Meandering Paul

Discussing the literary structure of the pastoral epistles, Kostenberger and company say this in The Cradle, The Cross, and the Crown:

“R. van Neste summarized the state of scholarship on the Pastorals this way: ‘Until recently, one of the widely accepted tenets of modern scholarship regarding the Pastoral Epistles was that they lacked any significant, careful order or structure.’ This was not confined to liberal critics; even an otherwise conservative commentator such as D. Guthrie wrote, ‘There is a lack of studied order, some subjects being treated more than once in the same letter without apparent premeditation. . . . These letters are, therefore, far removed from literary exercises.’”

It seems like Christians who hold to a high view of Scripture typically bristle at this sort of claim, perhaps because it feels almost irreverent to suggest that some of Paul’s letters lack a careful organization or structure. But there really isn’t anything irreverent about this. There’s nothing wrong with a meandering personal letter, and a lack of structure doesn’t undermine inspiration. What Guthrie says is exactly right. Paul’s letters were not meant to be literary masterpieces.

But look at how the Cradle authors express surprise that “even” conservative commentators have said such things. That’s odd to me. I don’t understand why this particular question should be understood in terms of a liberal/conservative divide. It isn’t like inspiration is at stake here.

The Cradle authors continue:

“Against those who have argued against the literary unity and integrity of the Pastoral Epistles, van Neste demonstrated, in the most careful study of the topic to date, that there is ‘evidence of a high level of cohesion in each of the Pastoral Epistles’ . . . . they demonstrate signs of a coherent structure and of theological competence.”

I don’t see how the word “integrity” has any place in this conversation. A lack of definite structure doesn’t undermine the letter’s “integrity” (whatever that actually means). “Theological competence” is also an irrelevant category. A lack of definite structure doesn’t mean that the letter or its author lacks theological competence.

The indefinite structure of the pastoral epistles can be seen even from the outlines that the Cradle authors themselves present. Consider their outline of 1 Timothy, which I hope no one will mind me reproducing an image of here:

Note that the fourth major section is simply titled “Further Charges.” It’s titled in such a general way because the charges in it are so diverse. There isn’t some kind of unifying feature that ties them all together, other than the fact that they’re all “charges,” though there isn’t even really a charge to be found in the first sub-section on latter-day apostasy (4:1-5). Moreover, there was already a “charge” section earlier in the letter, according to this outline (1:3-20). So why didn’t the “Further Charges” just get combined with those earlier ones?

Furthermore, within the “Further Charges” is a sub-section titled “Further Congregational Matters.” But there was already a major section on congregational matters earlier in the letter, according to this outline (2:1-3:16). So why didn’t the “Further Congregational Matters” just get combined with those earlier ones?

The most realistic conclusion to be drawn from all of this is that Paul meanders. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

In Cradle’s outline of 2 Timothy, there’s a section titled “Ministry Metaphors, Paul’s Gospel, and a Trustworthy Saying” (2:1-26). And those aren’t sub-sections within a major section; that’s the title of a major section. It’s pretty clear that a letter lacks definite structure when one of the main sections in the outline has to have three different ideas in its title.

Outlining a book doesn’t always demonstrate a definite structure. Some people seem to think that if they reduce a letter’s contents sequentially into concise phrases, and put numbers and letters beside those phrases, forming an outline, then they’ve somehow demonstrated a concrete structure. But sometimes an outline simply brings out the fact that the letter doesn’t have a clearly discernible structure.

Episkopos and Diakonos

The article on Philippians (written by Gerald Hawthorne) in IVP’s Dictionary of Paul and His Letters says this:

The terms “overseers” and “deacons” (1:1) occur here for the one and only time in Paul’s letters, but without any elaboration on what these people did or about what kind of authority they exercised within the church.

Unless I’m missing something, this is demonstrably false. “Overseer” is rendering the Greek episkopos, which also occurs in 1 Timothy 3:2 and Titus 1:7.  “Deacon” is rendering the Greek diakonos, which occurs frequently throughout Paul’s letters. Admittedly, Paul normally uses diakonos in a non-official sense, but he does sometimes use it to refer to the office of deacon (1 Tim. 3:8, 12). So what gives?

