felix hominum

What is "sacred" text?

Interesting thought from our Anglican Primate Fred Hiltz on books, & burnings & September 11:

That day, it seems to me, should be marked by gatherings for prayer, and expressions of mutual respect for our various faith traditions and the texts we all regard as sacred.

Here are a few open questions for all the members of the panel.  On what basis does one regard a text as sacred? What does Bishop HIltz mean by the phrase "we all regard as sacred"?  Who are the "we"?  What do the majority of Islamic scholars have to say about the text called the New Testament?  Can one regard another's text as "sacred" and posit that it is not actually revelation, or that it is incorrect on a number of major points? I'll attempt to answer some of these after some conversation with my betters later on today.

For fun, let's pretend-translate this into politics and see if the same structure of thinking holds true for something like a Palin v Obama election on Nov 4: 

That day, it seems to me, should be marked by gatherings for voting, and expressions of mutual respect for our various political traditions and the policies we all regard as sacred.

Btw, we had our first feast of most excellent corn on the cob from the veggie garden yesterday evening.

In other news:

The Bishop of Amritsar has called on the President of India Pratibha Devisingh Patil to protect Christians in northern India after a mob burned down the oldest school in Kashmir and also attacked other Christian institutions.

The Church of North India's Rt Revd Pradeep Kumar Samantaroy, wrote that it was “with a heavy heart” that he informed the President of the complete destruction of the Tungmarg Tyndale Biscoe branch school that provided “quality education to five hundred fifty children from one hundred fifty villages around Tangmarg.”

The school, managed by the Diocese of Amritsar, had 27 staff and 16 support staff and had been founded in 1996 by Tyndale Biscoe and Mallinson School Educational Society to cater for the economically deprived sectors of the community.

The whole three-storey wooden structure with 26 classrooms, computer labs and a library containing, among other books, copies of the Quran was completely destroyed on Monday after being set on fire by a large mob that marched on the school after hearing reports of a man desecrating the Quran in America. None of the staff were injured; they all managed to escape the blaze.

story here

Biblical Studies blog carnival

The XXXII Biblical Studies blog carnival is up at Ancient Hebrew Poetry.  It is divided into 3 parts:  Part 1 deals with primary texts and discoveries; Part 2: with controversies; and Part 3 with posts on individual texts.

Thanks to Tyler Williams (Codex) for keeping us informed.  The carnival features posts by a variety of bloggers, and I have always found something in these carnivals which is informative and edifying.

Workshop: Concept of Exile in Ancient Israel & its Contexts

Concept of Exile in Ancient Israel & its Contexts

A Workshop:  Dept of History and Classics

Ludwig-Maximilians Universität, Munich & University of Alberta, Edmonton

April 7-11, 2008 at the University of Alberta

Schedule

Dept info page here.

This workshop brings together scholars from the Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich (LMU) and the University of Alberta, along with colleagues from other European and Canadian universities. This workshop is part of a newly founded cooperation between LMU and the UofA and is conceived as the first of two workshops. The second is planned for Munich (2009).

As Tyler said, consider this an invitation.

Q, Walter Bauer, & more Bock and the missing gospels

A bit of continual meandering around some themes introduced by Darrell Bock, with previous posts here and here...  Tonight's stroll looks at some questions raised by Bock in chapters 4 & 5 of this book.

So we have a variety of viewpoints all claiming to lead us to the roots of the true Jesus, and the true teaching or faith which he left to his followers.  Was the variety of viewpoints found in the the 2nd C also present in the 1st C?  Or was this variety a novelty, a subsequent development?

There are a few things to consider as we look at competing claims.  One is the nature of the claims.  So someone might say, “Jesus was just a first C wisdom teacher, nothing more and nothing less”.  Now anyone can hold such a view.  The question is rather do the sources hold out evidence for such a view.  I might hold that Napoleon was an 18th Century watchmaker.  But do historical records point me in that direction?

If one is using only the alternative texts (such as the Gospel of Thomas), is there evidence to support such a claim?  Elaine Pagels is persuaded that Thomas is old, at least as old as John’s Gospel, and that it presents us with a non-divine, non-exalted Jesus.  But looking at things like saying 77, where Jesus claims he is “above all”, tells us that these texts do not simply provide a us with a picture of Jesus as a simple wisdom teacher. And people in the pews or in the news who claim that Jesus was a mere teacher also tend not to: a] be familiar with such texts; b] quote such texts if they know of them. 

Whatever happened to Q?

A lot of weight has been placed on “Q”. Q is thought to be a source for some of the material in both Luke and Matthew.  Think of it this way:  my brother and I are both writing family histories.  We each draw on a collection of notes which came from our great uncle.  And we also include our own observations, first hand accounts, and stories from other family members.   So parts of our stories would be quite similar (drawing from the same source) and other parts would be unique to each of our writings. 

