Christian Notes Theology 32 September 19, 2007
By notetaker: Stephanie Anne Jones (<[e-mail]> Wednesday, September 19, 2007: The Formation of the World in Christ: Jesus of Nazareth, the Israel of God To this point in the course, the first moment in the creed has been our place of habitation, We believe in God the Father. Our central claim has been that we must understand the Referent in this Creed as Yahweh the God of Israel, that this moment of the Creed be understood against the backdrop of Yahweh's covenant with Israel. Creed as constructive of Christian identity, based in Israel. Important corrective work for Christian theology given its modern unfolding: highlighting the Jewish covenantal character of the Creed (must not be read in biological, cultural or ethnic terms), meant to focus and redirect C. theology: 1. Move toward a theological correction of whiteness as modernity's quintessential theological problem, 2. theological return towards Israel >> restore the pastoral character of C.T. >> picks up the key theological insight, read for example in Ellen Charry [from first week: "Two Millennia Later: Evangelizing Jews"], emphasis on the aretigetic (pastoral) function of Christian doctrine, on the one time, and the issue of Israel on the other (very important: sense in which Carter deeply resonates with what she's doing but must recognize differences, primary of which is the assumption of the racialization of Jews themselves, she assumes Jewishness is an ethnic identity, spot on however as regards her views on supercessionism: patience of hearing somebody all the way through and really getting what they're saying, deeply inhabiting it, but how to play your own solo back given your own knowledge and experience of theology) Christian doctrine as shaping us in virtue (Charry). Part II: transitions to the second moment of the Creed: from Yahweh's Triune selfwitness to the formation of the world in Christ: this lecture will walk us through the transition. Temptation: to see the first moment of the creed as merely a grand and elaborate setup to the "real story," which allows us to jettison the first part of the story (about Israel): supercessionist tendencies due to the overly linear view of the relationship between the Old and New Testaments: theological significance of this? Task: show that this way of approaching matters is insufficient for us as Christians, who we are to be as well as pastoralintellectual task of forming disciples and facilitating Christians trying to live out their place as Christ's body. Guiding Question: Christological: Who is Jesus Christ? Question of Christ's identity: as asked, when raised in Mark: Jesus went out, and his disciples went into the town of Caesarea Philippi, and he asked them, Whom do people say that I am? And whom do you say that I am? Matt. 16:13: Whom do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?
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Got to slow down, lest we miss something important: if raising this question, Jesus is already restaging the great scene that was Yahweh's prelude to the Exodus, and restaging the scene on Sinai (the preamble to the giving of the covenant: the Suzerain establishing the fact that he is already acting on the behalf of the Subject in a historical event: Exodus as this event Yahweh references: formalized covenantal relationship on Sinai: But Jesus restages this). This scene in the Gospels restages this preambular event: Yahweh establishing Yahweh's identity as the prelude for the event of the Exodus, which means that this event is the event into which the Gospel narratives are walking/leading us. Won't be able to identify the God of Moses when he shows up to deliver them: Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel and say to them...What is this God's name, what will I say to them? (Moses) God's response is the Tetragrammaton (I will be where, I will be who I will be): say to the children of Israel, I am sent me to you: raising in the Gospels of the Christological question: Who do you say that I am? Language of the tetragrammaton inside this question: question of identity: John the Baptist, prophet Elijah, other prophets...Peter answers, "You are the Christ," see a restatement of prelude to Exodus story: how the people are articulating his identity, filling out the tetragrammaton, that's at stake: in story but anchoring on John the Baptist or Elijah or another prophet: while Peter's statement is correct, must be arrested by the point that Peter's correction that Jesus is the Christ happens inside the affirmation that Jesus' identity is inside Israel's story: correcting only to whom the story is tagged, Jesus as Messiah not John the Baptist, etc. Elaborate on word "tagged": being focal point or center of story, place from which the story itself is oriented. Attempts to interpret Israel's story but in relationship to various focal centers: what Peter affirms is, it is Israel's story but you've got it tagged, oriented, to the wrong person. It is still Israel's story: hasn't stopped being Israel's story: though we have to consider how as well. It's not my story, or your story, it's Israel's story. Peter confirms the tetragrammaton, and Israel's story, but shifts the focus to Christ. The vowel points as it were, rendering God's name articulate, are found in Peter's statement, "You are the Christ." Contemporary Theologian: in contextualist mode: theology of James Cone, liberation theology, typically worked out of the oppressed, what Cone is trying to retrieve: part of what Cone does to get after the problem of whiteness is to snatch Jesus out of the possession of white folks, who think they own Jesus, that he is therefore white: learned a move from him >> What he basically does: Jesus is who he was, Jesus is who he is, Jesus is who he will be, Jesus is black. Understand the first couple of moves, because they are important: We must understand that Jesus is alien to us, he is not our possession: Jesus is strange to us in that Jesus is who he was: who was Jesus, tries to restore a vision of Jesus as who he was in second Temple Judaism among first century Jews, then sees a kind of progression: Jesus is who he is, understood in the strict context of the Gospels of the New Testament: Jesus can be who Jesus decides to be. Trying to play with the divine name: fact that Yahweh can choose to be who he will be on the basis of who he was and who he is: Exodus theme as kind of motif through which we see the ways Jesus decides to be who Jesus will be: see liberation today in black liberation movement... so Jesus is black. The last moves, about Jesus being black, Carter does not make (though as a matter of rhetoric, he's down with that...though as a matter of theology, he can't be: we have to keep saying Jesus is a Jew). Here's where the contextualist problem comes back to get you: Jesus as articulation of my own reality: just gives you the photo negative of the problem, but
