Barring False Dichotomies: Adam and Eve's Disobedience and Death

James Barr's interpretation of the story of Adam and Eve has become a staple of modern biblical studies. Often it is assumed that he has successfully shown that Genesis 2-3 does not narrate the origin of death in the act of disobedience (in Barr's parlance: "evil") of the primal couple. Here's his own summary:

"So let me put forward at once my basic thesis about that story. My argument is that, taken in itself and for itself, this narrative is not, as it has commonly been understood in our tradition, basically a story of the origins of sin and evil, still less a depiction of absolute evil or total depravity: it is a story of how human immortality was almost gained, but in fact was lost. This was, I need hardly remind you, the reason, and the only reason, why Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden: not because there were unworthy to stay there, or because they were hopelessly alienated from God, but because, if they stayed there, they would soon gain access to the tree of life, and eat of its fruit, and gain immortality: they would 'live for ever' (Genesis 3.22). Immortality was what they had practically achieved." The Garden of Eden and the Hope of Immortality, p 4

This argument only works because Barr has introduced a dichotomy: Either the narrative is about immortality or it is about the origin of human evil. Note Barr: "the only reason[,] why Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden: not because they were unworthy . . . but because . . . they would soon gain access to the tree of life." However, the presence of the two trees in the garden joins the question of obedience/'evil' ("you shall not eat") to the question of life/death ("in that day, you shall die"). If God were only concerned to prevent the couple from attaining immortality, then the tree of life would have (also) been the subject of divine prohibition.

But it was not.

In my view, therefore, the narrative does in fact support the linkage of law and life, or disobedience and death.

What do you think?

* I believe the depiction of Adam and Eve is from a third century fresco, in the catacomb of St. Piretro and St. Marcellino, Rome.

Quote of the Month: LTJ on Historical Critical Method

In the classic historical critical method . . . once one has done an historical Jesus, or an history of the early church, there's really no reason to read the writings anymore. For me, I learn history in order  better to read these writings.

Luke Timothy Johnson: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ac7nGM1qGc

"Faith" Obscuring Understanding

"Israel conceived even Jahweh himself as having human form. But the way of putting it which we use runs in precisely the wrong direction according to Old Testament ideas, for, according to the ideas of Jahwism, it cannot be said that Israel regarded God anthropomorphically, but the reverse, that she considered man as theomorphic." G. von Rad, OTtheo, 1:145

This statement of Gerhard von Rad's nicely summarizes an emphasis James Kugel has often made.  Traditionally theology has tended to view the human-like attributes of God as distractions which need to be explained (away). This has the paradoxical results of a) decontextualizing and dehumanzing the biblical texts, that is, making it easier to understand them as divinely inspired, and b) of imposing on them, unwittingly of course, our (human) will to domesticate or exult them (depending on your perspective). If we take the lead of texts like Gen 1:26-27 we should be much less struck by the humanness of YHWH than by the divine quality of humanity. With the psalmist we might exclaim, "You have made him a little less than elohim!" (Ps 8:6).

A similar impulse to subject the text to a hermeneutical straight-jacket of symbolism is to divest the Gen 1 account of scientific implications, insisting, as Evangelical interpreters are want to do, that the text only communicates theological, not scientific knowledge. As von Rad notes, this too is a mistake: "This account of Creation is, of course, completely bound to the cosmological knowledge of its time" (ibid., 1:148). The Fundamentalist tries to take the high road by holding its scientific and theological implications together, but, because (s)he cannot allow that the text could be wrong, can only do so by badly misreading either or both the text and contemporary science.

I think that the only way to proceed is to admit that the text ties theological claims to defunct science, and then to ask whether the theology remains compatible or adaptable to our contemporary state of knowledge about the world. The answer to that may be yes or no: the fact that Gen 1 ties the two together does not mean that its theological claims are automatically false. (We shouldn't take from this that theology can ignore science; to the contrary, like the text of Gen 1, it must run the risk of engaging scientific knowledge dialogically.)

In complete contrast to the dictum that one must share the faith of the biblical texts in order to understand them, it is often the case that those who claim to possess such faith in fact misread the text, forcing it to conform to rather than challenge their convictions. This is faith obscuring understanding.

