Top Ten Theological Influences

Okay I haven’t done a top ten list before, but given that Nijay and Nick have done it, it’s time for me to join in… but to add to the excitement, I’ll do a countdown from 10 to 1…

10. Irenaeus: He is just fun to read (‘Against Heresies’), and I like the way he tries to creatively explain Christian doctrines at a time before those doctrines received standardised terminology: For example, he speaks of God the Father working through his two “hands”, which are the Word and the Spirit.

9. Dan Brown: His work is unsurpassed in Grail scholarship…. hehehe nah not really – just keeping you on your toes to make sure you’re paying attention!!!

8. Larry Hurtado: His book ‘Lord Jesus Christ’ is an excellent exploration of the origins of devotion to Christ in early Christianity.  It’s certainly the best and most thorough book on the way Jesus was treated as God in earliest Christianity.

7. Tie between Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur for their work on hermeneutics: Drawing on Hegel, Heidegger & other philosophers, they’ve really challenged me about limits of ’scientific’ knowledge and the relationship between ’subject’ and ‘object’ in the exercise of interpretation.

6. Tie between Margaret Mitchell, David Garland, and Bruce Winter, all for their work on 1 Corinthians.  In some ways, this represents “influence” in the sense of provocation – for example, Margaret Mitchell’s book ‘Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation’ is essential reading for the study of 1 Corinthians, but I don’t find her application of Rhetorical Criticism ultimately convincing.  Garland’s commentary is good, and Winter’s book ‘After Paul Left Corinth’ is excellent.

5. Tie between John Calvin and the Anabaptists: Often maligned (and sometimes understandably so), I think Calvin is worth giving a chance.  Calvin’s ‘Institutes’ is essential reading: He has a way of clarifying the issues that Luther raised, in a way that is far more careful than many of his followers.  I put the Anabaptists in here too, because I appreciate their corrective to Calvin’s reliance on the magisterium: Estep’s ‘The Great Restoration’ is an interesting introduction.

4. Tie between NT Wright, John Howard Yoder, and Stanley Hauerwas.  I probably haven’t read enough of each of them for them to get a place in their own right…  But they have helped me to consider the role of the church in relation to society.  NT Wright’s big works (eg Resurrection of the Son of God) are worth a read, as well as his little book ‘The Challenge of Jesus’; and Yoder’s ‘Body Politics’ is a good short introduction.  Hauerwas’ essay on why gays are superior to Christians raises a giggle.

3. Tie between Martin Luther and Karl Barth: When they’re bad, they’re bad: annoyingly one-sided and insensitive, but when they’re onto something good, they really push it well: Most importantly, they force us to consider the theological significance of the cross.  My fave Luther is ‘On the Freedom of the Christian’.  I haven’t read heaps of Barth, but his book on 1 Corinthians ‘The Resurrection of the Dead’ is underrated and worth a read.

2. Augustine: I am always impressed with his ability to combine passion and intellect.  He has such a commitment to the absolute Godness of God, and I think he is sensitive and nuanced, despite being annoyingly misrepresented in stupid booklets about “The Great Philosophers” in The Independent Newspaper.  His letters, his work on the trinity, and of course the ‘City of God’ are such worthwhile reading.

1. Anthony Thiselton: I have never encountered someone who has such expertise in so many areas.  His work on hermeneutics is outstanding, and is yet to be fully recognised for how creative and important it is: Read New Horizons or Thiselton on Hermeneutics or Hermeneutics of Doctrine.  And his commentary on 1 Corinthians is the result of a lifetime of careful, thorough, sensitive exegetical work.  He also happens to be an endearing teacher and a good Christian man.

Glasses befitting of a theologian

Having left my glasses in the Holy Land as a sort of accidental reciprocal relic (I’ll take some pieces of pottery – you can have my glasses), it’s time for me to look for some new ones.  I’ve decided I’d like to wear my theological influences on my face – or at least find some glasses befitting of a theologian who esteems academic pretension.  Currently I’m favouring the early Barth/Bonhoeffer look…

My one hesitancy is that my wife says I’d look like Harry Potter… any other suggestions of glasses that make a theological statement?

Hebrew of Hebrews

Today in church, the sermon was on Philippians 3.  The preacher suggested that when Paul lists “Hebrew of Hebrews” as characterising his former way of life, he was not simply restating his Jewish pedigree (of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin), but saying something about his culture: He was not someone whose primary language and culture were, in his own mind, Hellenistic – but rather, following his parents, his first language and cultural orientation were intentionally Hebrew (/Aramaic).

Of course you can’t divide “Judaism” completely from “Hellenism” in Paul’s time – but I think they were distinguishable – and it seems reasonable that someone who, as a Pharisee, followed a Zealot-like pursuit of Judaism-cleansing would have intentionally maintained those cultural elements that he saw as being Jewish.  I recall reading in a biography of Martyn Lloyd-Jones that at a young age he decided “I’m a Welshman now!” and began using Welsh at home rather than English.  It doesn’t seem like a stretch to view Paul in a similar way: Intentionally Hebrew.

All of this makes me wonder if the current focus in New Testament studies on Greco-Roman rhetorical criticism may be going too far…  I don’t doubt that it bears some fruit: Obviously Paul knew and used the Greek language, and certainly seems to have made use of contemporary rhetorical devices… but as for the macro-structure of his epistles, I wonder if we might find even greater fruit by paying rigorous and creative attention to Paul’s Hebrew background – including rhetorical movements suggested by the Hebrew Scriptures and early Judaism.  I suggested this to a Jewish student of the Hebrew Scriptures at the University of Be’er-Sheva, and their response was very interesting: “The reason New Testament scholarship neglects a nuanced study of Paul’s Hebrew background may be because New Testament students can’t be bothered learning Hebrew!”…. Ouch!!

But of course the study of the Hebrew Scriptures and Judaism isn’t enough to bring us to the heart of Paul’s thought – for that, we need to pay attention to what he claims was his most significant moment: His encounter with Christ on the road to Damascus.  Perhaps when we pay careful attention to Paul’s use of Greco-Roman language and devices, to his determined background in Pharisaic “Hebraism”, and his understanding of his encounter with the risen Christ, we will be more attuned to the rhetorical movement of his letters.

Bribe

Feeling inspired by a post on Mike’s blog, I have decided to shamelessly present a CRAZY offer to anyone who adds me to their blogroll: A free, quality coffee, made on my commercial-quality espresso machine, using coffee beans roasted in my very own kitchen…  How can I make such a bold and costly offer?  Confidence, dear reader, confidence: Confidence that not many people would be willing to come to Nottingham to claim their prize, and confidence that not many people would stoop to adding me to their blogroll.

Pure

One thing that is striking about travelling around archaeological sites in Israel is the number of times you encounter a miqve – which is a ritual-cleansing bath… There are dozens of public miqvaot around the Temple in Jerusalem, there are private miqvaot in Herod’s palaces, in ordinary households… they are everywhere!  In fact, in Jewish public bath-houses, the “cold” section of the standard Roman bath-house was replaced with a miqve, so that ritual purification came first.

The picture above is of a miqve directly in front of the Jerusalem Temple from the time of Jesus: The person entered in one side, immersed themselves in the water at the bottom (the action was called “baptizein”), and came up the other side, ritually pure.

All of this drives home just how aware people in Jesus’ time would have been of ritual impurity… and it makes it all the more amazing to think of Jesus taking six stone jars of water used for ritual cleansing, and turning them into wine: Imagine if that happened at your house: Someone replaced the ritual water - which was essential for your purity before God - with wine…

“This is my blood of the new covenant, poured out for many, for the forgiveness of sins”