Tag Archive - narrative theology

What’s In the Name of the Lord?

March 15, 2010 in Bible Thoughts with 33 Comments

What difference does it make for our understanding of NT Christology that the κύριος (“Lord”) language from the OT, the translation of YHWH, is applied to Jesus in the New?

It is highly significant. It wraps up Jesus into the identity of YHWH. And it tells us nothing about whether the NT writers thought Jesus was “divine” in the sense of either pre-existent or sharer in the godhead in a binitarian or proto-Trinitarian sort of fashion.

To take one example: in Peter’s sermon at Pentecost in Acts 2, he both cites Joel 2 which refers to being saved by calling on the name of YHWH and also then refers to Jesus as the Lord upon whose name one must call in order to be saved. Is Luke’s point, in part, that Jesus is YHWH?

Three points argue heavily against this.

First, the sermon itself consistently and sharply distinguishes between Jesus and God. “Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him.” Jesus is a human who acts as God’s agent on the earth. This is God’s doing, bringing about the signs and wonders promised by Joel–but through a human agent.

Similarly, when speaking of the resurrection this sermon (like Paul, Hebrews, etc.) speaks of God as the agent of the man Jesus’ resurrection: “This Jesus God raised up… having received the Spirit from the Father, he has poured this out…” The sermon indicates that Jesus is a human through whom God is acting.

Second, the sermon indicates clearly that becoming Lord (κύριος) is something that happens to Jesus at his resurrection: “Let the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.” The claim of the entire sermon is that Jesus’ being Lord (κύριος) is a change that takes place in Jesus, not something that was always true or is simply shown to be true at the resurrection. Again, Luke is in step with Paul here (see Romans 1:4, 1 Cor 15).

Third, the OT has several perfectly good categories for YHWH’s name being placed on people or places. The story of the biblical God is the story of a God who wraps his identity up with those who represent Him on the earth. One example is found in Daniel 9. In the prophet’s prayer for restoration from exile, this is the means by which he strives to motivate God to act: “O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive. O Lord, pay attention and act. Delay not, for your own sake, O my God, because your city and your people are called by your name.”

God has placed his name on a people. God has placed his name on a city. This means that YHWH’s fate on the earth, YHWH’s standing before the nations, is tied to what happens to those humans and that geopolitical entity to which YHWH has chosen to bind himself.

What does this mean for Jesus? It means that a major set of data in the NT that speaks to the question of Christology should be reframing how we think about what it means to be the human(s) entrusted to represent the reign of God to the earth. It means that the NT writers are inviting us to see that Jesus is the man upon whom God has placed his name and staked his identity, as he did to the kings, people, and nation of old.

It means to be called “Christian” is to bear the name of the name-bearer, and therefore to be charged to carry the mission of God, as God’s ambassador, to the ends of the earth.

Storied Doctrine: Good

March 13, 2010 in Bible Thoughts, Book Reviews with 4 Comments

I don’t normally blog my way through Christianity Today, but this month’s issue as a whole raises some interesting perspectives on theology–evangelical and otherwise! One of the short articles pointed in the direction of what it might be to think of the storied theology of sin.

The article is an interview with Gary Anderson, regarding his new book, Sin: A History.

According to the interview, the book spends much of its discussion of the Old Testament talking about the idea of sin as “burden”–a metaphor that is systematically eliminated from most of our English translations.

The part of the interview that stood out to me is, not surprisingly, the following: “[Paul] Ricoeur argues that many theologians have failed to see how our understanding of sin is deeply imbedded in particular narratives, and the narratives, in turn, are dependent on governing metaphors. These metaphors are not simply literary ornaments” (32).

Losing sight of the metaphors can make the stories unintelligible. Why would Israel load up their sins on a pack animal on the day of atonement? Because in a story where sin is a “burden,” a great way to get rid of sin is to load it up on a beast of burden and send it off, away from the people (Leviticus 16).

The other major metaphor that comes up for discussion in this interview is sin as debt. Anderson argues that such a vision of sin only began to arise in the Second Temple period, and that once it did, the idea began to flourish that certain “meritorious actions” can create credit (32).

Tying in Proverbs 19:17, He who is kind to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will reward him for what he has done, early Christians began to work out the redemptive significance of alms giving.

