This week Alastair, Derek, and Matt take up and read Book 1 of Augustine’s Confessions. If you’d like to read along–which we encourage you to do–Henry Chadwick’s translation is available widely at a reasonable price.
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Soli Deo Gloria
In the introduction to their new translation of Genesis, Genesis 1–11: A New Old Translation for Readers, Scholars, and Translators, Samuel Bray and John Hobbins explain various aspects of their translation philosophy. For instance, they emphasize rendering words consistently which keeps intratextual ties tight, clear, and without leaving the reader to wonder why a change occurred in the text where none actually does. Or again, they play special attention to how the translation sounds when read aloud, impacting the experience and encounter of the reader with the text.
Commenting on their willingness to let the reception-history of translation play a role in their own translation, using traditional phrases drawn from earlier renderings, they say:
This translation is traditional in a further sense: it takes seriously the reception of Genesis as scripture. It has become conventional for translators to seek to recover what the text was, without the distraction (or taint) of what the text would later become. Some might consider the intervening millennia a dirty window, and desire to see the text in the clear light of day. That is a good and worthwhile pursuit, but it is not the only one.
Here the reception of Genesis as scripture and its history of interpretation, both Jewish and Christian, are taken as a telescope; they do not eliminate the gulf between us and this distant text, but they let us see further and better than we can see on our own. And if Genesis may be interpreted as part of a broader corpus of Scripture, it may also be translated with attention to that corpus. After all, to make a translation is inescapably an act of interpretation. Thus, this translation reads Genesis in a broader corpus of Scripture, one that in the translators’ tradition includes the New Testament.
In practical terms, later meanings are not forced on a clear text. Instead, translation choices are made, at least in a few key instances, that allow the reader to participate in the long conversation about Genesis down through the centuries. The reader is in a position to see the Old in the New and the New in the Old. And, as noted above, the renderings of the Tyndale-KJV tradition are favored (e.g. Gen 3:15 “He shall bruise your head”). At present, it is not conventional for a translator to be candid about considering the later reception of the text. It was not always this way. When Archbishop Richard Bancroft distributed rules for the translators of what would become the King James Version, he included: “When a Word hath divers Significations, that to be kept which hath been most commonly used by the most of the Ancient Fathers, being agreeable to the Propriety of the Place, and the Analogy of the Faith.” (10-11)
I find this view eminently reasonable and applicable beyond even translation of the text. Tradition can cloud. Tradition can impede. Tradition can stultify. But it need not always do so. Tradition can also clarify, guide, give insight, and function as a telescope rather than a dirty window. Hence the wisdom of engaging with the history of interpretation and the history of doctrine when preaching, teaching, and formulating our own.
Soli Deo Gloria
Our Secular Age, a new volume edited by Collin Hansen on the tenth anniversary of Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age, has just been released by the Gospel Coalition. Taylor’s work is one of the most significant works on the problem of secularism, culture, and philosophy of religion in the new millennium.
In this volume, Hansen has gathered together some helpful essays by both academics and pastoral practitioners both engaging and applying Taylor’s insight for theology and ministry in our Secular Age. With historical and theological essays from Michael Horton and Carl Trueman, practical engagement from John Starke (preaching), Mike Cosper (pop culture), Jen Pollock Michel (flourishing), and my Mere Fidelity compatriot, Alastair Roberts (liturgy), and many more, there’s plenty to glean from, even if you haven’t yet read Taylor’s book yourself.
Indeed, part of the hope is to take some of Taylor’s best insights and make them accessible to those who may not have the time to wade through all 750 pages of Taylor themselves. Much of Collin’s introduction can be read here.
