Speaking freely

The Modal Possibilities of Salvation

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Frost) — Tue, 14 May 2013 16:58:00 +0000

Since I've started working on universalism, my reading list has shifted. Which has compelled me to read Ollie Crisp's chapter on Barth vis-à-vis universalism in "All Shall Be Well". And it's just as well that I had already decided not to go the route of comparing Barth to a predetermined standard of universalism. But from the analytic perspective, Crisp does something I find questionable in stating his definition, and I'd like to play with it more.

You see, Crisp begins with the statement that there is a difference that must be respected between "all human beings will be saved" and "all human beings must be saved." Now, on that bare point I can agree, albeit for different reasons—I mean it in deontic terms, and he means it in alethic terms. But he bases this distinction on possible-worlds semantics, such that it appears the difference is between "all actual human beings will be saved" and "all possible human beings will be saved." That is, Crisp makes the question to be answered whether universalism is true, or necessarily true.

Now, I'm not sure this is really the modal question that must be answered with regards to salvation. But the game is then to figure out what the good questions are, and to ask them.

The Three and the Two

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Frost) — Sun, 12 May 2013 19:03:00 +0000

Barth's doctrine of God is an interesting thing. I was once asked where the doctrine of the trinity was in Barth, and I was kind of stumped as to where to start—because where isn't it? There are places I could point to as more or less concise expositions, but they're microcosms of the whole. It's structural. It's a basic presupposition. (Yes, yes, I know, "presuppositionless theology"—which means theology done on its own internal presuppositions, as thoroughly examined as possible.) Dealing with Robert Jenson (well beyond the article I've been wrestling with lately) has forced me to re-evaluate certain things, and crucial among them is my estimation of how structural Barth's doctrine of the Trinity is. Or, more to the point, where and in what way structural.

The Doctrine of the Trinity, and Scripture

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Frost) — Tue, 07 May 2013 16:51:00 +0000

I've been arguing quite a lot lately about the doctrine of the Trinity, whether here, in other fora, or just in the relative quiet to be had sitting at my kitchen table with books strewn across it. And, frankly, if there's a better thing to be arguing about, I don't have a handle on it! The basic question is, how do we speak about who God is in such a way that we adequately describe who God is? And how does our practice of answering that question relate to our practice of interpreting scripture?

The Gospel Happens Offstage

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Frost) — Sun, 05 May 2013 01:37:00 +0000

I'm being too critical lately, and not preaching gospel enough. It's wrecking me. There are stupid ways to be intelligent, and I'm engaging in them. So let's see if we can't shift the path I'm on just a little.

In this week's reading from Acts 16, God has maneuvered Paul and company into a corner of sorts. And when they get there, there's a message. Kind of a "Help us, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're our only hope" kind of thing. So, straight away, and as directly as possible, they cross the Aegean from Asia Minor to Macedonia, and wind up at Philippi.

This is a key Roman city, a colony founded anew by Octavian on the site founded by Phillip II of Macedon. And it served the same functions for both states: control of trade on a main route, and access to vital resources in nearby mines. A place directly under the thumb of Roman governance, as only a flower in the emperor's lapel could be. A place with a lot of trade going on, since it's on the main road for anything going between Byzantium and Rome overland, and right next to the port at Neapolis.

Not a Judean place. A fact made more evident by our protagonists having to seek outside the walls for a proseuchē at which to worship on the Sabbath. But certainly a place with Judeans in it, as made evident by the fact that they found one! And not ethnic Judeans only, but Gentile "God-fearers" too. A living and active community.

Now, how Paul and Silas wind up at what looks at first glance like an "all-girls retreat" by the river is another question, but the author of Acts doesn't bat an eye at it. There are things I love about the ancient Hellenistic world, and this is one of them. We didn't invent female empowerment. A congregation of faithful women and their households, meeting for their regular Sabbath prayers, when Paul and Silas arrived visiting. And as visiting missionaries and teachers, they did their jobs, same as always. And one of the God-fearers, Lydia of Thyatira, by all indications an influential trader and the head of her household here in Macedonia—my guess, holding down one end of the family business—is moved to be baptized. She is, in fact, from the region they had just left in Asia Minor, and she invites the apostles to be her guests there in Macedonia. (Small world, eh?)

