The Existential Crisis of Barrenness in the Hebrew Bible

Being the curmudgeon I am, I’ve previously tried to argue that Jephthah may not have literally burned his daughter to death, but that the sacrifice was deferred and in a sense became the loss of progeny.¹ There’s no particular theological consequence to this, rather I simply find it to cohere well with the account as a whole. Here I’d like to bring to bear an example adduced by Jon Levenson as he articulates his thesis of familial immortality. Writing that losing, or not having, children is a form of the death of one’s self, he writes:

The book of Job is an instructive case in point. Job’s miseries begin not with lack of children, like Abraham’s, but with the loss of his children, which provokes suicidal thoughts and an existential and theological crisis that has continued to reverberate through the millennia (Job 1:13-19; Job 3). Here, bereavement of progeny is the functional equivalent of death, and here, too, the patriarch’s restoration inevitably entails his recovery of his seven sons and his three daughters (Job 42:13; cf. 1:2). [...] The tragedy of the mortality of individuals cannot but attract the attention of the modern reader. The interest of the ancient narrator lies, rather, in the restoration of Job through the return of his family.²

Levenson then pivots on the point that “childlessness is the equivalent of death.” Though I acknowledge that this also goes well with the standard understanding, it seems to me an excellent explanation for the reaction of Jephthah, his daughter, and the “daughters of Israel.” It seems likely that they annually recounted not the death of a single maiden, which was of no great consequence, but the giving up of the name of the house of Jephthah in obedience to a vow.

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[1] Jephthah’s Holocaust
[2] Jon Levenson, Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life (Yale University, 2006), 115.

John Hick on Credal Language

John Hick, The Metaphor of God Incarnate, second edition, page 45.

The metaphorical language of the Bible communicates naturally to all who inhabit or can imaginatively enter its universe of discourse. We still have fathers and sons and, less universally, kings and shepherds as part of our conceptual world; and with only a little effort of the imagination we can appreciate the ancient habit of thinking of one who is spiritually close to God, a faithful servant of God, as a son of God. Such metaphors communicate successfully because they were formed within the ordinary discourse of the time. But the Chalcedonian formula is a philosophical artefact having whatever meaning it is defined to have. Such formulae are impressive precisely because their sole meaning is technical and known only to the learned. Critical philosophical scrutiny of such conceptual constructions must, however, always be in order. And in this case the possibility that has to be considered is that the formula, which at first seems so firm and definitive, is incapable of being explicated in any religiously acceptable way.

Hick is certainly not beyond updating the metaphors of the Bible or using theological language. He’s simply pointing out that the language used in credal formulation, particularly that explicating the mystery of the Incarnation (prosopon, persona, hypostasis, ousia, etc.) was forced, technical language. It makes sense because it is so defined, not because it has a ground in accessible truth, as does the Bible’s own ‘creeds.’ The theologian is reminded that when one’s theology becomes laden with arcane language or too easily takes recourse in tradition, it’s time to revise the system.

The Ascension in Luke’s Narrative

The bodily resurrection of Jesus—the reanimated, physical man—is an important part of New Testament theology, one beclouded by dogmatic accretion and in great need of disambiguation. The ascension seems to play right into this: Jesus, fully embodied, is lifted to the clouds. Yet I don’t think that bodiliness plays much of a role in early Christian theology of the ascension, and especially not in either texts in Luke and Acts.

What, then, does the ascension do in Luke’s work? I find three functions. First, it signals the end of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances. Theophany on the road to Damascus notwithstanding, the disciples no longer expected to see their Rabbi: they knew he was now at the right hand of God. His rising into the heavens provided the closure a simple vanishing would not have. Second, it is the consummation of Jesus’ exaltation. He was victorious over death, had presented himself as proof, and though already glorified and ‘transfigured,’ the ultimate glory would be reached in the heavens. Just so ends the Gospel of Luke.

I find the third function, the flip side of the first, the most interesting of all: the beginning of the inspired, apostolic, evangelizing congregation. The ascension ends the Gospel and begins the Acts of the Apostles. Jesus had told them that he would leave, but he would send pneuma hagion, and it would give them everything they would need. Indeed, he would have to leave for it to come, and it was to be the critical element in their witnessing.

Jesus’ personal earthly work was concluded. His ascension fixed the change in his disciples from students looking for their teacher to evangelists preaching and teaching the kingdom. The ascension inaugurated the execution of the great commission.

Naive All Over Again?

I’ve been thinking about how a Christian evolves intellectually, and the unexpected turns in the journey. I’ve sketched out these levels of development according to my own experience and what I have seen in others.

