Goodbye

For various reasons, I will no longer be posting on this blog.

For the last two years blogging here (and on this blog when it was part of the “Blogspot” site) has been a thoroughly enjoyable experience that has provided me with somewhere to air my thoughts – sometimes theological and oftentimes dark – and to encounter and engage with people from many different continents and countries.

To all who have visited – whether regulars or one-time passers by – I thank you.

Update

I arrived safely in St Andrews earlier this morning and will now commence the business of getting my life sorted!

Blogging will likely recommence apace on Wednesday or Thursday, possible before.

Future Directions

It has become customary to post at the beginning of each new semester (in September, February and May) identifying those areas that are currently of particular interest to me in terms of research and academic study. So many of the posts here are taken from things that emerge during my studies that this allows you to see where this blog will be developing over the next few months.

In the last four months I’ve focussed heavily on Genesis, a general overview of Paul, 1/2 Samuel and studies relating to the exile and the return from the exile particularly the thrashing out of Jewish identity in Ezra/Nehemiah. Some more philosophical work on the influence of philosophy on Biblical Hermeneutics with particular emphasis on existentialism was thoroughly enjoyable and resulted in a number of posts here.

From a biblical point of view, I hope the next few months will allow me to develop my general study of Paul into a more focussed study of 1 Corinthians (which is among my favourite books of the canon). In addition I want to drill into the issue of Israel and the contemporary debate within evangelicalism.

The last four months saw my theological focus rest mainly with contemporary theology, Patristics and aesthetics. Regular readers will note my deep interest in theological anthropology and Christian ethics, and this will be developed further in the next few months along with new interests in Christian symbolics and pastoral theology, particularly the Dominican school of spirituality.

St Paul in Dialogue

Someboy – MeeboGuest85512 – left me a number of meebo messages (thank you!) in which they observed that in my recent posts on St Paul I’ve repeated claimed that he’s more of a pastor than a theologian, have suggested Justification by Faith is not central to his thought, and emphasised the sitz-im-leben of his works, whilst still maintaining that Paul’s vocation was that of a preacher – so the question arises: what on earth was he preaching! What was it the lay at the heart of his writings and various activities, if it were not a theological conviction?

There is clearly evidence for interaction between the historical immediacy that Paul’s writings address and a convictional base. Dunn develops Beker and Schweitzer’s emphasis on Paul’s Jewishness, regarding Paul’s theology as a “dialogue” between his inherited convictions, his Christian conversion on the Damascus Road, and the immediate historical crisis he seeks to address.[1] For Dunn, Paul does not stand alone as a monadic theologian, but theologizes for the present in continuity with his past – his concerns are rooted in his national identity as a Second Temple Jew (with which his Pharisaism interacts) with its developed theology of covenant and Torah, its ritual and liturgy, interpreted through his Damascus road experience and the convictions it left him with.

Dunn nuances Beker’s model of the coherent element of Paul’s theological writings: Paul’s theological activity is thus best understood not as a set ‘theology’ but as the fluid activity of ‘theologizing’.[2] The dialogue is continuous and interactive, involving backwards-and-forwards of interaction, response and reaction. Dunn emphasises that Paul does not depend upon, nor work towards, creedal formulations but from a host of convictions and ‘baggage’ with which he reacts to the crises in his communities.[3] Beker certainly understood Paul’s convictional base as being fluid, but Dunn’s emphasis on Paul’s theology as a process of coming to understand allows for development to be traced through the Pauline corpus. Indeed, Dunn centralises the Jewishness of Paul’s analytical methodology, anthropological understanding and typology as undergirding the entirety of Paul’s theological activity.[4] The theological statements of the Paul’s epistles are therefore rooted not only in the immediate crisis Paul seeks to address, but in Paul’s Jewish metanarrative.

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[1] Barr GK. Scalometry and the Pauline Epistles. (Leicester: Continuum, 2004): 127.

[2] Wedderburn AJM. “Pauline Pneumatology and Pauline Theology”. In: Dunn JDG, Stanton G, Longenecker BW, Barton S. Holy Spirit and Christian Origins. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004): 144.

