Monotheism - Again

The discussion about Monotheism continues, with Chris Tilling helping us along. In the comments to Chris' post, I asked: isn't Paul's "monotheism" more about loyalty to YHWH than a statement about the philosophical nature of GOD? Chris agrees with my position. Being the curious person that I am, I had a quick look at Thiselton's massive contribution where he writes:

Only God is God. Nevertheless, the fact that kyrios-cults do really exist means that habituated patterns of loyalty and devotion long practiced by new converts before their conversion cannot simply be brushed aside as no longer affecting their lives and attitudes in the present. At an existential and psychological level they still leave their mark. Indeed, this may mean even more. Not only do they return a subjective influence; they may also constitute objective forces of evil which bring destruction, disintergration, and pain. Unless we adopt a partition theory between 8:1-13 and 10:14-22, Paul appears to associate them with demonic forces.

[Thiselton, 1 Corinthians, pg. 633]

This seems to offer the best understanding of 1 Cor 8:6. Therefore, it appears that Paul is mocking the existence of "so-called gods" [Thiselton's translation]. These forces may be subjective or objective, but they do not assume Paul's definition of who God is or what God does. These are "so-called gods" which Paul then describes as demons later in 1 Cor 10. Thus, I'm not sure that we can confidently call Paul a polytheist.

Besides, this issue surely has more to do with loyalty and devotion than it has to do with ontological issues. There has to be a stable definition of what constitutes GOD, for there to be discussion about how many or who this GOD supposedly is. Bauckham's categories of Creator and Sovereign appear to appropriate the evidence well. Surely Paul did not believe in other creators or other sovereigns? Surely only YHWH was the Creator and Sovereign, and in that identity they [the early Christians] included Jesus. For all other gods, they were atheists - denying them loyalty and ontological status.

Exegetical Dictionary of the NT

Well, it's nearing that wonderful time of the year when I can begin hinting to my wife what presents should find there way underneath the tree... Or, whatever we decide to put up this year. As this will be our first Christmas as a married couple, my wife is looking to spoil me and so is asking for suggestions. So here's where I need some help.... I'm thinking of the Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament.

The English translation of the three-volume Exegetisches Worterbuch zum Neuen Testament, this monumental work by an ecumenical group of scholars is first of all a complete English dictionary of New Testament Greek. Going beyond that, however EDNT also serves as a guide to the usage of every New Testament word in its various contexts, and it makes a significant contribution to New Testament exegesis and theology. EDNT's thorough, lengthy discussions of more significant words and its grouping of words related by root and meaning (with alphabetical cross-references) distinguish it from simpler Greek-English lexicons. Advancing the discussion of the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, EDNT summarizes more recent treatments of numerous questions in New Testament study and takes into consideration newer viewpoints of linguistics.

Is this really as helpful as it claims? I've got Bauer's, Liddell/Scott's, and the abbreviated TDNT. And I'm not sure whether I should upgrade my software package (I'm currently working with Logos) or get hard copies... Obviously, the electronic version is cheaper. Any advice from those who use these tools? Or should I just get some more commentaries/books that will incorporate this?

Was Paul a Monotheist?

The Blog-father, Mark Goodacre, opens up the discussion, apparently initiated by Paula Fredrickson [See also Gods and the One God] about monotheism in antiquity. Dr. Goodacre quotes Fredrickson's article, Gods and the One God, where she states:

The world was filled with other gods, and ancient Jews knew this. Paul complains about their negative effect on his mission. Astral forces (stoicheia) previously enslaved his formerly pagan converts in Galatia (Galatians 4.8). "The god of this cosmos" blinded believers so that they cannot see "the glory of Christ, who is the likeness of God" (2 Corinthians 4.4). Paul writes, "For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth -- as indeed there are many 'gods' and many 'lords' -- yet for us there is one God, the Father . . . and one Lord, Jesus Christ" (1 Corinthians 8.5-6). Paul and his Gentile readers do not doubt the existence of many gods. They just do not worship them.

My own question in this discussion is a clarification of terms. Yes, monotheism designates the belief in one god. But surely within the Judeo-Christian worldview it designates loyalty or worship to one god, not just belief in one god. What made Paul a monotheist, was not just his belief but his adherence, allegiance and devotion. Every other god was a demon or demonic allusion [this appears to be what Paul is suggesting in 1 Cor 10:20: No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God.]

