140, 141, 145, 154, 159, 220, 249, 265, 298, 311–312, 375, 386, 392, 394, 396, 432 God  19, 24, 31, 48–49, 51–52, 56–58, 60–62, 64–67, 70–71, 74–75, 78–82, 85–89, 91, 94–96, 98–104, 108–109, 112, 115, 119, 121–123, 125–129, 132, 141, 152, 158, 161–162, 166, 168, 173–174, 176, 178, 187, 194, 196, 199–206, 208–210, 213, 218–220, 229–231, 236, 238, 240, 257, 262–266, 268–269, 273, 277, 279–289, 296, 300, 313, 315, 325, 327, 333, 343, 345, 348–349, 351, 357–358, 363–365, 370–371, 374, 376–380, 383, 386–387, 389, 391–393, 396–401, 403–405, 413–417, 419, 424–425, 427–432, 434–439 Godliness 134 Golden Rule  348

Index of Subjects

Gomorrah 314 Good  59, 112–113, 134, 146, 166, 265, 283–284, 289, 291, 386, 404, 408, 416 Gospel  6, 48, 51, 79, 85, 89, 98, 106, 125, 151, 154–158, 162, 164–165, 168, 171, 173–174, 183–184, 196–198, 202–204, 206, 208–210, 213–214, 231, 238, 250, 255, 269, 280–282, 287, 302, 313, 315, 352, 361–363, 367–369, 372, 377, 379, 383, 399, 423, 411, 415–416, 431 Governance, governor  365 Grace  20, 35, 86, 146, 168, 178, 206, 213, 260, 267, 271, 281, 283, 288, 300–301, 307, 312–313, 375, 380–382, 399, 404, 431, 436–438 Grammar, grammaticus  13, 160, 321, 326, 341, 344, 355, 358, 378, 401 Gratification 413 Greco-Roman, see Greek and Roman Greek  88, 99, 190, 205, 219, 222, 242, 245, 262, 296, 305, 307–308, 321–322, 339, 341, 347, 352, 355, 357–359, 363, 372, 378, 400–401, 411, 429 Ground of Being  54 Guard(s), Guardian  106, 137, 408 Guile 246 Guilt  65, 109, 112–114 Gujarat 418 Hades  175, 264, 377 Hadrian  85, 95 Hagar 287 Haggadah  358 Halakah  136, 250, 276, 282, 286, 33o, 358 Hallel Psalms 266 Hananiah 270 Hand(s) (of God)  396 Hanina ben Dosa  91 Hannah 369 Hapax legomenon  237 Hardship 212 Harmony, harmonizing  184, 368 Head 397 Healing(s), Health  45, 47, 69, 77–78, 80, 85, 87, 178, 186, 187, 197, 202, 274 Hearer  299, 328, 425

495

Heart  119, 124, 136, 180, 200–201, 211–213, 264, 268, 274, 276, 282, 284, 286, 289, 378, 391, 424, 426, 428–429, 435–436 Heaven, heavenly council  78, 96, 104, 178, 186, 212–213, 315, 371, 379, 382, 426, 430, 433 Hebrew  262, 358, 372, 411, 414, 417, 429 Heir 50 Helios 87 Hellenism, Hellenistic  43, 70, 74, 84–85, 88–91, 94, 96, 99, 101–104, 127, 245–246, 261, 288, 353, 356–359, 361, 363–364, 415 Help 264 Hephaestus 76 Heracles  76, 81, 84, 87 Heracleon  154, 177 Heraclides (of Pontus)  80 Hercules, see Heracles Heresy, heretic(s)  16, 60, 69, 122, 152, 154–155, 158–159, 168, 173, 178, 180, 219, 312, 343, 381, 395, 419 Heritage 410 Hermeneutics  12, 20, 179, 192, 277–278, 291, 311, 314, 323, 329, 332–333, 335–349, 373, 376, 381, 386, 396, 402, 405, 421–439 Hermes  80, 82 Hermetic literature  88 Hermippus 80 Hero(es)  14, 108, 111–112, 161, 322, 341, 355–356, 368 Herod 195 Heuresis, heurism  324, 345, 373 Hexapla 363 Hierarchy  54, 56, 96, 310, 316, 330, 398 Hindu  418, 420 Historical, history, to historikon  3, 10, 11, 12, 14, 16, 18, 19, 22, 24, 41, 43, 59, 61–62, 68–69, 79, 103–104, 106, 113, 158, 167–168, 171, 174, 177, 180, 183, 186, 188, 192, 193, 202, 276, 284, 291, 294–296, 302, 319, 322, 324–325, 327–328, 333, 336, 338, 341, 342, 355–356, 358, 362, 376–377, 383–387, 389–391, 393, 405, 407, 413, 415, 423, 434, 437–438

496

Index of Subjects

Historico-critical  3, 9, 10–12, 15, 18, 20, 24, 171, 181, 261, 314, 320, 330, 332, 336, 342, 384–385, 390 Hitler, Adolf  66 Holiness, holy  65, 113, 132, 156, 179, 187, 271–272, 284, 370, 382, 411 Holocaust 384 Holy of Holies  315, 429, 439 Holy Spirit  16, 17, 19, 22, 23, 52, 55, 59, 71, 86, 103, 124–125, 128, 130, 141, 144, 151, 161, 173–174, 176, 178, 180, 213, 230, 244, 250, 266, 268, 271–273, 276, 278, 280, 282, 284–285, 329, 345–346, 362–363, 369, 371, 376, 380, 386–387, 389, 394–398, 402–403, 405, 416, 433–434, 438 Home 354 Homily, see Sermon Homogenize 337 Homoousios  28–30, 37–38, 57–58, 159, 374, 380, 399 Homosexual, see gay Honi (the circle-drawer)  91 Honour  128, 269, 279, 427 Hope  99, 113, 180, 242–243, 266, 270, 275, 282, 286, 408, 413, 420 Hospitality  252–253, 408, 413 Hostile 408 House, household  302, 310–311, 313, 427 Hover 369 Humanity  3, 24, 28–36, 38, 49, 59, 63, 67, 81, 84, 91, 98, 100, 103, 112–113, 115, 121–123, 129, 159–160, 162, 163–164, 168, 173, 188, 192, 202–203, 206, 208–210, 231, 276, 280, 291, 325, 335, 370, 377, 379, 381–382, 387, 393, 397, 399–400, 415–419, 427–429, 433, 437–438 Humility, humiliation, humble  28, 31, 48, 132–133, 135–136, 138, 161, 190, 204–205, 212, 256, 263–264, 274, 281, 349, 383, 427 Hungry  161, 163, 382, 397 Husband  209, 310 Hussein, Saddam  412 Hymn, hymnography  6, 146, 187, 331, 389, 420, 427

