After Completing a Huge Project . . .

Random question for the day: after you finish a large academic project, what do you do to unwind?  For me, I’m ashamed to admit that it usually involves a snack run and some college football on the Nintendo Gamecube.  I just finished a big paper on Mark 5:1-20, but i haven’t gotten to my unwinding ritual yet.  Hopefully I can relax soon.  What do you do to unwind?

New Blog to Check Out

I have recently discovered a blog that will be devoted to discussing issues related to mental illness and Christianity.  As someone who has seen my family impacted by MI, and having worked with those who have MI for a couple years a while back, I’m glad to see someone blogging about this.  Here is the link.  Thanks to David for bringing this to our attention

Meditation on Power & Discipleship

Most importantly, the negative portrayal of the disciples [in Mark] leads the reader to a fundamental re-evaluation of power.  The juxtaposition of Jesus’ mighty works with the disciples’ incomprehension invites us to recognize that power is not self-attesting.  Those who know Jesus only as a worker of wonders do not understand him at all, for the secret of the kingdom of God is that Jesus must die as the crucified Messiah.

{source, p 76}

Reading Eschatology

Planning for next year’s WFPS conference has already begun.  We have chosen the theme “Eschatology & the Future.”  While i have done some work on this already, i haven’t read many of the main thinkers in this locus of theology.  I’m hoping that i can interact with a few of these thinkers fairly deeply over the next year in preparation for a paper to present at the conference.  I thought that i would poll my visitors for who i should interact with first in this area.

You Know You’re a Theologian When . . . .

You see a license plate that reads “soteric,” and the first thing you think about is the Doctrine of Salvation, not someone’s (weak) attempt at being clever.

A sad day for me.

Book Review-Holy Scripture, a Dogmatic Sketch: Introduction

Webster, John

Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch (Current Issues in Theology)

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.  Pp. vii + 144.  Paper. $18.42.  ISBN 0521538467

 

In the opening sentence of this work, John Webster succinctly states both his topic and the method of its investigation

What follows is a dogmatic sketch of a topic much negelcted in contemporary theology, namely, the nature of Holy Scripture (1).

What Webster wants to do is to examine Scripture from an unashamedly theological perspective, eshewing many major concerns regarding Scripture, like textual accuracy and the nature of inspiration.  While Webster wouldn’t deny the importance of these issues (he maintains that his dogmatic account of Scripture is subserveint to the primary theological task of exegesis), he wants to tackle the more foundational issue of what Scripture fundamentally is.  Webster’s study is an attempt to map out an ontology of Scripture from a dogmatic perspective in the hopes that it benefits the work of the church.  As Webster puts it

The result is a dogmatic ontology of Holy Scripture: an account of what Holy Scripture is in the saving economy of God’s loving and regenerative self-comunication (2).

Thus, in this introduction, Webster has articulated his topic (a theological ontology of Scripture), his method/presupposition (dogmatic theology), and his goal (a theological ontology of Scripture that is useful for understanding its role in God’s salvific plan).  At this point, some may be wondering why Webster sees the need to achieve this goal.  In his first chapter, which will be reviewed soon, Webster demonstrates why we need to rethink what exactly Scripture is and where it fits within God’s work of salvation.

What “is” Scripture?

This is a question that according to John Webster in his book Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch is of utmost importance.  In my faith background it is common to hear raging debates regarding the nature of the Scripture’s inspiration.  Questions regarding inerrancy and infallibility are often hotly debated, and all too often are made the benchmark for orthodoxy. 

However, Webster wants us to take a step back and ask more fundamental questions.  Is the totality of the Scripture’s significance found merely in the nature of its textual/historical accuracy?  Is the ontology of Scripture found merely in its inspiration?  Or is there something more?  What exactly is the purpose of Scripture?  What, exactly, is Scripture?

Thoughts?

