MetaCatholic

Peter Kirk takes me to task in a comment on a previous post. My statement that “mission” as we use the word today wasn’t part of the agenda for the mission of Jesus in the gospels was incidental to the points I was making there. It also seemed to me moderately obvious, that “mission” pre-church, in Judea and Galilee, pre-crucifixion and resurrection (never mind cultural differences or history) was going to be something different, and that theological work would be and will be needed to move from A to B. I had not expected serious disagreement on that point, but it seems I need to elaborate.

Let me suggest that there are three broad positions that can be taken about any particular part of scripture:

1. That (scripture) and this (what we are doing today) are talking about the same thing.
2. That (scripture) has nothing to do with this (what we are doing today)
3. There are connections between that and this, which we need to make in the work of reading and interpretation.

Let’s take a couple of genuine examples. Some catholics have read the word episkopos in the NT, and assumed something like a full-blown diocesan bishop in apostolic succession. That = this. Some protestants have read episkopos in the NT and have seen a function, but not a ministerial office. That ≠ this. Others again have worked at how to relate the patterns of the NT to the patterns of today.

Then there is speaking in tongues. For the larger part of Christian history that ≠ this. Instead they were most generally taken as a sign of possession. What the NT described was a unique action of the Spirit in the apostolic age. For a large number of contemporary charismatics and pentecostalists that = this. It is unproveable (and IMO unclear) what connection the contemporary phenomenon of glossolalia has with Paul’s “other kinds of tongues” (ἑτέρῳ γένη γλωσσῶν – 1 Cor 12:10) or Luke’s “speaking in other languages” (λαλεῖν ἑτέραις γλώσσαις – Acts 2:4) or indeed even whether Paul and Luke refer to the same phenomenon. Work must be done to relate them together.

I don’t believe that these different positions mark different kinds of churchmanship or tradition. I suspect that all of us, to one degree or another, actually hold all three of them on different points, quite un-self-consciously adopting position 1 (that=this) on matters congenial to us, and position 2 (that ≠ this) on those ideas that are either uncongenial, haven’t even occurred to us.

I would, however, submit that in theory the third position is the only one we can take on every part of scripture, and that it is the role of the tradition, and the contemporary community, (and for those who insist that piety is explicit, the Holy Spirit) to make us aware when we have all too easily slipped into either of the first two positions without even noticing it.