Author: dopderbeck

Categories
Biblical Studies Early Christianity

The Bible Hunters

Last night I began watching a fascinating new show on the Smithsonian Channel, The Bible Hunters.  I thought this show was going to be about Biblical archaeology, but in fact it’s about textual criticism, paleography, and the discovery starting in the Victorian era of early textual variants of some of the New Testament texts along with previously lost non-canonical texts.  It’s amazing to realize how fragile the Bible’s textual tradition can be and to relive the combination of pluck and serendipity that led to the discovery of many early texts.  Unfortunately, the show is marred by a tinge of sensationalism, as though the discovery of these texts radically undermined millennia of tradition.

For example, the show’s webpage states that “until the 19th century, most Bible-reading Christians believed the Old and New Testaments represented the Divine Word of God, presented in text without error.”  The show suggests that the discovery of textual variants of some canonical texts rocked this conception of the Bible.

Well, I mean, sort of.  The only “Bible-reading” Christians prior to the 16th Century or so were educated elites, monks (who also were a kind of educated elite), and the like.  From the very early centuries of the Church, real elite students of the Bible (people like, say, Origen), recognized that the Bible was full of complexity, even at the grammatical level, and couldn’t always be read “literally.”  Yes, Origen and other pre-modern Christian theologians would have said the Bible is without error, but what they meant by that is not exactly what modern fundamentalists mean by it.  It was also not exactly what the Victorians who first made these modern textual discoveries would have thought about how to read the Bible.  So while the parts of the Victorian world may have been shocked by some of these discoveries, these discoveries would not have been nearly so complicating to many earlier generations of Christian scholars.  Indeed, those early scholars lived when the “lost” texts were in circulation, so they would not have been shocked at all. Effectively, even through to today, various forms of modern Biblical criticism have helped Christian theologians rediscover and redevelop earlier forms of hermeneutics that can affirm the divine inspiration of the text without wooden literalism.  Hardly a radical break with our past.

The show also suggests, ala the tired Da Vinci Code craze but in a more subdued fashion, that the presence of early non-canonical Gospels and other related texts reflect alternative Christian communities that were substantial rivals to what eventually came to be established as the “orthodox” branch of the Church.  In fact, it is true that a plethora of non-canonical texts, including some of the “Gnostic” gospels, were widely circulated alongside what came to be included in the canonical scriptures, but this doesn’t mean there were significant early Apostolic Christian movements that didn’t believe in the divinity or resurrection of Jesus.  It just means that — like today — there was lots of religious literature around and that there were always shades of viewpoints, with some running to extremes.  Here is how scholar Larry Hurtado — who is actually interviewed briefly on the show — has put it:

The general point I wish to make at this point is that, based on the nature of the remnants of the early manuscripts of the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Mary, in neither case do we have any reason to link these copies with distinctive circles of Christians. That is, it would be dubious to posit a circle of ‘Thomas’ Christians or ‘Mary’ Christians as connected with these manuscripts. Indeed, I suggest that this should be taken as illustrative more widely of how apocryphal gospels functioned. There were obviously Christians who wrote these and other gospel-texts featuring figures such as Thomas and Mary, and there were obviously other Christians who enjoyed reading these texts, as reflected in the remnants of early
copies of them, and the subsequent translations of these and other such texts. But the features of the extant artefacts of the early reading and readers suggest that these texts were (typically?) copied for, and read by, individuals, the texts likely circulated and copied among those Christians who expressed an interest in them. As to the social connections of these individuals, at the most, we should probably imagine loose networks of sorts, rather than defined circles or sects of Christians.

L.W. Hurtado, Who Read the Christian Apocrypha?, online preprint from The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Apocrypha, eds. A. Gregory & C. Tuckett (OUP, 2015), pp. 153-66.

So, I’ll probably watch some more episodes of this show, but it’s too bad that even the Smithsonian Channel needs to veer into the sensational and can’t quite stick with the more reserved and plodding work of documenting scholarship.

 

Categories
Early Christianity Historical Theology Origen Science and Religion

Origen on Adam, Part 3: Origen on the Bible and Adam

800px-OrigenThis is the third post in my series about Origen and “Adam.”

Origen’s Interpretive Strategies: Impossibilities and “Stumbling Blocks”

Any discussion of Origen’s view of Adam and the Fall must begin with Origen’s strategies for interpreting the Biblical creation narratives.  Origen is often cited, and faulted, for an excessive reliance on fanciful allegorical Biblical interpretation.  But Origen’s method was crafted in significant part because of the challenges the Hebrew scriptures presented to any highly educated Greek Christian in the Second or Third Centuries.  Origen read the Biblical texts carefully and knew, well before modern historical criticism or Darwinian science, that many of the narratives could not constitute literal history.  At the same time, Origen did not simply write off those narratives as merely non-historical.[1]  Instead, Origen suggested that elements of the narratives should be taken as essentially historically accurate, while other elements should be understood as “stumbling blocks” intentionally included by the Holy Spirit.

In On First Principles, for example, Origen states that

If the usefulness of the law and the sequence and case of the narrative were at first sight clearly discernible throughout, we should be unaware that there was anything beyond the obvious meaning for us to understand in the scriptures.  Consequently, the Word of God has arranged for certain stumbling-blocks, as it were, and hindrances and impossibilities to be inserted in the midst of the law and the history, in order that we may not be completely drawn away by the sheer attractiveness of the language, and so either reject the true doctrines absolute, on the ground that we learn from the scriptures nothing worthy of God or else by never moving away from the letter fail to learn anything of the more divine element.[2]

These “stumbling-blocks,” Origen said, included things “which did not happen, occasionally something which could not happen, and occasionally something which might have happened but in fact did not.”[3]  In particular, Origen argued that parts of the creation narratives obviously were not literal:  “who is so silly,” he asked, “as to believe that God, after the manner of a farmer, ‘planted a paradise eastward in Eden,’ and set in it a visible and palpable ‘tree of life,’ of such a sort that anyone who tasted its fruit with his bodily teeth would gain life; and again that one could partake of ‘good and evil’ by masticating the fruit taken from the tree of that name?”[4]  Nevertheless, he thought parts of the narratives might still be historically true:  “[s]ometimes a few words are inserted which in the bodily sense are not true, and at other times a greater number.”[5]  Origen never fully articulated a method for separating the historical from the non-historical other than to “carefully investigate how far the literal meaning is true and how far it is impossible” and then to “trace out from the use of similar expressions the meaning, scattered everywhere through the scriptures of that which when taken literally is impossible.”[6]

Adam and Eve as Historical, Or Not?

