The Unity of Scripture and the Integrity of God
Having just written nearly Brian McLaren, and his comments about the style the OT relates to the NT, it was fascinating this week to attend the University of Nottingham theology seminar given past Prof Judith Lieu on 'The Search for Marcion'. She started by pointing out that we have no actual texts of Marcion, and that, if his disciples had passed on any of his teaching, we have no record of information technology. There is here both a parallel and a divergence with Jesus, but information technology is an instructive one—we have no direct records of the teaching of Jesus, but (different Marcion) we do have the records of his disciples who passed it on. The whole question of 'the historical Jesus' is about the human relationship between these records and what Jesus actually said, taught and did.
What is interesting is that, notwithstanding this lack of information, commentators often experience confident knowing what Marcion said—and knowing it was wrong! We can just reconstruct his pedagogy from his opponents, which raises pregnant questions of method, since these records are clearly both rhetorical in nature and polemical in purpose. Justin Martyr'due south comments in hisDialogue with Trypho are a case in point.
For some in ane manner, others in some other, teach to blaspheme the Maker of all things, and Christ, who was foretold past Him every bit coming, and the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, with whom we have nothing in common, since we know them to exist atheists, impious, unrighteous, and sinful, and confessors of Jesus in name only, instead of worshippers of Him. Nonetheless they style themselves Christians, simply as certain among the Gentiles inscribe the name of God upon the works of their own easily, and partake in nefarious and impious rites. Some are called Marcians, and some Valentinians, and some Basilidians, and some Saturnilians, and others past other names; each called after the originator of the private opinion, just equally each one of those who consider themselves philosophers, every bit I said before, thinks he must bear the name of the philosophy which he follows, from the proper name of the father of the particular doctrine. (Dialogue 35.5–half dozen)
This passage is often read as though information technology isdescribing the different 'heretical' groups that exist, and is used as a window into the social reality that Justin lived in, as though these groups had a articulate identity and there were stock-still boundaries betwixt them. Simply the testify suggests that the globe of the second century was much less clear and more fluid in terms of beliefs about Jesus. It is better to empathize this text asdefining rather than describing these groups, and in doing so, Justin is effecting a rhetorical purpose. Past naming these groups after their followers, Justin is asserting that they are more like schools of the philosophers than the 'true' followers of Christian organized religion, and past imitating the construction of the term (ending in '-ian'), he is asserting that they are distinct groups. This language functions as a oral communication act, forming these groups and asserting their mutual incompatibility. And this is in the context (especially pertinent to the 'Marcians') of understanding Jesus every bit one 'who was foretold past his coming'.
A cardinal text from Justin in understanding the teaching of Marcion comes from his First Apology:
And in that location is Marcion, a man of Pontus, who is even at this twenty-four hour period alive, and didactics his disciples to believe in some other god greater than the Creator. And he, by the assist of the devils, has caused many of every nation to speak blasphemies, and to deny that God is the maker of this universe, and to assert that another being, greater than He, has washed greater works. (Apol 26.five)
A fascinating insight into the theological significance of this comes from Tertullian a generation after. In Chapter 9 of hisAnswer to the Jews, he addresses the question of whether Jesus was the 'Immanuel' of Is vii:
Well, then, Isaiah foretells that it behoves Him to exist called Emmanuel; and that subsequently He is to take the ability of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria, in opposition to the rex of the Assyrians. "Now," say they, "that (Christ) of yours, who is come, neither was called by that name, nor engaged in warfare." Merely we, on the contrary, take thought they ought to be admonished to recall to mind the context of this passage likewise. For subjoined is withal the estimation of Emmanuel–"God with us"–in order that you lot may regard not the audio but of the name, but the sense too. For the Hebrew sound, which is Emmanuel, has an interpretation, which is, God with usa. Inquire, then, whether this speech communication, "God with the states" (which is Emmanuel), exist commonly applied to Christ e'er since Christ's light has dawned, and I think y'all will not deny information technology.
Tertullian is arguing that Jesus is the theological (if not the literal) fulfilment of Isaiah's prophecy. Similarly, in hisAgainst Marcion he addresses the same passage:
For there is immediately added the interpretation of Emmanuel, "God with us;" so that y'all have to consider non but the proper name as it is uttered, only also its significant. The utterance is Hebrew, Emmanuel, of the prophet'southward own nation; but the meaning of the word, God with united states of america, is by the interpretation made common property. Inquire, then, whether this name, God-with-us, which is Emmanuel, be non often used for the name of Christ, from the fact that Christ has enlightened the world. And I suppose you volition not deny it, inasmuch every bit you practise yourself acknowledge that He is called God-with-us, that is, Emmanuel. (Confronting Marcion Volume 3 Chapter 12)
What this suggests is that the issue with both Judaism and Marcion is the separation of the 2 parts of Scripture. Both hold that they are disconnected: Judaism accepts the starting time office but rejects the second; Marcion does the opposite. For Tertullian, the root problem in both cases is the separation betwixt the Law and the gospel—between OT and NT.