A Bizarre Dream about Christian Hermeneutics

Last night, I had a bizarre dream in which the fittingness of New Testament anti-types from Israel's history was allegorically tested by the ability of an archer to lodge arrows in my back. I managed to elude his offenses, running madly and throwing obstacles in the way.
 
True Story.

Creation, Theodicy, and the Divine: A Biblical Scholar Talks LOST?

Reading Jon D. Levenson's Sinai and Zion I was struck by how well his discussion of the problem of monotheism in the Bible via the flood narratives parallels what is going on in the television series LOST (I've italicized the most relevant part):

But there are reasons to doubt whether the religion of Israel was really monotheistic. Consider an illustration: Once there were two gods. One held high hopes for creation and would not tolerate evil in it; the other was more a realist and was prepared to bear with man, even though the latter's impulses were evil from his youth on. The first god brought a flood to destroy the world with the exception of one family of righteous people, for he regretted having created the world. But, after a while, he was overcome by the second god, who caused the flood to subside and swore that he would never allow such a thing to occur, even though man is still evil. Now this story is surely polytheistic; there are two gods. But is it essentially different from the story of Noah in Genesis 6-9? In the latter, God determines to destroy the whole world, except for Noah and his family, because of its corruption (6:13),but then he promises that he will not bring a flood again, even though man has not reformed. "The inclinations of man's mind are [still] evil from his youth" (8:31). In other words, God changes his mind twice in the story of Noah. First he regrets having created the world (6:7), and then he decides that he will not bring another flood even though man's evil, the cause of the flood, continues. My question is this: Is this one God or more than one? . . . Wherein lies the continuity of identity? (Jon D. Levenson, Sinai and Zion: An Entry into the Jewish Bible. New York: Harper, 1985. p. 57)

Of course, the parallel is not exact, but substitute "the island" for "creation" and you get a fairly good description of the kind of conflict portrayed between Jacob and his nemesis on LOST. Just to be clear: I'm not suggesting LOST wrestles with the philosophical problem of monotheism, only that its dualism has a parallel in the biblical traditions' struggle to reconcile a-sort-of-monotheism and human evil.

The Consumers of Cookbooks as Exemplary Readers of Texts

Continuing in the vein of biblical theology or theological interpretation of the Bible is the following quote from the pen of Christopher Seitz. Earlier, I quoted Ben Meyer to the effect that a prerequisite of any biblical theology would be the finding of a "deep coherence" amidst/within/beneath the "breaks, tangents, and oddly angled continuities" of the biblical text. Following that, I tried to show, with the help of John Goldingay, that an honest acknowledgment of such cracks in the surface of the biblical texts did not signal the end of theological interpretation and (implicitly) that the prospect of finding them need not be regarded with hostility even by people within the Judaeo-Christian tradition. But Meyer was right: one must move on to coherence. If there is to be theology, and not simply discrete theologies, and if there is to be biblical theology, then one must be able to give expression to that same "deep coherence" which the biblical writers evidently found with those who preceded them.

How then to find or express such coherence? Well, to start with, one must take a lesson in hermeneutics from cookbooks and their consumers. Seitz employs the analogy to describe what it would mean to interpret the Bible with concern for its subject matter.

If you buy a cookbook, you generally do so to cook and to enjoy what you have prepared. You could, however, buy a cookbook and seek to comprehend what cooking is about, or what this cook or that cook was thinking when he said, 'I shall cook a nice egg soufflé. The ingredients are these. The oven shall be this hot.' Or you could study the cookbook and conjecture about the history of fish preparation, if you were shrewd enough and had enough time to make comparisons throughout the history of cooking. Usually, though, purchase is made so as to cook along the lines introduced in the cookbook. If the food is good, you say, 'Brilliant. What a good purchase. I have learned to cook a great soufflé.' And, perhaps, 'Brilliant. People will be happy to eat what I have cooked.'

This is what it means to be interested in the subject matter -- not the author doing the producing, nor the circumstances of her writing or eating, nor even the energy produced by reflecting on how a soufflé is made, or what deep anguish lies in the human heart regarding soufflés that fall. No, to speak of the subject matter is to say, 'I'd like to eat a soufflé, but I do not know how to cook one.' It is not to say, 'What goes on in the mind of chefs, male and female? It is not to say, 'Eggs? How were they different in the southern hemisphere?'