Multi-Part Book Review: Conclusion

Borg, Marcus J., and N.T. Wright 

The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions

 

San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2000.  Pp. xi + 288. Paper. $15.95.  ISBN 0060608765

 

Review Sections: Intro Part 1 Part 2

This is a great book for those who are interested in the field of Christian origins and the historical study of Jesus.  This is particularly true for those new to the field, since in it two preeminent scholars from differing perspectives lay out their views in a succinct and accessible way.  In this respect they accomplished their goal (ix).  Perhaps the most useful section is where they directly engage each other’s work, noting the differences between them, and why they disagree.

 

 

The charitable tone allows one to feel the force of each thinker’s critiques of each other.  Wright’s accusation that Borg has allowed modern sensibilities to filter out aspects of Jesus that make perfect historical sense within his first century Judaic context appears reasonable after reading several chapters where Borg asserts that much of the gospel material isn’t actually Jesus’ thoughts or deeds (227).  Likewise, Marcus’ concern that Wright’s refusal to subvert faith to historical inquiry may lead him at times to be generous to the gospel’s portrayals of Jesus looks like a serious criticism after Wright occasionally works backward from his convictions toward historicity, as in his reading of the birth narratives of Jesus (232-234; cf 175-178).

 

 

Each reader must make his own judgment as to who has a more satisfactory understanding of who Jesus was.  The value in Wright and Borg’s work is that they have laid out two common options, along with their accompanying methodology, in which to approach this perennial subject of interest.  This book can serve as a guide to the beginning of one’s journey to answer the question “who was Jesus?”          

Multi-Part Book Review: Wright’s Method and Vision

Borg, Marcus J., and N.T. Wright 

The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions

 

San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2000.  Pp. xi + 288. Paper. $15.95.  ISBN 0060608765

 

Review Sections: Intro Part 1

 

  

Turning now to Wright, with Borg he affirms the necessity for understanding Jesus within his cultural context (31).  However, in contrast to Borg, Wright’s fundamental conviction is that Jesus is known through both history and faith (15).   Wright asserts that all historians have theological commitments, even atheists and such commitments can’t be divorced from one’s task as a historian (15-16).  Viewing the historical task as a matter of unashamedly “looking through one’s own spectacles” at historical material is the only way can properly appreciate the complexity that accompanies historical research (16-17, 22).  Wright is well aware of the dangers of this approach, and argues for it by pointing out that while one must seek to maintain a healthy degree of skepticism when looking for history within religious documents, one must not let such a suspicion degenerate into “paranoia (17-18).

 

 

Wright seeks to locate the foundation of all proper understanding of who Jesus was historically within the “Jewish world of Palestine in the first century (31; cf 35, 43).”  That being the case, Wright begins by examining the culture that Jesus grew up and lived in.  As he examines the literature, Wright believes that the culture during the writing of the gospels was a difficult place to live in for Jesus’ people, the Jews.  The Israelites of Jesus’ day had returned from their Babylonian exile to their home land, only to be under foreign rule (31-32).  According to the Israelites, this continued servitude meant that theologically, they were still in exile, waiting for their God, YHWH, to deliver them.  The people in Jesus’ time were looking expectantly that their God to send them a deliverer, one who could free them from their present bondage (32-35). 

 

 

Wright sees the key to understanding who Jesus was as presented in the gospels in this theological and political predicament Jesus’ people found themselves in.  Wright argues that although difficult for our minds to grasp at times, Jesus’ radical teachings and actions make perfect sense once one sees him within first century Judaism (42).  A concrete example of this is Wright’s view that Jesus was a prophet who “critiqued from within (42).”  When Jesus gave radical critiques of the injustice within his culture, when he made his announcement of the imminent arrival of God’s Kingdom, his teachings were consonant within the world of rival eschatological understandings, views dealing with how one day YHWH will right all injustices, that were prevalent in the first century (32, 43).    

 

 

This view of how to understand Jesus and his message sets the stage for the rest Wright’s views of Jesus.  To cite one brief example, since Jesus saw himself as proclaiming God’s coming reign, his overturning of the money changers tables was more than a social critique.  In that action, Jesus was proclaiming to his Jewish contemporaries that there would be a “replacement temple” where all could come for forgiveness (44-46, 96-97).  This and other actions and sayings of Jesus do not require modern dissection and sophistication to understand necessarily, but only that we try to enter into the first century Jewish world, and ask if it is possible that Jesus’ action is intelligible within it, even if it was taboo (18, 35, 97).

