Interpreting the Apostolic Tradition

Introduction to New Testament: Epistles, Essay 2

When we read the New Testament epistles, we are listening for God’s word to us today as spoken through documents written nearly two thousand years ago. We are faced with a myriad of challenges to interpretation, but we are far from the first Christians to find ourselves in this fix. The problem of interpretation is even embedded within these texts themselves, as they struggle to reconcile or contrast their experience of the gospel with their own previous traditions — whether originally Hebrew scripture, Gentile philosophy, or pagan practice — and with their contemporary context. (Lincoln, p. 256) We are still doing this work of locating ourselves within the apostolic tradition, as we seek to understand it for ourselves and for own time.

How are we to make sense of the scriptural abyss that seems to open up between Paul’s ecstatic declaration of the unity and equality of believers in Galatians 3:28 (“There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”) and the rigid hierarchical roles assigned to masters and slaves, men and women, parents and children in the Household Codes found in Colossians, Ephesians, and 1 Peter? What sort of church are we to be: one where each person is like a member of the body of Christ, with his or her own unique gifts contributing to the well-being of the whole without dominating or taking precedence over the others (1 Cor. 12:4) or is the church to be a well-ordered community like a household of the empire or the state itself, with Christ as its head, its Lord and Master, and each member of the body in proper hierarchical relationship to Christ and to one another ( Col. 1:18, Eph. 5:23-24)?

An awareness of the changing circumstances between Paul’s letters and those that shaped the Deutero-Pauline and Pastoral letters can help us sort through the differences. The theology and ethical teaching in Paul’s undisputed letters were driven by his personal encounter with the Risen One and his call to spread the gospel of faith and freedom to the Gentiles, as well as his grounding in an apocalyptic tradition of Judaism which expected that when the Messiah appeared a new age was imminent. For Paul, the Easter event was a recent one, the Spirit was alive and moving, and the time before the parousia, the end-time return of Jesus Christ, was very short, compelling urgency in communicating and living out the good news. His letters are marked by joy and excitement, and also by frustration and irritation at the communities who just don’t seem to grasp the radical nature of God’s grace in Christ, who are distracted by false-teaching outsiders, internal squabbles over status, or the worldly seductions of empire.

By the final decades of the first century, however, the earliest Christian communities were in a new phase of their life. The second coming had not occurred as promptly as anticipated, some of the first witnesses and believers had died, children were being born, households had to be managed and sustained, and Christian churches had to contend with either persecution and/or alienation from both the Roman empire and the various local cultural norms in which they were embedded. Prolonged exposure to the enticements of the surrounding environment made vital the reinforcement of the Christian community’s identity and values. Conversely, a movement that had held special appeal to outsiders and the powerless (like women, slaves, and displaced people) (Lincoln, p.258) now was reaching a wider spectrum of people at all levels of social strata, and needed to negotiate for its longer-term survival and prestige in a society that put a premium on order and honor. And as the Christian communities grew, their social, ethnic, and geographical diversity put them at risk of splintering apart and losing their shared identity of belief and practice.

The period of time which gives us these later letters was also the time during which the Gospels first came to be composed, drawing upon oral traditions of Jesus stories and liturgical materials of the earliest Christian communities as well perhaps as written collections of teachings/sayings. In both the Gospels and the epistles we find documents that address the needs and concerns of specific communities, but that also point to an emerging consolidation of lines of authority and a universalizing ambition for “the faith.” (Perkins, p. 238) The care that the authors of the non-Pauline epistles took to associate themselves with the Pauline and apostolic traditions (e.g, by pseudonymous attribution or by adopting the formal structure of the Pauline letters) speaks to the importance placed on the authenticity of that transmission by authors and audience alike.

We can see these factors at work, for example, in 2 Peter. Its attribution to Simeon Peter presents the author as squarely in the apostolic tradition, and the description of witnessing the transfiguration at 1:18 (found also in synoptic Gospels) underlines the connection. It carries only vestigial elements of the letter format, however, as it is written in the rhetorical genre in Jewish literature of a farewell address or testament, leaving advice and guidance from a leader to the community (Watson, p. 317). The community addressed is at risk because the delay of parousia has left it susceptible to the teaching of “false prophets” and abandonment of a strict Christian behavioral ethos. The letter presents the apostles as having a unitary message that is normative for the church and treats the Pauline letters as acknowledged — if sometimes difficult to understand — scripture. (1 Pet. 3:15-16). (Watson, p. 315, 319) A falling away from the ethical standards and practices promoted by the apostles is presented as an offense against and insult to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and a rejection of his saving mastery. (Watson, p. 320)

In the Pastoral epistles, Pauline ‘faith’ — which was a response to God’s free gift of grace and act of justification — has become “the faith”—propositions or sayings and a way of living and worshipping together to which the church community assents. (Dunn, p. 275; Ringe, p. 550) This church may even have second-generation members (“from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” 2 Tim. 3:15) and the author can point with confidence to “sound doctrine” and expect that his audience will carry forward the work of evangelism in that tradition (2 Tim. 4:3, 5) The church community is 1 Timothy has also become more deliberately structured, and now has an “overseer” (bishop) as well as deacons. (Dunn, p. 276) As in the Household Codes and the Stoic virtue lists to which they are related, hierarchical relationships in 1 Timothy are now inscribed with the values of the wider society: women (who had been matter-of-factly described as deacons in the undisputed Pauline letters) are now forbidden to teach (1Tim 2:12) and have authority. The community living by the scandalous message of the cross is made more tolerable to outsiders by limiting its blatant offenses to the honor/shame system that gross contravention of its hierarchical mores would entail. (Ringe, p. 547-8, Martin, p. 213)

The same tensions between the apostolic tradition, the requirement of Spirit-inspired interpretation for changing circumstances, and the radical roots of the gospel message have recurred again and again in the life of the church. Paul was able to envisage that the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ could wipe away the vast cultural gulf between Jew and Gentile by inscribing Gentiles within Judaism’s sacred history and liberating Jews from the burden of the law. The church he helped bring into being, however, was unsuccessful in extending that paradigm to the relationships between masters and slaves, husbands and wives (and men and women, generally), and parents and children.

