Standing Under the Scriptures
May 4, 2008

Dear Fellow Voyagers,

There are no readings for our class this week.

As announced last Sunday, on account of the annual parish meeting and vestry election the 11 o’clock service will be folded into the 9 o’clock. Therefore our Standing Under the Scriptures class will not meet this Sunday (but will resume on Pentecost, May 11).

But there are discoveries to report from last Sunday. These concerned chiefly Paul’s address on (or to) the Areopagus (Acts 17.22-31). Some remarks about Jesus as the true vine, our Gospel manqué (John 15.1-8), would also be worthwhile. But first I would speak of the extraordinary event which took up the first half of our class. This was the presentation to the All Saints’ library by the class members, in partnership with the library itself, of the 14 volumes of Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics, in my honor. I was the more overwhelmed by this for having been given no advance notice. In a real sense I should be honoring you, the class members. For the existence and evolution of the class is as much your doing as mine. And to you I owe, inter alia, the discovery that the things about the Bible that over the years have fascinated me are of interest to others as well. But this does not keep me from being deeply grateful for your presentation, to its instigator (I know who he was), and to all who contributed or even thought of contributing. Moreover, in honoring me you have enhanced the status of the All Saints’ library as a resource for scholarly research.

I have been at the reading of the CD (as it is customarily abbreviated) for a couple of years now, and I will be at it for at least a couple more. What I would chiefly say about it is that it judges me: the shallowness of my Christian faith. Notably in setting forth his Christology in Volume 4 part 2, Barth while cognizant of biblical criticism takes the New Testament writers’ presentation of Jesus at absolute face value, as they no doubt meant it to be taken. And the effect of this is exciting, to say the least. But I had been falling short of it. Still this is not bad news for me but rather good. For only as I am judged can I be redeemed (something which our Rite I liturgy well understands).

As for how I came to embark on reading the CD, I had long been aware that major theologians unfailingly took account of it. This was certainly true of my mentors Alister McGrath and Stanley Hauerwas, whom I have been privileged to know personally as well as through their writings. Stanley’s counsel was to approach the CD devotionally, letting it “wash over” me. Even so I was slow in getting started. In fact some ten years ago I made an abortive attempt. That this time I am committed to the end suggests that in the meantime I have matured theologically.

We did spend some time last Sunday on the Scriptures, on the Acts passage (17.22-35). This is known as Paul’s speech on the Areopagus, or Mars Hill. Actually it seems that this was the name of a council that met on that hill, near the Acropolis, to pass on what was suitable for public consumption in Athens, and that it was this council that Paul addressed (cf. Acts 17.16-21). We approached the passage from the standpoint of apologetics, which is concerned not to apologize for the faith but rather to explain it to outsiders. Apologetics is of particular interest to me. On my first exposure to biblical criticism I was struck by its affinities with the disciplines I had acquired in the Foreign Service. This was a breakthrough for me, causing the Scriptures to come alive as never before. (I continue to hope that others will experience a similar breakthrough.) And Paul’s apologetic techniques, as recorded by Luke, are on display here. For he was engaging with “Epicurean and Stoic philosophers” (verse 18). Indeed, an encounter of the biblical tradition with the Graeco-Roman thought-world was involved. And it may serve as a model for us in our encounters with the world around us, which in its secularism has become not so different from the paganism of the ancients.

We noted first that Paul picks up elements of this world. He speaks of having seen an Athenian altar “to an unknown god.” And he quotes the 3rd century B.C. Greek poet Aratus: “In him we live and move and have our being.” But, crucially, he does not adopt the framework out of which these elements came. Instead he takes them out of that and incorporates them into the gospel which he is proclaiming. I am reminded here of how in writing my book, To Restore the Church, I utilized mostly the standard facts of church and secular history. But in doing so I had to extract them from the framework in which authors presented them and reorder them quite differently, before they assumed satisfactorily coherent patterns. The process made me think of prying ice cubes out of a refrigerator tray. Paul, for his part, directly contradicts the prevailing Greek notions about deity. God does not live in shrines served by human hands, he declares. Nor is he “like gold or silver or stone, a representation by the art and imagination of man.” Paul acknowledges that there are traces of God in the world, so that mankind might feel after him and find him. But in his view this is the basis for judgment, imposing the obligation of repentance. (Cf. Romans 1.19-20, in which Paul maintains that “what can be known about God” similarly judges even pagans.) Finally Paul does not shrink, as we might from the controversial in our own encounters, from proclaiming Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. To be sure, this puts off many of his hearers, as he might have anticipated. Nevertheless some followed him, as some may follow us if we are similarly bold in proclaiming Christ.

In Volume 2 part 1 of the CD Barth devotes a page and a half of fine print (pp. 122 and 123) to an exposition of Paul’s address to the Areopagus. (Thanks to your gift I was able to track it down. I remembered reading it but could not have located it otherwise.) I urge you to look it up, so that you may encounter Barth first hand and also see how extensive is his own “standing under the Scriptures.” To be sure, his emphasis is on what Paul brings from the outside, which is not quite the same as ours. Nevertheless ours can be seen as coming out of a “theological trajectory” (McGrath’s insight) which Barth was already on.

The lectionary Gospel (John 15.1-6) was Jesus as the true vine. It was not read in the service last Sunday, nor did we discuss it. Nevertheless, as one of John’s “I am” passages---the sign of the divine speech---its theme is especially significant: how those who abide in him as the vine’s branches are abundantly fruitful while those who do not are sterile and wither. In fact it resonates remarkably with Barth’s christological vision. Jesus, as the Son of Man took our human condition upon him, even to the point of supreme humiliation in death on the cross. But in this humiliation he was exalted, rising from the dead as the Son of God. And through his having entered into our humiliation we too are exalted, partaking of his divine nature even while remaining in our human condition. It is on this account that those who abide in him as branches abide in a vine are so fruitful.

See you on Pentecost, the Lord willing with my teeth back in.

Faithfully, Fr. Ted