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Index |
139 |
THE historical study of New Testament theology,
as distinct from dogmatic or systematic theology,
is faced by the difficult task of discovering the true starting-point of the
development which the New Testament writings exhibit.
It seems that the soundest method towards that end is to isolate, among the
rich variety of these writings, those elements which are so widely common to
them that they must be regarded as forming part of a central tradition, by
which they were all more or less controlled.
It should then be possible to arrive at some probable estimate of the extent
to which this common tradition is primitive, or at least capable of being traced
back to as early a period in the history of the Church as our research can
reasonably expect to reach.
This would give us, not necessarily, or not only, a theoretical basis for doctrine,
but a genuinely chronological starting point for the history of Christian thought.
It may fairly be said that a considerable degree of consent has now been achieved
about the character and contents of the common and central tradition.
It appears to have at its core what the New Testament itself calls the kerygma, or
proclamation of the Gospel.
In its most summary form the kerygma consists of the announcement of
certain historical events in a setting which displays the significance of those
events.
The events in question are those of the appearance of Jesus in history—
His ministry, sufferings and death and His subsequent manifestation of Himself
to His followers as risen from the dead and invested with the glory of another
world—
and the emergence of the Church as a society distinguished by the power and
activity of the Holy Spirit,
and looking forward to the return of its Lord as Judge and Saviour of the world.
The significance attached to these events is mainly indicated by references
to the Old Testament.
In the few clauses of the kerygma which are preserved in I
Cor.xv.3-5
it is said that Christ died, and rose the third day,
"according to the scriptures."
In the more formal summary outlines of the kerygma which are given in
Acts
it is a constant theme that in the coming of Christ,
His death and resurrection,
the prophecies are fulfilled.
[I assume here the results of the argument set forth in
my book,
The Apostolic Preaching and its Developments (Hodder & Stoughton,
1936).]
Such, in very broad terms, is the core of the common and central tradition.
By comparison of data in the Acts and in the Pauline epistles it can
be traced back to a very early stage indeed, and may fairly be called primitive.
The more closely we study the writings of the New Testament, the more clear
it becomes that in most of them, at any rate, this apostolic kerygma is
a basic standard of reference for everything that is set forth as part of the
Christian Gospel.
It is itself, properly speaking, pre-theological, and does not bring us very
far on the road to that reflective and reasoned presentation of the truth of
the Gospel which is Christian theology.
But it underlies everything.
It may be described as the ground-plan of New Testament theology.
In various parts of the New Testament,
notably in the epistles of Paul,
the Epistle to the Hebrews,
and the Gospel and Epistles of John,
we have a theological edifice constructed upon this plan.
The style of building differs considerably.
The theology of Paul, of John, and of the author to the Hebrews,
though based upon a common tradition of the centre, is far from uniform.
As church architecture, based upon a universal general plan, may show the various
characteristics of Romanesque, Gothic or Baroque,
so each of these theologians builds after his own style.
It is a great merit of modern critical study of the New Testament that it has
made us appreciate the individuality of the great theologians of the apostolic
age, and the rich diversity of their teaching.
The question now before us is this:
Granted that each of these early thinkers followed the general tradition embodied
in the apostolic kerygma,
and faithfully conserved its main outline,
have they anything in common beyond the bare outline?
To put it otherwise,
given the ground-plan, and the majestic buildings erected to its pattern,
can we find a substructure —
a part of the actual edifice—
which is common to them all,
or are the several buildings individually different from the foundation up?
In describing the contents of the kerygma,
I have distinguished the events which it announces, on the one hand,
and on the other hand the significance which it attaches
to them.
We shall normally seek the starting point for theology in those parts of the kerygma which
suggest significance.
As I have remarked, this significance is indicated mainly by reference to the
prophecies of the Old Testament.
The programmatic discourse attributed to Peter on the Day of Pentecost in Acts
ii begins (after the rhetorical exordium) with the pronouncement,
This is that which was spoken by the prophet,
(ii.16)
and it is punctuated by citations from the Old Testament all through.
Similarly, in the discourse of Peter and John before the Sanhedrin in chapter
iii, we are told,
the things which God foreshowed by the mouth of all the prophets,
... he thus fulfilled (iii.18).