[3] Dunn JDG. ‘Postlegomena to the theology of Paul.’ In: Dunn JDG (Ed). The Theology of Paul the Apostle. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmanns, 1998): 713-737.

[4] Ibid, p734.

St Paul: Theology becomes Incarnate

In an earlier post I wrote that St Paul was primarily a pastor rather than a theologian, and then I wrote another post defending this claim against the allegation that Romans was a Pauline Systematic theology.

Whilst Paul’s works are theological and practical responses to the issues of his day, it seems that Paul sees them as being underpinned by a ‘gospel’ of Christian thought. Theologians have debated for centuries what the ‘gospel’ that lies at the heart of the Pauline confession is, with Reformation hermeneutics identifying it as justification by faith alone.[1] The new perspective has challenged this traditional view, and scholars such as Schweitzer have demonstrated a distinctively Jewish core to Paul’s theologizing as an eschatological mystic deeply influenced by Rabbinic-juridical thought.[2]

The search for a ‘core’ element of Paul’s theologizing is problematic because it is reminiscent of the demythologizing of Rudolph Bultmann[3] – the discarding of the ‘husk’ to reach the true meaning of the ‘core’. Paul’s theologizing is so historically conditioned that it cannot be detached from its historical setting, and must be treated as an organic whole. This view is supported by Beker, who saw Paul primarily as an interpreter whose hermeneutic was a series of interactions between the stable and consistent convictional base and the variety of social and psychological arenas within which he operated.[4] The former, the coherent aspect, is unchanging and is visible in the concrete episodes of his theologizing, which are contingent upon his deeper coherent convictional base and the situations within which his theologizes.

Paul is therefore a skilled hermeneutician whose interpretative activity mirrors the dialectic between unity (of the Church) and particularity (of the individual churches and local theologies) that is visible within his writings.[5] Beker’s coherency-contingency model is particularly useful because it allows Paul’s coherent thought to be a flexible and fluid set of propositions rather than a concrete list of cognitive propositions.

Furthermore, it allows for Paul’s distinctively apocalyptic Jewish thought to be acknowledged as the grammatical base for his theologizing. For Beker, therefore, the theological statements of Paul’s letters are contingent expressions, or ‘incarnations,’ of Paul’s coherent thought[6] – they are not merely theological and cannot be divorced from their own contingent sitz-im-leben and literary context.

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[1] Westerholm S. Perspectives Old and New on Paul. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmanns, 2004): 407.

[2] Sanders EP. Paul and Palestinian Judaism. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1977): 434.

[3] Jasper AE. The Shining Garment of the Text. (Leicester: Continuum, 1998): 113.

[4] Beker JC. ‘Recasting Pauline theology: The Coherency Contingency scheme as interpretative model.’ In: Bassler JM. (ed). Pauline Theology. (Volume 1). (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991): 15-24.

[5] Beker JC. Op Cit. (1987): 33.

[6] Ibid.

Conrad Black finds Serenity in Catholicism

The Catholic Herald is carrying news that disgraced Peer of the Realm and Papal Knight, Conrad Black, is finding that his Catholic faith brings him great serenity during his incarceration in the Coleman Federal Correction Facility in California, USA.

The article contains something of an extended spiritual autoboiography, which in places is fascinating. Black candidly discusses his fall from agnosticism into the arms of faith:

I had discovered by my early 30s that I no longer had any confidence in the non-existence of God. It was more of an intellectual and a psychological strain not to believe in God than to believe, and not from the impulse of hopefulness; from the impossibility of shutting out spirituality, abandoning curiosity about getting to grips with the infinite, before the beginning and after the end of time, and beyond the outer limits of space. Logically, there is some sort of organising principle abroad, [i.e. God!!] or at least something unexplained, partially defining, and at least slightly accessible. [Hmmm... then what is this spirituality he writes of it is not an effort to access the transcendent. Christian faith professes that which is both immediate and transcendent, in my view] Whether it was Bismarck speaking of “listening for God’s footfall and touching the hem of His garment as He passes”, or Britain’s late Cardinal Hume saying it was “like a screen. You can detect something behind it but can’t make out clearly what it is,” simply dismissing religious belief is not like dismissing astrology or chiropracting, or eschewing mushrooms. This is the only possible route to some insights beyond the normally discernible.

Along with this awakening seems to have come the realisation that the claims of the enlightenment are in reality untenable, and that human reason did not demand the abandonment of faith:

The exaggerated claims of the scientists were not much more persuasive than the similarly overblown liberties of the miraculists and creationists. At some point, science and revelation intersect, and faith is no natural enemy of scholarship.

There was then a gradual awakening the possibility of the miraculous, which precedes a deep acceptance of doctrine. Interestingly, in my own spiritual journey the accepting of the modern miracle came after the precedent acceptance of the miracle of doctrine:

To exercise and explore my faith, I would have to chin myself on Catholic dogma [if only more Catholics did], at least up to a threshold I had not approached before. I was satisfied, from my reading, and from my visits to Lourdes and Fatima, that miracles do sometimes occur. Therefore, logically, any miracle could occur, even the most apparently challenging, such as the Virgin Birth and the physical Ascension of Christ.

Finally Lord Black writes of his prison faith. A number of features stand out – firstly his link between “active participation” and “intellectual stimulation” and the centrality of the liturgy to the overall Christian experience:

The Catholic life in the prison where I write is active and intellectually stimulating. Confidence that there is at least some sort of an organising principle in the world, [I wonder why he speaks of this organising principle rather than of God. But note that now this principle is "in" the world and not entirely inaccesible.] the experience that worship sometimes produces – which can enhance an understanding of travails and observations – and some metaphysical background, do provide a hinterland for perceptions, and with it, relative serenity and proportionality, even, and perhaps especially, in times of extreme tension, poignancy, and adversity. And there have been some. [Oremus pro invicem.]

An interesting article, and well worth a read!

Summorum Pontificum – 2nd Anniversary

The feast of the Triumph of the Holy Cross – which occurs on Monday – is the second anniversary of the implementation of the decrees contained in the Apostolic Letter Summorum Pontificum, issued motu proprio by our present Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI.

The document has been among the most significant of the documents issued by the Holy Father during his pontificate and provided an overhaul of the regulations governing the celebration of the liturgy according to the Missal of John XXIII promulgated in 1962 (formerly known as the “Tridentine Rite” and now known as the Extraordinary Form of the single Roman Rite, of which the post-Vatican II Mass is the Ordinary Form). The Motu Proprio is intended to make the Extraordinary form more readily available for those people who wish for it, and for those priests who wish to celebrate it in private.

The document proved to be the source of much opining both on the Catholic blogosphere and in the back of our Churches. Those attached to the Extraordinary form celebrated a perceived victory and those opposed to the extraordinary form mourned a backwards step. Those celebrating and those mourning ranged from the people in the pews to the highest echelons on the episcopacy. Some Bishops have notably provided commentaries on the implementation of the document in their own dioceses. Some commentators have interpreted this as attempts to avoid its implementation… for my part, I don’t know if they were motivated by genuine pastoral concern or by fear.

Maybe this anniversary is an opportunity to express, in a most profound way, our communion with the Holy Father by attending a celebration of Mass in the form that we do not personally prefer. For me, this will mean attending a celebration of the Extraordinary Form. For other this will mean attending a Novus Ordo Mass. By so-doing I will express my communion with all who hold and teach the Catholic faith which comes to us from the Apostles: I will confess our One Lord and Saviour and unify myself to Christ’s body in the Barque of St Peter under the authority of his successor Benedict XVI. It is a deep means of attempting to think with the mind of the Church, casting aside my own prejudice, an identifying and repenting of my own tendency to use the liturgy as a point of division within the ecclesial Body of Christ.

At the elevation of the Sacred Body and the Precious Blood, it will be the same Christ who greets me and who I greet with the prayer of doubting St Thomas: “My Lord and my God”.

