Pat Flannery on the Web

Scope: The two major strands of the Western tradition come from Athens and Jerusalem: from the classical Greek and Roman world of Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero and from the Biblical world of Moses and Jesus. These two worlds came together intellectually in the writings of Church Fathers, such as Augustine, and the medieval period saw the flowering of the synthesis between biblical faith and philosophical reason that they had effected. Both scholastics, such as Aquinas, and mystics, such as Eckhart, were heirs of this wedding of Athens and Jerusalem. Modernity represented a fundamentally new relation to both these sources of Western thought.

Outline:

I. The anatomy of the West.

A. The right leg represents biblical tradition.

1. The traditions of Athens and Jerusalem are not simply in our past but are fundamental motivating forces in Western thinking and politics to this day.

2. The biblical tradition is on the right, because for most of Western history, Christianity meant respectability and power.

3. The right leg is (even today) the strong one. Especially at the popular level, the thinking that set Western society in motion has typically been rooted in the Bible (e.g., the anti-slavery campaign).

4. Although it is generally conservative, the religious tradition also underlies the reforming tendencies of the West.

B. The left leg represents classical tradition.

1. Intellectuals without strong religious allegiances tend to be on the "left” side of the body.

2. The critical, questioning spirit of Socrates is the guiding light of this tradition.

3. Would we really want philosophers to be 'king’?

C. The torso represents Christendom (the "Middle Ages”).

1. The Middle Ages can be seen as the era that embodied Plato’s Republic, when contemplatives were dragged back into the cave to rule (e.g., Pope Gregory I was dragged from a contemplative life to active life).

2. Syntheses of faith and reason, theology and philosophy, Jerusalem and Athens were fundamental to the culture of Christendom.

D. The left arm represents the Renaissance reclamation of the power of classical humanism, but Renaissance thinkers don’t cease being Christian.

E. The right arm represents the Reformation’s reclaiming of the power of the biblical word, but Reformation thinkers don’t cease thinking of God in the philosophical categories of antiquity.

F. The head represents modernity.

1. We look at the rest of the body from the head. i.e.. from the standpoint of modernity.

2. Modernity is Christendom secularized, as dependent on Christendom as the head is on the body.

3. In modernity, reason and faith start to resemble antagonists rather than partners: reason becomes critical of faith and faith (beginning with Descartes) comes to seem a flight from rationality.

II. Marking off the torso.

A. Athens and Jerusalem in the late Roman Empire.

1. The late Roman Empire in the fourth century AD was the place where the two legs came together in a somewhat embarrassing union.

2. The union was sometimes resisted. As Tertullian, an early Church Father and Christian writer, put it, “what does Athens have to do with Jerusalem’?”

3. In the end, however, Christian thinkers wanted both the story of the God of Israel and the metaphysics of the Greeks to articulate their understanding of self, world, and God.

4. Tertullian is, in fact, a case in point. As a stoic and opponent of Plato, he found himself talking about God and the soul in materialist terms (“divine fire”), which the later Christian tradition firmly rejected.

5. The Church Fathers (such as Augustine) were, for the most part, convinced Christian Platonists, using the language of Greek philosophy to articulate such key Christian beliefs as the doctrines of Trinity and Incarnation, in which biblical convictions are expressed in metaphysical terms.

B. Flight from authority.

1. Modernity can be thought of as the spirit of freedom from authority—especially religious authority.

2. The original meaning of authority was pedagogical: it was teachers, not rules, who had “authority.”

3. Intellectually, Western modernity is marked by a refusal of religious authority: “no one can tell me what to believe” is a truism in modernity, a piece of foolishness in the Middle Ages (run by clerics whose job it was to teach people what to believe).

4. Faith, stripped of its medieval authority, becomes a private matter in modernity.

5. Faith is also “a matter of the heart” in the sense that it involves (for moderns rather than medievals) a flight from reason into emotion (mysticism, fideism, and so on).

Ill. The middle and the margins.

A. Why the Middle Ages are “middle.”

1. The time of the Middle Ages was between antiquity and modernity, a connector. If Athens and Jerusalem are in our bloodstream (not just places we look at with our distant modern eyes), it is through our connection with the Middle Ages.

2. The Middle Ages also represents the torso, where all the bloody organs are: the ugly ones we don’t want to see, the hidden ones we don’t know much about, and the emotional ones we feel most strongly when we’re searching for something deeper than today’s reason.

3. The time of the Middle Ages is also central. To tell the story of the Middle Ages is to walk down the central corridor of Western history (and often to miss some places on the margins).

