{"id":3192,"date":"2017-01-17T16:25:17","date_gmt":"2017-01-17T16:25:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/?p=3192"},"modified":"2017-01-17T16:25:17","modified_gmt":"2017-01-17T16:25:17","slug":"ezekiel-jenson-on-prophecy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/2017\/01\/17\/ezekiel-jenson-on-prophecy\/","title":{"rendered":"Ezekiel: Jenson on Prophecy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"I’ve been enjoying reading through Ezekiel<\/a> lately with Robert Jenson’s Brazos Commentary<\/a>. \u00a0For any modern Christian reader, one of the problems presented by a text like Ezekiel is that of delayed prophecy. \u00a0Ezekiel speaks to the exiles in Babylon, who have grown cynical. \u00a0In Ezekiel 12:21-28, this discourse reaches one of many\u00a0points at which God instructs Ezekiel to announce that judgment will no longer be delayed:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mortal, what is this proverb of yours about the land of Israel, which says, \u201cThe days are prolonged, and every vision comes to nothing\u201d? <\/span>\u00a0<\/sup>Tell them therefore, \u201cThus says the Lord God<\/span>: I will put an end to this proverb, and they shall use it no more as a proverb in Israel.\u201d But say to them, The days are near, and the fulfillment of every vision. <\/span>\u00a0<\/sup>For there shall no longer be any false vision or flattering divination within the house of Israel. <\/span>\u00a0<\/sup>But I the Lord<\/span> will speak the word that I speak, and it will be fulfilled. It will no longer be delayed; but in your days, O rebellious house, I will speak the word and fulfill it, says the Lord God<\/span>. \u00a0(Ezekiel 12: 22-25<\/a> (NRSV)). <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From the perspective of the New Testament, and of Christian theology, however, Ezekiel’s prophecies\u00a0were<\/em> delayed, initially until the coming of Christ, and subsequently until Christ’s future return. \u00a0The premodern Christian interpretive strategy was to view such passages as prefiguring Christ. \u00a0One modern strategy, which Jenson calls neo-Protestant, has been to de-historicize\u00a0all Biblical eschatological hopes within a metaphysical view that negates any possibility of any teleology in history. \u00a0Another modern strategy, represented by dialectical theologians such as Karl Barth, was to render the Bible’s eschatological hopes as expressions of an immanent crisis to which each person is subject. \u00a0Yet another modern strategy, represented by dispensational theology and fundamentalism, was to render the ancient texts as code books for deciphering contemporary events.<\/p>\n

Against such modern trends, Jenson argues for a return to premodern exegesis, although in sympathy with dialectical theology, he is content to let the ambiguity and lack of resolution do its own work. \u00a0I appreciate Jenson’s comments here:<\/p>\n

Let us suppose that we find neither neo-Protestantism’s nor dialectical theology’s resolutions satisfactory. \u00a0What then?<\/p>\n

We should — in my view — begin by retrieving the church’s premodern construal. \u00a0The New Testament does in fact think that all the promises of God are fulfilled in Christ (e.g., Rom. 15:8), and so should Christian theology. \u00a0It is becoming even more obvious: \u00a0modern scholars’ insistence that the original sense of Old Testament anticipation cannot be christological or ecclesiological is not itself a scholarly result but an antecedent ideological construal of how history works. \u00a0There is no need to share this construal.<\/p>\n

We must, to be sure, be very careful not to suggest that, because the promises have been fulfilled in Christ, they no longer apply to the Jews as a people. But a nonsupersessionist construal is indeed possible and in some part already achieved.<\/p>\n

If we go on from the fulfillment of the Old Testament in Christ, the problems of delay devolve into one: \u00a0the so-called delay of the parousia. \u00a0And here the first thing to say is that the failure of primal Christianity’s expectation of Christ’s immediate advent is a plausible reason not to believe the gospel that proclaimed it. \u00a0If after nearly two millennia we find that gospel so compelling that we continue to hope, we should acknowledge that such a hope speaks a great “nevertheless.”<\/p>\n

Finnally, if we ask why the Lord is so slow, we may indeed adapt 2 Peter’s answer. \u00a0Those who write an dread this commentary should not complain that God did not end history millennia ago; he lingers to make room for us.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Jenson, Ezekial Commentary, 109-110.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been enjoying reading through Ezekiel lately with Robert Jenson’s Brazos Commentary. \u00a0For any modern Christian reader, one of the problems presented by a text like Ezekiel is that of delayed prophecy. \u00a0Ezekiel speaks to the exiles in Babylon, who have grown cynical. \u00a0In Ezekiel 12:21-28, this discourse reaches one of many\u00a0points at which God […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[31,81],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biblical-studies","category-ezekiel"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p824rZ-Pu","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3192"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3194,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3192\/revisions\/3194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}