Although Origen did not regard the “Trees” in the “Garden” as literal things, in On First Principles he did seem to suggest that Adam and Eve were both real individuals and symbolic of larger dimensions of humanity.  For example, in DP IV.III.7, in a complex passage commenting on Paul’s distinction between physical and “spiritual” Israel in 1 Corinthians 15, Origen traces the historical lineage of the Israelites and says Jacob was “born of Isaac, and Isaac descended from Abraham, while all go back to Adam, who the apostle says is Christ . . . .”  Origen then noted that “the origin of all families that are in touch with the God of the whole world began lower down with Christ, who comes next after the God and Father of the whole world and thus is the father of every soul, as Adam is the father of all men.”[7]  Further, Origen suggested, “Eve is interpreted by Paul as referring to the Church [and] it is not surprising (seeing that Cain was born of Eve and all that come after him carry back their descent to Eve that these two should be figures of the Church; for in the higher sense all men take their beginnings from the Church.”[8]  In texts such as these Origen seemed to assume that Adam and Eve were real people even as they symbolize larger truths.

Yet it is unclear whether in these texts Origen was simply reading off the literal sense of the Biblical text without commenting on its historicity.  In other texts, Origen seemeed to limit the historical content of the Biblical references to Adam.  Most notably, in his major apologetic work, Against Celsus, Origen responded to an early philosophical objection against what would seem a forerunner of Augustine’s biologistic view of original sin by noting that the Hebrew term “Adam” is used generically for all of humanity.[9]  Here Origen said that “the subjects of Adam and his son will be philosophically dealt with by those who are aware that in the Hebrew language Adam signifies man; and that in those parts of the narrative which appear to refer to Adam as an individual, Moses is discoursing upon the nature of man in general.”[10]   He concluded that “[f]or in Adam (as the Scripture says) all die, and were condemned in the likeness of Adam’s transgression, the word of God asserting this not so much of one particular individual as of the whole human race.”[11]

Even here, Origen seemed to hedge his bets about the historicity of Adam.  The apparent qualification in the translation quoted above from Contra Celsus that scripture asserts the universality of sin “not so much of one particular individual as of the whole human race” is interesting. This could suggest that the historical reference is real, or probably real, but of secondary importance.  In Migne’s Greek version text, this phrase reads “οὐχ οὕτως περὶ ἑνός τινος ὡς περὶ ὅλου τοῦ γένους” – “truly in this way about anything belonging to the former as about the entire race” (my literal translation).[12]  Whether Origen meant here that the reference to Adam signifies primarily the entire human race and only incidentally a historical man, or that the reference is “truly” only symbolic of the entire human race, is unclear. In any event, as Bouteneff notes, Origen could on different occasions speak of “Adam” both as a generic term for humanity and as an actual person in the genealogical line of Israel.[13]  It is probably best to conclude that Origen saw no reason to think a historical Adam was “impossible” and that therefore that the literal sense should be taken as historical.

A Dual Fall, Or Not

At the same time, in this passage in Contra Celsus Origen also hints at a notion of the human fall that extends beyond the “historical”:

And the expulsion of the man and woman from paradise, and their being clothed with tunics of skins (which God, because of the transgression of men, made for those who had sinned), contain a certain secret and mystical doctrine (far transcending that of Plato) of the souls losing its wings, and being borne downwards to earth, until it can lay hold of some stable resting-place.[14]

References such as this one led many ancient critics, and still convince many modern scholars, to conclude that Origen believed in a two-stage Fall:  a first fall of preexistent souls from paradise and “into” physical bodies, and a second fall of physical “Adam.”[15]  Bouteneff, however, sides with another line of scholarship that views these apparent “stages” of the human fall simply as different modes of discourse through which Origen seeks to explain the spiritual meaning of the diverse Biblical texts.[16]

A full effort at resolving this interpretive disagreement is beyond the scope of this post, but there are passages in On First Principles that could support either or both views.  For example, at one point Origen seems to understand the cycle of fall and return as an allegory of every person’s spiritual journey: “when each one, through participation in Christ in his character of wisdom and knowledge and sanctification, advances and comes to higher degrees of perfection,” God is glorified. [17]   Because God always offers forgiveness, “[a] fall does not therefore involve utter ruin, but a man may retrace his steps and return to his former state and once more set his mind on that which through negligence had slipped from his grasp.”[18]  In other places, though, Origen’s text seems to echo the Platonic mythology more literally.  For example:  “All rational creatures who are incorporeal and invisible, if they become negligent, gradually sink to a lower level and take to themselves bodies suitable to the regions into which they descend; that is to say, first, ethereal bodies, and then aeriel.”[19]

The Importance of “Matter”

