Theological Interpretation of Christian Scripture

Article based on a presentation given at the Thomas Latinus - Thomas Graecus. Thomas Aquinas and His Reception in Byzantium International Conference held at the Hellenic Library of Athens (Stavros Niarchos Cultural Center) in Dec. 15-16 2017, co-organized by The Hellenic Institute, Royal Holloway, University of London.

Focusing on the work of N.T. Wright, J. Louis Martyn, and Douglas Harink, in this essay I offer a theological analysis of the debate between salvation-historical and apocalyptic readings of Paul as a debate in Christology. I argue that in the end they are Christologically deficient in ironically similar ways: both positions conceive of Christ as accidental to the divine intent for creation, a notion that falls short of the robust Christology Paul adheres to. I offer an alternative that preserves both the notions of a salvific history and an apocalyptic revelation, but is also imbedded in what I call a supralapsarian Christology

Criticism of myth in the Bible is not a modern problem. Its roots go back to the earliest Christian theologians, and before them, to ancient Greek and Jewish thinkers. The dilemma posed by texts that ascribe human characteristics and emotions to the divine is a perennial problem, and we have much to learn from the ancient attempts to address it.

Mark Sheridan provides a theological and historical analysis of the patristic interpretation of Scripture’s anthropomorphic and anthropopathic language for God. Rather than reject the Bible as mere stories, ancient Jewish and Christian theologians read these texts allegorically or theologically in order to discover the truth contained within them. They recognized that an edifying and appropriate interpretation of these stories required that one start from the understanding that "God is not a human being" (Num 23:19). Sheridan brings the patristic tradition into conversation with modern interpreters to show the abiding significance of its theological interpretation for today.

Language for God in Patristic Tradition is a landmark resource for students of ancient Christian theology. Wide-ranging in scope and accessible in its analysis, it demonstrates that those engaged in theological interpretation of Scripture have much to gain from studying their forebears in the faith.

Can the Bible make one a feminist? Note that the question here is not, “Can a feminist read (and appreciate) the Bible?” Feminists, of course, do read the Bible. While most might find it at least occasionally a challenge to their feminist sensibilities, only some who approach the matter with Christian faith intact—most famously, perhaps, Mary Daly—walk away from it rejecting that faith. Many manage to retain their Christian convictions in spite of what may seem like a consistently dismal portrayal of Scripture’s female characters and its often tacit prescriptions for men in keeping women in line. Still others may even find their faith renewed and fortified by their feminist reading of Scripture, especially those who discover in the text a more feminine representation of God. 1

[email protected] 12/17/2020 22:15 a12/p12 The Hope of God: Open Theism and God’s Knowledge of the Future(What God Does, Might, or Cannot Know about the Future)AbstractGen 22, Exod 32-34, 1 Samuel 15.10-34, 1 Kings 21.20-29, and Jeremiah 18.1-12 and26.1-6, 12-13, passages from two of the three divisions of the Hebrew Bible represent aworld view that assumes God does not know the future exhaustively, but rather hopes forcertain outcomes. These Scriptures show that God altered the election, blessing, or judgment that God had planned, or they announce that God will “change God’s mind” inresponse to human action. Thus, in the cases God’s plans depend on human response,they must be classified as God’s hopes. This in no way implies that God does not plan certain outcomes—and carry out them out, regardless of the actions of particular humans, because God is free to use
other
people if such plans require human cooperation. God’sfreedom is never restricted—even by God’s self. Although God is characterized as revealing the future in certain cases, usually these passages are conditional and always must be understood together with the many Scriptures that represent the hope of God in the people of God rather than God’s foreknowledge of the future as actual.

This bibliography, which should be considered a work in progress, is a select list of books and articles, mostly by evangelicals, on evangelicalism and Scripture. I omit here works written from what I would describe as a neo-fundamentalist perspective, in which biblical inerrancy is interpreted in an extreme, literalist fashion such that mainstream evangelical biblical scholarship is condemned as compromising (e.g., by using literary and historical critical methods).

This book takes a distinctive approach to the same-sex-union debate by framing the issue as a matter of marriage. Darrin Snyder Belousek demonstrates that the interpretation of Scripture affects whether the church should revise its doctrine of marriage for the sake of sanctioning same-sex union. Engaging charitably yet critically with opposing viewpoints, he delves deeply into what marriage is, what it is for, and what it means as presented in the biblical narrative and theological tradition, articulating a biblical-traditional theology of marriage for the contemporary church. Afterword by Wesley Hill.