Paul appears to be a monotheist because his loyalty and devotion was to the god of Israel revealed in Jesus of Nazareth, and not to others. There apparently were other gods, forces, demons, emperors who claimed the title of GOD within Paul's world[view], but none of them amounted to Paul's identification of GOD as Creator and Sovereign of the universe - revealed in and through the crucified and risen Messiah, Jesus our LORD.

It will however, be fascinating to see if Fredrickson develop this thesis, and if so how... Stay tuned...

For more on this topic, see Richard Bauckham's Paul's Christology of Divine Identity.

IBR - Articles

Torrey Seland notes the following:

The Institute for Biblical Research has launched its new web page with a new URL. Try this one: http://www.ibr-bbr.org/index.html.

In addition to diverse postings of information concerning the activities of the institute, they now also launch a new availablity to the articles of Bulletin for Biblical Research.

BBR Articles Listed by Date (Full text 1991-2004.1; abstracts 2005.1-2007.1)

BBR Articles Listed by Authors The BBR articles listed on their page are found in the following three formats:*.html (Web format for quick viewing on your computer screen);*.doc (Microsoft Word format for using in word processing);*.pdf (Adobe Acrobat format for printing and viewing exactly formatted).

I'm still on leave from work at the moment, catching up on some lovely Birthday reading -> all about Thessalonians, which is very exciting. So back soon... In a week or two...

Authorship of 2 Peter - Ethical Dilemma

If 2 Peter was not written by Peter, then do the autobiographical statements in this epistle constitute a false witness? As Kelly states:

The author certainly represents himself as the Apostle, starting off with a greeting from ‘Symeon Peter’, recalling his presence as an eye-witness at the Transfiguration (i. 16-18) and his receipt of a private communication from the Lord about his imminent death (i. 14), affirming in a clear allusion to 1 Peter that this is his second epistle (iii. 1), and speaking of Paul as his colleague (iii. 15).[1]

How can someone inhabiting the moral worldview of early Christianity, so clearly falsify the evidence so as to lead the readers to believe that Peter wrote this letter? Thus, does the author of 2 Peter misrepresent himself as the apostle Peter, and if so, does this constitute identity fraud? Conrad Gempf responds with this counter-example from modern experience:

A few years ago I met someone who claimed to be C.S. Lewis. He clearly knew a lot about the man whose identity he was appropriating and on occasion mixed what he said with genuine excerpts from Lewis's books. He was very entertaining to spend an evening with, but he was not the man he pretended to be. There were other people present - should I have denounced him to them? Should I have confronted this man: 'Impostor!'?

Perhaps your feelings will change when I tell you that this man was on a stage at the time, surrounded by props. I had gone to see a one-man show based on the life and writings of C.S. Lewis. Despite the fact that the great majority of the audience with whom I was seated were Christians who would claim to be against falsehood and deceit of any kind, no-one was unhappy with the actor or the playwright for the fraud they conspired to present to us. In this context, the pretence was not only acceptable, but laudable. We all paid good money to be lied to, and emitted loud noises of approval when it was complete.

If we can forget for just a moment our deeply-ingrained acceptance of theatre and fiction as valid genres, we may be able to glimpse just how peculiar the whole business is - how odd someone from outside our culture might find it. I submit that it is in this frame of mind that we are best able to approach the curious business of religious pseudonymity ('pseudo' = false; 'nym' = name): the practice of writing a literary work under the pretence that someone else, usually someone more famous, wrote it.[2]

Richard Bauckham has argued for a notion of an intentional pseudepigraphy with regards to 2 Peter which alleviates this ethical problem.[3] If Bauckham is right, my question is whether one is not safer to speak of the authorship of this epistle as rather allonymous rather than pseudonymous. This distinction is used by I. H. Marshall for understanding the authorship of the Pastoral Epistles.[4] Marshall states:

I use the term pseudonymous to refer to documents that were intended to deceive their recipients into thinking that somebody other than the real author wrote them, and the term allonymous to refer to documents composed by somebody other than the purported author but in a way that was transparent and not intended to deceive the readers.[5]

If 2 Peter was recognised as a ‘testament’ of the deceased Peter, then there is no wilful deception which resolves the ethical dilemma. If this is accurate, then 2 Peter is closer to that of an allonymous writing rather than a pseudonymous writing, for it does not seek to mislead people, but rather is evidently a later writing under the auspices of some authority.

[1] Kelly, The Epistles of Peter and of Jude, pg. 235

[2] Conrad Gempf “Pseudonymity and the New Testament” in Themelios 17.2 (January/February 1992): 8-10, pg. 8.

