Category Archives: Theological Interpretation - Page 2

Theological Interpretation of the Gospel of John

Posted by on January 31, 2009 7 comments

In my ongoing studies in the gospel of John and my attempts to devote some time to theological interpretation, I have run across a few superb theological engagements with John’s Gospel. The most recent, and perhaps most accessible work on the topic that I’ve seen is Craig Koester’s new book, The Word of Life: A Theology of John’s Gospel. This is one of the most comprehensive and synthetic theological readings of John’s Gospel I’ve yet to come across. In fact, the next time I teach on the Gospel of John I may very well use it as my textbook.

On the doctrine of God in John there are two recent works that are particularly helpful, the first is Marianne Meye Thompson’s God in the Gospel of John which is perhaps the most comprehensive and helpful book on the topic. Central to her argument is that readings of John’s Gospel that merely taut it as “Christocentric” are missing the book’s overarchingly theocentric nature, and the fact that the point of John is not simply to articulate a Christology, but rather a doctrine of God that is determined by the person of Jesus Christ.

Andreas Köstenberger and Scott Swain also examine the doctrine of God, but take a more overtly theological perspective in their attempt to explore what, if anything, John’s Gospel may have to say about the Trinity. Their book, Father, Son, and Spirit: The Trinity in John’s Gospel is perhaps the best book examining the nascent trinitarianism of the Fourth Gospel that has been written. It engages thoroughly with the question of Jewish monotheism of the second temple period, and offers a trinitarian reading of John which is neither anachronistic nor minimalistic. 

The last book I would mention is the recent collection edited by Richard Bauckham and Carl Mosser, The Gospel of John and Christian Theology. This book contains some of the best theological essays dealing with all aspects of the Fourth Gospel that I have encountered. All of these books serve as helpful examples of theological exegesis and offer great vistas on the study of John’s Gospel.

Illegitimate Children of Abraham

Posted by on October 13, 2008 12 comments

There are three “Abrahamic” faiths. Judaism, Christianity, Islam alone among world religions trace the beginnings of their story back to a single patriarch, all of whom claim to be his true heirs, interpreted variously of course. But herein lies the fundamental difference between Christianity on he one hand and Judaism and Islam on the other. For Christianity it is precisely not legitimate ethnic or national descent from Abraham that places one within the people of God. This is a distinctly biblical point. God is able to raise up true children of Abraham from stones (Luke 3:8), it is the Spirit that gives life, the flesh is of no value (John 6:53). The incorporation of persons into the people of God according to the Christian faith, be they Jew or Gentile is always a distinctly unnatural event.

This is clear in the Pauline corpus with regard to the Gentiles (see especially Romans 11  cf. Eph 2:12-13). However the Johannine corpus goes even further in arguing that being reborn into the true community of God’s people is a miraculous novum, not just for Gentiles, but for the Jews as well. “He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:11-13). The people of God, in John’s gospel in particular are constituted not by any sort of legitimate, natural, historical succession. Rather the people of God are constituted by the miracle of being reborn by the Spirit into a radically new community that interrupts and scandalizes all “natural” communities.

Thus, from the perspective of inter-religious dialogue, one key element that distinguishes Christianity from the other two Abrahamic faiths is Christianity’s explicit denial of what the other two vehemently claim, namely that “legitimate” descent from Abraham substantiates the claims of their faith. Christians make no claim to be legitimate children of Abraham, rather they claim that their status as God’s people is derived from nothing inherent within themselves either ethnically or politically. We are the people of God solely and only because of the radical miracle brought about in Jesus Christ which shatters and scandalizes any “natural” claim to be God’s people through historical natural succession.

The Gates of Hell and Indefectibility

Posted by on October 6, 2008 20 comments

Jesus’ claim in Matthew 16:18 stating that the gates of hell will not prevail against the church has long been the subject of ecclesiastical disputes, especially about the authority of the papacy, the church’s powers of absolution, and so on.