Now, as it happens, I also had the privilege to contribute an essay on applying Taylor’s insights to ministry to Millennials growing up in the Super-Nova of belief and the internet age, (and really anybody inhabiting our cross-pressured age). Here’s one clip:
We’ve reached the point where everybody has to preach apologetically, even if your congregation isn’t mostly millennial. To be clear, I don’t think such preaching is simply a matter of incorporating in every sermon arguments for the resurrection, or the existence of God, and so forth (though some of that might help). Instead, we need to actively answer objections to the gospel from inside the mindset of our cross-pressured culture on a regular basis as a part of ourscriptural exposition.
We need to show the consistency, coherence, and comeliness of the gospel to this generation. But it is not enough to simply defend the gospel. Present the way it interrogates the dominant, unquestioned narratives of our hearers—on meaning, money, sex, power, politics, gender, and so forth—and actually makes better sense of the world than any other view on offer.
If you want to see my first ever chapter in print, you can buy copies of the book for yourself and for all of your friends and family members at Amazon.com or WTS bookstore.
If you need more encouragement, here are a couple of the blurbs:
“Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age is a landmark book, and the essays collected here ponder it intelligently and charitably. Some echo Taylor, some extend his ideas, some contest his claims, but all engage his argument with a seriousness that
the book deserves—and that Christ’s church needs.”-Alan Jacobs, distinguished professor of humanities in the honors program at Baylor University and author of How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds
“To be secular, says philosopher Charles Taylor, is to have no final goals beyond this-worldly human flourishing. This is only one of the many insights from which pastors can profit from Taylor’s work in their ministry of the gospel to an age that has substituted spirituality and authenticity for religion and doctrine. The essays in this helpful volume do more than borrow from Taylor: they engage, question, develop, and occasionally criticize his influential account of our complex cultural moment in which we all—moderns and postmoderns, millennials and non-millennials—are trying to live, move, and have our being as disciples of Jesus Christ. Reading and applying the insights of those who have read and applied Taylor is a salutary exercise in understanding oneself and others in an age that is not only secular, but fragile, frustrated, and confused.”
-Kevin J. Vanhoozer, research professor of systematic theology,
Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
And, finally, here’s a nifty book trailer:
‘Our Secular Age’ Book Trailer from The Gospel Coalition on Vimeo.
Soli Deo Gloria
On this week’s show, Alastair, Matt and I consider the nature, ethics, and benefits of theological controversies. As we seem to get into controversies on a more regular basis than we’d probably like, we wanted to take a week to dig into how and why one might want to do so. Andrew was not included since he has been too uncontroversial of late.
Beyond that, next week’s show will be a discussion of Book 1 of Augustine’s Confessions. If you’d like to read along–which we encourage you to do–Henry Chadwick’s translation is available widely at a reasonable price. I have already read book 1 and let me tell you, I am so excited about these shows. If we succeed in doing nothing but encouraging you to finally pick up the Confessions our work is done.
If you like the show, please do leave us a review on iTunes. We are also available on Google Play.
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Soli Deo Gloria
500 years on downstream from the Reformation, one of the most common charges against the Reformers is that they divided the Church. What’s more, once the division came, inevitably division after division followed, with fragmentation, fissiparousness, and ecclesiastical foment.
Beyond that, what have we got to show for all that division? With our various and sundry denominations, views on baptism, end-times, and so forth, what was the theological and spiritual gain? To many, the answer is, “not much.”
In an effort to answer that charge, and more importantly, to give positive witness to the gospel truths of the Reformation, a group of Protestant theologians have drafted, signed, and offered up “A Reforming Catholic Confession: A ‘Mere Protestant’ Statement of Faith to mark the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation.” The idea for it first hit Wesleyan theologian, Jerry Walls, who reached out to a range of theologians, one of which was my own adviser Kevin Vanhoozer. Vanhoozer responded positively, they got to working together, drew in dozens of other collaborators across the theological spectrum, and over a long period, together crafted and hammered out the confession presented today.
With nearly 250 signatories drawn from every continent and spanning most Protestant theological traditions and Communions (Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, Methodist, Baptist, Free Church, Nazarene, Pentecostal, etc.), this has as decent of a shot at the claim of being “global” and “ecumenical” as you can get for Protestants.
