MetaCatholic

What do we call the collection of books that are shared between Jews and Christians? Picking up on an article in the Chicago Tribune which claimed that the term Old Testament was insensitive to Judaism Claude Mariottini entered the debate with a firm commitment to the term for theological reasons. Chris Heard responded with a preference for Tanakh, as the Jewish term of designating them. Tyler Williams reminds everyone that this debate has been had before and has a great cartoon to boot! He notes that he uses the awkward Old Testament / Hebrew Bible. Chris Weimer goes for Jewish Scriptures, and now Claude Mariottini has returned to the fray with a stronger pleas for retaining Old Testament.

Clearly, both in terms of a non-confessional academia, and a confessional inter-religious dialogue, language is a problem. Within confessional Judaism, there is nor problem referring to Tanakh. Within confessional Christianity there is no problem in referring to Old Testament (or at least, only a small one as I note below). But most of us blog, write, speak and live within a multiplicity of overlapping contexts, and there we don’t know what to call these books. So what are the strengths and weaknesses of each name? I will leave aside until the end the issue Mariottini raise about what one then calls the New Testament if we use any term other than the Old Testament.

Tanakh has the advantage of describing the books essentially descriptively. It’s also as near as any name (other than a generic scriptures or writings) comes to being, as it were, canonised as a description in the New Testament (avoiding the question of what we cal that for the moment) — “the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms” (Luke 24:44) However, unless you are a Protestant Christian, Tanakh is not co-terminous with the Old Testament, but considerably shorter.

Hebrew Bible sounds descriptive, but is probably the least satisfactory in two ways. First the minor quibble that bits of it are Aramaic. Second, and more significantly, it imports implicit Christian concepts of Bible that do not, as far as I can see, do justice to Jewish views of the scriptures. It neither highlights the priority of Torah, nor deals with the fact that in many ways Talmud and Mishnah as a hermeneutical lens for the reading of these books, that they function in ways not totally dissimilar from that of the New Testament for Christians. The same point about different canons of (OT) scripture for Jews / Protestants and Catholic and Orthodox still applies.

Jewish Scriptures sounds neutral but misses the point that these books are also Christian Scriptures. And ditto the same canonical discrepancy as above.

First Testament is increasingly the term I’m trying to favour (though years of habit mean I’m as likely to write OT / Old Testament as anything else).That is of course as much an implicit theological judgement as calling it Old Testament, but in my view a more positive one. I don’t agree with Mariottini that “The term “Second Testament” for the Scriptures of the church is not acceptable” (nor that we have to drop New Testament as a term if we say “First Testament.”) What’s wrong with calling the the NT “the Second Testament” or, being truly eschatological “the Last Testament”. In favour of either I’d adduce Paul’s language about Christ who is both “the last Adam” and “the second man” (1 Cor 15:45,47) without implying a whole sequence to come between or after. Like the traditional term “Old Testament” it cheerfully blurs the canonical discrepancy.

Old Testament is of course hallowed by tradition, and has the clarity that we know what we’re talking about (saving the blurred canonical boundary). It does, however, suffer a certain problem in modern usage, in that “Old” has increasingly become surrounded with negative connotations: obsolete, crumbling, out-of-date, irrelevant are just some of the ideas the adjective carries around with it in most contemporary English. When one adds that to the problems of finding a sufficiently respectful term in inter-confessional dialogue, one is indeed forced to wonder whether the term “Old Testament” is, well, how can I put this — old.

written by doug

AKMA draws attention to the splendidly bizarre Arian Catholic Church, which seems to be a new British cult (and possibly not much more than a one man band. A little more about its beliefs in a minute, but a quick Google reveals that its recently “consecrated” Arian Catholic Primate Archbishop of York (why use one title when more will do?) is a “Most Reverend Dr. B. B. Michael John Mackenzie-Hanson, BA (Hons), DD, acOSB. and Arian Catholic Primate of the worldwide Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.” Nothing like a delusion or two of grandeur.