In the type of kerygma attributed to Paul in Acts i we read
We bring you good tidings of the promise made to the fathers,
how that God fulfilled the same to our children
(i.32-33).
The "good tidings'' consist primarily in the news of what has happened;
to understand how they are "good tidings," they must be
related to what has gone before.
How vital this reference to Scripture is, appears from another clause in Peter's
Pentecostal discourse.
In his brief report of the facts, he comes to the point that Jesus was handed
over by the Jews to the Romans, who put Him to death.
The inclusion of so tragic a report in a proclamation which purports to be "good
tidings" needs some justification.
Peter offers the key to such justification by adding that all this took place
"by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God"
(Acts
ii.23).
Such a bald and provocative statement as that cannot have been intended to
stand by itself.
It was incumbent upon the preacher, having said so much, to establish what
was the determinate counsel of God.
The only way in which this could be discovered (for anyone who accepted the
fundamental postulates of biblical religion) was by consulting the record of
God's dealings with His people in Scripture;
for no devout and believing Jew would suppose that the human mind could by
speculative reasoning discover the counsel of the Most High.
Thus the Church was committed, by the very terms of its kerygma, to
a formidable task of biblical research,
primarily for the purpose of clarifying its own understanding of the momentous
events out of which it had emerged,
and also for the purpose of making its Gospel intelligible to the outside public.
According to the Acts of the Apostles this task was essayed from the very
beginning of the Church's existence as an organized and active body.
There are numerous places where the methods employed by early Christian preachers
are instructively depicted.
In Acts
viii.26-38, for example,
we have an account, given with the vividness characteristic of Lucan narrative,
of an encounter between the evangelist Philip and an Ethiopian visitor to Jerusalem—
the first recorded approach of a Christian preacher to a person neither Jew
by birth nor resident in Palestine.
The Ethiopian, having made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, has acquired a scroll
of the Book of Isaiah, and is whiling away the tedium of a long drive by reading
it— reading it aloud of course, after the manner of the time.
The narrator has thus skilfully prepared for the introduction of a passage
from the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah which, in his belief (and as we shall
see, in the general belief of the primitive Church), declared in unmistakable
terms
"the determinate counsel of God";
and he goes on to tell how the evangelist forthwith showed this to be "fulfilled" in
the Gospel facts.
Again, in Acts
xviii.24-28, we have a brief and not too perspicuous account of the work
of Apollos.
This rather enigmatic personage is described as a man of learning (or perhaps
an eloquent man, ἀνὺρ λόγιος)
and an outstanding biblical scholar, hailing from the great university city
of Alexandria.
He appeared at Ephesus as a disciple of John the Baptist and began teaching,
quite accurately (says the author), "the things concerning Jesus."
How much Luke intended to include under that head is not clear, but he evidently
felt that it fell short of the full Christian Gospel.
Apollos however was taken in hand by Priscilla and Aquila, who expounded to
him "the way of God" more accurately.
They were then satisfied to recommend him as a teacher to the young Church
at Corinth, and there he formed close ties with its members, and held public
sessions in which he set about convincing (the imperfect διακατηλέγχετο)
the Jews, by demonstrating through passages from the scriptures that the Messiah
of whom they spoke was no other than Jesus (εἶναι
τὸν χριστὸν Ἰησοῦν).
We could wish that our author had been more explicit;
but we seem safe in concluding that according to his view the Christian Gospel
could not be adequately or convincingly set forth unless the communication
of facts about Jesus (τὰ
περὶ τοῦ Ἰησοῦ)
was supported by references to the Old Testament which gave significance to
the facts, and that it was a prime concern of Christian missionaries to provide
and interpret such references.
The same method, fundamentally, is attributed to Paul.
At Thessalonica, for example (Acts
xvii.2-3), he followed what is expressly said to have been his general
practice, of commending the Gospel by arguing from the Scriptures.
He "opened up"
the meaning of certain passages from the Old Testament, and "adduced" them
as evidence for his conclusions (διελέξατο αὐτοῖς ἀπὸ τῶν γραφῶν,
διαωοίγων καὶ παρατιθέμενος).
