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The Epistles in the light of the Gospel

Posted 25 June, 2006 - 06:12 by samlcarr

Priority seems to make a lot of difference to theology. Does anyone recall the brouhaha (in theology) over the Mathean priority papers that created a few ripples in the 70s? It was my first exposure to the implications of source criticism for modern scholarship. That debate in itself is hardly considered a bone of contention anymore. But it opened my eyes to something very interesting and that is the very shaky foundation of all the modern criticisms. The question then was, what if Mathew were first? Then Mark would be a largely narrative summary of Mathew and Luke would have had Mathew and Q or Mathew, Q and L with which to work out his gospel…

I would like to pose a similar question as regards the Epistles and how they relate to the Gospels.

I have heard a number of scholars say that the gospels, being later compositions (especially Mathew, Luke and John) would also contain theological correctives to the bent of community Christianity as it had developed and which is most clearly reflected in the Epistles. So now, when we read the NT, we should read the epistles in the light of the gospel writers’ correctives.

The thrust of this argument seems to be that the gospels (in effect) call us back to the historical Jesus since, in the NT communities, the intent of the gospel writers was to issue such a “call back” to the early Christain communities. In bringing us back to the ‘theologically interpreted historical Jesus’, the gospels also provide a corrective to the overly spiritualised portrayals of Christ in the epistles.

My question is this: Could the gospels reflect an oral tradition which was actually an accurate reflection of the content of the kerygma? The gospels would therefore constitute the foundational information that each and every Christian had to know, and the epistles assuming the preaching of the gospel and thorough knowledge and practice of the Jesus teaching would clarify and build on Jesus teaching in dealing with the particular issues facing the emerging communities in the light of, and interpreting the words of our Lord.

It may not seem to be a very strange suggestion (or maybe it’s horrifying -I don’t know) but in attempting to think this one through, I have been startled at the difference it makes to my reading both of the gospels and of the epistles. I would appreciate it if you could provide some clarity to help me through on this.

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Comments

Whose good news?

by Andrew - 29/06/2006 - 18:56

Good questions. They keep us thinking about the relation between text and historical narrative, which I think is vital for the current renewal of theology.

The suggestion that the Gospels were written to correct the over-spiritualized Jesus of the communities that we see reflected in the epistles is interesting. But if that were the case, wouldn’t we expect to see more obvious anti-docetic polemic in the Gospels? Is the corrective bias really apparent? The (synoptic) Gospels certainly present a historical Jesus, but I don’t see any reason to think that this was done in conscious reaction to an anti-historical distortion. I would also question whether the human Christ is missing from Paul’s letters. He is not especially interested in the details of Jesus’ life, but he is very interested in the very human suffering of Jesus - not least because he believes that he has been called to imitate it.

If Luke was concerned to correct the presentation of Jesus in the Gentile world, wouldn’t he have made the historical Jesus more prominent in the various speeches in Acts?

Paul gives some indication of what he originally taught: eg., the abandonment of idols, the resurrection of Jesus, who would ‘come’ to deliver believers from the wrath of God (1 Thess. 1:9-10); Christ crucified (1 Cor. 2:2; Gal. 3:1); a story about Jesus death and resurrection (1 Cor. 15:1-6); the power of the Spirit (Gal. 3:2-5). These are in agreement with the Gospels but I’m not sure they exhibit direct dependence on the Gospel traditions. But questions like this require more careful analysis.

I would also suggest that there was not one uniform kerygma. On the one hand, we need to allow for the natural diversity of human communication in a complex environment. On the other, I don’t think the good news for Israel (in Palestine or in the diaspora) was the same as the good news proclaimed to the Gentile world. The word ‘Gospel’ does not define its own content: it is simply a message of good news, but what’s good news for me may not be particularly good news for you.

Holistic readings of gospels and epistles

by peter wilkinson - 30/06/2006 - 16:50

I’d like to know more about how samlcarr’s suggested perspective for reading the epistles - from the standpoint of the gospels - has transformed his reading of them, as I’m sure this is how they are meant to be read.

I’m also interested to know in what ways Andrew sees the good news for the pagan world as not necessarily being the same as good news for Israel. The packaging of the message may have been different (cp Peter at Pentecost/Jerusalem with Paul at Athens), but in the epistles I see Paul as bringing a very Jewish message to the Gentile world - as opposed to, say, the view that he refashioned a ‘local’ Jewish religion to make it a universal religion using Greek thought-forms.