. . .

A cookbook, most would agree, is constraining readers to read it in a certain way. It is constraining readers to read it so as to cook food well. The subject matter (cooking) and the form (recipes, etc.) conspire to call forth a certain kind of reading. Other ways of reading are not ruled out, but most would agree they are either subsidiary, peripheral, or are self-conscious efforts not to deal with the subject matter (cooking) so as to do something else (e.g., reflect on the history of cooking).

"Review of Richard Bauckham, God Crucified: Monotheism and Christology in the New Testament." International Journal of Systematic Theology 2/1 (2000): here, 112-113

N.B. David Guretzki, a theology professor at Briercrest, has initiated a promising new series: 1 John: A Theommentary; here are the first and second posts. Do check it out!

Disclaimer: my posts on this topic should not be taken as a claim to any great proficiency on my part. What they reflect are brief soundings I am taking in order to satisfy a largely neglected interest.

John Goldingay on Daniel's Vision of the End: Reading the Bible's Breaks, Tangents, and Oddly Angled Continuities Theologically

There has been some discussion of the dating of Daniel in the blogosphere (see here and here). This is a convenient context in which to insert some excerpts I have been intending to post from John Goldingay's WBC commentary on Daniel.

I hope to show how some of the Bible's "breaks, tangents and oddly angled continuities" can profitably be read theologically. Rather than provide a program for a biblical theology, I only intend to give an example of the kind of exegesis and historical and theological reflection that make a mature biblical theology possible (i.e., one that doesn't operate with exegetical expectations about what the Bible can and cannot say/do).

The book of Daniel is an ideal subject. Even within its own structure Daniel confronts us with a stark discontinuity: that between the purported author and circumstances, on the one hand, and what the text implicitly reveals--and what (I suspect) nearly all modern scholars recognize--as the actual author(s)/sources and circumstances, on the other. In spite of what a surface reading of the text would imply about its setting, the book of Daniel cannot be dated to the 6th century BCE. This conclusion can be argued on many fronts; one of them comes from the account of the course and consequences of Antiochus IV's career in chapters 11-12.

Daniel 10-12 are set in the time of the Persian king Cyrus (10.1). They recount a vision of heavenly beings and an increasingly detailed (but not totally unproblematic; e.g., cf. 11.2) "prophecy" of the course of Persian and Hellenestic history, culminating in the rise of "a despised man," the Seleucid king, Antiochus IV. The events narrated of his career can be traced historically up to 11.39, which brings us to the enforcement of his infamous decrees against the practice of the Jewish law; v. 40 begins a genuine prophecy of interconnected events (cf. "at that time," 12.1), the end of Antiochus, the End of time, and the resurrection of the martyrs.

In a surprising piece of prosopopeia (speaking in the person of one who is absent), Goldingay imagines how "Daniel" (the historical author) would react to the course which history took, seemingly, in spite of the climax of his vision (another "break" or "oddly angled continuity"). Goldingay allows himself to import Christian presuppositions into this reflection, but I suspect it would be of interest to anyone trying to understand the mindset which operates in the writing and reception of apocalyptic literature.

I will play the role of interlocutor; the replies are those of "Daniel"/Goldingay.

Daniel, you say your message came by divine revelation, but why should we believe you given all that we know about its composition?

I do not necessarily imply that either I or my audience took this [the revelation of the heavenly beings] to be a conclusive argument. First, even if I believed my message to have come by divine gift, I of course knew, and at least some of my contemporaries knew, that it was not received by the exilic Daniel in the way I described it. Second . . . a claim to revelatory experience is not to be accepted purely on the basis of the claim (cf. Jer 23:15-32).

But my account implicitly offers several other reasons for accepting the message as a God-given revelation. First, I could present it as an experience of a man of proved discernment and faithfulness. In chaps. 1-6 these qualities appear in Daniel; in chaps. 10-12 they also appear when we see the actual recipients of these visions become fleetingly visible (11:32-35; 12:10). Second, my message was presented not as a quite new revelation but in large part as a piece of scriptural exposition . . . Biblical prophecy and not merely personal insight provided the categories for my understanding of the events of Hellenistic history. . . . I was reapplying Scripture to Antiochus and the promised destiny of conservative Jews. p. 311

But what about the apparent non-fulfillment of your prophecies about Antiochus' end, the arrival of the "time of the End," and the resurrection of the martyrs, Daniel?