Pre-critical naivete. This is where folk theology swells out of a two-dimensional view of the biblical literature, unimpeded by an awareness of underlying problems.  Eschatology, typology, allegory, personal intuition/revelation, and emotion are at their highest.

Internal apologetic. Superficial problems are addressed, harmonized, and justified for oneself and the church. Long-solved issues from philosophy to archaeology are solved anew, giving the impression of critical engagement. Historical theology becomes important. There is a greater understanding of the need to read the text on its own terms and on a deeper level, but this is attempted with out-dated tools and clumsy methodology.

Engaged apologetic. Exegetical methodology is solid, though unsophisticated; if at the ‘internal apologetic’ level one commits the etymological fallacy, this is the level where one spots it.  Work on doctrine turns self-critical to hermeneutics, and outward to issues of canon, contemporaneous literature and culture, etc. Epistemic humility begins to develop.

Engaged intellectualism. Apologetics loses its primacy to intellectual curiosity and satisfaction. Ratio of questions to answers reverses. Gaps and contradictions are held in unresolved tension. Close study continues, but there is an increasing openness to broader philosophical questions, personal experience, community, and religious practice. Complex, nuanced theology develops.

Post-critical naivete. [?] “Beyond the desert of criticism, we wish to be called again.” (Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil, 349)

Disingenuous Religious Practice

A WordPress neighbor wrote briefly about, as I’ll frame it, the compatibility of religion and biblical studies. Some of the responses are quite predictable, but the encouraging part is the openness. Whereas I wonder if at church on Sundays we are not, to some extent or another, being disingenuous. One can go through the same practice, utter the same words, but inside mean something else. It can be consistent with an internal theology, but it is not the theology of the congregation, even if it’s related. Is it close enough? Can one congregant speak of the Gospel of John and another of the Gospel of “John,” and both be participating in the same Bible study? How much can one withhold before he is simply going through the motions? Or does this joyfully free me up to be a church of one?

My relatively minor problems close to the conservative end are amplified by those whose thinking has taken them to liberal Christianity. For many of them I wonder how it remains a “Christian” faith at all; perhaps Christian only in the sense that that is the tradition they are most comfortable with, or it’s simply a cultural identifier. I have tried to understand how some toss everything but Jesus, and even then in a qualified sense, or perhaps entirely existentially. But I can’t see why they don’t want to let go of that last thread. Why claim Christianity at all, with all that ugliness and culpability? I can’t help but think that it’s the bottomless abyss of disbelief, in which case it becomes a question of philosophy and psychology above all else.

Form and Convention

I suppose I’m broadening the “Text” in Text and Theology to some post-structuralist, Derridian sense in this post, but the following ubiquitous element in journalistic writing gave me pause.

Two of the Senate’s staunchest conservatives, Sens. James Inhofe of Oklahoma and Jim Bunning of Kentucky, who have said they intend to vote no on President Barack Obama’s first high court choice. Pennsylvania Sen. (Naftali BenDavid and Jess Bravin, Wall Street Journal, July 18, 2009)

Did the writers mean to say that the votes of the named senators had anything to do with the fact that the nominee is the President’s first? Language is so delicate, so ambiguous. But no, almost certainly not. This is a convention, a peculiarity of journalese, wherein, perhaps for brevity at times, another fact is reported in the same breadth. The writers just threw in the fact that Sotomayor is President Obama’s first nominee; they did not mean to say that somehow this was a factor in the Senators’ no-votes. This is why rhetorical (and related) studies of New Testament literature are so helpful. As much as they often fall flat in re-interpreting the epistles, say, they do alert us to over-reading, and help give us a feel for some of the conventions of antiquity.

MacQuarrie: Principles of Christian Theology

Principles of Christian Theology, Second Edition
John MacQuarrie
Paperback, 544 pages
SCM Press, 2003

A very readable existentialist, panenthieistic theology. MacQuarrie discusses as lucidly as anyone the concepts of authentic existence, being, transcendence, and the rest of the language of existentialism and dialectical theology. The author’s thinking draws evenly from tradition and continental philosophy, particularly Heidegger. In the first part of the book, really a prolegomena to a systematic theology, he charts a middle way between Bultmann and Barth, interacting with Tillich, Buber, Pannenberg, Niebuhr, and other theologians. The last two parts are a systematic discussion of classic doctrines read symbolically and existentially.

Though revised in 1977, Principles of Christian Theology is still dated and limited to a particular phase of theological discourse. MacQuarrie seems haunted by the specter of positivism, though that tension has long receded to background noise. He is given to considering Freud and Marx over the insights of cognitive science, psychology, and philosophy of mind. He engages in philosophical theology while devaluing analytical philosophy and natural theology, a conceding of ground quite typical of his contemporaries.