Another quick Google helps me note that at the same address as the Diocesan Office, a certain Brian B. M. J. Mackenzie-Hanson is the genealogist for the Earl of Cromartie and the Mackenzie clan, and from there it’s a short leap to discovering that the same bloke also runs a Russian-English translation service, a consultancy and design service, with software development. You’d think he might be a bit too busy to run the worldwide Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.

So what does this new cult believe? Well: here’s just a taster. According to their downloadable new parishioner form, attending Mass every Saturday comes first on the list. Hmm, I’d forgotten Arius was a seventh day adventist. They note in their calendar that 1st of May is “Beltane / St James (the Less) and St Philip the Apostles - Feast” Apparently Arius was also a Gaelic pagan. According to the new parishioner form again, you have “to keep the eleven holy commandments” — and I bet you thought ten was more than enough. (You also get a bigger Bible, with the Shepherd of Hermas and the Epistle of Barnabas added in)

Oh, and because Jesus spent some time in Britain (although the real evidence is lost because that nasty Roman Catholic church burnt all the evidence) England is the natural home for one of the patriarchates of the church, as “endorsed by St Paul, St Simon Zealotes and St Joseph of Arimathea”, apparently. Okay, Arius was a British Israelite too.

At this point my mind begins to spin as much as I suspect the Arius of history might be spinning in his grave. As if it wasn’t enough being an old-fashioned Arian, now he’s got to be a sabbatarian, Gaelic, British Israelite pagan too.

Update:

Actually, it might not be such a laugh after all: see this page, where you can find this seriously nasty and objectionable quote among others:

“It is an inalienable fact that humans have evolved on the Earth into four principle sub-species and these were distributed primarily on separate continents … The Arian Catholic policy is to promote cultural identity and not multiculturalism. It is not racist to be proud of being Caucasoid, Christian and English, in just the same way as being proud of being Mongoloid, Buddhist and Mongolian! God put the mechanism in place for humanity to evolve the way it has for very good reasons (each sub-species is tailored to suit a particular continent with its own Environment and cultural ways of life), it is the Church’s belief that to work against the grain of evolution is unnatural and will result in problems that will later become disastrous for society”

written by doug

Starting to look at the readings for this coming Trinity Sunday has got me thinking again about the text of Romans 5:1.

Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have [or let us have] peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. (NRSV)
Δικαιωθέντες οὖν ἐκ πίστεως εἰρήνην ἔχομεν [or ἔχωμεν] πρὸς τὸν θεὸν διὰ τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ

Virtually every translation and commentary accepts the indicative “we have peace” while noting that the subjunctive “let us have peace” has by far the strongest manuscript support.

The argument is essentially this: the two words were almost identical in their pronunciation, so that it was easy to mishear the indicative as a subjunctive. The following verbs are all indicative, and the flow of thought seems to demand that this argument starts with the state of having peace with God. It is not only modern commentators who have difficulty with the subjunctive: the manuscripts of Sinaiticus and Vaticanus were early corrected to the indicative.

The problem I have with this is that it overturns one of the most basic methods of textual criticism, and plays with another. It overturns the maxim of accepting the most difficult reading, and it (at the least) offers a somewhat disingenuous version of the idea that a reading capable of generating the other versions is the most likely original.

To take the latter first: all we are offered is the view that it can easily be understood how the virtually identical pronunciation of the two words led to the scribe writing down the wrong one. I would contend, however, that when there is widespread evidence of the “mistake” across a range of witnesses, the most likely “mistake” would be to hear the homophone that makes most sense in the context. In other words, it is easier to accept that a scribe misheard the subjunctive as an indicative, because an indicative appears to make most sense, then as now.

This simply intensifies the sense that the subjunctive is indeed the most difficult reading. The argument, however sophisticated, for preferring the indicative is simply that it is easier, rhetorically and theologically. This does seem to me to be a very odd way to go about things: “We will prefer the more difficult reading, except when we like the easier one.” I would suggest that it is better to start by saying, how could we read this text, and see the argument, if we adopt the more difficult reading, and only if that exercise proves the impossibility of the difficult reading, should we give it up.