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retains image of problem: Jesus don't belong to any of us: how you really affirm Cone's point: Jesus is a Jew who affirmed the expectations of his time and in so doing opens up and renews the world, but as a Jew and inside Israel's covenant: Jesus don't belong to us: Modern problem is that by which the West started believing Jesus belonged to them: constructs this problem, birth and history of the racial imagination ("there once was a time when race was not"): ask what were the conditions that gave birth to it? Believing that Jesus is mine. While Cone, at the end of the day, falls into the very problem he's trying to overcome, the problem by which theology is merely a cultured, gendered, etc. reflex of my own reality, there you have the problem: don't want to reinvent that problem but escape it. Must stay with Cone's first point, which is where the constructive power of his theology continues to reside (So provocative was Cone's deep insight here that theology had two choices, (1) to ignore him, to relativize him as an angry black man, or (2) to do what Balthasar said in his theology, to change: trying to seize his deepest insight, which is not just a liberation movement insight but a theological insight: to stand upon its shoulders and ask where to go, where to take it). Cone's deepest insight: Ultimate context must be reckoned with is Jesus himself. The context that matters is the context of Jesus himself. Suggesting then is not "no context" versus "being contextual," rather question is "which context? whose context?" Of late, theology in contest, my context or yours? But still in the problem. On many levels sound like a multiculturalist (respects, learned from but ultimately Carter is a Christian theologian): saying that the ultimate context which we all must reckon with is the context of Jesus. Who do you say that I am? Vantage point to query whom we are? In such a way that turn in Jesus brings Israel's story into sharp focus for us, brings it to its most pristine and clarion pitch, don't leave Israel's story: rather Jesus opens up the heart of the covenant, opens up the story for the world, but as that story: and Savior servant of the Jews, the Son of God, their Messiah. What must now be established is this: as Gentiles, Jesus doesn't belong to us: Jesus is not the universal ideal or the insubstantiation of freedom or the moral consciousness. He is the Israel of God, where Israel again is the Son: the Son of God. Only in his coming for Israel that he comes for those who are not Israel: thus the coming for notIsrael, if this is to occur at all, happens, is to happen, inside Yahweh's covenant with Israel. What does this mean? Means this: We are transitioning then from the Old to the New, from what one theologian (Balthasar) called the Elder covenant to the New covenant, or perhaps better, the Newer covenant, the Renewed Covenant: break out of oldnew opposition where one replaces the other, nuances to what we mean by `new': new as in renewed, elder as in relation to the newer covenant. We are not leaving the elder covenant, we can't be: for the two are one covenant: whatever we say about the covenant in its elder expression, on Sinai, and its renewed expression in Jesus Christ, we must see them as one covenant, expressing Yahweh's love for the world. Transition from Old to New? Don't mean transition that negates the former in moving to the latter: sense in which negating that language even as uses it, must qualify in each use: "always speaking under erasure" (postmodernism 101?!). Always speaking of/thinking of the covenant as it goes into fulfillment: Jesus brings the covenant into its modality of fulfillment: what marks it in
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fulfillment? VERY IMPORTANT: What Jesus does in bringing the covenant to fulfillment (remember, covenant begins unilaterally, Yahweh calls forth, creates the people Israel to be Yahweh's Son, but within the unilateralness, has a crucial bilateralness, calls for the response of Israel, not merely God's declaration, rather God's declaration but always searching for its perfect human embodied response: Israel's history is the struggle for this perfect human response, covenant unfolding itself in time, Israel's struggle to fully and adequately respond as the Son to God: remember the patripassionism of the OT, God in some sense suffers in this relationship, and Israel suffers in this relationship: when we get to Jesus we can see how these are true, how both thoroughly meet and yield the human flesh that is appropriate to the covenant: the working out of the covenant as a particular history is the working out of God's searching for Israel's perfectly humanized response, perfectly human response adequate to the expression Yahweh's love for this people: even if this people prostitutes itself, Yahweh will not issue a bill of divorcement) Philippians 2:6+, language of the selfemptying, already in the covenant, seeing in the covenant, in Yahweh's expression of love for this people, already something like the divine selfemptying happening but yearning for the perfect response to this divine selfemptying and when it comes, the perfect expression of humanity, in tune and in sync with Yahweh's selfemptying love: history of Israel, of their relationship with Yahweh, of their wounds, of their call: Jesus as expression of response thoroughly adequated to the divine call, in just this sense the Israel of God, God's son, not by virtue of the negation of Israel but by bringing their life and history to fullness: means that Jesus being the nation is the nation resurrected (the Resurrection). Here's the point: the covenant Yahweh enters into with Israel is a covenant that requires its human partner, which in its fullness needs its human embodiment, covenant as Israel, Israel as humanity. Converging relationship: Yahweh's coming and selfemptying in love for the world (Yahweh holds nothing back of who Yahweh is in selfpossession, abandons Yahweh's self, shall we say), then the world selfemptying back to Yahweh (human complementary response), when thoroughly converge you have the full meeting of divinity and humanity (Caledonian Creed). Must see what the covenant with Israel even means so that the language of Trinity, of Christology, doesn't become our language: Yahweh's love of Israel which entails Yahweh's love of the world (what we must hear when we hear Trinity). Point is Yahweh's love for Israel, and out of that that even nonIsrael is brought in: the point is not whether explanations of Trinity are intellectually adequate. At the end of the day, must understand Jesus in terms of Yahweh's giving of who Yahweh is for the people Israel: call for Israel to connect up with, respond adequately to Yahweh's love for his people: in its history, always `yes but': Jesus is Israel's response adequately stated: full coming together, divine action coupled with human response in one person: precisely from that that we can launch into Christological conversations: happening inside Israel's covenant: Jesus is the fulfillment of Israel's covenant, brings it to its crescendo and its perfection.