Conference draft of the article: "Intellectual Elitism and the Need for Faith in Maimonides and Aquinas," forthcoming: Anuario Filosófico, Vol. 48, no. 1, "Aquinas and the Abrahamic Traditions" (2015).

Copyright © 2013-15 Francisco J. Romero Carrasquillo.
All rights reserved.

Abstract: In his Commentary on Boethius' De Trinitate 3.1, Aquinas cites Maimonides as giving five reasons for why faith is necessary for mankind.  Yet when one turns to The Guide for the Perplexed 1.34, one immediately sees that Maimonides is actually giving five reasons for why the study of metaphysics, which he considers to be the ultimate path to human perfection, must be restricted to the learned and must be hidden from the unlearned masses.  Interpreters tend to see Aquinas as therefore misappropriating Maimonides' thought, or in the words of one scholar, as "standing Maimonides on his head": his use of Maimonides is seen as a reversal (albeit a "benign reversal") of Maimonides' own thought.  In this paper, however, I place Maimonides' text on the five reasons for concealing metaphysics within the context of his rational mysticism and compare it to Aquinas' own Christian mystical thought in an attempt to show that in his own mind Aquinas is not misquoting, reversing, or doing violence to Maimonides' text; rather, Aquinas is completing Maimonides' natural, rational mysticism with what he understands to be the supernatural perfection of the theological virtue of faith.

(In Russian) Formation of the canon of the New Testament as a theological argument in a controversy with the Protestants // For many hundred years since the Protestant Reformation, the Catholic Church has been regularly criticized by Protestants who accuse Catholics of being deviated from the apostolic teaching documented in the New Testament.
In this article we will try to show that the process of canonization of the Scriptures of the New Testament is in itself a strong theological argument that can shake the confidence of the Protestants in the correctness of their critique of the Catholic Tradition.
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Католическая Церковь вот уже не одну сотню лет со времени протестантской Реформации регулярно подвергается нападкам со стороны протестантов, обвиняющих католиков в отступлениях от апостольского учения, зафиксированного в Писании Нового Завета.
В данной работе автор ставит перед собой цель показать, что процесс канонизации Писаний Нового Завета является сам по себе сильным богословским аргументом, способным поколебать уверенность протестантов в правильности их критики католической Традиции.

David Beldman’s commentary on Judges in the Two Horizons series is an example of Theological Interpretation of Scripture. This is an attempt to do quality exegesis while reflecting on the biblical and systematic theological ramifications of the text in contemporary culture. Beldman previously contributed a brief contribution to the on the book of Judges, Deserting the King (Lexham, 2017).

This autobiographical account details the author's upbringing in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in southern Idaho and outlines how his encounters with history and science undermined his faith. Dr. Thomas W Murphy presented this story as a keynote speaker at the Help for the Hurting Conference in Keokuk, Iowa in September, 2003, less than a year after the LDS Church initiated and then aborted an effort to excommunicate him for his publication of a summary of genetic research into Native American origins and its implications for the Book of Mormon.

Philosophers have often described theism as the belief in the existence of a “perfect being”—a being that is said to possess all possible perfections, so that it is all-powerful, all-knowing, immutable, perfectly good, perfectly simple, and necessarily existent, among other qualities. But such a theology is difficult to reconcile with the God we find in the Bible and Talmud. The Question of God’s Perfection brings together leading scholars from the Jewish and Christian traditions to critically examine the theology of perfect being in light of the Hebrew Bible and classical rabbinic sources. Contributors are James A. Diamond, Lenn E. Goodman, Edward C. Halper, Yoram Hazony, Dru Johnson, Brian Leftow, Berel Dov Lerner, Alan L. Mittleman, Heather C. Ohaneson, Randy Ramal, Eleonore Stump, Alex Sztuden, and Joshua I. Weinstein.

Genesis 6:14-16 appears in most translations as a mundane practical set of instructions. Brief and incomplete, nevertheless, they gave Noah a blueprint for a seagoing vessel that would house all living things. Closer examination suggests that all is not as it seems. The passage is full of hapax legomena, words that have puzzled readers since the earliest translations. Common words are eschewed for cryptic expressions that might confuse more than they illumine first time readers. More poetic than practical the divine instructions are full of cultic resonances and allusions to temple and tabernacle. They raise significant questions of genre and draw the interpreter into comparative studies with Atrahasis and Gilgamesh.