I would encourage you to read the Statement here. You can see it covers 12 articles from the Triune God, creation, fall, redemption through the work of Jesus Christ in the Gospel, the Church, and concluding with Last Things. In covering this range, their hope is to give testimony to “the catholic substance of the faith (the consensual tradition worked out over the first few centuries of church history about the triune God) according to the Protestant principles of the faith (sola scriptura, sola gratia, sola fide).”
I would also encourage you to go read the “Explanation” as to what provoked the statement, what its aims are, what it’s trying to do (and not do), and how that plays into the particular kind of document this is. And this piece over at Christianity Today is very helpful. Finally, check out this little video snippet with Vanhoozer on the Confession:
You can catch the rest of the interview here.
To be clear, the point is not to offer up a new confession for Churches to adopt and replace your old ones. Nor is it to be a new political litmus test for good standing in Protestantism, or Evangelicalism (that is quite contrary to its intended use). Nor is it even to be a lowest common denominator harmony of the confessions.
The drafters clearly state, “We continue to appreciate the distinctive emphases of our respective churches, denominations, and confessional traditions.” The Mere Protestantism they’re giving witness to takes place in the “rooms” of the house, not simply the hallway they’re describing (to steal an image from Lewis). So, if you’re worried particular distinctives or emphases don’t seem to appear in the document, they’re not trying to erase them or take them away from you (put your muskets away, nobody is coming for Westminster, fellas).
Instead, it is an attempt to give testimony to the fact that despite our sin and confusions, despite our fallibility and error, despite all possible outward signs, despite the as-yet unresolved differences still among us, God’s Spirit was at work in the Reformation and is still at work in the Protestant churches that it birthed. In an age of polarization, there is greater confessed unity in the gospel among us than we’re tempted to believe. What’s more, it confesses that there was a permanent gain for our understanding of the gospel in the Reformation worth preserving, confessing, and passing on.
I’m not typically a “signer.” I’m wary of hastily jumping on to this or that statement, pronouncement, and so forth, so I can appreciate the hesitation some may have at this point. All the same, I think this one is worth your time and consideration.
Soli Deo Gloria
Reading the Church Fathers on Scripture can be illuminating, surprising, and sometimes weird. This is part of what’s so fun about reading them. They come to the text of Scripture from a different time and place, with slightly different questions, exegetical instincts, and theological approaches, which present a question and a challenge to our own. I was reminded of this when diving into a little of Cyril of Alexandria’s work on the Gospel of John.
The Patriarch Cyril is best-known for his polemic against Nestorius and the central role he played in Christological controversies which leading up to the Council of Chalcedon (at which point Cyril was dead). Many will have read his little work On the Unity of Christ, which is what I have. I was not aware, though, that his commentary on the Gospel of John was translated until recently (Brandon Crowe quotes it in his excellent book The Last Adam). On a whim I looked it up and found online for free because, well, Cyril of Alexandria. Anyways, I started poking around and stumbled on one of the oddest bits of trinitarian reasoning I’ve read in one of the Fathers.
It comes in his comments on John 1:1, “and the Word was with God”, in his chapter arguing that the Son is consubstantial with the Father and therefore God in his own person. The trouble he’s dealing with specifically is the oddity of thinking of the Son as properly God but somehow also being “with God”, alongside him. Cyril proceeds to explain how this is so by commenting on various relevant Scriptures you might expect him to. For example, see this entirely unsurprising bit on John 14:
Consubstantial is the Son with the Father and the Father with the Son, wherefore They arrive at an unchangeable Likeness, so that the Father is seen in the Son, the Son in the Father, and Each flashes forth in the Other, even as the Saviour Himself says, He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father, and again, I in the Father and the Father in Me. But even though He be in the Father, and have again the Father in Him, Himself full well, as has been already said, perfectly exact unto the Form of Him Who begat Him, and depicting again in Himself without any shortcome, the Father whence He is:—-not therefore will He be deprived of His separate existence, nor will the Father lose His own special Being; but neither will the surpassing Likeness and Resemblance work any confusion of Persons, so that the Father Who begat and the Son Who is Begotten of Him should be considered as one in number. But sameness of Nature will be confessed of Both, yet the Individual Existence of Each will surely follow, so that both the Father should be conceived of as indeed Father, and the Son as Son. For thus, the Holy Ghost being numbered with them and counted as God, the Holy and Adorable Trinity will have Its Proper Fullness.