B. The course of medieval Christendom.

1. Late antiquity: the era when Athens met Jerusalem, when Constantine converted to Christianity.

2. The “Dark Ages”: why we skip 800 years after Augustine. The knowledge of Greek classical cultures was lost.

3. The High Middle Ages: the flowering of monasteries and universities in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

4. Fourteenth-century troubles: plagues and other problems.

C. The margins of medieval Christendom.

1. The twin brother: Eastern Orthodoxy in Byzantium. It is Greek speaking, the origin of Greek and Russian orthodox churches.

2. The black sheep: Islam as preserver of the classics.

3. The forgotten older brother: the Jews. (They never appear after the right foot—the Old Testament.)

4. The silent sister: women, who seldom received education or legitimate power. We meet them only as abbesses or mystics.

Essential Reading:

R. Banton , Christianity (Boston: 1964/1992).

Supplementary Reading:

Etienne Gilson, History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (New York: 1955).

Jeffrey Stout, Flight from Authority: Religion. Morality and the Quest for Autonomy (Notre Dame, 1981).

Questions to Consider:

1. How do you think faith and reason ought to be related’?
2. What advantages does modernity have over the Middle Ages’? Do the Middle Ages have any advantages over modernity’?

Glossary
top^

Adonai: Heb., "The Lord.”

Beatific Vision: literally, ‘the seeing that makes us happy”; in the Augustinian tradition, this means seeing God, which is the goal of human life and the source of our ultimate happiness or beatitude.

Covenant: in the Hebrew Bible, a kind of binding relationship of promise between two persons, such as an oath of allegiance or a wedding vow.

Creature: a thing created by God; i.e. (according to orthodox Christian theology) everything that exists other than God (see un created).

Critical historiography: The project of critically examining historical texts and questioning whether one can take them at face value.

Dead Sea Scrolls: The famous scrolls discovered in a cave above the Dead Sea dated from 200 BCE to 100 CE.

Ecstasy: (from a Greek word meaning ‘to stand outside”), in Denys, the natural tendency of all intellectual beings to be drawn out of themselves by love.

Elect: old way of saying “chosen,” used in Calvinist theology to describe those predestined by God for salvation; the usage goes back to Paul’s phrase “the election of grace” (i.e. literally God’s “choice of favorites”) in Romans 11:5.

Eschatology: from the Greek eschaton, meaning “last thing”, this is any account of the end or goal or ultimate future of history and humanity; giving such an account is typical of Jewish and Christian views of history rather than Greek philosophical views.

Gentiles: Jewish term for non-Jews. The crucial question facing Paul in the New Testament was whether Gentiles could be allowed to become Christians without first converting to Judaism.

Grace: a key term in Paul meaning both divine “mercy” and divine “favor.” Augustine interprets it as meaning the inner help of God healing the disease of sin and strengthening the soul to do good; this establishes the doctrine of grace which is crucial for Aquinas, Luther and Calvin.

Indulgences: official letters authorized by the pope promising remission of sin and release from time to be served in purgatory, which were sold in the public square in Luther’s time; Luther’s 95 theses were a scathing critique of this practice.

Intuition: From Latin, “to behold" to see.

Justification by faith: Martin Luther’s notion that there is no way to earn the grace of God except through the gospel of Christ.

Justify: literally “to make just or set right” (“justice” and “riehteousness” are alternative translations of the same Greek word), the term has been prominent in Christian theology ever since Paul used it in the New Testament used to talk about how the Gentiles may be made righteous (i.e. just) in God’s sight.

Manichaeanism: a religion formed in Persia (3rd century AD) as an amalgamation of Christian and Zoroastrian themes, regarded as heresy by Catholics when it spread throughout the Roman empire, but found attractive by Augustine in his wayward youth; it involved an extreme form of dualism, teaching that the soul was a fragment of pure divine light trapped in the filth of the body.

Messiah: from a Hebrew word meaning “the anointed one,” designating the legitimate successor to King David; translated into Greek the word is “Christ ,“the fundamental Christian title for Jesus of Nazareth.

Mysticism: a term invented by modem scholars to describe people having (or claiming to have) direct experiences of God; when applied to medieval writers, it typically refers to a tradition of thought concerned with the ultimate union of the soul with God.

Nominalists: Proponents of the philosophical position that names have little or no reality content.

Nous: From Gk., for “intellect,” also, mind, intelligence, understanding.

Predestination: in Christian theology since Augustine. this term refers specifically to the choice God makes in his foreknowledge, before creating the world, to give grace (and therefore salvation from sin) to some people but not others.

Prevenient: a technical term meaning ‘comes before.” used to describe grace in Augustine’s theology; prevenient grace is grace that comes to) help human beings before any choice of theirs.

