"The evangelical tradition at its best encourages critique from within. It sends us back to the Scripture which stands over against all traditions, our own included"
- NT Wright (here)
posted by Chris Tilling @ 12:09 PM
7 comments
I am New Testament Tutor for St Mellitus College and St Paul's Theological Centre, London. In my postgraduate research (under the supervision of Max Turner) I’m working on a thesis that concerns the christological significance of the language Paul used to describe the relationship between risen Lord and believer. My blog, Chrisendom, is primarily occupied with biblical and theological themes – especially those Apostle Paul shaped, but I try as best as I can to squeeze in a decent amount of inappropriate baloney on the way. For more about me, click here for my interview with biblioblogs' Jim West.
7 Comments:
Once again, Wright is right! Of course, not without qualification--why comment then, right?
Question: Don't you think it might be better said that Scripture doesn't "stand over against all traditions," but many traditions? In some cases doesn't Scripture stand WITH traditions?
There are cases in which Scripture stands, not over against, but WITH traditions. If these traditions are 'traditions of the Lord,' such as those that Paul "hands on" to the Thessalonians in 2:15, and to the Corinthians in 1 Cor. 11:23--see the nice article on "tradition" in the New Dictionary of Biblical Theology (IVP 2000). Some traditions are not authoritative and so Scripture does stands over against those.
We must constantly go back to Scripture because it is the "soul of sacred theology." Yet, I think it is most helpful to go Scripture WITH these traditions, not without them. They are in a certain sense, the key to interpretation. And as Platinga, Gadamer, and others have shown, it is impossible to do otherwise.
I am a Catholic, but it seems to me that the "evangelical tradition" does not go "back to the Scripture" without its "evangelical tradition." When it is "at its best" the evangelical tradition goes back to Scripture WITH tradition as it does this "critique from within." For example, it reads the Bible with Trinitarian lenses, not without them. This is one of the reasons I love to read evangelical theology, and thus this blog!
I understand that Wright is referring mostly to critiques surrounding things like the New Perspective, etc--as they are "from within," in the sense that the interlocutors share the tradition.
Speaking of "critiques from within"...
Our divisions should never be discussed except in the presence of those who have already come to believe that there is one God and that Jesus Christ is his only Son.
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
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Theology is a comprehensive, rigorous, and systematic attempt to conceal the beam in the scriptures and traditions of one’s own denomination while minutely measuring the mote in the heritages of ones’ brothers.
Walter Kaufmann, The Faith of a Heretic
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Every sect, as far as reason will help them, make use of it gladly; and where it fails them, they cry out, “It is a matter of faith, and above reason.”
John Locke
NTW wrote, "Scripture stands over against all traditions."
But isn't the thing we call "Scripture" also just part of a lengthy "tradition" involving a process of accumulated written and oral stories, and cannonization processes, etc.?
Let me put what I have said in a more scholarly fashion. The Biblical authors themselves were in debt to works that were written before their time. The O.T. mentions the names of books now lost but which the O.T. authors relied upon to write the O.T..
In the case of the book of Proverbs, clear links exist to previous wise sayings from Egypt ("If Amenemope teaches us anything, it is that what the West has traditionally been accustomed to think of as 'Judeo-Christian morality' in fact preceded both Jews and Christians by more than a millennium, and that our hybrid Judeo-Christian/Greco-Roman
heritage is ultimately the heritage of Egypt," to quote the conclusion of a thesis by a Christian professor who also addresses a wide variety of possible objections).
