lisa@phs.UUCP (Jeffrey William Gillette) (10/04/85)
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As usual, Gary Buchholz has contributed a very thoughtful and informed
article to the discussion of doctrine and Christianity. Regarding the
importance of the canon as authoritative for Christianity, Gary calls
attention to the writings of Helmut Koester and J.M. Robinson, who argue
(following the lead of Walter Bauer, who wrote at mid-century) that the
New Testament canon is simply the end product of theological
controversy of the 2nd Century. Put bluntly, Bauer, Koester and
Robinson claim that our Bible represents the authority of the "winners".
While there is much truth, and even more significance in the Koester &
Robinson approach (e.g. their argument for the continuity of development
from Jewish wisdom tradition to Jesus saying to Gnostic revelation), we
must avoid drawing excessively simplistic assumptions about how the
canon came about. In fact, the first church authority who published a
list of books which corresponds exactly to our New Testament was
Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria Egypt, in his Easter letter of 359. Al
Sundberg has argued forcefully for years that the formative period in
the development of the canon of the New Testament as we understand it
was not the 2nd Century but the 4th Century.
It is interesting to note in support of Sundberg the reaction of 2nd
Century writers to the phenomenon of Christian Scripture. Papias,
writing in the early decades of the 2nd Century, rejects the written
Gospels, preferring the "living and abiding voice" from the apostles.
Tertullian, writing around 200 in Carthage, North Africa, bemoans the
fact that every heretic quotes Scripture. Irenaeus thinks it necessary
to defend his use of Christian Scripture by first defending the
orthodoxy of the apostles who wrote it! In my readings of the 2nd
Century it seems evident that the normative force in Christianity is the
"regula fidei", the creed (loosely speaking) by which one interprets the
writings. The idea that Christianity was a religion of the "book", and
the debate over which books are included belongs much more to the
constructive and academic debates of the late 3rd / early 4th Century,
rather than the "political hegemony" of 2nd Century theological debates.
Regarding the continuing relevance of Scripture, Gary brings up the
views of Best and Dunn, roughly that in the New Testament we have
"freezings" ("snapshot" might be as good a term) of how specific
individuals in specific situations and specific cultures understood
Christianity. The upshot of this for Best is to call into question
whether these "freezings" ought to be more authoritative than, e.g. the
non-canonical Gospel of Thomas or Shepherd of Hermas (the first of these
books may well come from the 1st Century, the second came very close to
"making it" into the New Testament). For Best, the presence of multiple
layers of tradition in the text causes him to attempt to formulate an
"irreducible minimum" of Christian belief (which core Best characterizes
condescendingly as the "individualistic emphasis of Evangelical
Protestantism").
Recently Brevard Childs of Yale has registered two very powerful (to my
mind at least) criticisms of the Dunn / Best view of Scripture. First,
Childs argues that Best wants to anchor the meaning of the text too
firmly in a "historicist reading" - that the meaning of a parable is
what Jesus meant when he told it, or what the Evangelist meant when he
wrote it down. In fact, the many levels of material in the text (e.g.
what Jesus said, what the early Church passed on, what the Evangelist
wrote down, what latter editors may have reworked) shows the church
involved in the exact opposite of the "freezing" process. The process
of the canon is a process by which the believing community attempted to
"loosen the text from any one given historical setting, and to transcend
the original addressee", while still remaining faithful to the fact that
the Word of God came in time and history.
Second, Childs criticizes Best and Dunn for not realizing that the
significance of the canon was not to tie the gospel to the past, but to
the future. The process of canonization was a dialectic in which the
church shaped the text, and in return were shaped by the same
Scriptures. Rather than presenting a series of outdated and irrelevant
snapshots of Christianity (a position, by the way, which neither Dunn
nor Best would hold), we see in the canon the church of several
generations wrestling with the basic questions of what it means to be
and to live as a Christian. Inasmuch as the basic questions of human
existence, justice and theology have remained the same throughout the
past two millennia, the canon serves to give us a living paradigm of how
the contemporary community must wrestle with the truth of the gospel of
Jesus Christ.
This brings up Gary's final point. Given the point that the canon of
Scripture represents a positive and relevant definition (or definitions)
of what Christianity is about, can we call it authoritative (i.e. Truth
or Reality)? I take it that this is where the 20th Century academy has
not (nor, dare I say it, ever will) overcome the "scandal of the Cross."
Bultmann thought that if one properly "demythologized" the New Testament
he could come up with some enduring insight into Reality. I would argue
that his approach differs from modern Fundamentalists in degree, not in
kind. In fact no denomination takes Scripture "literally" (when was the
last time someone in your church sold all his belongings and gave them
to the poor). On the other hand, every believing Christian makes the
conscious decision to accept on faith that in Jesus Christ God decisively
encountered humankind, and in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures (canon)
we have the authoritative record of that encounter, which, when properly
interpreted (whatever this may mean) will yield valid and relevant
insight into the person of God, God's relationship with man, and man's
ethical responsibility in the world. Has the Christian "defined" reality
or "described" it (to use Gary's terms)? I suppose that depends on
whether one chooses to "believe" or not. Thus I see no way around the
dilemma: what appears to one as the "shifting images of phantasmagoria"
appear to another as "true doctrine."
