Standing Under the Scriptures
November 16, 2008

Dear Fellow Voyagers,

Our readings for this Sunday are:

Judges 4.1-7: In a rocky period of Israel’s early history, the “judge” who organizes resistance to a dire external threat is a woman.

Matthew 25.13-30: In the parable of the talents Jesus brings out our responsibility to employ whatever resources have been given us.

The readings for last Sunday, Amos 5.18-24, an attack on complacency about the day of the Lord and the efficacy of ritual, and Matthew 25.1-13, the parable of the wise and foolish bridesmaids in the face of the bridegroom’s eventual arrival, are both powerful passages. I am sure that the class discussion of them was absorbing. But I know nothing of what was said, having been at Evensong in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London at class time, and so cannot report on it. What I can provide is an account of my two and a half weeks in England, from which I have just returned. They were not without relevance to the subject matter of our class.

I traveled around a fair bit. I began amidst the fields of rural Suffolk, some fifty miles north of London, where there is a “benefice” with which I have a long-standing relationship. From there I went on to Cambridge for two days and to Oxford for ten, ending with a couple of days in London. Essentially in all these places I was seeing people, especially the teaching staff of Wycliffe Hall in Oxford, the “theological college” in which I spent the latter half of the 1980s. While in Oxford I attended the annual meeting of the Congo Church Association, which is much taken up with the current crisis in that country. And I had serious conversations with two personages deeply involved in Anglican Communion affairs. These were Canon Chris Sugden, the Secretary of Anglican Mainstream, the main voice for Evangelicals in Britain, and the Bishop of Winchester, the leader of those English bishops protesting publicly TEC’s deposition in September of Bishop Bob Duncan of Pittsburgh. (I spoke with some of more liberal persuasions as well.)

Of direct interest to our class was my encounter with Richard Hays, said to be one of the world’s leading authorities on the New Testament. Last year, when I saw him at the Duke Divinity School where he teaches, we spoke of getting together in Cambridge, where he would be on sabbatical when I came there. Not only did we do that, he enabled me to hear him present a paper in Cambridge and, the next day, another in Oxford, together with his debate with Nigel Biggar, the Oxford Regius Professor of Morals and Pastoral Theology (= ethics). The title of his Cambridge paper was “Supersessionism in Hebrews: a New Covenantalism?” and of the Oxford one, “Jesus as the God of Israel in Mark?” Both of these were more accessible than they may seem, bringing out key elements of these writings which were there to be seen but which I never had, and probably never would have, seen. Hays held that contrary to appearances Hebrews was not supersessionist, i.e., predicated on the replacement of Israel by the church. Instead it could be regarded as coming out of a time when Christians and Jews were not yet separated and as being concerned with the situation arising out of the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple by the Romans in 66 A.D. And Mark’s Gospel he saw as not just straightforward and somewhat simplistic but instead as conveying, through its unobtrusive allusions to the Old Testament, a highly subtle theology. After his presentations Hays invited questions and comments from his audiences, made up graduate students and professors of theology. To most of these he had a ready and persuasive response. But sometimes he said, “That is something I hadn’t thought of” or “I will have to think about that.” This seemed to me not so different from what goes on in our class, albeit on a much higher level.

His debate with Biggar might also be noted. The question was, “Was Jesus a Pacifist?’ Himself a pacifist, he took the affirmative. In that the answer hinged on the interpretation of certain New Testament passages he had a clear advantage over Biggar, an upholder of “just war” theory. In fact he walked all over him. My sympathies were with Hays’ position. Nevertheless my satisfaction was tempered by my friendship with Biggar, whom I had got to know back in the 1980s, when he held a must less exalted position.

In the question period following Hays’ and Biggar’s presentations there was a further wrinkle. A graduate student in the audience from the former Yugoslavia addressed Biggar in somewhat halting English about the consistency of Christian participation in violence with the martyrdom of Stephen as related in Acts 7. Here, the student said, was a case of grievous harm, indeed death, being inflicted on an innocent person, such as Biggar held to warrant forcible intervention. Yet the church made no effort either to rescue him or to retaliate. Here, we may suppose, the church was bearing witness through its non-violence, the role that Hays considers appropriate for it. He could have made his point even stronger by noting that the early church responded to the massive persecution of the Roman state consistently with non-violence. Yet he failed to pick up on it despite my having reminded him of it the previous morning.

I took the occasion of that meeting, a breakfast one, to question Hays about the “Beckwith hypothesis.” As you may recall, some time ago in our reading of Matthew we came upon what is known as the Matthean exception. This is Jesus’ instruction to his disciples: “Go nowhere among the Gentiles… but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Mt. 10.5). John proposed that the “exception” was necessitated by the fact that the issue between Jesus and the Jewish religious establishment was still pending, that only after it had been resolved (non-violently) could there be an outreach to the Gentiles. Hays did not dismiss this idea. In fact his only concern about it was that it might lead to a supersessionist view of the situation. But I pointed out to him that the issue was with the establishment, not the generality of the Jewish people. And he seemed to accept that. Whether Hays will take this idea anywhere I do not know. But it seems to me capable of significant further development.

I look forward eagerly to being with you again this Sunday.

Faithfully, Fr. Ted