A Snippet on Scripture

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Frost) — Sat, 04 May 2013 23:18:00 +0000

Scripture does this little dance. On the one hand, it represents God—literally presents us again and again with God—so that we who have seen God because of the stories it tells can say that we know this God. One the other hand, it insists that this same God, who was living and active in these stories of the past, is living and active today—and so cannot be reduced to the past or its stories. It presents us with icons of the depth of the activity of God—and then breaks them such that we cannot worship the images. Each image, the deeper we follow its lines, forces us out of itself. And this is the nature of the kind of thing that scripture is. Scripture is a field guide for those who rely on the presence of the God who is Spirit in the world.

"Modes of Being" and the Threefold Alterity of God

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Frost) — Fri, 03 May 2013 14:56:00 +0000

It's "brass tacks" time. Or at least, it's part 1 of "brass tacks" time. Yes, I'm still working on Jenson's "You Wonder Where the Spirit Went."

The article has five sections. The first explains Jenson's task, which is to "pick a nit"—not an insignificant task, given that it was a pest that both he and the Barth Society at the time saw as lively and unpleasant. And I agree—this article remains worth engaging precisely because, if this pest is really what's biting us, we are obliged to kill it stone dead for the sake of the health of our theology.

Barth has done something salutary in his use of the doctrine of the Trinity to identify the specifically Christian God. Jenson, of all people, knows how obliged the 20th century is to this insight. The problem, however, if it is real, is with Barth's development of this doctrine. Jenson locates it in two places: first, the insufficiency of Barth's "full technical doctrine of the Trinity" as to the nature of persons; and second, the use of that insufficiently-developed doctrine as a framework for everything else. And so, in the second section of the article, Jenson points to three cases of apparent "binitarianism," perceived conflicts of the three and the two in Barth's exposition, in which a two-sided relationship gives primary form to the material. This is the "nit," and Jenson will go on to associate it directly with a Father-Son binary that leaves no room for an equal third in the Spirit.

(Of course, I have my own explanation of Barth's play with the three and the two, and why Barth's dependence upon the relationship between God and humanity, and the corresponding relationship between human individuals, isn't "binitarian"—but I won't get to it today. That has to do with the impact of ethics, and Jenson doesn't go there. Besides, let's take one massive and complicated thing at a time, eh?)

The third section of the article is where Jenson engages in preliminary diagnosis, before proceeding onward to identify this "nit" specifically and trace its ecclesiological implications in the following two sections. And that preliminary diagnosis is where I will begin. Jenson commences this diagnosis with the declaration of the interconnectedness of the filioque, which Barth uses, and the heresy of modalism—which in fact Barth fights. And that is the territory I'm going to engage over today: modalism and the definition of God's threefold personality.

Digging up Footnotes

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Frost) — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 16:16:00 +0000

Once upon a time, some weeks ago, I said something to the effect that the mistakes brilliant theologians make are easier to handle because they get so much else right. For the record, I was mistaken. There is nothing simple about any of this. Errors in stupid people and brilliant people alike involve ripping out sections of supporting problems in order to correct. However, sometimes brilliant people weave their mistakes far more tightly together into everything else. It lowers the fault-tolerance of the system, because the fix is no longer a simple modular swap. Sometimes, the only leverage to be gained is to move the earth on which it stands.

Tracking Jenson's sources in "You Wonder Where the Spirit Went" tempted me to discard this 1993 article as not worth the trouble. Surely he's changed his opinion at least somewhat since! Surely I can deal more pleasantly with other pieces, right? But in spite of the hooks back into The Unbaptized God and forward into Jenson's own mature doctrine of God, this piece ultimately isn't about Jenson. It's not what he does. It's a sideline of a sort. But it's still a serious challenge. One must understand the flaws to build something better to replace it. (As an analysis of Barth.)

So, for my own sake in arguing with it as a young Barth scholar, I did up a "study edition" of the original article, in which I took Jenson's source citations from the KD in the footnotes, tracked them down from the German edition into the English, and added proper CD pagination along with expanded textual context, in dual languages where necessary. (For the record, I own no rights to any of these materials; I just did the editorial schlepping necessary to combine them in what I hope is a more useful fashion for discussion of the merits of the article. If someone wants it down, I'll make it disappear.)

Why? Because what else do you do when you're reading a paper, and the author seems to have read a different work than you have under the same name? (Even when you assume, as in this case, that he's read it better than you have…) You dig up the footnotes and check how good they are!

