open source theology

Thanks Andrew for the quick and thorough reply.  Thanks also for moving the thread to a new discussion (I was hesitant about starting a new one - yet another discussion on eschatology and the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it - but also thought it was appropriate to do so).

Let me explain a little bit about the background of these comments.  McKnight himself is a preterist (apparently, with regard to Jesus’ teachings as recorded in the synoptics, he is a full preterist, seeing AD 70 as the realization of Jesus’ imminent kingdom - however, don’t quote me on that as I have not read his "Jesus and the New Vision for Israel").  Here he is quoting Dale Allison, who is critical of Wright, Caird, and others in employing a metaphorical reading of Jesus’ eschatological language (though this is not to deny that there is an historical referent, namely AD 70) w/in the Dodd rubrics.  Allison himself apparently believes that Jesus’ langauge is inauthentic (as w/Borg), or (with Schweitzer and Weiss), just plain wrong, and that Wright, et al. are seeking to save Jesus at the expense of historical interpretaion by appealing to metaphor. 

Let me explain further by quoting McKnight (who has been lumped together with Caird and Wright in his interpretation of ‘the historical Jesus’) in this regard: "For Dodd, Caird, and Wright, the imminent eschatological language of Jesus, while referring to historical events, is fundamentally imagery and metaphor; for Weiss and Schweitzer, it was historical prediction pure and simple - and mistaken.  What Wright (and Caird and Dodd) fail to examine is the historical implication of using end-of-the-world language for 70 C.E. - what’s next? and further, when?  For Wright, the destruction of Jerusalem is seen as God’s vindication of Jesus and his followers - the Son of Man - and this event is of momentous historical significance.  It is God’s act on the historical plane.  But is the entire future program of Jesus’ langauge a study in a multiple set of unhistorical metaphorical images?  Are pariousia, resurrection, judgment, and final banquet each simply a metaphor for that vindication?  Or, do those images move to a different time frame?  The end?"  McKnight earlier acknowledges that, though Wright follows Dodd in his ‘realized eschatology’, "what Wright thinks of Jesus’ future eschatology is unclear but will become clearer as he continues to write on these themes."

I agree entirely with your statement:

" I don’t think we help ourselves with this simple distinction between literal and metaphorical - not when it comes to interpreting prophetic language. This is a very complex area and ill thought-out, but two questions seem to me to be more fundamental."  The first one being: "First, what are they likely to have been talking about? What mattered to them? What fears and expectations did they have? Where were the boundary markers of their worldview and world? It’s very difficult to differentiate between literal and metaphorical language without some sort of interpretive framework."

Your last sentance in particular is the whole of the matter, isn’t it.  Certainly, the oversimplisitic ‘literal vs. metaphorical’ is the irritating ‘bogey’ in many debates over biblical interpretation.  But there is a sense of course in which it is meaningful to discuss metaphorical verses literal within a particular interpretive framework (particularly with repsect to historical referentials, as in McKnight’s essay, for example, which btw is taken from "The Face of New Testament Studies," Apollos, 2004).  And this is precisely what I understand you to say, when you write: "My hermeneutical assumption is that the authors of the New Testament, including Jesus, thought, spoke and wrote about matters of real personal and historical significance to their hearers and readers. That’s why we have narratives and letters, not abstract essays. It’s only when we’ve got some sense of what they were referring to that we can begin to decide what is being said metaphorically and what is being said literally."

Again, all things I would agree with…

I also agree with your statement: "Secondly, how is the eschatological future given meaning? How is it shown to be God’s future and not merely the outworking of historical process? Eschatology is not only about predicting events that will take place - it is also about how those events are to be interpreted, how they are perceived to have theological significance. We have to ask ourselves how that significance is carried in what are essentially narrative texts. Why is there so much symbolic language? What is there such reliance on Old Testament texts that have their own context?"

To be sure (note, Peter’s ‘this is that’ of Acts 2:16ff., for example), and all good questions.  It would seem our frameworks have some significant overlaps. 

