In yesterday’s post I made reference to a thousand years without doctrinal statements. What I was referring to was the ways that Jewish theological reflection is demonstrated to us in the Old Testament and the ways that it is shown to us in the New. For all the things that we can and cannot say about the Bible, and for all the difficulties inherent in trying even to talk about “the Bible” as a singular entity, some labels clearly do not fit and this is significant.
One, the Bible is not a guide to living. Yes, there are rules and instructions, but that’s not what the Bible is. Yes, we are to apply much of the wisdom it contains to our lives, but even its commands are tied to particular people in particular moments. Meat sacrificed to idols? Not a big deal (Paul)? Or damnable offense (everyone else)?
Two, the Bible is not a work of doctrine or systematic theology. Yes, it does contain theological claims. But how are those claims expressed and what does that tell us about what we should be doing with the Bible?
One route has proven to be a dead end, and I’d suggest it must inherently be seen as a dead end because it depends on a mistaken idea of what the Bible is. The idea promoted by J. P. Gabler in his famous “Oration on the Proper Distinction between Biblical and Dogmatic Theology and the Specific Objectives of Each” is that the task of Biblical theology is to distill the timeless truths from the Biblical texts and hand these to the theologians to order into their proper logical sequence and results.
This is a bad idea on several grounds.
First, it presumes that the point of biblical theology is to create something else. Yesterday I voiced some hesitation about the idea that we should see systematic-type theology as an inherent product of Christianity. That presupposition has been too often accepted without question. In fact, the Bible is neither a systematic theology nor a refrigerator full of ingredients placed there for the purpose of being made into a theological cake.
The true end of Biblical theology should be to articulate a theology that corresponds to the historical and narratival dynamics that make theology biblical. In Biblical theology, God must always be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God and Father who raised Jesus from the dead. God need be neither of those things in systematic theology, where timeless truths are the order of the day.
Gabler plays into the mistake that in order to be “true” something must be “timeless”. The abstracted is therefore to be prized as the “goal” of such investigations. But again, what the Bible actually is argues strongly against such an idea. We have stories of Jesus–told four times over without any concern for distilling a timeless truth from it. No, it seems in fact that biblical theological reflection moves in much the opposite direction–recontextualizing the message in order to show how it is true rather than decontextualizing it.
What is the Bible? I am committed to a generally narratival shape to scripture: it is a dynamic story that moves from creation and fall through Israel’s story of patriarchs and law and judges and kings and exile and failed return and messiah and church and return. I am committed to this, not because I think it is a problem-free story that runs easily from start to finish, but because even where we find theology and instruction and wisdom and law it is all deeply shaped by the moment of the story within which it is found.
The whole points in one direction: the Bible is storied. Therefore, our calling is to tell the story well so that we learn to live and love and worship well within the narrative that determines our identity.
The question I’m perennially wrestling with is this: is there a way to do theology that will conduce to faithful living? Is there a storied theology that can succeed in drawing people along the way of the cross, a way to express theological commitment that would never, for example, allow someone to claim the church’s blessing on a vision that said, “By this cross you will conquer”?
To be continued…
This is brilliant. I, as a systematic theologian, enthusiastically agree with what you are saying, and there are many others that would too. It is as just as important to my theological concerns that the Bible not be seen as a primarily a guide to life or a box full of tools from which to construct a timeless theological system.
I have just two quick concerns with what you’ve written here: 1) you allow yourself to define systematic theology exclusively along the lines of those guilty of working with a radical Platonic dualism between history and truth, those seeing the Bible as needing to be ‘systematized’. There are plenty of theologians who are free from such unbiblical presuppositions – I’d point again to Karl Barth, G. C. Berkouwer, T. F. Torrance, Bruce McCormack, and Robert Jensen, the last of which I think actually takes the historicism of God too far (along Hegelian lines) from what I know of him (which isn’t much).
2) I’m curious whether you believe God has any reality and life prior to and independent from creation. It seems to be important that he does, not because of a philosophical pre commitment, but precisely because the story requires him to.
Yes, I recall liking Barth. His starting point in and with Jesus resonated deeply with me when I read the first few volumes of CD a few years ago. I’ve been told that I’d really like Jensen but haven’t been able to get to him yet.
Yes, I do think God has reality and life prior to creation, but since creation it would seem that God has inextricably bound his life to the created order. Sort of like I could say that I sort of have a life apart from my wife but not really…
I also like what you’re doing here. To follow up on Adam’s last point: what place do you think passages like these should have in a biblical/narrative theology:
“…he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and the Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see.”
“alpha…omega…one who is, was, and is to come.”
etc.
The systematic theology that you are very concerned about (cf. WCF) has obviously given these statements a primary role and sees them as giving license to go beyond the history into eternity…
The first one creeps me out, because it’s supposed to be talking about Jesus–who is the king people have, in fact, seen!
The second is fascinating, especially in the way that it ties God’s future to this world: Not was, is, and shall be, but is, was and is coming.
My main concern is that we don’t try to pack too much into that “is” when most of what we know if the “does”.
I disagree with you that the referent in the Timothy passage is Jesus. It is referring to God himself.
Also, the unapproachable light is the sun. The writer of this passage seems to interpret LXX Ps 19 to be referring to God living in the sun (at least by day).
Perhaps a small point: but do you think the Bible is a story or that the Bible bears witness to a story? I feel much more comfortable with the latter than the former.
Is this just the difference between fiction (where the story has no reality beyond the telling and hearing) and history (where the story points to things that happened)? I’m not sure what the differentiation between story and witness to a story gets you beyond this, beyond saying merely that the biblical story is historical.
JD: My hesitation with following you down that road is that it makes something else “the real thing.” I think that the story and the writing about the story and witnessing about the story, and reflecting on that story in churches, and singing about that story in song are all bound up together.