Wittgenstein's Tractatus, part 2a

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Frost) — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 15:33:00 +0000

Too many irons in the fire right now. So, while a massive post on Barthian epistemology (possibly broken up into a series if it keeps going on like this) and a post doing better justice to Jenson are in the works, let's get on with the next installment of Wittgenstein's far-more-interesting-to-translate-than-it-ever-was-to-read Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, in which we consider what "what is the case" means.

What it means seems to have everything to do with Sache, and its offspring by copulation with other words. A fun little root, one that means "thing" without such material connotations as Ding, and so has more to do with events, situations, issues, "things" in the manner of conceptual entities. (Brother Ludwig is, after all, doing philosophy.) And, of course, we've already had one such offspring, Tatsachen, "what is actual," which takes after its mother. We're about to get several more.

Now, in part 1 of our series, Wittgenstein helped us to determine what the nature of the world was, and that "what is the case" is not simply the collection of all actual things, but also the logical extent of their possibilities. In other words, "the world" is not merely a synchronic set of things, but the diachronic series of sets of things by extension. And a "thing" is not merely its present existence, but also the logical scope of its possibilities. While that was implied, it's about to get explained.

"You Wonder Where the Spirit Went"

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Frost) — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 01:51:00 +0000

Anyone attempting to tackle Barth's pneumatology has at least one hurdle to cross, and it's one that's been attempted by no less a theologian than Robert Jenson himself. The resulting article, "You Wonder Where the Spirit Went," appeared in Pro Ecclesia in 1993, and it pops up fairly regularly in the literature. For my dissertation, I'm going to have to make a solid attempt to clear this hurdle, and in practice I had as well make a serious attempt at the criticism Jenson leveled in his analysis. (Keeping in mind, of course, that I'm not so much arguing with Jenson himself, as trying to do better than this one concerted attempt of his from 20 years ago! The mistakes of brilliant minds are always easier to fix, because they get so much else right.)

Wittgenstein's Tractatus, part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Frost) — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 16:59:00 +0000

While I'm translating various things in German, I thought I'd turn my attention to Wittgenstein. How better to grasp what he's saying? And, of course, where better to start than the Tractatus? (Seriously, it's crisp, lucid, definitional German. How can you go wrong?)

Frankly, I remember this being more obtuse than it has been so far. Not that I agree with him all the way across, of course, but I do admire it as a cogent and lucid discourse on saying what can be said, well. Which is, of course, the point for which the famous dictum, "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent," is the declaration of last resort. In the introduction to this work, this is also the second half of a couplet that, in the German, goes like this: "Was sich überhaupt sagen lässt, lässt sich klar sagen; und wovon man nicht reden kann, darüber muss man schweigen." And in English, albeit my own: "Let what can be said at all, be said clearly; we must [only] be silent on points about which nothing can be said."

Now, when the man says "about which nothing can be said," he means, "about which only nonsense can be uttered." Discovering this point in reality is always a matter of practicing transgression. If we establish a boundary, and what is on the other side can still be expressed sensibly, the boundary belongs somewhere else. If, on the other hand, we find ourselves in a realm where only nonsense can be said, blue banana solar underpants. (It is for this reason that, as a theologian, I accept no premature limitations on theological topics. I will accept that one should "maintain a reverent silence," within the discipline, only in places where the alternative is pure nonsense. Up to that point, it is better by far to strive for understanding, and then for clarity of expression!)

So: onward to the text!

One-Upping the Prodigal: CD §57.1

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Frost) — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 01:39:00 +0000

So, after working through volumes III and II of Barth's Church Dogmatics, I've moved on to volume IV. And right away in IV.1, one hits the theme of the Prodigal Son. Which Barth does brilliant things with, when it comes to extending his prior analyses and discussing salvation. As you might expect, I'm walking through looking at the internal grounds for Barth's own brand of universalism, and here's a great beginning, so I'm going to map it and push the themes.

On Lent, Moral Rigorism, and True Penitence

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Frost) — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 16:44:00 +0000

I've been disturbed, this Lenten season, by what our practices of Lent say about our beliefs, and by contrast, what our beliefs ought to say instead about our practices.