We have, in my view in Romans, a letter addressed to a church which experiences both internal divisions between Jewish and Gentile believers, and external conflicts with the Jewish community. Even if that controversial picture is not granted, there are clear references in the immediate text to sufferings (θλίψεσιν – 5:3) experienced by these believers. This is followed by the model of Christ who rather than oppose his enemies dies for them showing God’s love (5:6ff). This leads to present justification, and a future salvation (5:9). Much of the rhetorical trajectory of these verses reaches its climax in chapter 8.

In this context, it is possible to read “Let us have peace with God.” Let us have peace with God, even though we do not find peace with those around us. Let us maintain peace with God, by enduring the suffering in hope, and not being deflected. Let us hold on to peace with God, by modeling ourselves on the Christ who died for his enemies, and not going in for vengeance on those who afflict us with suffering (and cf Rom 12: 14:21). In all these ways, the subjunctive exhortation offers a perfectly acceptable reading, and one which hints at the letter’s unity in anticipating the paraenetic material still to come. Perhaps the main translation tradition should not have given up so easily on the difficult reading, but, ah, persevered with patience.

written by doug

One of the better known prayer passages from Augustine’s confessions is this one.

Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would have not been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace.¹

Since we started including it in a collection of prayers for personal use at the back of our mass booklets, a number of people have commented on how much they appreciated it. For some time now I’ve considered whether it might make the basis of a hymn. This is a first draft, and there are one or two places I still want to work on the wording. The tunes I have in mind are Billing or Gerontius.

Late have I loved you, O my Lord,
before whom beauty pales,
whose glory shines in Christ the Word,
whose splendour never fails.

I searched for you in all you made,
in all my eye discerned,
I did not look within, afraid
to know what passion burned.

You walked with me unseen, unloved,
I trod as one alone,
I seized your gifts, and using, proved
the Giver was unknown

And yet you called, to me you spoke
loud shouted words of love,
which my long-practiced deafness broke
with thunder from above.

Your flashing lightning cleared my sight,
your storm winds conquered me,
and now I see love shining bright,
I breathe air clean and free.

The taste of love is now my meat,
I hunger still for more;
the breath of life is true and sweet,
the touch of peace is sure.

Late have I loved you, O my Lord,
beauty once new and old,
late was my love for Christ the Word,
but now your hand takes hold.

1. Confessions Book 10, ch 27 [↩]

written by doug

Anglicans have very frequently adopted the tag lex orandi, lex credendi, sometimes as a way to avoid systematic theology. Sometimes, however, it’s worth paying attention to the practices implied in the tag. One of the very specific features of Cranmer’s Reformation was to anchor the reading of scripture in daily prayer. If the amount of scripture has now been reduced, and daily prayer is less visible than it used to be, it’s also become true that for most Anglicans their primary reading of scripture is actually the hearing with interpretation that takes place in public worship. Both the historical roots, and contemporary practice therefore suggest that it might be worth someone essaying a liturgical and experiential hermeneutics.

An outline sketch of such an approach might include the following starting points:

