Mission, Contextualization and Canon (Christopher Wright)

I am reading a great essay written by Rev Dr Christopher Wright. I really like Wright's missional reading of Scripture. The following two quotes about the canon, mission and contextualization are particularly insightful.

The task of recontextualizing the word of God is a missional project that has its basis in Scripture itself and has been part of the mission of God’s people all through the centuries of their existence. The finality of the canon refers to the completion of God’s work of revelation and redemption, not to a foreclosure on the necessary continuation of the inculturated witness to that completed work in every culture.

So, then, we should take into account not only the missional locatedness of today’s readers, but also the missional locatedness of the very first readers of the canonical texts. The Scriptures, after all, are not disembodied pronouncements dropped from heaven, but collections of texts that addressed living people in specific contexts, who were therefore called upon to respond to them, in faith and action. What can we know about those original contexts, and how can we discern the misisonal drive and energy that the texts injected into them?

Chris Wright then uses Jeremiah to illustrate how this works. I think he has given us much to ponder.

(The above two citations are from Christopher J H Wright, “Mission and Old Testament Interpretation,” in Hearing the Old Testament: Listening for God’s Address, edited by Craig G Bartholomew and D J H Beldman (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 188.)

David Lamb on Jesus and the Old Testament

In his book God Behaving Badly Professor David T. Lamb says the following about Jesus and the Old Testament.

People who overdichotomize the two testaments seem to forget one important fact: the Bible of Jesus was the Old Testament. His value for the Old Testament can be seen in how frequently he referred to it. At the beginning of his ministry Jesus quoted Deuteronomy three times in the wilderness to Satan (Lk 4:4, 8, 12; Deut 6:13, 16; 8:3), and he quoted the Psalms as his final words on the cross (Mt 27:46; Ps 22:1). Throughout his entire ministry Jesus constantly mentioned the Old Testament law, the Prophets and the Psalms (for example, Lk 7:27; 10:26; 18:31; 19:46; 20:178; 22:37; 24:44). Jesus loved the Old Testament.

What is particularly relevant for this discussion, however, is that Jesus used the Old Testament to describe God. His description of God as a vineyard owner (Mt 21:33) came straight out of Isaiah 5:1-2. When Jesus told a scribe that the Lord our God is one (Mk 12:29), he quoted Deuteronomy 6:4. When the high priest asked him if he is the Christ, Jesus first stated, “I am,” an allusion to God’s Old Testament name, Yahweh (Ex 3:14), and then he combined two Old Testament texts into a prophecy that they will see him as the Son of Man seated at God’s right hand (Ps 110:1), coming in the clouds of heaven (Dan 7:13). Jesus frequently used Old Testament images to describe both himself and God as a bridegroom (Is 62:5; Mk 2:19), as a shepherd (Ezek 34; Jn 10:11) and as a king (Ps 47; Mt 18:23). Jesus not only knew the Old Testament, he also identified completely with its God. (Pages 20-21)

I think this is well written.

David Lamb on racism in the Old Testament

In his book God Behaving Badly Professor David T. Lamb has done a good job in explaining that the God of the Old Testament is not racist. Indeed, not only that God is not racist, he also loves people of all races. But what impresses me is David Lamb's honest sharing of his own experience. Here is an excerpt of what he says,

[W]e confront racism as Jesus did in the Old testament examples he mentioned in Luke 4 or in the parable he told in Luke 10. Two colleagues of mine recently confronted me about an insensitive racial remark I had made to them. They said that even though they knew I hadn’t meant to insult them, they were still deeply offended by my comment. I initially felt very defensive – they should have known that my comments were simply meant to tease them. But then I realized that they had a legitimate point, I didn’t understand their context, and my comment had been very hurtful. I asked them questions to understand their perspective and then asked their forgiveness. While their words were hard to hear, I appreciated not only their honesty but also that they valued our relationship enough to confront me. (page 91)

I have to say that I really appreciate David Lamb's humility and honesty.

Lament as true prayer (Dr Diane Jacobson)

I find this an excellent way of describing lament and prayer in the Old Testament. The following quotes are taken from an article written by Dr Diane Jacobson in The Lutheran, July 2005.

We speak honestly of what we know. God meets us there.

"Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words" (Romans 8:26).

I often think the sighs of the Spirit are heard most clearly in the laments of the Psalms. Praying the laments is difficult. But so often they are our deepest and truest prayers...

Some say God, in utter grace, allows us to express such lamentation until the time we can return to faithfulness. But I contend that the importance and truth of our laments goes much deeper: To lament is to be faithful.