 

Multi-Part Book Review: Borg’s Method and Vision

Borg, Marcus J., and N.T. Wright

 

The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions

 

San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2000.  Pp. xi + 288. Paper. $15.95.  ISBN 0060608765

 

Review Sections: Intro

 

 

A crucial issue in the book is the question of method, the question of how one does historical research.  While the initial chapters are devoted to Wright and Borg’s methodology, the issue resurfaces through out the book, particularly in the last chapter, where Borg lays out the principle differences between their approaches (229-238; cf 27).  The authors also take great pains to be clear about the presuppositions they each hold, as in many ways these set their agendas for them (3-30, 225-227, 229-238).

 

 

Borg affirms this point as he lays out a few of his basic convictions regarding the historical study of the gospels (8).  The gospels, the data, for Borg aren’t necessarily eyewitness accounts but rather are a developing tradition born out of communities of faith as they reflected on Jesus (8).  This tradition is multilayered, containing some original teachings of Christ which have been intermixed with the faith of the subsequent communities of faith (8).  Borg also seeks to take the cultural context out of which beliefs about Jesus emerged seriously.  He is committed to viewing Jesus within the tradition of Judaism (8).  Further, Borg seeks to situate the gospel’s view of Jesus within the wider social context of the times of his life (9).  The final presupposition that Borg initially offers is his belief that much can be gained from investigating other religious traditions.  Borg believes that when one analyzes different religious experiences and actions across cultures, light can be shed on the particular tradition in question (9). 

 

 

Given these fundamental orientations, Borg provides a basic framework for how he reaches conclusions regarding the historical Jesus.  Since the gospels are hybrids of early recording and the theological reflections of the early Christian communities, it is vital at the outset that the layers are sorted out and the earliest material is found (11).  From here the historian seeks to situate this initial material about Jesus within the cultural context of Jesus’ life (11).  The goal in all this is to get “beneath the surface level of the gospels” so that one can “discern the historical Jesus (14).”  

 

 

Borg is thus skeptical of much of the gospel’s portrayals of Jesus as recounting actual historical events (x).  Throughout the rest of the book, Borg argues that much of what is claimed about Jesus, including why he died (chapter 5), his bodily resurrection (chapter 8), his claims to divinity (chapter 9), his second coming (chapter 13), and the virgin birth (chapter 12) are more about the early Christian church’s beliefs, not actual beliefs held by Jesus himself.  Borg, in contrast, to other scholars, does not then argue that such beliefs are irrelevant to the life of faith.  Rather, he affirms their truthfulness, but not in a historical sense.  A key distinction Borg makes throughout is between “history remembered” and “history metaphorized (for examples, see 85-87, 135-142, 148-153, 179-185, and 193-194).”

 

 

Borg understands “history remembered” to refer to actual historical events.  History metaphorized represents for Borg “the use of metaphorical language and metaphorical narratives to express the meaning of the story of Jesus (5).”  Thus for Borg the “stories” of Jesus are still pregnant with meaning, and yet as a historian he doesn’t feel that he has to affirm their historicity in order to seem them as meaningful for the life of faith (5-6).  This is because for Borg the experience of the living Christ matters regardless of the factuality of the gospel’s account of Jesus’ life (135).  To cite one brief example, Borg isn’t concerned with whether the tomb of Jesus was empty after Easter.  He doesn’t believe that Christianity is hinged to whether or not a tomb was empty, since Christians continue to experience Jesus as Lord in the present (135).  It is this metaphorical and symbolic truth, that Jesus is Lord, that Borg believes is formative for Christian belief, and should impact how we live today (135-142).

 

 

The Christian life that Borg envisions then is one where God is immediately accessible to all, regardless of traditional Christian belief systems and organizations (241).  Since Borg reads Jesus as caring deeply about social justice and compassion, these are qualities to be embraced by his followers (242).  One should focus on their spiritual lives, cultivating a life characterized by being open “to the Spirit (243).”