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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780687344147 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Abingdon Press |
| Publication date: | 01/01/2006 |
| Edition description: | New Edition |
| Pages: | 220 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.08(w) x 8.94(h) x 0.55(d) |
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A Concise History of Christian Doctrine
By Justo L. González
Abingdon Press
Copyright © 2005 Abingdon PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-687-34414-7
CHAPTER 1
Israel, the Church, and the Bible
* * *
Their delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law they meditate day and night. Psalm 1:2
The Jewish Roots of Christianity
As we read the New Testament, it is clear that one of the issues the church first had to face was its relationship to Israel and to the promises made to Abraham and his descendants forever. According to the witness of the Gospels, during Jesus' lifetime there were those who associated him with Elijah, John the Baptist, or others among the prophets (Matt 16:14; Mark 6:15; 8:28; Luke 9:18-19). Jesus himself repeatedly referred to the sacred Scriptures of Israel. The same was true of his earliest followers, as well as all the writers of the New Testament.
Even Paul, the "Apostle to the Gentiles," usually began his preaching in the cities he visited by speaking at the synagogue, constantly quoted the Hebrew Bible—although in a Greek translation— and according to Acts declared himself to be preaching "the hope of Israel" (Acts 28:20).
Yet it was some of the religious leaders of Israel who, according to the Gospels, believed Jesus to be a danger to the nation and its religion, and therefore turned him over to the Roman authorities to be crucified. When, after the events of Holy Week and Pentecost, his disciples began their preaching, they had to contend with the opposition of many in the Jewish Sanhedrin, which ordered them to cease their activities, and punished them when they did not obey.
As Christianity spread into the Gentile world, many of its first converts were either Jews or those whom the Jews knew as "God-fearers," that is, people who believed in the God of Israel and who followed most of the moral teachings of the Hebrew Scriptures, but who were not ready to accept circumcision, nor to follow all the ritual and dietary laws of Israel. Traditionally, when such God-fearers decided to join Judaism, they were accepted into Israel's fold through a series of steps that included a baptismal rite and were known as "proselytes." Now the preaching of Christianity provided such God-fearers with a new option. They could join the church through a process that also culminated in a baptism, and within this community they could worship the God of Israel without having to submit to the ritual strictures that had stood in their way to becoming Jews. Many actual Jews accepted the preaching of Christians, and Jesus as the Messiah—to the point that for quite some time a large proportion of Christians were of Jewish origin. For some, this new form of Judaism that seemed to make it easier to be part of the surrounding society without fear of being defiled by ritually unclean Gentiles seemed less demanding, and therefore more appealing, than a stricter form of Judaism. In this, they were continuing a trend that had developed in some Jewish quarters, for even before the advent of Christianity there were many Jews who were seeking ways to bridge the gap that separated them from Hellenistic culture and society. For many such Jews, and not only for God-fearers, Christianity seemed to provide an attractive alternative.
Thus was set up a spirit of competition and often suspicion between Christians and Jews—a competition that centered mostly on the question of whose interpretation of ancient Scripture was correct. Christians claimed the Hebrew Bible as their own, accusing Judaism of misinterpreting its own scriptures. They insisted that there were prophecies in the Hebrew Bible that pointed to Jesus. Soon they began circulating lists of "testimonies"—passages from the prophets and other sacred Jewish writings that, according to Christian polemicists, foretold the coming of Jesus and many of the events of his life. In the heat of competition and controversy, Christians increasingly blamed Jews in general—and not just the religious leadership of Jerusalem—for the death of Jesus. Blaming Jews for the death of Jesus served their anti-Jewish polemics, and it was also more convenient and less dangerous than constantly reminding themselves and others that Jesus had been executed as a subversive criminal by the powerful Roman Empire.
In the midst of polemic and competition, Judaism also stiffened its opposition to Christianity, particularly after the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70 left it devoid of a temple and territorial identity. Judaism, until then the national religion of a people with a land and an ancient center of worship, now found itself having to define itself by means other than a temple and a land and competing for a place in the maelstrom of religions of the Greco-Roman world. In that competition, its most serious rival was Christianity, precisely because Christianity had Jewish roots and now claimed for itself much of the religious inheritance of Israel. A center of the ensuing revival of Jewish scholarship and polemics was in Jamnia (now Yavneh, in Israel). In the year 90, the rabbis in Jamnia listed the official books (the "canon") of the Hebrew Scriptures. Scholars still debate to what degree this was simply a reaffirmation of what most Jews had long held, and to what degree it was a reaction to Christianity and its propaganda. At any rate, the canon of Jamnia excluded many of the more recent books that for a number of reasons were often quoted by Christians.