The lament, more than any other form of prayer, speaks directly to God of the reality of suffering. And God knows when our prayers are true. (emphasis added)

Consider the book of Job. Job's speech is rife with lamentation. He rails against the Almighty, throwing the issue of suffering into God's face, begging for a relationship that speaks to the truth of his loss and pain. Job's friends are appalled by his words, which they deem unfaithful. The friends reason that humans should never question God's motives but, in all humility, should accept suffering as the righteous judgment of a just God...

But in contrast to his friends, Job refused to overlook the depth of his suffering. He refused to protect God from his despair. He refused to believe God wasn't active in the world. Perhaps most importantly, Job continued to speak directly to God, praying for justice, relief and comfort. True prayer, true speech to and about God, never uses theological platitudes to deny the reality of the world.

The power of the lament is this: We come to God boldly, directly, defenses stripped away, with nothing standing between us and the Almighty. Standing thus, we can do nothing but speak the truth from our depth. This isn't to say that we suddenly have right understanding, only that we speak honestly of what we know. God meets us there.

"Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD. ... I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word !hope" (Psalm 130:1, 5).

True prayer, true speech to and about God, never uses theological platitudes to deny the reality of the world.

Click here for the full article.

Reading the Old Testament in the age of the New Testament

I have found a post in Daniel Kirk's blog which is very interesting. (Click here for the link.) It is about how Christians should read the Old Testament. He starts with saying how important it is. For example, he says,

"What’s the difference between Reformed ethics and Anabaptist? Oh yeah… We continue to be plagued by the issue of (dis)continuity."

In recent years as I speak with Christians from these two traditions I find that ultimately the underlying debate is precisely the issue of the relationship between the Old and New Testaments.

Here is Kirk's thesis:

"Here is my thesis, as I’ve hinted at it, perhaps stated it, in earlier posts: nothing comes to Christians from the OT except insofar as it is mediated through Christ.

That mediation can mean that the OT storyline and/or law is abrogated, or that it is affirmed and renewed, or that it is affirmed in some transformed manner. But either way, we have to wrestle with the implications of the Christ event and our identity as the Christ-and-Spirit community before we know the relevance of the OT text for us."

I found this useful, but immediately I realised that one could raised several questions. Not surprisingly Nathan MacDonald (an expert in Hebrew and Old Testament from St Andrews University) comments on Kirk's post and says,

"This is a sophisticated attempt to do justice to some of the issues to do with Old and New, but there are considerable traps for the unwary. Which is to say, Daniel, I think you’ve managed to avoid them thus far, but I am not confident that all that read you will. From my perspective, there are various things that need also to be said if we are to get the picture fully right.

First, the Old Testament is presented to us in a form that is unglossed. Even if we recognise the early Christian allegiance to the Septuagint, Christians have steadily refused to gloss the Old Testament so as to make it speak more obviously of Christ or New Testament realities. This is a basic instinct that perhaps deserves some reflection, especially given the possibility that early Christians could have resorted to the type of rewritten Scriptures that are found in Qumran. Thus, it would seem to me, that there is a confidence that Old Testament Scripture can speaks in a clear voice that Christians can recognise. Both directly of Christ, but also I think of other things of which the NT does not speak.

Second, your picture tends to reverse the realities of the New Testament church, as Childs and others have pressed most strongly. Thus, the question in the early church was not how do we make sense of this weird set of texts now that we have Jesus, but rather, given that we have these Scriptures how do we make sense of Jesus? Our own context is some steps on from that, but there is no harm in being reminded of where the first Christians were at, and at very least it needs to be recognized as a counterpoint to what you’ve said. Thus, as happy as I might be to affirm for a Christian reading of Scripture the necessity of “intentionally bring[ing] our New Testament and otherwise Christian theology with us when we read the OT.” the reverse also needs to be stated too, viz. the necessity of intentionally bringing our OT with us when we read the NT”. We fail to do justice to the two testament nature of the Christian Scripture if we do not have the other side.

Third, it is not clear that what you say does complete justice to how the Old Testament has been used and appreciated in the history of the church. That is, Christian readers have been able to read the Old Testament and hear a word from God to them without always deploying the framework that you have set out. This is not to doubt that the narrative theological movement has its benefits, but we might also not wish to too quickly disconnect ourselves from how many Christians have read Scripture before our enlightened times!

Fourth, it is unclear to me that “nothing comes to Christians from the OT except insofar as it is mediated through Christ.” could not mutatis mutandis be said about the NT, to the extent to which it is important for a truly Christian theology to be centred around the Christ-event. Or am I missing something in the way that “New Testament” issues such as head coverings or women and ministry have been discussed in the last thirty or more years?

Fifth, it is also unclear to me that “nothing comes to Christians from the OT except insofar as it is mediated through Christ.” solves the problems of interpreting all OT texts. Some texts and issues do indeed find further explication in the NT. But how do I deal with those that don’t? Am I then working with some form of developed Christological theology that I can wield to make sense of my OT text, or some sense of the narrative flow of the big story. It is not clear to me that these abstractions necessarily resolve the issues that you rightly mention of having divided Christians in the past: anabaptism etc. Might it not be the case that some OT texts do not need to do a hop skip and a jump via the NT?

