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In a couple different blog contexts, the question of John Howard Yoder’s assertion of Christ’s independence (especially as expounded by Nate Kerr) has been raised. What is meant by “Christ’s independence” is multifaceted, but the short version of it is, as Yoder says that Christ lived among the powers of this age in a manner that was intensively “morally independent of their pretensions” (Politics of Jesus, p. 145). Jesus is thus a singularity within the history of humanity. He lives a life of moral freedom from the fallen powers (i.e. ideologies, structures, etc.) that enslave and determine human existence. He lives in independence from them, breaking their mythological yoke and opening up history to the life of God’s abundant freedom (i.e. the Spirit, Pentecost, Parousia).
What is meant by the independence of Jesus, then, is this radically irruptive singularity. This term signifies the way in which Christ’s moral existence was free from the machinations of the powers that sought to determine human history. Because Christ lived independently from all human powers, structures, ideologies, and authorities, he has exposed their rebelliousness and their contingency. In his resurrection, Christ’s life of moral independence from the powers was shown to be the truth of all of history. His independence from the powers goes all the way down to their most ultimate weapon: death.
Now, the question that often gets raised against this construal of Christ’s independence is the question of the Torah and of the history of Israel. Is not Christ conditioned, determined, and only intelligible within the framework of the history of Israel and its tradition? Does stressing Christ’s independence lead to some sort of Marcionism?
There are a few things that should be pointed out here. First, the notion that Israel and Torah constitute a prearranged “framework” for Christ’s intelligibility seems to me to be inherently supersessionist. If Israel and Torah are there to facilitate Christ’s mission in an instrumental sense it seems that they are, well, merely instrumental. This is a problem. Second, the notion that Jesus is made intelligible by his historical location in Israel and Judaism relies on a rather myopic reading of the Gospels. It doesn’t take that much of a heavy reading to see that Christ was clearly an irruptive presence within the national, social, and religious conventions of his context. However, in the midst of fairly clear interruption, revision, and inversion of many tenets of the Torah, Christ also claimed, not to be annulling it, but fulfilling it. What might this mean?
I think all of this, and the more important point about Jesus’s independence points us to a different construal of the relation between Christ, Israel, and the Torah. Rather than conceiving of Israel and Torah as a sort of framework that prepares the world for Jesus (as, for example T.F. Torrance does), we would do better to understand them as retroactive effects of Jesus’s own independent singularity. I have argued for something like this before in arguing that “we should see the biblical history of Israel and the nations, as preverberations, if you will, of Christ’s apocalyptic recreation of the world in the event of death and resurrection. Such a theology of recapitulation would see the apocalypse of Christ as the macrocosom, the mesoform within which created reality has its being and freedom.” In other words, Christ is not a predicate of Israel and Torah, rather they are retroactive events that irrupt from the very singularity that Christ is.
This ties into another important point that Kerr makes regarding his fundamental theological proposal that we understand divine action in Christ through the logics of singularity and excess. It is Christ’s singular reality, his independence which “unhands” and breaks open history, opening it up to the “more” of God, namely the Pentecostal mission of the Holy Spirit. Christ’s singular, apocalyptic reality is the very event which, by defeating the powers, opens the world to God’s radical love poured out in the Spirit. From within this logic of singularity and excess, we are able to propound a different and more fruitful reading of Israel and Torah than a conventional salvation-historical approach.
Rather than seeing Israel and Torah as precursors to Christ who make the way for him and his mission, we ought to see them as events of God’s own irruptive excess which Christ’s own singularity unleashes. Christ’s defeat of the powers liberates not only the future, but retroactively, the past. Torah and the history of Israel, like the history of the church is the story of the way in which Christ’s disruptive singularity, his independence from the powers has opened up the world to the freedom of the Holy Spirit. Israel and Torah are not conditions of Christ’s intelligibility or agency. Rather they are effects of his very particular singularity.
This is to take the distinctly Pauline idiom, “he is before all things and in him all things hold together” with the utmost seriousness. Likewise it is to insist that the Johannine, “before Abraham was, I Am” means exactly what it says. Indeed, stressing Christ’s independence is, in a cosmological and metaphysical sense, a way of talking about his eternality. Here we have the very specific historicality of Jesus coupled with the affirmation, grounded in the resurrection, that this singular one is before, above, and beyond all powers and realities. Christ’s independence means the adoption of an apocalyptic and doxological cosmology. It means understanding the world, politics, and history—including biblical history—as predicates of Christ’s own singularity. “He is before all things.” That is what it means to speak of Jesus’s independence.
I understand the instrumentalizing going on in viewing Israel as a prearranged “framework” for the coming of Christ, but I’m not so sure I understand your second point on how it is myopic to understand a strong relationship between the historical location of Israel and the intelligibility of Jesus.
I also am not entirely comfortable with the language of retroactive and preverberation. How is this less supersessionist? Israel is included in this account rather than merely instrumentalized, but it still takes on a relative and secondary significance to the event of Christ. Also, what do we make of the fact that it seems as though the biblical account of history itself thinks primarily in terms of prophecy and fulfillment?
In regard to the question about my second point, all I mean is that Jesus radically interrupts and shatters many aspects of what had come to be accepted as Israel and Torah. Thus the notion that they are the framework that renders him intelligible seems pretty questionable. Jesus was clearly a lot different than the context he entered into. That is the apocalyptic point.
