The Heart of Biblical Theology

Providence Experienced

Mark W. Elliott

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317029229
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christianity

Providing a model of how to 'do' biblical theology, this book also explores important emerging trends over the last five years including: reception-history as a means to grasping the theology of the bible; theological interpretation as a new form of lectio divina (meditative reading); the place of Jewish interpretation in forming a biblical theology; and the ever-present problem of losing Old Testament theology in New Testament theology. The second half of the book discusses the theme of Providence, as found in both Testaments, with insights gained from the history of biblical interpretation and from major attempts at working out a theology of Providence. Elliott focuses on Providence as it has been perceived rather than the themes of God's goodness and powerfulness in themselves.

Chapter 1
The Limits of Theological Interpretation

It has become fashionable to regard the history of biblical interpretation as a guide for today’s theological interpretation. Most popular is the idea that the so-called undivided Church of the first four centuries is the place where ‘the rule of faith’ will be found, such that scripture can be read in a certain way according to creedal lights. When this seems to get a bit predictable, inevitably the focus switches to ethics or spirituality so that it is the Christian soul reflected in scripture that becomes the substance of ‘theological interpretation’. Now it is by no means unwelcome that ethics and spirituality take centre stage, especially after a long, lamentable separation between these two.¹ These themes are, after all, important to the Christian scriptures. Nevertheless, how we now should live is arguably a more, not less, difficult area for biblical interpretation today, and it is arguable that discourse on ‘the Christian life’ requires some sort of doctrinal run-up, as seemed to be how St Paul operated in writing epistles such as Galatians or Philippians. It also seems odd that theology today so often means ‘the Trinity’ and ethics means ‘ecclesial identity’, with the theological interpreter shuttling between the two and having less to say about other doctrines, as well as the biblical texts.

The Invention of ‘the Rule of Faith’ as a Patristic Hermeneutic Tool

The Ecumenical movement of the years immediately following World War Two received a boost in the shape of the Oxford International Patristics Conference. The concurrent French project Source Chrétiennes paid particular attention to the early Church’s exegetical works and the effect of this, along with a more ‘Catholic’ spirituality encouraged by a new evangelical pietism that made Evangelicals feel at home in the world of patristics. The fathers were Bible-reading, prayerful, orthodox folk. They were – or at least the best of them, such as Irenaeus, were – biblical theologians who used the Bible to knock back heretical interpretations and the views underlying these. Biblical theology was done by those who interpreted the Bible to refute the abuse of that book by heretics (e.g. Gnostics and Arians) and pagans (e.g. Celsus and Porphyry). This theology was vital, self-consciously non-academic: theology from the Church for the Church.

Part of the ecumenical rapprochement came from revising any unfortunate hyper-Protestant view of ‘sola scriptura’. The myth that the rule of faith was Irenaeus’s main contribution to theology or that the creed was used to shape the reading of the scriptures has held many captive. Minns speaks for many when he writes:

As the reference to baptism suggests, the ‘measuring rod of truth’ is related to a creed, but the relationship is to the content of the creed, rather than a particular credal formula. In the Demonstration [3] Irenaeus speaks of a κανών (the Greek word is transliterated in the Armenian) of faith rather than of truth, and tells us that this faith is arranged under three headings by which baptism is completed – faith in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

However, tradition and scripture are best viewed as equal partners, rather than the former being identified with the rule of faith and superimposed on scripture as a grid. The reality to which the scriptures point is not a creed, however valuable that is, but to what God is doing, has done and who he is. What is often missed is the extent to which Irenaeus was a controversial theologian with a fight on his hands. It was not as though his aim was to provide a total account of the Bible, merely one that would be less selective.

In actual fact, references to ‘the rule of faith’ in Against Heresies are as good as non-existent. In AH I.10.1, there is no mention of ‘rule of faith’, only ‘has received this faith’. In AH I.22.1, ‘rule of truth’ is mentioned but then explained: that God the Father of Jesus Christ created all things – that is, the regula veritatis (rule of truth). In AH III.4.1, it is not used at all, despite some claims to the contrary, and in Irenaeus’s Demonstration 3 it is mentioned but not explained, while in Demonstation 6 it is called the taxis tês pisteôs.

The OT scriptures work as prophetic of Christ, not as forming some rule of faith. For Irenaeus the rule of faith is neither a summary nor a story – it hardly exists. A help to our understanding is found in Clement of Alexandria who defines the ecclesiastical rule (κάνων τῆς ἐκκλησἰας) as ‘the concord and harmony of the law and the prophets in the covenant delivered at the coming of the Lord’ (Strom 6.15). The point is that the prophecy or the concordance of testaments, not the Bible as story as such, is what matters.

Norbert Brox is right to affirm that for Irenaeus the battle for truth was a battle for the Bible² (or rather, battle over the right method of Bible reading). The formula ‘scripturae dominicae’ means the whole Bible, as when at AH V.20.2 Irenaeus insists that one must eat from every branch of the tree of Paradise, i.e. each biblical book, (even though some branches provide more fodder than others), whereas Gnostic writings can be known from just one of them (AH II.19.8).³ Yet – and this is Brox’s emphasis – scripture throws up difficult questions (AH II.28.2). There is a need for true Gnosis (1 Tim 6:20) at the start of exegesis; without the Church, scriptural interpretation will fail (AH IV.32.1). According to Brox, Irenaeus is arguing that even if there had been no Bible, God would have left us with enough truth through the apostles (AH III.4.2).