One hint at a constructive resolution of the ambiguities in Origen’s views about the Fall might lie in Origen’s lengthy discourse on “matter” in Book IV, Chapter IV of On First Principles, which serves as a summary of the entire treatise.  Origen understood “matter” to be “that substance which is said to underlie bodies.”[20] Origen noted that humans exist bodily in various states, such as “awake or asleep, speaking or silent,” that do not comprise a human person’s “underlying substance.”[21]  The philosophical problem Origen was confronting here is the relationship between the “one” and the “many” (or the “universal” and the “particular”), which is so central Greek thought, and his division between substance and particulars was classically Platonic.[22]  However, in this part of his treatise, Origen also was attempting to show how the Christian doctrine of creation differed from the Aristotelian idea, which may also be present in Plato’s Timaeus, of the eternity of the cosmos.[23]  Origen, like other early Christian writers, sought to counter this reasoning in light of the Biblical revelation about the temporality of the immaterial creation.[24]

Although Origen wanted to deny the eternity of the material cosmos, he recognized that a radical disjunction between God’s eternal being and the purposes of creation – as though at some defined point in time God suddenly decided to create matter – would compromise God’s eternity and simplicity by introducing a temporal sequence into God’s own life.  Origen therefore borrowed another move from Platonism that would become a classically Christian – indeed, eventually an Augustinian – move:  he located the unchangeable substance, the “one,” in the eternal mind of God, and separated it from the created matter that will receive its form.  Here is how Origen summarized his conclusion:

since, then, as we have said, rational nature is changeable and convertible, so of necessity God had foreknowledge of the differences that were to arise among souls or spiritual powers, in order to arrange that each in proportion to its merits might wear a different bodily covering of this or that quality; and so, too, was it necessary for God to make a bodily nature, capable of changing at the Creator’s will, by an alteration of qualities, into everything that circumstances might require.  This nature must needs endure so long as those endure who need it for a covering; and there will always be rational natures who need this bodily covering.[25]

Concerning Adam, in other words, from eternity past God knew Adam would fall, and therefore God created a material body for Adam appropriate to a fallen creature.  While “Adam” is a changeable and imperfect being, God’s intellect and foreknowledge are perfect and unchanging.  Consistent with the “two-stage fall” reading of Origen, then, it is probably true that Origen envisioned the pre-material fall of Adam as an actual event in the ontology of creation, but there is also a sense in which that pre-material ontology of creation for Origen is an ideal in God’s eternal mind rather than a series of events in the “historical” timeline of creation.  The “pre-material” fall therefore was not so much part of a sequence of “historical” events as a trans-historical reality that is manifested in history.  As discussed in my next post, this ontological connection between the trans-historical and the historical ties directly into the relationship between Christology and theological anthropology.

______________________________________

[1] See Bouteneff, Beginnings, 103-107.

[2] Origen, On First Principles, trans. G.W. Butterworth (Notre Dame:  Ave Maria Press 2013), IV.II.9.  Following scholarly convention, this text will be referred to hereafter as DP, the initials for the Latin title of the text, De Principiis.  The Section, Chapter and Paragraph numbers to the standard scholarly division of the text will be provided.  Unless otherwise indicated, Butterworth’s translation is from a Greek version of the text.

[3] DP IV.II.9.

[4] DP IV.IV.1.

[5] DP IV.II.9.

[6] DP IV.III.4.

[7] DP IV.III.7.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Origen, Contra Celsus, trans. Frederick Crombie (Buffalo:  Christian Literature Publishing 1884), available at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0416.htm, 4:40.  Citations to this text will use the standard scholarly abbreviation C. Cels. and will refer to the standard scholarly section and paragraph divisions.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Jaques-Paul Migne, Patrologiae Cursus Completus, Series Graeca (Parise:  Imprimerie Catholique  1857), Vol. 11, available on Google Books athttps://books.google.com/books?id=qAkRAAAAYAAJ.  A Greek text file from Migne, from which I made my translation, is available at http://khazarzar.skeptik.net/pgm/PG_Migne/Origenes_PG%2011-17/Contra%20Celsum.pdf.  A good article describing Migne’s collection is available on Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrologia_Graeca.

[13] Bouteneff, Beginnings, 111.

[14] C. Cels. 4:40.

[15] See Bammel, Caroline P. Hammond, “Adam in Origen,’ in Rowan Williams, ed., The Making of Orthodoxy:  Essays in Honour of Henry Chadwick, 62-93 (Cambridge:  CUP 1989).

[16] Bouteneff, Beginnings, 108.

[17] DP I.III.8.

[18] Ibid.

[19] DP I.IV.1.  He continues:  “And when they reach the neighborhood of the earth they are enclosed in grosser bodies, and last of all are tied to human flesh.”  Ibid.

[20] DP IV.IV.6.

[21] DP IV.IV.7.

[22] For a discussion of this problem in Platonism generally, see Gerald A. Press, “Plato” and Lloyd P. Gerson, “Plotinus and Neo-Platonism” in Richard H. Popkin, ed., The Columbia History of Western Philosophy (New York:  Columbia Univ. Press 1999).  For a discussion of the problem of particulars and universals in Platonism, see Balaguer, Mark, “Platonism in Metaphysics”, in Edward N. Zalta, ed., The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2016 Edition, Sec. 3 (“The One Over Many Argument”), available at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/platonism/#3.

[23] See ibid. (noting that “we absolute deny that matter should be called unbegotten or uncreated”).  For Aristotle’s discussion of the eternity of the cosmos see Aristotle, On the Heavens, trans. J.L. Stocks (Oxford:  Clarendon Press 1927), Books I and II, available at http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/heavens.2.ii.html.  The Hellenistic Jewish philosopher Philo, with whose work Origen was well-acquainted, was also very concerned about this question.  See Philo, On the Eternity of the World, in The Works of Philo, trans Charles Duke Yonge (London: H.G. Bohn 1854-1890), available at http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/yonge/book35.html.  For a discussion of the relationship between Origen’s thought and Philo’s, see David T. Runia, Philo and the Church Fathers:  A Collection of Papers, Chapter Six (New York:  E.J. Brill 1995).

[24] See, e.g., Harry A. Wolfson, Patristic Arguments Against the Eternity of the World, Harvard Theological Review 59:4 (Oct. 1966), 351-367.