It all started with "burying the alleluia" on the Sunday before Ash Wednesday—which, in contemporary style, we celebrate with the observance of the Transfiguration. And yet we retain enough of Septuagesima and the pre-Lenten observance to still sing an 11th c. Latin hymn that belongs to that occasion, called Alleluia dulce carmen. Stanza 3 is the crucial one:

Alleluia non meremur nunc perenne psallere;
Alleluia nos reatus cogit intermittere;
Tempus instat quo peracta lugeamus crimina.

Now, a century and a half after Neale's translation, we have turned this into "Alleluia cannot always be our song while here below / Alleluia our transgressions make us for a while forego / For the somber time is coming when our tears for sin must flow." But this is not precisely what the Latin says. Most particularly, it leaves out the clearly juridical language of the original, which goes more like this (albeit without the poetry):

We do not now deserve to continue to sing the alleluia;
The indictment compels us to suspend the alleluia;
The time in which we must mourn the judgment approaches.

Is this the nature of Lent? A span in which we refuse to praise God, and instead ponder our judgment as sinners? Are these things even commensurate as opposites? The hymn conceives of "alleluia" as an angelic song of joy, the song of the free and sinless redeemed, the song of the "new Jerusalem," rather than the song of the exiles. It, along with Easter, becomes a purely eschatological reality in which we do not deserve to participate, except by hope. Is this right? Does this idea have any legitimacy outside of Medieval piety? Is this, in fact, good theology?

Election, Predestination, and Bad Presumptions

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Frost) — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 15:47:00 +0000

Once upon a time, to keep myself from succumbing to the Lutheran echo chamber, and because I had started to love Barth, I took it upon myself to keep up with Reformed circles. When one's bread and butter has been Lutheran—Roman Catholic dialogue, with a hefty portion of intra-Lutheran (and often also infra-Lutheran) bickering, it's refreshing to explore the strange world of Calvinist, Arminian and "Evangelical"/Fundamentalist pieties.

Of course, now I live there, even as a Lutheran, writing a Barth dissertation. Some days, even many days, I swim in those circles more than the Lutheran ones. It might even be noted that I have a distinctly Barthian approach to Luther, which I will tell you is more faithful than many Lutheran approaches. And as a result I find much of my own world strange enough—but all the more so when "we" bring up topics like election, which in my experience has become one of those taboo subjects that tends to get one labeled with the C-word. (Little-known fact: it's illegal to shout "Calvinist!" in a crowded Lutheran church. Especially in Wisconsin and Minnesota! People could get trampled.) You see, we don't do election; we do justification. And it's no wonder that Barth saw these as cock-eyed versions of one another. I believe he saw that correctly. When the Reformed discuss election, the question is motivated by the assurance of salvation, just as much as the Lutheran discussions of justification are.

Ah, but here's the strange thing: when the Lutherans discuss election, having already handled assurance of salvation in another locus, they return to the bare fact. And the "bare fact," as it seems to be taken, is the understanding of the confessing Fathers, particularly Luther, and the Formula of Concord that some are saved and others are not. Which, to be fair, was also the Roman Catholic understanding. And it's no wonder, as I've shown elsewhere, because even the scriptures tend to believe in the self-evidence of the fact that some are saved and others are not.

It is at this point that even the Lutheran mind is driven to do weird things, like divide justification and discuss "objective" and "subjective" versions in order to theologize this "fact." The results simply reinforce my opinion that the presumption that some are saved and others are not is the only prerequisite for analogues of double predestination. And that's a hill I don't need to die on, because someone else already did. But it's a hill I will fight for, on the exact opposite claim that all shall be saved.

But I would still love it if someone could justify the idea of reprobation to me as God's idea, in such a way that it doesn't inevitably boil down to a theology built on the observation of difference in the world. Because that, right there, is the battle. Demonstrate to me that reprobation is part of God's being-in-act. I will have that argument with you.

"But Not For Me"

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Frost) — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 18:00:00 +0000

For Epiphany 4C

"He's reading words of hope / But not for me..."

You can almost hear Judy Garland singing in the heartbreak of the moment when Jesus' audience in Nazareth realizes that they're in for the other half of prophecy, the uprooting and destruction rather than the rebuilding and planting. Of course, Judy didn't leave scene, grab Mickey Rooney, and try and throw him off a cliff. (Gershwin women aren't like that.)