The points that he made are summed up as follows:
that the Messiah is a suffering Messiah;
that the Messiah rises from the dead; and
that this Messiah is identical with Jesus.
Again, in Acts xxvi we have an account of a speech which Paul is said to
have delivered in the presence of Agrippa II,
and in which he briefly states and defends his missionary work.
No good Jew, he contends, ought to take exception to his preaching, since there
is nothing in it which cannot be justified out of "Moses and the prophets."
In particular, the three points to which exception was taken are all attested
by scripture, viz.
that the Messiah is a suffering Messiah;
that the Messiah is to rise from the dead, and
that He is to proclaim the light of salvation both to Israel and to the Gentiles (Acts xxvi.22-23).
Two of the points, we observe, are repeated from the other passage we noted:
the third point is new.
Paul does not here mention the point that the Messiah is to be identified with
Jesus,
while he adds the point that the Gospel is for Gentiles as well as for Jews.
But the general similarity of the two schemes is striking.
It is particularly interesting to note the form in which the main heads of
Paul's discussions are stated.
They are introduced by the particle εἰ used interrogatively:
"whether the Messiah is a suffering Messiah. ..."
This interrogative form is eminently appropriate to a method of teaching which
is described by the verb διαλέγεσθαι, "to
discuss."
We conclude that in addition to what is called "preaching" (κηρύσσειν),
early Christian missionaries also employed the method of discussion, in which
certain questions were propounded—
questions arising unavoidably out of the kerygma—
and answers sought by a study of the Old Testament.
Luke evidently believed that the three great questions which he has formulated
were in no way peculiar to Paul;
for so much at least we may infer from the close of his Gospel, where he has
appended to an account of the appearance of the risen Christ to His disciples
a summary of what they learned from Him after His resurrection:
"it is written
- that the Messiah is to suffer and
- to rise from the dead the third day, and
- that in His name repentance leading to forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed to all nations":
once again the three headings of Paul's argument before Agrippa (xxiv.46-47).
The Lucan writings are in the first place evidence
for missionary practice at the date of their composition.
So far however as Paul is concerned we are in a position to test Luke's statements
by the direct testimony of the Apostle's own writings.
We have indeed nowhere in the Pauline epistles a full discussion of the questions
propounded regarding the scriptural warrant for the Messiahship of Jesus, or
for His sufferings and resurrection.
None of the epistles was written to people who needed convincing on those points.
It was enough simply to set down the fact that all this was "according
to the scriptures."
But the last head,
"whether He is to proclaim the light both to Israel and to the Gentiles"
("first to the Jew; then to the Greek," as Paul formulated it briefly, Rom.i.16)
happened to be a matter on which there was still not complete agreement among
Christians,
and we have a full-length discussion of it in Romans
ix-xi,
which provides a striking example of Paul's method as described in Acts
xvii.2-3.
The terms "opening up" and
"adducing" are apt.
The method is to take certain passages of Scripture,
to examine them in relation to a broad context,
and to determine their meaning and application to the existing situation
by comparison with other passages from Scripture.
In the course of the discussion the apostle quotes from the following books
of the Old Testament:
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy,
Samuel, Kings,
Job, Psalms,
Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, Joel, Malachi.
This is evidence of the thorough and extensive biblical research which lies
behind Paul's exposition of the Gospel.
It should be added that the argument, complex and compressed as it is, proceeds
by strict sequence from step to step, and is, with one or two possible exceptions,
completely cogent, granted the pre-suppositions common to Paul and to those
whom he addressed.
The qualification indeed is itself scarcely necessary;
if one takes the pains to understand exactly what is implied in the various
steps in the argument,
there is very little which does not contribute to a strictly logical presentation
of his case from first principles.
A careful study of it, for which this is not the place, opens up a genuinely
historical understanding of the Gospel facts in relation to their antecedents
in the history of Israel.
This however would be a study of the mind of Paul, a single and towering genius,
and we are in search rather of that which was common to the general mind of
the Church.
Let us, then, take a further example from a different author,
the unknown scholar and theologian to whom we owe the Epistle
to the Hebrews.
This epistle is in large part a prolonged exposition of portions of the Old
Testament with reference to the Christian Gospel.
But take one brief passage, ii.5-13.
Here the question at issue is, to put it broadly, the status and dignity of
Jesus Christ;
that is to say, it might be placed under the Lucan heading "that the Messiah
is Jesus."
The author begins by citing at full length a passage from Psalm viii:
What is man that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that thou visitest him?
Thou didst for a short time make him inferior to angels:
thou hast crowned him with glory and honour;thou hast put all things under his feet (4-6).
The writer observes that the last clause here is to be taken strictly:
"all things" means the entire universe, without exception.
It is therefore clear that the terms "man" and "son of man"
cannot refer to the human race as we know it, for man is not yet lord of creation.
On the other hand we have seen Jesus (in the terms of the Psalm) first brought
low for a time, and then "crowned with glory and honour," and that,
by virtue of His passion and death.
[That all things are subjected to Him the author has already
shown from Ps.cx.i:
"Sit thou at my right hand till I make thy enemies the footstool of thy
feet" (Heb.i.13).]
Hence we must conclude that the "Son of Man" of the Psalm is Jesus
as Christ.
But that implies that the glory with which He is crowned is intended to be
shared with the whole human race,
for the Psalm speaks of
"man":
in Him God designs to bring many sons to glory.
This is what is referred to in Ps.x.22,
"I will proclaim thy name among my brothers;
in the midst of the church I will sing thy praise,"
as well as in Is.viii.18,
"Behold! I and the children whom God has given me."
The conclusion is that Jesus is Messiah, or Son of Man, in the sense that He
has passed through death to glory and universal sovereignty as representative
Head of a redeemed mankind.
As a further example of method we may take another passage from the same epistle, Heb.iii.7-iv.9.
The question at issue here is not precisely one of those listed by Luke, but
it is one which bears upon the fundamental assumption of the kerygma, that
the eschatological hope is now realized.
The author takes the word
"rest" (κατάπαυσις)
as the key to the blessings of the new era.
He cites at length a passage from Ps.xcv,
which ends,
unto whom I swore in my wrath:
They shall not enter into my rest.
Who, he asks, are these persons who are not to enter into God's rest?
Those who were faithless and disobedient.
It follows that those who are to enter into the rest are, by contrast, the
faithful (οἱ πιστεύσαντες,
which for him and his readers connotes "Christian believers").
But what is the "rest" spoken of?
It might be supposed to mean that Israelites who in the wilderness were faithful
while others were unfaithful would end their wanderings in the land of promise.
But this is impossible,
because the Psalm, written by David centuries after the time of Joshua, by
implication offers entrance into rest "to-day."
It is God's own rest, or Sabbath, that is meant:
see Gen.ii.2: "On that day God rested from all His works."
That is what is here meant by "my rest":
there is a
"sabbath", a day of rest, still in store for the people of God.
Conclusion:
"To-day" has come:
let us hasten to enter into God's rest.
Paul, and the author to the Hebrews, were trained scholars,
and both were men of great and original individuality.
It would be precarious to infer that precisely these methods of scripture interpretation
were employed by the common run of Christian teachers.
Let us look at a much more
"popular" work,
the First Epistle of Peter.
In the passage i.22-ii.10 the
author is dealing with the theme of the new people of God—
the people
"born again" through the word of the living God.
Here he seems to be going outside the scriptural basis of Christian preaching,
for "rebirth" is not a biblical idea.
But the reference to the Word of God brings him back to bedrock.
He quotes from Is.xl.6-8,
a passage which ends with the clause
"the Word of the Lord endures for ever";
and he adds:
"this is the word of the Gospel preached to you."
In receiving it (he proceeds), Christians have (in the words of Ps.xxxiv.8) "tasted
how gracious the Lord is."
The Lord, he continues (meaning, of course, our Lord Jesus Christ), is the
stone spoken of in Ps.cxviii.22,
rejected by men, but made by God both corner stone,
and also, as Is.xxviii.16 has
it, the foundation stone of Zion.
But the same stone, as Isaiah says in viii.14,
is to the faithless and the disobedient "a stone of stumbling and a rock
of offence."
No wonder, then, that Christ is rejected by many.
