Listening to: Nothing
I've just uploaded Mike Reeves' seminar on the Apostolic Fathers to Theology Network. Click click clicky! Enjoy.
(There's Ignatius glady being eaten by lions in Rome.)
In time they'll be joined by their later friends Justin Martyr and Irenaeus of Lyon.
Meanwhile, I'm preparing for my sermon on Sunday night- Psalm 84. How lovely is Your dwelling place... Wonderful stuff!
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Introducing... The Apostolic Fathers
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7 comments:
Excellent. So good to spend some time with the middle church fathers. ;-)
awesome.. can't wait for the rest..
btw.. any chance of getting those notes that they use!? =)
dev
yeah i'll second dev's post.. :) i was a bit lost without the notes which the people who attended the calvin/augustine/luther seminars received...
i stumbled on mark driscoll's church website which separates the notes and mp3's quite nicely... perhaps it can be of some minor inspiration to incorporating the notes/mp3's to the site?
http://media.marshillchurch.org/
Does MR talk about (what we would now call) the anti-Semitism of all too many of these church fathers? I hope he does - in my experience far too many evangelicals are unaware of the long and depressing history of "Christian" anti-Jewish incitement...
Dev & Jacky- the notes won't be coming just yet I'm afraid. Hold on for news on that front, though.
James- good question.
Mike does deal with the way these guys address Judaism and Jewish people. His basic approach is, I think, the right one. He says that to simply come crashing down on some of these with charges of anti-semitism is actually a little bit unfair and in fact not quite true.
The key is, I think, reading Luther and Justin and the rest on their own terms. What often happens in my experience is that people pull-out quotes (e.g. Luther's famous and horrifying stuff about burning synagogues and killing Jews), make the charge of anti-semitism/racism, and write them off by saying 'I know he was important for such and such a doctrine, but look at this! We can't possibly like this guy!'
That's unfair for a couple of reasons at least: anti-semitism is a recent term, and it's very much bound-up with Hitler and the Holocaust in our thinking. To apply that without discretion to a 16th Century theologian (let alone a first century one) is something akin to calling the Bible homophobic.
Secondly, anti-semitism is to do with hating Jewish people (or other Semitic people) because of their ethnicity. What we see in Justin (and for that matter Jesus and Paul!) is anti-Judaism. Justin is in this conversation with Trypho hoping to convince him that Jesus is his Messiah- and he does that by demonstrating that according to the Hebrew Scriptures, it's Christianity (or the Messianic believers) that are the legitimate heirs to Abraham and the Patriarchs. If Judaism were the heir, then Christianity is completely illegitimate.
Just as Paul goes spare at Judaisers and Jesus condemns the Pharisees, so Justin tell Trypho that the religion he's following is not the religion of the Old Testament, for the Patriarchs and Prophets trusted in Christ! So it's anti-Judaism, but far from anti-Jewish. In fact it would be far more anti-Jewish if Justin had decided to leave Trypho in his sin and not bother with Jewish evangelism.
Justin seems a good example of the Early Church's concern to show Jewish people their Messiah from their own Scriptures. Our problem tends to be a sociological one as we find his methods difficult to swallow- but we have to be very careful when we make claims of racism.
Hope that's all clear. Do come back to me on any of that. And if anyone more learned than me wants to touch on any of this, please do!
Hi Dan,
Thanks for that. I think I would generally agree with what you've written, except:
(1) Yes, racial anti-Semitism is a recent development, but I don't think that means its entirely wrong to read it back into history. If anti-Semitism can be defined as "a hatred of Jews because they are different" then it can be traced back at least as far as Haman (Esther 3:8)! The following all came after Justin Martyr, but when Ambrose orchestrated the burning of a synagogue; when Jerome referred to Jews as 'carnal', 'lewd' and 'materialistic'; when the Council of Nicaea declared that Easter should no longer be determnined by or celebrated during Passover because it was inappropriate for Christians to have anything in common with "this odious people" - was that not anti-Semitism?
(2) Small but important point: "Anti-Semitism" was initially coined solely with reference to hatred of Jews - not of other Semitic peoples.