• Scripture is read in the context of conversation with God, providing both God’s side of the conversation, but also much of the language for our side of the conversation. The experience of scripture is fundamentally relational.
• Reading scripture is both speaking to God and listening to God. Much of the language it authorises us to use to God, especially in the words of the psalms, which make up the backbone of daily prayer, invites a bold relationship that is not afraid to complain, and argue, even if that is subsumed in a framework of praise. The human character of scripture is owned in human speech, even while the divine word is attended to.
• The christological character of the Old Testament, whether read prophetically, typologically or allegorically is attested to in the Eucharist by the way scripture readings climax in the gospel. But it is also attested in the way in which the canticles of Benedictus and Magnificat (in Cranmer’s Prayer Book) form the response to the Old Testament reading. These take up the language of the Old Testament and point it at the incarnation as its goal.
• The modern version of Common Worship Daily Prayer places this incarnational focus after both of the scripture readings, OT and NT. On the one hand, this directs the whole of scripture to the incarnation. On the other it allows (by giving an OT canticle at Morning Prayer) us to see much more that the Old Testament has its own integrity as a basis for speech with God, even if taken as a whole, it still directs us to Christ.
• In daily prayer and Eucharist, the course of readings is followed by a creed — the Apostles’ Creed in the daily office, the Nicene Creed at the Eucharist. This functions to emphasize that scripture is read with the Church, and in the light of the rule of faith. This has the further effect of contextualising the sermon: we affirm what the church says about scripture, before hearing what the preacher says about it. The sermon is intended to interpret scripture in the light of the church’s faith.
• Within the weekly round (at least) as intended by Cranmer, the Eucharist followed Morning Prayer uninterrupted on a Sunday, and in both ancient and modern prayer books, as in patristic theology, is the centrepiece of worship. This does two things to develop the christological focus further. First, the readings of scripture crystallize in the proclamation of the Gospel. The reading of scripture is in that sense not simply a chronological narrative, in which what is earlier is followed by what is later. The epistles / Acts / Revelation also find their direction focused towards the narratives about Jesus. Second, the climax of the whole is to be found in the sacramental encounter with Jesus, not simply in the hearing. Scripture as the sacrament of hearing God is given to enable the sacrament of meeting God to take place.

written by doug

I have found myself this Pentecost pondering again about the filioque¹ clause of the Nicene Creed, not least because so much of what gets written and preached about the Spirit seems to me to lack sufficient reference to Jesus. It strikes me that in a lot of popular talking and praying, despite the long Western attachment to saying that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, a great many Western Christians leave the Son out of it.

The lack of a christological lens for the Holy Spirit contributes to the way in which the Spirit can be associated with power, but not weakness. It contributes further to the way in which the Spirit can be used to excuse and bless anything that goes by the name of Spirituality. It tends to help the way in which many Christians, traditional and non-traditional tend to look at the work of the Spirit in creation, without taking the eschatological nature of most of the New Testament discourse into account.

Yet it seems to me that in the main NT witnesses that speak of the Spirit, Luke, Paul and John, there is a strong christological connection, which is by far the strongest in John.

John’s testimony

• Jesus is the one on whom the Spirit descends and remains: John 1:32 — And John testified, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him.
• The gift of the Spirit is linked to the cross: John 7:39 — [Jesus spoke] about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive; for as yet there was no Spirit, (οὔπω γὰρ ἦν πνεῦμα) because Jesus was not yet glorified.
• From Jesus “going away” according to the long discourse of chapters 14-17, the Spirit, the Advocate will come. This Advocate is mainly sent by the Father in Jesus’ name (e.g. John 14:26 — ὁ δὲ παράκλητος, τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον, ὃ πέμψει ὁ πατὴρ ἐν τῷ ὀνόματί μου) but is also sent by Jesus (e.g. John 15:26 — Οταν ἔλθῃ ὁ παράκλητος ὃν ἐγὼ πέμψω ὑμῖν παρὰ τοῦ πατρός)
• At the moment of death Jesus gives up the Spirit: John 19:30 — παρέδωκεν τὸ πνεῦμα (he handed over the Spirit).
• In the first flush of the resurrection, Jesus imparts the Spirit which earlier could not be given because he had not been glorified: John 20:22 — He breathed on them and said “Receive the Holy Spirit.” (λάβετε πνεῦμα ἅγιον).
• The link between Jesus and the Spirit in John is clear, though thanks to most English translations of 7:39 and 19:30, not quite as clear as it could have been for those who only have English.

Now, none of this actually compels the church towards the filioque, because theology doesn’t read the eternal generation of the Son, or the eternal procession of the Spirit straightforwardly from narrations of the incarnate Son. But it does force some questions.

