Monthly Archives: December 2006

Geocaching–ever heard of it?

I’m shocked that I’ve never heard of this great new sport before–geocaching! It sounds like orienteering but with cool technical gadgets and bizarre intellectual riddles. Apparently they do it in Sweden. I wonder if it’s arrived here yet… It sounds like great fun…

What led me to this particular topic? Well, I got an alert on a blog post on Early Medieval Thuringia. Why would I be following random links to early medieval blog posts a half hour past midnight? ‘Cause I’m trying to get a syllabus for this semester put together before the family arrives home tomorrow morning. It’s coming…slowly.

Anyway–read this.

Thoughts on Lutheran Zephyr’s Thoughts on Dr. Levine’s Thoughts

The Lutheran Zephyr has got an interesting post up that engages some things said by Jewish New Testament scholar Amy-Jill Levine. He is reporting a summarization of her comments (so I’m probably commenting on fourth-hand material here; caveat lector…) that remind Christians that Jesus was, in fact, Jewish and that therefore knowing things Jewish are an important piece of understanding him. Here are my thoughts in response to LZ’s thoughts that may or may not address Dr. Levine’s actual thoughts. :-D

One of the real successes of the third quest for the Historical Jesus was the rediscovery of a Jewish Jesus. [Nutshell–First Quest: Reimarus to Wrede (18th and 19th centuries, see Schweitzer’s classic chronicle of it in Quest for the Historical Jesus); Second Quest: Bornkamm et all (1940’s-’50’s); Third Quest: Perrin, Jesus Seminar, Crossan, +Wright (80’s to the present, see Mark Alan Powell’s great recent work on it.)] In the sense that Dr. Levine is calling for a recognition of this, she is speaking to the non-scholarly audience; most NT scholars have been on board with it for at least a decade. Ditto with the latest trends in Pauline scholarship.

Yes, modern Christianity–indeed, Christianity through the ages–has had Marcionite tendencies that attempted to divorce the NT from the OT, Christians from Jews. The dark side of this are the well-known expressions of anti-semitism. This is something we have to guard against and more pastors need to wake up to that the fact that the NT really cannot be properly understood without a solid grounding in the OT. In fact, this is the way a lot of earnest interpreters get into real trouble…

What I don’t hear in your initial summary of Dr. Levine’s thoughts, LZ, is a reflection on Judaism, however. Quick history lesson: 2nd Temple Jewish religion was a complex mass of different groups, theologies, and practices. There were several groupings or sects that stand out and most treatments of the topic zero in on Josephus’s attempts to explain it to the Romans. From what we can tell from the surviving texts–he’s done quite a lot of oversimplifying. There were all kinds of ways of beng “Jewish” in the centuries before and after Christ and for a while being Christian was one of them. All of that dramatically changed in AD 70. The sack of the Temple and the descturction of Jerusalem was a huge blow not just to Jewish pride but, more importantly, to Jewish self-identity and religious conciousness. Suddenly several different ways of being Jewish disappeared overnight. That is, those who held that the heart of Jewish religion was the sacrifical system of the Temple were in real trouble. Furthermore, so were those who believed that they and only the held the real secrets to the Temple liturgies, not those damn usurpers in Jerusalem (after all, they couldn’t hope to take it over and set things right any more). In essence, the groups whose polity and piety and less to do with the Temple dealt with it better. Christians were one of these. After all, we claimed that the true temple was, in fact, the physically body of Christ and by extension, his mystical body. Another group who was philosophically cheek-and-jowl with early Christianity, the Pharisees, were also in a better place to cope since others. They had been arguing all along that the true temple is not just the Temple but the people of Israel; hence, they’d been harping for years that the temple purity regulations should be obeyed at home as well. (There really are a lot of similarities between the Pharisees and us; this little drive-by can’t hope to do them justice.) Anyway, time passed, Christians and Jews moved apart and those Jews who wanted to retain their religious heritage rather than just assimilating started talking and systematizing how to do that. And that process took a while. The first authoritative text on it, the Mishnah (or key parts of it), took written form around 200, the Gemara (commentary on the Mishnah) and the Talmud (commentary on the Mishnah and Gemara) came even later, in the 500’s or so.