Does Hawthorne mean that this is the only time the terms occur in Paul’s ecclesial letters (i.e. his letters written to churches)? That would have been an easy thing to communicate. Does he assume that Paul didn’t write the pastoral epistles? That would be lame. Is Hawthorne working from an English translation that renders episkopos as “overseer” in Philippians 1:1 but as “bishop” elsewhere, and is that what he means? That wouldn’t seem in line with the scholarly standards of the dictionary as a whole. Does he mean that this is the only time in Paul’s letters that the two terms appear side by side? That may be true, but seems like an insignificant thing to note. Does Hawthorne mean that this is the only time the terms appear in the plural? That may be true (at least in the case of episkopos), but again seems like an insignificant thing to note.

The Ultimate Unfortunate Event

Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket) made millions off A Series of Unfortunate Events, a story that promotes sympathy toward children who’ve had it rough. Then he publicly donated one of those millions to an organization that makes children victims of the ultimate unfortunate event. An organization that kills children by chopping them into little pieces. Planned Parenthood makes the wickedness of Count Olaf look tame.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/01/us/lemony-snicket-the-author-and-his-wife-donate-1-million-to-planned-parenthood.html?_r=0

Questions from NT Survey: 9.28.15

How do we harmonize John 5:31 with John 8:14?

Here are the two verses side-by-side:

“If I alone bear witness about myself, my testimony is not true.” (John 5:31)

“Jesus answered, ‘Even if I do bear witness about myself, my testimony is true, for I know where I came from and where I am going, but you do not know where I come from or where I am going.’” (John 8:14)

These statements initially seem to contradict each other, but in context, I don’t think they do. In 5:31, Jesus is alluding to the standard of the Old Testament law, which requires at least two witnesses for an accusation to be deemed trustworthy (Deut. 17:6). In 8:14, Jesus is specifically responding to an accusation thrown his way by the Jews, who had claimed that Jesus was in fact bearing witness about himself, and therefore his word has no authority. But in both verses, the point that Jesus is driving at is that he doesn’t need to rely on his own testimony about himself, because there’s another witness that testifies about him also.

In John 5:31, the additional witness is John the Baptist, as Jesus goes on to say: “There is another who bears witness about me, and I know that the testimony that he bears about me is true. You sent to John, and he has borne witness to the truth. Not that the testimony that I receive is from man, but I say these things so that you may be saved” (John 5:32–34). In other words, Jesus points to John the Baptist as a second witness, not because he actually needs to do so, but so that the Old Testament standard will be upheld for the sake of the Jews.

In John 8:14, the additional witness is none other than God the Father, as Jesus goes on to say: “You judge according to the flesh; I judge no one. Yet even if I do judge, my judgment is true, for it is not I alone who judge, but I and the Father who sent me” (John 8:15–16). So in effect, the Jews were saying to Jesus, “See, look! You’re bearing witness about yourself right now, and that means your word isn’t true” (John 8:13). To which Jesus responds with words to this effect: “Even if I am bearing witness about myself, my testimony is still true. Why? Again, because there’s another who bears witness about me, namely my Father in heaven.”

Notice that in 8:14, Jesus does not say “Even if I alone bear witness about myself, my testimony is true.” That would make 8:14 contradict 5:31. But that’s just the point: Jesus is not alone. He is so united with his Father that there are always at least two bearing witness. And in truth, we know that there are actually three who bear witness.

Why did Jesus occasionally instruct his disciples and others not to tell anyone that he was the Christ (Matt. 16:20), or not to tell anyone about the miracles he did (Matt 8:4)?

Some point out that the title “Christ” would have carried political connotations, such that to announce Jesus as the Christ would give everyone the impression that Jesus would be the earthly king they were expecting. That could be the case, but I’m content with a more general answer: It just wasn’t time to tell everyone yet.

To draw an analogy, an author who’s writing a novel doesn’t want a half-finished manuscript to get leaked to the public. He wants the work to be completed first. Jesus’s hour had not yet come (John 2:4). His work wasn’t yet completed. He didn’t want word to get out until his redemptive work could be seen and understood in its fullness. Of course, this “messianic secret,” as it’s often called, was only a temporary policy. After Jesus was resurrected, his instructions became very different: Go tell everybody (Matt. 28:19).

School Paper: “Symbols in Dante’s Inferno” (Fall 2010)

The general fieriness of this short essay suits its subject matter, Dante’s Inferno. It’s the first time I really opened up and spoke frankly about what I felt were some annoying tendencies of literary scholarship. C. S. Lewis once said, “Some of the allegories thus imposed on my own books have been so ingenious and interesting that I often wish I had thought of them myself.” Reading scholarly interpretations of the Inferno frequently made me wonder if Dante would have said the same thing.