Problem of universals: A major philosophical issue in the medieval period that questioned the relationship between names and things and of these to the standard categories of Western analysis of phenomena.

Protestant Reformation: Religious revolution of the sixteenth century that rebelled against the practices of the medieval church.

Pseudepigrapha: All Jewish writings between the Old Testament and the New Testament.

Q: A hypothetical source document for the gospels of the New Testament.

Synoptics: term designating the Gospels of Matthew. Mark, and Luke, which (in contrast to the Gospel of John) share the same basic plot-structure; so-called because all three can with relative ease be brought under a common synopsis.

Teleology: The study of the end or purpose of an action or thing.

Theodicy: (from a Greek term meaning ‘justification of God”) a philosophical reply to the “problem of evil,” trying to show it is possible that God is good. despite all the evil there is in the world.

Transmigration: the view that souls move or migrate from one body to another at death (including from animal bodies to human bodies and vica-versa); often called “reincarnation.”

True contrition: The Augustinian idea that one must hate one’s sins for God’s sake.

Uncreated: technical term in Christian theology referring to God, who is the only thing in existence not made by God (see creature.

Via Negativa: Latin tbr “the negative way.” the theological method of speaking about God by saying what he is not rather than what he is, emphasized by PseudoDionysius.

YHWH: Heb., “Yahweh,” the sacred name of God.

Biographical Notes
top^

Aquinas, St. Thomas (1224—1274). Known as the Angelic Doctor, Aquinas is the greatest figure of Scholasticism. He was born outside Naples into the ruling family of Aquino and was educated by Benedictine monks. At age twenty, he joined the Dominican order while a student at the University of Naples. His family was disappointed by his religious commitments, hoping instead that he would assist them in their political endeavors. Kidnapped by his brothers and held prisoner for a year in the family castle. Aquinas escaped in 1245 and made his way to Paris to study with the Dominican theologian Albertus Magnus. He taught theology at Paris, Cologne, and Rome. combining Aristotle with Christianity and arguing that reason is subordinate to faith and does not contradict faith. His greatest philosophical accomplishment is the Sumrna theologiae. which remains today one of the pillars of Catholic theology. Aquinas died on March 7, 1274, at a monastery between Naples and Rome.

Augustine, St. (354—430). Bishop of Hippo in Africa from 395 until his death; the premier theologian of early Christianity and the most influential of the western Church Fathers. Raised as a Christian by his mother. St. Monica, Augustine fell away from the faith in his youth and became a Manichaean. While in Milan, he came under the influence of St. Ambrose and soon found his way back to the Christian faith. While visiting the town of Hippo in 391, he was chosen against his own will to become a priest. Four years later he became bishop of Hippo, where he died in 430 during a siege by the Vandals.

Calvin, John (1509—1564). French Protestant theologian and one of the great figures of the Reformation. After studying law, classics, and Hebrew, Calvin experienced a “sudden conversion” of faith and henceforth worked to contest conservative theology. He rejected papal authority and is perhaps best known for his belief in justification by faith and predestination. He offered the Bible as the fundamental source of God’s will. Considered controversial for his opinions regarding the Anabaptists and Lutherans, he was a proponent of the capitalist economy, which encouraged the virtues he felt were essential to preparing the way for the rule of God. His teachings were later disseminated through the work of John Knox of Scotland and the Puritans of New England.

Eckhart, Meister (c. 1260—c. 1327). Dominican theologian, preacher, and founding figure of the tradition of “Rhineland” mysticism (“Meister” is medieval German for “master,” in the sense of “teacher”). Actively involved with preaching to the poor and destitute, he was eventually accused of heresy. He may have been the first German writer in speculative prose and challenged the domination of Latin as the language of the educated. After his death, Pope John XXII issued a bull declaring several of Eckhart’s stated positions as heretical.

Luther, Martin (1483—1546). German monk, professor, and theologian. commonly regarded as the leading figure of the Protestant Reformation. Tormented by doubts about his own salvation, Luther eventually established the doctrine of salvation through faith rather than good works. In 1517, he posted his famous “95 theses,” which attacked such practices as the buying of indulgences. His most celebrated works include The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, The Freedom of a Christian Man, and Address to the Christian Nob jury of the German Nation. He was excommunicated by the church in 1521 and spent the next ten years translating the Bible into German. His popularity ebbed with his opposition to the Peasants’ War of 1524—25. He eventually married a former nun and raised a large family, his reputation as a religious radical secured during the controversies with John Calvin and Huldreich Zwingli in his later years.