New Testament scholars have looked at Luke and Matthew and said “It looks like these writers have, at some point, been drawing from the same pool of material – either something written down, or particular stories handed on orally.  That is why the two gospels share similar stories at certain points.”  And so they hypothesized that there must be a source from which Luke and matthew both draw.  The name for this source is Q.  Now a few points are in order.  First is that “Q” has never been found.  That in itself presents a bit of a difficulty for historical accuracy, doesn’t it?  Second, accepting or rejecting the idea of Q does not put one inside or outside any circle of orthodoxy or heresy.  After all, Luke says that he used sources. 

The difficulty comes when you try to reconstruct Q, and then come up with a reason for its “disappearance”.  First, you have to assume that it was a thing in existence.  Second, you have to come up with a description of it.  Was it merely a collection of handed on teaching which was then incorporated into the gospels as authentic?  Or, as some suggest, was it a larger body of material which was suppressed because it gave an alternative picture of Jesus?  So someone like Ehrman makes the claim that it presented a different picture of Jesus, and so it was suppressed by the powers that be.  Perhaps there was an early tradition which told the truth about Jesus – that he was a wisdom teacher and nothing more, that all the things and teachings we now associate with the word orthodoxy were later additions, that “we have missed the truth about Christianity” (cf NT Wright in this book).  The key question about Q has to do with what one thinks was in Q.  Was it a body of sayings and material that was circulated in the tradition, and because of its authenticity (and hence orthodoxy) was simply absorbed into the writing of the evangelists?  Or did it have a lot of other things which contradicted the traditional gospels on certain points, and so it was “disappeared” by the orthodox religious mafia of the day?

In chapter 5 Bock gives us a brief tour of the influence of Walter Bauer.  Bauer published a work in 1934, which was republished 30 years later in 1964.  The English title of his work is “Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity”.  Bock helpfully points out both positive and negative in Bauer’s work.  First, Bauer introduced some methodological considerations:  how far can one trust the church fathers in assessing the views of those they were writing against?  True enough, yet when one looks at Irenaeus against the sources there is great consistency:  he represented the views of his opponents quite well. (Bock 48).  A second insight had to do with geography:  as Bock states, ideas travel across time and place at different speeds. (49)

So what was Bauer’s thesis?  It basically had two pillars:  [1] there was a variety of views as to what the original form of the Christian faith was, which could be seen if one looked across the geography at the time;  what we call orthodoxy was a later construct;  [2] Rome was in control and imposed its version of orthodoxy across the church, that’s how and why “orthodoxy” came into being.

Bock devotes a good deal of energy (see Bock 48-55) referencing subsequent scholarship debunking Bauer’s thesis, although he notes that Bauer’s contribution to method are important.

Bock & the Missing Gospels: an intro to the questions

Picking up from here.

For a number of years I’ve had an interest in older things.  Probably explains why I ended up in Classics.  Old texts, old thoughts, old ways of looking at things – all of these capture imagination, both mine and those of others.  Over the past number of years we’ve seen the publication of things like the Qumran scrolls, the discovery of the Nag Hammadi material, and if you recall, the most recent “discovery” of the Gospel of Judas.

Often what one encounters is a sound bite of such ancient texts, in the form of an interpretive summary.  Sort of “I’ve looked at the material and can now say X about the historical Jesus/ the early Church/ Judaism/ Paul/ insert item here.”  I’ve encountered many people in bible studies, discussion groups and in conversation who have heard of these kinds of documents and about a particular interpretive school of thought.  One hears about these texts and their interpretation, significance or meaning from religious studies courses, local study groups and lectures, and from the more popularized works of theologians and would-be theologians.

I was an undergraduate in Classics a few years after Elaine Pagels published  “The Gnostic Gospels” (Princeton, 1979).  The book was an instant success.  Bock introduces his work with a quote from the back cover of Pagels’ work: 

…to illuminate the world of the first Christians and to examine the different ways in which both Gnostics and the orthodox Christians constructed God, Christ, and the church.  Did Jesus really rise from the dead?

Whether you have studied or read in this area, or simply picked up a newspaper around Easter every year, you will have heard names like Bart Ehrman, Crossan and the Jesus Seminar.  The inside jacket of Ehrman’s “Lost Christianities:  The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew” (Oxford: 2003) makes the claim that:  “…these spectacular discoveries reveal religious diversity that says much about the ways in which history gets written by the winners.”  Bock looks at the announcements surrounding the more recent work by Marvin Meyer (The Gnostic Gospels of Jesus):  “an image of Jesus as the ultimate wisdom teacher.”  Students and laypeople alike will recognize (and have differing opinions of) what Bock refers to as the “new school”.

So where do we start?  In a sense we are starting ahead of ourselves:  we really need to look at what we understand by revelation and Scripture.  But for the time being, I want to take a walk through Bock’s work – looking at the Nag Hammadi texts at some depth.  This is really the most fruitful way of discovering any ancient way of thinking.  Read the text.  The same principle is true of the gospel of John and the letters of Seneca:  read the text.  It is great and helpful to read commentaries and interpretive materials, but they are no substitute for immersing yourself in the text.