Alright, so far so classic Trinitarian. It doesn’t get more basic than Jesus’ discourses in the Gospel of John.
Now, jump down six or seven texts and we arrive at this fascinating bit of exegesis of Genesis 19:24:
Another. The Divine Scripture says that the cities of the Sodomites were burned by the Anger of God, and explaining how the Divine wrath was brought upon them, and clearly describing the mode of the destruction, The Lord, it says, rained upon Sodom brimstone and fire from, the Lord, since this too is the portion of the cup most befitting those who are wont to commit such sins. What Lord then from what Lord sent the fire on and consumed the cities of the Sodomites? It is clear that it was the Father Who worketh all things through the Son, since He is too His Might and His Arm, Who caused Him to rain the fire upon the Sodomites. Since therefore the Lord sends the fire from the Lord upon them, how is not the Father Other, in respect to His own Being, than the Son,, and the Son again than the Father? For the One is here signified as being from One.
I have to admit, Sodom and Gomorrah is not one of my top 10 go-to texts in proving the distinction-within-unity of the persons of the Godhead.
Still, the text is illuminating for a number of reasons. First, Cyril picks up on a real oddity in the repetition of the LORD twice in the verse. Calvin suggest the repetition emphasizes the God’s agency. Robert Alter says its a repetition of emphasis as well, but he focuses on connecting the phrase, “from the heavens” which links it to the destruction of the Flood. Gordon Wenham doesn’t comment on that repetition, but right before it he notes that the whole passage is riddled with ambiguities “the LORD”, “the men”, and “the angels” in chapter 18, but here in chapter 19 and in the encounter in, it is clear one represents or is the LORD, the Angel of the YHWH.
It seems, then, Cyril is picking up the Angel of YHWH reading and suggesting the repetition indicates something about the complexity of the agency of the One God being depicted. The argument depends on the doctrine of inseparable operations and its corollary: the outward works of the Trinity are undivided, but that doesn’t mean the persons are indistinguishable or confused in them either. In the incarnation, Father, Son, and Spirit are at work, but only the Son is incarnate and so forth. Cyril discerns a distinction of activity here as well.
Connecting this to the broader Patristic habit of seeing an order to the works of the economy as proceeding from the Father, through the Son, and perfected in the Spirit, Cyril focuses on the fact that all of God the Father’s works are “through the Son”, whom he has identified with the Angel of YHWH. And so, when “the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven”, we should understand that it is the Son who rains down fire on Sodom from the Father.
Weirder still is that while in other places the Fathers might describe the Son as the Wisdom of God, or the Power of God, by which he acts, it seems Cyril may be identifying him as the “Anger” of God, or God at work in the execution of his judgment against Sodom. (Though, it could be the capitalization in the translation is misleading me here.)
In any case, the point is that Cyril wants us to see that while the text is clear that while there is an overall unity to the act of judgment as that of the One God, there is a distinction in the agency implying an internal otherness appropriate to the two persons of Father and Son. There is one Judgement, but it comes through the Son from the Father.
Turning a bit from “trinitarian” issues, it’s worth noting that Cyril sees no problem reading the affair at Sodom and Gomorrah as an instance of active divine judgment and retributive punishment, with no mediators involved. We have here a deeply Christological exegesis which places the Son plainly at the center of the Old Testament text, but does so by making him the active agent of judgment in God burning a city to the ground. Suffice it to say this is markedly different from other recent proposals for relating Jesus to Old Testament violence. Though, it does seem consistent with Paul’s reading in 1 Corinthians 10.