The way that Ephrem works this out, according to Anderson, is to reconceptualize God within a world where God receives alms. As in the OT God received sacrifice though he did not need food, so in the NT God is like a needy person in need of alms–despite being “the enricher of all”. But God’s positioning himself with the poor informs our understanding of the ontology of the universe: “the universe operates by a principle of charity. That God loves the world. That God loves the poor. We’re to love the world and love the poor”.

Looks like I know how I’m going to be spending part of that Amazon gift certificate I just got…

Doctrine Good. Stories Bad.

March 10, 2010 in Bible Thoughts with 32 Comments

Doctrine Good. Stories Bad. That’s the mini-theme of this month’s Christianity Today.

I begin with the most egregious offense. There’s a short inset on p. 26, snipped from a book by J. I. Packer and Gary A. Parrett (Grounded in the Gospel; Baker, 2010) entitled, “The Lost Art of Catechesis.” The point? Back in the old days, folks used to have to learn their theology. That waned for a bit, but was revived in all its glory in the Reformation. Doctrine. The church has to learn its doctrine.

When did this all go astray between then and now? When Sunday Schools entrusted instruction to lay people and rather than teaching people theology substituted “instilling of familiarity (or shall we say, perhaps, over-familiarity) with Bible stories” (26).

I could not disagree more with the claims being asserted here: that the real thing we need is theology, and all those stories in the Bible (you know, the actual Bible God, in God’s wisdom, decided to give to the church) are second-rate tools the learning of which makes us less competent Christians.

This is the classic inversion of sola scriptura: no longer do we really want you to do what the Reformers did (read your Bible), we want you instead to read and memorize what they said after they had read their Bibles.

This not only gets the Bible wrong, it leads to us getting our own story wrong as well. A glimpse of this is caught when they say, “A pastor’s chief task, it was widely understood, was to be the teacher of the flock.” Ugh. At least, ugh given the vision of teaching depicted here.

No. The story is the thing. Regurgitation of catechism not only fails to make good theologians, it fails to make good Christians. I’ll wrestle with this one a bit more in a subsequent post, in which I’ll take up the cover story–an essay claiming that theology is an essential component to spiritual growth.

Yes, we do need to have well-trained minds, but such assertions as these generate an anticipated result that can be empirically verified or falsified. And in the case of the equation “theology ==> piety” the data fail to convince.

So in response to the story-disparaging Packer and Parrett I want to say, “I’d rather have someone grounded in the Gospels than grounded in ‘the gospel’.” The story is the thing.

“I am known by justice”: It’s Dangerous Being Story-Bound

March 4, 2010 in Bible Thoughts with 9 Comments

The sub-title of my blog is “Telling the Story of the Story-Bound God”. This reflects my conviction that the identity of the God of the Bible is unknown without the story and peoples of the Bible. His identity is wrapped up with his people’s story–a dangerous proposition.

In the “Song of the Vineyard” in Isaiah 5 we read of YHWH’s expectations for the people he planted and cultivated. What grapes did he expect to find?

The vineyard of YHWH of hosts is the house of Israel,
and the people of Judah are his pleasant planting;
He expected justice, but saw bloodshed;
righteousness, but heard a cry! (NRSV, alt)

YHWH expected justice and righteousness. Why? Because the job of the vineyard is, apparently, to make known its planter, protector, and cultivator. When we read the following several verses later, we start to realize that Israel’s problems are a problem for Israel’s God:

YHWH of hosts is exalted by justice,
and the Holy God shows himself holy by righteousness. (NRSV, alt.)

The purpose of the vineyard was to exalt its maker and put its God on display before the world. Where are we to look to see who God is? Among God’s people, to whom he has bound himself for better or for worse. And often, we discover in the prophets, it’s for worse.

God’s name, his identity, is tied to the deeds–and fate–of his people. In this case, the identity of YHWH is obscured by his people’s faithlessness. In the exile itself, his identity will be obscured by their suffering.

Being a story-bound God is a dangerous proposition.

Adam is Israel? Ok, maybe not so fast…

March 3, 2010 in Bible Thoughts with 3 Comments

I hereby repent in sackcloth and ashes for saying “YES!”