Bock calls himself a “tour guide” for the reader.  No doubt he has his positions and beliefs, as we all do, and so one might be skeptical as to whether or not he will simply point out his favourite portraits of Jesus and early Christianity.  Yet I think overall he does a fair job of presenting the texts, the various interpretations, and giving the reader enough context to draw conclusions.  He limits his study to

“the period before Irenaeus, that controversial church father of the late second century.  The new school claims that Irenaeus ‘won’ and was the key architect of orthodoxy.  The claim is that this orthodoxy … emerged even more clearly in the third and fourth centuries.  So the new school argues that the Christianity we know has roots that do not really go back to the time of Jesus or even to the apostles in a way that precludes other alternative views of Christianity.” (xxv)

In chapter one, Bock gives the reader some basic historical background to the time period of the second and third centuries.  The first context of “Christianity” is the Jewish setting in which it arose, with the Jewish beliefs about God, and the broad category of the covenant and the promises to Israel.

It is helpful to think about some rough timeline in early Christianity, although one should remember that there are not abrupt jumps from one time period to the next.  Bock gives a brief overview of three:

1]  The time Jesus and the Apostolic period – up to the end of the first century.  This is the period in which Jesus and his immediate followers (apostles) would have been active.  The latest date for New Testament writing puts us in the 90’s AD, so with the death of the Apostles comes the end of the Apostolic age.

2]  The age of the “Apostolic fathers” covers the time the time of the first few generations after the first period, roughly up to 150 AD.  The Apostolic fathers were those “who had contact with the apostles or fit in the period just after them.” (9)  In this period you will encounter texts like 1 Clement, the letters of Ignatius (a bishop of Antioch), the “Martyrdom of Polycarp”, the Didache, the “Shepherd of Hermas”.  It is in this time period that one can certainly see the rise of “alternative” views of Christianity, particularly some Gnostic texts.  We will talk about the Gnostics below.

3]  The age of the Apologists goes from the previous period through to Nicea (325) and beyond. (10)  In case you are confused by the term “apologist”, it isn’t someone who is sorry for Christianity, it is one who writes a defense of Christianity, or makes an argument in its favour.  Apologists often wrote with specific “opponents” in mind.  In this time period you will see names like Justin Martyr (100-165; who, by the way, predates Irenaeus), Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria and Origin.

So why is the history important?  Well, it is argued by the new school that these later apologists are the ones responsible for forming what we might call orthodox Christianity.  It is claimed that earlier on, there were:   [A] competing views and interpretations, or [B] an entirely different understanding of Jesus and Christianity, and that [C] these later apologists pushed out the other views and imposed ‘orthodoxy’ on the church.  Some questions which come to mind:  did these “orthodox’ beliefs exist in the early Christian communities?;  was there suppression of such beliefs?  Or, as NT Wright asks in his work, have we missed the truth about Christianity?

A word about the Gnostics.  While Bock gives us a brief overview, I would also point you to part one of Jaroslav Pelikan’s work, “The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition” from his five volumes on the history of Christian doctrine.  It is a more thorough and presents the reader with the “next step up” in terms of indepth history of the period.  It is worth getting.  But back to Bock’s overview.

When we think of possible “alternatives” to orthodox Christianity in ancient times, the term “Gnostic” always rises to the surface.  The term comes from the Greek words for knowing or knowledge.  In modern scholarship, Gnostic or Gnosticism is used to refer to those who held that belief was rooted in a “special knowledge”.  As Bock summarizes, “those in the know are called Gnostics”.(15)  In chapter two Bock looks at some of the discussion and difficulties around the term.  It is a term, which was used both positively and negatively in early Christian circles.  We can see both uses as we read the scriptures:  many Christians will be able to quote a text like “you shall know the truth…” and yet we have Paul writing “knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.”

Bock points us to the work of Kurt Rudolph, who has listed five traits of Gnosticism (19ff):
1]  Dualism – the belief that creation and humanity are a mix of good and evil, based upon the view that there is a distinction between the true “God” who is above all, and a lesser “God” who created the material world.  Often the “true God and the Creator God of Genesis are not the same thing.”
2]  Cosmogony, or how the universe is set up.  There is a contrast between light and dark, soul (or spirit) and body or flesh, knowledge and ignorance – things exist in pairs of opposites.  If point one shows us a dualism in God, then this point shows us a dualism in the created world and how we live in this dualism.
3]  Soteriology, or what we mean by salvation, and how it is brought about.  Salvation is by knowledge of the true state of things, and it is salvation of the non-material part of humanity.  There is a saving of the mind/ soul or spirit, but not of the body.  Because the body and flesh belong to the darkness, there is generally no resurrection of the body.
4]  Eschatology, or what the end-times of all things will be like.  Think “Left Behind”, but with panache.  There is a restoration of the spiritual to the Spiritual, and not much interest in having a re-newed creation.
5]  Cult and community, in which cult means not the people who sell peanut brittle at the airport and live on a commune, but the way the believers or adherents practice their faith in worship and liturgy and ritual.  For instance, the Gnostics had practices like baptism, and other liturgical ceremonies.

