New creation and the kingdom of God

Andrew - I wholeheartedly endorse the interpretation of Jesus’s parable of the two houses which you give - with its historical perspective. I don’t have Tom Wright’s ‘Victory of God’ to hand, but I imagine that he says something similar about the parable.

The parable also gains meaning from its position at the end of the ‘sermon on the mount’: obey the teaching of the sermon on the mount - "whosoever hears my words these and does them" - and the house will stand; disobey - and the house will fall.

So the parable, and the teaching of Jesus, have a particular historical context. The question then follows: was this the only context in which the teaching was intended to be understood? Were there not different and later contexts in which the teaching was also intended to be understood?

Intended by whom? There is no evidence that Jesus himself saw multiple contexts in which his teaching would apply. But there is no evidence that he didn’t. The greatest evidence is deduced from practice - nobody, apart from a few diehard dispensationalists, has tried to argue that Jesus’s teaching (in this, and the ‘kingdom’), was intended for a limited historical time (about 40 years), and for a limited historical group of people. The vast majority have seen this teaching as relevant for all ages, and to be applied within all types of culture - which is where it has worked. To this day, the arguments are about how literally or how far the teaching is to be obeyed, but nobody has seriously questioned its authority over followers of Jesus.

I think, whatever the logical extrapolations of the narrative/historical argument, there has to be a serious focus on the issue of whether it is  credible that Jesus’s teaching, and his actions, were of such a limited historical and demographic relevance.

On the other hand, there has to be a serious focus on whether an equally credible theological case can be made for arguing that the teachings (and actions) of Jesus were relevant for cultures beyond the immediate historical people and culture in which they were given. A notable theologian, Brevard Childs, has seen the importance of such a discussion, and has given it in his "Introduction to the New Testament".

When we are looking at any major reinterpretation of the New Testament, we have to ask at least two questions:

i) Is this internally coherent and consistent?

ii) Where does this argument take us?

(These are my questions, not Childs’). If the latter question raises some serious doubts, then a more sceptical review of the first question is called for - however ardently or thoroughly it may appear to have been argued and presented. I believe that is very much the case here - and increasingly obviously the case, the more the implications of the narrative/historical argument are unravelled.

Andrew, your historically contextual reading of Jesus actions and teachings leads to the vexing question of whether the substance of Jesus’ message has relevance to other than the very Israelite-Jewish setting within which it makes the most sense.

I don’t see that Paul is overly concerned that Jesus may have lost relevance. When writing to a mostly gentile convert audience, Paul seems to assume a familiarity with the gopel narrative and then move on from there. The 4 gospels themselves, being mostly later than Paul in final form, also seem to assume that Jesus’ story will be readily understood/believed as THE good news by anyone who can read Greek. Allusions to OT prophecies (Mtt 13:35, Acts 2:16) that are formulaically introduced again do not seem to assume that the reader needs a knowledge of the original context. The story on the whole is not difficult to understand, nor to believe.

I too wholeheartedly agree with your reading of Jesus’ parable. I also agree that the evangelical tradition, by being very selective in its understanding of a rather secular tale, has done a great disservice to the gospel that Jesus preached and himself lived out.

Certainly a methodologically rigorous, historically sensitive, reading goes a long way to challenging any proof-text approach to the bible. Certainly a sensitivity to how the writers linked the gospel story to the Israelite covenantal tradition and the broader context of the Roman occupation mirroring the Babylonian conquest also anchors and fleshes out the original context and meaning of many a pericope.

But when taken as a whole, the narrative force of the gospel story - the story of Jesus, really does not need these anchors. Greek speaking gentile NT readers in NT times who did not have any knowledge of the OT, nor of Israel’s hoary past, still linked up to the gospel story without great difficulty. This is evidenced by the lack of much explanatory stuff in the gospel texts themselves. Even the extended explanations in John’s gospel do not insist on an Israelite filter in order to be largely understandable.

I would ask whether insisting too strongly on a particular contextual reading and one that also insists on a particular eschatological framework, really does help to dig us out of the evangelical tendency to start with Paul before we have understood Jesus in the gospels. The inevitable consequence being that Jesus’ own centrality to Paul’s thinking is entirely lost. And all of Paul’s own foundations in the gospel narratives get thrown out with the Evangelical bath water?

Live to serve : Serve to live