Four questions

1. Has today’s church overplayed the Spirit as “the wind that blows where it wills” and detached it too much from the shape of God delineated in the incarnation and passion of the Lord?
2. Has the Eastern doctrinal insistence on the Father as the origin of Godhead (safeguarding God’s unity) driven too great a wedge between the essential and economic Trinity? Is God as revealed to us in Christ Jesus so different from the way God is in God’s self?
3. Has today’s emphasis on the power of the Spirit moved us too far away from seeing the work of the Spirit as drawing us into the eternal relationships of the Godhead?
4. Have we made too much of the work of the Spirit in creation, downplayed in the NT in favour of the work of the Word / Wisdom of God in creation, and not enough of the Spirit’s work in making the new creation?

I would rather go with the filioque than omit it, but wonder still if the more Cappadocian formula is the better solution: that the Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son.

1. The bit of the creed that says the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son (qui ex Patre Filioque procedit) — added in the Western Church, but not used in the Eastern Church which still says τό εκ τού Πατρός εκπορευόμενον [↩]

written by doug

One of the persistent features of common Christian readings of Scripture is a stereotype of hypocritical Pharisees. This is then often enlisted into a grace versus law debate, typical of the Reformation tradition. The range of scholarship  that has argued against this stereotype seems either unknown or discounted.(At this point I must confess that in this field I’m a babe in the woods, — I still can’t quite always work out what gets Sanders and Neusner so passionate about each other’s positions.)

Some of this is no doubt down to the sharp divide between the church and academy. Some of it must owe something to the almost archetypal status of the Reformation tradition in both parts of Europe and the States. But some of it may also be down to the way in which most modern historical reconstructions assume that, on this topic at least, the gospels are historically inaccurate, and influenced primarily by the later separation of the church and the synagogue, and the polemic that arose between them towards the end of the first century. Views that simply dismiss the gospels’ historical value will always struggle to make headway in the church.

There is, for every reconstruction, a problem with sources. Josephus (himself a problematic witness) tells us little enough. The picture from the gospel traditions (with one direction of bias) is largely at odds with that of the rabbinic traditions (with another direction of bias). There may, however, be room for considering Paul further in these reconstructions. He could be the only first-century Pharisee who has left us his own words, even if his Christian perspective and polemic makes it hard to recover useful historical information. (Claims for Josephus being a Pharisee are often assumed, but heavily disputed.)

One area where I suggest we may take Paul’s witness as having some credibility is in his grounding in apocalyptic eschatology. Evidence that sits comfortably with this includes:

• The likely time of the Pharisees’ emergence roughly parallels the period when apocalyptic literature began to flourish.
• They share, with Essenes and the Jesus movement (and very probably wider circles) a belief in the resurrection.
• Their belief in “fate” (according to Josephus) may well, as Tom Wright (I think) suggests be an acceptably apologetic disguise for “divine intervention”
• At least a good number of Pharisees are to be found in support of the revolt, and, of course, no less a figure than Akiba hails bar Kochba as Messiah.

With this in mind, and very conscious that I’m very poorly read in the wider literature on this topic so that there may be significant data that I’m missing, I would suggest there is a reconstruction that makes more sense of all the witnesses we have, while still allowing for some significant reinterpretation of history as the gospel writers (particularly Matthew) assimilate the Pharisees to later opponents, and the rabbis de-eschatologise them in the service of a non-political remaking of Israel.

This tentative reconstruction in barest outline is threefold:

1. Both the Pharisees and Jesus are concerned for the coming of God’s kingdom. Hence their frequent interactions with each other.
2. The Pharisees believe that God’s kingdom will be hastened by demonstrating and enhancing the nation’s faithful and observant purity (and, possibly, by taking temple purity into the wider world will make up for the compromises of the temple elite with the Romans). By contrast Jesus believes that the kingdom of God brings its own purity with it.
3. The Pharisees believe that impurity is contagious. Jesus believes that purity is contagious.