As a final note, and discarding any facade of humility, I wonder whether you have read my own attempt to deal with some of these matters in dialogue with Irenaeus and some narrative theological readings of him? The essay was published in JTI a year or two back. I hope you might find there further matters for reflection."

Very good discussion going on!

Justice in the Old Testament (More from Wolterstorff)

Here are more quotes from Nicholas Wolterstorff's Justice: Rights and Wrongs (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008).

Citing Oliver O'Donovan's The Desire of the Nations (1996):

[The conception of justice in the Old Testament] is often obscured by the influence of a quite different conception of justice, classical and Aristotelian in inspiration, built on the twin notions of appropriateness and proportionate equality - justice as receiving ones own and being in social equilibrium. Mishpat is primarily a judicial performance. When "judgment" is present , it is not a state of affairs that obtains but an activity that is duly carried out... So, for example, when Amos calls for mishpat to "roll on like a river," he means precisely that the stream of juridical activity should not be allowed to dry up. (page 69 in Justice: Rights and Wrongs)

The following quotes are directly from Wolterstorff.

[J]ust as we use our word "justice" to speak of both primary and rectifying justice, so Israel used its word "mishpat" to speak of both. (p 75)

They were downtrodden as our older English translations nicely put it. The rich and the powerful put them down, tread on them, trampled them. Rendering justice to them is often described as "lifting them up." (p 76)

Rather often what the writers [of the Old Testament] have in view, when speaking of the plight of widows, orphans, aliens, and the impoverished, is the collapse or perversion of the judicial system. A place midway between Brueggemann's emphasis on primary justice in Israel and O'Donovan's on rectifying justice seems to me the right place to be. (p 78)

Injustice is not equally distributed. The low ones enjoy those goods to which they have a right - food, clothing, voice, security, whatever - far less than do the high and mighty ones. (p 79)

Israel's religion was a religion of salvation, not of contemplation - that is what accounts for the mantra of the widows, the orphans, the aliens, and the poor. Not a religion of salvation from this earthly existence but a religion of salvation from injustice in this earthly existence. (p 79)

Yahweh's pursuit of justice and Yahweh's injunction to practice justice are grounded in Yahweh's love. (p 82)

Injustice is perforce the impairment of shalom. That is why God loves justice. God desires the flourishing of each and every one of God's human creatures; justice is indispensable to that. Love and justice are not pitted against each other but intertwined. (p 82)

God holds human beings accountable for doing justice; and God is himself committed to justice, both in the sense that God does justice and in the sense that God works to bring it about that human beings treat each other justly. Underlying these two themes is God's love of justice. (p 89)

Israel's writers were implicitly working with the conception of justice as inherent rights rather than with that of justice as right order. (p 91)

The assumption of Israel's writers that God holds us accountable for doing justice has the consequence that when we fail to do justice, we wrong God. We not only fail in our obligations to God. We wrong God, deprive God of that to which God has a right. (p 91)

What Israel's writers presuppose, of course, is that God has the right to hold us accountable for doing justice. (p 93)

Surely, God does not have these rights on account of some norm that applies to him! They are not conferred upon God. They belong to God inherently; they come along with what god is and what God does. (p 94)

N T Wright on Genesis 1-3 and Adam

Here are two very short video clips in which N T Wright suggests how we should read Genesis 1-3. Simple and easy to understand. Worth watching.

On Adam and Eve. Are they myths? What are myths anyway?

Click here to view.

On the Genesis story

Click here to view.

Isaiah's vision

It seems to me that the Christian hope is not about a ticket to heaven. It is, instead, about the hope of a new world in which death not longer has its power. It is about life eternal, where one day those who are in Christ will rise with him and enjoy his presence with them. It is about a new creation where we can enjoy Shalom.

What Isaiah foreshadowed was quite amazing. Read these verses in Isaiah and let them touch your life and encourage you!

25:7-8 On this mountain he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations; he will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will remove his people's disgrace from all the earth. he LORD has spoken.

26:19 But your dead will live, LORD; their bodies will rise — let those who dwell in the dust wake up and shout for joy — your dew is like the dew of the morning; you will make it fall on the spirits of the dead.

11:6 The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them.
7 The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
8 Infants will play near the hole of the cobra; young children will put their hands into the viper's nest.
9 They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.

What did the Old Testament law have to offer foreigners?

Christopher Wright says that the Old Testament Law says a lot about caring for foreigners.