I hear your point. I was wrestling with something similar even as I was writing this post. I don’t feel like I have a clear point that I want to come down on. For example, if the Bible is witness to the story does that make the historical Jesus more authoritative than the canonical witness? *shudder*
Adam: No, I wouldn’t say this distinction is between historical and non. The distinction I’m trying to draw has basically 3 points as I see it: (1) recognizing that there really is stuff that happened in history, but that (2) the Bible isn’t properly speaking a “story,” but a collection of documents of various genres that interpret, tell, react to, and experience that history in a variety of ways, and that (3) the coherence of these writings is *not* narratological–in the same way a novel would. In fact, many of the stories disagree with one another, offer different perspectives on the same thing, etc. But rather, their coherence is anchored in their connection to the broader story they themselves are (in some sense) actors in–a story that we too participate in and which culminates in the death/resurrection of Christ, etc.
JRDK: But the Bible isn’t “the real thing.” If it were, it wouldn’t matter what happened or not–and what happens does matter. The actual story, writing it down, singing about it, etc. are surely all connected, but they’re not the same thing. And it would be equivocating to call the whole thing “narrative” or “story.” I think it would be more appropriate to see them all as individual elements of–or actors in–The Story, as I said above, but I think that’s a crucial distinction. And it certainly takes some of the weight off the Bible.
About the Historical Jesus vs. the Canonical Jesus: I find this question a bit ironic given your aversion to ST above. If “Historical Jesus” is the Jesus that really existed–that is, not the Jesus of scholarly reconstruction–then I’d say yes, of course he must be more authoritative. But if not, then the more basic question is what’s the relationship between the divine authority of the Bible and its historical veracity, or and the material it relates. Are there points when, say, Jesus or Paul are “wrong,” and if so when, why, and what does that mean for the rest of the Bible? Relatedly is the meaning of “authority”: for what is the Bible supposed to be authoritative? Just faith and practice? If so, on what counts as faith and practice, and what basis do we have for making this distinction? What I’m getting at here is that ever since we’ve realized that CJ and HJ aren’t the same person, we haven’t really come very far in solving this dilemma.
For what it’s worth, my knee-jerk reaction is to say that “the real Jesus” is what we’re after, but CJ is the closest we have to him. So we use CJ the best we can to get to HJ and go from there. And if there are points where CJ isn’t sure what he thinks–i.e., the Gospels disagree with one another–then we do as God intended: Shelve it.
JD: regarding your response to me, I’m on board – I can get behind the distinction on those terms, understanding that not the entire Bible is narrative but the non-narrative bits are participants in and conditioned by the story. That works.
In regards your response to Daniel, the distinction you’re making between the historical and canonical Jesus’s is too radical, building a basically insurmountable barrier to Christ as he actually is. The historical Christ actually ties himself to the canonical Christ in his authorizing of his apostles to be his witnesses: “He who listens to you listens to me; he who rejects you rejects me; but he who rejects me rejects him who sent me” (Luke 10:16). At Pentecost Christ fills his apostles with his very Spirit, making himself present in their ministry, which we must regard the NT as a part of.
I really enjoyed this post. Lately all my conversations, concerning Bible, Christ, etc., have been centered around stories. Ever since I began story telling the conversations have been richer. Last night I had a talk about cruciformity and it was centered around stories. It’s pretty cool
Brian, your reward is great in the Kingdom of Heaven.
On the differentiation between the canonical vs. historical Jesus:
You can’t. They are inseparably bound together, and we can only know “Jesus” insofar as we have these texts to report him.
This is kind of like philosopher Kant’s distinction between the “noumena” (world-in-itself) vs. the “phenomena” (world-as-we-see-it). The problem is that you can never get outside of the bubble of phenomena to compare it to the noumena, to see how well they “match” each other. This is, by the way, what analytic Realist philosophers strive for when they discuss a “correspondence theory of truth,” which is just nonsense.
The upshot is that ontology melts into epistemology. And really, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Our obsession with the “real” (historical Jesus, correspondence truth, systematized “timeless” theology, etc.) is a product of Modernity, and a non-starter. I’m a Christian and I believe in the integrity of God’s creation as an ontological reality, but we simply cannot “know” what is “really there” versus merely “what we see.”
And really, that’s just a part of being a creature–finitude. Our ways are not God’s ways.
Good theoreticians on this score would be philosophers such as Gadamer, Heidegger, Richard Rorty, and philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn.
Kierkegaard, by the way, speaks to this problem of first-hand eyewitness to Jesus versus second-hand witnesses. And Karl Barth apparently read a lot of Kierkegaard and it is very evident in his formulations.
(I’m trained in philosophy, but I’m a theologian at heart.)
“In fact, the Bible is neither a systematic theology nor a refrigerator full of ingredients placed there for the purpose of being made into a theological cake.”
Maybe it’s just because it’s 12:45 in the morning, but I found this to be a greatly amusing way to put it.
)
No Ashleigh, time of day has nothing to do with it. It was an inherently amusing comment.
Er, why does your blog misinterpret my smilies? That was a : o ).
Am I just an old-fashioned fundamentalist, or are missing something like ‘the Bible is the inspired word of God’ in this conversation?
The Bible is the inspired word of God.
Yes, it’s that. But that doesn’t really tell us anything about the various forms which that voice has taken and what that tells us about how the Bible worked and works. Too often, starting there just leaves us hunting for transhistorical truths. It’s a confessional starting point that can actually keep us from taking the Bible on its own variegated and deeply contextualized terms.
This may be your best post yet. Thank you. i do wonder if we can truly speak about the Bible theologically without violating the guidelines you’re setting up (or at least alluding to) but that is a totally different conversation that you’re well aware of. This could be a book… or maybe a story…