I’m not sure how much my criticisms here are actually worth, but this was a fun paper to write nonetheless. The professor’s grader told me that it was excellent, but apparently the professor didn’t agree. It came back with a C.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Symbols in Dante’s Inferno:

Examining Common Allegorical Interpretations

History of Ideas 3

November 2, 2010

Dante Alighieri applied to the text of Psalm 114 a fourfold manner of interpretation: literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogical.1 From this, George Santayana concludes that one can expect to find in the Commedia similarly layered stages of meaning.2 This conclusion is likely an attempt to justify heavily speculative and complicated allegorical interpretations of Dante’s principal work. While it cannot be denied that the Commedia has its share of unambiguously symbolic and allegorical features, the tendency of many scholars seems to be speculative excess rather than objective moderation.

John Ciardi, in his synopsis of the Inferno‘s eighteenth Canto, attempts to explain how the punishment of those residing in the Malebolge’s first bolgia (the panderers and seducers) is reflective of the lives they lived. He states that “in life these sinners goaded others on to serve their own foul purposes; so in Hell are they driven in their turn.”3 Ciardi also maintains that the oppressive demons of this bolgia represent the sinners’ own wicked natures and even suggests that the horns of the demons may symbolize cuckoldry and adultery.4

One will be hard pressed, however, to find any grounds within the Canto itself on which to base such conjecture. Let it be said that some sinners described in subsequent Cantos do suffer penalties that unequivocally correspond to the sins of which they are guilty, such as the fortune-tellers who have their heads reversed so that that they cannot view what is in front of them. In this particular case, Virgil himself identifies the imagery explicitly within the narrative.5 In such cases, emblematic postulations are not at all inappropriate or unfounded. When the symbolism is less clear, however, as in the earlier case of the panderers and seducers, there is no obligation on the reader’s part to strain parallelisms from the text.

Ciardi makes similar assertions in regard to the sinners who suffer in the fifth bolgia, namely, the grafters. He maintains that the boiling pitch which engulfs the grafters represents the “sticky fingers” with which they acquired illicit lucre in life.6 The pitch also hides the grafters from sight, which according to Ciardi, corresponds to their clandestine antemortem deeds.7

Though Ciardi seems well confident that his symbolic interpretation is accurate, it is by no means the consensus view. Vincent Hopper suggests that the boiling pitch of the fifth bolgia is symbolic of the Blacks of Florence8, a political faction to which Dante was opposed.9 Frederick Farrar, while in agreement with Ciardi’s “sticky fingers” symbolism, further adds that the boiling of the pitch corresponds to the bubbling sensation of gain and loss that the avaricious soul experiences in life.10 Indeed, one wonders if there are any limits at all to the possible symbolic construals offered by many scholars. Surely some discrimination is necessary. In all reality, none of the aforementioned interpretations are better than the others, as all of them are offered without any defense from the text itself. This lack of consensus exemplifies the subjective and conjectural nature of what commonly passes for scholarship.

One final and classic example of the notoriously far-reaching allegorical interpretations of many Dantean scholars is typically found in commentaries on the Commedia‘s first Canto wherein Dante encounters three vicious beasts: a leopard, a lion, and a she-wolf. Commentators are all over the map as to the allegorical significance of these creatures, but one common interpretation is political. Santayana claims that the lion in particular represents the King of France.11 Edmund Gardner, however, argues that this “comparatively modern interpretation which would see in the beasts the three great Guelf powers [the lion being the royal house of France] . . . is now generally discarded.”12 This further illustrates the teeming deluge of symbolism in which scholars frequently drown when allegorical speculation is indulged in ways that the original author likely never intended.

Allan Gilbert keenly notes this overly allegorical tendency in his introduction to the Inferno where he describes what he calls “scholars’ allegory.”13 According to Gilbert, scholars have always found themselves in a predicament when it comes to writing about poetry. There is not very much to say about the literal sense of a poem such as the Commedia, and it thus becomes necessary to consult the limitless provision of allegory. Gilbert writes, “The manufacture of allegory offers to the ingenious but prosaic mind an opportunity to speak at length with the appearance of wisdom . . .”14

Gardner sympathizes with Gilbert as is clear from his own admission that allegorical interpretations of the Commedia have frequently been carried to excess.15 Gardner also warns, however, of the opposite extreme, namely, divorcing all allegorical material from Dante in order to focus on the beauty of his poetry alone. As mentioned above, it simply cannot be denied that there is legitimate room for allegorical analysis in a discussion of Dante’s Commedia. However, the question of the proper balance between the beauty of poetry and its underlying allegory is not an easy one to answer.