Scriptural justification for the practice of slavery lasted well into the nineteenth century and, as Clarice J. Martin outlines, it took a concerted effort of hermeneutical reinterpretation on the part of slaves themselves, as well as abolitionists, to reassert the primacy of the Pauline emphasis on shared human kinship as adopted children of God and our unity and equality in Christ. (Martin, p. 215-7) The same liberating hermeneutic was not, however, extended to the male/female relationship at the time. That work had to wait yet another century and, sad to say, is still far from complete among many churches. Similarly, movements to include other excluded and traditionally vilified groups, such as gay and lesbian people, are still making slow progress against the literalist and exclusionary readings of scriptural codes of who’s in and who’s out.

In 1 Timothy 1:19 we read, “by rejecting conscience, certain persons have suffered shipwreck in the faith,” and in 2 Peter 1:21-2 that “no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by human will, but men and women moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” Accordingly, we must listen to our consciences when we interpret scripture and the apostolic traditions, remaining open to and mindful of the movement of the Holy Spirit in our time and in our church.

Bibliography
Dunn, James D. G. 2005. “The First and Second Letters to Timothy and the Letter to Titus.” In The New Interpreter’s Bible New Testament Survey, 274-281. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press.

Lincoln, Andrew T. 2005. “The Letter to the Colossians.” In The New Interpreter’s Bible New Testament Survey, 238-262. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press.

Martin, Clarice J. 1991. “The Haustafeln (Household Codes) in African American Biblical Interpretation: “Free Slaves” and “Subordinate Women.” In Stony the Road We Trod, ed. Cain Hope Felder, 206-231. Minneapolis, MN: Augsberg Press.

Ringe, Sharon. 2004. “1 and 2 Peter, Jude.” In Global Bible Commentary, eds., Teresa Okure, J. Severino Croatto, Nicole Wilkinson Duran, 545-551. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press.

Watson, Duane F. 2005. “The Second Letter of Peter.” In The New Interpreter’s Bible New Testament Survey, 315-320. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press.

Discouraging Word

The new guidlines for the discernment process in the diocese of Washington are out. Reading them, I very much doubt I will be able to jump through all the hoops they require.

Which somewhat simplifies my decision as to whether to enroll as a degree student in September.

You'd think this new-found clarity would bring me some satisfaction. It does not.

First Class

True confession time.

After a week of pretty relentless work and emotional unpleasantness, on a whim and in a moment of weakness I took the airline up on its $50 upgrade offer. I flew home in luxury.

I wish I could do it every time. Amazing what a comfortable seat and plenty of elbow room will do for a person's frame of mind.

Irony alert: this was the first shuttle flight from Boston to DC I've ever been on that arrived fifteen minutes EARLY. So I got to enjoy my expensive seat for a significantly shorter than typical time.

I am a Christian

I went with my dear friend J. and her family to an Easter service at the First Parish of the Unitarian Universalist Church in Harvard Square. It was a pleasant-enough affair, filled with rambunctious children, an ambitious music program, and a generously ecumenical agenda. The homily had uplifting anecdotes.

It left me spiritually unfed.

Jesus was mentioned three times. The resurrection was a maybe-yes-maybe-no proposition. Most of the language was about the cycles of nature and the return of Spring. There was nothing to object to, nothing to contend with, and nothing to be passionate about.

Willy-nilly, like it or not, it appears that I am a Christian. The Gospel story, with all its problems, challenges, aggravations, contradictions, and joys... it's my story. It doesn't have to be everybody's story. (Maybe it won't always be my story, who knows?) But I can say that spending this Easter away from my church on this, our day of days, has made me feel more a Christian than I have ever felt in my life.

The Episcopal church I went to for a Good Friday service, poor St. James, was very cold and sparsely attended. I felt for this congregation that seems almost on the edge of extinction (I don't know if it is or not, it just seemed marginal). I went forward to venerate the cross, and found myself weeping. I longed for communion bread and wine.

There was none to be had then, or this Sunday, and I miss it as a starving person misses life-sustaining food. How did it come to this, for me?

Feed me, Lord Jesus.

Strange Communion

A decade ago, we went to Cape Cod to scatter some of my mother's ashes. (My father insisted on retaining most of them. He wants us to mingle my mother's and his own when he dies.)

At the beach, each of us had a small handfull of ashes. I waded into the ocean, and prepared to cast them into the water. I was overcome with a primal urge. With my back shielding my actions from the rest of my family, I opened my hand and touched the tip of my tongue to the scant heap. The taste was bitter and harsh, and the texture unexpectedly gritty and very unpleasant. The act seemed at once wildly transgressive and absolutely essential.

I cast the ashes out away from me out onto the gentle ocean swells. I leaned and rinsed my mouth out with seawater.

Much later, in a conversation with my sister, I learned she had done the exact same thing. I wonder how common this behavior is.

I was reminded of it by this. Richards has since retracted the comment. But as for me, I believe it. There is some primitive impulse to incorporate our beloved dead into our own living substance.

Obligation

Tomorrow morning I'm flying to Boston to deal with The Artistic Legacy as best I can. I am not looking forward to it all. I'll do what I can, which won't be all that fabulous.

I'm lucky to have wonderful friends who will help ease the experience somewhat.

Still, I hate the whole business.

I'm not sure how much internet access I'll have. Please, keep a good thought for me over the next week or so.