At which point, it’s worth reiterating that this isn’t some weirdo outlier. This is Cyril of Alexandria, revered Patriarch, central figure in formulating and consolidating the Christological Orthodoxy for the whole Church, East and West. Now, you may be unconvinced by his reading (and I’m not sure I buy it myself), but it does present a striking instance of the way the Fathers often don’t fit our popular expectations on these matters, which are often shaped by 20th Century prejudices, Eastern polemics, or recent progressivish retrievals.
Now, I don’t really have a big point here except that sometimes you find odd, things reading the Fathers. Though, I suppose the next time you’re teaching on the Trinity, maybe consider the story of Sodom and Gomorrah?
Soli Deo Gloria
Alright, hopefully this is the last thing I write on this Brian Zahnd review. After the review went up, Luke Norsworthy at the “Newsworthy with Norsworthy” podcast asked me if I wanted to come on and chat about it as he was going to talk to Zahnd as well. I heard he was a good dude, so I did. And it turns out, he was good dude. I had a great time with him, which you can listen to here.
He also had Zahnd on, who responded to my review on this episode. Now, with that out, I just wanted to write up two or three clarifying explanations both to some general criticism I have received as well as in response to a couple points on podcast response.
Length and “Pop” theology.
First, on the length of my review. Yes, it was long. Probably a quarter of Zahnd’s book. Some (not Zahnd, but some) have suggested that the response was all out of proportion to a popular level book.
I have to say, first, the subject of Zahnd’s book is related to my research here at school and it’s about things I have already written about at length on this very blog. So, it’s not like I took a week obsessively writing this thing from scratch or something. This really wasn’t a personal animosity thing. Listening to him, I think I’d like to grab a beer and chat music and theology. What’s more, there are people I do actually dislike whom I wouldn’t respond to at length like this. It was really a function of the importance of the issues as well as my personal interest in them.
Second, I don’t think that just because a book is pop-level it doesn’t deserve careful attention or scrutiny. Zahnd may not be an academic theologian writing for an academic audience, but he is a pastor-theologian who has clearly thought about these issues at length and is writing for the Church—for people in both his pews and those of others—which is a role I take seriously. In which case, in many senses it matters not less, but more since it is a work of theology people will actually read.
I think there is often a dismissiveness with which some academics (or academicish bloggers) write off pop-level works as beneath their time or attention, which is not simply arrogant but short-sighted. As Zahnd said, he wrote a book for truck drivers, which is exactly what pastors should be doing. Maybe it’s because I still think of myself as a college pastor who snuck into grad school, but I don’t think that same audience is beneath my attention, and neither is the sort of book that they’ll be reading.
I don’t say that all grad students or professors should be reading and reviewing popular books. Some really do serve the kingdom best by focusing on academic-level works. I do think that more should consider wading into popular debates. We probably need more who consider themselves doctors of the church, not simply professors. Indeed, if some did that more often, I think we might see less of a disconnect between the “theology of the pews” and the “theology of the academy”, which sets up the sort of bad preaching in Evangelical circles which Zahnd’s book is reacting against. Incidentally, that means we’ll have to be willing to critique our own tribe more in this regard as well.
Finally, I do think it’s important to engage the “best” versions of a certain kind of theology and not just pop-level versions (assuming academic works are able to handle things with greater precision and sensitivity). So the people popular authors quote, not just popular authors. That said, I don’t think the one activity rules out the other. For instance, reviewing Zahnd’s book doesn’t rule out later reviewing Gregory Boyd’s book, whose name has been brought up constantly as the real interlocutor (which I’m not sure is quite fair to Zahnd), nor vice versa. What I think is probably important is not reviewing Zahnd and then just wiping your hands and saying, “It’s basically the same thing, so dealing with popular, I have dealt with the academic.”