But those who accept Him are themselves "living stones" built upon
Him as foundation,
and are consequently, as sundry passages of the Old Testament declare God's
people to be,
a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession,
whose priestly function it is, to announce His mighty acts.
In short, what Hosea said has come true:
they who were once called Lo-ammi, "not my people,"
are now called Ammi,
"my people."
We observe that, unlike Paul and the author to the Hebrews, the writer of
this passage is not arguing.
He is setting forth the character of the Church's life,
founded upon Christ as He is made known in the Gospel,
by recalling passages from the Old Testament which recite the attributes of
the people of God,
which passages are assumed by him and his readers to be applicable to
Christ and His Church.
It is clear that the writer can confidently assume this application, without
argument;
from which we may fairly infer that an already accepted tradition of scriptural
interpretation lies behind this epistle.
But now,
if we turn back to Paul and the author to the Hebrews,
we discover that they too make certain assumptions without which their carefully
sustained arguments would not stand.
Take the latter first.
In chs.iii-iv, on
the "rest" of God's people,
the author is clearly arguing to show that a psalm not hitherto related specifically
to the themes of the Gospel has a real bearing on them.
But in ch.ii, on
Jesus as Son of Man, the case is different.
He assumes without argument that the one-hundred-and-tenth psalm refers to
Christ,
and uses its opening words (by implication) to support his reference to Christ
of the words
"thou hast put all things under his feet" from Ps.viii.6.
[He appears to find it necessary to argue for the application
of Ps.viii to
Christ;
yet we shall see reason to suppose that this psalm too had already been so
applied (pp. 32-34).]
Again, he assumes without argument
that the passages from which he cites
"I will proclaim thy name among my brothers,"
and "I and the children whom God has given me,"
refer to Christ.
Here again we seem to discern a common tradition lying behind the original
contribution of a single learned author,
a tradition which he shared with those to whom he wrote.
Similarly, although Paul in the main tries to start from an understanding of
the biblical text just as it stands in its context,
yet his selection of passages seems to be largely dictated by the postulate
that certain particular parts of scripture have direct relevance to the events
announced in the kerygma.
Thus, he argues that the passage from Deut.xxx.12-13, about the
word in the mouth and in the heart, has reference to the "word of Christ," or
the Gospel (Rom.x.6-10);
but he appears to assume rather than to argue that the passage from
Hosea about Ammi and Lo-ammi,
and the passages from Isaiah
about the Remnant,
about the Foundation stone of Zion,
and about the Stone of stumbling,
belong to a group of prophecies which directly illuminate the situation brought
about by the coming of Christ.
And these passages, with one exception, are those which we have seen to be
adduced under the same assumption by the author of I Peter.
The impression, therefore, that we derive from examination of such applications
of Old Testament Scripture to the events of the kerygma by the New Testament
theologians is that they are working upon certain accepted assumptions, and
that they have behind them a good deal of fundamental work upon the subject
which must have gone on in very early days.
This impression must be tested by closer inspection of the data.
It was suggested long ago that the phenomena of scriptural quotation in the
New Testament might be accounted for by the hypothesis that a collection of "messianic
proof-texts" was compiled at a very early date, and that this was used
by New Testament writers.
The hypothesis was worked out most elaborately by Rendel Harris, first in a
series of articles, which were subsequently published, with additional matter,
in two slim volumes entitled "Testimonies" (1916, 1920).
Harris's argument started from two ends.
First,
we have a volume under the name of Cyprian entitled Testimonial,
containing just such a collection,
organized and classified for the use of Christian apologists.
It is easy to see that Cyprian is little more than an editor who revised and
enlarged an earlier work.
Harris showed abundantly how substantial portions of the classified collection
can be recognized in such earlier writers as Tertullian, Irenaeus and Justin.