Marcion'due south special and principal work is the separation of the law and the gospel; and his disciples will not deny that in this indicate they have their very best pretext for initiating and confirming themselves in his heresy. These are Marcion's Antitheses, or contradictory propositions, which aim at committing the gospel to a variance with the constabulary, in club that from the diverseness of the ii documents which incorporate them, they may contend for a diversity of gods also. (Against Marcion, Book i, 19.4)
It is like shooting fish in a barrel to run into why Tertullian considers this such an important result. I don't remember it is exaggerating to say that thecontinuity between Jesus and the Hebrew Scriptures is the key question of NT theology. We see information technology in John the Baptist'due south question: 'Are you the one who was to come, or should nosotros expect someone else?' (Matt eleven.3). And we see it equally in Jesus' respond, where he describes his ministry in (amended) terms from different parts of Isaiah, including Is 61. Just most illuminating is what Jesus says afterward asking some rhetorical questions about John'due south ministry:
I praise you, Begetter, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children (Matt xi.25)
In other words, this continuity cannot exist seen simply by reading words on the page: information technology is discerned spiritually. In gimmicky terms, we might talk of continuity of theological estimation. But the continuity is seen in every NT document. In Romans 1, Paul explains 'the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures regarding his Son' (Rom 1.2–3). In 1 Cor 15, he sets out the key elements of the gospel: 'that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was cached, that he was raised on the third mean solar day according to the Scriptures' (1 Cor 15.3–4). When Paul claims that 'God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself' (2 Cor 5.nineteen), we assume the referent of 'God' is a theological notion which might or might not relate to what nosotros read in the OT—merely for Paul, the referent was the God of the Scriptures who had delivered State of israel from slavery and given them the law. (For the landmark study of the mode the OT works in Paul, see Richard Hays'Echoes of Scripture in the Messages of Paul.Steve Moyise has also written very helpfully onPaul and Scripture: Studying the New Testament Use of the One-time Testament.)
The author to the Hebrews links the ways God has spoken in the by and how he has spoken 'in these final days by his son' (Heb 1.2). Reading from a gentile perspective, the tendency is to see contrast here. But from a starting time century Jewish perspective, the key point was continuity: this was the aforementioned God, speaking his consistent discussion. The aforementioned is true for the description of Jesus every bit 'the Word' in John i. It is most oftentimes used (as Brian McLaren does) to emphasisdiscontinuity—no longer that one, but now this one—whereas John'due south claim is at least as much nearly continuity and unity. This give-and-take of God, which spoke the world into beingness, which spoke the law to Israel to give shape to their life, which spoke through the prophets to bring them back to God—this discussion is now before us, in a way we can come across and hear and touch (ane John 1.ane).
But that which God has joined, we take repeatedly put disconnected. Like Adolf Harnack (in his study of Marcion), we blame Paul:
The starting indicate of Marcion's criticism cannot exist missed in the tradition: it was provided in the Pauline opposition of Law and Gospel, malevolent, petty, and cruel penal justice on the one hand and compassionate honey on the other.
What Harnack fails to meet is that it is not Paul who causes the problem, simply a distortion of Paul produced by a Reformation calendar and driven by critical scholarship'due south modernist presuppositions. (This is why information technology is important to get to grips with the 'new perspective on Paul'; come across Mike Thompson's excellent Grove booklet on the subject.) The consequent partitioning of Old and New Testaments is then picked up by evangelical piety ('The New is in the Old concealed; the Old is in the New revealed') which explains why evangelicals often find information technology and so difficult to read the OT in its ain terms.
A terminal, fascinating insight into this event comes from a further annotate from Tertullian:
This man of Pontus offers 2 Gods… The ane the Creator, whom he cannot deny, which is our God; the other, whom he cannot bear witness, a god of his own…for like many these days, especially the heretics, he sickens over the question of evil. (Against Marcion, Book one, chapter two).
Marcian's concern, it appears, is a pastoral 1—'the question of evil'. The division of OT from NT in McLaren (and Steve Chalke, and other 'progressives') is likewise often motivated by a pastoral concern. But the solution offered ('which aims at committing the gospel to a variance with the law'!) leads to an even bigger pastoral problem. When we end upward constructing our own view of God by putting some parts of Scripture in opposition to others, we are left with the question: does God go on his word? The unity of the narrative stands or falls with the integrity of God.
I commented concluding yr on the debate between Chalke and Andrew Wilson:
If the writer of Numbers was mistaken, asked Wilson, and then what about the other writers of the Bible? What nearly Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5? If God does not strike people downwards, what was going on at that place? Aye, said Chalke, the author of Acts was also mistaken. As of form was Paul (or whoever) in one Timothy 2. So it is non just a case of 'progressive revelation'; any and all of the Bible authors tin be mistaken. On what ground? On the basis of the revelation of Jesus as the personification of the beloved of God. The large question, then (which was not asked in these terms) is:If whatever of the New Attestation writers could besides be mistaken, on what basis can we know annihilation most this Jesus?
That is why the 'progressive' agenda, including its calendar on revisionist sexuality, touches the heart of Christian theology.
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