Hyperbole 13 Hyperborean Apollo  80 Hypocrisy  138, 146, 205, 207, 211 Hypostasis  71, 103 Hypothesis  15, 257, 377–378, 412 Ichor 74 Icon  7, 168, 209, 365 Idea(s), ideal  100, 121, 251, 428 Identity  130, 181, 190, 260, 293, 313, 316, 410, 417, 426, 439 Idiom 377 Idol, idolatry  121, 138, 196, 211, 213, 217–219, 238, 287, 288, 432 Ignorance  256, 420 Illuminate, illumed  128 Image of God, imago Dei  30, 49, 50–51, 99, 101, 122–124, 127, 186, 206, 209, 219, 276–277, 283–284, 292, 351, 370, 382, 411, 437 Imagination  11, 72, 194, 294–295, 323, 332, 389, 402, 424, 435, 439 Imitation, mimēsis  57, 106–107, 109, 188, 212, 313, 328, 338 Immanence, immanent  64, 71, 99–100, 123, 394–395 Immature  433, 435 Immediate  424, 435–436 Immigrant(s) 409 Immorality 312 Immortality  30, 78, 80, 189, 379, 392, 395, 398, 434 Impact 193 Impassible (see also apathēs)  34–35, 38, 71, 379, 392, 398 Impiety 345 Implicit 346 Impossible 398 Imperial, see Empire Imprint 123 Impure, impurity  213, 238 Incarnation  3, 16–17, 19, 20, 22, 24, 28–9, 31–32, 35–36, 38–39, 41, 45, 49–52, 55, 57–59, 61–2, 65, 68, 70, 73–74, 78–80, 85, 89, 99, 102, 104, 118–119, 157, 163–164, 169, 175–176, 178, 194, 347–348, 375, 379–380, 383, 389, 392, 394, 396, 398–399, 417, 419

Index of Subjects

Inclusion, inclusive  418 Incomprehensible 164 Inconsistency  128, 180 Incorporation 212 Incorrupt 382 Indefinable  168, 404 Indefinite dyad  398 Independence 254 India 78 Individual, individualist  259–260, 336, 409 Indwelling 380 Infanticide 138 Infinite, infinity  347, 403–404, 419 Infirmity 397 Information 408 Iniquity  201, 265 Injustice  243, 414 Innocence, innocent  66, 112, 181, 195, 383, 435 Innovation 413 Insecurity 115 Inseparable 387 Insight 3 Inspiration  6, 20, 180, 314, 329, 339, 356, 387–388 Instinct 63 Institutional(-ization)  299, 365 Instruction  146, 314, 364 Instrument(al)  144, 396 Insult 200 Integrity 217 Intellect, intelligence,  117, 118–119, 133, 136, 177, 324, 348 Intensity 115 Intent, intention  164, 203, 242, 256, 320, 336, 344–346, 376, 387, 400, 404, 424 Interaction 432 Intercession 36–37 Interdependence 281 Interest 328 Interiority, interiorization  211 Intermediary, see Mediator Internet 408 Interpenetration 129 Interpretation  3, 9, 18, 19, 23, 63, 119, 128, 177–179, 195, 222, 224, 248, 257, 279, 295, 319–333, 335–338, 346, 353,

497

355, 358–359, 364–365, 371, 373, 376, 378, 381, 383–384, 411–412, 418, 423–439 Inter-testamental 362 Intertextuality  162, 165, 314–315, 331, 332, 344 Intervention  61, 103 Intolerance  59, 69, 408 Intuition  3, 117–118 Inventio, invention  324, 345 Investigation  322, 342 Invisible  392, 395, 398 Ipsissima verba  180, 203 Ipsissima vox  203 Iraq 408 Irony  13, 244, 344 Irrational  109, 119 Isaac  112, 163, 287, 374, 413 Isis 101 Islam  24, 330, 410–413, 417–418, 420 Ismael, Rabbi  95 Isolation  112, 407–409 Israel  24, 62, 91, 96, 98–99, 101, 103, 125, 158, 196–198, 202, 208, 254, 272–273, 287–288, 315, 364, 372, 386, 394, 408, 413–415 Italy  307, 338 Jabbok 99 Jacob  98–99, 394, 413 Jahweh, see Yahweh Jealousy  136, 211, 213, 238, 243, 250, 431 Jerusalem  172, 176–177, 189, 205, 255, 306, 315, 357, 359, 370–372, 414, 426, 428, 431 Jesse 273 Jesus (Christ)  3, 4, 7, 11, 17–18, 19, 24, 32, 35–39, 43, 44, 47–49, 51–2, 57–58, 60–62, 64–70, 72–74, 79, 83–86, 88–89, 91, 96, 99–100, 102–104, 106, 112, 114, 118–120, 122–124–127, 129–130, 132, 136–137, 139, 141, 143–144, 146–148, 151, 153, 156–162, 165–168, 171–173, 175–178, 183–198, 201, 202–209, 211–212, 213–214, 217, 220, 233, 238, 249–250, 252–256, 262, 269–270, 275, 283–284, 287, 301, 306–307, 309, 312, 315–316, 319, 343, 349, 352, 359–361,

498

Index of Subjects

363–365, 367, 369–372, 374, 376, 382–384, 386–389, 393–399, 401–404, 415–419, 423–439 Jewish, Jew(s), Judaism  6, 12, 17, 24, 31, 46, 51–52, 54, 66, 71, 73, 84–86, 89–92, 94, 96, 98–99, 101–104, 106, 121–122, 126–127, 129, 156, 189, 191–194, 197, 199, 201–202, 205–207, 211, 218–219, 235, 245–246, 249, 252, 254, 260–261, 275, 280, 287–288, 297, 305–316, 330, 343–344, 351–365, 369–370, 372, 384–385, 393, 396, 401–402, 411–413, 415–416, 418, 423, 428, 432 John the Baptist  44, 148, 175–176, 197, 199, 205, 207, 369, 371 Jordan 389 Joseph  146, 167 Joshua  16, 425 Journey  370, 405, 425–428, 435, 437, 439 Joy  106, 111, 213, 264, 370 Judah 308 Judaizer(s)  51, 220, 251, 254 Judas 253 Judge, judgment  36–37, 66, 71, 97–98, 104, 114, 134, 138, 143, 158, 202, 208, 233, 244, 266, 281, 284, 288, 292, 302, 312–314, 324–325, 328, 346, 348, 364, 369, 392, 414–415, 424 Jupiter 82–83 Justice, justify, justification  30, 49, 132, 235, 240, 283, 285, 309, 312, 413–414 Kashmir 418 Katharsis, see Catharsis Kenōsis  30, 31, 37, 50, 165, 190, 349, 379, 404 Kerygma, kerygmatic  330 Kindness 213 King, Kingdom (of God), kingship  37, 45–46, 59, 71, 84, 86, 91, 94, 96, 151, 158, 190, 205–207, 208, 210, 213, 308–309, 367, 372, 377, 416 Knowledge, see also Gnōsis 33–34, 132–133, 137, 145, 238, 265, 273, 277, 346, 348, 404, 410, 430–432 Korah 314