Abraham Malherbe on Anti-Intellectualism in the Church

[Following are portions of a talk Dr. Malherbe gave at Pepperdine University, as published in Declaring God's Good News, 1964.]

…It reveals a certain uneasiness, and more seriously, a sense of insecurity which is the real basis for the uneasiness. Surely our faith and our appeal are deserving of more confidence. We cannot afford to allow the fact that this enterprise is strange to some of us and therefore makes us uneasy, deny its legitimacy to others, to whom it is natural, and, indeed, necessary. If we do so, we shall only appear to be placing a premium on ignorance, and this is a disservice to the Christian faith.

Just as it is the intellectual’s responsibility to correct his view of the intellectual life, so certainly it is the duty of his opponent to learn to understand, if he cannot appreciate, that life properly….The response frequently offered, that when the Gospel is represented on a level a twelve-year old can understand it will answer all needs of all men, and can be understood by all men is both unrealistic and untrue. Such a response, besides leaving the questioner unsatisfied, also leaves the suspicion that anti-intellectualism is as much a kind of snobbery as intellectualism.

…If we are to take the Great Commission seriously, we must grant that “every creature” has a significance other than contributing to a geographical distribution of preachers. Surely “every creature” includes the intellectual. Or are we Calvinistic enough in this respect to damn him before we speak to him? If we do deign to speak to him about Christ, do we become all things to him, and speak to him in terms that are real to him, or do we insist on speaking to him as to a twelve-year old? Whose example shall we be following if we do this? Certainly not that of Paul. Paul was familiar with the intellectual currents of his own day. He knew that they revealed the needs of man, and he knew how to approach men in those terms.

…Let us put away recrimination and suspicion. Let us put into practice Paul’s conviction that the body consists of many members who have many different functions. Let us be concerned to develop the part God has given us, and have a care for one another. Let us all show our knowledge of the more excellent way as together we strive to build up the body of our Lord who died for us all.

Are All Things Permitted?

Given my previous discussions, in what sense can it be said that the Bible is inspired? I want to articulate the beginnings of a theory of inspiration, one I will call via media (VM) for the time being. VM inspiration, as I conceive it, allows for a high view of the Scriptures while not positing an over-riding form of God’s control. I will try to juxtapose it to a nebulous ‘conservative’ view and even more nebulous ‘liberal’ view. I will avoid talking about inerrancy, not because I don’t think it applies, but simply because I don’t want to parse the word.

On my VM view, Yahweh provided ‘epiphanies’ and set the boundaries for the writing but left the rest to the human authors. He constrained the writers’ personal freedom rather than overran it (via negativa?). It might be thought of as akin to the divine intervention in Acts 16 that kept Paul from preaching in certain areas: God did not need to direct Paul to a certain place in this case (no doubt preaching in any number of areas would have been very good), but it was his will that certain areas be avoided. The particular type of ephiphany is not specified, but it is clear that there was a conscious interaction with Paul rather than a psychological over-ride. My illustration is, admittedly, quite terrible, but let me explain why I take this route.

The stand-by liberal option is that the Bible contains the inspired message of God, infallible in leading to salvation but allowing for all sorts of non-inspired flotsam and jetsam. This is just too convenient. Rather than simply saying that the message of the Bible is inspired but the words are not, VM keeps Scripture as a normative, authoritative text; Scripture itself, not tradition and ethics that may be culturally and historically rooted in it, but otherwise removed from its intent. It also affirms that what the Bible says happened really happend, within the limits of responsible exegesis. At the same time, VM allows the Bible to speak authentically. By this I mean that the different literatures are read by the rules of their particular genre, not to mention by the rules of regular human communication. A thinned-out plenary verbal inspiration doesn’t account for the diversity of the Scriptures, at least not as easily. To digress, this is the kind of thing that makes me prefer the designation Scriptures against Bible, because the former admits its plurality whereas the latter is an artificial monolith.

The variety among the books of Scripture is more easily explained as the product of men and communities of people first, and secondarily as the handiwork of God. The material is too occasional, or incidental; too lacunal to have fallen from heaven into the minds of human writers. Such a top-down, heavy-handed inspiration makes, for example, dialogues between the patriarchs and Yahweh nonsensical, because the opportunity for real interaction and reciprocity is lost if God is the one speaking on both sides of the conversation. VM lets the dialogue, the poem, the lament, and the epistle be what they are. It also makes sense of the Bible’s own tacit descriptions of inspiration. For instance, no further divine intervention is needed to explain John’s Revelation. If God’s modus operandi is to impel the writer on some psychological level, why bother with visions? Similarly, the motivation and source behind Luke-Acts and other historiographic books are clear: the writers/editors/compilers consulted other records to meet the needs of their community.