So Gnosticism and Orthodoxy – which came first?  Did Gnosticism give birth (by opposition) to what we call orthodoxy, or was it a derivative set of beliefs, a parasite upon orthodox belief and practice?

That’s it for tonight.

Darrell Bock & the Nag Hammadi "Missing Gospels"

For the past half year or so I have done a bit more reading some early documents.  You can still see NT Wright's Judas and the Gospel of Jesus : A Christian Response sitting on the reading list, although I finished it last spring.  One of the other books I have recently read is by Darrell Bock.  It's called The Missing Gospels.  It is a fairly good introduction to the Nag Hammadi texts; the many so called "gospels" which pop up in the news, in pop culture and in scholarship on a regular basis.  (Usually around Christmas and Easter, in order to "debunk more fully the mythology" which traditional Christianity has assembled around those dates.)

For the rest of the week I will be doing some posting around this particular area.  What are these "other gospels" which one hears about?  What do they say about Jesus?  Bock does a great study of the original materials, both the Nag Hammadi & the traditional gospels, and compares them in several categories:  God and Creation;  Jesus - Divine and/or Human;  the nature of Redemption - Spiritual/Physical;  Jesus' death.  I will also throw in some stuff from Wright's analysis of the Gospel of Judas.

There are so many fundamental questions involved it's hard to know where to begin, but let me suggest this as a starting point.  in my reading of various churchy-type publications (okay, I like to read church newspapers), I came across a description of a traveling Jesus Seminar presentation in the Diocese of Calgary: 

For those who attended the Seminar at All Saints, our speakers presented  Jesus as one who was just as radically counter cultural in his own day as he is in ours.
An illiterate rural peasant from a dirty town, itinerant preacher and a day laborer...
Sower (big pdf, pg 8)

There are two things which jump out at me.  First is having a look at some of the "alternative texts" which people use to establish a new idea/picture of Jesus.  And second is the question of whether there are fundamental problems which arise in this sort of re-drawing of Jesus.  Many folks might be startled by this description.  Jesus an illiterate peasant?  How then shall we think of this:

When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
   because he has anointed me
     to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
   and recovery of sight to the blind,
     to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’

And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him.

Let us fix our eyes on Him.

patristics blog carnival at hyperekperisou

Phil over at hyperekperisou has got a selection of blog posts related to Patristics up on his site.  H/T to Codex on this announcement. 

What I really meant to write was that following up on Crouse's analysis of 'pilgrimage' in the Trinity, we have the parallel idea of the Neoplatonic exitus-reditus (the going forth or emanation of the divine and then the return of all to the divine);  Augustine's theme of perigrinatio which has been looked at elsewhere by lots of folks, and then a whole bunch of stuff comparing the origins of Christian notions of divine Trinitarian 'pilgrimage' (God speaking his Word as Son who returns, the Spirit being sent and returning with re-newed  creation) with the Neoplatonists'  idea of exitus-reditus, and then looking at a bunch of stuff and shouting down the Gnostics and all that sort of thing.

It's all there.  Work it out for yourselves and send me the draft copy...

That sort of thing just gets me all a-shiver!

call for papers - Religion and Place

Fourth Annual Symposium of the Program in Religious Studies

Call for Papers

The annual symposium of the Program in Religious Studies will be held on Monday 16 April 2007, 9:30 to 3:30, in the Papaschase Room of the Faculty Club.  We invite proposals for papers on any aspect of the topic of “Religion and Place.”  We imagine that these could be papers on sacred spaces and architecture, holy lands and pilgrimage, ritual and religious "performance" within communal spaces, contested regions, migrations of religious communities, spiritual practices within one’s own "special" space, artistic representations or musical reflections of the religious dimension of place, or any of a host of other possibilities.

contact:
Stephen Reimer, Ph.D.
Visiting Speakers Co-ordinator, Program in Religious Studies
3-5 Humanities Centre

Whatever happened to the Gospel of Judas?

You remember, that funny thing that the National Geographic hauled out of the archives last spring, just in time for Easter, and the promise that it would turn Christianity on its head, rehabilitate Judas' good name, and open up the secrets which the "Church" has kept hidden from the plebs for ages?

Well, 6 months later Tom Wright published a succinct little book.  "Judas and the Gospel of Jesus: Have We Missed the Truth about Christianity?"  I've read through the advance copy a few times.  It has probably been overlooked by most in the wake of his simply Christian thing, but this is N.T. Wright at some of his finest, I think.  He disembowels a lot of pretentions here.  We are going to go through it step by step...

