Comments on: The Roots of the Messiah http://blog.mycatholicfaithdelivered.com/2010/12/17/the-roots-of-the-messiah/ Time for the Timeless Wed, 05 Jan 2011 08:51:46 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 By: petebrown http://blog.mycatholicfaithdelivered.com/2010/12/17/the-roots-of-the-messiah/#comment-248 petebrown Mon, 20 Dec 2010 11:01:26 +0000 /post/The-Roots-of-the-Messiah.aspx#comment-248 Well...I''m not sure we should conflate what certain Church fathers did or tried to do with the mind of the Church. The Church Fathers generally assumed that the gospels were reducible to historical fact. Not in every case did they do this...we see eg Chrysostom arguing that the differences between them actually strengthened their historicity when they agreed and Origen arguing that the gospels could not be harmonized according to the letter. Even Augustine in his influential but largely unsuccessful "Harmony of the Gospels" acknowledges at several points that one would have to make a distinction between the "things" the gospel words pointed to and the words themselves. All of these in their own way pointed to a more refined and sophisticated approach today. The Church herself in Dei Verbum 19 draws a distinction between 1) the historical events themselves 2) the telling of the events in the early Church and 3) the writing of the gospels. There''s distance in other words between the Christ event and the gospels..not only a temporal "distance" but metaphysical "distance" as well since the evangelists clearly take some license in shaping the material they had into gospel narratives. How far this license extends is a thorny problem, admittedly. But the license makes it impossible for us ever to unscramble the egg. The evangelists have scrambled it without any expectation that we''d try to go in and unscramble them later. In fact I think they''d be astounded if they saw us trying!! And I think the Church, which now emphasizes the inspired Biblical writers as true authors who write in a distinct genre called "gospels" is now telling us to just appreciate the different flavored omelets for themselves and not only for the ingredients which go back to the historical event. When I teach NT --as I will again in a few weeks--I generally devote nearly a whole class period to getting harmonizing the gospel accounts out of the students'' systems. Ditto with the naive view that the historical event was simply a composite of stitched together gospel accounts. I generally don''t use the omelet egg analogy but sometimes I do draw a distinction between photographs and portraits. We don''t try to harmonize Peal''s and Stuart''s versions of George Washington--even though we are curious about what the dude actually looked like--according to modern standards of imaging. We just like each portrait for what its artist intended it to be. And naturally the Church is very careful to connect its belief in inerrancy to what the authors actually intended. If they intended their genealogies to serve a more literary/theological purpose (and this is an if!), we should not expect them to meet some idealized standard of precision. Nor should we evaluate them by that standard--as people that insist on coming up with dubious and farfetched ways to harmonize them implicitly do. So--I don''t mean to be a pest by pressing my objection--but this is an issue I care about. I really think harmonization runs very much against the tenor of recent Church documents. But worse still..I think it is dangerous. I run across ex-believers in Biblical studies all the time....they never learned nuance..never learned that there was distance between the event and the gospels and thus gave up believing when they couldn''t "solve" the panoply of discrepancies between the gospel accounts--as their teachers insisted could be done or held out hope that one day would eventually be done. So show me an ex=beleiver and I''ll show you an ex-fundamentalist at least 75% of the time!!! So I do think it is important that new believers looking at genealogies or enything with "fresh eyes" learn a little about the relationship of the gospels to history. Merry Christmas, Leon. Well…I”m not sure we should conflate what certain Church fathers did or tried to do with the mind of the Church. The Church Fathers generally assumed that the gospels were reducible to historical fact. Not in every case did they do this…we see eg Chrysostom arguing that the differences between them actually strengthened their historicity when they agreed and Origen arguing that the gospels could not be harmonized according to the letter. Even Augustine in his influential but largely unsuccessful "Harmony of the Gospels" acknowledges at several points that one would have to make a distinction between the "things" the gospel words pointed to and the words themselves. All of these in their own way pointed to a more refined and sophisticated approach today.

The Church herself in Dei Verbum 19 draws a distinction between 1) the historical events themselves 2) the telling of the events in the early Church and 3) the writing of the gospels. There”s distance in other words between the Christ event and the gospels..not only a temporal "distance" but metaphysical "distance" as well since the evangelists clearly take some license in shaping the material they had into gospel narratives. How far this license extends is a thorny problem, admittedly. But the license makes it impossible for us ever to unscramble the egg. The evangelists have scrambled it without any expectation that we”d try to go in and unscramble them later. In fact I think they”d be astounded if they saw us trying!! And I think the Church, which now emphasizes the inspired Biblical writers as true authors who write in a distinct genre called "gospels" is now telling us to just appreciate the different flavored omelets for themselves and not only for the ingredients which go back to the historical event.

