Regressive awareness (4)

This final post follows from this one, this one and this one, in which I began sharing commentary on a post on the Logos Academic Blog.  Here is the most substantial, worthy comment from someone else on that article.  Please note the reliance on data and the good follow-up questions, and please don’t miss my summary statement at the bottom.  I’m explicitly inviting comment and challenge to that.

Joshua:  Todd, Thank you for your post, a few questions concerning your analysis (wondering if leaps were made on some points):

1. How many of the 135 gospel occurrences are unique pericopes?
I noticed that you paid particular attention to the number of pericopes in the epistles but not in the gospels–why was that? From your data, it seems that we would want to consider that the 103 occurrences in the synoptic gospels describe some of the same events/speeches, meaning that the gospel writers might agree on the emphasis of kingdom in recording Jesus’ word 30ish times. The analysis would then emphasize 30ish rather than 135. That is, instead of adding up the occurrences to gain a picture of emphasis, wouldn’t we want to compare the # of unique pericopes to get that data?

2. Is the drop-off from the gospels to the epistles individual authors really that significant of a drop-off?
Asking this question in 2 areas: First, in the area of the number of occurrences: It seemed like you were making a particular point based upon the falling off of the number significantly. How significant is the drop really when not thinking about “135” to “27” but “30ish” (i.e., unique occurrences in the gospel accounts) to “20ish” (non-gospel accounts). Do you have those exact figures too? Second, in the area of appropriate context. I considered from your data that if the drop is significant where would the places be that we should be seeing kingdom emphasis that we don’t. That is, as solutions to church problems are discussed in the epistles, where would be the “missed opportunities” to use kingdom themes. Of course, we don’t want to place ourselves above the text in this type of analysis but noticing the places it isn’t mentioned might be part of this study to understand “kingdom” better.

3. Is a word study of one word alone sufficient to do biblical theology?
I noticed you drew attention to biblical theology but your analysis seemed to be based on one particular word (not a word group, synonyms, or thematic phrases surrounding that word). What other words/phrases should be considered for a biblical theology of kingdom in the NT (e.g., throne, rule, judge…)? I would think that a phrase you separated out “David’s coming kingdom” would be ripe to include in Messiah’s kingdom because of the Davidic covenant (2 Sam. 7). Could you explain why you isolated this one word alone for the implications of your analysis?

 

Me:  These are great questions, constituting good contributions to this discussion. Obviously, Todd can speak for himself, but I’d like to share some thoughts, too. First, combining questions 1 and 2: you are probably right that it’s not nearly as significant a “drop-off” if all the gospels are taken together. Common gospel sources (i.e., Q and oral tradition) ought to come into this picture, and any differences among the synoptics would warrant text-critical and theological consideration.

On the other hand, chronology of authorship might be considered, as well.  By that I mean that if Mark is presumed to have been drafted earliest, his usage of “Kingdom” might be viewed differently from Luke’s.  Let’s say Luke does not include something that Mark included.  hat may indicate a chronological “drop-off” (but not necessarily a background decrease in concern over Kingdom among Christ-devotees).  If we assume all the synoptics roughly reached final form sometime in the late 60s, this paragraph loses significance.

Question # 3 might be considered differently if the sphere is assumed to be biblical/textual studies instead of “biblical theology.”  If this is a strictly text-based word study, it seems a sufficient approach, but if we are trying to expand to theology a la Kittel and others, we might legitimately expand the data field to include words phrases such as those you mention. It seems to me that both are important — both strict word studies in the available texts and biblical theology, that is.

What different perspectives there are about the Kingdom of God/Kingdom of Heaven!  (The latter is almost exclusively Matthew’s term.)  We have seen a few of the perspectives in this series of posts.  

The aggrandized Christianese notion of the “Tribulation” and expectations of a physical kingdom obscure the deeper reality that God reigns.  He is now, and always has been, in His Kingdom.  I will close this lengthy recap of discussion with a summary of my own.  This is meant neither as a last word nor as supposed evidence of progression.  I don’t purport to have arrived or to know anything final, but neither am I willing to languish in a sea of vapid meaninglessness because of the regressive awareness within the institutional church. 