[25] DP IV.IV.8.

 

 

Categories
Early Christianity Origen Patristics Science and Religion

Origen on Adam, Part 2: Locating Origen’s Views

800px-origen-768x911This is the second post in my series about Origen and “Adam.”

Today Origen is widely recognized in both the Western and Eastern branches of the Church as one of Christianity’s great early thinkers, even if some of the details of his protology and eschatology remain suspect, or at least subject to historical dispute.[1]  However, several problems confront anyone who seeks to understand “Origen’s view” of Adam, sin, and the Fall.

First, like all of the early Church Fathers, Origen did not produce a definitive “systematic theology” treatise.[2]  Origen is, of course, recognized as one of the first “systematic” Christian thinkers because of his effort to produce a sustained, philosophically and Biblically integrated argument in his treatise On First Principles, from which these posts will draw heavily.  Much of what we know today about Origen’s thought, however, is derived from more occasional, less systematic sources, in particular his extensive Biblical commentaries and homilies.  As Peter Bouteneff has argued, Origen’s theology primarily was an exercise in Biblical exegesis in conversation with the Church’s experience with Christ and the Rule of Faith.[3]

A second problem is that the textual tradition for some of Origen’s key writings sometimes is ambiguous.  For some key writings, such as his Commentary on Genesis, only isolated fragments survive.  For other key writings, such as On First Principles, there is a Latin translation by Rufinus that might gloss some potentially heterodox passages, and some Greek fragments preserved in the Philocalia that may or may not always be faithful to the lost original Greek text.[4]

A third problem is a significant reason for the textual issues:  some of Origen’s ideas, which were controversial even in his lifetime, were seemingly anathematized by the Second Council of Constantinople in 553 C.E. upon the urging of the Emperor Justinian, about three hundred years after Origen’s death.[5]  The circumstances leading up to the anathemas included numerous intellectual and political disputes and intrigues between “Origenist” and “anti-Origenist” schools that developed after Origen’s death.  There is considerable question today about whether the concepts condemned at the Second Council of Constantinople could really be fairly traceable unalloyed to Origen himself.[6]  The result is that Origen’s intellectual legacy is somewhat obscured.

These three problems suggest that we cannot truly claim to know “what Origen thought” about Adam, sin and the Fall.  We cannot cite Origen as some sort of counter-authority to Augustine, even if an argument from authority in this context could otherwise be valid.  What we can do is peek into the workings of this great early Christian mind for insights that might help us make sense of these questions today.  We’ll start to do that in the next post.

________________

[1] See, e.g., Hans Urs von Balthasar, Origen:  Spirit and Fire, trans. Robert J. Daly, S.J. (Washington D.C.: Catholic Univ. of America Press 1984), 1 (stating that “[i]t is all but impossible to overestimate Origen and his importance for the history of Christian thought”); Pope Benedict XVI, Great Christian Thinkers:  From the Early Church Through the Middle Ages (Minneapolis:  Fortress Press 2011), 19-25 (stating that Origen was one of the most “remarkable” and “crucial” figures in the history of Christian thought).

[2] For a good discussion of the nature and sources of Origen’s corpus, see von Balthasar, Origen:  Spirit and Fire, 1-23.

[3] Bouteneff, Beginnings, 94-96.  For a good discussion on debates in contemporary Origen scholarship about how to read Origen, see Wilson, Origen.

[4] von Balthasar, Spirit and Fire, 21-22; Bouteneff, Beginnings, 95.

[5] An English translation of the Acts of the Second Council of Constantinople is available at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3812.htm.

[6] For a discussion of this history, see Wilson, Origen, 64-66.

Categories
Historical Theology Origen Patristics Science and Religion

Origen on Adam

800px-origen-768x911This will begin a series of posts on how the 3rd Century theologian Origen might help us think about “Adam.”  The question “who was Adam” presents difficult issues for Christian theology.  Following the lead of St. Augustine, “Western” Christian theology historically has emphasized the implication of each human being in the primordial sin of Adam – that is, Western theological traditions tend toward robust versions of the doctrine of “original sin.”[1]  There are significant philosophical, critical, and scientific problems with this approach.[2]  Philosophically, it is unclear why it is just for God to hold the rest of humanity accountable for Adam’s actions. [3]  Critically, it is unclear that the Hebrew scriptures ever meant to suggest any doctrine of “original sin” or whether the locus classicus for the doctrine in the Pauline New Testament literature was properly translated and understood by Augustine.[4]  Scientifically, it is now clear from various lines of evidence that the population of anatomically modern humans evolved gradually over millions of years from a common ancestor shared with the great apes, and that the present human population could not have genetically derived from a single common ancestral pair.[5]  In other words, a flatly literal “Adam and Eve,” which seems to be required by the Augustinian view, is scientifically impossible.

In response to these concerns, many contemporary theologians suggest that “Eastern” traditions, which are less connected to the “Western” / Augustinian view of original sin, can more easily manage these tensions.[6]  Some of these writers seek to bring Eastern views into conversation with modern liberal or neo-orthodox theology, which tends to emphasize the metaphorical nature of the Biblical creation accounts, and with the trend in recent theology towards social Trinitarianism, which can map onto a social (rather than Western “individualistic”) ontology of what it means to be “human.”[7]

These gestures towards “Eastern” thought are helpful in the sense that they do highlight the “mythic” dimensions of the Biblical creation narratives and the irreducibly social construction of human identity.  They tend, however, towards broad generalizations that often do not account for the more nuanced and complex philosophical matrix that informed many of the Eastern Church Fathers as they thought about creation, humanity, and the Fall.  In this regard, Origen is an interesting figure to study because of the historic anathemas against his supposedly aberrant neo-Platonic views about the pre-existence of souls.[8]  As we shall see, Origen did indeed draw heavily on Platonism, but his views about Adam and the Fall were far more subtle than is often supposed.  Indeed, I will argue that elements of Origen’s views could be useful to a contemporary Christian theology of Adam and original sin.

