A long awaited seminar class is finally underway in the Criswell College New Testament department entitled “Christology and Monotheism“. This is not a systematic theology class, nor a class reading the early christian creeds back into the text, but is a seminar exploring the early Jewish background to the Christology of the NT. I have been waiting patiently for a formal class on this particular topic for a couple of years and I am enlivened at the opportunity to delve into the Second Temple Jewish conception of the heavens and their populace for backgrounds of our understanding of how the NT authors articulate their comprehension of Jesus of Nazereth, who is called Son of God, Son of Man, Lord, Messiah, the Great High Priest, and even God.
Here is the outline for the topics the seminar is addressing in their respective order: Ancient Israelite Monotheism and Heavenly Beings; Exalted Humans in Second Temple Judaism: Adam, Moses, Kings, Priests; Principal Angel Traditions in Second Temple Judaism; Exalted Figures cont.; Exalted Enoch in Second Temple Judaism; Personified Divine Attributes in Second Temple Judaism: Logos/Wisdom/Memra/Glory/Name; NT Christology: reviewing Bauckham’s idea of Christ and the Divine Identity; NT Christology: reviewing Hurtado’s idea of early devotion to Jesus; NT Christology: questioning the consensus; and finally Patristic Christianity.
This has the potential of being the best class in my educational career. I am thoroughly enjoying it and we just begun.
I was reading up on the interpretation of the “spirits in prison” passage in 1Peter 3:19-20 in John H. Elliott’s Anchor Bible Commentary when I realized that one of the primary interpretations held by the church fathers seemed to have been partially rooted in an extant OT textual tradition. As Elliott references a few texts from the fathers (particularly Irenaeus and Justin Martyr) to identify their interpretive tradition, he observes that in their addressing of the descent of Christ, they do not openly refer to or quote 1 Peter 3:19-20, but to a textual tradition seemingly shared by early fathers that is no longer attested to by any biblical manuscripts we have recovered thus far.
I saw Robert S. Fyall’s book, “Now my Eyes have seen You: Images of creation and evil in the book of Job” sitting on my roomates shelf, probably due to my constant talk about creation and the waters. This book is part of the “New Studies in Biblical Theology” series edited by D. A. Carson. A fine addition this makes to the series, unique due to the topic. I thoroughly enjoy any scholarly work done in this area of study (as seen previously by my Levenson post) but this one stood out a bit. The way in which Fyall deals with the sea motif in his forth chapter (“The Raging Sea“), first the texts in Job and then subsequently relating it to the calming of the sea by Jesus in the gospels will be illuminating for many who have not studied the topic (this book having been written primarily for evangelicals). He interracts with the best scholars in the respective fields and deals judiciously with previous work on the topic. I recommend it for those who are interested with OT themes of creation, the Leviathan/sea problem, and God’s dealings with evil.
“Creation and the Persistance of Evil: The Jewish Divine Drama of Omnipotence” has, I have to say, become one of my favorite books in OT Studies. The reason I say this is because it opened up my conservative evangelical mind to the reality of some difficult things in the OT. Granted many conclusions or interpretive decisions that are made in the book may be called into question, he deals with many themes in the Hebrew scriptures that are often read over by mainline evangelicals which are critical to OT theology. Not only this, but the book will help all those who are unfamiliar with the warfare motifs in apocalyptic literature and allow them to begin making connections, not only in the OT genre, but in NT apocalyptic as well. Theologically the Christian may run into some difficulties, but keep the big picture in mind. Levenson is certainly a creative thinker but this is a very important book and there is much to be gleaned from it in terms of the mythopoeic background for many of the polemics in the Hebrew Bible.
When reading the Apostolic Fathers such as 1 Clement as a biblical studies student, my first knee jerk reaction is to read it with the excessively critical lenses of one who is searching for theological trajectories that can be traced from the scriptures to these deuterocanonical texts and do comparative work in order to be able to say something about the authorial conception of God. Last night, to my own amazement I must admit, I did not read the text in this way. I just layed back comfortably in my bed, tired from a long day, and said “hey, why not read some 1 Clement (if you are thinking random, I know)?”
Hope is a hard commodity to come by these days. In a time of economic “crisis”, political turmoil, unstable foreign relations, and even war, many Evangelical Christians have a hard time believing that they have anything to say to the lost and dying world in regards to supplying this precious commodity in the present. After talking to many of these Christians, many tend to retreat to the idea that “well, we will all go to heaven when we die” as if to escape any glimpse of this precious commodity we call hope in the present life. We try to muster up enough looking towards a relatively uncertain post-mortem state in the place we call “heaven” leaving the world to its demise. As Christians with a hope resembling that of a battered child we pray our Presidents and politicians we vote in can give us a glimpse of this precious commodity by implementing policies that will somehow help the nation we live in with its socio-economic and moral distresses. The on-looking pagan world looks for hope and hears of a far off gospel about going to heaven when we die, looks around at the world around them, and sees little need to believe in that which has no real power to change the world. In the Southern Baptist Convention of which church I have been a part of, our own Baptist Faith and Message seems to agree with this frail line of thought. Article 10 on last things reads as such: