P.OST

I spent a day this week with a group of leaders from a network of churches in the UK who were discussing how best to teach theology across the movement. They went about it with a refreshing candour: “We have an anti-intellectual history—we need to embrace learning.” The discussion revolved around the questions of what should be included in an “in house” theological training programme and how it might most effectively be delivered.

The rather less practical question that kept going through my mind, however, was: What do we want this sort of programme to achieve? What is the guiding vision? Are we looking to theology to underpin our ecclesial structures and doctrinal commitments? Or do we need it to take us somewhere? In the context of the consultation that would probably not have been a very helpful contribution—the network in question already has a solid vision for the coming decade. But I want to explore a bit further here what we currently need theology to do in our churches.

There is a strong dissident view that the nobleman in Jesus’ parable, who gives ten minas to each of his servants to do business with, before travelling to a far country to receive a kingdom, is an unjust rather than a just “lord” and that his “kingdom” is quite antithetical to the kingdom of God. Lloyd Pietersen makes use of it to illustrate how “readings from the margins completely subvert the natural Christendom reading which is still favoured by commentators”.

What has especially recommended this line of interpretation is a story in Josephus’ Antiquities. The appointment of Archelaus as king in 4 BC was contested before Augustus by a delegation from Judea, accompanied by a large number of Jews who were living in Rome. The Jews were understandably afraid that Archelaus would follow in the footsteps of his father Herod: before setting out for Rome to have his kingship confirmed by Caesar he had violently suppressed opposition from the Pharisees. To avoid a repeat of Herod’s brutal reign, the Jews asked that:

they might be delivered from kingly and the like forms of government, and might be added to Syria, and be put under the authority of such presidents of theirs as should be sent to them (Jos. Ant. 17:314)

In the second part of The Prophet Jesus and the Renewal of Israel: Moving beyond a Diversionary Debate Richard Horsley first discusses a number of methodological issues, then outlines his view of Jesus as a prophet leading the renewal of Israel against the rulers of Israel. I will give a quick summary of his arguments and then briefly discuss the failure of the reconstruction adequately to take account of the theme of the coming of the kingdom of God, which seems to me to be the major shortcoming of the book. The first part of the review can be found here.

I have read a fair bit of Richard Horsley’s work on the social and imperial background to the New Testament. It’s always been interesting stuff, but my impression is that he has been more interested in the critique of political and economic injustice in the abstract than in the particular Jewish-historical reaction to pagan empire that, in my judgment, shapes the emerging Christian narrative. I haven’t read his Jesus and the Powers: Conflict, Covenant, and the Hope of the Poor (2010), but this review by Kevin McCruden suggests that he presents Jesus as a prophet of covenant renewal primarily against a background of economic exploitation. That seems to me a less valuable perspective, on the whole, than the argument of the present book, The Prophet Jesus and the Renewal of Israel: Moving beyond a Diversionary Debate (2012), which considers the historical Jesus in the light of a revised understanding of Jewish apocalypticism.

The first part of the book deals with the debate over the apocalyptic Jesus, which in Horsley’s view has dominated study of the historical Jesus since Schweitzer. It is presented as a neat oscillation between two misguided scholarly positions taken with respect to the apocalyptic content of the Gospels, and I will do little more than summarize his analysis here. The second part, which I will review in a separate post, presents Horsley’s own account of Jesus as a prophet of renewal.

I recently outlined what I see as the apocalyptic Christology of Acts and suggested that most of what is said about the post-Easter Jesus in the New Testament needs to be interpreted within this narrative framework: Jesus was unjustly killed by the rulers of Israel and the Gentiles; he was raised from the dead and given authority to rule as king at the right hand of YHWH; and the historical outworking of this would be judgment first against the Jews, who had rejected the prophets and finally the Son, then judgment against the idolatrous Greek-Roman oikoumenē, the pagan world.