Please share your thoughts/challenges/comments on the statement below.

In full view, we may say that God’s kingdom, i.e., God’s reign, has always been and always will be.  Humans have messed it up in various ways and to various extents—e.g., in the Garden of Eden, in the time of the Judges, the Maccabees, and others.  When Jesus came, the final understanding came into being.  That understanding of the kingdom means that God’s reign, which was in a dim sense manifested physically in such times as Joshua’s, David’s, and even the Babylonian captivity, ultimately is unseen and eternal.

Regressive awareness (3)

This post follows from this one, and this one, in which I began sharing commentary on a post on the Logos Academic Blog.  Here, a comment is made that appear context-less, so I would preface them here by saying that some (nay, many) serious believers tend to want to consider every possible source together, amassing “evidence” in a huge theological grain silo.  Should Genesis, Romans, Ezekiel, John, and 1Thessalonians all use the word “world,” they would throw those uses in with Augustine and Calvin and Piper and others and say, “Now this is solid.”  I demur.  One text at a time, please. 

Sean:  The comments about systematic theology are wide off the mark. It is biblical theology (as a discipline, not as in “theology that is biblical,” which all should be) that tends more towards the atomistic–“e.g., I’m doing Pauline theology, therefore I will not look at the Synoptics to inform an answer.” It is systematics that, by definition, “ensures that we read the entire Bible together without separating corpora from each other,” whereas, most often, biblical theology does not.

Also, we systematic theologians will start taking the findings of biblical studies/biblical theology more seriously once you guys are able to reach a consensus about, well, anything. 😉

Me:  What an entirely different perspective you bring. As for “atomistic,” I suppose the charge could be leveled at either perspective, depending on what one considers to be the “atoms.”

I would assert that the goal should be no means be to “read the entire Bible together without separating corpora from each other.”  To do so, or even to hint at the supposed need or advisability of doing so, is to operate from within a particular viewpoint (worldview) regarding scripture.  I reject that viewpoint, preferring to consider each document as it stood originally — as much as that is possible — and also to consider authorship and historical context, as appropriate.  I have little interest in any text scholar’s studies being taken more seriously by a discipline appears to be built on extra-textual, historical constructs.  Biblical studies, as a discipline, carries some subjectivity, to be sure (and some imagination and speculation may be valuable in any pursuit), but the worthy text scholars are guided by sound principles that hark back to the original (language and document and rhetoric and author), however indistinct the precise original may prove to be in a given case.

I have said the above in an effort not to influence you (there appears to be little chance of our influencing one another here) so much as to present to anyone less informed that there are (at least) two ways.  Wherever text scholarship and any kind of theological pursuit are found in conflict, I choose biblical studies.

Finally, I will share what I consider the most substantial, worthy contribution from someone else on the original article. 

Regressive awareness (2)

This post follows from the previous one, in which I began sharing commentary on a post on the Logos Academic Blog.  Here, a commenter named Daniel speaks matter-of-factly.  I disagree with him sharply but appreciate his tone.

Daniel:  The reason that the kingdom is rarely referenced after the Synoptics, especially in Paul’s epistles, is because it has been placed on hold until after the Tribulation.  The Church is not now, nor will it ever be, the Kingdom of God.  The phrase “kingdom is heaven” was used exclusively by Matthew to refer to the physical, literal kingdom of the Messiah.

The Acts 1:6 question is essential because the apostles expected Jesus to rule physically in Jerusalem as the Hebrew prophets had foretold. They realized that Jesus had offered his kingdom to Israel but was rejected as their Messiah (as shown in the Synoptics); thus, he cursed that generation and removed the kingdom from them.

After his rejection, Jesus said that he would build his church/congregation, not his kingdom. Paul’s epistles teach that we are the Church, the Body of Christ, not the Kingdom or in the Kingdom.  It is not “already”; it is still future.

That’s why the Synoptics are so heavy and the rest of the NT is so light on the topic.