(3) I don't think it's accurate to say we see "anti-Judaism" in Jesus and Paul. Jesus was, looked like, spoke like and answered to the title "rabbi". Paul identified as a Pharisee long after coming to faith in Jesus and (acts 21) was prepared to offer a blood sacrifice in the Temple to vouch that he never encouraged Diaspora Jews to turn away from Jewish customs. They weren't "anti-Judaism" in the sense of being against all and any form of Jewish self-expression; they were against non-Messianic expressions of that identity i.e. they were against "wrong forms of Judaism", not against "Judaism" full stop. A small but important difference! In contrast, once Christianity became the state religion under Constantine, Jews who came to faith in Jesus were forced to renounce all forms of Jewish identity.
Thanks, James.
On your point 1, of course there has been 'racial' hatred all through history. I think it's important to distinguish what we see in Scripture as particularly important since in the actions of Haman or Herod, we're seeing essentially an effort to wipe-out the Seed. That's the real goal that lies behind what appears to be simple ethnic cleansing or racism.
After Christ's birth, I think we're looking at a slightly different phenomenon (e.g. terrible ignorance in the case of medieval England where Jews were expelled from town on account of being considered 'Christ killers' etc.) What we're not seeing is the effort to stamp-out the Messiah.
Undoubtedly the Church's attitude towards Jewish people has at times been deplorable, but I still would say that we need to be a little more nuanced in our language. What I'd hope to avoid is the idea that all of Church history is written-off on account of the Fathers (and many after) being considered biggots, racists, and devilishly intent on wiping-out the Jewish people.
Number 2 taken, and I think that's important, yes. Thanks for pointing that out.
Point 3 is an interesting one. I'm not sure that because Jesus was called rabbi and Paul was a Pharisee etc. they were endorsing what Judaism was during their lifetimes. If Paul had endorsed it, he would never have been born again: he'd still be waiting for the Messiah, having continued to deny Christ. In Galatians 1, Paul speaks about what we can only call a conversion from Judaism. I know that's an uncomfortable term for many people, but he speaks about his 'old way of life in Judaism' and contrasts that with set apart from birth by the Lord to see God's Son. Paul's conversion is out of the religion of law keeping for righteousness/empty ritualism (Judaism) and into the true religion of Abraham and the Patriarchs (salvation through faith in the Messiah). That seems to be at the heart of Galatians.
I think that does require us to say that the Judaism of the New Testament that Paul and Jesus both spoke against was far from the religion of the Old Testament. In fact that's precisely Jesus' point in John 8 when he tells the Pharisees that if they were really Abraham's children, they would have accepted Him (John 8v38)- and even goes so far as to say 'If God were really your God, you'd glorify me' (8v54), then tells them that Abraham's faith was all about Him (8v56) but here they are plotting to kill Him. That seems like a devastating critique of a religion that's been perverted and twisted away from the Christ-centred faith of Abraham that Paul uses in Romans 4 as a model for believers- Abraham's spiritual children.
Of course they're not against cultural expressions of 'Jewishness', as you say, but they seem very clear that whatever the religion is that currently rules in the Pharisees, in the Temple with the money changers, with the Judaisers- that it's definitely the one that Abraham began with.
In that sense, they're entirely anti-Judaism, just as all the prophets were. 'Why all these sacrifices when you whore yourselves out to other gods? Why the circumcision when you refuse to give me your heart? Why all the good works when you fail to trust me for your salvation?'
The point is that the heirs of Abraham's faith are the Apostles and all those who trusted Christ. As a nation in NT times, Israel was far from God- so far that it was blind to see the Messiah when he came (John 5v39-40). I think we must lovingly bring unbelieving Jewish people to face up to this, since they're gaining nothing by virtue of being Abraham's physical descendants: they are in desperate need of the salvation that comes only in Christ.
I think that to look at the issue in any other way begins to dilute the gospel for a Jewish audience. Then what we're preaching is not 'the power of God for the salvation of all who believe; to the Jew first' but a sociologically modified gospel, which I think is terribly sad.
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