Yesterday I linked to a post by Pete Enns entitled, “Adam is Israel,” and simply said, “YES!”

The beauty of a blog is that it’s a work in progress, and I can perpetuate my posting by disagreeing not only with the rest of the world but also myself.

Ok, so, maybe I’m not totally disagreeing with myself. But I think I’d nuance the issue a bit differently than Pete does over there.

My primary concern is to say that the creation stories are written for the purpose of prequelling the story of Israel. That is to say, they are not written to be allegories of Israel’s creation (as some seem to be taking Pete’s post, though I don’t think that’s what he’d say); and I don’t think they’re even written to be metaphors of Israel’s life before God.

I’d say that they are written to tell the story of the world in such a way that the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and possibly even the Davidic Kings, would be seen as fulfilling God’s purposes for His human creations.

So yes, they are stories of everything, but stories of everything for the purpose of privileging the subsequent Israelite narratives as being the continuation of the creational purposes of YHWH.

So I think I’d rather say, “Israel is Adam,” than, “Adam is Israel,” eschewing all notions that the transitive property is relevant to theological articulation. Such a fine distinction also enables one to make some important caveats that I think are essential (that creation and covenant are two different ways of being related to God, for one thing).

That is all. For now. Until I get Pete my post on Adam and Jesus to put up at Biologos…

Adam Is Israel

March 2, 2010 in Bible Thoughts with 12 Comments

Over on Biologos Pete Enns has a post arguing that Adam is Israel.

YES.

Things a Human would NEVER Get to Do…

March 1, 2010 in Bible Thoughts with 4 Comments

Of course, for all that humans might be involved with God’s work on earth, we know that there are some things a human would never get to do. If a person were worshiped alongside YHWH, that person would be tantamount to God. And if a person were to sit on YHWH’s heavenly throne (Bauckham) that person would be sitting depicted as YHWH himself, right?

Right!

Unless, of course, you’re the ideal king of Israel, as Solomon was to the Chronicler:

20 Then David said to the whole assembly, “Bless the LORD your God.” And all the assembly blessed the LORD, the God of their ancestors, and bowed their heads and prostrated themselves before the LORD and the king (KJV: and bowed down their heads, and worshipped the LORD, and the king.). 21 On the next day they offered sacrifices and burnt offerings to the LORD, a thousand bulls, a thousand rams, and a thousand lambs, with their libations, and sacrifices in abundance for all Israel; 22 and they ate and drank before the LORD on that day with great joy. They made David’s son Solomon king a second time; they anointed him as the LORD’s prince, and Zadok as priest. 23 Then Solomon sat on the throne of the LORD, succeeding his father David as king; he prospered, and all Israel obeyed him.  (1Ch 29:1 NRS, HT, James McGrath, The Only True God)

I know what you’re gonna say: they just bowed down according to the NRSV, they didn’t “worship” both. Yeah. In the temple. Bowed down and bowed down (ויקדו וישתחוו).

They bow before both YHWH and his king, the king takes his seat on YHWH’s throne and thereby begins to represent YHWH’s rule to the earth–and mediate the world’s worship to YHWH.

“Kiss the son,” indeed.

My point, as in all such rants, is to highlight the importance of recognizing that Jesus’ vocation to rule the world on God’s behalf is as much about Jesus’ being human as it is about Jesus’ being God. While both are true, our anthropology and christology are both impoverished if we skip too lightly past Jesus’ calling to be The Man.

Being Handed Over, Being a Child, Being Exclusive

February 24, 2010 in Bible Thoughts with 12 Comments

I confess: it takes a lot sometimes for me to see what Luke’s up to in the way he strings together the Jesus stories. But today I’ve been pondering a possible thread through three pericopes: Jesus’ passion prediction, the disciples subsequent arguing over greatness, and their confession about stopping a guy from exorcising (all in ch. 9).

First, in a striking juxtaposition, Luke tells us that Jesus responds to everyone being astounded at all the things he was doing by saying to his disciples, “Listen carefully to these words, ‘For the son of man is about to be given over into the hands of people.’” Greatness is going to be turned on its head. The mighty, powerful one will be handed over to sinners.