Now–here’s the point that I really want to make about this.

Yes, Jesus was Jewish. No, Jesus did not practice Rabbinic Judaism. In fact, it didn’t exist until centuries after his death. That is, Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism developed alongside and with knowledge of one another. (Although, Christianity was essentially an entirely gentile enterprise from–say–the 150’s on so you can’t really say they were “competing.”) As a result, you can imagine that it bugs me when people who want to honor the religious roots of Jesus start pulling in practices of Rabbinic Judaism (The prime example being the Maundy Thursday Seder dinner. That’s a rant unto itself.) in the supposition that it’s “what Jesus did.” I respect they’re wanting to reconnect with Judaism in appropriate ways–that’s just not one of them… It’s historically anachronistic and more often than not does justice neither to Christian nor to Jewish theology.

Getting to LZ’s second point, there is a fundamental problem with the thoroughly protestant notion that Jesus has to be “rediscovered” by the means of historical inquiry. The distinction that some folks (like seminary professors) like to use to finesse this is to talk about the Jesus of History and the Christ of Faith. The idea here is that you can hold onto your theological Christ of Faith so you can dig and tackle the hard historical questions with your Jesus of History. The problem, as I touched on here, is that this attitude is fundamentally Nestorian.

I guess where it really comes down for me is this: are we looking for information about a historical figure in the past–or are we learning about a relationship with a living, dynamic being, who swoops up on us and shocks us with his love? Fudamentally, are we asking about the dead or the Living? If we believe that Christ is strongly and powerfully alive, then it changes the whole framework for how we shape the questions. As I see it, an undeniable part of what t means to be Christian is learning about how the relationship unfolded with our spiritual ancestors. If we really believe that the Church is the Body of Christ in more than just a metaphorical sense, then we must learn our history as part of learning about who he his. We must look for his face in the faces of the saints–then and now.

[And for the sake of full disclosure, many of the thoughts in that last paragraph come from a book I heartily recommend Living Jesus by Luke Johnson (a former Benedictine New Testament scholar).]

Anglican Identity

I’m back–hope your holidays were good. I’ll post on mine in a bit but this has been bugging me…

Over on Thinking Anglicans a commenter going by “Raspberry Rabbit” made the observation in the ongoing discussion about Truro/Falls Church that many who protest so loudly about Anglican identity may not be terrible well informed in it themselves. Rabbit mentioned one such vociferous “Anglican” who used to come to seminary classes in a Savlation Army uniform… One of the central topics in the current debate revolves around the notion of Anglican Identity. Everybody is sure that they have it and that the other side doesn’t. several things come to my mind including the reognition and realization that few in the debate in this corner of the web, at least, are cradle Anglicans. I’m a fairly recent convert myself. So how do we decide what is really Anglican and what isn’t without distorting things? It’s hard and the danger as to always before our eyes especially when we engage in polemics on who’s in and who’s out, who’s authentically Anglican and who’s not.

Personally, I have my own recommendation and criteria. It’s not really about formal theology since Anglicans have been all over the map on that one. Ditto on purity tests like the 39 Articles which were useful at a certain time and place for locating the English Church in the face of Rome, Geneva, and Wittenburg–and whose current application is one of the ongoing topics of debate. No, I go back to the prayerbook. Feel free to lecture me about Anglican identity–after you’ve spent at least a year living with the prayerbook Offices every morning and night and making it to Mass at least most of the Sundays and Holy Days. And for the record the edition doesn’t matter–’28, ’79, hell, I don’t care if you’re using the 1662 book. What is important is that Anglicans are people whose lives and thoughts about life (ergo, theology) are shaped in the context of these liturgies. The twice-daily recitation of the creed, the Lord’s Prayer, the versicles; the daily recitation of the canticles; the weekly celebration of the Mass; the monthly recitation of the Psalter; the yearly reading of the Scriptures, this is fundamentally what makes classic Anglicans in my book (literally…). Try that–then come back and harangue me about Anglican Identity.