Three commentaries on Ecclesiastes represent renewed academic interest in theological interpretation of Scripture (TIS), as well as the evolving relationship between biblical and contemporary theologies. Despite the focus on Ecclesiastes, this article more broadly illustrates that TIS is not a narrow movement exclusively oriented toward evangelical aims despite its biblical focus. In reality, TIS is inclusive across denominations with varying degrees of comfort or discomfort with traditional systematic theology and pluralistic worldviews. Not surprisingly, integrating the Bible and theology will differ for various Christian traditions depending on one's view of systematic and biblical theology. This article examines how three commentaries on Ecclesiastes, representing theological and biblical scholars, highlight diverse traditions, while offering useful contemporary applications for Christians practicing across the spectrum who identify with common faith.

In this paper I will argue that all major Reformers have accepted the divine origin and the infallible character of Scripture, and this fact defines its authority as the revealed Word. In a unique way, the Reformers have correlated the Word and the Spirit (testimonium externum Spiritus Sancti - testimonium internum Spiritus Sancti), that is the external witness of the Spirit (the preaching of the Word) with the internal witness of the Spirit (the internal work of the Holy Spirit). For the Reformers it was essential that the authority and the content of the Bible are interconnected. The authority of the Bible derives from its content, and the content is confirmed through its authority. The authority of the Bible cannot be imposed externally. This authority comes from the interior, from the Holy Spirit and it has a double function: it prepares the witness for Christ and it stirs the faith internally in our humanity, and thus the witness is accepted. So, the Word does not have the role of a supplement, but the role of a singular. This was something very new at the time, and this made the Reformation possible.

While the Judeo-Christian religious tradition promotes an image of God characterized by mercy and compassion, one cannot deny the startling images in scripture of a wrathful God who seemingly condones sexual violence and rape as divinely-sanctioned punishments. This article reviews existing interpretive strategies designed to salvage the image of a merciful and compassionate deity despite depictions of a violent and sexually-violating God in the scriptural texts. These attempts at interpretation, however, are not without their limitations and problems. After surveying and critiquing attempts at interpreting images of divine wrath, this article seeks to reinterpret the texts as a divinely-inspired and implicit critique of the religious tradition itself-one which has enabled and even promoted sexual subjugation, violence, and trauma in the name of God.

Alexander Kupsch geht in seinem Beitrag „Dogmatik und Exegese im Gespräch. Johan- nes Calvin und Robert W. Jenson als Ausleger der Schrift“ den disziplinären Rationalitä- ten von Dogmatik und Exegese anhand einer Fallstudie zu den Hesekiel-Auslegungen von Johannes Calvin und Robert W. Jenson nach. Der Vergleich einer ‚vorkritischen’ mit einer ‚nachkritischen’ Schriftauslegung sucht dabei Konvergenzen und Differenzen einer dogmatisch orientierten Bibellektüre vor und nach dem Einschnitt der historisch- kritischen Wende zu erhellen.

Throughout his writings, St. Thomas Aquinas makes occasional reference to the coexistence of multiple versions of the Bible, for instance in his treatment of St. Paul's use of quotations from the Septuagint which differ significantly from their Hebrew-Vulgate parallels or in his frequent references to "alia littera" of scriptural citations. 1 In addition to these explicit treatments of scriptural plurality, Aquinas makes subtle use of the multiplicity of scriptural translations in the context of quoting from the Psalms, which he knew in several Latin versions used in liturgical and scholarly contexts that reflected various strands of the biblical tradition.