Labour  348, 369 Ladder 405 Lament  267, 281 Language, linguistics (signa, Langue) 1, 10, 12, 16, 19, 20, 42, 44, 64–65, 89, 110, 112, 180, 186, 194, 212, 214, 243, 254, 260–261, 266, 291, 294–295, 297, 302, 313–314, 320, 323, 329, 331–333, 336–338, 341–343, 345–348, 355, 374, 376, 378, 381, 386, 388, 400, 404, 412, 419–420, 423 Lao-Tzu 420 Latin  326, 339, 341–342, 347, 378, 387, 401, 412 Law, Torah, Nomos  17, 48, 51–52, 100–101, 139, 189, 197–199, 206, 210–212, 250, 268, 274, 275–276, 286, 288–289, 309–310, 313, 329, 356–362, 364, 367–370, 372, 397, 403, 411, 414–415, 428, 432 Layers, layered  203, 437 Lazarus  163–164, 197, 202, 397 Leadership 297 Learning  133, 385 Lebanon 408 Lectio divina  9, 23–24 Lectionary 301 Legacy 356 Legalistic  261, 286 Legend(s)  14, 322, 341, 355, 360 Leper, leprosy  205, 372, 416 Letter  278, 282, 284, 343 Levi(ites) 175 Liberal(s)  11, 21, 190, 277, 319, 342 Liberation, liberty  98, 108–109, 111, 125, 168, 205, 278, 309, 407, 419 Licentiousness 213 Life  49, 61, 63, 65, 84, 171, 183, 202, 209, 262, 270, 275, 286, 302, 316, 327, 339–344, 349, 371, 379, 382, 387–388, 397, 399, 404, 416, 424 Light  65–66, 98, 101, 114, 128, 136, 138, 202, 380, 416, 439 Likeness  123, 127, 370 Limitation(s)  333, 348, 379 Lion  173, 343 List 364

Index of Subjects

Literacy  185, 353–354, 357, 359–360, 409 Literal  14, 17, 65–67, 106, 160, 172, 177, 180, 278, 345, 347, 365, 376–377, 384, 386 Literary-critical  6, 20, 328–329 Literature, literary  3, 5, 6, 85, 112, 156, 172, 179, 293, 296, 307, 314, 322, 328, 330, 339, 346, 352, 354, 356, 358, 360, 381, 390, 402, 413, 423, 436 Liturgy  6, 8, 22, 109, 145, 151, 157, 168, 180, 184–187, 194, 208, 212, 260, 293–294, 296, 301, 307, 311, 313, 320, 331–332, 362, 365, 385–386, 389–390, 392, 397, 402–403, 410–411, 437 Local 354 Location 340 Logic  342, 402 Logos  21, 28–32, 34–35, 37–38, 43, 55, 57, 59, 71, 91, 98–100, 102, 121, 139, 141, 145, 148, 162–164, 173, 175, 177, 299–300, 323, 340, 379, 383, 393–400, 405, 416–417 Lord  43–45, 47–48, 52, 62, 85–86, 90, 101, 106, 114, 124–126, 134, 188, 200, 263, 264, 270, 274, 396, 411, 417, 430, 432 Lord’s Prayer  210, 331 Love  32, 36, 45, 65–67, 69, 76, 118, 135, 138, 206, 210–211, 213, 239, 250, 309, 313, 348–349, 370, 378, 404, 416, 419, 436 Loyalty, loyal  238, 310, Luck 109 Luminous 387 Lust 187 Luther, Martin  308–309, 332 LXX, Septuagint, see Old Testament Macedonia  236, 240, 255 Mad(ness) 205 Magic  80, 354, 356 Maia, see Mercury Majesty  383, 430 Make, made  375 Male  205, 417 Malice 138 Man, see Human

499

Manichaeus, Manichaean  161 Manifest, epiphany  84–85, 197, 389 Manna  17, 196, 198, 363 Manuscript(s)  10, 185, 355, 368 Maranatha 212 Marcion  152, 155, 159, 161, 173, 184, 362, 367, 368–369, 372, 375, 396 Margin, marginalize  416 Mari 187 Market (place)  320 Marriage  238, 414 Mars 82 Martyr  44, 66–67, 75–76, 108, 189, 208, 282, 301, 310 Marxism 418 Mary (Blessed Virgin, Mother of Jesus, Theotokos)  157–159, 161, 369, 371, 411, 433 Mary Magdalene  114 Masoretic text  185 Master  84–85, 310 Mathematics  338, 342 Matter, material(-ism)  16, 61, 177, 377, 392 Matthias 253 Maturity  387, 391, 433, 435 Meaning  10, 15–17, 109, 113, 172, 174, 180, 194, 233, 294, 303, 316, 320, 322, 327, 333, 336–338, 341, 345–346, 348, 363, 365, 372, 374, 385, 387, 405, 410, 412, 417, 423, 426, 434–435, 437 Measure 329 Mediation, mediator, intermediary  3, 35, 37, 49, 52, 54–57, 61, 91, 100, 102, 104, 168, 330, 365, 387, 398–399, 411, 419, 426–427, 432, 438 Medicine 189 Medieval  9, 17 Meditation  357, 410, 438 Mediterranean  357, 411 Meek 205 Melchizedek  14, 97–98, 429 Melody 356 Memoir(s)  154, 166, 184, 188, 190, 193, 203, 209, 362, 369 Memorial 437 Memory, memories  186, 188, 193, 194, 428, 438

500

Index of Subjects

Memra, see Logos Menstrual 369 Mercury  82–83, 85 Mercy, merciful  31, 137, 146, 186, 205–206, 265, 269, 272, 283, 308, 415, 419 Merkabah  94, 96, 126, 128 Messiah  43–44, 46–47, 83–84, 98, 104, 143, 148, 189, 196, 205, 370, 372, 414, 428–429, 438 Messianic (Secret)  46, 172, 191, 205, 309–310 Metamorphosis 114 Metaphor  13, 16, 64, 119, 123, 125, 129, 160–161, 180, 203, 258, 292, 295, 322, 337, 341, 343–344, 346, 348, 376, 388, 391, 404, 419, 425, 435 Metaphysics  12, 355, 389, 402 Metatron 95–96 Method  320, 322, 341 Methodikon, to  14, 322, 341, 342, 343 Methodist 407 Michael (Archangel)  98, 314 Middle Platonic, Middle Platonism  54, 398 Middot  358 Military 245 Milk 433–434 Mimēsis, see Imitation Mind (dianoia, nous)  7, 19, 30, 102, 117, 119, 177, 213, 259, 268, 323–324, 329, 333, 335, 373–388, 399–400, 402–403, 419, 426, 438 Mindless 135 Mingle(d) 162 Ministry  172, 253, 265, 269–270, 371 Minorities 409 Miracle(s)  11, 21, 47, 75, 78, 80, 85, 87, 91, 94, 172, 189, 198 Mirage 377 Mirror  127, 283, 388 Misfortune 33 Mission  190, 192, 217, 233, 239, 249, 252, 266, 300, 303 Misunderstand 378 Mix, mixture  35, 129 Mockery  33, 112, 397 Modalism, modalist  392–394, 399