While in the case of the N.T., the intertestamental period which preceded the N.T. period was a time during which there arose new ideas that would later be taken up by N.T. writers, including the rise of the notion of a fiery tortuous hell and the elevation of Satan to "prince of this world." Similarly, both Jesus and the Apostles made use of--and even appealed to the authority of--the oral traditions, deuterocanonical and extracanonical writings, and varying textual recensions of their day:
Among these are Matthew 2:23 (unknown prophecy), Matthew 23:2-3 (rabbinic tradition), Matthew 27:24 ("Story of Susanna" = Daniel 13:46 LXX), Mark 10:19 ("do not defraud" = Sirach 4:1 LXX), Luke 11:49 (unknown scripture), John 7:38 (unknown Scripture), Acts 7:14 (vs. Exodus 1:5), Acts 7:16 (cf. Gen. 50:12-14, Joshua 24:32), Acts 7:20-30 (Jewish traditions about the early life of Moses), Acts 7:36 (Testament of Moses), 1 Corinthians 2:9 (Apocalypse of Elijah23), 1 Corinthians 10:4 (Jewish tradition), 2 Corinthians 11:14 (Life of Adam and Eve), Galatians 3:19 (Jewish tradition; cf. also Acts 7:38, Acts 7:53, and Hebrews 2:2), Ephesians 5:14 (Apocalypse of Elijah24), 2 Timothy 3:8 (Book of Jannes and Jambres), Hebrews 1:6 (Septuagint and Dead Sea Scrolls), Hebrews 10:5-6 (Septuagint), Hebrews 11:4–5 (Book of Enoch), Hebrews 11:35-37 (2 Maccabees 6-7, Martyrdom of Isaiah), 2 Peter 2:4 (Book of Enoch), James 1:19 (= Sirach 5:13), James 4:5 (unknown Scripture), Jude 9 (Assumption of Moses), Jude 14-15 (Book of Enoch), and Revelation 15:3-4 (the Song of the Lamb). [Note also that John 10:22 places Jesus at the Temple during the Feast of Dedication (i.e., Hanukkah), a religious celebration whose only scriptural justification is in the Books of Maccabees. [1 Maccabees 4:36-59; 2 Maccabees 1:18-2:19, 10:1-8]
See this page for further discussion, written by a Catholic scholar, because Catholics readily acknowledge such evidence of a host of evolving prior traditions influencing the Bible, rather than insisting like Protestants that the Bible interprets itself. For Catholics only the Catholic magisterium interprets itself, i.e., the Catholic church. While for Protestants, there are potentially as many churches and different traditional interpretations of the Bible as there are Protestants, each man being his own pope and magisterium rolled into one.
Dr. Robert M. Price wrote a theses on the difficulties that North American Evangelicals have with their varying interpretations of inerrancy and semi-inerrancy and with the need among them to try and find a "cannon within the cannon of Scripture" in order to be able to agree on where to draw the lines of how to interpret it properly. The Catholics let their magisterium draw the lines. Dr. Price's thesis has appeared in an Evangelical Journal in the 1970s and has been re-edited and will appear in print over a year from now, it's titled, Inerrant the Wind: The Troubled House of North American Evangelicals.
Edward T. Babinski
Babinkski and Lady Macbeth:
"Out damned spot!"
According to Scripture; the Church is "the pillar and foundation of the truth," (1 Tim 3:15). The traditions of the Church preceded and produced the NT. It was the Church who weighed in the balance and selected the writings we now know as Scripture. So it would seem to me, that it is only within the traditions of the Church that selected them, that Holy Scripture can be rightly understood.
So the question becomes; which Church authoritatively defined and codified what we now know as Holy Scripture? If it is -- as I believe -- the Catholic Church. Then shouldn't Her traditions take precedence?
Pax.
John
Hi Jeremy,
I must say, I was thinking the same thing as I posted it! But you put it so well... To be honest, I think Wright would qualify himself as you suggest as well.
Crikey Edward, blogger didn't send me your second comment - I need to read that before I comment! And thanks for those great quotes.
Hi John,
Great comment. I suppose my only thought is to suggest that these texts were recognised for the authority they already had, not given an alien (legal fiction?) authority. And as such the church put itself under their witness. In this way the church has a very concrete measure by which it can continually reform itself. Having said that, I appreictae your perspective as a Catholic on this and am well aware I have much to learn and reconsider!
<< I suppose my only thought is to suggest that these texts were recognised for the authority they already had, not given an alien (legal fiction?) authority. >>
Hello Chris,
I agree, I think? :-)
But the authority they had was because they were accepted by the Church as coming forth from the foundation stones of the Church. The Apostles and their associates. And some of the writings that were also thought to have an authority of their own, didn't make the final cut. So once again -- to me -- the Church was, and is, the only rightful arbitrator.
Having said that, when I speak of the Church in its present tense, I'm including all of the Church(es). Protestant, Eastern Orthodox and Catholic, et al. I have learned, and continue to learn, from all of these traditions. And I'm thankful for their different perspectives and for all the insights they have to offer.
[ After all, why else would I be reading your blog every day. Or championing scholars like Richard Bauckham. Except for that one article he wrote on the family of Jesus. No good! ... just kidding. :-) ]
But at the end of the day, I have planted my staff on the Church of Rome. So of course, its interpretations are going to carry the day.
<< And as such the church put itself under their witness. In this way the church has a very concrete measure by which it can continually reform itself. >>
Here, I definitely agree.
Though I also believe that there's another side to that coin. Scripture must also be read in the light of the witness of the Church. So that we have a concrete measure to protect us from the many errant and unwarranted readings that have constantly been perpetrated on it.
Scripture and tradition go hand in hand. They are not opposed. And in a sense; they are one and the same.
At least for me.
<< Having said that, I appreciate your perspective as a Catholic ... >>
And I appreciate yours as a Protestant.
Pax,
John
PS After all of that; I'm off to read your review of VanL's book. Cheers!
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