Jesus’ Parables, etc.
Turning to the podcast, Norsworthy brings up my point about Zahnd not addressing various of Jesus’ parables beyond the Prodigal Son, which assume or teach retributive justice. He mentions Matthew 25 and the sheep and the goats, which Zahnd points he deals with, and that’s why I didn’t fault him for ignoring that one in my review. That said, he dealt with it in his chapter on hell and so his treatment wasn’t pitched at the issue I was concerned with, but rather how he relates it to his view of the afterlife.
My point with the various other parables which didn’t get brought up is that there is a consistent teaching of retribution even in the parables of Jesus which fits with the OT portrait as well, not so much the view of the afterlife implied. It is that issue with which I was concerned, as I’m not particularly interested in using the parables as a Polaroid of the last judgment either. So, I guess I just wanted to clarify that.
Calvinism, etc.
As for the rest of his comments about the Reformed system, I’m happy to let the review sit as is. I don’t think it commits me to going everywhere Edwards does, nor to the “4-year-olds deserve torture” view of things. I’ll simply note, though, I mostly quoted non-Calvinists and focused my review on issues I would have had trouble with back when I was an Arminian who hissed at the name of Calvin. I’ve had several non-Calvinists say they agree on those things, with even an Eastern Orthodox chap or two among them. So, I probably fit the “polemical Calvinist” mold in writing the review, but I don’t think my concerns can simply be chalked up to being a polemical Calvinist.
“Neo-Marcionism” and the “Gospel”
Finally, Zahnd had two main complaints where he thought I was unfair or being overly harsh. First, he objected to the “Neo-Marcionism” label, as well as my one line about the “gospel and God” being at stake.
Now, I really didn’t want to be unfair. I hope I wasn’t. But I guess I’ll just reiterate that I am using the Neo-Marcionism with qualifiers to note a couple of important theological analogies with distinction. Mark Randall James engages that helpfully here in this article. That said, I’m not married to that term, so if there is a more neutral one available, I’m happy to use something less inflammatory. But I’ll just say that nearly every one I think of is going to probably be objected to as I am trying to flag something problematic about his hermeneutic.
As for the “gospel and God” being at stake, I’ll just repeat what I said on the podcast: Zahnd writes as if our understanding of God and the gospel is at issue. In that sense, I am just agreeing with him. I thought that in trying to correct bad, harmful portrayals of both God and the gospel he thinks distort both, he over-corrected and distorted both. I think that’s just a fundamental disagreement we’re going to have. Which is just life in the Church before Jesus comes back and corrects us both, I suppose.
Soli Deo Gloria
It’s been a few months, but the Mere Fidelity crew (Alastair, Andrew, Matt, and I) is back in the saddle again. For our debut episode, we decided to talk about the Sex Ethics and Orthodoxy conversation that a few of us have been participating in. Is marriage an issue of ‘orthodoxy’, or something less than that? Or is that even the right word for this sort of subject matter?
Well, that was going to be interesting enough, but the day before we record, CMBW decided to release the Nashville Statement. So, we couldn’t just ignore that either. Given that two of us had signed it and two of us haven’t, going into some of the whys and why nots was an enlightening conversation.
I’d like to highlight two articles in that regard. First, this is the article we mention on the show in which Matt Anderson gave his reasons why as a conservative he didn’t sign it. You should read it if only to understand what he means by “what I have written, I have written.”
Following that, here is Alastair’s second follow-up (he wrote two) in which he defends his signing all the while noting the various conservative criticisms of the statement. It’s notable because, up until now, it’s the only written defense of signing it which fully acknowledges the real conservative criticisms of it, without ignoring, waving them off, or simply acting as if we were only dealing with unfair, hysterical progressive criticisms. I won’t say more than that except that in their rush to occupy their office of “defender of the faith against the progressive hordes”, some of the conservative defenses have been less than impressive on that score.
Soli Deo Gloria
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