Paul’s Vocation as a Preacher

The first reading of Monday’s Mass was taken from St Paul’s letter to the Colossians (1:23-2:4), and demonstrates Paul’s wonderfully rich Ecclesiology as well as a profound exposition of his own vocation:

It makes me happy to suffer for you, as I am suffering now, and in my own body to do what I can to make up all that has still to be undergone by Christ for the sake of his body, the Church. I became the servant of the Church when God made me responsible for delivering God’s message to you, [the theologian and preacher is a servant of the Church and must "think with the Church" if he is to fulfill his vocation] the message which was a mystery hidden for generations and centuries and has now been revealed to his saints. [the subject and object of theology and preaching is divine revelation] It was God’s purpose to reveal it to them and to show all the rich glory of this mystery to pagans. The mystery is Christ among you, your hope of glory: this is the Christ we proclaim, this is the wisdom in which we thoroughly train everyone and instruct everyone, to make them all perfect in Christ. It is for this I struggle wearily on, helped only by his power driving me irresistibly. [prayer is essential to theology]

Yes, I want you to know that I do have to struggle hard for you, and for those in Laodicea, and for so many others who have never seen me face to face. It is all to bind you together in love and to stir your minds, so that your understanding may come to full development, until you really know God’s secret in which all the jewels of wisdom and knowledge are hidden.

I have penned a few observations in red, but I think this passage speaks for itself.

Augustine in East and West

In a previous post I noted that the large scale acceptance of the theological works of St Augustine of Hippo in the West presents a significant barrier to ecumenical dialogue with the East, where Augustine’s works exercise far less influence.

With this in mind it was with interest today that I saw a message from the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, addressed to Cardinal Walter Kasper (the president of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity), written on the occassion of the 11th Inter-Christian Symposium. Unfortunately there is no English translation available (yet), so I have had to make a vague stab at the Italian:

Il tema scelto per il prossimo incontro: “Sant’Agostino nella tradizione occidentale e orientale” – argomento che si intende sviluppare in collaborazione con l’Istituto Patristico Augustinanum – [The theme selected for the next meeting: "St Augustine in Easter and Western tradition - a topic developed in conjunction with the Augustinianum Patristic Institute in Rome] risulta quanto mai interessante per approfondire la teologia e la spiritualità cristiana in occidente e in oriente, e il loro sviluppo [will be most interesting in appreciating the theology and Christian spirituality of East and West, and its development]. Il Santo di Ippona, un grande Padre della Chiesa Latina, riveste in effetti una fondamentale importanza per la teologia e per la stessa cultura dell’occidente, [the Saint of Hippo, a great Latin Church Father, is in fact of great importance for both Western theology and culture] mentre la ricezione del suo pensiero nella teologia ortodossa si è rivelata piuttosto problematica [whilst the reception of his thought in Orthodox theology has been rather more problematic]. Conoscere pertanto con oggettività storica e cordialità fraterna le ricchezze dottrinali e spirituali che formano il patrimonio dell’oriente e dell’occidente cristiano, [Therefore, it is indispensible to understand - with historical objectivity and brotherly cordiality - the doctinal and spiritual wealth that forms the patrimony of Christian East and Christian West] diventa indispensabile non solo per valorizzarle, ma anche per promuovere un migliore reciproco apprezzamento fra tutti i cristiani. [not only for their mutual evaluation, but also to promote a great mutual appreciation between Christians.]

Before anyone pipes up, I know my Italian is crap.

As soon as there’s a translation, I’ll make it available.

Suffice to say that this symposium looks very interesting!

“The New Man” and “The Old Man”

In this morning’s short reading taken from the Morning Office of the Church (Lauds), we hear the words of St Paul that Christ’s death on the cross destroyed enmity and opposition between the Jew and Gentile, creating a “single New Man in himself out of the two of them” (Ephesians 2:13-6). Christ, in his very person, ushers in a new humanity – a unified humanity – no longer divided against itself through the law: two antithetical positions have not just been brought close, they have been made one through, with and in the person of Christ. Hostility between man and God has been destroyed: a new world order has been ushered in.

It is perhaps shocking to some that the same writer – the Apostle Paul – is heard later, in today’s first reading at Holy Mass, to describe Christ Jesus as the “εἰκὼν τοῦ θεοῦ” (the image of the [unseen] God), invoking the same language used to describe the creation of Adam in the “image of God” in Genesis 1:27. Indeed, the Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible employs the same phraseology (imago Dei) in both verses. The inference is that Christ is everything that Adam was – created for life in the Garden of Eden, in the image and likeness of YHWH: Christ is not just created in the imago Dei, but in the imago Adam. Paul seems to argue that Christ restores what once was: he reflects a unity with God that was once humanity’s but has since been lost – the “paradise lost”.