Another obvious criterion for deciding whether a prophecy comes from God is whether it comes true (Deut 18:22). I might seem to fail that test. . . . The words of the OT prophets, who sometimes fail the test of fulfillment, commonly receive what people could see as a partial fulfillment, and perhaps it is this that encourages the community to hold onto words that were not fulfilled--these must also have come from God and must offer illumination for the future. My community, too, might not have preserved my words if they had experienced no spectacular deliverance in 164-163 B.C. p. 311-312

Daniel, what's the point of writing "prophetically" after the fact?

My vision pictured a heavenly being revealing in the exile events to take place over the coming four centuries up to the End, from the contents of "a reliable book" (10:21) . . . The significance of describing what is actually past as pre-written is to declare that God is somehow in control even of the inexplicabilities of history--the success of the godless and the sufferings of the faithful--and even at moments when evil is asserting itself in a particularly oppressive way. Given the difficulty of viewing history as it actually unfolds as the direct will of God, the books declare that it was foreknown by God and in some sense willed by him. It is part of some pattern and purpose, rather than being random and meaningless. . . . There is a fixed inevitability about history; human beings cannot frustrate God's ultimate purpose [the defeat of evil and triumph of God's rule], and in that sense cannot alter what has been determined by God's will. But the detailed portrayal of how the End will come is an imaginative scenario drawn in the light of Scripture, rather than a forecast of how things actually must be. p. 315

Is this why, Daniel, your depiction of the resurrection of the martyrs never materialized? And is this why, even though writing of the End, you mention neither Messiah nor Antichrist? How is all this to be understood?

Admittedly there is [here] no such figure who embodies the fulfillment of God's positive purpose-no messiah. Nor is there any indication in my vision that at some point it moves from talking about Antiochus to talking about Antichrist or Satan, or begins to speak in words that refer both to Antiochus and to Antichrist. But in the way I spoke of Antiochus I was suggesting that he--like the King of Babylon in Isa 14 or Gog in Ezek 38--was the very embodiment of godless wickedness, so that the language used of him could be used of Antichrist or Satan. The passage could be treated typologically in this way: this is a way of using the passage to throw light on Antichrist or Satan, but not a way of approaching the passage exegetically. . . . My vision of the awakening and vindication of the holy and discerning martyr shaped the perceptions of Jesus, for Jesus himself and for his followers. It thus proved it had an anticipatory relationship with the event that more than any other brought a realization within history of realities that belong to the End; and by a feedback process this Christ event turned out to be the vindication of my own vision. Setting my vision in the context of the NT suggests that one martyr indeed awoke to such vindication. pp. 317-318

So, your having written in the person of the exilic Daniel was meant to affirm, retrospectively, that despite the chaotic events of history, there is a God whose will will finally triumph. You also suggest that at least some of your contemporaries knew that you were not the exilic Daniel. I don't see how it could be otherwise; yet many of them, and certainly most who followed you, did not know this. I wonder how or if that obstructs your aims in writing? Then you suggest that when your vision turns to genuine prophecy (11.40 on), it must be understood, like all biblical prophecy, which it creatively reapplies, as forecasting the kind of future that must eventually transpire given God's providence and his word in Scripture. This means that they are "more promise than prediction." (p. 312) Again, it seems that something like this must also have been in the minds of those who first accepted your vision even after these things did not materialize in the way described.

Thanks, Daniel. Your words in their generic and historical setting are a powerful stimulus to our thinking about history and the form that the divine (Word) takes in the human (word).

