Showing papers in "Horizons in Biblical Theology in 2008"

The Recovering God of Hosea

Abstract: This paper addresses the question of the character of God as sketched in the poetry of Hosea. It considers the broad and rich spectrum of images and metaphors that are employed to give expression to that divine character in poetic idiom. It is clear that the range and spectrum of metaphors cannot be systematized, but one can nonetheless identify among them usages that bespeak divine judgment, usages that articulate a positive concern, and usages that are neutral or ambiguous. After that survey, the discussion focuses upon the two provocative texts if Hosea 2:2-23 and 11:11-9. Attention is given, in each of these cases, to the movement from judgment to positive possibility. The two governing metaphors of husband-wife and parent-child are taken to be indispensable for a relationship that persists, even in the face of harsh judgment and alienation. The flow of drama in these two texts suggests that YHWH has been an agent of violence, but is "in recovery" from that propensity to violence.

Reading Hosea and Imagining YHWH

Abstract: As the readers among whom and for whom the book of Hosea was composed read and reread it they could not but construe images of YHWH. In the process, metaphors from different source conceptual domains were evoked. Each of them involved important aspects of the worldview of these readers, their understanding of themselves and their deity, and very often a sense of resistance to imperial ideological constructions. The centrally enabling metaphor of YHWH as didactic communicator, that is teacher of Israel, played a central role in the social and ideological worldview of the literati who wrote, read, and reread the book of Hosea and other prophetic and authoritative books in ancient Yehud and reflected the social roles of the literati and of the repertoire of prophetic books that evolved in ancient Yehud, among which the book of Hosea, in its present form, evolved and found its place.

Interrogating the Violent God of Hosea: A Conversation with Walter Brueggemann, Alice Keefe, and Ehud Ben Zvi

Abstract: This essay responds to Brueggemann, Keefe, and Ben Zvi. Commending Brueggemann's discernment of multivocality in Hosea, this response considers his idea of a recovering God in light of rhetorical disjuncture between the brutal God of most of Hosea and the nurturing deity of Hosea 14. Keefe's welcome focus on class-based economic motivations for Hosea's polemics raises a question about the "urban elite male warrior class" that she identifies as responsible for regional economic exploitation; postcolonial notions of hybridity and mimicry are invoked to extend Keefe's analysis. Ben Zvi's argument that Persian-period literati would have been empowered by Hosea's utopian rhetoric is considered; the male rereadership would have been shamed, too, by Hosea's metaphorization of Israel as adulterous woman, and Yehud readers might not have seen the monarchical-era implied audience as discontinuous with themselves. The question is posed as to what role(s) the prophet Hosea might play in the hermeneutical models of Brueggemann, Keefe, and Ben Zvi.

Being the Church in Philippi

Abstract: Contrary to widespread assumptions, neither Paul's pattern of church-planting nor his vision of those churches' mission was focused on efforts by those churches to draw and make more members for the church. Rather, Paul saw the church's life itself, both in relation to one another and in relation to their neighbors, as its calling and its mission. For Paul, the church's mission is to live out its identity in Christ as God's new creation in the face of empire. A careful look at Philippians in particular will make the contours of such a mission clear.

Matt 1:1: “Son of Abraham” as Christological Category

Abstract: Matt 1:1 raises interpretive questions regarding its scope as a potential title and the import of the phrases “son of David” and “son of Abraham.” This article contends that “son of Abraham” introduces a significant sacrificial Christological category centered on the figure of Isaac which complements the Messianic aspects of Jesus Christ's ministry associated with the title “son of David.” “Son of David” and “son of Abraham” therefore stand in parallel at the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew as two titular designations specifying two Christological categories of the greatest import for the Gospel: Messiah (“son of David”) and new Isaac (“son of Abraham”). Thus is solved the difficulty of a crucified Messiah: Jesus is indeed the Messiah but also the anti-type of Isaac, whose sacrifice was paradigmatic in Jewish tradition. Matt 1:1 therefore introduces the reader to these dual Christological categories and is a title whose scope covers the entire Gospel.

The Human Response in the Creation and Formation of Faith: A Narrative Analysis of John 12:20-50 and its Application to the Doctrine of Justification

Abstract: One area of lingering tension between Lutherans and Roman Catholics on the doctrine of justification relates to the necessity, or even the possibility, of a human response in one's justification. In this article, I argue that the Gospel of John can address this lingering tension and, in doing so, acts as a counter balance to the Pauline corpus. Through narrative and inner-textual analysis, the article claims that John 12:20-50 informs the reader that Christ, the light of the world which allows humanity to see where to walk, has been sent into the world by God the Father. In this critical passage, the point at which the light of Christ is to be taken out of the world, one discovers that John corroborates Catholic concerns that the gift of God's grace, God's light, empowers and requires a human response. Such a response, however, must not be understood as independent of God's gift of grace, or light, both in its origin and continuing efficaciousness.