For the theologian Irenaeus of Lyons, Paul’s reference to both a new humanity and the old humanity of Adam is entirely logical. For Irenaeus, salvation and creation are part of a single divine act: it is a distinction drawn from viewing the same act from different perspectives. When God creates Adam, he has Christ in mind (and indeed Paul again informs us in the reading that humanity was created “in Christ” from the very beginning), for it is Christ who will bring both the fulfillment of humanity and the salvation of humanity. He not only saves but shows us what it means to be fully human. Christ and Adam are diametrically opposed in the sense that Adam broke and sinned whilst Christ was faithful and did not sin, but they are typologically connected in that the sin of the first Adam is reversed and overcome by the faithfulness of the eschaton (final) Adam that is Christ Jesus.

Christ is for us what Adam should have been. It is not true to claim that we are sinful because we are human. Christ was fully human – he was fully Adam-like, and yet Paul maintains Christ was sinless. And how great it is to be human: to be like Christ and to be like Adam! Adam, despite his sinfulness – and the fact that he is identified as the one through whom sin and death entered the world – is afforded a remarkable dignity by the Biblical writers. He is unavoidably and inalienably created in the image of his God: and in that sense, the pre-fall Adam demonstrates the happy, joyous and free intention that the creator God has for all humanity.

That reality is realised in He who brings humanity to fulfillment – Christ. In reconciling humanity to God – in drawing an end to hostility and enmity between mankind and God – it was necessary that Christ identified entirely with Adam and entirely with God. The two opposing forces are drawn together not in an ethereal mystery but in a corporeal and personal mystery: and it is in this person that creation reaches its Zenith.

Humanity has a habit of engaging in de-creation: pulling down the barriers that God has erected in creation. Christ is the ultimate transgression of the barriers: the reconciliation of Old and New, the breaching of the metaphysical gap between divine and human. Yet in looking to him we learn what it is to be human: to live with the contradiction and to continue the trudge of our own personal journey of re-creation in a humanity of which he is the head and recapitulator. And when that journey reaches its completion, we will make our own the prophetic words of St Paul: “all things [have been] reconciled through him and for him, everything in heaven and everything on earth: he made peace by his death on the cross.”

What is Romans?

In an earlier post I argued that St Paul was more a pastor than a speculative theologian. One major problem with this argument is the undoubted attribution of Romans – which is densely theological and sometimes interpreted as a systematic theological exposition – to St Paul.

Due to its especially theological nature, and it having been interpreted as either Paul’s systematic theology or his “last will and testament”,[1] it is necessary to demonstrate that the typology of ‘pastoral communication’ which can be applied to the other Pauline epistles can be applied to Romans.

Paul’s reasons for constructing the letter to the Romans have been the subject of lengthy scholarly debate, largely due to its distinctive style and the fact it is written to community that Paul did not establish.[2] Some scholars argue that Romans was constructed to fulfil one of Paul’s own needs – either to gain support for missionary work in Spain or Jerusalem,[3] or as a letter of introduction to the Christian community in Rome,[4] who were largely unfamiliar with his works. However, Koester argues that Romans serves a theological purpose – being a personal apologetic of self-recommendation[5] designed to gain him theological respectability in Rome (then the “Capital of the World”) and a work which Suggs argues was to be circulated widely.[6] This view may be supported in nuanced form by scholars such as Munck[7] and Stuhlmacher[8] who regard Romans as a carefully constructed statement of Paul’s gospel.

Koester’s position is weakened, however, by textual evidence. Whilst accounting for the length of the letter and its didactic tone, Romans apparently avoids topics that are given considerable importance in other Pauline Epistles – for example the eschatology of the epistles to the Thessalonians[9] – and seems to stress certain points (for example the co-equality of Jewish and Gentile Christians, the model of Abraham, and the parenthetical chapters 9-11) beyond what would be necessary for a systematic exposition. Indeed, it is unclear why Paul would address his theological work to any community, let alone one that was relatively unknown to him – and the text clearly demonstrates concern with the Roman Church’s situation: including references to prominent individuals within the Church, consistent with Paul’s desire to visit Rome, and address the issues facing the Roman Church.