However, the common perspective among such readings of this verse center on the claim that Jesus’ promise (be it to Peter and his allegedly continuing office, or to the church as a whole) guarantees the church indefectiblity or infallibility. This verse is the locus classicus of the claim that the church is promised, by Christ a status impeccability and constancy in faithfulness.

Now, while such a reading of this verse has certainly become well enshrined in  ecclesiastical claims, it reflects a very irresponsible reflection on the text itself. Truthfully it seems to me that one can only get to a theology of ecclesial indefectiblity via this text by reading a whole host of theological claims back into it that are not there.

The language of “gates of hell” is the first thing that tends to get ignored in the way this passage is deployed. Jesus’ claim that the gates of hell will not prevail against the church is a military metaphor of a rather clear kind. If the church is set in conflict with the gates of hell, the the direction of aggression–defense flows in the direction of church–hell, not the other way round. In other words, nothing in Jesus’ claim leads us to think that the church will always withstand the onslaught of the powers of darkness and remains perpetually faithful, rather the verse implies the reverse, namely that the powers of hell will not be able to stand against the incursion of the church into its territory.

Jesus’ words should not be construed as promising the church institutional infallibility, such a sense is foreign to the military metaphor of the text. Rather Jesus is promising that the church’s apocalyptic invasion of the powers of hell will not be withstood. Nothing will stand in the way of the church’s invasion of the territory claimed by the devil. This verse promises that the mission of the church will never fail, not that the church is guaranteed institutional indefecibility. Rather the promise to the church is that its own defections (cf. Matt 16:23; Luke 22:31) will not bring about the failure of the church’s mission, grounded as it is in the sole lordship of Christ (Matt 16:16).

To be sure this implies a certain sort of theology about the church’s indefectibility, but only of the sort that promises that the church will never degrade in such a way as to render the completion of its mission impossible. Thus, this passage implies the church’s indefeatability; the church clearly will never cease to exist or be malformed to such a degree that its mission fails. However this by no means implies indefectibility, let alone infallibility. Rather it promises that our defections and unfaithfulness will never be such that the mission of the church will fail. It expresses the commitment of Christ to the church, to preserve it in its missional calling, which happens all to often despite our unfaithfulness rather than through our faithfulness.

The Theological Role of Historical Criticism

Posted by on July 2, 2008 10 comments

These days there is much talk about the inherent limits of historical criticism as a tool of biblical hermeneutics.  Historical criticism, it is said reduces the Bible to a collection of ancient texts to be dissected rather than affirming the Bible as the scriptural canon of the church.  However, no one is really questioning the total viability of historical criticism as a serious tool of biblical and theological study.  It has been chastened, but certainly not denied, cast away, or declared useless.

So, my wonderings on this matter relate to what positive role there is for historical criticism in the task of theological interpretation and the theological enterprise more generally.  What function is historical criticism supposed to serve and how does it uniquely fill that function.  On thing that comes to mind for me is the way in which historical criticism prevents the objectification or reification of the text in itself as divine authority, a form of bibliolatry.  And yet, I don’t see how we really needed historical criticism for this insight, as it is rather a Christological one.  So, I’m interested in what people might think, what is the theological role of historical criticism?  Do we really need it at all?

What Makes Theology Biblical?

Posted by on April 8, 2008 8 comments

Most Christian theologians agree that dogmatic or systematic theology should be biblical.  However, there is very little clarity about what it means to be biblical in doing theology.  Is theology biblical insofar as it doesn’t conflict with the Bible?  Is theology biblical insofar as it’s shape and structure reflects the content and shape of the Bible?  What might it even mean to think about theology conforming to the Bible given the radical diversity of the biblical canon?

Today theologians are giving more and more thought to what it means to read Scripture theologically.  However, I think we still haven’t even scratched the surface of figuring out what it means to do theology biblically.  Too often we just assume that we know what being biblical means when I think many of us could not even offer a well-constructed statement of what we mean when we say theology should be biblical.  So what is it that makes theology biblical?