In my next post, I’ll examine some threshold problems in locating “Origen’s views” about Adam.

____________________________________________

[1] For a good summary of the doctrine and its Augustinian roots, see Ian McFarland, “The Fall and Sin,” in John Webster, Kathryn Tanner, and Iain Torrance, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology (Oxford:  OUP 2007), 140-157.

[2] For a general discussion of contemporary objections to the Augustinian doctrine of original sin, see Alistair McFadyen, Bound to Sin:  Abuse, Holocaust and the Doctrine of Sin (Cambridge:  CUP 2000), at pp. 40-41.

[3] Concerning objections to the Augustinian doctrine, see McFarland, “The Fall and Sin.”  For a more in-depth discussion, see David Kelsey, Eccentric Existence:  A Theological Anthropology, Vol. 1 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox 2009); Veli Matti Karkainnen, Creation and Humanity:  A Constructive Christian Theology for the Pluralistic World, Vol. 3 (Grand Rapids:  Eerdmans 2015), Chapter 15.

[4] See, e.g., Peter Bouteneff, Beginnings:  Ancient Christian Readings of the Biblical Creation Narratives (Grand Rapids:  Baker Academic 2008).

[5] For a general overview of the evidences for human evolution, see Steve Jones, Robert Martin, and David Pilbeam, eds., The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Human Evolution (Cambridge:  CUP 1996).  For a series of articles on why population genetics precludes a single genetic ancestor of all modern humanity, See Dennis Venema, BioLogos Forum,” Letters to the Duchess,” available at http://biologos.org/blogs/dennis-venema-letters-to-the-duchess/series/adam-eve-and-human-population-genetics.

[6] For a general discussion of the “Eastern” view, see Peter Bouteneff, “Christ and Salvation,” in Mary B. Cunningham and Elizabeth Theokrotoff, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Orthodox Christian Theology (Cambridge:  CUP 2008), 94; Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church (New York:  Penguin Books 1997), 222-225.

[7] See, e.g., Kelsey, Eccentric Existence; Karkainnen, Creation and Humanity, Chapter 15.

[8] For a discussion of the historical disputes over Origenism, see Joseph Trigg Wilson, Origen (London:  Routledge 2002).

 

Categories
Theology Thought

Oakes on Grace (And Back at Writing)

oakescoverI’ve been thinking for a while of blogging regularly again.  The last time I tried was February 2015.  Looking back over this site, there are materials on it dating from 2004!  Some of it’s quite good (I think), most of it shows ways in which I’ve both changed and stayed consistent over more than a decade of writing.  So, let me try to get it going again.  We’ll start with a wonderful new book that you must read, A Theology of Grace in Six Controversies, by the late Edward T. Oakes, S.J.

Anyone must love a book that opens with a portion of Boethius’ The Consolation of Philosophy.  Boethius asks “Lady Philosophy” to “reveal these mysteries and explain those things that are clouded and hidden.”  At this request, Boethius says,

She hesitated a moment, then smiled and at last replied:  ‘This is the great question, isn’t it?  It is a problem that can never be fully soled even by the most exhaustive discourse. For when one part of the conundrum is resolved, others pop up, like the heads of the Hydra.  What is needed to restrain them is intellectual fire.  Otherwise, we are in a morass of difficulties — the singleness of providence, the vicissitudes of fate, the haphazardousness of events, God’s plan, predestination, free will.  All these knotty questions come together and are intertwined. . . . [So] you must be patient for a bit while I construct the arguments and lay them out for you in proper sequence.’

It is these Hydra-headed problems Oakes addressed in this book.  As we will see, Oakes did so gracefully and winsomely, without pretending to offer ultimate solutions.

Categories
Scripture Spirit

Calendar and Lectionary: Transfiguration Sunday

Icon_of_transfiguration_(Spaso-Preobrazhensky_Monastery,_Yaroslavl)This Sunday in the Church Calendar we remember the transfiguration” of Jesus.  Our Lectionary reading in Mark 9:2-9 contains an account of this event.

In chapter 8 of Mark’s Gospel, we see Jesus feeding a crowd and healing a blind man.  There is a palpable sense of excitement that leads to Peter’s bold assertion that Jesus is, indeed, the Messiah. (Mark 8:27-29.)  But Jesus warns the disciples not to tell anyone about this truth, and then tells them plainly that he will be killed and will rise again! (Mark 8:31-32.)  Peter, in particular, is scandalized by this message. (Mark 8:32-33.)  Jesus tells Peter and the other disciples that the way of his Kingdom is the way of the cross:  “Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.'” (Mark 8:34.)

It’s not hard to imagine that the disciples were confused, even perhaps a bit angered, by these words.  They expected a Messiah who would lead them to victory, not one who would lead them to a cross. Yet Jesus mentioned not only the cross, but a resurrection. And in Mark’s Gospel Jesus immediately assures the disciples that “some who are standing here will not taste death before they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.”  (Mark 9:1.)

Immediately following this claim Mark provides his account of the Transfiguration.  After a six day period, Jesus takes Peter, James and John to a “high mountain” where Jesus “was transfigured before them. His clothes became dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them. And there appeared before them Elijah and Moses, who were talking with Jesus.”  The account in Matthew’s Gospel is similar to Mark’s (see Matthew 17), but Luke’s Gospel says the Transfiguration occurred “about eight days” after Jesus told the disciples that some would see his Kingdom come within their lifetimes.  (See Luke 9.)