What did the Old Testament law have to offer such foreigners? A great deal… The Old Testament speaks of protection from general oppression (Ex. 22:21; Lev. 19:33) and from unfair treatment in court (Ex. 23:9; Deut 10:17-19; 24:17-18); inclusion in Sabbath rest (Ex. 20:9—11; 23:12; Deut. 5:12-15) and inclusion in worship and cov­enant ceremonies of Passover (Ex. 12:45-49), the annual festivals (Deut. 16), the Day of Atonement (Lev. 16:29), and covenant renewal ceremonies (Deut. 29:10-13; 31:12); the economic benefit of the triennial tithes (Deut. 1-1:28-29; 26:12-13) and access to agricultural produce (gleaning rights) (Lev. 19:9- 10; Deut. 24:19-22); and equality before the law with native born (Lev. 19:34).

See also the similarity between the second greatest commandment (as Jesus affirms) and the instruction to look after foreigners (both found in the same chapter in Leviticus).

Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD. (Lev 19:18)

The foreigners residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God. (Lev 19:34)

I hope these Scriptures can help us to formulate our view on asylum seekers.

Source: Christopher Wright, The God I Don’t Understand [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008), page 103-4.

Isaiah's vision of God putting the world to rights

The following is an excerpt of Tom Wright's recent sermon on Isaiah 11.1–10; Acts 17.22–32.

I find the first paragraph amusing - abstract thoughts of a theologian! But the following comments on Isaiah's vision are profound. We have messed up God's creation, but God is in the process of putting it to rights by transforming it. May that be our vision too!

(Click here for the whole sermon.)

"The theologian tells the time by looking at the future and the past and discerning where we are in relation to both of them. And a great deal of the trouble in today’s world is caused by people who think we’re living in the past, on the one hand, and by people who think we’re living in the future, on the other hand. You and I are called to live in the present, in appropriate relation to past and future, but in a realistic appraisal of the differences between present and past and present and future.

Now that’s horribly abstract, so let me at once jump to something solid, concrete, and actually stunningly beautiful. Here is the vision of the future we heard a few minutes ago, one of the most evocative passages in all poetry:

The wolf shall live with the lamb
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze,
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain;
for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD
as the waters cover the sea.

Isaiah’s vision of a world put to rights: not only put to rights, but transformed, made to be more fully and gloriously itself, discovering at last what the Garden of Eden might have become if only we hadn’t messed it up. " (Emphasis added)

Old Testament Law and Justice

I am going through the lectures on Old Testament given by Prof Iain Provan at Regent College, Vancouver. He said some things about the Ten Commandments that are very interesting and important. Here are a few things I note (according to my understanding of Provan's lecture).

The Ten Commandments are not an exhaustive set of laws for human behaviour, and hence cannot be a simple and precise measure of good human behaviour and ethics. For example, when the Rich Ruler said to Jesus that he had kept all the Commandments, the Lord asked him to sell everything and give to the poor. This implies that the requirements of God go much further than keeping the Commandments. Indeed Jesus summaries the Law with the love commands of loving God and one's neighbours.

Then Provan says that even in the Old Testament we see how the ethical requirements of God can be summarised in terms of what should be done to reflect his values: Do justice and show mercy.

Here I am reminded of Micah 6:8, Deut 10:12-22, and Jeremiah 9:23-24 (and more in Isaiah 1, Amos, and Zechariah).

Something for us to ponder on.

Victory over powers of oppression

Hans Boersma (Professor of Theology at Regent College, Vancouver) has written a book called Violence, Hospitality, and the Cross. It is not an easy book to read unless one has had theological training. But the following is a good quote about the place of the church in speaking up against injustice.

"The Christus Victor theme of the atonement is in a real sense the most significant model of the atonement. The result of Christ's work of recapitulation is victory over the powers of oppression. In other words, God's hospitality aims at the freedom of humanity and all creation. The whole creation is waiting to 'be freed from its slavery to corruption and brought into the same glorious freedom as the children of God' (Rom. 8:21). This freedom no doubt includes freedom from social and political bondage. The concrete language with which the Old Testament prophets describe the peace and justice of the coming kingdom of God precludes all spiritualizing that seals off salvation from our concrete historical contexts... The Church must of necessity be careful in asserting its authoritative voice in the particularities of social and political issues. Nonetheless, there are situations of egregious evil and injustice where the Church must speak as Church in order to effect redemptive liberation. What is more, even when the Church cannot speak as Church on specific issues, it nonetheless directs the religious and moral lives of the believers, who cannot but make social, economic, and political judgments that ultimately stem from faith commitments that speak of redemption and liberation." (p. 248)

Christopher Wright and Old Testament Ethics

I find Christopher Wright's Old Testament Ethics for the People of God an excellent book. If you want to have a good understanding of Old Testament Ethics, social justice, ecology and the earth, economics, the land and the poor, etc, this is a good book to read. Highly recommended.