[3] See Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, pg. 286. Bauckham suggests that 2 Peter is pseudonymous but that it would have been recognised as such, and thus it never sought to intentionally mislead its primary audience.

[4] I. H. Marshall, New Testament Theology (IVP, 2004) pg. 398

[5] Marshall, New Testament Theology, pg. 398 n.4

Obedience to Scripture - Preach

Earlier this year, like a month ago, NewFrontiers hosted its annual Student camp. I was asked to do the final session on the camp, and the talks are available for download as follows. The theme of the camp was "Devoted." Here are all the messages...

• Mbonisi Malaba - Session 1 - Devoted
• Mbonisi Malaba - Leadership Seminar
• Mbonisi Malaba - Session 2 - Answering Gods call
• Steve Van Ryhn - Session 3 - What God is devoted to
• Sean Du Toit - Session 4 - Obedience to Scripture

This is not an academic message, it's a sermon. For those interested and willing, I'd like some feed back on this message. So if you're keen, drop me some comments.

Thanks much, s D.

Was Jesus Literate?

Craig Evans has published another study online discussing the issue of Jesus' literacy. See: Jewish Scripture and the Literacy of Jesus - C. A. Evans and W. H. Brackney (eds.), From Biblical Criticism to Biblical Faith (Mercer University Press, 2007) 41-54.

Skimming through it, it's a helpful response to the work of P. F. Craffert and P. J. J. Botha, “Why Jesus Could Walk on the Sea but He Could Not Read and Write,” Neot 39 (2005): 5-35. Botha argue for the illiteracy of Jesus in the fourth part of his paper, under the heading “Was Jesus Literate?” (pp. 21-32). Evans response, is to that section of the paper.

As usual, Evans doesn't waste time and his familiarity with the material and the context in which Jesus was raised, lived and what the determining factors are, remain almost unmatched. The article assumes a knowledge of Greek, so either brush up or learn it, or just skip over. Another excellent offering from the mind of one of the greatest NT scholars alive.

Who is the "Author" of 2 Peter?

I wrote the following over the weekend, and then found Mike Bird's comments on the same topic today, so at least I'm glad that I'm thinking along the same lines as a NT geek!

Did the apostle Peter author the work known as 2 Peter? There are two distinct elements, among others, that compound the problem faced in discussions of the authorship of 2 Peter. Firstly, there is the complicated notion of what constitutes an “author” of a particular work, and secondly, given the ethical world the early Christians sought to express, does narrating a story under the auspices of someone else constitute giving a false witness? These issues inspire various possibilities with little confidence in acquiring certainty in our understanding.

The authorship of 2 Peter is often discussed with the majority favouring some form of pseudonymous authorship.[1] As Kelly noted nearly four decades ago:

“Scarcely anyone nowadays doubts that 2 Peter is pseudonymous, although it must be admitted of the few who do that they defend their case with an impressive combination of learning and ingenuity.” [2]

This first issue plunges one deep into contemporary philosophical and literary debates. Without getting too complex, biblical scholars must realise that our current definitions and conceptions of “authorship” may be to simple.[3] It is possible that Peter did not strictly pen the work known as 1 Peter, Silvanus did (1 Pet 5:12).[4] Although, we could use a broader definition of authorship (namely the figurative definition), so that Peter is clearly the originator of the ideas and teachings present in 1 Peter, but not the actual person who penned them on to papyri. But if that is true, and allowable, then what prevents one from suggesting that a disciple, after Peter’s death, penned 2 Peter, believing that he was in fact merely restating and formulating the teachings of his teacher? Is Peter then still the author, and would the first century Christians have had a problem with this? Thus, Davids writes:

1 Peter (or 2 Peter, for that matter) is just as much “by Peter” whether he dictated every word or whether he told a co-worker, “Write a letter to x to combat y – you might use argument z, as well as any others you can think of.” In either case an ancient would think of the letter as being “by Peter,” even if in the latter case we would lack any certain knowledge of how Peter himself thought.[5]

So in what sense are we suggesting that Peter was the author of this work? And does Peter remain the author, if a disciple recounts and relays his teachings, despite the fact of his being dead? [6]

In out next post, we'll consider the claim that if Peter was not the author of 2 Peter, this constitutes wilfull deception.

[1] J. H. Neyrey, 2 Peter, Jude, pg. 128 does not even seek to argue the matter of pseudonymity, but merely assumes this is the case.