Model(s) 63 Modern, modernity  3, 9, 179, 181, 192, 319–320, 335–336, 383, 385, 387, 391, 410, 418, 434 Monarchian, monarchy  52, 391–394, 395–397, 398 Monastic 325 Money 312 Monogenēs  398 Monolithic  407–409 Monotheism  52, 54, 71, 90, 96, 103, 218, 356, 393–394, 398, 402 Montanus, Montanist(s)  166, 329, 362, 395 Moral, morality  15–17, 19, 61, 108, 109, 138, 156, 161, 166–167, 190, 243, 251, 291, 312, 316, 326, 344–346, 348, 354, 355–356, 363, 365, 392, 435 Mortal, mortality  200, 262 Mosaic  159, 271, 367, 375 Moscow 408 Moses  24, 29, 45, 99–100, 124–126, 137, 146, 151, 173, 195–196, 198–199, 201, 271, 276–277, 282–283, 314–315, 357, 359, 363, 367, 370–372, 414, 419, 425–427, 431–432, 438–439 Mother  267, 370 Mountain  370, 405, 419, 433, 439 Mourn(ing) 205 Muhammad  410–411, 419 Multiple  345–346, 387 Murder  138, 187, 213 Muse 377 Music, musical  321, 332 Muslim(s) see Islam Mutable 57 Mutual  243, 252, 281, 436 Mystery  44, 60, 67, 70–72, 94–95, 109, 112, 114, 164, 300, 327, 356, 386 Mystery cults  48, 75, 88–89, 99, 354, 356 Mystic, Mysticism  126–129, 177 Myth  2, 3, 14, 60, 64–67, 70, 73, 76, 82, 84, 87–88, 90–91, 94, 96, 118, 120, 122, 131, 141, 145–146, 159, 161, 186, 188, 190–191, 193–194, 201, 312, 322, 338, 341, 344, 355–356, 377, 384, 389, 400–402, 432

Index of Subjects

Naaman 372 Nails 106 Nain  179, 372 Name(s)  137, 194, 404 Naomi 414 Napoleon 408 Narrative (see also story)  3, 4, 78, 106–110, 112–114, 118, 161, 165, 168, 177, 185, 191, 198, 202–203, 206, 242, 256, 298–299, 315, 328, 336, 363, 364, 369, 371, 375, 377, 379–381, 383, 386, 402, 409, 412, 424, 435 Nation, nationalist  313, 372, 407–408, 414 Nature(s)  35, 37, 58, 63, 91, 106, 122, 129, 342, 379–380, 382–383, 387, 399 Nazareth, Nazarene  195 Necessity 112 Negotiation 408 Neighbour  206, 210–211, 343, 348–349, 378, 416, 420 Neo-Platonic, Neo-Platonism  54–55, 80, 342, 344, 355, 391, 400 Nero 85 Nestorian (controversy), Nestorius  28, 59, 161, 164, 378, 380, 382 Network  302, 308 Neutral 348, New Age  118 New Testament  43, 51–52, 61, 69–70, 79–81, 84, 89, 97, 99–100, 107, 112, 114, 122, 131, 140–142, 151, 156–157, 171, 183, 186, 192, 194–195, 206, 208, 225, 247, 259, 287, 300, 315, 327, 359, 362, 364, 369, 375, 379, 389–405, 413, 415, 432, 437 Nicaea, Nicene  28, 34–35, 37, 51, 56, 58, 68, 374, 398–399 Nicodemus  176, 300 Night  76, 210 Noah  151, 173, 314, 430 Noetus 394 Non-Pauline letters  6 Norm(s)  297, 434, 438 North, northern  417 Northern Ireland  408 Notebook 362 Nous  375–376

501

Novel, novelty  183, 256, 293, 328, 340, 352, 369, 411, 435 Numerology 342 Obedience  30, 32, 51, 133, 137, 163, 166, 196, 211, 213, 281, 284–286, 289, 310, 316, 413, 429–431, 436 Objective, objectivity  171, 179, 319–320, 333, 336, 348 Oikonomia, see Economy Old Slavonic  412 Old Testament, Hebrew Bible, Septuagint  7, 13, 90–91, 96, 112, 133–134, 156–157, 194–195, 199, 239, 262, 362–264, 281, 360, 362, 364, 369, 383–385, 393, 395–396, 403, 412–414, 424, 432 Olympias 81 Olympic games  75 Olympus 76 Omen 356, Omnipresence 64 One, Ultimate  54, 71, 398 Oneness Pentecostal  394 Only-begotten 380 Ontology, ontological  69–70 Open(ness) 68 Opinion 409 Opponent(s) 279 Opportunity 177 Oppressed, oppression  33, 108, 115, 266 Oracle(s)  75, 76, 354, 358, 360 Oral, oral tradition  153, 166, 185–186, 191, 315, 341, 354, 359, 362 Orator 243 Order  113, 136, 152, 307, 312, 383, 395, 431 Origenist controversy  377 Origin 395 Original(-ity)  336, 341 Orphan(s)  187, 309, 414 Orthodox, Orthodoxy  7, 18, 37, 41–42, 69, 155, 157, 332, 364, 384–386, 389, 402, 412 Other  293, 335, 337, 423 Ousia, see under Being Out of Nothing (ex nihilo)  121, 392 Outbreak 371

502

Index of Subjects

Outcast 205 Outpouring 371 Overarching  168, 364, 375–378, 381, 383, 385–386, 388, 396, 399, 417, 419 Overlay  117, 124, 126, 128–129, 172, 402 Overshadow 369 Pachomian 140 Pagan, paganism  3, 6, 77, 89–90, 102, 104, 120, 122, 218–219, 351–365, 395, 432 Paideia, see Education Pain  65, 67, 114, 264 Palestine, Palestinian  43, 76, 84, 91, 99, 112, 121, 220, 245, 252, 254, 306, 359, 408, 418, 423 Palliative 109 Pantheism, Pantheist(-ic)  121 Panthera 167 Papyrus, papyri  241 Parable  13, 134, 147, 172, 205, 210, 344, 358, 375, 377, 416 Paraclete see Holy Spirit Paradigm 381 Paradise 377 Paradox  3, 52, 59, 67–68, 71, 112, 120, 129, 168, 283, 392, 438 Paraenesis  331, 364 Paraphrase  15, 323, 325 Parent(s) 310 Parody 244 Parole  336 Parousia  48, 85 Parrhēsia, see Self-assertion Parrot 347 Parsing 341 Participate, participation  381 Particular(s), Particularity  113, 127–128, 176, 320, 414, 419 Partition(s) 408 Party 359 Passible 398–399 Passion  112–115, 186, 206, 238, 311, 377 Passover  17, 172, 176, 208, 363 Past  243, 385, 419, 424 Pastor, pastoral  217, 291 Pathos  21, 33, 299–300, 339–340, 379, 405

Patience  133, 166, 213, 301 Patriarchy  179, 312, 316, 337 Patripassionism, Patripassionist  57, 394 Patristic  5, 41, 52, 54, 61, 70, 90, 326, 331–332, 338, 383, 385, 396, 432, 434 Patronage  252, 255, 280 Pattern 433 Paul (St)  3, 5, 6, 22, 42, 45, 48, 49, 51, 64, 82, 88, 89, 95, 99, 101, 114, 121–122, 124, 128–129, 132, 148, 153, 156–158, 166, 173, 193, 204–205, 208–209, 211–213, 218–219, 223, 227, 229, 233–289, 293, 298–302, 305–311, 313–315, 319–320, 340, 353, 359, 362, 367–368, 370, 381, 384, 401, 415, 423, 439 Paul of Samosata  58, 393 Peace  146, 205, 213, 260, 268, 271, 287, 307, 419 Peasant 192 Pedagogy  242, 245 Pentateuch 198 Pentecost 371 Pentecostal 412 People  268, 273 Perception  70, 117, 276 Perfect(-ion)  426, 435 Performance 341 Pericope  186, 191 Perigrinus (Proteus)  75–76, 78 Periphrasis 52 Peroration 243 Persecution  6, 33, 48, 148, 205, 208, 212, 262, 301–302, 311, 313, 371 Perseus 77 Perseverance  315, 425, 435, 437 Persia 414 Persist, persistence  425 Person, personality  35, 61, 64, 144, 180, 186, 190, 259, 397, 409 Persuasion  244, 296, 324 Perversion, pervert(s)  238 Peter (St), Cephas  166, 249–250, 252–253 Petition(s) 187 Phanuel 102 Pharaoh 146

Index of Subjects

Pharisee(s), pharisaic  51, 175, 192, 200, 211, 266, 286, 302 Philanthropy, philanthrōpia 36 Philemon 82 Philip II (of Macedon)  81 Philology  14, 294, 322, 328, 331 Philosophy, philosophers  12, 38, 41, 52, 54, 58–61, 71–72, 79–80, 87–88, 96, 99–100, 113, 120–121, 156, 160, 207, 245–246, 254, 256, 261, 280, 319, 321–322, 326, 355–356, 358–359, 365, 375, 390, 392, 396, 400–402, 411 Phoebus, see Apollo Phronēsis, see Intellect Physical(ity)  114, 174, 177 Physics 355 Physiology 165 Piety, pietas  132, 354, 357 Pilate, see Pontius Pilate Pilgrimage  357, 439 Pioneer  32, 35, 425, 429, 437 Pistis, see Faith Pity 243 Place(s) 407 Plant(ing) 267 Platonic, Platonism  56, 58, 100, 121, 140, 391–392, 398 Play 338 Plight 370 Plot  328, 375, 381, 386 Pluralism  7, 41–42, 72, 179, 181, 319–333, 359, 395, 407–420 Plurality of meanings, polysemy  6, 8, 64, 180, 337, 345–346, 387, 395 Poem(s), poetic(s), poetry, poets  3, 16, 64–65, 113, 117–118, 159, 333, 335, 337, 344, 346, 355–356, 358, 413 Pogrom 357 Polemic  45, 90, 219, 312, 378, 432, 434 Politics  59, 61, 88, 112, 244, 291, 385, 391, 407, 409 Pollio 83 Pollution  108, 113, 239 Polysemy, see Plurality of meanings Polytheism  90, 392, 432 Pontius Pilate  104, 115, 157, 166, 189, 192, 301 Poor, poverty  205, 309, 327

503

Popular, populism  3, 386 Pornography 292 Possessed 205 Possibility  337, 426 Postmodern, postmodernity  6, 12, 171, 179–181, 319, 335–349, 383–384, 386–387, 391, 409–410, 418–419, 423, 434 Potential 303 Power  30–31, 33, 62, 74, 126, 132, 136, 164, 166, 262, 264, 270, 280–281, 285, 407, 409 Praise(s)  279, 397 Praxis 327 Prayer  23, 24, 62, 71, 80, 85, 88, 112, 133, 163–164, 185, 187, 212, 274–275, 277, 297, 327, 331, 357, 361–362, 397, 410, 416 Preaching  45–46, 51, 60, 189, 205, 231, 255, 288, 301, 323, 327, 330–331, 333, 395, 404 Précis 324 Predestination 287 Pre-existent  19, 49, 102, 104, 148, 389, 398 Pre-figure 17 Prejudice  206, 385 Presbyter, Presbyteroi, see priest Presence  115, 176, 277, 405, 439 Present  419, 424 Presentation 328 Presupposition 435 Pride  135, 138, 200–201, 204, 213, 235, 250, 269, 274, 280, 286, 348–349 Priene 85 Priest (High), priesthood  28–31, 33–34, 36–37, 44, 137, 175, 297–298, 313, 315, 414–415, 428–429–430, 433, 436–437 Primitive 391 Principle 395 Printing  10, 411 Priscilla 305 Private  296, 298, 409 Problem 323 Process  71, 91, 365 Proclaim, proclamation  372 Programme 371 Progressive 418

504

Index of Subjects

Promise(s) 288 Proof-text(s)  164, 194–195, 242, 281, 315, 328, 360, 365, 381, 390, 393, 395–397, 403, 426 Propaganda 245 Prophecy, prophets  16, 17, 18, 44, 46–47, 74, 76–78, 81, 88, 103, 112, 129, 133, 139, 144, 148, 156, 158, 184, 189, 191–192, 204, 207, 261, 266–268, 272–273, 282, 287–288, 312, 314–315, 330, 359, 361–362, 364, 367–371, 375–376, 380, 384, 396–397, 402–403, 410–411, 414–415, 417, 428, 432, 438 Propitiation 35–37 Protection, protector  267 Protestant  330, 386, 407 Proteus, see Peregrinus Providence  59, 61–62, 143, 148, 181, 348, 376, 395 Provocation 177 Pseudonymity, pseudonymous  5, 298, 303, 306–308 Psychology, psychological  32, 61, 65, 68, 236, 259, 260, 436 Ptolomy I, Ptolemaic  85 Public  12, 293, 296, 298, 314, 338, 340, 354, 409, 412 Publication 353 Punish, punishment  36, 113, 264 Purgation, purge  108 Purify, purity  110–113, 133, 146, 187, 205, 207, 246, 310, 342, 432 Purpose  37, 178 Pythagoras, (neo-) Pythagorean  77–78, 140 Q(uelle)  142, 191, 369 Qatar 412–413 Quarrel  138, 213 Quest (of the historical Jesus) 11, 189, 192 Quirinius 166 Quotation  195, 262, 314, 330, 432 Qur’an  410–413, 417–418 Rabbi(s), rabbinic  47, 51, 91, 99, 102–103, 192, 223, 261, 277, 358–359, 361, 364 Race  313, 407

