Hat Tip: Between Two Worlds: A Theology of Anti-Americanism
Evangelicals should be concerned about any approach to reading the scripture that removes the author as the ground and focus of textual meaning.
I’ve read two books by Horsley, whom the writer is criticizing in the above quotation. The first was Bandits Prophets, & Messiahs, which he co-authored with John Hanson. The second was his commentary on Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. There was much with which to disagree in these two books. Indeed, I found the few provocative insights in the commentary mostly outweighed by statements I found baseless, inaccurate, and unhelpful. Chief among these would be Horsley’s willingness to disagree with the Apostle Paul–something I would label, as an Evangelical Christian, as arrogance. One ought to learn from God’s apostle, not contradict him.
But what I do not remember from Horsley, was any disinterest in authorial intent. How can I agree that someone doesn’t care about the author when he so caustically criticizes that author for what he says in the text? No. Horsley’s exegesis was simply standard grammatico-historical interpretation with, as is typical in unbelieving scholarship, too much weight given in some instances to the historical reconstructions that are at odds with what the Bible states. But mainline liberal scholarship is nothing new and should be critiqued on the basis of the doctrine of Scripture. What we should not do is build a post-modern strawman and give people confidence of errors in method that have no basis in reality. Horsley, just like any decent Evangelical commentator, makes arguments about what the text actually says, not about what third-world, feminist, Marxists might want it to say. He may be wrong, and his mistakes–once demonstrated!–may be argued to spring from biases, but that does not justify throwing him in the back of the Anti-american garbage truck and promising that he is ready to be hauled away.
Thus Horsley advocates an approach to interpretation that effectively diminishes the role of the author of the text (in this case, the Apostle Paul). The interpretive agenda is announced at the outset and thereby diminishes the authoritative voice speaking in the biblical text. In this case the agenda requires that Paul must decrease so that the interpreter might increase.
In my opinion, the word “thus,” is inappapropriately used in this quotation (on page 11 of the pdf text) to begin this paragraph. I agree, of course, that there is a certain disrespect for the text in Horsley, but the sentence, “Horsley is not an inerrantist,” only takes five words; seven if you want to include his first name and title as “Dr.”
Of course, the point in saying all this about Horsley is to try to tar with that same brush the exegetical work of Jesus and Pauline scholars who have a much better (more Evangelical and even inerrantist) view of Scripture. Anyone can read Peter Leithart’s essay on repoliticizing Jesus and see this, when he writes, among other things:
To depoliticize Jesus one has stand outside the world of the Bible. Liberation theologies have been denounced, rightly, for forcing Jesus into a Marxist mold, but an apolitical Jesus is just as much an optical illusion created by projecting modern prejudice on the screen of the gospels.
Happily, the writer goes on to target N. T. Wright and, even though insisting his criticism still applies, admits he is concerned about authorial intent.
But what sort of arguments does that leave for him?
The examples of this hermeneutical procedure are too numerous to reproduce here, but I will illustrate the point with one example. We note J. R. Harrison’s 2002 article in the Journal for the Study of the New Testament, “Paul and the Imperial Gospel at Thessaloniki.” Harrison observes that the term primarily motivated by his desire to link the Messiah Jesus with the term kuriosprimarily motivated by his desire to link the Messiah Jesus with the kurios of the Old Testament? I think the answer to these questions is yes, and it therefore makes it less likely that Paul was trolling around Greco-Roman cults in order to find linguistic grist for his Christology.
But no one claims that Paul was “trolling”–as much giggling as that pejorative straw man might cause among the writer’s allies. Rather, writers like N. T. Wright in What Saint Paul Really Said, point out that the question of derivation in Paul is not the same as the question of confrontation. Paul did not troll for grist and no one has claimed otherwise.
But this sort of false antithesis is the only leg in this one-legged paper. In addition it ignores that paganism and the OT Hebrew religion are exactly alike in deriving political authority from YHWH/the gods (the main difference being that YHWH’s authority is derived from his giving in creation and providence whereas the pagan gods based their authority primarily on power and conquests; YHWH conquered too, but only because he was creator). When YHWH demanded that Pharaoh send Israel away, this was an order with political ramifications. In the resulting confrontation YHWH declared that he had passed judgment on Egypt’s gods (Exodus 12.12; Numbers 32.4).