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Question (by Brian, brilliant): What do we do with Hebrews? "The old made obsolete...will soon disappear." Full answer to that can't be given `til we get to the third moment of the Creed: What does it mean to say that the old covenant is obsolete? We believe in the Holy Spirit >> entails claim of belief in Church >> Church as Christ's body and Israel as people >> answered in certain reading of book of Acts. Not to read the language of obsolescence as negation. To understand this better: return momentarily to the methodological stricture we started with in week 1: Jazz: six lessons: one, to know the tradition, to rigorously and relentlessly inhabit it, to improvise within the tradition, to be so inside the tradition that it gives you voice, find yourself by being found within the tradition that you rigorously inhabit (think Brecker and Coltrane's Naima: becomes Brecker's mouthpiece): theology has its own way of speaking about this: Irenaeus, anacaphalyasis, notion of recapitulation, in Against Heresies (Marcionism, took leave of Israel as relevant to Christian identity): argues rigorously for connection between Christianity and its Jewish roots: builds on Paul in Ephesians (uses verb anacaphaleo). Critical point: overarching statement for next three weeks: In shifting form the first to the second moment of the Creed (Father to Son), not turning from Israel's story, sum and substance of NT, continuation of Israel's story in the form of Jesus' story: Israel's story refracted into the biography of a life, that of Jesus: the quintessence of Israel's story is played out in and as the uniqueness of Jesus' life: Gospel is the story of Jesus told as the story of Israel in concentration (`parfum' rather than `eau de toilette'): indeed in a form that brings Israel's story to a crescendo: Gospel writers, including Paul, express the belief that in JC Israel's history has reached its climax. Coming pieces: Creation (Creation is the story of Israel's creation through which we understand the Creation), anthropology (the story of Jesus is the coming to be of humankind in its adequate response to Yahweh: Jesus' humanity becomes the humanizing of all humanity). Must hear how its read through Jesus as the adequate response to Yahweh. Stepping back a moment into expectations of 1st century Jews: examine the backdrop against which Jesus' claim to be Israel's messiah is intelligible: pull this into theology, see what's at stake: expectations of Jews of the era, centered on a new turn in Israel's fortunes: in exile: if there is one God the Creator and Israel is this God's people, then this God must act sooner or later to restore this people's fortunes: symbols of covenantal life must be restored because the covenant must be renewed: emphasis on apocalyptic, whose point is not to try to get us to think about the end of this world and inbreaking of another, but to draw on exodus and (re)creation language to talk about Israel's restoration, now, not in the time to come. It is as part of this that we must understand a text such as Daniel 7, in its language of the Son of Man: (remember Matthew...or is it really Mark?): story of various monsters who represent various nations at war against Israel holding them in bondage or exile: Son of Man figure whom the beasts attack but is vindicated: who is this figure? Practice of the Jews at the time to interpret as representative of the nation not as an individual: this figure is the nation, is Israel, the true humanity, among the nations who themselves act like beasts or monsters (almost like the Genesis 2 story: one human being in the midst of the animals): expression of a hope for recreation.
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Thumbnail of book of Matthew: Jesus is the nation: Matthew reiterates this point, Jesus being the expression of Jesus' story in Concentration: first five books like the Pentateuch: 1:1 like Genesis, 2:15 Exodus, 57 Deuteronomy (regiving of the law on the mountain, beatitudes, etc.), royal and prophetic ministry followed by an exile (the cross) culminating with the restoration (resurrection): Israel's story in the concentrated form of a life, but now as an adequate response to Yahweh the Father's love.
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