Rachel 195 Radiance  420, 438 Rahab 430 Ramah 195 Reaction 339 Reader, reading  8, 13, 20, 21, 22, 179–180, 183, 185, 189, 193, 203, 259, 291–294, 296–297–299, 314, 319, 321, 323–324, 328, 338, 341, 344, 346, 354, 357, 362, 364, 370, 373–388, 404–405, 410, 424, 427, 429–431, 434–438 Reality  107, 110–111, 115, 338, 347, 365, 377, 419 Reason, rationality  118, 162, 319, 397–398 Rebellion  65, 238 Rebuke(s)  237, 314 Recapitulation  33, 113, 167, 240, 243, 370, 433 Reception  174, 183, 291, 295–296, 335, 369 Reconciliation  49, 51, 67, 69, 109, 211, 240, 268, 284 Reconstruction  10, 73, 162, 192 Re-create, re-creation  129, 387 Re-imagine 424 Red Sea  17, 363 Redaction criticism  42, 180, 191 Redeemer, redemption,  47, 49, 60–61, 67, 89, 109, 113, 138, 197, 369, 378, 381–382–383, 386, 433 Reductionism  3, 62–63 Reflection  174, 283, 438 Reformation  5, 65, 211, 314, 386, 436 Refraction 420 Regula Fidei, see Rule of Faith Rehabilitation 292 Reign, rule  396 Reincarnation 77 Rejection  33, 45, 205 Relation, relationship  52, 54, 58, 60, 62, 203, 241, 252, 255–256, 260, 268, 280–281, 296, 313, 397, 399, 409, 436–437 Relativity, relativism  181, 335, 348, 419–420 Reliable, reliability  229, 282, 289

Index of Subjects

Religion  12, 61, 78, 112, 156, 300, 309, 353–354, 356, 361, 407–410, 412 Remembrance  184, 187, 208–209 Renaissance  10, 61, 436 Renewal  371, 381, 387, 426 Repentance  37, 136, 175, 186, 372, 381, 430 Repetition 337 Reputation  279–280, 313 Res, see Subject Rescue 266 Resolution  111, 113–115 Resonance(s)  194, 438 Respect  187, 250–251, 293, 310, 354, 413, 419 Response, responsibility  45, 68, 69, 72, 109, 257, 292, 337, 339, 424, 436 Rest 425 Restoration 272 Resurrection  36, 48, 102, 104–107, 112–115, 125, 127, 156, 158, 167, 178, 185, 188, 191–192, 208–209, 253, 262, 269, 285, 313, 361, 372, 376–377, 397 Revelation, Revealer  39, 52, 60–61, 103, 114, 123, 127, 166, 174, 253, 265, 357, 360–362, 365, 411 Reverence 355 Rhea Silvia  82 Rhetoric, rhetorical  5, 21, 160, 166, 239, 241–242, 244–245, 247, 260, 299, 301–302, 305, 321, 324, 337–341, 345–346, 349, 355, 358, 360, 373, 378, 395, 400–402, 423, 425, 428 Rhythm 356 Rich, riches  269, 309, 327 Riddle(s)  134, 358 Ridicule 409 Righteous, righteousness  49, 133, 135, 146, 199–200, 205–206, 211–213, 238, 266, 285, 287, 289, 309, 314, 426–427, 429 Ritual  108, 110–113, 315, 352, 357, 412, 428–429, 436 River 397 Rôle(s)  260, 328 Roman Catholic  12, 364, 407, 412, 416 Romantic  10, 294

505

Rome, Roman  82, 84–85, 88, 99, 190, 193, 207, 236, 242, 247, 249, 296, 308, 321, 354, 355, 357, 359, 392, 400–401, 423, 428 Romulus  81–82, 88 Rule, rules  436 Rule of Faith, Regula Fidei  158, 165, 329, 343, 367, 376, 396 Ruler-cult  84–86, 88 Russian Orthodox Church  412 Sabbath  201, 207, 309, 315, 414, 425 Sabellian(s)  28, 71, 399 Sacrament(s)  17, 117, 128–129, 382 Sacred  15, 110, 113, 335, 358, 365, 369, 407–420 Sacrifice  2, 12, 30–31, 35–37, 67, 78, 80, 110–112, 151, 166, 177, 197–198, 208, 219, 282, 315, 357, 361, 363, 428–429, 431, 436–437 Sadducee(s) 103 Sage 192 Saint(s)  86, 213, 380 Salvation  17, 18, 23, 30–31, 33, 35–36, 39, 41, 48, 51, 58, 60, 64, 68, 70, 72, 87–88, 97, 129, 136–137, 139, 144, 146, 161, 178, 187, 238, 260, 263, 273, 285, 287, 375, 377, 382, 397, 399, 415–416, 426–428, 433 Samaritan(s)  24, 102–103, 205, Samuel 376–377 Sanctify, sanctification  49, 110, 112, 267, 377 Sanctuary  425, 428, 433 Santiago di Compostela  407 Sarah  286–287, 369, Sarx, see Flesh Satan  205, 208, 218, 272 Saul 377 Saviour  19, 69, 84, 86, 370, 372, 399 Saying(s)  172, 191, 364 Scandal 206 Scapegoat  112, 436 Sceptic(-ism)  348, 409 Schema  377 Scholarship  21, 23, 24, 167, 322, 331, 351, 376, 384, 385–386, 389, 434 Scholastic, Scholasticism  325