The Discipline of Theological Commentary

Posted by on April 3, 2008 5 comments

One of the elements of theological discipline that has been lacking for a long time among theologians has been the consistent practice of doing commentary on Scripture.  What was once a standard practice of theologians seemingly went quite out of style during early modern times.  Today of course, this lacuna is being swamped with ever-new series’ of theological commentaries.  I take this to be a good thing, and hope it doesn’t just become a fad.  So now every theologian writes one biblical commentary as some sort of badge of acomplishment and then goes back to business as usual.  I hope that isn’t where all this goes, but somehow I doubt that we’ll be having theologians of the calibur to church out commentaries on multiple books of Scripture along with multivolume works of dogmatic theology anytime soon.

However, one ray of potential hope that I see is actually the theo-blogosphere.  What a better venue could there be for theologians to take up the discipline of regular, ongoing comentary on Scripture than through blogging?  I am hoping to start doing some of this myself in my upcoming teaching work that I’ll be doing on the first epistle of John.  I hope that others will take up this idea and run with it.  I can hardly think of a better thing to see happening among the theology blogs that theological commentary on Scripture.

And by the way, if anyone has particular books that they would recommend on the Johannine letters, let me know as I’m in the process of accumulating such resources right now!

A Christological Theology of the Psalms

Posted by on November 8, 2007 6 comments

In reading through the Psalms yesterday, I was struck by what it might mean to read them Christologically as Dietrich Bonhoeffer recommends in his books Psalms: The Prayerbook of the Bible and Life Together.  His proposal, simply stated is that it ultimately Christ himself who prays the psalms.  This is, in part a brilliant way of reading the imprecatory psalms with it’s shockingly violent imagery: ”Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!” (Ps. 137:8)

For Bonhoeffer, it is Christ himself and Christ alone who is able to pray this prayer for God’s judgment, and in so praying it he causes it to fall, not on those deserving wrath, but on himself.  Thus, we cannot pray such prayers, rather we can listen to Christ pray them and make them his own, bringing about the curses on his own head for us and in our place.

However, such a way of reading the pslams is not just a handy way to deal with rough texts.  It also helps to make sense of a great many of the psalms of David.  Beginning always with the epitaph לְדָוִד ( “to David” or “in reference to David”), a great many of these psalms make little sense if we simply try to situate them within the historical life of David as narrated in Samuel and Kings.  One could, of course cite radical poetic hyperbole as the reason for the language of these psalms: “O LORD, you brought up my soul from Sheol, restored me to life from among those gone down to the Pit” (Ps. 30:3).  And, I certainly don’t dispute that the Psalms could be read on that level.  However, in reading through them it seems that the text of the psalms invites a theological reading that extends far beyond simply the emotional and historical situations of the life of David.

First of all throughout the first book of the Psalms (1-42), which are all ascribed to David (except for the first two Psalms, which I would argue serve as an introduction to the book as a whole and which should in fact be read as a unity rather than two separate songs) there are references to Israel’s exile and a longing for redemption (see e.g. Ps. 14:7; 25:22).  Moreover, the superscriptions of many of the psalms speak to these psams being composed for occasions that could not have historical reference to David (“for the memorial offering”: Ps. 38 or, more definitively, “A Song at the dedication of the temple”: Ps. 30).

My point in all of this is that the psalms seem to invite a level of theological interpretation that goes beyond simply the historical.  The weaving together of rich poetic language of suffering and vindication, descent and ascent, desolation and consolation seems to point beyond the historical origins of the individual psalms towards a broader situatedness within the history of Israel in exile, and more importantly, within the all-encompassing history of Jesus.  Read canonically, I think the the bulk of the psalms just make more sense if we read them as coming from the mouth Jesus himself.  The dialectic of death and resurrection, desolation and joy, abandonment and praise seems to long for a Christological interpretation.