It is clear from these accounts that the Transfiguration is the fulfillment of Jesus’ promise that some of his disciples would see the Kingdom of God come in their lifetimes.  Indeed, the second epistle of Peter testifies to the enduring impact of this event:  “For we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty.  For when He received honor and glory from God the Father, such an utterance as this was made to Him by the Majestic Glory, ‘This is My beloved Son with whom I am well-pleased’ — and we ourselves heard this utterance made from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain.”  (2 Peter 1:16-18.) The Transfiguration assures us that the present sufferings of the way of the cross are not permanent. It in a sense opens the veil between Earth and Heaven and allows us to glimpse the indescribable glory and peace that accompany and await Jesus, his Apostles, and by extension his Church — us — on a mission that requires death but culminates in resurrection.

This theological and missional significance of the Transfiguration may provide a hint concerning the enigmatic time period between Peter’s confession and the Transfiguration.  Remember that, in the first creation narrative in Genesis 1, God creates in six days and rests on the seventh.  Matthew and Mark are suggesting that the vision of the Transfiguration is a vision of rest. They present suffering of creation — the way of the cross — is somehow necessary before the time of rest.  As for Luke, is he simply providing a time frame that he doesn’t precisely recall — “about eight days?”  (This hesitancy is, in fact, a fair rendering of the Greek text.)  Or, is Luke’s Gospel reflecting a theme that developed somewhat later in the Christian Tradition: that the creation “week” really contains eight “days,” not seven, and that the “eighth day” is the day of resurrection and re-creation?  I see this last theme in all three accounts.  The Transfiguration shows us that all things will be “transfigured” — changed and transformed into what they were truly created to be, and revealed to be what they truly are.

Categories
Thought

Ric Machuga on "Three Theological Mistakes"

machuga-333x372I’m starting a series on Ric Machuga’s new book Three Theological Mistakes:  How to Correct Enlightenment Assumptions about God, Miracles and Free Will.    I had an opportunity to give some comments to Ric about an earlier version of the text, and Wipf and Stock gave me a final copy for review.

In the Preface, Machuga sets for himself a big task:

This book addresses five big questions.

  • Is the existence of God a matter of faith or knowledge?
  • Does God sometimes act miraculously or are there physical causes for everything?
  • Is morality absolute or relative?
  • Are humans truly free or does God’s sovereignty determine everything?

  • When bad things happen, is God the only cause or are they the fault of humans?

With a set-up like this, it might seem that we’re in for a polemic from one side or the other.  Not so in this case.  Machuga continues:

Too frequently Christians answer these questions with a Yes to one side and a No to the other side.  Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth answer Yes to both, in all cases.  Following their model, I will defend a ‘third way’ which transcends the dichotomies of fideism versus rationalism, supernaturalism versus naturalism, relativism versus absolutism, free will versus predestination, and God’s justice versus his mercy.

A third way that draws on both Aquinas and Barth?  Set the hook, and reel me in!  Indeed, Machuga addresses all these questions with careful and eloquent arguments and shows how both Aquinas and Barth can serve as resources for a philosophical theology that avoids the reductionistic trends of modern thought.  Next week, we’ll look at Machuga’s take on mechanism and the limits of logic.

 

Categories
Theology Thought

Christian Theological Ethics: Euthyphro Dilemma

I’m teaching a class in Christian Theological Ethics as an adjunct at Alliance Theological Seminary this term.

For every class I will post a discussion question that will help frame our conversations in class.  Often these questions will involve a concrete ethical problem.  For the first class, however, our discussion question is a bit more theoretical.  It comes from one of Plato’s dialogues and is a classic starting point for thinking about how theology — and particularly the doctrine of God — relates to “ethics.”

Plato’s dialogues are a unique form of literature.  They are presented as reports of conversations between a great teacher, Socrates, and some conversation partner or partners, in this case Euthyphro.  Socrates probes the assumptions of his interlocutors by asking pointed questions.  In the Euthyphro dialogue, Socrates and Euthyphro are having a conversaton about goodness and justice.  Socrates asks whether it is good and just for the state to punish a murderer, when the punishment results in harm to the murderer.  In other words, Socrates asks why it is ethically acceptable to harm a murderer through punishment but not ethically acceptable to harm others by committing murder.  Euthyhpro responds by suggesting that the gods have declared murder immoral and subject to punishment.  Socrates then asks why the will of the gods should determine what is or is not good and just.  Here is a key part of that discussion:

Euth. . . . I should say that what all the gods love is pious and holy, and the opposite which they all hate, impious.

Soc. Ought we to enquire into the truth of this, Euthyphro, or simply to accept the mere statement on our own authority and that of others? What do you say?

Euth. We should enquire; and I believe that the statement will stand the test of enquiry.

Soc. We shall know better, my good friend, in a little while. The point which I should first wish to understand is whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods.

A bit later in the dialogue, Socrates frames the key question as follows:

Soc. And is, then, all which is just pious? or, is that which is pious all just, but that which is just, only in part and not all, pious?

Euthyphro responds by suggesting that piety is just because it honors the gods.  Socrates responds that people are pious because they are afraid of the gods, who have the power to destroy their lives, just as oxen or cattle obey a herdsman who weilds a whip:

Soc. I should not say that where there is fear there is also reverence; for I am sure that many persons fear poverty and disease, and the like evils, but I do not perceive that they reverence the objects of their fear.

The discussion between Socrates and Euthyhpro then goes on to explore the relationship between piety and fear.

All of this dialogue establishes what we today call the “Euthyphro Dilemma”:  Is what God commands “good” because God commands it, or does God command it because it is “good”?

If the former is true — what God commands is “good” because God commands it — then it is hard to see how the term “good” has any meangingful content.  God’s commands could be entirely arbitrary.  One day God might command us to love our neighbors as ourselves, and the next day he might command us to slaughter our neighbors.  If we obey these arbirary commands, our obedience will arise only from fear of God’s absolute and terrible power.