I think that such a reconstruction is historically plausible, allows us to see why the quite mixed traditions about Jesus and the Pharisees arose in the first place, does not present caricatures, and does not cast the arguments in terms of either law and grace, or religious superiority.

It may be that those who know the data better will be able to point out the flaws in this reconstruction. It’s final advantage (which ultimately, of course, depends on its being correct) is that it offers a way to engage the church positively and non-dismissively with the gospel material, without falling into anti-semitic stereotypes.

written by doug

This is a follow-up to my post on Sex and the Single Saviour, and in particular to John Hobbins‘ comment on that post which has helped me clarify the unease I expressed towards the end. John wrote:

He is not afraid to name the otherness of the text, and then kiss it goodbye. The usual approach is the opposite. Pretend the text is not so other, and then kiss up to the heavily diluted version.

It is this willingness, once the strangeness of the text has been elucidated, “to kiss it goodbye” that really troubles me about Martin’s work. I feel it is masked by the lucid defence of non-foundationalism and community-bounded reader-response criticism. It is less the theoretical and well-defended approach that bothers me, and more that I find myself wondering if Martin isn’t actually giving a disguised foundational privilege to certain aspects of contemporary culture, or one’s own personal preferences.

If different readings of a text are truly in play within the reading community spread across time, shouldn’t more attentiveness be given to precisely those readings which are strange to our time. Befriending a strange text is about recognising its otherness, and still welcoming it to a place in the discussion.

For example, in Martin’s reconstruction, which I find well-worth considering, Paul is very negative about human passion and erotic desire, and far more attention is given in Paul’s argument to (what we would call) heterosexual passion, than to (what we would call) homosexual passion. This is the strangeness of this particular text which makes it unwelcome in today’s culture, but was still a significant part of many other traditional readings of it up to the Reformation.

Being honest, as Martin is, that scripture is often a stranger to us, is refreshing in a church where its strangeness often goes disguised and unrecognised. But if we are truly to practice a community-bounded reader-response criticism in the communion of saints, then it must be a stranger who is welcomed at the table.

That leaves a lot of theological work to be done with our diverse responses (as befitting a diverse community across time and space) reading the same text. The relationships, as we conceive them, between creation and new creation, body and spirit, and an Adam-Eve mutuality being in the image of God contrasting with a single man as God imaged in flesh are among the significant areas of discussion.

The sexual delight of horny teenagers in the Song of Songs is set together in the same scriptures with Paul’s asceticism. Traditional church readings that privileged the asceticism to read the songs as allegory are not the only ways to read these texts together. The creation of a canon of scripture invites intertextual play, and recognising authority (or authoritative experience) in the texts, and not just one interpretation of them, encourages us to read each in their integrity, as well as hear them together.

At the same time, Paul’s asceticism, together with traditional readings of the virtue of apatheia as a mimesis of God’s impassibility, may want to ask questions of a culture in which sexual imagery is so all-pervading, and people seem to assume that living a fully human life involves being sexually active.

If (and here I use a shorthand I normally seek to avoid) failing to recognise the strangeness of the text is the conservative temptation, failing to welcome the strange text may be the liberal one.

written by doug

There have been some recent posts on Better Bibles Blog about the impact of the headings given to passages in a large number (the majority?) of modern translations of Scripture. Two key issues touched on are the placing of headings and the interpretative function of headings. Both these examples come from texts used in (mainly inter-evangelical) controversies. They are, however, symptomatic of a much broader problem, and one that is not confined to headings.

I have often been struck by those churches that use pew bibles, or bibles rather than lectionaries for readings in church, how often the heading is read out as part of the scripture reading. On the course I teach I regularly have to point out to students that the headings they quote so blithely are not necessarily what the passage is about, far less that they are themselves part of the passage. I often have to make a similar and related point about notes in the unfortunately ubiquitous “study bibles.” I am, in fact increasingly thinking about banning the use of study bibles in classroom discussions in order to get people to focus on the text.