David Gunn visiting lectureship

Distinguished Visitor in Religious Studies:
Professor David Gunn, the A. A. Bradford Professor of Religion at Texas Christian University, and a world-renowned scholar in Old Testament studies

Professor Gunn is an internationally renowned scholar whose main field of study is the cultural history and reception of the Hebrew Bible. He has written on narrative in the Hebrew Bible, drawing on literary criticism and feminist criticism; on the representation of biblical characters and stories in art, literature, and movies; and on the use of the Bible in colonial settings. Among his numerous publications are The Story of King David: Genre and Interpretation (1978), The Fate of King Saul: An Interpretation of a Biblical Story (1980), and a commentary on Judges (2005).

Events open to the public (no charge)

*Bible, Violence and Colonialism: A Tale from the Frontier.  Wednesday, 20 September 3:00 pm, CAB 239

*(Town and Gown Lecture) Covering David: Michelangelo's David from the Piazza della Signoria to my Refrigerator Door.  Thursday, 21 September 7:30 pm, Edmonton Art Gallery 

*Biblical Women and Subjectivity: From Peter Abelard to Harriet Beecher Stowe.  Tuesday, 26 September 3:30 pm, CAB 243  

*Bathsheba Bathing: An Illustrated History of a Biblical Woman.  Thursday, 28 September 3:30 pm, CAB 265

*Public Reception Wednesday, 27 September 5:00 - 7:00 pm, Faculty Club (Saskatchewan Room)

 

postmodern rigour - a quiz

To put the matter baldly, a person of religious conviction should not want to enter the marketplace of ideas but to shut it down, at least insofar as it presumes to determine matters that he believes have been determined by God and faith.  The religious person should not seek an accommodation with liberalism, he should seek to rout it from the field.

So who is author behind this?  A] Jerry Falwell;  B]  Pat Robertson; C] The Pope

None of the above.  It is from Stanley Fish, postmodern theorist, in his work "The Trouble with Principle" (Camb: Harv, 1999, p 250). 

One of the marvelous things about the embrace of postmodernism by the church is our selective reading and understanding of the various strains of postmodern theory.  I dare say that there are at least a few who would think that the position put forward by Fish in this piece is the opposite of postmodern thinking.  But postmodern thought is like Protestantism in this regard:  there is such an endless variety that you don't know what you're getting until you've already consumed it.

There are two ends of the spectrum:  those whose modernity is stubbornly exclusive, where faith ideas are thrown out kicking and screaming,  and those whose postmodernity is stubbornly inclusive, where faith ideas are dragged in and "baptized" automatically.  I posit that because they share the same absolutist method, they are in fact brothers.

Which brings me to the radical conclusion that it is a valid form of postmodern church to say that "No man comes to the Father but by me".  Or, to put it another way, if you think that postmodernism does away with the rigour of specific faith claims, you are not familiar with the wide variety.

And this variety of specific faith claims leads me to my last point.  In the various interfaith meetings I attend, there are a number of faith groups represented.  It is not "interfaith" to offer up a general wish when asked for a prayer.  When I pray, I pray in Jesus' name.  If you can pray along with me, please do.  If you cannot pray along with me, then take the interfaith movement seriously and listen and learn as you hear me pray.  I will afford you the same dignity.  But please don't tell me to pray in a way that "everyone can join in".  I simply cannot take every faith position and baptize it into Christian prayer.  It does not do justice to your faith.  Nor can I simply pretend that my prayer is some sort of "lowest common denominator" spirituality.  That does not do justice to one I call Lord, and whose name is Jesus.

Which brings this meandering discourse again to the quote from Fish.  Is there any wisdom in what he has to say?  It is the nature of a faith position, conviction, belief, that its holder should actually hold those positions.  The all inclusive is not post modern;  it is, as Fish rightly notes, merely the old end of modernity: liberalism. 

Be postmodern.  Like Jesus.

"To whom should we go?  You alone have the words of eternal life."

Next week:  the other side of Fish's argument.

sketches on Romans 1:18

Just another bit of private study which started out here a little while ago.  It was part of an ongoing assessment of the question of natural theology in Romans...

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by their wickedness suppress the truth.

What does this mean?  What is a NT understanding of God's "wrath"?  How is it "revealed", and what does that mean?  The pdf is over here .  It's about a 150kb file.   And there are really only about 3 people on the face of the earth with an interest in this sort of thing.   The whole project has some shape from related stuff I did a while ago. 

Every now and then I think that clergy (or at least this one) should engage in a bit of scholarly dabbling...  Makes you look smart at Anglican cocktail parties & the like.

sketches on Romans 1

Beautiful snowy day in Edmonton, the perfect sort of day to enjoy the warmth of thinking about the first chapter of Paul's letter to the Romans, with an end to eventually answering the question:  what does the term "wrath of God" mean in Romans?  Is it willed or built into the structure of things according to Paul?  What has this to do with natural theology.

