Another one completed

This morning I've finished the second 'big' book of my 2010 reading list, Larry Hurtado's 'Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity'.

I've posted some comments on this book earlier - here.

This is a good book and well worth reading.

I think Hurtado is persuasive in showing that devotion to Jesus as God began early, in the first century certainly, most likely in the 30's and 40's, the very earliest period of the Christian church.
Hurtado's historical work is valuable not least because our Christian faith and hope depends upon the history of Jesus incarnate, crucified, buried, resurrected and ascended for us.

It is helpful that Hurtado illustrates the difficulty faced in second century Christianity was to articulate their faith in Jesus as Christ and God - within the framework of Jewish/OT monotheism. That there is only one God, and that he is only one, is the constraint placed upon expressions of devotion to Jesus. To deny the divinity of Jesus is easy, to collapse God into Jesus is also easy, to portray Jesus as one among many gods is easy. All these moves were made in the second century, but none of them were found to be adequate in describing this Jesus who is both human and divine, one person within one God.

In the final pages Hurtado offers, 'The devotional practice of earliest Christianity was particularly foundational for doctrinal developments.' (page 649) Today we often think of worship practices as culturally conditined, and I think that is right. However, there remains something about our worship and devotional practices that shapes and informs our doctrine. I think that for the earliest Christians, including the apostle Paul, it was the encounter with the risen Lord Jesus and their subsequent worship of him as God that largely shaped their expressions of the gospel. The question then is what do our current worship and devotional practices say about our understanding of the gospel and what are we communicating of the gospel through them to the world?

So, my list needs amended.
Gordon Fee's 'God's Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul' moves up to the top of the list. I'm really looking forward to this one. Hopefully I'll finish this in the third quarter of 2010.
For the final quarter then, an addition to the list:
Bernhard Lohse's 'Martin Luther's Theology: It's Historical and Systematic Development', T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1999. I've had this book for three years now, I bought it in the Free Church Bookroom while at a Rutherford House Dogmatics Conference. So I'm looking forward to spending some time with Luther and learning from him something of the gospel.

Q - you are making it up now, aren't you?

I've previously commended Larry Hurtado's book - here, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity, and rightly so, it is a very good book.

However, when serious scholars start devoting whole chapters to Q I begin to think the world has tilted somewhat.

I don't have a problem with Q, I know what it is, and that's not a soft-porn mag trying to pass itself off as a music mag! Q is the hypothetical 'document' used to explain the agreements of Matthew and Luke against Mark in solving the Synoptic Problem. (In passing, I don't think Matthew, Mark and Luke had a synoptic problem, it is all our own.)

The problem I have is when you publish a critical edition of Q and start giving chapter and verse numbers to passages in this edition of Q, see e.g. JS Kloppenborg eds. The Critical Edition of Q, pub 2000.
If Q existed as a 'document' the only evidence we have for it is in the text of Matthew and Luke, and it is beyond me how you can reconstruct a 'critical edition' of such a hypothetical document.

Hurtado wrties, 'The christological categories used in Q are somewhat like those of the Synoptic Gospels generally.' P. 250 (emphasis mine)
How can anthing of Q be only 'somewhat like' or 'generally' related to the Synoptics? The only access to Q we have is those same Synoptic Gospels, or more particularly, Matthew and Luke. If Q is not exactly like or specifically the same as the text of Matthew and Luke then we really are making it up!!!

I don't mind anyone using Q to resolve the relations between the Synoptics. I wouldn't mind if Hurtado had commented over 3 or 4 pages that nothing in the hypothetical Q document was distinctive in terms of evidence of Jesus devotion from what is known elsewhere in the first century. But I fear that Q scholarship has circled Pluto and is heading for deep space where any kind of control or restrain is not applied.

History is better than nonsense

I'm giving thanks to God that when Philip Pullman published his latest attack upon the gospel I'm reading a really good work of biblical history.

Pullman repeats the old lie that Jesus of Nazareth was a good man who has been manipulated and abused by the church and turned into the Christ - a title he neither claimed nor wanted for himself.

Hurtado in a work of careful historical study shows, among other things, that devotion to Jesus predates the writtings of the apostle Paul.

By devotion to Jesus what Hurtado is describing is the worship of Jesus as God and the ascription to him of titles like Christ, Son of God and Lord (kurios). In Paul's letters, from the 40's and 50's AD we find repeated comments in passing recognising the divine worship being given to the Lord Jesus. That such comments are made in passing tells us that they are not considered controversial by Paul and would be readily accepted by the churches.

Within 10 to 20 years of the resurrection of the body of the Lord Jesus he is being worshipped as God. If only Philip Pullman and others understood history rather than attacking the church and the gospel.

'Tis Done!

I've just finished reading the second volume of Bavinck's Reformed Dogmatics: God and Creation. Hence 'Tis Done!

Say something nice about Herr Bavinck's book.
Very comprehensive. If you want to know what the position of Reformed Theology is on the doctrine of God and/or Creation this is the one volume that will do it for you.

Now tell us what you really think!
There are just too many pages describing positions in theology and philosophy that Reformed Theology will disagree with. I know that Deism and Pantheism are wrong, I don't need to read about why they are wrong under every heading.

If you want to read a really good book on the doctrine of God, you should try Gerald Bray's volume of that title in the IVP Contours of Christian Theology series (pub 1993). At 251 pages of text, plus some notes and suggested further reading, this is a far more accessible and useful volume than Bavinck. Bray covers the doctrine of God, which to be fair is only the first three parts (432 pages) of Bavinck. But he does it so much better.

So, 'tis done! That's another book ticked off my reading targets list for 2010, and the first of my major volumes. I'm really looking forward to starting Larry Hurtado's 'Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity'. This theology is all very well but just not as much fun as biblical studies.

I'm going to replace Bavinck on the reading targets list with Gordon Fee's 'God's Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul' (pub 1994). Just in case Hurtado doesn't turn out to do enough detailed exegesis of the text Fee won't let me down. But I'm not aiming to get to Fee until the summer, unless Hurtado ends up being a better page turner than Dan Brown.