506

Index of Subjects

School(s)  12, 357–359, 401 Science  11, 41, 61, 63–65, 67, 319, 336, 384, 408, 409 Scripture, scriptural  6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 16, 20, 22, 23, 24, 124–126, 128, 156, 159, 161, 163, 174, 197, 199, 206, 238, 260–261, 277, 300, 314, 316, 326, 328, 332, 347, 351–352, 353, 359, 360–363, 365, 367–389, 391, 396, 399–400, 403–404, 407, 410, 413, 419, 423–439 Scholarship  4, 5, 329, 363 School  156, 339, 354 Scroll(s)  13, 352, 361, 375 Search 363 Season(s) 187 Secret  210, 274 Sect, sectarian  7, 359 Secular  329, 418 Seer  192, 356 Selection 330 Self  293, 338, 348, 392 Self-assertion (parrhēsia)  36, 259 Self-control 213 Self-deprecation 190 Self-justification 108 Self-sufficiency 138 Semiotics, Sign theory, Signifier(s)  6, 19, 130, 335, 346, 347 Senses, sensual  174, 378, 381, 399 Separationist(s) 160 Sequence  326, 377 Serapis 89 Serbia 408 Sermon, homily  6, 14, 42, 160, 166–167, 307, 321, 326, 330–331, 362, 365, 412, 424 Serpent  77, 238, 377, 384 Servant, service  31, 67, 71, 124–125, 128, 190, 205, 254, 263, 272, 302, 310, 427, 432 Sex, sexual intercourse  81, 91, 138, 211 Shadow  433, 437 Shame  108, 113, 143 Shekinah  95, 102 Shelter(s) 439 Shepherd  100, 132, 397 Shine  279, 439 Shiur Komah  127

Shoot 397 Sibyl 76 Sick 205 Sidon 372 Sign(s)  137, 172, 186, 190, 202, 205, 208, 338, 342–343, 345, 347, 355, 378, 408, 436 Sign theory, signifier(s)see Semiotics Silence 439 Simeon 371 Simile 322 Simon (son of Onias)  274 Simon Magus  74 Simple 138 Sin, sinner  30, 31, 34–36, 38, 48, 51, 56–57, 61, 64–67, 108, 112–114, 200, 207, 213, 238, 266, 268, 274, 281, 284–286, 301, 313, 379, 381, 399, 416, 428–429 Sinai  124–125, 315, 370, 426, 438 Sing 405 Single, singular  419 Single-mind(edness)  135, 229, 238 Skopos, scope, see also intent  345, 365, 376 Slander  213, 238, 270 Slave, slavery  124, 179, 205, 264, 272, 302, 310, 337 Slogan(s) 303 Society, social, sociological  59, 61, 81, 259, 260, 294–298, 302–303, 316, 320, 327, 329, 335, 338, 340, 346, 347, 352–354, 359, 385, 391, 402–420, 434 Socrates 417 Sodom 314 Sola scriptura 386 Solomon  141, 147, 196, 396 Solon 357 Solution 370 Son (God the, of Man, of God)  28, 43–44, 45–48, 50, 56–57, 74, 79, 81–82, 84, 86–87, 89–91, 96, 98–100, 102–104, 128, 139, 141, 158, 163–164, 167, 173, 175, 208–209, 212, 370, 372, 374, 389, 394–399, 405, 426–429, 433, 436, 438–439 Sophia see Wisdom Sophisticated 339–340

Index of Subjects

Sorrow 370 Soteriology, soteriological  32, 34, 38–39, 42, 57, 59, 61, 68, 72, 164, 209 Soul  30, 78, 128, 177, 180, 348, 410 Source (Criticism)  191, 423, 395 South, southern  417 Sovereign  391, 395, 415 Soviet (Russia)  408–409 Space 176 Spain  236, 407 Speaker, speech  13, 277, 299 Spirit see Holy Spirit Spiritual, spirituality  15, 16, 17, 19, 21, 23, 89, 114, 118, 120, 129, 146, 174, 178, 180, 213, 251, 254, 261, 262, 266, 281, 286, 303, 325–326, 331–332, 338, 343, 357, 376–377, 384, 387, 404–405 Sri Lanka  408 Stalin, Josef  408 Stars 438 State 302 Statue(s) 85 Status  251, 352–353, 427 Stephanas 250 Stephen (St)  146 Stoic  87, 101, 121, 140, 390 Stone  125, 284, 426, 435 Storm  370, 439 Story  16, 19, 65–67, 76, 78, 106, 112–113, 118, 167, 176, 185, 188–189, 203, 259, 316, 323, 332, 381, 424 Strange, stranger  191, 335, 346, 414 Strength, strong  132, 211, 269, 282 Strife 238 Structure, Structuralism  15, 20, 129, 179–180, 241, 247, 279, 291, 324, 328, 336, 338, 423 Struggle  437, 439 Study  275, 340 Style  322, 324, 339–340, 345 Subject (res)  19, 38, 164, 324, 345, 347, 378–379 Subjective, subjectivity  118, 319–320, 333, 336 Submission, submit  348 Substance  65, 71, 81, 110, 120, 397, 399, 436 Subversion, subversive  114, 197, 369

507

Success 269 Succession 431 Suffering  28, 31–35, 44, 55, 58, 61–62, 64–68, 106, 111–112, 114, 159, 167, 205, 212, 282, 286, 302, 313, 339, 372, 379, 395, 397, 425, 427–428, 433, 436 Summary 324 Sun, sunbeam  397 Sunday  184, 187 Sunnah 418 Superior(-ity) 435 Supernatural  58, 60–61, 91, 103–104, 192, 336 Supersede, supersession(-ist)  359, 372, 384–385, 415 Superstition  298, 354, 408 Supper, Last  172 Suppression 408 Surprise 337 Suspense 337 Suspicion  192, 257, 303, 311, 333, 337–338, 354 Sway  339–340, 345–346 Sweat 397 Symbol  16, 17, 20, 64–65, 151, 167, 173, 177, 180, 186, 197–198, 295, 308, 332, 342, 356, 358, 363, 365, 376, 388, 402, 419, 436–437 Sympathy  242, 296 Synagogue  76, 89, 156, 195, 245, 249, 262, 266, 288, 297, 352, 357–359, 362–365, 401, 428 Synchronic 336 Syncretism, syncretistic  73, 90, 102–103, 356 Synonym 323 Synoptic(s)  17, 42, 78, 88, 171–181, 197, 201, 204 Syntax 377 Synthesis, synthetic  3, 117, 119–120, 122, 125–126, 128 Syria, Syriac  84, 154, 357, 372, 412 Systematic (Theology)  6, 7, 332, 337, 354, 358, 384–386, 391, 402 Tablet(s) 124–125 Taboo  110, 113, 115 Tales 344