We might respond, then, that God only commands that which is really “good,” even if we do not always fully understand the goodness of God’s commands.  But this response suggests that God is bound by a principle higher than God’s self — some principle of “the good.”  The problem here is that the definition of “God” entails absolute perfection.  There can be no principle of “the good” that limits God’s commands or compels God to act, because God would then not really be “God.”  There would be some principle higher or more authoritative than “God,” which in a sense would itself by “God.”

In both popular and academic literature, sermons, and so-on, you will often hear statements about morality and ethics that impale themselves on one or the other of the horns of the Euthyphro Dilemma.  Why did God command the Israelites to destroy the Canaanites?  A common response is along these lines:  “Who are we to question God’s commands — God can do whatever He wants.”  This kind of response makes God’s commands utterly arbitrary and destroys any objective concept of “the good.”  Alternatively, we might suggest that the Biblical witness concerning these commands is untrustworthy and perhaps should be edited out of our Bibles:  “God would never command His people to do something unjust.”  This kind of response seems to suggest a standard of “justice” that sits in judgment over God Himself.

The readings assgined for our first class point towards a way between the horns of the Euthyhpro Dilemma for Christian theological ethics.  The key, as we will discuss in class, lies in a robust understanding of the doctrine of God.

Categories
Scripture Spirit Thought

Commentary on Psalm 107: Part 1: "Good"

This series is a theological / spiritual commentary on Psalm 107.  I don’t pretend to have great expertise in critical Biblical studies, which I find incredibly valuable, but this is an exercise in theological and spiritual exegesis.

Good.

Psalm 107 opens with a familiar refrain:

Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good;
his love endures forever.

This is the most basic statement of God’s character in scripture.  The LORD is “good.”  The word “good” in this text is the same word used for the creation in Genesis 1.  This tells us much about what it means to say that God is “good.”

Water and sky, land and trees, fish and birds, are “good.”  These things nurture and sustain us.  They are life.  Without them, we shrivel and die, we cease to be.   Our human being itself is “very good” (Gen. 1:27-31).  God is “good” as life itself is “good.”

The word “as” in this sentence suggests that this is an analogy.  When theologians speak about “analogy” we mean that because God is truly God, we can say nothing that fully measures or contains Him.  To say God is “good” as trees and water and birds are “good” is not to limit God to the “goodness” of those created things.  Rather, it is to say that if we imagine the highest “good” of any of those things, we must try to imagine it infinitely more so when we try to think of God.  If water gives quenches our thirst, sustains our bodies, and revives our spirits, how much more does God do the same?  If a lack of water causes us to shrivel and die, how much more does a lack of God do the same?

Of course, we cannot truly understand the “infinite,” so to say that God sustains us infinitely more than water is already to admit that the excess of God’s “goodness” over that of creation is itself something our human minds cannot contain.  “The LORD is good” therefore is no modest claim.  Is it a claim we can truly learn to trust?

Photo Source: Terry Ratcliff / Flickr (Creative Commons)

Categories
Biblical Studies Scripture

God's Concern for the Marginalized in the OT, Part 3: Joshua – 2 Kings

This post is from a paper I wrote for an Old Testament class at Wycliffe College.  The prompt was as follows:  Discuss God’s concern for the outsider (the poor, the widow, the orphan, the marginalized, etc.) in Genesis–2 Kings.

Here is Part 3:  Joshua – 2 Kings.

The theme of the marginalized and outsider in Joshua – 2 Kings presents the same meta-difficulty as does this theme in connection with the Law:  these are narratives that describe or presume military conquest and displacement of “native” people.  Once again, we can draw on the concept that Israel is the “marginalized” or “outsider” character in relation to the violent Canaanite nations and in relation to Babylon if parts of the final text are post-exilic.  This will not satisfy all our contemporary objections to the notion of herem warfare, but it is a fair characterization of the texts.

At the same time, these texts offer some wonderful micro-examples that demonstrate God’s concern for particular marginalized or “outsider” individuals.  A prime example is that of Rahab.  (See Joshua 2).  As the lecture notes on Rahab indicate, there is debate about whether Rahab was a “prostitute” / Madame or merely an innkeeper.  I think the former interpretation is most likely correct because it fits the canonical context of women who have been treated as prostitutes and then vindicated, including Dinah (Gen. 34:1-31); Tamar (Gen. 38:12-30); and the Levite’s concubine (Judges 19).  The example of Tamar is particularly interesting because of the motif of a “scarlet thread” (cf. Gen. 38:27-30; Joshua 2:17).  That one of the heroes of the conquest / historical narratives was a non-Jewish prostitute demonstrates vividly God’s concern for the outsider.

The Levite’s concubine is another basic example of this concern.  (Judges 19).  Indeed, I think the Levite’s concubine narrative is a paradigmatic text in the Hebrew Scriptures.  The story is complex because the concubine seems in some respect to have “deserved” her “outsider” status since she was “unfaithful” to her husband / master.  (Judges 19:1-2).  But there are hints that the husband / master might have also been at fault and perhaps was abusive or at least had treated her unfairly.  The fact that the woman returned to her father, who had the means to entertain the Levite and was able to persuade the Levite to accept four days of hospitality, suggests there are tribal or economic issues bubbling under the surface.  Perhaps the woman and her father were trying to persuade the Levite to make his “concubine” a “legitimate” or primary wife or to become a subsidiary part of the father-in-law’s household.

It seems, however, that the Levite would not agree.  (Judges 19:10).  The Levite departed from the concubine’s father’s house and then failed to protect the concubine while he was a guest at a Benjamite’s home.  (Judges 19:16-26).  Instead of feeling remorse and caring for the concubine’s burial after her abuse, the Levite cut her body into twelve pieces “and sent them into all the areas of Israel.”  (Judges 19:29-30), provoking a civil war between the other tribes of Israel and the Benjamites that culminated in atrocities by the Benjamites and the other tribes together against Jabesh Gilead.  (Judges 19:30 – 21:24).  The dénouement of this bizarre sequence of events is the familiar refrain:  “In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit.”  (Judges 21:25).