Paul of Tarsus (d. 63 AD). A Jew and a Roman citizen, born in the city of Tarsus in Asia Minor. After completing his studies in the Jewish religion, Paul was commissioned to suppress Christianity in the town of Damascus. While traveling there, he was blinded by a brilliant light, and he heard Jesus ask him:

“Why persecutest thou me?” With this revelation, Paul converted to Christianity, was baptized, and immediately began preaching. He traveled to many cities throughout the Roman Empire, preaching to and instructing the Christian communities. Paul was arrested by the Roman authorities sometime after 57 AD on the charge of provoking a riot. According to tradition, he was beheaded in Rome during the 60s AD.

Plotinus (205?—270). Born in Egypt, a pagan Platonist philosopher, author of a collection of treatises called the Enneads; his writings are the single most important philosophical influence on Augustine, although he was

Job and the Problem of Suffering
top^

Phillip Cary, Ph.D.

Scope: There is nothing like the biblical book of Job. In one of the greatest poems ever written, a good man who suffers incomprehensibly pours out his heart to God, complaining, yet afraid to complain; wishing for death, yet longing to bring his case before God; and increasingly impatient with his friends who offer him ‘good advice” that misses the point. Perhaps similar ordeals have happened many times, but how often has God answered? Yet, if you expect God to explain everything, you will be disappointed. Oddly, Job does not seem disappointed. This is a book about a very unusual relationship, but it is a relationship that the biblical people of Israel seem to have understood perfectly well, because they lived it.

Outline:

I. The narrative framework of the Book of Job.

A. The title character.

1. Job is introduced as a good man, “blameless and upright, who fears god and avoids evil.” (“Fears God” means he is religious and obeys the god.)

2. He is also rich, with a big family and large herds and flocks, the main form of wealth at this time.

B. The scene in heaven.

I. The sons of God (angels or “gods”) come before the Lord (like courtiers before the throne).

2. One of them, who likes to roam the earth, is called “the accuser.

3. The Lord brags to the accuser about Job: “There’s no one on earth like him, blameless and upright [and so on].”

4. The accuser’s reply is a key thematic question: “Does Job fear God for nothing?” In effect, the accuser is saying, “Yes, it’s true, there’s nothing I can accuse him of—he follows all the rules—but that’s because you’re paying him off.”

5. The question leads to a challenge: take away Job’s wealth and “he will surely curse you to your face.”

6. The Lord takes up the challenge; as a result, Job loses everything he has: flocks and herds, servants, and children.

C. Job under test.

1. Job’s response to the bad news is to bless the name of the Lord, in the famous words, ”Naked I came from the womb... (1:20)”

2. Hence, the next time the sons of God come before the Lord, the Lord again boasts of Job: “he is blameless [and soon]... and maintains his integrity, even though you incited me against him to ruin him for nothing.”

3. The accuser figures the Lord has made it too easy for Job: “Skin for Skin.., all a man has he will give for his life. Just stretch out your hand and touch his flesh and bones...”

4. Once again, the Lord takes up the challenge; as a result, Job suffers from a painful and revolting skin disease.

D. The outcome of the test.

I. Then comes the crucial temptation of Job: his wife urges him to “curse God and die.”

2. Job’s reply is to shut her up and accept the trouble God has given him.

3. Then come three friends of Job to comfort him; they are so astonished by his suffering that they can do no more than sit silently with him for seven days.

II. The literary character of the Book of Job.

A. Job and the problem of suffering.

1. Modem readers see Job as a book about theodicy: the problem of why God allows suffering, specifically, how he can be a just and loving God and allow good people to suffer.

2. Notice, that question has already been answered. Job is suffering because God and Satan have a bet about whether Job will curse God when God allows him to suffer. If you’re happy with this “solution” to the problem of evil, then you’re welcome to it. But if we want to see the Book of Job as a serious response to that problem, we must read on beyond the first two chapters and see that no real answer is given—as in all serious treatments of the problem of evil!

3. That question is part of a larger problem about the relationship between Job and God, which is really the theme of the book: is it about being good and being rewarded, or is it about something deeper? (This larger problem is explored at great length in the rest of the book.)

B. The structure of the Book of Job.

1. The opening portion (chapters 1—2, the frame story) is a prose narrative told in the style of a folk tale, using a picture of God in heaven that would have been recognizable throughout the ancient Near East. There’s nothing especially Israelite about it—and Job is not identified as an Israelite.

2. In the closing portion (42:7—17), the prose narrative resumes and Job is rewarded for speaking rightly of God (double the flocks and herds, double the number of sons and daughters, Job’s daughters proverbial for their beauty).

3. In between, is the bulk of the book. 39 chapters of some of the most powerful poetry ever written.

4. The usual scholarly view is that a great poet took a folk tale about Job and used it as a frame in which to insert the compelling poetry of chapters 3—42. (If there is a “great mind” at work here, it is in the poetry—which also contains the serious treatment of the problem of evil in the book.)