Also, I see your point below, but I still prefer the language of retroactivity, on the basis of the Pauline point that Jesus is before all things and in him all things hold together. I don’t think that this is supersessionist in the same way at all. Rather it renders the history of Israel in the same light that it renders the history of the church, namely as part of humanity’s being opened up to the “more” of God through the mission of the Spirit.
Finally, I think prophecy and fulfillment need to be rethought as it bears on this issue. Clearly the Old Testament is not a straightforward “prediction” of Jesus in any simple sense. I don’t think seeing them as retroactive effects of Jesus’s singularity does violence to the nature of Israel’s exilic hope. Rather it just points to where the coherence of that hope is to be found, namely in Christ’s irruptive coming, which at once defines and constitutes the very nature of that hope.
I am not convinced that the “apocalyptic point” is even intelligible outside of Jesus’ Jewish context. It seems to me that Jesus’ apocalypticism is deeply traditional. I agree that apocalyptic emphasizes discontinuity, but I think such a discontinuity is in itself rooted in the life story of Israel.
Let me be clear. I’m not trying to isolate Jesus from his Jewish context as if that has no relevance for how we understand him. Only to decry the idea that seems to lie behind some of the criticisms of Jesus’s independence that Christ’s singularity can simply be rendered in terms of Israel. As if “Jewishness” is some sort of pre-packaged hermeneutical framework that just renders Christ correctly.
In other words, Jesus’s apocalyptic singularity is such that it resists being rendered intelligible by reference to anything else, including Israel. This is not to deny the connections, biblical and historical between Jesus and Israel. Only to put the center of gravity where it belongs.
Sorry, Halden. Didn’t read this well before I commented below. I just think you push this too far. From the standpoint of intelligibility, the gospels are situated within a canon for a reason. This does not at all necessitate that Jesus can be reduced to that canon or is in any way merely a product of the story; I take seriously the singularity. But Jesus’ singularity occurs within, though is not exhausted by, the context of the singularity of Israel, and separating them is deeply problematic.
I think a shift just happened in my brain…What you are saying makes a lot of sense. I’m going to spend years thinking through the implications of this as I read Scripture.
The more I’ve read Jesus as dependent upon a Jewish context, the less relevant the OT has become in my thinking.
Kinda like reading the Silmarillion (the mythical back-story to the Lord of the Rings). Once I got the necessary gist to understand the Trilogy, it wasn’t important to go back and really engage the deeper mythology of the Lord of the Rings.
In the same way, the OT has been like a cultural decoder ring for understanding Jesus. However, if I take what you say to heart, I can really embrace the OT as flowing from Christ himself. This does away with my own secret and unconfessed replacement theologies as the Hebrew Scriptures become part of the story of Christ himself–not just some prequel.
I’m not convinced, Halden. First of all, Christ being “before all things” does not necessarily denote sequence or chronology, but priority. Christ can be “before” Israel, both its archetype and consummation, while becoming at least partly intelligible via Israel’s story. Indeed, it is hard to see how it could not.
I just don’t think you can make this move Scripturally. Christ fulfills the law. He is the embodiment of Israel as Israel was called to be – “Out of Egypt I have called my son.” He comes to save this people. Your move is to focus on his singularity at the cost of his proper theopolitical context, which was the quite singular nature of Yahweh’s calling of Israel. Why should Jesus be divorced from that? Indeed, I think this robs the OT theopolitical narrative of Israel of its singularity and uniqueness.
And why stop there? Doesn’t the Incarnation make him intelligible to humanity in certain ways? Does that rob the singularity of its power? Conversely, doesn’t the context of that incarnation have some sort of significance?
One can recognize Yahweh’s singular work with Israel – which Jesus fulfills as only Yahweh could (Yahweh being the center of gravity throughout) – without being supersessionist.
But I’m not “separating them” as you imply, Brad. Rather I’m pointing out that “Israel” and “Jewishness” isn’t just some ready made hermeneutic that can render Jesus. I take the Jewishness of Jesus with the utmost seriousness, but likewise I stake the radically interruptive character of Jesus’s apocalypse with seriousness.
And “Before Abraham was I Am” certainly implies chronology. As does Paul’s whole thing about “the Rock was Christ.”
I think Mark’s comment above really gets what I’m going for here.
I see what you’re saying, Halden, and I’m probably in agreement with it. But I find certain notions problematic, such as nothing in the OT is important for its own sake, apart from Christ. I think Jesus fulfills the OT and redefines certain things, but I’m not willing to claim that Yahweh’s activity pre-Incarnation is itself completely unintelligible without the Incarnation. There are certain implications there about Yahweh’s behavior toward Israel that would be made suspect. In my mind, that takes nothing away from the singularity of Christ, however.
In hist-crit terms, I think your challenge is spot on, specifically in terms of Christ’s Jewishness. I guess my problem is when we get into ecclesiology and think Israel has nothing to teach us. That may not be what you or Mark was saying, though.
Perhaps the discussion of this thread has passed. However, I might draw your attention to one of my recent articles, “Paul and Israel: An Apocalyptic Reading” in Pro Ecclesia 16(2007):359-380. I make an argument there which, I believe, fundamentally supports Halden’s point. A forthcoming article, “Barth’s Apocalyptic Exegesis and the Question of Israel in Romerbrief Chapters 9-11,” Toronto Journal of Theology, Summer 2009. For a powerful and quintessential interpretation from a salvation-historical approach in which Jesus’ “Jewishness” provides the framework for understanding him and in turn leads to a strong supersessionism, see the works of N.T. Wright.