Furthermore, when Isaiah and several of the prophets declared Israel’s messianic hope, they declared it in the context of either predictions of or amid the reality of Israel scattered among the nations, militarily defeated, and politically ruled by foreigners. Thus we read from Isaiah 40,
Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and cry to her
that her warfare is ended,
that her iniquity is pardoned,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand
double for all her sins.A voice cries:
“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord;
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
and the rough places a plain.
And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
and all flesh shall see it together,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”
A voice says, “Cry!”
And I said, “What shall I cry?”
All flesh is grass,
and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades
when the breath of the Lord blows on it;
surely the people are grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
but the word of our God will stand forever.
Get you up to a high mountain,
O Zion, herald of good news [i.e “the Gospel”];
lift up your voice with strength,
O Jerusalem, herald of good news [i.e. “the Gospel”];
lift it up, fear not;
say to the cities of Judah,
“Behold your God!”
Behold, the Lord God comes with might,
and his arm rules for him;
behold, his reward is with him,
and his recompense before him.
He will tend his flock like a shepherd;
he will gather the lambs in his arms;
he will carry them in his bosom,
and gently lead those that are with young.
So here is Jerusalem in ruins, but she is going to be, in fulfillment of this prophecy, rebuilt. One can read Ezra and Nehemiah about these events and one will find stories about political intrigue.
Furthermore, of course, these events find their fulfillment in the Gospel story of Jesus. In fact, one finds this passage quoted as introduction to the main gospel story (Matthew 3.3; Mark 1.3; Luke 3.4-6). Any alert intertextual reader will ask themselves at this point in reading any one of these three gospels, “I wonder if the mountains might object to being ‘made low’?” And sure enough we find people jealous of Jesus, wanting to hold on to their status despite Jesus, and getting Jesus killed for political reasons (on the basis of political accusations).
Did Herod assume that because the wise men were searching for someone with an OT-derived identity that this person’s birth in Bethlehem was of no political consequence to him? Does the fact that the wise men thought they were looking for a king prove that this man was probably not identified by OT prophecy?
And this is apart from the fact that Gamaliel compares the Jerusalem Christians to military rebels, that the accusation was made in a pagan city of the Christians “they are all acting against the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus”, or that it is known that Christians were executed for confessing Jesus as kurios and refusing to acknowledge Caesar as kurios.
Of course, I agree with some of the things the writer states, and wish he had devoted his paper to them. I think Paul and the OT are more positive about the empire than Wright or others really allow for (though that hardly precludes that Paul would want to challenge the idolizing of the empire).
I also think America compares rather favorably to Rome. But even so, does that mean we get no prophetic critique? As a world superpower claiming hegemony we certainly fit in the place that Rome held, even if we function in that place differently.
I could probably list some other things as well. But if the issue is, Has the Fresh Perspective offered us value in knowing God’s will and following in his ways?, I don’t think these political affinities amount to much. The fact is I have benefited from Wright’s “fresh perspective” while being embarrassed by his UN support and other atrocious ideas about the nature of international trade and debt for some time. And so have many other people. So what? All you have to say is, “Thank you very much for reminding me of the Lordship of Christ but I think Christ has a different opinion about” and then say what and why.
I happen to think King Jesus wants us politically free to buy, own, and distribute dangerous weapons at will. Others will say he wants the civil leaders to “control” those weapons. This sounds all pious until you describe it for what it is: establishing a cadre of tax-fed gunmen to take other people’s only means of self-defense against the pretentions of empire and shoot them if they resist. Now I expect Bishop Wright would violently (in a figurative way, unlike his UN peace-keepers) disagree with me. But so what? I don’t read Wright for expertise on the pros and cons of gun control. I read him for NT scholarship where, despite is deficiencies in politics, he makes a great deal more sense than anything written in this paper against the “fresh perspective.”