It is difficult for us today to understand the full measure of the debate and controversy involved in this process. For many centuries—even though there have always been differences in the midst of each of the two—Christianity and Judaism have been fairly well defined. For much of that time, Christians have had the upper hand politically and socially and have often used their power to suppress Judaism and to harass its followers. But such was not the case in the early centuries of the Christian era. Both Christianity and Judaism were in the process of taking shape—Christianity because it was new, and Judaism because it was learning to live under new circumstances. Thus, neither Judaism nor Christianity was exactly what it is today—and which of the two would eventually win out was still much in doubt.
The Hebrew Bible
The first Christians, like Jesus himself, were Jews. They did not think they were part of a new religion. They were convinced that the "gospel," the good news, was that in Jesus and his resurrection the ancient promises made to Israel were being fulfilled—in other words, that "the hope of Israel" was now coming to fruition. As Acts tells the story, at first they did not even conceive that this was a message of hope for all humankind, and it was only after some astonishing experiences that they decided that their good news was also for the Gentiles. Even then, all you have to do is read the epistles of Paul to realize that the good news for Gentiles is that they, too, are invited to become children of Abraham by faith—or, as Karl Barth put it in the twentieth century, that they could become "honorary Jews."
As Jews, no matter whether by physical descent or by adoption through faith, Christians had a Bible—the Hebrew Bible, to which we shall return later in this chapter. This was the Bible they read in their meetings, as they gathered to worship God and to try to discern God's will for them and the meaning of the events to which they had become witnesses— the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. In the book of Acts we have several examples of Paul and others speaking at a synagogue, and there using the Hebrew Scriptures to tell their fellow Jews that Jesus is the fulfillment of the promises made to Abraham, and to invite them to believe in Jesus. Thus, the first Christian Bible was the Jewish Bible. This they used in teaching. This they used in controversy. And this they used in worship. Apparently no one even dreamed of adding other books to the Hebrew Scriptures.
However, as the first generation of witnesses began disappearing, Christians felt the need for some instrument of instruction that preserved the teaching of those early witnesses. It was not enough to read in church the books of the prophets, or the Law of Moses; it was also necessary to read materials that dealt more directly with Jesus himself and with the duties and beliefs of Christians. In a way, Paul's letters were intended to meet this need.
He could not be present in all the churches he founded, so he wrote to them. His letters— with the exception of his personal note to Philemon—were intended to be read aloud to the gathered congregation. They were letters of instruction, entreaty, challenge, inspiration, and sometimes fundraising, addressed to particular churches with particular needs. He even dared write a long letter to the Christians in the city of Rome, most of whom he had never met. He apparently did this to prepare the way for a planned visit to Rome; but the power and insight of this letter were such that people continued reading it in church long after Paul's death. In fact, the effect that Paul's letters had led churches to make copies and share them with one another, and then to read them in their services, using them as materials for instruction parallel to the ancient books of the Hebrew Bible. Toward the end of the first century, while exiled in Patmos, John "the theologian" wrote a book to the churches in the Roman province of Asia—the book of Revelation—that soon began circulating among other churches in the region and eventually was recopied and read throughout the church.
Paul and John of Patmos wrote for specific occasions, and therefore did not write about the entire life and teaching of Jesus. They were still alive when people began feeling the need for teaching documents to be read in church—documents presenting the entire life of Jesus, as well as his teachings, or what we now call the Gospels. Most scholars agree that the first of these was the Gospel of Mark, followed shortly thereafter by the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, and eventually by the Gospel of John.
As they began reading these books in church, Christians did not debate whether they were "the Word of God," nor whether they were inspired. At first they did not even seem to have considered the matter of their relative authority vis-à-vis the books of the Hebrew Bible. They simply found them valuable for their worship—particularly for that part of the worship service that consisted mostly in Scripture reading and exposition—and began using them in that context. Some time before the middle of the second century a Christian writer, Justin Martyr, tells us that Christians gathered "on the day that is commonly called of the Sun" and read, "as time allows, the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets." Thus, apparently without much debate, in the context of worship, the "memoirs of the apostles"—perhaps the Gospels, or perhaps the Gospels as well as some of the epistles—were being equated in authority with the prophets.
The Challenge of Marcion
At about the same time as Justin was writing those words, however, a controversy was beginning to brew regarding the authority and value of the Hebrew Scriptures—a controversy that was related to the attempt on the part of some Christians to reject everything Jewish.