Again, this is merely for my own amusement, and not your edification, and bits of it are scattered around the virtual office....

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Verse 18:    Generally, in this verse Paul begins to “shape” the mind of the reader for what is to come.  This is done in two ways.  First, Paul expresses a contrast between the “revelation” of God’s righteousness in the Gospel, and the “revelation” of His wrath from heaven.  This allows us to think of more than one kind of revelation.  It also means that divine wrath can be perceived apart from special revelation.  Second, having introduced the wrath of God in this way, we can now see that if the wrath of God can be known apart from special revelation, Paul is setting a tone that permits us to think that there are things of God which are known “naturally”.   How the wrath is known is tied to our understanding of God as the creator of an ordered universe in which there is an interplay between our ability to discern and God’s desire to have His attributes discerned. 

Verses 19-20a:    Paul elaborates on the themes introduced in verse 18.  Several terms pick up the various threads.  To  gnoston introduces the question of “knowing” in a direct way, relating knowledge to God’s attribute of “knowability”.  Paul’s use of phaneroun and  apokalyptein continue the general shape of the argument.  The two terms do not refer to the same kind of revelation.  What is going on in these verses is not direct revelation.  As we saw with wrath, so now we see with God’s “knowability” and attributes:  some things are discernible apart from special revelation.  The en autois of verse 19 can be understood as meaning (revelation) “to them” or (knowledge) “in them.”  It thus introduces further that there are two sides to the equation of natural theology - God’s initiative and humanity’s appropriation.  The apo phrase of verse 20 relates all of these to creation, indicating that the created order has been a continuous source for knowledge of God.

We then consider generally the process described in these verses, with reference to the issues raised by the terminology.  First we critique those who hold that there is no natural theology here, or a very limited one.  Next we show how Paul appeals to divers traditions to posit a natural theology which has its grounding in both Jewish and Gentile tradition, particularly with reference to Wisdom. 

Verses 20b-23:    Here we have the further specifics of natural theology.  The claim is made that “they knew God”. (verse 21)  We look at this phrase for further support that there is a claim to natural theology.  We then see the initial summary of Paul’s indictment of the Gentiles.  The result is idolatry, and a confusion in the minds of the Gentiles.  Here again Paul uses arguments typical of Hellenistic Judaism in his indictment, and this we relate to the presence of a natural theology.

further thoughts

There is (and probably will continue to be) a variety of interpretations of Romans 1:18-23.  What is important to distinguish in the commentators is their own particular view of what natural theology is, what the limits of human reason are, and what knowledge of God entails for the Gentile mind.  Several difficulties present themselves.  Paul is writing to a mixed audience, and it is unwise to dwell exclusively on the ‘Jewish’ or ‘Gentile’ aspect of his own thought or on the part of his hearers.  With this in mind one can almost rather present the view of the third group: those Gentiles he is indicting, and argue with commentators and the text itself from the point of view of the “virtuous Gentile.”

If Paul’s thesis that all have sinned is proved by his separate treatment of the sins of the Gentiles and the Jews, then there must have been a difference in the kind of idolatry which each group practiced.  Dunn’s statement that

what is known of God is an act of revelation personally willed by God (19b) in relation to a created order (20); and man is recognized as a responsible agent in face of this revelation, so that his failure to respond appropriately is not simply a lack of perception, a defect in spiritual capacity, but a moral failure, a culpable act, “without excuse”(20b). (JDG Dunn, Rom)

will not suffice.  It is precisely that kind of knowledge which the Gentiles, the ones under indictment, did not have.   If Paul is to be successful in his critique of the Gentiles, then he must convict them on their own ground.  Paul’s use of Gentile (Stoic and Middle-platonic) language is of no avail - it is a mere rhetorical trick - if the indictment does not convict the Gentiles on their own ground.  It does not carry the same weight as an accusation based simply on the Jewish/Christian notions of God as a “revealer”.  This would simply be to blame the Gentiles for being Gentiles .  As it is, they are without excuse at this point because they did not respond to what their own natures must have known was a distinction between the creator and the creature, and more than that, a failure to respond to the known attributes of what the divine nature must be, given what human reason can ascertain of it through its knowledge of the created order. 