5. A certain (perhaps deliberate?) tension exists between the ending of the poetic section and the closing prose narrative, in the former, God shuts Job up; in the latter, he rewards Job for speaking rightly of him, unlike the three friends.

C. The structure of the poetic sections.

1. The speeches are in alternating cycles: Job speaks, one of his friends answers, and Job replies (chapters 3—27).

2. Job has a long concluding soliloquy (chapters 28—31).

3. A young man, Elihu, interrupts and insists on having his say against Job (chapters 32—37).

4. Then God speaks to Job from a whirlwind, ignoring Elihu and Job’s friends and challenging Job to reply (chapters 38—41).

5. In contrast to his previous willingness to defend himself against all corners, Job now “repents in dust and ashes,” admitting that he didn’t know what he was talking about (42:1—6).

D. Surprising features of the poetic sections.

1. ‘The accuser” simply disappears from the story and does not even return with the closing prose narrative. Job is not about Satan as a source of evil.

2. The events in the opening scene (the bet between the accuser and God) are never referred to again and play no role in the story or the arguments of the rest of the book.

3. Job never even refers to his physical suffering or his loss of wealth in the poetry—something else seems to be eating him (i.e., his relationship to God).

III. The poetry of Job.

A. Job breaks his seven-day silence by cursing. not God, but the day of his birth.

1. He rejects God’s act of creation.

2. He wants not only to die, but to have never been born.

B. The theology of Job’s comforters.

1. Job’s comforters articulate the common view of the Wisdom tradition in the Hebrew Bible.

2. According to the Wisdom tradition. God keeps order in the world: the good are rewarded and the evil, punished (4:1—9).

3. Job’s words are profoundly disturbing to his friends, because he longs for death; according to the Wisdom tradition, the righteous should be confident that they will be rewarded with a satisfying life.

4. Job’s friends thus urge him either to complacency (“you’re a good man; you shouldn’t doubt that everything will be OK”) (4:6) or repentance (“if you’re suffering, it must be because you did something wrong”).

5. Job refuses to do either. He wants to tell his own story, and it’s not a story that fits the complacent platitudes of his friends (6:1—4,11— 13).

C. The development in Job’s speeches.

1. Pushed by his friends, Job discovers that he wants more than just to die: he wants his story to be told truthfully, as only he knows how.

2. Job’s initial speech was solipsistic. addressed to no one, but later he addresses God and pleads with him to be merciful (7:7—21).

3. At first, he wishes that God would just leave him alone (10:18—22). This is the deepest, darkest moment of Job’s despair.

4. On the one hand, Job wants God to leave him alone; on the other hand, he can’t stop talking to God about his plight.

5. As the book progresses, Job becomes more and more obsessed with speaking to God, and he begins to wish he could bring his case before God in the heavenly court, even though he knows he can’t win (9:14—18).

6. Then, in an amazing feat of imagination, he wishes it could be fair: that he could have an advocate in heaven who would plead his case before God (9:32—35).

7. The high point of Job’s hope is that there is, in fact, such an advocate for him (16:19—2 1 and, most famously, 19:25f). The Hebrew here is obscure, but it seems clear that Job is hoping that he will meet God and have some heavenly advocate speak for him.

8. The irony is that Job is right: he has had all along an advocate in heaven to vindicate his righteousness—God himself, according to the scene in heaven at the beginning!

IV. End of story?

A. in the end, God answers Job out of a whirlwind (chapters 38—41) and, as Job predicted, He is overwhelming.

1. Thus. God does reply to Job (as Job wished) but asks him questions he cannot answer (38:1—11). This is a Wisdom theme: God setting limits to sea, which mirrors God bringing order to creation.

2. Job gets both what he asked for and what he feared.

B. Job’s last speech is one of repentance (42:5—6) and has been variously interpreted. is he:

1. Cowed by terror?

2. Recognizing his limits?

3. Trusting God to be in charge?

C. Job’s restoration (in the concluding prose narrative) has often been found unsatisfying by modern readers.

1. Of course, it is unsatisfying as an answer to modem questions of theodicy.

2. But it is the inevitable ending if Job is to be vindicated. He does not serve God for reward and precisely for this, he is rewarded.

V. Features of Israelite faith illustrated by Job.

A. Job is one of the great examples of biblical faith.

B. It is not that Job is always happy with God, but that even when he would most like to get away from God, he can’t—he cannot opt out of the relationship, cannot stop wishing to speak to God, because there is no place else to turn.

C. The biblical word for this relationship between God and human beings, which can be stretched and strained but never broken, is “covenant.”