As an additional extra - I’m fairly interested in how various ‘Christus Victor’ interpretations of the cross and resurrection draw on the whole of the gospel narratives much more than other interpretations. As an example of this, I came across this item recently: http://www.crosscurrents.org/weaver0701.htm -
an article by J.Denny Weaver, which, leaving aside some some glaringly partisan interpretations of the OT and NT God, seems to point to a more holistic understanding of the gospel narratives and Jesus’s death and resurrection. I was relating this to Andrew’s point about interplay of ‘text and historical narrative’, in the sense of avoiding abstract schemes of atonement - which may place the event in a ‘spiritual’ realm outside of this-worldly concerns, let alone the concerns of the historical narrative. But I’m probably not relating to his actual concerns here.

Also - isn’t the apparent (but maybe not actual) divergence between gospels and epistles partly explained by the continued history of Jesus after the cross and resurrection - ie the events described in Acts after the gospel narratives? In this sense, wasn’t Paul supplementing rather than reinterpreting the gospel narratives?

Continuity

by samlcarr - 18/07/2006 - 20:43

One area that specifically puzzles me is that when talking of sin, Jesus laid down principles while the epistles often provide lists of specific sins. Are the ethical teachings found in the epistles very different from Jesus’ approach to holiness and righteousness?

Not that principles are not enunciated in the epistles! It’s more in the emphasis. Perhaps what is happening is that epistles require brevity and specificity, by their very nature of having to address specific situations and trends in the individual churches, so that the writer of the epistle is ‘forced’ to summarize.

Gross generalizations but intiguing…

Live to serve : Serve to live

The sins of Jesus and Paul

by Andrew - 18/07/2006 - 22:50

I would have thought that the difference can be attributed for the most part to the difference between Jesus and Paul as teachers and to the different conditions of a renewal movement in Palestine and emerging churches in the Gentile world. One thing I would stress is the importance of the eschatological narrative: Israel’s sin is fundamentally rebellion against the covenant God; Gentile sin, for Paul, is fundamentally idolatry and the rampant sexual immorality that he believed characterized Graeco-Roman society.

But the formal differences can also be exaggerated. Jesus mentions specific sins (lust, false witness, hypocrisy, anger), and Paul, as you say, has his principles.

Polemic

by samlcarr - 19/07/2006 - 15:27

Palestine vs the Greek world certainly has an impact on both content and style and perhaps even on argumentation. I am not sure that I understand how the eschatology-covenant interpretation helps to clarify the apparent differences in emphasis that is sensed between the approach of the Gospels and the Epistles to ethics and the definition of sin. Is the eschatology of the Gospels somehow broadly different from the eschatology of the Epistles?

Certainly Jesus’ approach is uniquely His own. But my point is that there should not be this apparent divergence if the content of the Gospels are prior in the knowledge of the community.

One reason that I am leary of the New Perspective approach to the Gospels (not that I know that much about it) is that when reading back from Paul to the Gospels, while covenant is a given, Jesus specifically targets practices of law. So is it covenantal nomism or nomistic covenantalism (variegated in either case)?

The abuse of the minutiae of the legal-religious system to burden and therefore bind the ordinary Jewish believer in a position of perpetual obeisance to the ‘legal-religious’ leadership is a constant point of friction and controversy between Jesus and this leadership. I think a clear contrast can be seen when He teaches ‘the crowd’ and here His appraoch is both to radicalize and to liberate. So, questions of the burden and meaning of ‘the Law’ are very much in focus in the Gospels and the Gospel writers of course are able to show by contrast the uniqueness of Jesus “Come to me all you who labor…”

 

Live to serve : Serve to live

Rereading the Epistles

by samlcarr - 09/07/2006 - 13:29

Thank you Andrew and Peter. How my reading of the epistles has been changed is very interesting. Whenever an epistle writer refers to ‘the gospel’ as they all do very frequently, my assumption now is that they have our Gospels in mind (or something similar).

When Paul says something like

(Eph 2:13-22) “ But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

The blood of Jesus has saved me and made me a part of His new humanity and that new creation is defined by Him (as He has been revealed to us in the Gospels) and this gives me a concrete goal - to be in Jesus and to become like the earthly, incarnate Jesus and a part of the community of believers who believe in this Jesus, our saviour, the Son of God.

So, to answer one of Peter’s questions first, I see a very concrete teaching in the epistles, strongly tied and in fact dependent for substance upon the Gospels.

I am not at all competent to tackle Andrew’s suggestions but I think that the sense that I get from rereading the epistles in the light of the gospels is that there was indeed only one gospel and the content of the gospel is precisely the birth+ministry+death+resurrection of Jesus and that is what indeed we have “fleshed out” in our Gospels. In Galatians, what Paul seems to be saying is that he received this gospel directly from the Holy Spirit and that it was the same gospel as that which Peter and James subscribed to; (ICor1:23)”we preach Christ crucified…”.