508

Index of Subjects

Teacher, Teaching  19, 45, 78, 134, 165–166, 171, 183, 188–189, 213, 311–314, 316, 320, 329, 340, 345, 357, 365, 370, 372, 401 Tears 243 Technical 326 Technology 410 Television 408 Temperance 161 Temple  78, 167, 207, 238–239, 315, 357, 361, 371, 383, 416, 428–429 Temporal 433 Temptation  28, 31–32, 38, 57, 66–67, 108, 174, 190, 195, 370, 407, 437 Tension 408 Terminology  254, 260 Terror  113, 115 Test, testing  274, 315 Testament(s) 177 Testimony, testimonies  193, 301, 362–363, 369 Text, textual  8, 13, 14, 20, 21, 155, 179–181, 183, 185, 222, 234, 240, 292–293, 297, 299, 314, 320–322, 324, 326–329, 333, 335, 336, 338–344, 351–365, 352, 368, 375, 376–377, 384, 390, 423, 396, 398, 401, 405, 407–420, 430, 435 Thanksgiving  62, 243 Theatre 111 Theft 213 Theios anēr, see Divine men Theism 386 Theme, thematic  327, 329 Theodrama 405 Theology  3, 42, 70–71, 113, 118–120, 173, 177–178, 180, 183, 187, 191–192, 218, 256, 261, 287, 301, 305, 311, 319, 322, 325, 327, 329, 331–332, 335, 348, 355, 373–388, 386, 389, 393–394, 398, 400–405, 419, 423 Theophany  114, 127, 279 Theopoiēsis, see Divinization Theōria  18, 377 Thesis 412 Thessalonica 254 Thief 210 Thing(s), res  345, 347

Third race  361 Thirst, thirsty  397 Thorn 271 Thought 345 Throne  128, 427 Tibet 410 Time  129, 176, 407 Timid(-ity) 379 Title(s) 194 Titus  236, 239, 255 Tolerance  408, 419–420 Tomb 105 Torah, see Law Torture 200 Totalitarian(-ism) 407 Totalizing discourse  337 Touch 179 Tradition(s)  6, 11, 24, 69, 203, 210, 260, 288, 298, 300–301, 303, 306–308, 311, 315–316, 337, 352, 358, 361, 364, 386, 398, 403, 407–420, 424 Tragedy, tragic  3, 107–108, 111–113, 115, 329 Trajan 187 Transcendence, transcendent  54, 56, 64, 71, 99–100, 103, 108, 121, 127, 129, 168, 344, 392–396, 398, 407–420, 438 Transfiguration  113–114, 370, 439 Transform, transformation  65–67, 113, 123, 126, 168, 209, 302, 346, 348, 387, 416 Transgress(-ion) 429 Translation  11, 24, 186, 322–323, 342, 345, 373 Transmission  184–185, 187 Transparent, transparency  281 Treasure 262 Treatise 331 Tree (of knowledge)  202 Tribe, tribal  260 Trinity, trinitarian  7, 39, 55, 59–60, 65, 70–72, 118, 128, 189, 378, 384, 389–405 Tritheist  71, 394 Triumph, triumphalism  106–107, 113–115, 177, 190, 240 Tropes  13, 343 Troy 81 Trust  66–67, 109, 206, 266, 282, 289, 339

Index of Subjects

Truth  63, 66, 69, 108, 113, 118, 132, 159, 177–178, 181, 194, 233, 265, 266, 329, 335, 340, 346, 348, 352, 381, 384, 405, 413, 438 Tumult 115 Tyana 78 Type, typology  16, 18, 129, 139, 277, 287, 314–315, 332, 344, 363, 381, 388, 405, 425, 433, 436–437 Unbeliever(s) 281 Unchangeable (atreptos)  28, 30–31, 35, 57, 398, 403 Underived see agenētos Understanding  111, 132–134, 138, 146, 178, 181, 193, 256, 259, 265, 419–420, 430 Unfaithful 287 Uniformity 408 United States (of America)  418, 420 Unity, Union  18, 19, 20, 29–30, 34–37, 58, 68, 100, 128, 130, 162, 180, 217, 233–234, 240, 250, 279, 307, 333, 345, 375–376, 378, 381–382, 384–385, 387, 392, 395–396, 403, 437 Universal(s), Universe  113, 166, 398, 417, 419–420 Universalism, universalist  414 University 434 Unrighteous 266 Unveiled 439 Upright 265 Uriel 99 Utterance(s) 345 Valentinus, Valentinian(s)  141, 152, 155, 173, 401 Values  409, 420, 434 Variety  368, 407 Vatican II (Second Vatican Council of the Catholic Church)  12, 23 Veil(ed) 125 Verba  324 Vestal virgin(s)  82 Vice(s) 258 Vicegerent, viceroy  48, 100, 104 Viceroy, see Vicegerent Victim  36, 112, 436–437

509

Victory  33, 64, 67, 112 Violence  36, 201, 206, 408, 414 Virgin (birth), virginity  62, 74, 88, 91, 158, 195, 238, 327, 351, 383, 394, 397 Virtue(s)  108, 203, 253 Vision, visionary  118, 253, 270, 281, 333 Vocabulary  13, 234, 341 Vocation  4, 260, 269, 279, 281–283, 285, 287, 289 Voice  185, 362, 370 Vulgate 10 Vulnerable, vulnerability  112, 114 War  82, 85 Warfare 414 Warning 273 Water, watering  267, 397 Way 138 Weakness  31–32, 34, 38, 57, 67, 137, 178, 211, 251, 253, 255, 262, 269, 280–282, 284–285, 430 Wealth 200 Wesley, Charles  332 West, western  386, 409, 420 Whale 415 Wicked  205, 213, 266, 274 Widow  97, 187, 309–310, 372, 414 Wife 209–310 Wilderness  196, 198, 277, 370, 427 Will  37, 178, 345, 379, 418 Wind(s) 173 Wine  187, 397, 437 Wisdom, Sophia  4, 6, 19, 49, 52, 101, 103, 117, 122, 131–137, 139, 140–148, 162, 164, 201–202, 210, 261, 269, 273, 280, 315, 335, 339–340, 349, 352, 356, 358, 365, 389–390, 396, 398–399, 401, 403, 410, 415, 417, 420, 432 Wit 339 Witch 377 Witness  33, 426 Wizard, wizardry  78 Woman, women  21, 81, 205, 209, 297, 300, 327, 329, 369, 379, 416, 418 Womb  267, 272, 283, 286, 394 Wonder  117, 404 Word (see also Logos), word(s), wording  7, 8, 16, 19, 22, 24, 45, 162, 178–179, 181,

510

Index of Subjects

323, 328, 333, 343, 347, 351, 358, 371, 376–379, 382–384, 386–387, 397, 416–417, 419, 424–425, 432, 434, 436, 438 Work(ers)  302, 309–310 World, see Creation Worship  45, 51, 62, 80, 96, 106, 266, 327, 331–332, 356–358, 362, 389, 404, 410, 428 Wound(s)  106, 380 Wrath  36, 287–288, 436 Writing, written  185, 316, 362, 368

Yahweh 95–96 Yoke 238 Yugoslavia 408 Zarathustra 420 Zarephath 372 Zealot(s)  47, 51, 69 Zechariah 371 Zeus, Zeus Ammon (Amun)  76, 78, 81–82, 85, 87, 89 Zion 315