Historical reconstruction of the Roman Church suggests that it had initially existed within the synagogues, but that the expulsion of the Jews (including the Jewish Christians) from Rome in AD 49 by the emperor Claudius had radically changed its ethnic and cultural makeup, to the extent that it became dominated by gentiles.[10] Some scholars even argue that the Church became ‘theologically gentile,’ arguing for replacementism and supercessionism,[11] seeing God as having abandoned the Jews. Thus, when the Jews returned under emperor Nero, it is likely that tension developed between the increasingly non-Jewish faith of the non-Exiled Roman Christians (who would have come to assume leadership roles) and the returning Jewish Christians (who would previously have held leadership roles).[12] Furthermore, the Neronian persecution of the Church likely exacerbated these divisions, forcing the Christians into small and relatively disorganised house churches outside of the synagogue structure.[13] Thus, Paul’s letter to the Romans is a highly significant theological treatise, but one addressed to the specific crisis in the Roman Church – the scandal of division between the Gentile and Jewish Christians that would have severely hampered missionary activity.[14]

The significance of Paul’s letter, which affirms the validity of Jewish Christianity, is underlined by Paul’s commitment to the gentile mission as “Apostle to the Gentiles”.[15] The theological tone of Paul’s letter is not due to Paul’s desire to expound a personal theology, but is demanded by the theological crisis within the Roman Church. Thus, Paul stresses the priority given to the Jews (1:16) which is religion and not ethnic (2:9, 2:28, 3:9), argues for the interdependence of salvation for Jew and Gentile (11), and the logical precedence of the Jewish election into which the gentiles have been grafted (11:18). Such an interpretation explains the prominence of Romans 9-11, and explains Paul’s avoidance of the term εκκλησια, have been provocative amongst Roman Christians.[16]

Thus it can be comprehensively argued that the epistle to the Romans represents a pastoral communication rooted in historical contingencies of its audience and not abstract ahistorical theology. Romans may well be seen as Paul’s last will and testament, but only retrospectively as a result of his subsequent imprisonment and execution.[17] The theological statements of Paul’s epistles are not merely theological – they are principally to be seen as pastoral communication.

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[1] Donfried KP. Romans 16. Society of Biblical Literature. 89.4 (1970): 441-9.

[2] Barclay W. Letter to the Romans. (London: WJK, 2002): 9.

[3] Capes DB, Reeves R, Richard RE. Rediscovering Paul. (Leicester: IVP, 2007): 171.

[4] Bruce FF. Romans. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985): 38.

[5] Ziesler JA. ‘The role of the tenth commandment in Romans 7.’ Porter SE, Evans SA. Pauline Writings. (London: Continuum, 2004): 137.

[6] Guerra AJ. Romans and the Apologetic Tradition. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995): 200.

[7] Esler PF. Conflict and Identity in Romans. (London: Fortress Press, 2003): 9.

[8] Stuhlmacher P, Hafemann SJ (tr). Paul’s letter to the Romans. (London: WJK, 1994): 182.

[9] Kaye BN. ‘Eschatology and Ethics in 1 and 2 Thessalonians.’ Novum Testamentum. 17.1 (1975): 47-57.

[10] Stuhlmacher P. ‘The purpose of Romans’. In: Donfried KP. (ed) Romans Debate. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1991): 231-242.

[11] Piana GL. Foreign groups in Rome. Harvard Theological Review. 20 (1929): 182-198.

[12] Guerra AJ. ‘Romans: Paul’s purpose and audience with special reference to 9-11.’ Revue Biblique. 97. (1990): 219-237.

[13] Nanos M. The Mystery of Romans: The Jewish Context of Paul’s Letter. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996): 43.

[14] Beker JC. ‘Paul’s theology: consistent or inconsistent?’ New Testament Studies. 34 (1988): 364-377.

[15] Romans 11:13.

