See that’s what i get for entering a conversation in the middle of it. So, if I may put this discussion into OT terms, it sounds very much like we are talking about apodictic vs. casuistic law. We have the universal maxims (e.g. Thou shalt not commit murder, to continue in that vein), but then we have the case law that seems to come about because of a process of governing (e.g. the laws for the cities of refuge, or the prohibition on putting a stumbling block in front of a blind man, which probably issues in the fact that some 15 year old boy did just that). So, the continual knowing (or coming to know) of the divine absolutes, which as you and I (and apparently Friederich) agree, can only be understood imperfectly, that is un-absolutely.

I also, like the idea of “feeling out” the law. Isn’t that what the 70 assistants of Moses (not to mention others along the way) help Israel to do? In fact, if the Documentary Hypothesis is correct in any way, shape, or form, which I suspect it is, isn’t this exactly what happens in both the Deuteronomic and Priestly traditions?

Gotta run,

John

I think your comment about ‘murderer v. divine warrior’ gets at the point precisely. Depending on how one defines the term murder (intent v. action), implicates the way that command can be followed. There is ‘play’ with the term and in no sense is there an absolute moral about death that is being invoked. Instead, we end up saying ‘death is bad’ or ‘hate that leads to murder is bad’. But there are million ways in which you can live that out (i.e. Jesus’ cutting interpretation of this commandment).

As far as transgression of law maintaining coherence, I was not implicating morality, but rather morality-expressed-in-statute. When I say, “Don’t hit people,” there is a whole moral system that undergirds that simple command. But there are times when I want you to hit people for good and righteous reasons. For example, if I were becoming hysterical in the face of disaster, I would want you to hit me in the face (think “Airplane”). If I were choking, I would want you to hit me in the stomach. “Don’t hit” is a short-hand and truncated communique that grips enough on a current context to reveal a little bit about the moral system that supports such a command.

Again, I have an imperfect moral system working in me, but we presume that God’s is not the same. So his commands are also truncated and only reveal what is sufficient in its context of the larger moral reality. And because it is truncated (or sufficiently pithy, if you like), the case law must ratify the statute via transgression. God said to take your troublesome teenager to the elders and stone them to death if they don’t repent.

But how does one determine exactly what that process looks like? There has to be some ‘feeling out’ of the law and that involves the times where you know you are within God’s intentions and when you have crossed some line. The coherence of such laws can only be appreciated on when we are in that ‘feeling out’ period of case law. It’s shorthand is often stated, “I don’t know what it is, but I know it’s not THAT!”

So I would argue that this is difference between knowing a moral absolutely (which is what rubs Nietzsche and me the wrong way)verses knowing an absolute moral. The former abandons trust in God in favor of trust in my absolute knowledge. The latter requires continuing trust in the source of the sufficiently pithy Law Giver.

Just read this post and I have a couple of questions. First, I’m not sure that I buy the idea that transgression of a moral is necessary to maintain its coherence. Why? Now, if you are talking here about absolute knowledge of the moral, that may be a different thing. Yet, that’s not the way it read to me. In addition, I wonder how God can hold us responsible to obey a law if it is not coherent to us unless we break it. Of course, a question like this one may take us down a bunny trail that can only end in a debate over whether God is just in judging those with limited or no knowledge about Him. Second, I really don’t think I buy the idea that God is a murderer. Moses, yes. YHWH, no. Rather, His actions in delivering Israel from Egypt as well as those He will shortly undertake to deliver Canaan to His people fit more clearly, it seems to me, into a Divine Warrior matrix. So, it seems to me, that we are talking apples and oranges when we talk about YHWH’s actions as a warrior and the injunction not to murder. Of course, I am coming in in the middle of a discussion, and so I am probably missing something here.

By the way, the other two points about Nietzsche, whom you’ve been trying to get me to read for years, I find very well taken. As per a text I tried to send you yesterday, the last chapter of H.R. Niebuhr’s book Christ and Culture argued some of the very same points.

John

Thinking through Pentecostal implications might be more important at Sheffield, which is where the Journal of Pentecostal Theology is published if I remember correctly. Now, concerning the prophets and instantiation, an historical critic might say that there is good reason for your inability to escape the prophets as you work through your thesis since they, for the most part, gave birth to the OT. A case of seeing what we want to if you ask me, but there may be a point there.

John

Thanks for the comments. Succints reactions really do help me think through the implications better. No, I had not fully thought through the pentecostal implications, but I suppose I’d better.

I was just writing some outlines last night and could not get away from ‘prophetic instantiation’ being the centerpeice of a biblical epistemology. So we are thinking alike on that.

Keep throwing stuff at me.

Dru

Just read your proposal (without attention to all the footnotes). Permit me to make a couple of comments. First, it was good to take a gander at your interests in black and white. It does lend greater coherence to some of our previous conversations for as you know, we tend to jump from one thing to the next. Second, I think there will be more than a few of our Pentecostal/Charismatic brothers and sisters who will be interested in the somatic epistemology you are pursuing, especially as it relates to tongues speech. I suspect you’ve already thought about some of the applications of your work in that direction, but I thought I’d just come out and say it. Third, I suspect you’ll want to deal with the Spirit bringing the word of YHWH to Israel’s prophets or to YHWH’s word coming to them in the process of your research if you have time. Yes? If so, I wonder if you have any reflections on whether we could say that a prophet’s somatic epistemology is reproducible or paradigmatic for others.

I appreciate you so much,

John

My mom told me you guys announced your intent to go to Scotland this past Sunday. Of course, Mom can’t hear so she depended on Dad His hearing is not much better) who told her you guys were moving out of state. Well, that’s better than nothing.

At any rate, let me know what, if anything, we can do to help you guys out. Of course, we will be praying that God open all the doors necessary. Big undertaking for sure.

John

Congrats on Vanderbilt (BTW). I’ve been thinking about this exact issue a lot lately. Michael Bird had this Craig Koester quote on his blog:

“Reading Heb 1 is something like looking at a mosaic that depicts the image of a person. The artist creates the mosaic by selecting various types of stones and arranging them in a way that conveys the subject’s likeness. Those who look at the mosaic generally do not ask where the individual pieces came from or how each piece functioned elsewhere, but whether the arrangement of the stones conveys a genuine likeness of the person being portrayed. Similarly, to read Heb 1 on the author’s own terms is to ask whether the mosaic of OT quotations is a faithful representaton of the exalted Christ.”
- Hebrews (AB), p. 198.

What I have been thinking about specifically is the ‘prophetic license’ of inter-scriptural quotation. Even more specifically, how do we see the canonical texts of the NT using the OT in contrast to how we see the early Fathers using the NT. It is fairly well known that Papias and Polycarp (1st and 2nd century) were making extended and ‘literal’ quotations of the NT canon, even when they were describing the Gospels as something like the ‘memoirs of the Apostles’.

If we see a trend of marked contrast in the ‘prophetic license’ in quoting scripture against the literal quoting after the period of canonical formation, then we have some precedence to talk about the NT quotations of the OT. For then, we could say that the apostles were acting in line with prophetic tradition, much like we say that the speeches in Acts are well within the prophetic-repentence pattern.