Essential Reading:

Job

Supplementary Reading:

K. Barth, Church Dogmatics, iV/3. 1 (volume 4, part 3, first half) (Edinburgh, 1961), pp. 383—388, 398—408, 421—434, 453—461 (small print sections).

Questions to Consider:

1. Does this book help you think about the meaning of human suffering?
2. Why do you think Job submits to God at the end? How is this consistent or inconsistent with his attitude in the earlier part of the book?

The Hebrew Bible and Covenantal History
top^

Phillip Cary, Ph.D.

Scope: The Hebrew Bible—which Christians call the Old Testament—can be read as the story of a relationship between two main characters: God and his people Israel. This relationship is defined by a covenant that binds the two main characters of the Bible together. God first makes this covenant with the patriarchs. Abraham. Isaac, and Jacob (whose name is changed to Israel after he wrestles with an angel of God). He renews it and shows his faithfulness when he brings the whole people of Israel out of Egypt in the Exodus. This redemption by the Lord is the birth of Israel as a people and the context in which Moses receives the Jewish Law, as well as the promise of God’s presence among his people in the tabernacle and, later, the Temple. The latter is built by Solomon as part of the fulfillment of the covenant between his father, David. and the Lord. Throughout the Hebrew Bible, the covenant relationship between God and Israel is threatened by Israel’s disobedience and God’s punishment in the form of exile and destruction of the Temple. Yet the relationship is never simply broken, and there is always the expectation of a restored peace between these two quarreling lovers.

Outline:

I. Covenant versus contemplation. or “why faith?”

A. The Hebrew Bible as a whole is like the Book of Job: a story about the troubled, deep, inescapable relationship between two main characters, in this case, Israel and the Lord God.

B. This relationship gets its structure from a covenant, a set of explicit promises and commands that binds these two characters together like lord and vassal or husband and wife.

C. In addition to a structure, this relationship has a history. In contrast to Plato’s good or Aristotle’s God, to know the God of the Bible, you must know the story of his relationship with his people Israel.

D. The Hebrew Bible focuses on faith rather than reason, because its concern is with the history of this covenant relationship—a relationship that you know about not by figuring it out by yourself (reason) but by hearing the story and believing it (faith).

11. Historical context.

A, For most of biblical history, Israel is one of a number of small nations (tribal groups, really), living precariously in the region between large empires (Egypt and Assyria or Babylon).

B. These nations are often closely identified with particular gods (e.g., Chemosh, the god of the Moabites) who are their protectors and fight for them against their enemies.

C. The God of the Bible is emphatically the God of Israel, fighting for Israel against her enemies and punishing Israel when she rebels against him.

III. Genesis: the patriarchs.

A. The story of the Lord’s relationship with Israel begins with its ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—three generations of seminomadic herdsmen.

B. God promises to make Abraham a great nation, to bless him—and to bless those who bless him, so that he might be a blessing to all nations (Gen. 12:1—3).

C. This covenant is renewed with Abraham’s son Isaac, then with Isaac’s son Jacob, who is renamed Israel after wrestling all night with an angel of the Lord. (He comes away wounded, with a new name that means, “he struggles with God” for “you have struggled with God and with men and have prevailed.”)

IV. Exodus narrates the familiar story of how the Lord created the people of Israel and established the relationship between himself and them.

A. Covenant promises: “you will be my people and I will be your God” (Exodus 6).

B. Revelation of the name: the repeated refrain “I am the Lord”; Adonai, instead of the name of God, YHWH. “They shall know I am the Lord” or “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt” is not a claim of power but an announcement of the name of Israel’s God.

C. Giving of the Law: the God who redeems Israel from slavery in Egypt then gives them a Law (Torah) by which to live (Ex 20:lff).

D. Also gives him a detailed “blueprint” for a central place of worship, the tabernacle, or tent shrine (which subsequently becomes the Temple).

E. Promising a land: Finally, the Lord accompanies the people as they journey to the Land of Israel, a place where they can live in prosperity and peace as he dwells in the midst of them.

V. Prophets and psalms: the dialogue of the Hebrew Bible.

A. The Law envisioned a stable order of festival and sacrifice, including regular sacrifices and a cycle of festivals to be “an ordinance for you forever” in Leviticus.

B. Already in the book of Deuteronomy. however, when Moses speaks to the Israelites just before they go to take possession of the land, the Lord anticipates Israel’s disobedience. He warns that when they violate the terms of the covenant, their land will be ravaged by war and they will be taken into captivity.

C. Similar warnings, and a pattern of exile and return, become a central theme of the prophets (e.g., Isaiah. Jeremiah. Amos, and soon) and. thus, of the relationship between the God of Israel and his people.