There were plenty of perfectly good Israelite widows, when the sky refused to rain for three-and-a-half years. And God sent the prophet to a city in Sidon, on the Mediterranean Sea, to a widow in a foreign land, to show mercy. Of course, that whole "no rain" thing was a curse upon Israel because Ahab raised an altar to Ba`al and worshiped the asherah, so there's a reason for this.

Ahab's son, Jehoram, was a bit better in that respect, demolishing the altar to Ba`al—though he didn't completely fix the liturgical innovations of his ancestor Jeroboam, so the author of the books of the kings still doesn't like him. (Moral: never piss off a liturgist.) And things were still pretty bad in Israel at that time, though not because of any curse. But the prophet heals Naaman of his leprosy—a Syrian in command of the forces of Aram, a foreigner in command of the armies of the enemy! And later that same day, Elisha will curse his own servant, and his whole lineage, with leprosy for seeking to profit from Naaman's cure. But the other lepers in the books of the kings stay lepers. There's no reason for this. It's not a curse, it's not from God, but God doesn't make it go away, either.

God is good to a Lebanese widow, and a Syrian general, and Israel goes begging. Now that inspires some jealousy! The kindness of God for others, "but not for me." But it isn't the prophet's job to be nice to his own people, most of the time. He's not a prophet because the people have been good. God makes a prophet when there's a problem. And the people know there's a problem. That's why they look with such hope toward the prophets that God sends to them.

Epiphany 4C

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Frost) — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 17:55:00 +0000

Getting too cranky. Must sermonize. To that end, the texts for this coming Sunday, the fourth week of Epiphany in the year of Luke. Some sad stuff. The birth of the prophet of the exile; the hope of safety with God; and Jesus telling the people of his hometown that the good news they just heard isn't for them. And, in the middle, Paul reminding the people of Corinth that they may do anything they want—as long as it is love. A group of texts that can only be grounded in the gospel, in spite of the circumstances.

The Miracle at Cana: Something from Nothing

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Frost) — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 23:01:00 +0000

I usually think of the miracle at Cana as one of the little ones, "unfit even to be called a miracle"—a kind of parlor trick, even. Water to wine. A casual thing, certainly by comparison with raising the dead. I thought to myself this morning, "how d'ya preach on this?" Fortunately, I didn't have to; I could simply hear it. And what I heard is no small thing. What I heard is, "God makes something from nothing."

Apocalyptic Christological Ethics Through the Dogmatics

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Frost) — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 17:01:00 +0000

"Hope does not lie in a way out, but in a way through." (Robert Frost)

I'm very sympathetic to requests for help refining down the amount of Barth's Church Dogmatics one has to read to get a certain point. It's like being a sherpa for groups looking to climb Everest. I feel like reaching a point where I could do that myself has taken up most of my graduate career!

I recently had such a request from someone looking for advice on Christology and ethics in Barth. Which is fine; I was once asked where to find Barth's doctrine of the Trinity. These are reasonable requests, in any other theologian. But when the thing you're looking for is so basically structural to Barth's work, there are two answers to such a question. The first is that you have to pan out far enough to see the whole thing. And the second is, "what are you really interested in?"

And the answer that came back this time delighted me, because it offered me a chance to show someone the road I wish I had taken. The refinement that came back involved the doctrine of scripture, and apocalyptic. Thank God for Phil Ziegler, pushing people to think in apocalyptic terms about theologians we thought we already knew! These four things still point to a massive chunk of the Dogmatics in their intersections, but they're workable. (I should know; I've been working them!)

There is, as far as I'm concerned, a preferable path for these things through the Dogmatics. It helps fix certain errors of perception I find common in the field. And I'm going to try and walk it for you right now, as much for the help of those who want such a thing as for the correction of those who may know better.

Organization Matters

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Frost) — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 01:04:00 +0000

Picked up a systematic theology volume on the new-books shelf in the library the other day, and thought to myself, "starting with creation, again?" I realize I've gotten used to the in medias res way Barth goes about things, but I think it just sets a bad precedent to start with the doctrine of creation as though it were a primary doctrine.