[16] Campbell WS. ‘Why did Paul write Romans?’ In: Campbell WS (ed). Paul’s Gospel in Intercultural Context: Jew and Gentile in the Letter to the Romans. (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1992): 27.

[17] Bornkamm G. “Romans as Paul’s last will and testament”. In: Donfried KP. (ed) Romans Debate. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1991): 16-28.

St Paul: Theologian or Pastor?

The Pauline epistles contain some of the most developed theological statements of the New Testament, and were essential to later development of orthodox soteriology, doctrine of revelation, Christology, theological anthropology, sacramentology, etc.

However, a theological reading of the Pauline corpus must be nuanced by the fact that the extent to which abstract and universal theological statements can be extracted from St Paul’s letters is limited by the fact that his letters are written to particular Christian communities with a concrete historical sitz-im-leben.[1] In many cases, Paul is the founder of the communities with which he communicates (and is therefore well acquainted with their difficulties), and in instances where he is not (such as Romans where it appears Paul is not yet personally known)[2] he demonstrates tacit awareness of their unique setting.[3]

Paul’s letters are permeated with metaphorical familial language which Paul uses to present himself as a caring Father to his readers, portraying Christians as siblings in the family of Christ.[4] Paul’s letters are an outworking of this metaphor – they are his caring interaction with the ‘children’ of his communities. Although in places didactic, his epistles are overwhelmingly pastoral – concerned with the shepherding of embryonic Christian communities.[5] The letters are necessarily, therefore, concerned with the daily realities of Early Christian life – Paul’s theologizing is cut at the coalface of the minutiae of Christian life and is reactive and responsive to Christian experience. Paul offers encouragement, explanation and direction in response to community developments, rather than simply seeking to impose a top-down systematic theology that focuses on orthodoxy rather than orthopraxis. Paul’s theologizing is a reactive and responsive assistance, rather than a prescriptive or proactive imposition. Whilst it is possible Paul understood his letters would be circulated beyond their first audience,[6] they remain intrinsically occasional, rooted in the specific crises that provoked their construction: they are based on the needs of the community, not Paul’s need or desire to theologize.[7]

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[1] Austgen RJ. Motivation in the Pauline Epistles. (Washington: Notre Dame, 1969): 61.

[2] Best E. ‘The Gospel According to Paul’. In: The Letter of Paul to the Romans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967): 9-11.

[3] Dodd CH. The Epistle of Paul to the Romans. (Edinburgh: Harper, 1932): 189. [Digitised Copy used at the University of St Andrews Library].

[4] Moxnes H. Constructing Early Christian Families: Family as Metaphor. (Cambridge: CRC, 1997): 8.

[5] Harrington DJ. The Church according to the New Testament. (London: Rowan and Littlefield, 2001): 58.

[6] Patzia AG. The Making of the New Testament. (Leicester: IVP, 1995): 80.

[7] Moo DJ. Epistle to the Romans. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002): 20.

A Vision for you…

Abandon yourself to God as you understand God. Admit your faults to him and to your fellows. Clear away the wreckage of your past. Give freely of what you find and join us. We shall be with you in the fellowship of the spirit, and you will surely meet some of us as you trudge the road of happy destiny.

May God bless you and keep you – until then.

(p164)

Fr Ed Houghton pulls in the crowds

It’s been nice to see that over 300 individuals have come to this blog in the last two days having searched for “Fr Ed Houghton” or “Fr Edward Houghton” on google.

The funeral arrangements have now been announced.

RECEPTION OF THE MORTAL REMAINS OF Rev Fr E HOUGHTON
Our Lady of Grace and St Edwards RC Church, Chiswick, London W4

Wednesday 2nd September at 7.00pm

Followed by celebration of Mass
Principal Celebrant
HE Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor

REQUIEM MASS
Thursday 3rd September at 12noon, Our Lady of Grace, Chiswick, London W4
Principal Celebrant
Most Rev Vincent Nichols
Archbishop of Westminster

Mark Goodacre on Ignorance and Historical Jesus Research

Mark Goodacre has penned a very thoughtful and useful oped article on the inevitability of ignorance in historical Jesus research, whilst acknowledging scholarly tendency to deny such ignorance. Historical Jesus research isn’t my area, but I wonder how this article might be applied to systematics and pastoral theology. Here’s an excerpt (with my comments and emphases):