Ben Meyer on Biblical Theology

This is from the Preface to Ben Meyer's Critical Realism and the New Testament:

The more [the biblical tradition] revealed its breaks, tangents, oddly angled continuities, and the more I thought of the stunning shape taken by the fulfillment of its hopes, the more striking became the constant biblical affirmation of precedent and the triumphant achievement of ties with the past. The sustained effort of biblical authors to trace and affirm these ties was a hallmark of the tradition. The result in the New Testament was to project horizons allowing the elements of a rich, long history to be brought into deep coherence--a condition of the possibility of a truly 'biblical' theology. p ix

So well put! The fallacy of ignoring or downplaying the "breaks, tangents," and "oddly angled continuities" in favour of a straight-line coherence results in a grossly perverted and virtually impotent biblical theology--one that is of much less service to any attempt to think deeply about the world and our times.

Three Views on Biblical Authority

This topic falls somewhat outside the normal purview of this blog, but I bring it up because my area of specialization can help to adjudicate disputes on the nature of biblical authority, and because some of you, presumably, wrestle with the same topic. (Even if you have no faith commitment to the Bible, you may still find it intriguing just how Christians can actually think of this book as "the word of God"!) Some views, like the fundamentalist view, are completely out of touch with the realities of the biblical text.

Anyway, if you’re interested, here are three articles on biblical authority written by serious scholars but for a general audience.

Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Inerrancy of Scripture.

N. T. Wright, How Can the Bible Be Authoritative?

Walter Brueggemann, Biblical Authority...

Though my own view is still somewhat undefined, my sympathies lie with the last two articles. I find that in these two, and especially the last, I can at least recognize as the topic of conversation the same texts I read and study. The first, while containing some good insights, ultimately fails to account for the profound humanity of the biblical texts.

(If you know of other online material, please leave a comment--but only if the author is a reputable scholar.)

The Now and the Not Yet in the Kingdom Message of Jesus: A Rant

It is often said that Jesus spoke of the kingdom in both the present and future tense. I will not dispute this. I would like to lodge some significant qualifications, however. I doubt we can say that they were perfectly well balanced. Rather one is informing the other, and that, in my view, is the future tense of the kingdom.

And, yet, to call it “future” is somewhat misleading, for Jesus spoke rather of imminence: “It’s at hand!” His emphasis was not on its futurity as such but its nearness. And that is where the present aspect comes into play: it’s so close, Jesus said, that you better start living as if it’s here; otherwise, you will not be recognized as a citizen when it arrives. It’s so close, in fact, that its powers are already beginning to be felt through the Spirit at work in me.

There is, of course, another sense in which the kingdom is present and I’m sure Jesus subscribed to it (cf. Matt 6.25-34), but in this he was no different than the writer of Psalm 145: God’s kingdom, as in his rule, is eternal.

When Jesus spoke of kingdom, however, we must think primarily of his appropriation and (re)interpretation of the promises made to Abraham and David and of the visions of the prophets (cf. Luke 1-2!). This future, eschatological kingdom was present proleptically in that its effects were beginning to be felt before its arrival; this "presentness," however, should not be conflated with God's eternally present rule and reign. To do that is to loose the distinctiveness of Jesus' message.

Jesus was an eschatological, millenarian prophet. He was not primarily a preacher of social justice. The message of the kingdom was not primarily about the eternal life that is present here and now. He spoke to these things in his own way, of course, but within the context I have sketched above.

It may be that the church in the twenty-first century should contextualize the message differently than did Jesus (though in a way that coheres with his preaching), but that is a theological question. Let’s ask the theological questions after we've answered the historical questions rather than importing our theology into history, and thereby distorting the biblical texts.

Coherence in Paul, according to J. C. Beker

“Paul’s coherent center must be viewed as a symbolic structure in which a primordial experience (Paul’s call) is brought into language in a particular way. The symbolic structure comprises the language in which Paul expresses the Christ-event. That language is for Paul the apocalyptic language of Judaism, in which he lived and thought. The symbolic structure then is the result of the translation of Paul’s primordial experience into his basal language and constitutes for him the necessary interpretation of the Christ-event. The primordial experience of the Christ-event then nourishes, intensifies, and modifies Paul’s traditional apocalyptic language. It is in this sense that I speak about the coherent center of Paul’s gospel as a symbolic structure: it is a Christian apocalyptic structure of thought—derived from a constitutive primordial experience and delineating the Christ-event in its meaning for the apocalyptic consummation of history, that is, in its meaning for the triumph of God.”

J. C. Beker, Paul the Apostle: The Triumph of God in Life and Thought. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980 pp. 15-16