An interesting point is that in Acts 18:25 we find Apollos already having independently “been instructed in the way of the Lord. And being fervent in spirit, he spoke and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus” and that indicates to me that the oral traditions that have coalesced into our Gospels were very widely known and were being passed on acurately by word of mouth amongst the believers. The very pericopial nature of the synoptics indicates that this was teaching designed for fairly accurate oral transmission and it makes me wonder whether the vague summaries that many scholars favour for being the content of the gospel (or kerygma) are not terribly misleading? In fact the idea that the Gospels are primarily written for chatecetical use itself needs to be questioned.

Getting to the question of the apparent divergence (between epistles and gospels), again I think that this goes away to a large extent if the epistles are in fact dependent on the Gospels for their content and meaning. I remember being very impressed with Cullman’s titles appraoch to Christology, but now I’m wondering whether very often when Paul says “Christ” does he in fact simply mean “the anointed”? There is real continuity between our Jesus and our transcendent Lord and Christ.

I would further suggest that the apparent lack of a lot of direct quotes actually makes sense if the ground is common; that is that the epistle writer knows that the readers know “the gospel” by heart. So, what some scholars have taken to be a hiatus between the “Jesus of history” and the “Christ of faith” is a false dichotomy, there are not two but one and I too should get this sense if I read the epistles after immersing myself first in the gospels.

Live to serve : Serve to live

unscholarly musings on redactors

by samlcarr - 18/10/2006 - 23:47

Jesus is Lord and Jesus has done certain things and spoken certain words. His followers have been taught by Him and told to remember. These disciples in turn teach what they remember to their disciples as the most precious of traditions.

Would or could one imagine that these disciples would feel a freedom to rearrange and change this tradition for any reason including to suit their own community’s needs?

That’s a question which really still bugs me whenever I run into it in commentaries on the gospels. If I were a disciple and I had been given charge of the “words of life”, it seems to me that rather the opposite tendency would prevail. Even when faced with another, alternate source, I would doggedly preserve the tradition that had been handed down to me.

For the last 40 years or so, New testament scholars have been convinced that many of the differences between the gospels (particularly the synoptics) can be ascribed to the tendency to redact (in NT scholarship, to modify, slightly stronger than ‘edit’) their traditions to suit the needs of whatever community they happen to be in. The gospel writers then become theologians and much is made of the individual theology of each author and what in turn this tells us about the specific situation of his own community of faith.

By contrast let’s look at some other possibilities. Various persons who were followers of Jesus recorded and remembered His sayings and doings. This tradition was faithfully and accurately transmitted to his disciples and so on. Each gospel can easily be read in a day. Jesus ministry is acknowledged to have lasted for around three years. So, each gospel contains less than 1/1000 of the entire ministry. There is no reason to suppose that they all duplicated exactly the same 1/1000th of Jesus ministry.

Of course there are obvious areas of overlap. We have double, triple and even quadruple pericopes. Given that Mathew and Luke probably used Mark along with other sayings sources (some say Q and some argue for Luke using Mark and Mathew) - the Mathean priority argument seems to be held by very few - I would have expected a much greater degree of synchronisation to have taken place at this writing stage if the transmitters of the oral traditions had in fact felt free to modify as freely as is supposed.

Instead, what is remarkable is that in spite of Mathew supposedly knowing Mark, Mathew sticks to the tradition as he received it. It makes one wonder then whether this ‘dependence on Mark’ is at all necessary for when we look at the synoptics on the areas of commonality we find that there are all sorts of things happening, so much so that a commentator has to keep on making judgements almost sentence by sentence as to who is transmitting the least modified version, and his/her judgemnt, in a triple tradition passage, will include variously each of the three authors!

It looks much more (to unscholarly me) that the evidence of the synoptics looks like a dogged determination to preserve that particular tradition exactly as it was received rather than the constant redactions that are now supposed to have taken place. In other words, we would more profitably search for the sources of variations in the original ministry of Jesus than in the situations of the faith communities and the theological bents of the intermediate and final authors.

I see one of the central problems as being what the gospels were written for. The consensus of scholarly opinion seems to be that their purpose is catechetical. I think it’s much more likely that the pericopes survived so well because they were the essential content of the kerygma. I see the sequence being that Christ is preached from this tradition and as people come to faith in Jesus, they in turn memorise the teaching and use it for further evangelism.

Live to serve : Serve to live

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