When I teach NT –as I will again in a few weeks–I generally devote nearly a whole class period to getting harmonizing the gospel accounts out of the students” systems. Ditto with the naive view that the historical event was simply a composite of stitched together gospel accounts. I generally don”t use the omelet egg analogy but sometimes I do draw a distinction between photographs and portraits. We don”t try to harmonize Peal”s and Stuart”s versions of George Washington–even though we are curious about what the dude actually looked like–according to modern standards of imaging. We just like each portrait for what its artist intended it to be. And naturally the Church is very careful to connect its belief in inerrancy to what the authors actually intended. If they intended their genealogies to serve a more literary/theological purpose (and this is an if!), we should not expect them to meet some idealized standard of precision. Nor should we evaluate them by that standard–as people that insist on coming up with dubious and farfetched ways to harmonize them implicitly do.

So–I don”t mean to be a pest by pressing my objection–but this is an issue I care about. I really think harmonization runs very much against the tenor of recent Church documents. But worse still..I think it is dangerous. I run across ex-believers in Biblical studies all the time….they never learned nuance..never learned that there was distance between the event and the gospels and thus gave up believing when they couldn”t "solve" the panoply of discrepancies between the gospel accounts–as their teachers insisted could be done or held out hope that one day would eventually be done. So show me an ex=beleiver and I”ll show you an ex-fundamentalist at least 75% of the time!!!

So I do think it is important that new believers looking at genealogies or enything with "fresh eyes" learn a little about the relationship of the gospels to history.

Merry Christmas, Leon.

]]> By: leon http://blog.mycatholicfaithdelivered.com/2010/12/17/the-roots-of-the-messiah/#comment-247 leon Sat, 18 Dec 2010 11:39:36 +0000 /post/The-Roots-of-the-Messiah.aspx#comment-247 I suppose one can go overboard on the subject, but several Church Fathers went to significant lengths to understand and explain how the two fit together, and those who turn to the Bible with "fresh eyes" do tend to notice the apparent discrepancies and ask about them. Getting to the "bottom" of this biblical puzzle does call for literal-historical criticism undertaken with the mind of the Church. And besides, my genealogy doesn''t change depending on my audience! If I''m making up different genealogies, then why should anybody take me seriously? However, as you note, there may be other considerations, sources, etc. based on the author and audience that could account for the different presentations, and surely those can and should be developed in a way that edifies the faithful. Merry Christmas, Pete! I suppose one can go overboard on the subject, but several Church Fathers went to significant lengths to understand and explain how the two fit together, and those who turn to the Bible with "fresh eyes" do tend to notice the apparent discrepancies and ask about them. Getting to the "bottom" of this biblical puzzle does call for literal-historical criticism undertaken with the mind of the Church.

And besides, my genealogy doesn”t change depending on my audience! If I”m making up different genealogies, then why should anybody take me seriously? However, as you note, there may be other considerations, sources, etc. based on the author and audience that could account for the different presentations, and surely those can and should be developed in a way that edifies the faithful. Merry Christmas, Pete!

]]> By: petebrown http://blog.mycatholicfaithdelivered.com/2010/12/17/the-roots-of-the-messiah/#comment-246 petebrown Fri, 17 Dec 2010 21:07:27 +0000 /post/The-Roots-of-the-Messiah.aspx#comment-246 Hi Leon Isn''t harmonization of the two genealogies the wrong approach in a way? After all, the Holy Spirit inspired two different ones as part of the fourfold gospel tradition. He doesn''t seem to have been especially bothered by the differences, so why should we be? Maybe we should actuallly embrace the differences and explain them with reference to Matthew''s and Luke''s distinctive theological and literary purposes. That seems to me to be an eminently more sensible way of proceeding than trying to explain the discrepancies away. Besides, purely at the level of history, the fact that Matt and Luke tell such different infancy stories actually strengthens the claims of historicity on points in which they agree! Hi Leon

Isn”t harmonization of the two genealogies the wrong approach in a way? After all, the Holy Spirit inspired two different ones as part of the fourfold gospel tradition. He doesn”t seem to have been especially bothered by the differences, so why should we be? Maybe we should actuallly embrace the differences and explain them with reference to Matthew”s and Luke”s distinctive theological and literary purposes. That seems to me to be an eminently more sensible way of proceeding than trying to explain the discrepancies away.

Besides, purely at the level of history, the fact that Matt and Luke tell such different infancy stories actually strengthens the claims of historicity on points in which they agree!

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