For the Jew idolatry was a sin against a divinely revealed decree, and a Jewish hearer would have interpreted our pericope largely in that manner.  There would have been no question that natural revelation demanded a response.  To a Gentile convert who was familiar with the various cults in the Empire, there are two possible ways of hearing the message.  Either as proof of the foolishness of cultic worship and foreign deities, or, if the Gentile was of a more educated school, as an argument concerning a logical contradiction in what was the real knowledge of the thinking Gentile tradition.  The latter would have been more likely to take the concept of ‘natural theology’ further than either the Jewish hearer or many modern day commentators of the Protestant variety.  Though not absolute, there does seem to be still this distinction between Jew and Gentile, to be seen largely in the division of Roman Catholic (notably in reference to the Vatican I use of this text) and the Protestant “wholly fallen” camps.  Paul’s own background was influenced by both sides of the equation;  his audience was mixed;  his message is not understood fully unless both sides are presented.  It is not an either/or situation, nor, in my view is it entirely a both/and situation.  It seems rather to be the case that much more needs to be done in the interpretation from the perspective of the question: does Paul adequately indict the highest form of ancient religious thought?  The language of Paul, though certainly dependent upon contemporary Jewish and Gentile thought, is addressing a universal situation.  It is not enough to defeat a “straw Gentile” so to speak.  There is much that has been ignored in the ‘theological’ interpretation of this passage.  I have offered only a few positive directions in which this can possibly move.

a bit of mystery/paradox/contradiction

Since Tim had so graciously introduced St Augustine into a discussion about mystery/paradox over at Mike's place, I thought I would indulge myself for a moment or two.   This is entirely for my own amusement and not for your edification...  it is a long way from being presentable, these are mainly rough drafts of something, but  there you have it for the time being...

Short version:  yadda yadda, we all know that the Trinity is a mystery, and so are some bits of the bible...

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Long version:  do we know why  the Trinity is a mystery, and what does that have to do with reading the bible?  Auggie in the Confessions:

So now, when another shall say:  Moses meant as I do, and another says, Nay, he meant as I do;  I suppose that with more reverence I may say:  Why meant he not as both you mean, if you both mean truly? (conf 12.31)

Aside:  What is to keep us from falling into an endless variety of interpretations, and without shutting out those interpretations which may be different from our own, and yet as Augustine would say, they are “true”?  Augustine himself allows for many different interpretations of Genesis, as long as they are compatible with God as Trinity.  In this way there is a limit to the range of interpretations.   The task of interpretation is really the task of Trinitarian theology.  Secondly, false interpretations will say something false about the nature of humanity which is made in God’s image, especially as humanity is seen in its original state in the creation story, prior to the fall.

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With all of these various interpretations, all of which Augustine claims are true, the only appeal left is to place them under a principle which is capable of unifying them, of giving them a logic.

In this diversity of true opinions, let truth itself procure reconcilement, and out God have mercy upon us, that we may use the law lawfully, even the end of the commandment, pure charity… (12.30)

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Augustine is not about to give an answer to the question of which one out of all the possible interpretations is the "correct" one.  Should someone ask him at this point in the argument, they have missed the logic of the work.  The correct answer is not finite, it does not need to oppose one position to another.  It has moved beyond this to the divine, where what is a contradiction for finite logic is the logic of the divine unity in Trinity.  Charity is the answer, and God is love.  Humanity's end as contemplating the divine is the end of the argument, it is the locus  of the highest charity which joins distinctions, even in itself. The God who inspired the Scriptures has allowed there to be truths which appear as contradictory to finite minds.

…God who is One, hath tempered these holy Scriptures to the meanings of a many, that were to see true things and yet diverse. (12.31)

    God himself, who is one and three, has allowed His Scriptures to bear his Trinitarian image – there can be differences of meaning within the text, as long as these all bear witness to the nature of God, and in the spirit of charity.  The ones who will this as their end can be led through the Scriptures without contradiction, as the meanings they perceive can still serve this end.  It is not impossible for the divine to bear what appears as a  contradiction - Christ has already done it in its fundamental form – impossibly joining the contradiction of god and humanity, eternity and time, death and resurrection.   

The two necessary elements in the further interpretation are presented: when things are related to the human mind per signa  one can doubt either the veracity of the sign itself, or the meaning intended by the agent of the sign.  To proceed in the argument, one must have both reason and faith.  Rather than proceeding with a confession which attempts to further knowledge simply in terms evident to natural reason, Augustine is trying to take reason, add to it a properly willed relation to the divine authority of Scripture, and through this to move beyond the limits of finite thought.  The purpose of Scripture is not to give him the type of knowledge of the finite he was looking for in the Manichees or the astrologers.  He is rather using Scripture to present to the mind objects which would not naturally fall into its gaze.  In so doing the finite mind thinks the objects it sees in Scripture, and conforms its own activities of thinking and willing to them. thus both the intellect and the will are moving to higher objects.

So what are you supposed to be doing when you read this part of the Confessions?   You are supposed to be thinking in Trinitarian terms – how difference and unity can exist at once, held together by charity.   This is Augustine’s project – to see how we can move to  - I won’t say an understanding of, nor a belief in, but rather a vision of God the Trinity.  Revelation of the inward relations of the Godhead itself:  difference and unity in the principle of charity.

Is there such thing as Natural Theology?

Every once in a while you get a craving for a certain type of food.  With me it is the DQ Peanut Buster Parfait.  You just gotta have it.   The same thing sometimes happens to my brain.  Just a craving to exercise it a little beyond its usual daily routines.   So I thought we would begin with a fairly easy question:   Is there any true knowledge of God (" natural theology") outside of the revelation in Christ?   We'll begin with a look at the first chapter of Romans, but before that....