Perhaps the one most qualified to answer the question of the relationship between allegorical meaning and poetic beauty, particularly in the Commedia, would be the Florentine poet himself. In his Convivio, Dante makes it clear16 that very few will understand the hidden meaning of his principal work. However, he earnestly motivates his readers by encouraging them to appreciate the beauty of the work rather than its goodness (i.e. its meaning). Dante confidently maintains that his poem is beautiful in its composition, order, and rhythm, which concerns grammarians, rhetoricians, and musicians respectively. In other words, all allegorical considerations aside, the beauty of the poem itself is enough to garner the appreciation of academicians in a number of fields. The true and total meaning of the Commedia may never be known, but as Dante rightly states, the poem’s beauty of composition “can be perceived . . . by anyone who looks closely.”17

Notes

1. From Dante’s epistle to Lord Can Grande della Scala, http://www.danteonline.it/english/opere.asp?idope=7&idlang=OR (accessed October 23, 2010).

2. George Santayana, Three Philosophical Poets (Garden City: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1910), 98.

3. John Ciardi, synopsis of Canto XVIII in “Inferno” in Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, trans. John Ciardi (New York: New American Library, 2003), 141.

4. Ibid.

5. Dante, Inferno, XX.38-9.

6. John Ciardi, synopsis of Canto XXI in “Inferno” in Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, trans. John Ciardi (New York: New American Library, 2003), 165.

7. Ibid.

8. Vincent F. Hopper, A Simplified Approach To Dante: Detailed Analyses and Summaries (Great Neck: Barron’s Educational Series, 1964), 38.

9. Dante Alighieri Society of Massachusetts, “Guelphs and Ghibellines – Who were they?”, http://www.dantealighieri.net/cambridge/guelphs.html (accessed October 23, 2010).

10. Frederick W. Farrar, Great Books (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell and Company, 1898), 160.

11. Santayana, 98.

12. Edmund G. Gardner, Dante (London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1923), 115.

13. Allan Gilbert, introduction to Dante, Inferno, trans. Allan Gilbert (Durham: Duke University Press, 1969), xl.

14. Ibid.

15. Gardner, 108.

16. Dante, Convivio, II.11.

17. Ibid.

Boys and Girls

Whenever I substitute-teach at the local middle school, I have to make a note of which students are absent and then send their names to the front office. Usually I get a student to make the delivery for me, and today I was struck by the fact that I almost always choose a girl for this job.

Why do I do that? Well, I think it’s because girls tend to be more trustworthy when it comes to those sorts of things. You’re less likely to find them taking it as an opportunity to wander the halls or goof off. I send girls because they tend to be better for the job.

Now, is there anything sexist about that? No, I’m just paying attention to the way things are. Boys and girls are different. Boys are best suited for some tasks, and girls are best suited for others.

But let’s say my claim was that boys were more trustworthy than girls. I imagine that would be perceived as sexist. You can say that girls are better at certain things than boys, and nobody feels the need to get offended. But if you dare to say that boys are better at certain things than girls, then the egalitarian outrage ensues. But that’s sham egalitarianism. A real egalitarian would be just as offended regardless of which gender I claimed is more trustworthy.

Leithart on the Gospels

Peter Leithart’s discussion of the so-called “synoptic problem” and the dating of the gospels is extremely refreshing. Here are some quotes from chapter 3 of his book The Four: A Survey of the Gospels.

“If the view of the church fathers explains the gospels, and does so fairly simply, why do scholars have to invent a complicated ‘synoptic problem’ and resolve it with a mythical document called ‘Q’? There are many answers to that question, but at base the answer is that much of modern New Testament scholarship is a Satanic attack on the truth and reliability of the gospel of Jesus. . . . This is not to say that New Testament scholars themselves are demonic. They aren’t. But New Testament scholarship is an arena of spiritual battle, where we fight not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers and rulers of wickedness.” 

“Moreover, since the fall of Jerusalem proves that Jesus is a prophet, we would expect the writers of the New Testament to mention that event to defend themselves and their Master. The church fathers often mention the fall of Jerusalem in their arguments with Jews. But the apostles never do. Why not? The most likely reason is that Jerusalem was still standing. Wenham argues that the entire New Testament is finished before the fall of the temple. I agree.”