Part of this story is the belief that Jesus is the one “appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead” (cf. Acts 10:42; 1 Pet. 4:5). We would normally understand this as a reference to a final judgment at the end of the world as we know it, but it seems to me that the language of judgment in the New Testament is too closely tied up with the vindication of the early persecuted churches and the overthrow of Rome for us to think that it can be indefinitely deferred. In the 1 Peter passage he writes that the “end of all things is at hand” (1 Pet. 4:7). There is a clear and consistent expectation that this day of judgment was coming soon.

Since the idea that Jesus was “destined to judge the living and the dead” is also found in The Epistle of Barnabas, The Letter of Polycarp to the Philippians, and 2 Clement, I thought I’d have a go at reconstructing the apocalyptic Christologies—and the surrounding narrative—of these texts. They probably date from around AD 100-110. They are not the only texts in the Apostolic Fathers that speak of a future judgment, though they may be the most important. If you’re not interested in the details, you can skip to the end for a quick summary.

The book of Acts tends to get overlooked when we try to explain who Jesus was and why. We go to the Gospels for an account of Jesus earthly existence and to Paul and Hebrews for an account of his heavenly existence—an approach that reflects the fact that we have been conditioned by later christological developments to think of Jesus as a split human-divine personality. Acts, however, gives us an apocalyptic narrative of the exalted Jesus arising directly out of the Gospel story that challenges the bifurcated ontology of traditional representations. In fact, I would argue that Paul and Hebrews mostly presuppose this apocalyptic-narrative framework—that most of what needs to be said about Jesus, as far as the New Testament is concerned, can be found in Luke-Acts.

Most of us will have observed that in the western context religion is out and spirituality is in, and we may well have adjusted church life, preaching styles, and mission strategies with that observation in mind. Religion is institutional, spirituality is personal; religion is controlling, spirituality is liberating; religion is toxic and polluting, spirituality is environmentally friendly; religion is intolerant and competitive, spirituality couldn’t care less—whatever floats your boat; and so on.

According to an article on the BBC website, research by Professor Michael King from University College London shows that one in five people in the UK regard themselves as spiritual but not religious. The figure is roughly the same in the US. It also appears that people in this category are more likely to suffer from mental health problems such as anxiety and depression. The study concludes that “there is increasing evidence that people who profess spiritual beliefs in the absence of a religious framework are more vulnerable to mental disorder”. Of course, the correlation could be stated the other way round, to subtly different effect: people who are vulnerable to mental disorder are more likely to profess spiritual beliefs in the absence of a religious framework. But that’s another matter.

I read Naomi Alderman’s book The Liars’ Gospel: A Novel because a friend was trying to get her to speak at a debate in Westbourne Grove. Sadly, he failed, but the book, for all its profound Jewish distrust of the madman Yehoshuah and the unfriendly religion that his followers devised, is worth reading for at least three reasons. The first is a matter of hermeneutics—of how we read, how we interpret, how we re-interpret. The other two reasons have to do with how Alderman’s Yehoshuah—our Jesus—fits into history. Since modern evangelicals tend to have a very poor grasp both of storytelling and of history, The Liar’s Gospel may have some truths to teach us.

These notes are an attempt to clarify, for myself at least, the historical setting for the Immanuel prophecy in Isaiah 7:14, following the helpful feedback given to yesterday’s post: Are Immanuel and Wonderful-Counselor-Mighty-God-Everlasting-Father-Prince-of-Peace the same person? Thanks to all those who have so far contributed to the discussion. This may have to serve as a rather dull (but warm) Christmas greetings to all and sundry.

The birth of Immanuel was to be a sign, either to Ahaz or to the house of David, that within a few years the two kings, Rezin and Pekah, who threatened Judah at that time would be defeated by the king of Assyria (Is. 7:10-25). Some time later another boy was born to Isaiah, Maher-shalal-hash-baz, an event which further confirmed that Syria and the northern kingdom of Israel would be defeated. Following that, however, the king of Assyria would invade Judah, reaching to the gates of Jerusalem, as punishment for the failure of Ahaz and the people to trust YHWH when Syria and Israel first threatened (8:1-10; cf. 7:2). It seems likely that both boys, along with Shear-jashub (7:3), are “signs and portents in Israel”, along with Isaiah himself, regarding impending events.