God, the beginning and end of all things, can be known with certainty by the natural light of human reason from the works of creation. (Vatican I) [a]
...‘natural theology’ does not exist as an entity capable of becoming a separate subject within what I consider to be real theology - even for the sake of being rejected. (Barth) [b]

    A common starting point to the discussion of natural theology is the dichotomy of opinion which has surrounded the question in the last hundred or so years.  Vatican  I is often quoted  in support of, and Barth with his definitive “No!” is often  quoted  against, the question of natural theology.  Modern commentators on Romans 1 are divided on the issue as well.  Often these  preferences fall along denominational lines.  Some commentators are conscious of supporting the view put forth by the Councils of the Roman Catholic Church.  Others are conscious of supporting Barth’s position.  Still others try to plot a middle course, and seek to avoid the extremes of interpretation.

    Over the next few weeks (or maybe months) I intend to occassionally examine the question “Is there a natural theology in Romans 1:18-23?”   --  in dialogue with modern commentators;    to address the arguments both for and against a natural theology in Romans 1:18-23, as those arguments are presented by exegetes of the passage.  I shall also try to be aware of the theological implications of the question. 

Although the name most associated  in the 20th century with the rejection of natural theology is of course Karl Barth, I shall concentrate more closely on the comments of other biblical commentators.  Barth’s thought, though, has exercised a great amount of influence over this question.  His thinking on the whole question of natural theology is well known in theological circles.  His answer was a definitive “No!” to the entire concept.  The debate between Barth and his opponents (such as Emil Brunner) have set the background for much subsequent thinking on this whole question.  What Barth has brought to the question is quite significant.  Is there a natural theology at all, let alone in the Bible, and furthermore in the passage under consideration?   I shall focus more directly on the question of whether or not Paul argues that there is a natural knowledge of God.  That is to say, whether there is a knowledge of God which is neither attained by knowledge of Christ, nor acquired through the direct revelation of Scripture.

Barth is not without his critics.  In more recent times James Barr has answered Barth’s no with a most definitive yes.[c] Is natural theology then,  as Barth was convinced, truly a nonentity, something to be removed from the parlance of Christian theology?  The nonentity stubbornly seems to remain, however, prompting another modern author, Paul Avis,  to comment:

But perhaps natural theology is not what Barth thinks it is. Perhaps it is not a malignant tumour but a vital healthy organ.  In that case, the operation was clearly not successful.  Natural theology is not so easily got rid of.  It tends to return under another name in the form of dialogue with the sciences, other religions, or Marxism.  Barth has certainly not succeeded  in abolishing natural theology - he has just given it a bad name.  [d]

And a bad name it indeed has in some circles.  Part of the problem is just that -- i.e.,  of naming the creature we are about to discuss.  What exactly do we mean by the term natural theology?  Do we mean the operation of pure unaided reason?  Do we mean reason operating independent of God’s will?  Or do we mean reason operating in conjunction with God’s guidance?  Certain commentators have held the view that by natural theology we mean the capacity of the human mind to know God, independent of His willed desire to be known. [e]   On a broad level, this definition would seem to be part of our inheritance from the Enlightenment, with respect to which Joseph Fitzmyer raises valid concerns.  Within our own times, and within our own intellectual heritage, there are considerations to be taken into account.  Fitzmyer explains :

Ever since the Enlightenment, when thinkers tried to extol human reason and to substitute for Christian revelation a natural religion or a religion of reason, some commentators have subconsciously reacted by denying the capability of the human mind to attain some knowledge of God.  As a result, they have taken refuge in a form of fideism.  In doing so they have been reluctant to admit what Paul himself actually says about natural theology; they deny that God makes himself known in any other manner than in Christ. [f]

a -  Concilium Vaticanum I, Constitutio dogmatica “Dei Filius”,  chapter 2, “De revelatione,” in Enchiridion Symbolarum, 33 ed., ed. H. Denzinger, rev. A Schönmetzer, (Frieburg:  Herder, 1965), no. 3004, p. 588.
b - K. Barth, Natural Theology: Comprising ‘Nature and Grace’ by Professor Dr. Emil Brunner and the Reply ‘No!’ by Dr. Karl Barth, with an Introduction by J. Baillie, (London:  Bles/Centenary, 1946), p. 75, cf. pp. 67-128.
c - James Barr, Biblical Faith and Natural Theology, (Oxford:  Clarendon Press, 1993).
d - Paul Avis, “Does Natural Theology Exist?”, Theology 87 (1984):  431-437, p. 431.
e - So for example, Cranfield in his commentaries on Romans wishes to enforce this definition.
f - Fitzmyer, Romans, (Anchor Bible Series 33; New York:  Doubleday, 1993), p. 274.