It’s worth pondering whether Jesus said, “Listen to these words” prospectively (“what I’m about to tell you,” NIV) or retrospectively, (“Listen to what these people are saying, and hold it together with the next part of the story.”). The latter, incidentally, is how Peter preaches Jesus in Acts 2.

But in any event, Jesus’ falling into the hands of sinners is set in striking juxtaposition with people’s glorification of him. And, the disciples’ deafness to the calamity is put on display by their own visions of glory.

The disciples get into a dispute about greatness. Interesting, isn’t it, that division arises when people are pursuing greatness? There’s a connection here between unity and humility. A call to oneness will only be successful when that oneness is predicated on the gospel narrative that turns the world on its head: the narrative of the handed-over Messiah as God’s agent who embraces the world.

<aside> Incidentally, this is why I’m quite sure that a narrative hermeneutic is more fundamentally Christian than a Trinitarian hermeneutic. A Trinitarian hermeneutic, or even one that simply reads the stories as telling us about “God” does not contain the inherently self-emptying dimension of the cruciform narrative of Jesus. If you want to say that this is exactly the kind of God who exists as 3 in 1, I’ll not fight with you on that, but only point out that such a claim entails a cruciform, narrative hermeneutic to interpret God. The narrative is the thing, the description trails behind. But a Trinitarian hermeneutic, could very well leave the disciples’ quest in place as inherently legitimate, a questing after the sort of greatness that God has put on display in his acts of creation and providence. </aside>

Jesus takes a child and puts it in their midst, telling them that to receive such a one in Christ’s name is to receive not only the child but Christ and the Father as well. The “name of Christ” will recur in the next story as well. The question for me is why is receiving such a child a sign of greatness and a creator of unity with God?

My initial thought is that this is, itself, an enactment of the reception God brings to us in the gospel of Christ. It is a reenactment of the narrative. Note how it turns the expectations of the disciples on their heads. They are, rather Corinthian-like, thinking about their own greatness in the kingdom. The child is a reminder of the opposite. Moreover, to accept the child is to associate with the child, spurning the pursuit of greatness and the halls of power. It is to become the least by embracing the least. This is the way to greatness.

Ok, Jesus, so we can be like you, receive people in your name, and then we’ll be great. Got it. So, just checking here, this still means folks have to be with us, right? I mean, we’re the center of blessing and everything, so we still control the boundaries, right? So, like, this guy we saw casting out demons in your name, we were right to put a stop to that since he’s not following with us, right?

*sigh*

No. Wrong again. Part of the point of this whole thing is that Jesus, not the disciples, is the set-binder. To act in his name is to be on the mission of God. To act in his name by receiving a child, or to act in his name by casting out a demon. Unity is found in the gospel narrative which places Jesus at the center of kingdom of God.

As the intramural oneness was undone by hoping that, as an individual, the disciple is greater than the next guy (thereby failing to live into the narrative of the humble messiah), the inter-group oneness was undone by hoping that, as a group, the disciples were greater than the next guys (thereby failing to live into the narrative of an all-determining Jesus). The former is failure of the individuals to live into the gospel story, the latter is the failure of the group.

Indeed, the surprising turn of phrase that caught me off guard in 9:50 was when Jesus said not “whoever is not against us is for us,” but instead, “whoever is not against you is for you.” Your good is assessed, Jesus indicates, by seeing how my work is being done in the world–whether by your hands or not.

And, we’d all better hope, there seems to be a lot of “or not” going around.

Failure of Exile and Theological Interpretation (3)

February 22, 2010 in Bible Thoughts with 5 Comments

Last week we started looking at the question of how to read Isaiah’s failed anticipations of restoration from exile as Christian scripture (part 1, part 2).

At this point in my life I remain skeptical of the value of creedal “narratives” to help us find our way, or of Trinitarian hermeneutics to do much better. In this, I recognize that I am stepping away from a broad and powerful stream of Christian biblical interpretation. So they’re probably right. You’ve been warned.

What we see happening in 2d and 3d Isaiah is a commitment to Israel’s God, and the faithfulness of Israel’s God, despite the failure of the prophetic word to materialize. Despite the fact that these are prophetic texts and not stories per se, I’d argue that the texts are engaged in a process of narratival reimagination. The telos of the story is the same (the glorification of Israel by her God), the faithfulness of the main character, God, is never called into question. But the other players and the plot itself will have to be reconfigured in light of recent developments.