Sometimes I really hate what modernity did to us. We were compelled to fall back on Medieval scholasticism, but on terms it would never have accepted. The result has been that, in many cases, we don't understand why we do the things we do anymore. In Thomas, creation is first because Thomas follows a thoroughgoing teleological arc. And it is first in this way because Thomas is doing apologetics for his prolegomena. Creation definitely has pride of place in apologetics, and for good reason. In the conflict of worldviews, the leading edge tends to be the proof of the worldview, and for us the worldview is inevitably set by our reading of God as creator and the world as creation. This is why Augustine found it so important to hash out, and rehash, and rehash, etc., the material in Genesis 1-3. One sets the stage for the rest of the worldview in this way. But this is not because creation is a primary doctrine—it is simply because apologetics involves wrapping the core doctrines of the faith in a nice candy coating! The consistency of the worldview is the logic that guides the presentation of the articles of the faith.

In dogmatics, however, we are preaching to the converted, and helping them to understand the kinds of natural and logical sequences that let us make sense of the faith internally. Here we are doing Anselm, not Augustine. It is therefore the internal logic by which the faith itself coheres, and not the external logic of the worldview it produces, which is of the greatest importance. In that effort, creation must resume its place among the secondary doctrines.

Confession and Proclamation

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Frost) — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 13:51:00 +0000

I've been trying for a while to express why I find Barth's Gifford Lectures on the knowledge of God and the service of God according to the Scots Confession, and his Göttingen course on the Reformed Confessions, so necessary to his ethics. And that's basically because they're not essential to his ethics, as we have understood it in the literature so far. And they're not going to figure heavily in my dissertation at this rate, either. The ground has to be laid for them, first. But I can't shake the feeling that they belong, nonetheless.

Yesterday's very brief post (there are advantages to composing on an iPod) was half an attempt to get this bit right, and half an attempt to be succinct about my sense that dogmatics and ethics in Barth are both subordinated to a third thing, the Word of God:

Two things are morally incumbent upon the Christian. We must confess none but God, and we must preach nothing but the gospel. Ethics as a task follows from these. It is the project of living in consistency with them. Dogmatics, or theology, instead pursues them. It is the project of verifying today that what we confess is in fact none other than God, and that what we preach is in fact nothing other than the gospel.

From these, all else follows.

But this is not the normal way we speak of ethics in its relationship to dogmatics, or about ethics simpliciter. We must, as fundamental obligations, confess and preach? What good does that accomplish?

What Must We Do?

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Frost) — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 13:25:00 +0000

I know this will bother my exegete friends, at least some of them, by omission. I'm striving for concision, against myself. Go ahead and push back! Where is the role of Biblical scholarship?

Two things are morally incumbent upon the Christian. We must confess none but God, and we must preach nothing but the gospel. Ethics as a task follows from these. It is the project of living in consistency with them. Dogmatics, or theology, instead pursues them. It is the project of verifying today that what we confess is in fact none other than God, and that what we preach is in fact nothing other than the gospel.

From these, all else follows.

Christmas 1C: Welcome to the Family

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Frost) — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 15:43:00 +0000

It's been a while since I did this. Last Lent, it got me through a season in which a lot of other things were falling apart, but afterwards, I blamed my Lenten practice for the fact that I got nothing else done. Still, I do insist that if you can't preach the gospel, instead of all the other things that show up in the text, you can't understand Barth. It's about time I got back into the practice. It may be the least esoteric thing I do!

Just the New Testament this week, though.

Dogmatics in the Service of Ethics

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Frost) — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 15:29:00 +0000

Can or should ethics be separable from theology? More importantly, since these two actually are treated as separate discourses: when we connect them up, which will serve the other? Making ethics serve theology means that we might just have to do what we say. But it can then be suggested that what we call "ethics" is something parochial, a restricted set of something that ought to be a universal task—and therefore something that can only be universalized by the assertion of our dogmatic priorities over others. If we make theology serve ethics, on the other hand, we suggest that our faith will have to yield to some external priority. This is certainly one of the false dichotomies endemic to modernity. How do we escape it?

Conversion, and Reversion

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Frost) — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 16:31:00 +0000

So: Galatians 1-2 is pretty interesting. Especially if you read Paul's anastrophe in 1:13 as intentionally parallel with the metastrophe being attempted by the proselytizers in Galatia in 1:7. What we're talking about here, in the mid-first-century, is conversion in Judaism. Conversion, and reversion.