Consider for example, Psalm 30:

I will extol you, O LORD, for you have drawn me up
  and have not let my foes rejoice over me.
O LORD my God, I cried to you for help,
  and you have healed me.
O LORD, you have brought up my soul from Sheol;
  you restored me to life from among those who go down to the pit.

Sing praises to the LORD, O you his saints,
  and give thanks to his holy name.
 For his anger is but for a moment,
  and his favor is for a lifetime.
 Weeping may tarry for the night,
  but joy comes with the morning.

As for me, I said in my prosperity,
  “I shall never be moved.”
By your favor, O LORD,
  you made my mountain stand strong;
you hid your face;
  I was dismayed.

To you, O LORD, I cry,
  and to the Lord I plead for mercy:
“What profit is there in my death,
  if I go down to the pit?
Will the dust praise you?
  Will it tell of your faithfulness?
Hear, O LORD, and be merciful to me!
  O LORD, be my helper!”

You have turned for me my mourning into dancing;
  you have loosed my sackcloth
  and clothed me with gladness,
that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent.
  O LORD my God, I will give thanks to you forever!

In a psalm such as this I cannot help but hear the voice of Jesus of Nazareth at prayer with the one he called Father.  Here we here the voice of the one who “offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the One who was able to save him from death” who “although he was a Son, learned obedience through what he suffered” (Heb. 5:7, 8).  One is hard pressed to find a more appropriate poetic articulation of the agonies of Gethsemane and the ecstasy of Galilee.

The psalms string together, in a beautiful symphony the longing of Israel for redemption in exile, the Davidic memory and covenant, the cries of the faithful for vindication, and the firm resolve to praise the God of Israel.  All of these themes coalesce and cohere in Christ, and truly I think, nowhere else.  So, after reading the psalms through again, I find my self more convinced than ever that the best way to read them is through a historically and eschatologically oriented Christology.  Or, to put it another way, the pslams can fruitfully be read as a sort of inter-trinitarian dialogue between Jesus and his Father.  And it is within that trinitarian conversation, through the rhythms of descent and ascent, death and resurrection that Israel and the Church are found and redeemed.  What this might for the reading of the psalms as a whole is an interesting, and I think, exciting prospect. 

Advent Bible Blitz: Reflections on Genesis

Posted by on October 17, 2007 2 comments

Well, it has begun.  So far I am on schedule.  Here are a few of my thoughts from my reading today of the book of Genesis:

1.  I was struck by the description in Genesis 3 of Eve’s way of evaluating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  She looks on it and sees it as “good for food”, “delight to the eyes”, and “to be desired to make one wise”.  This description is striking to me in light of the recent discussions of capitalism and the way in which “commodity fetishism” preys on such desires and draws persons away from the love of God and obedience to God.

2.  Covenant.  Covenant is everywhere in Genesis and in all places it is is utterly gratuitous, completely non-necessary.  In the story of the flood, for example, God has a whole litany of reasons for removing humankind from the earth, and his reason for not doing so is not a reason at all, rather it is simply an assertion of utter grace: “But I will establish my covenant with you” (6:18).  God’s covenant love cannot be worked into any system of necessity with regard to how God treats humanity.  God establishes covenant simply because he is that kind of God.  It is pure grace and as such is completely ineffable and on it everything depends if there is any hope for humanity.

3.  I found it interesting the way that the discussion of Abram and Lot separating in Genesis 13 was described on the basis of how they each had “great possessions”.  Maybe I’m reading something into the text here, but it seems as though the possession of abundant resources drives people apart, bringing separation.  Thus my mind goes immediately to the story of Jesus and the rich young ruler who is asked to part with all his possessions for the sake of Christ.

4.  God, in Genesis is constantly giving people children.  God is the good who gives children to the barren woman, especially if she is unloved.  God is fundamentally concerned with bringing about fruitfulness, human flourishing and life.  He brings life and posterity to those in need, lavishing it on those who have not the ability of secure such things for themselves.