1. Since therefore we have such proofs, it is not necessary to seek the truth among others which it is easy to obtain from the Church; since the apostles, like a rich man [depositing his money] in a bank, lodged in her hands most copiously all things pertaining to the truth: so that every man, whosoever will, can draw from her the water of life. For she is the entrance to life; all others are thieves and robbers. On this account are we bound to avoid them, but to make choice of the thing pertaining to the Church with the utmost diligence, and to lay hold of the tradition of the truth. For how stands the case? Suppose there arise a dispute relative to some important question (Latin, ‘modica quæstione’) among us, should we not have recourse to the most ancient Churches with which the apostles held constant intercourse, and learn from them what is certain and clear in regard to the present question? For how should it be if the apostles themselves had not left us writings? Would it not be necessary, [in that case,] to follow the course of the tradition which they handed down to those to whom they did commit the Churches?

That of course is not saying quite what Brox is claiming it is: Irenaeus is not saying that the Church could survive without the scriptures because of the apostolic tradition, but that if there had been no scripture remaining, God would have preserved a lot of it in memory form. The factual rather than counterfactual is that the apostles have left us their scriptures. Theology is indeed required to work where scripture does not give a ready answer, and that is the time for resorting to ‘oral tradition’. Of course it is not a question of waiting for this to happen: one may start with speculative theology, but the scriptural witness needs to have justice done to it.

When we get to Tertullian:

Now, with regard to this rule of faith – that we may from this point acknowledge what it is which we defend – it is, you must know, that which prescribes the belief that there is one only God, and that He is none other than the Creator of the world, who produced all things out of nothing through His own Word, first of all sent forth; that this Word is called His Son, and, under the name of God, was seen ‘in diverse manners’ by the patriarchs, heard at all times in the prophets, at last brought down by the Spirit and Power of the Father into the Virgin Mary, was made flesh in her womb, and, being born of her, went forth as Jesus Christ; thenceforth He preached the new law and the new promise of the kingdom of heaven, worked miracles; having been crucified, He rose again the third day; [then] having ascended into the heavens, He sat at the right hand of the Father; sent instead of Himself the Power of the Holy Ghost to lead such as believe; will come with glory to take the saints to the enjoyment of everlasting life and of the heavenly promises, and to condemn the wicked to everlasting fire, after the resurrection of both these classes shall have happened, together with the restoration of their flesh. This rule, as it will be proved, was taught by Christ, and raises amongst ourselves no other questions than those which heresies introduce, and which make men heretics. (Tertullian, The Prescription Against Heretics, Chapter XIII)

Even less than Irenaeus was Tertullian trying to be constructively systematic in his theology. As with the Pastoral Epistles and the works of Ignatius, the point was to use what had been handed on, in order to have the edge over heretics who had only some written materials. The Creed is a shield rather than a sword (or a ploughshare to encourage natural growth); it is meant for catechumens; it is a starting place, not an end. It may give some outline of the structure of Christian belief, but not its fullness. It also needed updating: if one compares the formula given by Tertullian above with that of Nicea–Constantinople (381), one can see that creeds by themselves can do a certain amount, but needed revising in the light of difficult questions. It can be argued that theology starts where biblical information gives out, but for the early Church, and the Church through the ages, has always tried to do justice to scripture before deciding that extra-scriptural resources need to be called on. A baptismal creed is a useful checklist of belief and a powerful way of confessing God and Christ. Yet it functions in such a way, not as ‘a hermeneutic for the Bible’, in order to read it properly. These creeds complemented scripture and prevented early heretical tendencies; they do not work as a grid to be put over it.

It is one thing for the Council of Ephesus (431) to look to the canons of Nicea as first authorities, another to say that the Church at this point jettisoned scripture. It could be used to make ‘knockout’ points, rather as it would later do in Aquinas’s Summa. Ephesus worked with Ps 80:10 – you should only worship the Lord your God (and Arians worship Christ).⁴ One can speak of flurries of exegetical activity when it was felt that the Bible needed to be looked at afresh: the period between the major councils of Constantinople and Chalcedon (381–451), during the late first millennium in the Oriental churches, during the Carolingian renaissance, extensively through the Early to High Middle Ages, the era of the Reformation In all these cases it can be argued that scriptural exegesis drove theological judgements.

Those who think that ‘theological interpretation’ is salutary for any profitable reading of the Bible often make reference to Irenaeus and other patristic exegetes as employing a ‘rule of faith’. However, Irenaeus was in fact more concerned that texts did not get distorted by heretical leanings leading to a heavy ideological ‘spin’ than he was suggesting, positively, that scripture needed to be understood in terms of a creedal statement. In other words, any rule was used as a ‘shield’, not a ‘sword’. The term ‘regula fidei’ as such does not appear in Irenaeus, whose motto might more have been: let the scriptures speak for themselves.

Theological Biblical Interpretation

Some think we can privilege patristic exegesis because the fathers were closer than we are to the NT. Chrysostom ‘got’ Paul’s rhetoric. Their exegesis was also ‘integrative’; it had meaning for life. One can explore this through reading Margaret Mitchell’s impressive and full account of Chrysostom.⁵ Critical questions on 1 Corinthians such as ‘Wa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 The Limits of Theological Interpretation
• 2 The Usefulness of Historical Biblical Interpretation
• 3 The Possibility of Biblical Theology
• 4 Might ‘Providence’ Show the Way?
• Bibliography
• Author Index
• Scripture Index