This is what Paul's conversion story is doing in 1:13-24, as well as the resulting confirmation by the "pillars" in 2:1-10 and the subsequent diatribe with Cephas in 2:11-21: authenticating Paul's way of life, and the freedom of the gentiles in Christ, and demonstrating that Torah, while it remains a valid option, is only an option—not a necessity. Christ is the necessity. The Galatians, like Paul, have made a valid conversion and become faithful people of God. They should not now revert to any other position—they should return to their right faith. (The language Paul uses, in another context—like Romans 2:4—will be metanoia: returning to a proper sensibility. Paul, in his prosecutorial zeal, was just as anöētos, or insensible, as he will chide the Galatians for being in 3:1.)

This is the kind of conversion Paul is talking about. Once we get it out of our heads that Paul converted from Judaism to Christianity (there being no such thing), and we get our minds around the plurality of Judaisms (much like our contemporary plurality of Christianities), a better analogy presents itself. Paul is a convert from fundamentalism. He even uses the right word: hyparchē, fundamentals. Someone's idea of basic, underlying principles. So-called "foundational Judaism." The same kind that's being pushed on his audience.

Celts, Judeans, Nature-Worship, and Civilization

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Frost) — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 18:04:00 +0000

One of the things we know about the Galatians, from history, is that they settled in Asia Minor (I won't mess with the north or south question) after having been invited as mercenaries. They are, as the name Γαλαται suggests, a Celtic people. (The Celts really got around. They are to Europe, in many ways, what the Kazakhs are to Asia.)

And so, in 3:1 when Paul calls them ανοηται Γαλαται, "silly Celts," and asks who has magicked them, who has cast a spell on them or given them the evil eye, he is invoking their shame at a heritage of "superstition." This isn't a Jewish thing, but rather something they would have gotten living in the cultured paganism of the Hellenistic world. Nature religions have nothing on the real anthropomorphic pantheons.

And so, when Paul goes on in 4:8-9 to talk about οι φυσει μη ουσιν θεοι, things that are not naturally divine, and τα ασθενη και πτωχα στοιχεια, the powerless and helpless elements of the world, what's he talking about? Think about Poseidon. Poseidon is not a water elemental. He's not a water-god; he's the god of water, the god of sea and squall, of earthquakes and waves. Poseidon, however evocative his raiment, is not made of the elements. He is the god who rules these elements, the god who loves the seas and their creatures and chooses to dwell among them. He is the god who, if you honor him, will get you safely home across the waters—and who, if you cross him, may see to it that you never reach your next port. One does not worship the waters and their creatures, or the waves and their force—one knows that these things are not naturally divine. One worships, and perhaps even chooses to serve, the god who moves both land and sea.

Silly northern pagans, with their nature religions—worshipping the stuff instead of the god. But the Hebrews are little better, with their harvest cycles and their observation of the cycles of the moon. What, after all, is a calendar in the ancient world, but a liturgical map? Careful and even religious attention to the στοιχεια του κοσμου. But at least the Judeans have some culture. For all their traditional celebrations and their superstitions that keep them from totally getting along in the real world, they do worship and serve a genuine θεος (even if only one, and even if they refuse to get along with people of other gods), and they do follow a mostly-sensible νομος, a way of life based on their πιστις. This goes a long way toward civilizing them!

Fidelity to the Proclamation: Galatians 1-2

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew Frost) — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 21:04:00 +0000

While I work on debunking the various places where Louis Martyn and others following him see reified opposition to God as a real force in Paul's mind, have a couple chapters of freshly-translated Galatians. There's definitely at least a study to be done on the use of ἀνατίθημι, especially when it comes to ἀνάθεμα and the nature of respectful dialogue Paul shows. Also worth noting is the theme of reversal, with μετα- and ἀνα-στρέφω. Paul isn't talking about his "former way of life"—this is his conversion narrative within Judaism. And, as always, it's worth noting the oral coherence of the piece. It's just good stuff!

From Paul—a missionary not from people nor because of a person, but rather because of Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from among the dead—and all of my siblings with me, to the assembly of Galatia:

Grace to you, and peace, from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ—the one who gave himself, concerning our failures, to extract us from this age of besetting wickedness in accordance with the will of our God and Father, whose is the glory for as long as time continues, amen!

I marvel at how quickly you have shifted from proclaiming the one who called you by the grace of Christ, to another proclamation—which is not different, except that there are some who are stirring you up, seeking to reverse the proclamation of Christ. But even if we, or a messenger from heaven, should proclaim something opposed to what we proclaimed to you, they must retract it. As we have said, so now I say again: if someone proclaims to you something other than what you received, they must retract it.