I would add that part of what ‘imbues’ these events (in the Gospels and Acts) with such profound significance IS the eschatological context of the kingdom, brought to bear in Jesus’ central message (Mark calls it, ‘the gospel of God’): "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand…" (and ALL that that means).  The imminent coming reign of God contextualizes the historical events (of the kerygma and ‘the emerging church’) and their interpretation in the teachings of Jesus and the apostles.  And in turn, these events ‘contextualize’ the kingdom of God in unfolding its import and meaning.  Of course, as you acknowledge, part and parcel of the apostolic explication (whether in Mark’s Gospel or the book of Romans) of the ‘mystery of the gospel’ and ‘the mysteries of the kingdom’ is the OT scriptures as ‘witness’ to this kingdom and anticipatory of it. 

But moving on…you write:

"The struggle with unfufilled prophecy is there in the New Testament, but it is not over whether prophetic language is to be interpreted literally or not. It has to do with timing. When people asked, ‘Where is the promise of his coming?’ (2 Pet. 3:4), it was because the church was still suffering and their enemies, their persecutors, had not yet been defeated."

No, you are right, it was not whether prophetic language was to be interpreted ‘literally’ specifically.  However, this question cannot be untangled from the question of ‘timing’.  The ‘what does it mean’ obviously impinges on ‘when does/did it happen.’  To give an example from my hermeneutical perspective on this matter, what good would it have done to say in response to such critics after the events (as you understand them) stand fulfilled: ‘Oh it did happen, he came back - somewhere between the fall of Herod’s Temple in AD 70, Hadrian’s brutal and devastating response to the Bar-Kokhba revolt in 135 (annihilating the nation of Israel as such), and the fall of Rome, somewhere between 190 and 457."  Not terribly convincing to most critics, you understand (nor apparently to the overwhelming majority of Christians through the centuries).  Why?  Because the language (and I would argue, the obvious hope of the early church) of this ‘coming’ does not seem adequately answered in these events (nor did they to those who were witnesses to them [yes, Justin Martyr understood the removal of Jews from the land under Hadrian to fulfill Scripture, but it is by no means clear that he saw it as Jesus’ return - in fact, if one reads his ‘Apology’, it is quite apparent that he did not]).  

Moreover, the question of the critics, it is clear from the whole discussion in 3:3ff., is not merley timing.  It is an incredulity toward the nature of the events expected by the faithful: namely, cosmic and supernatural disruption, and final judgment.  Hence, "Where is the promise of His coming?  For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning."  There is a sort a pre-modern materialism assumed.  The created order stands, always has, since the beginning, and apparently, always will.  But then Peter points out the flaws in their reasoning: the order itself was supernaturally established and the flood is one dramatic exception, of which they failed to take note. 

More importantly, your otherwise right and noble desire to read and interpret the NT in its own historical mileu becomes, I think, a bit heavy-handed in circumscribing the boundaries of its ‘worldview’ within their immediate historical situation.  Surely they (the apostolic church) did not see the significance of Jesus’ coming as delimited within the nation of Israel (this is the lesson of Paul’s unique apostolate and Peter’s visions, and the Council of Jerusalem), nor to the falling of a physical temple.  They, with the cosmic and apocalyptic worldview bequeathed to them through their OT scriptures, understood Jesus’ kingdom as transcending the merely immediate historical circumstances of first century Judea, did they not?  Did not the concept of the eternal (as transcending, though NOT thereby rendering irrelevant or unimportant the temporally immediate) as shaping the present (rendering it significant, rather than irrelevent, and revealing its true meaning or import in the light of ‘the telos’) run as a significant (eschatological) insight throughout the prophets, psalmists, and apostles?  Hence, for example, the famous enthronement psalm: Psalm 2 is messianic not only in anticipating the greater Son of David, but also in coronating the ‘lesser’ sons of David.  The significance of this coronation ritual and language is grounded in the divine promise to David, but confirmed and fully ‘answered’ only in its fulfillment 6-9 hundred years later!  It had huge significance for David’s sons (in pre-exilic Judah), but not inspite of its eschatological (and, I would add, supernatural, by virtue of Jesus’ supernatural Person) fulfillment - rather, it was significant precisely in light of that promised fulfillment, that promised glory (which was, at that point, ‘not yet’).

You go on to write, "It (reinterpretation of eschatological language) has happened because traditional eschatological expectation is maintained only by forcibly suppressing the sense of imminence that runs throughout the New Testament. To my mind it’s far more problematic that we refuse to take seriously the New Testament’s sense of an imminent ‘end’ than that we interpret certain statements non-literally."