On the Economic Trinity

This is prompted in part by a student paper from my mass of grading I’m slowly coming out from under…since I think my grades are due today…

 

If people complain that the Trinity isn’t in the Bible, they ought to complain even more about the Economic Trinity: “Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier.” The more I think about it, the more uncomfortable I am with it, especially in its current liturgical use. This formulation is—as far as I know—a construct of liberal protestant theology without particularly deep roots in Christian practice, especially in the ways it’s coming more and more into use. My reading of medieval sources in particular is often at odds with it in several key respects and highlights the dissonances within it for me.

 

Increasingly, the Economic Trinity is gaining favor as a liturgical substitute for the classical Trinitarian of “Father, Son, Holy Spirit”; functionally, people seem to map the terms with the various parts of the Godhead: Father=Creator, Redeemer=Son, Sanctifier=Holy Spirit. I don’t know if this was the original intent of the folks who constructed it or not but it’s certainly the way it’s playing out in our faith communities. And as strict equivalencies—they don’t work. Medieval catechetical documents lift up Christ as creator in ways at odds with this construction. And, when the dissonance is probed, the New Testament evidence—John, the Pauline group, the Petrines—comes down much more on the medieval side than the modern side. The same is true of disassociating the Father for the Redeemer;  who is it that leads out his people “with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm”?

 

Professional theologians have the learning and leisure to sit around and discuss how Christ is functioning in the Exodus narrative or in Creation and how the economic terms neither precisely limit nor delineate the persons of the Godhead—but most other folks don’t. I suggest we think real hard about the theological problems of replacing one with the other before making it an unreflective liturgical change. It’s the unreflective changes that seem like a good idea at the time that can lead not only us but our fellow believers into trouble…

Biblical Marriage Helps

My parents have recently sent a couple of books on marriage and family relationships (long story…). These books are authored by people with degrees from the Moody Bible Institute. They purport to give me biblical advice on dealing with relationships. As a biblical scholar—I’m underwhelmed. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think they’re chock full of conservative social principles with carefully selected biblical stories, vignettes and decontextualized sayings functioning as illustrations rather than real sources for the reflections. No, if I want a book teaching me how to have a good relationship as grounded in Holy Scripture, I want a book that wrestles with the hard questions and that seriously engages what’s actually in the text. Here’s a sampling of things I want to see and need advice on drawn directly from Scripture…:

  • How should I handle it when my wives team up against me?
  • What are the complexities and complications of family life when my wives are also sisters? Does sibling rivalry help or hurt a relationship?
  • What’s the proper etiquette when one of my wives sends her slave to have sex with me?
  • The parents of your wife/wives are your “in-laws”; what’s the proper form of address (and holiday gift giving requirements) for the parents of your concubines?

And this is just the beginning…

“No I amn’t!”

And yes, that last post would have been an opportunity to use one of Lil’ G’s favorite words—that isn’t a word. She’s quite good with language and is still working through the intricacies and rules of English use. Recently, she’s begun using the word “amn’t” (especially in defenses of her behavior or other denials) that functions in the same way as isn’t and aren’t. We’re attempting to persuade her that such a word really doesn’t exist. Linguistically, though, I am’nt sure why it doesn’t… My guess would be that the vowels I and a elide more naturally into “I’m” (hence the more standard “I’m not”) rather than the m and n.

Correction…

Ok, M didn’t say the blog was boring, just that it was primarily academic and political and didn’t talk much about our family life. And she’s entirely right. And yes, part of the point is to let our friends scattered around the country know what we’re up to so I’ll write more about such things.

G and H


Ok–for those wanting more G & H content, here they are–and some old guy at the mall:

And for the record, this is Santa, a person completely disctinct in our household from Saint Nicholas. St. Nicholas is a real person whom we celebrate in the German fashion on Dec 6–Santa is a guy the culture made up loosely based off of St. Nicholas.

M’s Review

M told me last night that she’s been reading the blog and has decided that—particularly in reference to other’s like LP’s—my blog is boring. I talk too much about Anglican stuff. Yeah, she’s probably right. So—a bit of levity for your Friday, a thought from the day from one of my co-workers that I’ll pass on for the amusement of the twisted:

 

Some people are like "slinkies". They’re not really good for anything; but they still bring a smile to your face when you push them down a flight of stairs.