The Levite’s concubine, I think, represents the poor and oppressed in Israel.  She is not herself perfect, but she presents the Levite – the representative of the Priestly class, tasked with ensuring that the law is kept – with an opportunity for reconciliation and mercy.  Instead, the Levite chooses a course of action that leads to violence and social fracture.  The Levite’s failure to care for an outcast, a scorned concubine, led to violence that prefigured the final dissolution of the nation.

After Judges in the Old Testament canon, the book of Ruth is a classic text regarding God’s concern for the outsider and marginalized.  Ruth determines to stay with her mother-in-law Naomi even though Ruth’s immediate fortunes undoubtedly would have risen had she returned to Moab after Naomi’s sons Mahlon and Kilion died.  (Ruth 1:1-18).  Ruth is then taken in by Boaz and becomes a link in the line of King David.  (Ruth 2:1 – 4:22).  The obvious lesson here is that God remembers and honors ordinary faithful people such as Ruth.  It is important to note, however, that Ruth also took advantage of the opportunities presented to her, not least when she took the provocative and perhaps sexually daring step of uncovering Boaz’s feet and sleeping in his presence.  (Ruth 3:1-18).  A further lesson might be that God expects everyone, even the poor and marginalized, to use whatever opportunities are provided to them.

1 Samuel is yet another example of God’s care for women who are socially marginalized because of childlessness.  (1 Sam. 1:1-19).  Hannah’s prayer after she dedicates Samuel to God’s service reflects this theme directly:

[The Lord] raises the poor from the dust
and lifts the needy from the ash heap;
he seats them with princes
and has them inherit a throne of honor.

(1 Sam. 2:8) (NIV).  Hannah’s prayer prefigures God’s choice of David as King.  David was an ordinary shepherd boy,  “ruddy, with a fine appearance and handsome features,” but not respected by his brothers.  (1 Sam. 16:12, 17:1-58) (NIV).  In 2 Samuel 9, David himself reenacts the truth of Hannah’s prayer by honoring Mephibosheth, the crippled son of Jonathan (and grandson of Saul) who was afforded an honored place at the King’s table.  (2 Sam. 9:1-13).

David’s story itself, however, soon becomes complicated.  In 2 Samuel 12, after David has committed adultery with Bathseeba and murdered her husband Uriah, the prophet Nathan confronts David with the parable of the poor man and his lamb.  (2 Sam. 12:1-7).  The remainder of 2 Samuel treats the rebellions against David by Absalom and Sheba, the revenge of the Gibeonites, and David’s legacy.  There are many difficulties in these texts for the theme of this paper, such as the fact that David handed over seven of Saul’s descendants to the Gibeonites “to be killed and exposed before the Lord….”  (2 Sam. 21:6).  Even in the context of this tribal vengeance practice, however, David spared Mephibosheth, and subsequently gave Saul, Jonathan, and those killed by the Gibeonites honored burials.  (2 Sam. 21:7-14).

1 Kings describes the rise of Solomon and the division of Israel and Judah after Solomon’s death.  Solomon famously began to follow other gods when his many non-Israelite wives and concubines led him astray in his old age, and this kindled God’s anger and set the stage for the united monarchy’s fall.  (1 Kings 11).  Solomon’s idolatry was linked to greed, which produced heavy burdens of taxation on the people.  His son Rehoboam followed in these footsteps and increased the quotas of forced labor, cementing the division of Israel and Judah.  (1 Kings 12).  This demonstrates once again the theme that failure to give proper worship to God is linked to exploitation of people without power, resulting in war and violence.

The last word, however, always belongs to God, and it is always a word of vindication.  This is one of the themes of the story of Naboth’s Vineyard, another longer narrative interlude in the cycles of rebellion and return throughout Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, and 1 and 2 Kings.  (1 Kings 21).  King Ahab desired the vineyard of an apparently ordinary man, Naboth, ultimately resulting in Naboth’s murder through the scheming of Ahab’s wife, Jezebel.[1]  God pronounced judgment on Ahab of a particularly ugly sort – Ahab’s house would be destroyed and Jezebel would be eaten by dogs – although because of Ahab’s repentance God relented until after Ahab’s death in battle.  (1 Kings 21:20-29).

God’s judgments and deliverances in these texts are mediated by prophets, that is, by individuals chosen and gifted by God to speak truth to power.  The final vignette I will focus on in this paper is that of the resuscitation of the Shunammite’s Son by the great prophet Elisha.  (2 Kings 3:8-36).  The Shunammite was a wealthy woman who regularly housed Elisha.  (2 Kings 3:8-10).  Although she was wealthy, like so many other women profiled in these texts, she was barren, and God surprisingly provided her with a son.  (2 Kings 3:15-17).  Her son died, perhaps of a heat stroke.  (2 Kings 3:18-21).  Through Elisha, the boy was miraculously revived.  (2 Kings 4:28-37).  It is unclear whether this is a narrative of a “miracle” or of some sort of physical resuscitation, given the precise description of Elisha’s actions:  “mouth to mouth, eyes to eyes, hands to hands.”  (2 Kings 4:34) (NIV).

Looking back at this text with a post-Easter hermeneutic, there are obvious resonances with the death and resurrection of the Son of God and with the Christian resurrection hope.  Perhaps more immediate to the redactors of the story’s canonical form, the text offers hope to Israel that the nation might yet again live after the Exile.  Even though 2 Kings ends with the fall of Jerusalem (2 Kings 25), God will send His prophets to give the nation breath, sight, and strength once again.  From Genesis 1 through 2 Kings, the “outcast” and “marginalized” is Israel, the people whom God will never abandon.

[1] Since Naboth is known by name and the vineyard is a family inheritance, however, it seems that Naboth was relatively prosperous.  (See 1 Kings 21:1-3).