There are myriad ways in which the issue of failed return from exile is picked up in the New Testament. The introduction of John the Baptist with the words of Isa 40 are an invitation to read the subsequent story of Jesus’ ministry as a fulfillment of 2d (and 3d) Isaiah’s vision of restoration from exile and/or Second Exodus.

We mustn’t miss the implications. The second and third rewritings of Isaiah’s hopes for return from exile were not the end of the narrative reimagination. Now the retelling itself is reconceived as occurring hundreds of years after the original prophecy was supposed to come to pass.

This Christian rereading of Isaiah requires both that the historical problem of non-fulfillment and the theological conviction of God’s faithfulness to his promises be fully in play. The prophecies will now be reread in light of the conviction that Jesus has brought about restoration, healing, transformation, and the restoration of the Davidic kingship.

To give a Christian reading of the Isaiah text is, in part, to refuse to stop reading it in its historical context. If we stop there and apply it to our lives we are truncating the process by which the story meets us today. It meets us through the claims of the NT writers that Jesus’ ministry is the means by which all these hopes are fulfilled.

We must reimagine the story as it comes to an unexpected turn in the first century, where the people are gathered without being drawn to Jerusalem, where the Messiah reigns without displacing the foreigners, where God provides deliverance without transferring ownership of Israel’s land.

Most of all, the story is now defined by the death of Jesus as the means for God’s great rescue operation. That narrative moment relativizes and transforms early expectations. This is, at heart, what it means to give a Christian rereading of these texts: to see how the Christ event not only fulfills, but embodies and especially transforms the expectations created by the OT telling of the story.

But the place where we started was in the realization that one of the most important expectations of the exile was that it was to be transformative. Those who returned were supposed to be newly and uniquely faithful to Israel’s God.

And for all the promises of Spirit and new creation, all the hopefulness of a transformation that breaks into the present, we don’t see the end of this yet. Why give a Christian reading if it isn’t any more ultimate than the earlier reading? What does it mean to be confronted by this text in our communities? What does it look like to apply it to our lives as, specifically, Christians?

Stay tuned.

A Well-Storied Lent

February 21, 2010 in Church with 6 Comments

Ok, so last Wednesday I went all grumpy on the idea of Lent, suggesting that it might be getting the Christian story wrong. The back-story on that one is that I have wrestled on and off with the power of rediscovery of church tradition to be a divisive force in the church. The same dynamic I witness with people who get all excited about a particular kind of theology (especially Reformed, but not exclusively) I see working at times in my friends who discover liturgy and church calendar (often through Anglican or Episcopal churches).

But far be it from me to only advocate for one side of an argument, especially when I can come back four days later and offer the other with a good conscience. So I will.

It has struck me over the past several days that Lent has the potential to open our eyes to the fundamental narrative dynamic of the Christian life, namely, its cross-shaped character.

Last year I was teaching my course on Acts-Revelation. I told the class that in the summer I’d be teaching “The Cross in the New Testament,” and they asked, “How is that different from this class?!” That’s when I knew I’d done well.

For a people and nation glutted on excess, power, comfort, and glory, Lent can be a salutary reentry into the cruciform narrative of Christianity. We follow Jesus. And to follow Jesus means to walk the way of the cross.

I still have a beef: that churches would make things all dreary and stop saying “Hallelujah” and all that during these 46 days. In the spirit of those who break their fast on Sunday, I’d suggest that the church itself needs to observe such non-observance as well.

Why? Because the great surprise of the gospel narrative is that we sing “Hallelujah” not in spite of the cross but because of it. We sing hallelujah both because the Lamb has been slain and because we conquer with him through our blood and the word of our testimony.

So yes, be sober. Yes, sacrifice. Yes, exercise renewed discipline. But let’s not forget that these are the reasons to praise as much as (or more than) they are the things that need to be overcome in order to join the heavenly chorus.

[Editor's note: the writer has chosen to give up his Lenten discipline of not observing Lent--but only on Sundays when we all break our fasts in honor of the resurrection of Jesus.]

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