D. Much of the literature of the Hebrew Bible is a kind of dialogue in which God (through the prophets) issues promises and warnings, while Israel responds (in psalms and prayers) with confession of sin and (often Job-like) complaint: “How long, 0 Lord? Will you forget me forever’?” (Psalm 13:1)

VI. History of exile and return.

A. The famous “Babylonian captivity” in 586 BCE means the capture of Jerusalem, destruction of the Temple. and exile of the Israelite leadership in Babylon.

B. But the story does not end there, because the Israelites are allowed to return to the land two generations later and begin rebuilding the Temple.

C. This pattern of exile and return makes Israel unique among the nations (its neighbors knew exile but not return) and reinforces the historical character of Israel’s relationship with the Lord. The stable order of Law does not tell the whole story, because sometimes the Temple and Jerusalem itself exist more as a hope for the future than a present reality.

D. The hope for a future fulfillment of history has come to be called eschatology (literally, “the doctrine of last things”) and is characteristic of biblical (as opposed to Greek) thought.

VII. Monarchy.

A. Another covenant that shapes Israel’s history is one that the Lord makes with David, the second king of Israel: “Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever.., your throne shall be established forever” (2 Sam. 7:16).

1. After the disaster of the same first king of Israel, David had wanted to build a house for the Lord in his capital.

2. The Lord replies by promising to establish David’s house.

B. The lineage of David is subsequently associated with Israel’s sacred places: Israel (the holy land ruled by David), Jerusalem (the holy city first captured by David), and the Temple (the holy of holies, built by David’s son Solomon).

C. For Israel, the wrath of God means the loss of these holy places: exile from the holy land, conquest of Jerusalem, destruction of the Temple.

D. Similarly, the mercy of God means restoration of the Temple, rebuilding of Jerusalem, and the monarchy of David reestablished.

VIII. Conclusion: Jerusalem and Athens.

A. The Hebrew Bible is not about the triumph of an idea called “monotheism,” but a story about a relationship between two quarreling lovers, the Lord and his bride, Israel.

B. The God of Israel is unseen, not represented by images or idols—and in this respect, has a good deal in common with the god of Aristotle and the good of Plato, which are beyond the reach of the senses.

C. And yet, because the God of Israel is someone to be in relationship with rather than something to contemplate, faith is before reason: to know this person, you must believe his story and trust his covenant, not discover and contemplate an eternal truth.

D. Because God is a person with a story, history matters in a way not seen in Greek metaphysics.

Essential Reading:

Genesis 12—35 (the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob).

Exodus 1—20, 32—34, 40 (the founding narrative of Israel).

2 Samuel 5—7 (the covenant with David).

Supplementary Reading:

L. Boadt, Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction (New York: 1984).

Questions to Consider:

1. Does the story of the relationship of God and Israel seem strange or familiar to you? Why?

2. Do you find the biblical portrait of God “too human” or “personal” in a good sense?

The Synoptic Gospels—The Historical Jesus and the Kingdom of God
top^

Phillip Cary. Ph.D.

Scope: In the New Testament, the synoptic Gospels (Mark. Matthew. and Luke) are the key sources for research on “the historical Jesus,” which has been undergoing a renaissance recently. Scholars disagree extensively on what the historical Jesus was like. Some scholars accept much of the portrait in the synoptics, while more revisionary scholars read these Gospels as documents that reflect more accurately the conditions of the early church than the conditions of Jesus’s life. Nearly all are agreed, however, that the proclamation of something called “the kingdom of God” was central to his work, along with the telling of parables and the practice of ‘miraculous” healings. Most scholars would also agree that the key to understanding who Jesus was (and who he thought he was) is to understand what he meant by “the kingdom of God.”

Outline:

I. The synoptic Gospels.
top^
A. The first three books of the New Testament, the Gospels of Matthew, Luke, and Mark, are called “synoptic” Gospels because they share a common plot line that can be easily summarized in a common “synopsis”’

B. The fourth gospel (John) has a different plot line, as well as a different focus: Jesus as the eternal Word who came from the Father into this world.

C. The synoptic Gospels are usually taken as the key sources for understanding “the historical Jesus.”

II. Research into the historical Jesus.
top^

A. The notion of “the historical Jesus seminar

1. Revisionary view: represented by the big gap between what Jesus actually thought about himself (“historical Jesus’) and what the early Christians thought about him (“the Christ of faith”).

2. Traditionalist view: early Christian views of Jesus (as recorded in the New Testament) stand in continuity, if not in identity. with Jesus’s own views of himself.