There were those whose opposition to Judaism went to such an extreme that they were ready to disown any connection between their faith and the religion of Israel. There was, for instance, an obscure sect called the Ophites—that is, followers of the snake. According to them, the real hero in the garden of Eden was the serpent, who sought to liberate humans from the tyrannical power of the God of the Jews. Others, the Cainites, held similar opinions, making Cain their hero. To what extent they made use of Christian doctrine is not clear. In any case, the most famous and most influential among Christians who sought to do away with the religion of Israel was Marcion.
Marcion was born in the town of Sinope, on the Black Sea, the son of the Christian bishop of the city. Although little is known of his early life, by the middle of the second century he was in Rome, where his teaching caused quite a stir. Eventually his followers withdrew from the rest of the church, giving birth to a Marcionite church with its own bishops and its own structure. The existence of this rival body was the reason Marcion became so influential, and why some of the intellectual leaders of the church, including some who wrote polemical treatises against Judaism, also wrote treatises against Marcion.
Marcion claimed there was a sharp contrast and even opposition between the God of the Hebrew Bible and the Father of Jesus. These were not even two different concepts of God; they were two different gods. According to Marcion, the Yahweh of Hebrew Scriptures is an inferior god, one who—either out of ignorance or out of mischief—created this world and now rules it. This is a vengeful and even vindictive god, one who insists on justice and punishment for disobedience, and whose willfulness is manifested in his having arbitrarily chosen the Jews as his own privileged people. In contrast, the Father of Jesus Christ—and the God of Christian faith—is high above the petty god of Israel, and high above any concern for matter and this physical world. This high God, rather than demanding every last ounce of what is owed to him, forgives the sinner. This is not the Yahweh of law and justice, but the Father of love and grace, who has sent Jesus into this world of Yahweh's in order to save what was lost—that is, our spirits that Yahweh had imprisoned in this material world of his.
According to Marcion, this message of grace was soon forgotten by most Christians, and it was only Paul, the apostle of grace, who had retained the message of the high God of love and forgiveness. Yet even Paul's writings had been taken over by people who did not understand this message, or the contrast between Yahweh and the Father, and who had corrupted Paul's epistles by introducing in them all sorts of references to the Hebrew Bible and to the God of Abraham and Jacob.
This meant that Marcion, unlike the rest of the church, rejected the ancient scriptures of the Jews—not because they were false in the sense of being untrue, but because they were the true revelation of an inferior god. It was for this reason that he felt compelled to propose a new Christian Bible, one that would not include any of the books of the Jews, nor any positive reference to such books. This was the first canon of the New Testament.
It included ten epistles of Paul and the Gospel of Luke, who, because he had been Paul's companion, was a true interpreter of the Christian message. What, then, of the many references to the Hebrew Scriptures in the Gospel of Luke and in the epistles of Paul?
Marcion claimed that these had been interpolated into the original text by "Judaizers." The writings of both Luke and Paul, therefore, had to be purged of every reference to the Hebrew Bible or to the God of the Jews.
The rest of the church was appalled at such teachings. Although there certainly were conflicts and competition between Jews and Christians, the latter had always recognized their Jewish roots, and their argument with Judaism had to do with whether or not Jesus was the Messiah, and not with whether the God of Abraham was the true and highest God, or whether this God had created all things. The passages from the Hebrew Bible that Christians had previously used to prove to Jews that Jesus was indeed the Messiah were now put to a different use, which was to prove that the books in which such prophetic utterances were found were indeed the Word of the same God who had spoken in Jesus.
Thus, for instance, although Christians had long claimed that Isaiah 53 had predicted that the Messiah would suffer, and in their polemics against Jews this was used to prove that Jesus was the Messiah, now in the attempt to refute Marcion, the same claim was used to prove that God did speak through Isaiah.
The Canon of the New Testament
However, it did not suffice to refute Marcion and to claim that God spoke in the Hebrew Bible. It was also necessary to determine which Christian books could and should be used in the churches to teach its members, much as the Hebrew Bible was used in the synagogue to instruct its faithful. As we have seen, by Marcion's time it had become customary to read and expound in church, not only the Hebrew Bible, but also the writings of the apostles. Now, partly as a response to Marcion's strange canon, and partly out of the unavoidable need to determine which books should be granted that authority, and which should not, the church began developing lists of authoritative Christian books.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from A Concise History of Christian Doctrine by Justo L. González. Copyright © 2005 Abingdon Press. Excerpted by permission of Abingdon Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Preface,Introduction,
1. Israel, the Church, and the Bible,
2. Creation,
3. Culture,
4. God,
5. Humankind,
6. Christ,
7. The Church,
8. The Sacraments,
9. Salvation,
10. Tradition,
11. The Spirit of Hope,