It may be that we seldom reflect on this fact because the ideological investment in Jesus affects our historical research on him [Hmm... maybe I'm one-sided but I can't help but wonder if this applies more to those who seek to undermine Christianity than those who seek to defend it?]. Those ideological interests are, of course, many and varied, but the same kind of optimistic assumptions about the data set are shared by those from different ends of the spectrum, from those whose faith commitment compels them to regard the scriptural deposit as definitive, to those who look to a range of materials and methods in a bid to reconstruct a Jesus who is uncongenial to later Christian orthodoxy [Critically... note that Historical Jesus research can be hijacked to reproduce an uncongenial Jesus, but that it need not. Both those who regard scripture as true in all it affirms and those who deny scripture's authenticity are able to engage in what they regard to be an authentic "Quest for the Historical Jesus".]

Let me illustrate the kind of thing I am talking about. According to almost everyone, one of the most certain things that we can know about the historical Jesus is that he was a disciple of John the Baptist. This is bedrock stuff and anyone familiar with Jesus research will know all about why. As it happens, I am inclined to agree with this; I suspect that Jesus did indeed have an association with John the Baptist and that it was important, in some way, in his development [This seems to be a point of agreement between the two extreme camps as well, being affirmed by the Lucan infancy narratives among other pericopes.]. But how important was John the Baptist, as an influence on Jesus, in comparison to other people? We know about the link between the two men because John the Baptist was himself famous — Josephus devotes more time to him than he does to Jesus. So the tradition remembers and underlines the association between the two men. [Well, yes. To an extent I agree: but tradition also affirms the influence of "The Holy Family" - Jesus, Mary, Joseph, Joachim and Anne. But Goodacre's point still stands.]

But our influences are seldom solely other famous people. Perhaps the major influence on Jesus was his grandfather, whose fascination with Daniel 7 informed Jesus’ apocalyptic mindset. Or perhaps it was Rabbi Matia in Capernaum who used to enjoy telling parables drawn from local agriculture. Or perhaps it was that crazy wandering Galilean exorcist Lebbaeus who used to talk about casting out demons by the Spirit of God. [These last three possibilities are particularly powerful: they underline the humanity of Jesus in the context of a vastly pluriform first century Judaism.] The fact is that we just don’t know. We can’t know. Our knowledge about the historical Jesus is always and inevitably partial. If we take the quest of the historical Jesus seriously as an aspect of ancient history, we have to admit that many of the key pieces must be missing. [I don't disagree. But what if we are engaging in the quest for the historical Jesus as part of a quest attempting to "do theology" - specifically Christology or Soteriology - rather than history? Are the pieces still missing? Perhaps not.]

The problem is that we are in denial. [Yes! But are we alone? Isn't this denial the very same hangover from the enlightenment with its vastly over-optimistic emphasis on the abilities of human intellect and will?] We simply do not want to admit that we do not have all the data we need to paint a complete picture of the historical Jesus. Good scholarship is sometimes born from a desire to fill in the gaps, and informed speculation can be a virtue. ["Informed Speculation" is an interesting concept: how informed, and informed by what? Is there any reason why historical Jesus research cannot be informed by the fidei depositum of Tradition and Magisterium?] But over-confidence born out of an unrealistic expectation [There are clearly unrealistic expectations placed on both theologians and historians: we will never be able to answer all the questions.] of the evidence will make future generations wonder what we were playing at. [Indeed. Will future generations look back at two centuries of historical Jesus research and wonder why theologians did not simply accept the ambiguities and focus on the Jesus of faith, the person of the Christian confession rather than the man of Nazareth?]

I thoroughly appreciated Goodacre’s piece, which is a refreshingly honest appraisal of the state of historical Jesus research. There is a profound unwillingness amongst theologians en generale to admit and accept our inability to provide exhaustive answers to the pressing questions of life. Indeed, there are some questions which theology cannot, and ought not, attempt to answer. Theological activity seems only to limit the scope of the thought area that can be defined as “Orthodoxy” without actually providing any definitive and exhaustive statements of its own.