3. Skeptical theological view: there’s not much we can know about the historical Jesus; all we have is the New Testament portrait of “the Christ of faith” (i.e., those who hold this view are skeptical about history but often very traditional in theology).

4. Revisionist “quests for the historical Jesus” go back two and a half centuries, but are represented most notably today by “the Jesus seminar” (Robert Funk, Burton Mack, John Dominick Crossan).

5. The most influential traditionalist “historical Jesus” scholar today is N. T. (Tom) Wright.

B. The following resources for “historical Jesus” research include the evidence that the scholars themselves examine.

1. Jewish writings between the time of the Hebrew Bible and the writings of the rabbis (including the Apocrypha in Catholic Bibles and other writings collected in Charlesworth, Old Testanment Pseudepigrapha).

2. The writings of Josephus, a Jewish historian of the first century

AD.

3. The Dead Sea Scrolls, which probably had no direct influence on Jesus or the early church, provide a powerful illustration of the range of possible ways of being Jewish in the first century.

4. The Gospel of Thomas, a lost gospel of about the fourth century AD, containing purported sayings of Jesus, some of which may go back to Jesus himself.

5. The hypothetical source document “Q.” This document is very important for the “Jesus seminar” but less so for other scholars—indeed, many scholars doubt such a document ever existed.

III. Some samples of context.
top^

A. Historical context: bandits (or “robbers”) as potential revolutionaries are discussed in Josephus.

1. Bandits were not burglars but highway robbers—the only aimed men who weren’t in the service of Rome. It would be natural for them to share their proceeds with sympathetic village supporters, like Robin Hood robbing from the rich and giving to the poor.

2. Bandits regularly got crucified—the most fearsome of punishments—because they were a serious threat to Roman rule.

3. According to Josephus, the great Jewish war with the Romans in

67—70 AD coalesced around groups of bandits.

4. Some robbers also had hopes of becoming king, i.e., messiah (see below on messiah = king of Jews).

B. Literary context: apocalyptic literature and the hope for the restoration of Israel (e.g., Daniel 7).

1. Apocalyptic literature is prophecy in the form of dreams and visions, including symbolic or allegorical figures, such as beasts in the sky. (For prophets, beasts represented enemy nations, and David, or his anointed successor, was the shepherd who protected Israel, the flock, from wild beasts.)

2. The heavenly events symbolize earthly events, including the rule of God over Israel—the kingdom of God.

3. Hence, Daniel 7: beasts, Ancient of Days (God on His throne) and “son of Man” (= Israel or else its King as Israel’s representative). Wright contends that this is the proper context in which to understand Jesus’s view of himself.

IV. Jesus as preacher of the Kingdom of God.
top^

A. “The Kingdom of God” is the basic theme of Jesus’s preaching.

1. His early preaching is summed up: “The time is fulfilled. The Kingdom of God is coming. Repent and believe the good news (Mark 1:15).

2. “Kingdom of God” is sometimes paraphrased “Kingdom of Heaven” (especially in Matthew), but there is no suggestion that it’s about “how to get to heaven.”

3. What’s at issue is that God is coming to rule Israel at last (“rather than the Romans” is the implicit suggestion). This is an eschatological view.

4. The big question is: how did Jesus think this would come about?

5. The first piece of evidence for answering these questions is the nature of Jesus’s actions.

B. Works of cleansing and healing.

1. The old scholarly debate was about whether Jesus actually performed miracles that proved he was the son of God.

2. The new scholarly consensus is that acts of healing and exorcism were characteristic of Jesus’s activity. Even scholars who don’t believe in miracles think that Jesus was what we would now call a “faith-healer.”

3. Thus, Crossan paints a vivid picture of the basic shape of Jesus’s activity, a kind of bargain between Jesus’s followers and the peasant villagers of Galilee among whom they roamed: “we heal you, and you feed us (and we all eat together, even the outcasts and the unclean).”

4. These healings made clean and whole what was unclean under the Law of Moses (e.g., lepers).

5. Hence, one likely overall interpretation of Jesus’s work is that he understood himself to be setting Israel to rights, healing and cleansing it in preparation for (or as part of?) the coming of the Kingdom of God.

C. Parables of the Kingdom.

1. The most distinctive form of Jesus’s teaching was his parables.

2. By nature, the parables are cryptic, with hidden meanings, meanings that Jesus will explain more clearly to his disciples than to the crowds, meanings that are more accessible to Jesus’s original audience than to us. It’s not surprising that the Romans wouldn’t have liked hearing about the Kingdom of God —you didn’t go broadcasting this message where Romans could hear and understand.

3. Hence, the original meaning of Jesus’s parables is a matter of particularly hot dispute among scholars.

V. The plot line of the synoptic Gospels (Mark).
&