Me:  That is a rather absolutist position to take.  I read it as a conversation-stopper, and that may be how you intended it.  In this post, you have almost set up an either-or proposition along with the tribulation theory. However, there are additional options, and one of those is that the Kingdom was and is primarily unseen—and as such, neither is it summed up in a Jerusalem throne in any era or in the church per se.  This is the option to which I am partial.

 

Daniel:  Yes, I understand that there are many other options that people prefer to take.  However, the article gave three reasons why the kingdom didn’t show up much in the early Church writings, and the writer asked how we see the data.  When the context of Scripture is put together, my conclusions are different.

I do maintain an absolute position that the promises God gave to people in the past he intends to fulfill literally, not in an unseen way.  I read the Bible in its plain, natural sense, which leads me to conclude that the kingdom is yet future and that the apostles knew that (although they certainly didn’t know how far into the future it would be), so they focused on the Church, which Jesus is building in this age, rather than the Kingdom which he will establish later.

 

Me again (edited):  Daniel, thank you for this reply.  Somewhat like you, I believe there are future aspects to the kingdom. . . . “Plain and natural” seems attractive, but it does not express a very helpful paradigm — at least not for me. . . .  We all must admit a large degree of interpretation as readers, no matter what our paradigm for reading.  I interpret, and you interpret.  We just choose different starting points, perhaps.

The scriptures of course contain much figurative text, poetic text, and other types. . . .   You and I might have a different grasp of the nature of scripture.  I try to take one book by itself, later perhaps comparing it to others by the same inspired author or within the same historical context.  I believe context is to be considered on an individual-document level (e.g., Matthew’s context is not that of John or Paul’s letter to the Philippians).

Where this comes into play with “Kingdom” is probably clear. I would assert that GMatthew’s “Kingdom” is first to be viewed separately from Paul’s mentions in 1Cor or Romans.  We may find commonality — especially with such a dramatically pervasive word-concept — but we will do better not to mash them all together as a first impulse, I would say.

I would add that only in a limited sense did Jesus “offer His kingdom to Israel,” as Daniel asserted above.  It’s not as though Jesus had been ascending to a human throne and then selected a successor from among the Jews of the day, just before His death. 

Further, I believe his objection to the identification of the Kingdom with the church is reasonably well founded, but the starkness of his delineation between the two is overstated.  The two are certainly not the same, yet the word “church,” as it is most purely thought of in our age, could be said to refer to a temporary part of (or an aspect of) the Kingdom.  I am not sure how anyone reads the New Covenant documents and comes out with an entirely-future view of Kingdom.  

Next, thoughts from another interlocutor—this one about the supposed message of theology and theologians in this arena.

Regressive awareness (1)

A recently published word study was not exactly revelatory for me, yet it did guide me back to that type of investigation in the Kingdom sphere.  (Here is my follow-up inquiry on the word frequency data.).  Quite a bit of dialogue—or, more accurately, a series of solitary interjections—came later.  On the whole, it seems to me that the comments indicate a kind of regressive awareness of the nature of the Kingdom, not to mention an all-over-the-map set of vantage points from which people approach it. 

Comments below this line may be edited for format or truncated in spots.  We’ll start with a word from Larry, who chimed in to inform readers of a book.

Larry:  The Theocratic Kingdom, by George N. H. Peters, thoroughly addresses all of the issues brought up here and much more.  Unfortunately, Logos markets this 1860s work as “Dispensational,” which probably scares off many who would benefit from it.  Also unfortunately, Peters is apparently seldom read and people continue to take up this topic as if they are breaking new ground. . . .

Me:  I appreciate knowing of the Peters work and suspect you are at least partially correct as to why the work has been (recently, at least) ignored.  I have a sizable bibliography of works on this topic and have never come across this one — or any reference to it.  I have just put it on my shopping list.  Another work that should not go unread for any serious pursuer of Kingdom is John Bright’s The Kingdom of God.  A student of noted historian William Foxwell Albright, Bright treats Kingdom thoroughly and astutely through the periods of believing history.

As for my own work, I have not been under any impression that I’ve been breaking new ground. I do have some evidence, including this Peters work and other works of the 19th and early 20th centuries, that some really well-plowed ground has been covered by sand and silt for decades, though!

Commentary:  in academic scholarly pursuits, it is often considered important to start at the edge of the tilled acreage, so to speak, and then continue plowing ground from there.  Despite the fact that the initial impetus for discussion was academic, and acknowledging the contributions of academic inquiry to most discussions, Kingdom must never be confined to academics or academia.  Even if it is not explicitly understood or stated, Kingdom is an essential sphere for the Christian, and it should not be thought of as only an academic pursuit, although academics may certainly make worthwhile contributions.

Based on observations in my travels, I would assert that, regardless of research and writing, general Christian awareness of Kingdom thinking and implications has not advanced.  Little new ground has been plowed recently, and I’m not sure there are many tillable acres left.  Although many write and speak of Kingdom, it is not that the contributions are new, nor is it that more apt understandings are being reached.  I would argue In some ways, the “advancement” of Christendom (and I use that term both advisedly and pejoratively) has shrouded the Kingdom, resulting more in a regressive awareness than a deeper understanding.  Sigh.

If I were researching for academic purposes, the Peters tome would surely be requisite reading.  A later commenter referred readers to a YouTube video serial presentation on the Peters work, so I checked that out, hoping to find a sort of précis.  Based on a few minutes spent with that presentation, and, really, based solely on the video’s subtitle (“Proving the Physical Nature of the Kingdom” or some such malarkey), I no longer think the Peters work warrants my time.  Even though physical aspects may be greater than I think they are, these need little emphasis.  Anyone who sets out to “prove” the kingdom is purely physical has got to have his head examined.  Or be talked into actually reading the documents in the New Testament.  Or both. 

In the next installment, I’ll share a comment from Daniel, relating to an unyielding view that pays tribute to the Tribulation theory.

Unseen yet apparent: insights into the Lord’s model prayer

It is almost embarrassing to admit that (1) traditions surrounding the Lord’s model prayer and (2) my own distaste for repetition have kept me from considering the place of this prayer in early Christian thought—and presumably in the very mind of Jesus.  As set in Matthew’s gospel, this prayer can lead to important insights, including focus on the Father’s purposes and the art of simple, trusting request.

I am also struck by the material that flanks the prayer.  Consider the immediate context:

1. [Prior to the prayer]  Counsel about doing good things with the Father in mind, not to be seen by others
2. [After it]  Words about (a) spiritual forgiveness, which occurs without physical evidence, (b) the secretive, non-observable side of fasting, and (c) treasures on earth vs. treasures in heaven

Do you notice the unseen element that appears (!) in Matthew’s material?  It’s really quite apparent, but that didn’t stop me from ignoring it until very recently.  Matthew seems concerned here with what’s spiritually real (not what’s physically observable).¹  I wonder whether we might say that the Lord’s prayer is, a sense, a prayer that relates the unseen kingdom to the here and now.  That one proposition deserves repetition (but not quasi-monotone recitation).

There is yet more in this prayer.  I could, for instance, draw on the insights of Gary D. Collier about the prayer’s compelling grammatical and syntactical structure.  (I’ve never seen a published English translation that comes close to rendering this aspect well.)  Surely, serious study of the prayer would last a year or two, and working it more into my heart, a lifetime.

For now, please simply consider with me the place of this prayer within the “Sermon on the Mount,” as the Matthew-gospel gives it to us.  There is much in the context of Matthew 6 that clues us in to the unseen, yet very present nature of God’s will and God’s reign.  Consider also the following quotation that ties the conclusion of the “Sermon” to the will of the King:

I like what Dr. Larry Chouinard writes in his pamphlet, The Kingdom Manifesto:  “Jesus expects his followers to take seriously his words (Matt 7:24-27), and embody Kingdom values and priorities in the here and now. . . the modern church seems to have lost its earthly mission to embody and practice the way of the Kingdom as a concrete expression of God’s heavenly will.”  – David Fiensy, Ph. D., https://www.kcu.edu/economics-christian-ethics/

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¹ Those who are convinced that Jesus will yet rule on an earthly throne in Jerusalem should probably deal with this “unseen” aspect in some way.