I do not detect such a forced ‘suppressing [of] the sense of imminence that runs throughout the NT" in the eschatology of such evangelical scholars (who maintain a traditional understanding of the parousia) as G.E. Ladd, or H. Ridderbos, for example.  Why?  Because, I think, they do take seriously this sense of imminence in their ‘partially realized’ eschatology - as do I.   The reign of God has been established in Christ - not, however, through the overturning of Rome or even Judea for that matter (though these events are not without significane, theologically - for the sovereign God has thus ruled the nations since the beginning, and judged Israel ever since the Exodus - and the events of the first and second revolt in particular are significant within the context of the ‘gospel event’, esp. in light of Jesus’ prophetic announcements), but through the cross, the resurrection, and the outpouring of the long-promised Spirit at Pentecost.   As you know, I expect a future parousia, in light of which all historical events take on significance and find their true meaning (as understood within/beneath the present reign of the resurrected Lord and His future judgment, when justice will be satisfied). 

You go on to say, "Here we run up against the realism issue. It is not simply that the early believers got the timing wrong, which could be a matter of indifference. They also got the character of God wrong because they believed that he would act to intervene in their circumstances, within their foreseeable future, to vindicate them and to defeat their enemies. They also got the nature of prophecy wrong because they thought that their prophets were speaking to them about their suffering and their glory."

Here is what I mean by a ‘heavy-handed’ reading.  Did then Peter, who died a martyr’s death somewhere between 64 and 68 not find his vindication?  What of Paul?  What of any of the apostles?  I am not convinced that the early believers presumed that God would thus act within their foreseeable future.  In light of Jesus’ constant warnings about the uncertainty of timing regarding his return, such a presumption would seem out of place.  You have gone from rendering the early believers as real, historically and socially ‘located’ people, to an incredibly short-sighted and self-absorbed people. 

Their hope was not in an historical, political vindication w/in their life time, but in an ultimate vindication, in final judgment.  For Jesus promised them not vindication in this life, but rejection, persecution, and death!  Yet, not a hair on their head would perish (Lk.21:16-18).  How can this be?  Through the promise of eternal life, of course.  For though you die, yet you will live (Jn.11:25).  Their hope was not the collapse of Rome, for a Christian Empire in its stead, but the collapse of Babylon (embodied in Rome) which was the incarnation of evil and satanic rebellion - the ultimate defeat of sin, satan, and death - and the establishment of God’s reign ‘on earth as it is in heaven’ (which is not nor ever has been in human history).  To suggest that this has already occured can hardly be taken seriously, at least not without emptying the Christian hope of all its ‘vim and vigor’. 

Nor did they get the nature of prophecy wrong.  For what could the signficance of Peter’s words be in 2Pe.3:3ff., but that the promise is NOT in any way vitiated or impugned by our time tables: "do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with he Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day"?   The Lord, he goes on, is not then slow, as some count it, but patient.  Notice, however, that this cosmic event (in which the elements themselves will ‘burn up’), whenever it occurs (a thousand years or a day), will certainly happen (v.10), and has significance for the church right now (vv.11-13).

I do not deny the cultural aspects of language, of course, but neither do they seem to be what is at issue here. Taking your example of Gehenna, it is both a physical place in the world of Jesus’ “sitz im leben” (as you noted, a trash heap) and a metaphor for the divine punishment of those who “practice lawlessness”. As “it became the common lay-stall garbage dump of the city, where the dead bodies of criminals and the carcasses of animals, and every other kind of filth was cast,” it was a fitting metaphor ideed.

But here the issue is the metaphor and how it is interpreted (Andrew interprets its as the judgment against Jerusalem in AD 70 - a most unlikely interpretation in my view).

Regarding Edersheim’s interpretation of the ‘eye of the needle’ gate, most recent scholars I have read take issue with this understanding. It is more likely a hyperbolic analogy (Jesus often spoke this way). Either way, it is used analogically to communicate the difficulty of entering into the kingdom, and thus is metaphoric (or a ‘rhetorical trope’, if you’re a linguistic geek).

Regarding your last paragraph, I’m not understanding your point. Could you clarify for me?