5.  The stated purpose of all of God’s actions among the patriarchs is the preservation of a people.  All of God’s actions, through all of the flawed characters in the narrative are ordered towards securing life and hope for a people in whom his purposes for the world are intimately invested.

Advent Bible Blitz

Posted by on October 15, 2007 9 comments

 Earlier this year, my friend and occasional theo-blogger, Chris Layton did a “Lenten Bible Blitz” in which he read through the entire canon over the 40 days of Lent.  I thought this a wonderful idea and couldn’t bear to wait until next Lent, so I shamelessly stole Chris’s schedule and modified it for reading through the Bible in the 40 days prior to the first Sunday of Advent.  So, starting on Wednesday I will be probably be blogging something about my daily readings.  I do, of course hope to have time to post stuff about theology, et cetera as well. 

Here is the schedule I’ll be using if anyone is interested in joining me in this time-consuming venture.  If you try it, expect to spend at least two hours reading the Bible every day.  But, given the all too common tendency for would-be theologians to simply neglect the regular reading of the Scriptures, this promises to be a discipline well worth the time.

Week 1

  • Wednesday 10/17: Genesis
  • Thursday 10/18: Exodus
  • Friday 10/19: Leviticus
  • Saturday 10/20: Numbers

Week 2

  • Sunday 10/21 – Rest: No Reading
  • Monday 10/22: Deuteronomy
  • Tuesday 10/23: Joshua, Judges
  • Wednesday 10/24: Ruth, 1 Samuel
  • Thursday 10/25: 2 Samuel
  • Friday 10/26: 1 Kings
  • Saturday 10/27: 2 Kings

Week 3

  • Sunday 10/28 – Rest: No Reading
  • Monday 10/29: 1 Chronicles
  • Tuesday 10/30: 2 Chronicles
  • Wednesday 10/31: Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther
  • Thursday 11/1: Job
  • Friday 11/2: Psalms 1-50
  • Saturday 11/3: Psalms 51-100

Week 4

  • Sunday 11/4 – Rest: No Reading
  • Monday 11/5: Psalms 101-150
  • Tuesday 11/6: Proverbs
  • Wednesday 11/7: Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon
  • Thursday 11/8: Isaiah 1-39
  • Friday 11/9: Isaiah 40-66
  • Saturday 11/10: Jeremiah 1-40

Week 5

  • Sunday 11/11 – Rest: No Reading
  • Monday 11/12: Jeremiah 41-52, Lamentations
  • Tuesday 11/13: Ezekiel
  • Wednesday 11/14: Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos
  • Thursday 11/15: Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum
  • Friday 11/16: Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi
  • Saturday 11/17: Matthew

Week 6

  • Sunday 11/18 – Rest: No Reading
  • Monday 11/19: Mark
  • Tuesday 11/20: Luke
  • Wednesday 11/21: John
  • Thursday 11/22: Acts
  • Friday 11/23: Romans
  • Saturday 11/24: 1 and 2 Corinthians

Week 7

  • Sunday 11/25 – Rest: No Reading
  • Monday 11/26: Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians
  • Tuesday 11/27: Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians
  • Wednesday 11/28: 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus
  • Thursday 11/29: Hebrews, James
  • Friday 11/30: 1 and 2 Peter, 1, 2 and 3 John
  • Saturday 12/1: Jude. Revelation

A Thought on Meaning in Texts

Posted by on July 14, 2007 2 comments

Amongst self-proclaimed “postmodern” interpreters of Scripture today there is something fashionable about the assertion (usually in writing, ironically enough) that there is no stable meaning in texts.  While there is certainly something to the claim that the meaning of texts cannot be completely determinate, the claim to a total indeterminacy of textual meaning seems ludicrous to me for the following reason:  Books are extremely dangerous things in our political world.  Why has every oppressive regime in history in one way or another regulated and controlled literary media and expression if texts do not exert and impress thoughts that may run contrary to social opinion and upset the status quo?  Texts are dangerous because precisely because they do in fact stand outside of “the way things are” and in the form of prophetic critique can and have changed the face of the world.

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