At the other end, we have the New Testament itself, where Harris noted certain
points:
in particular
certain passages tend to be quoted by more than one writer;
when they are so quoted, the said writers not infrequently agree in a
reading different from that of the LXX,
as if they were using in common a different translation,
though such translation can seldom be identified,
except in so far as some of these peculiar renderings reappear in the
later versions of Aquila or Theodotion;
certain passages tend to appear in combination in more than one New Testament
book,
suggesting that two or more authors took them from a source in which they
were already combined;
and this suggestion is all the stronger where it appears that a writer
has inadvertently attributed two passages from different authors to the
same author,
as for example Mark (i.2-3)
gives a composite citation from Malachi and Isaiah
and attributes the whole to Isaiah,
an error which might easily arise if he were drawing the quotations
not from copies of the books in question,
but from an anthology which gave the two prophecies together;
groups of passages tend to recur, connected by some key word or idea,
e.g. various passages which speak of a stone—
the stone which the builders rejected,
the corner-stone of Zion,
the stone of stumbling,
and Daniel's stone cut without hands, which overthrew the great image and
ground it to powder.
Such groupings seem to anticipate the classification of testimonies in
Cyprian and others, where we find, e.g. the passages just referred to under
the catch heading "Quod idem (Jesus) Lapis dictus sit."
Harris drew the conclusion that the original Book of Testimonies was,
if not the earliest literary product of the Church,
at least one of the earliest,
antedating every canonical writing,
and that its compiler was Matthew the Apostle;
and he adopted from F. C. Burkitt the suggestion that it was this compilation
which Papias meant when he said that "Matthew composed the Logia."
The subsequent fortunes of this most important book he was able, with his immense
and curious learning, to trace through innumerable writings, in various languages,
of the patristic period, showing that it was used, re-edited and enlarged constantly
throughout this period;
and he even ventured to identify a sixteenth century MS. preserved on Mount
Athos, containing a work against the Jews in five books
which consists mainly of a collection of Testimonies, and is attributed to "Matthew
the Monk," as a late form of the primitive Testimony-book, with the name
of its true author confusedly preserved.
This final stage of the argument, I fancy, no one, perhaps not even Harris
himself, took very seriously.
[I have heard him whimsically parody his own methods
with an apparent seriousness which imposed upon some of his hearers.]
But the main theory commanded wide attention and gained the assent of many
scholars.
In fact it may be said that in Great Britain at least Rendel Harris's book
was the starting point of modern study of the use of the Old Testament in the
New.
It has, I believe, been assumed by most recent British writers that some such
anthology of quotations was actually in existence at an early period, and that
its use by New Testament writers is the best explanation of the phenomena before
us.
For myself, I worked with Harris's hypothesis for many years.
Many of the observations which I have already made, and shall make, I owe originally
to the study of his work.
But I have come to think that his theory outruns the evidence, which is not
sufficient to prove so formidable a literary enterprise at so early a date.
Indeed, if such a work existed, was known to be the work of an apostle, and
was held in such high esteem
that Paul,
the author to the Hebrews,
the evangelists,
the author of Acts, and one after another of the early patristic writers
made it their vade mecum,
it is scarcely to be understood that it should have been omitted from the Canon,
should never be referred to, unless in Papias's enigmatic note,
and should not have emerged into the light of day, as a substantive work,
until Cyprian edited it in the middle of the third century.
Further, while the examples which Harris gave under the four heads I have mentioned
are striking enough,
it is difficult to extend the list of such examples under the heads (b), (c)
and (d).
The cases (b) where two or more writers agree in non-septuagintal readings
are not numerous,
certainly not more numerous than cases where one agrees with the LXX and the
other differs,
or where both differ from the LXX and from one another.
The list under (c) where identical combinations of passages occur in more than
one writer, is a comparatively short one, and while these cases need to be
accounted for, they may be quite special and exceptional cases, insufficient
to prove a general theory.
Finally, the recurrence of the group of passages in which a "stone" is
used as a symbol, corresponding as it does to an established grouping in known
testimony books, is indeed striking, but is almost the only one of its kind—
the only one certainly which carries any particular weight.
In my judgment, the evidence points in a somewhat different direction, as I
shall try to show.
The attempt to discover just how the Old Testament was employed to elucidate
the kerygma in the earliest period accessible to us and in circles which
exerted permanent influence on Christian thought, is one which we are bound
to make in seeking the substructure of New Testament theology; because, if
we can discover it, we shall be on the way to understanding the concept of "fulfilment,"
which appears to govern the early Christian interpretation of the Gospel events
as proclaimed in the kerygma.