[2] J. N. D Kelly, The Epistles of Peter and of Jude (A & C Black, 1969) pg. 235. However, M. J. Kruger “The Authenticity of 2 Peter”, JETS 42 (1999): 645-71, argues that the case against Petrine authorship is not conclusive.

[3] The Oxford English Dictionary offers a few options that are instructive. Author: A) a writer of a book, article, or report. B) someone who writes books as a profession. the writings of such a person. C) figurative: an originator or creator of something, especially a plan or idea.

[4] Contrary to this however, see the study of E. R. Richards “Silvanus Was Not Peter’s Secretary: Theological Bias in Interpreting dia Silvanou… egrapsa in 1 Peter 5:12,” JETS 43:3 (2000) 417-32. Although, this does not negate the possibility of Silvanus, or someone else, as an amanuensis. See P. H. Davids, The First Epistle of Peter (Eerdmans, 1990) pg. 198-90. But Davids has subsequently changed his mind. See Davids, The Letters of 2 Peter and Jude, (Eerdmans, 2006) pg. 128.

[5] Davids, The Letters of 2 Peter and Jude, pg. 128

[6] A contemporary example is that of G. B. Caird and his student L. D. Hurst. Hurst took Caird’s notes, books, ideas and practically wrote most of the script of Caird’s New Testament Theology (Oxford, 1994). Did Caird author this work, or did Hurst? Or more poignantly the question must be asked, are they Caird’s ideas, or Hurst’s?

Calvinism Scares Me

Roger Olsen makes some bold statements about Calvinism...

Many conservative Christians wince at the idea that God is limited. But what if God limits himself so that much of what happens in the world is due to human finitude and fallenness? What if God is in charge but not in control? What if God wishes that things could be otherwise and someday will make all things perfect?

That seems more like the God of the Bible than the all-determining deity of Calvinism. In this world, because of our ignorance and sinfulness, really bad things sometimes happen and people do really evil and wicked things. Not because God secretly plans and prods them, but because God has said to fallen, sinful people, "OK, not my will then, but thine be done -- for now."

And God says, "Pray because sometimes I can intervene to stop innocent suffering when people pray; that's one of my self-limitations. I don't want to do it all myself; I want your involvement and partnership in making this a better world."

It's a different picture of God than most conservative Christians grew up with, but it's the only one (so far as I can tell) that relieves God of responsibility for sin and evil and disaster and calamity.

The God of Calvinism scares me; I'm not sure how to distinguish him from the devil. If you've come under the influence of Calvinism, think about its ramifications for the character of God. God is great but also good. In light of all the evil and innocent suffering in the world, he must have limited himself.

Dr. Roger Olson is a professor of theology in George W. Truett Theological Seminary.

HT: Mike Bird, who unfortunately offers a weaker retort which I'm not convinced answers the charge or represents the position well.

Scholarship and Faith

I must confess that I do wonder about some "Christian" scholarship now days. I was reading Dodd's commentary on the Epistles of John this morning, and it just fed my soul. I read contemporary commentaries and I almost never feel that way. I remember reading Alfred Plummer's ICC commentary on 2 Cor. He kept referring to Jesus as 'the Master'. Reading through it, you got the feeling this was a man who actually took serious the Scriptures and actually loved Jesus.

Which brings me to my point: Are we actually serving people [Christians] by writing commentaries that hide our faith? Have we secularised commentaries so that it's strictly business? Exegetical business? Are we compromising on our faith by merely reporting on the analytical details or "the text"? G.B. Caird wrote hymns and songs, and by reading his commentaries you always get the feeling that he's telling you all the necessary details but he's also sharing his soul, and encouraging us to love GOD. Plummer's ICC commentary still managed to deal with the details and give you a glimpse at his relationship with GOD. Does the NIGTC, NICNT, WBC, or even BEC series ever give you this feeling? That these scholars actually love GOD and are teaching us the Scriptures because they believe in them and were trying to live by them?

Or is this too much to ask in a series, and we want to remain palatable and nice to the rest of the world? Do we do theology like Paul did theology? Giving glory to GOD as we teach and preach the gospel in our writing about GOD's word?

Witherington says:

Paul is a pastoral theologian who lives what he preaches and believes what he says. Experience, not just understanding, is the basis of expression in so much of what he says. However uncomfortable some of us may be with this, it is still an essential feature to understanding Paul’s theology. Nor should we overlook how much worship and Christian experience was the matrix out of which much Christian theological reflection came…

Ben Witherington, 1 & 2 Thessalonians (Eerdmans, 2006) pg. 237

Think on these things...