Jeffrey William Gillette uucp: duke!phys!lisa
The Divinity School bitnet: DYBBUK @ TUCCVM
Duke Universitymangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate) (10/08/85)
I have decided to wait for a response to the referenced article before I respond to Gary's original article, as I think that the answers to some of the questions raised. I'm also awaiting Gary's response to Charli's amateur status, as I have tremendous problems accepting a position which elevates theology into a study which must be kept from the laity. My response will be in two parts. The first will be a statement/reply from my own position. The second will be a statement of the current Anglican position (as much as such a thing exists). This latter will require further research, so it may be delayed. Charley Wingate
nlt@duke.UUCP (N. L. Tinkham) (10/10/85)
[*] The story so far... Charli Phillips raised the question of changing ancient creeds (in particular, the "Athanasian Creed") to reflect modern insights. I replied that the creeds are of value as they are, since they state what the church considered "orthodox" at the time they were written, and that by comparing these views with each other and with present views, we can attempt to compensate for some of the cultural biases implied in the documents and in our own views, in order to discern objective truth about God and his work. Gary Buchholz has suggested two major ways in which my observations can be extended: 1) to consider the biases contained in Scripture as well as in the creeds; 2) to dismiss the possibility of discovering truth about God, since all we have is (to quote Gary) "a history of biases". I will consider these points in order. Regarding Scripture, Gary states the following: > The response from Koester might be this. Why exclude anything from > the critique ? Extending Tinkhams insight one might say that a culture > in any particular time has an "idiom" (=interpretive system) for > construing Reality. If as Tinkham says, these "idioms" are in question > then why limit the criticism to post-biblical times. Why not center > the critique on the NT itself. I did not intend to exclude the New Testament from the "critique". These problems should be addressed for canonical writings as well as for creeds and other non-canonical writings. I omitted mention of the Scriptures only because Charli Phillips' original question dealt with creeds rather than Scripture. Since Jeff Gillette's research field is early church history and mine is not, I refer the reader to his recent article which gives more information regarding the formation of the canon than I can present. Regarding the possibility of discovering truth by comparing biased accounts, Gary asks the following: > What does Tinkham have after his survey of history tells him "what, > in a given time and place, was considered to be orthodox by the church". > What I think he has is the history of Christian thought (modern academic > discipline of Historical Theology). But does he have any "truth". He > has only succession of one thing replacing another. > >>... One way to try to compensate for these biases is to compare our >>present understanding with the beliefs held by the church in different >>times and places... > > What does one do with a "history of biases". Can we extend it to the > NT. Is "to believe" a bias ? What does "compensation" mean here. The claim that I make but have not yet stated is that the Spirit of God is and has been working in the life of the church. God transforms and is revealed in the lives of those who follow him. If I may be so bold as to claim some truth for my own religion, I would state that God is revealed particularly clearly in the lives of those who have been transformed by God in Christ, both individually and, in the church, collectively. It is this work of the Spirit in the people of God that we are trying to discern when we examine the history of Christian thought. It is not, of course, as simple as looking at the beliefs and deeds of Christians and saying "everything that Christians do or think reflects the will and truth of God". Because of cultural biases, because of tendencies to equate one's own wishes and loyalties with the will of God, because, sometimes, of errors people make even when they are trying to do what is right -- because of all these human imperfections, we cannot simply equate human perceptions with either "the" truth or the will of God. And thus we have writings (Scriptures, creeds, and other theological writings) which do not always agree, which may even directly contradict each other. So: Because God is at work in the church, we have hope of finding some truth about God by looking at the history of the church; at least, there is some truth to be found. Because the church is not God and reflects God imperfectly, we have to look at the history of the church in a way that allows us to detect some of the errors in Christian thought. The process of comparing writings from different cultures against each other is intended to aid in this error-detection. I realize that if one is not willing to assume that God in some sense guides the church and transforms the lives of those who follow him, then the position taken in the preceding paragraphs will not be acceptable. An alternative argument which does not use this assumption is that the process comparing points-of-view in order to extract "the truth" from a variety of viewpoints is a method used by non-theologians in domains other than Christian thought. I use a similar process, for instance, in trying to obtain accurate reports of current events. Since most or all of the news sources to which I have access are written with some bias, I read or listen to several sources which I believe have differing biases, and then extract what seems to be objectively the truth. This method of comparing reports with differing biases, while not infallible, is a good method in domains where first-hand observation is hard to come by (or where, for some reason, one cannot wholly trust one's own observations). It does require the assumptions that 1) there is truth to be found and 2) the reports contain at least some truth, but it does not require that the reporters have had any "divine guidance" and so avoids, in part, the awkwardness of assuming that God works to preserve the accuracy of church tradition. N. L. Tinkham duke!nlt