I have opened my (rather old) copy of the NIV at random, and I find Matthew 22:23-33. This is entitled “Marriage at the resurrection.” First, I must note, this is a relatively uncontroversial heading in terms of any ongoing disputes. But I must also ask whether this is actually what the passage is about, rather than being the surface topic of debate between Jesus and the Sadducees. Jesus does say something about marriage at the resurrection rather than sidestep the question, and what he does say points arguably in the direction of an androgynous non-gendered humanity, which is not quite about marriage at the resurrection, but human nature.

Principally, however, it is the actuality of the resurrection, and testimony to it even in the books that the Sadducees take as scripture that is at stake here, not marriage. Is the heading the NIV chooses oversimplified? Does it side-step the awkward and unapproved (in contemporary terms) pattern of Jesus’ exegesis? And does it simply avoid what might be a more provocative heading: “Jesus sides with the Pharisees” — which would have rather more relevance to helping interpret the verses that immediately follow?

I notice this phenomenon of treating headings as scripture seems far more prevalent in evangelical churches, and among more evangelical students on courses. On the courses they are also those students most likely to use and quote from the notes of the study bibles. There is a fascinating irony here: those who most strongly stress the authority of the scripture alone in theory are those who in practice are quickest to supplement it (at worst) or read it only within the bounds of the traditions enshrined in the headings and footnotes.

written by doug

I’ve just finished reading Dale Martin’s new book Sex and the Single Savior, and am still digesting it. Like all his work, it’s both fascinating and persuasive in its historical readings of the scriptural text, and deeply provocative in its interpretations of them.

This book brings together a mix of material mainly published elsewhere, but does manage to weave the variety of essays into a coherent whole. His knowledge of the range of ancient literature is impressive, and, as in his previous work The Corinthian Body, he draws heavily not only on popular philosophical work and other standard “background” material, but on the medical literature of the time. Many of his positions here echo that earlier work, but he focuses on understandings of gender and sex, and particularly homosexuality. Disappointingly, except for one eponymous essay, he does not particularly reflect on Jesus’ singleness.

He tackles a number of the texts which have been drawn on as proof-texts in the debate on homosexual relationships in the church and raises some significant questions that have been inadequately addressed by others. His conclusions are not always predictable in terms of the debate, and he often criticises liberals as well as conservatives: there’s a clear example of the former in his chapter on “The Queer History of Galatians 3:28″

To my mind, his examination of the ancient text is at both its best and its most challenging in the chapters “Paul without Passion,” and “Familiar Idolatry and the Christian Case against Marriage.” It’s a little disappointing then, that having shown the strangeness of the biblical text to any modern sensibility and ethical use of it, he doesn’t spend long enough bringing it into dialogue with contemporary views.

Having explored Paul’s rejection of passion as a critique of American views of the self, desire and reason, he then simply says Paul’s view is “Not for me, thanks.” He is a little more attentive to the case against marriage as a critique of what he sees as the idolatry of the modern nuclear family, but too quick to dismiss the embarrassment of the ancient texts that find sex shameful. (I’m not suggesting that we should accept it, rather that it offers as much a critique of modern idolatries of sexual “fulfillment” as it does of those of the family.

I’m also not entirely sure where I stand in relation to Martin’s assertive non-foundationalism, and particularly his attack on scriptural or textual foundationalism. I think he offers the most persuasive argument for a community-bounded reader-response criticism that I have yet heard, not least because he takes the communion of saints in history as part of that reader-response community.

And yet … I agree with him that “the original meaning” of the text is always for us a reconstruction, and that the scriptural text itself bears witness to experience as the interpreter of scripture. But I do also think I want to give more weight, in between all the competing readings, to our reconstructed readings of the text in its socio-historical context. I’m just not entirely sure how I justify that, and perhaps its either some latent evangelical or modernist hangover. I think, however, it may also be taking seriously the witness of past readers to how this text (in their many diverse readings) has addressed them in blessing and judgement, in affirmation and disruption, and through that attentive hearing of the other in the text, they have heard and encountered the living Other.

written by doug