There is no reason pretheoretically to think that accepting VM inspiration would change conservative Christian worship and practice. Whereas the liberal view can ignore biblical ethics, VM takes them seriously. I would almost say that conservative judgments on orthopraxy (role of women, leadership, marriage…) would not change at all, but this is somewhat misleading. A re-examination of the cultural centeredness of the texts becomes warranted. However, this is nothing new even with the most fundamentalist hermeneutics. Jesus’ command not to take provisions in the evangelizing work, for example, is understood to be situation-specific.

Applied to Paul’s theologizing in 1 Corinthians 10.1-6, we could accept both that it is a product of Paul’s own imagination and that it is of God. From the Christian perspective everything points to Christ in some way and he was the rock in some sense, the specifics of which remain for modern theologians. Yahweh’s protective spirit allowed this interpretation because it expressed an appropriate way to think about the centrality of Christ and drew a legitimate lesson from the sojourn story.

Paul Ad Hoc: The Rock was Christ

Earlier I began to explore a view of the inspiration of the Bible that would allow biblical writers greater room for personal creativity and would explain certain phenomena in the biblical texts as human literary activity rather than Divinely-communicated truths. Later I wish to say a few more things about the implications of this, but presently I will discuss a better example of what I consider to be theological creativity, one less threatening and easier to see. In 1 Corinthians Paul identifies Jesus as “the rock” of the Israelites’ desert journey. Was Paul moved by God to say this? Were these events in the Torah meant to prefigure Christ in a way that was only understood by Christians in retrospect?

For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they were all drinking from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ. But God was not pleased with most of them, for they were cut down in the wilderness. These things happened as examples for us, so that we will not crave evil things as they did. —1 Corinthians 10.1-6, NET Bible

Contextually the issue is Christian conduct. Paul warns that they are in a position similar to the Israelites and that, as the latter failed, so could they. There are a few issues in this passage I’d like to deal with briefly. I think that Paul was using a classic interpretive method to draw in the Scriptures for his immediate needs, but not allegorizing deeply. I find his use of typoi (τύποι/τύπος) to be non-technical. However, it isn’t currently important to decide if Paul meant this as mere example or strict typology. Though, if the view of inspiration I’ve been articulating is correct, then the understanding of New Testament typologies would be affected; many would be ‘reduced’ in some sense to an intertextuality. Further, whether or not the apostle was influenced by Philonic Wisdom theology¹ or by a rabbinic interpretation of Numbers 21.17² are interesting questions but are not decisive, and I think more conservative views of inspiration could account for them. I must nonetheless point out that both of these issues are more easily accounted for by a more liberal bibliology.

That Paul was composing by the seat of his pants becomes clear as he reads Christian theology back onto the Torah, “baptized into Moses.” Here at least it’s quite clear that Paul is speaking poetically: the Israelites most certainly were not baptized in any recognizable way. Paul intertwines the Christian sacrament with Tanakhic imagery. Spiritualizing the food, the drink, and the rock, he uses these as metaphors for the spiritual life of his audience. In saying that the rock followed the Israelites he may be drawing from rabbinic tradition helpful to his aims or even conflating the rock-spring with the ‘YHWH the rock’ trope. This is perfectly consistent with his interpretive methodology. In fact, it is his purpose and audience that should be studied here, not his hermeneutics. In verse seven he does ‘work’ with the Scriptural text, but here he only uses it to paint a picture.

The clause “the rock was Christ” is especially ad hoc. Depending on how Paul came up with the “rock that followed them,” it seems to be an odd bit of theologizing, unconnected to the context and unnecessary. I don’t think there is much weight behind it. It could easily have been a rhetorical flourish, just Paul getting caught up in his own metaphor. If it was more than an off-hand remark the connection might be with 1 Corinthians 1.10-17, meant for unifying them around Christ in light of their schisms, or rooting his ethical appeal to the believing community on solid ground. Either way, to insist that the apostle was giving new revelation about the rock-spring is to miss what Paul was after. Better, I think, to accept that he was not looking to make historical identifications for them, but to identify current realities.³ Paul was doing theology broadly, not exegeting or conveying special knowledge.

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[1] Philo, Legum Allegariae 2.86, ‘the flinty rock is the Wisdom of God.’

[2] The rabbinic texts behind this, and whether the Rabbis combined this with Exodus 17 or Paul meshed his text with this tradition, are unknown to me.

[3] James Dunn doesn’t even see this a good proof-text for Jesus’ preexistence, much less a literal identification of the rock. See Christology in the Making, 183.