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Background: The mathematical idea of Jesus Christ is ­ ~ ≤ X ≤ ~ and X = Y. Other mathematical ideas are the Cartesian coordinate system, n⁰ = 1 and ~, and n⁰ = 1 (X for the Lord ‘s day) and n ^n + 2 (Y for human’s day). Mathematically, it is scholarly that Christ came from heaven to earth and the dead people, and then came back to heaven through the earth. The gospel does not introduce a new Lord. There is no other Lord in Christianity, except Christ. The mathematical idea of - ~ ≤ X1 < ~ and X1 = Y1 is for Satan and the false prophet.
Objectives: To show mathematically that Jesus Christ is Lord and journey of Jesus Christ from heaven to earth and the world of the dead, then returned to heaven through this world. This journey is scholarly.
Methods: The n⁰ (X) and 10 ^2+n is mathematical ideas of days in God and human. The n⁰ = 1 and ~ in which -~≤ n ≤ ~ is for mathematical idea for one God. The ­ ~ ≤ X ≤ ~ and X = Y is mathematical idea for the spiritual journey of Jesus Christ. For the false prophet and Satan are - ~ ≤ X1 < ~ and X1 = Y1, and Cartesian coordinate systems were described.  Searched verses in the Bible manually and via the internet. Keywords included such as Christ, and the false prophet. 
Results: God in the Old Testament is the same as God in the New Testament. In mathematics, God is the same as one and ~. Mathematics can show who is God. Christ is the same as God. There is no other Christ. God became man in Jesus Christ to preach the gospel to humans. He went to the earth of the dead to preach the gospel 3 days, returned to the earth, and then to the heaven. This is the spiritual journey. Emmanuel is God with us.  A Christian could catch up into paradise as Paul’s vision. It was from the earth. It was not from heaven. It is different with Jesus Christ’s journey. Paul’s vision shows that the man catch up from the world to heaven, returned to the earth and died. He needed to wait the advent of Christ to rise up him from the death. Christ is eternal forever. The man in Paul’s vision still needs to be rise by Christ on the day of the Lord. The - ~ ≤ X ≤ ~ and X = Y fills Quadrant 1, Quadrant 2, Quadrant 3, and Quadrant 4 in the Cartesian coordinate system. Mathematical idea of -~ ≤ X=Y ≤ ~ is first the evidence as spiritual journey of Jesus Christ as the Father, Son, and the Spirit. The Cartesian coordinate system is the second evidence of the journey. Another evidence in mathematical idea, the third evidence, of the Father, Son and the Spirit is n⁰ = 1, ~. For example, if n is 1, 2, 3, the result is 1⁰ = 2⁰ = 3⁰ = 1. It shows that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit is one. The forth evidence is day in the Lord and day in human. Its mathematical idea is n⁰ = 1 (the Lord’s day) and n^n+2 (human’s day). Satan was from heaven and was thrown into the earth. It was not a spiritual journey. Satan, his angels and the false prophet have been thrown into the hell.  The mathematical model of the false prophet is - ~ ≤ X1 < ~ and X1 = Y1.
Conclusions: Jesus Christ is the Lord and scholarly. There is only one Lord Jesus Christ. The ­ ~ ≤ X ≤ ~ and X = Y shows that Jesus Christ is the Lord. Ten mathematical ideas or evidences can demonstrate the relationship between God, Jesus Christ, and the Spirit. This relationship also shows the Spiritual Journey of Jesus Christ. These include n⁰ = 1and~ , n0⁰ (X) and n^2+n, -~ ≤ X=Y ≤ ~, and the Cartesian coordinate systems. The false prophet has mathematic idea as - ~ ≤ X1 < ~ and X1 = Y1.

Top Ten Reasons to read this Book

1. Show Christians and Jews the truth of the Quran while showing them the errors of the Bible!

2. You will see exactly which verses of the Quran correct those errors from the Bible!

3. Contains Islamic replies to established excuses by Jewish and Christian scholars!

4. Provides you with a new climax in comparative religion analysis!

5. Nearly a decade of research to make this book for you, the reader!

6. Organized in a topical format for quick and easy reference - an encyclopedia of Quranic corrections to errors in the Bible!

7. You are going to read four books in one:

*A book of Errancy; that lists over two hundred contradictions in the Bible

*A book of Excuses; in light of religious fairness, excuses by the top Biblical apologetics have been included!

*A book of Rebuttals; refutations to the Biblicist excuses are listed, so that the reader can view both views with an open mind!

*A book of Corrections; which lists the ways the Quran corrects the Old and New Testament.

8. Detailed descriptions of over 200 miracles in the Quran. What thousands of priests and thousands of years could not do: the Quran does.

9. Extensively lists the Differences and Similarities between the Quran and the Bible.

10. Lists the various Biblical differences between Judaism and Christianity and how the Quran settles those points of dispute.

Georges Florovsky (1893-1979) was one of the most prominent Orthodox theologians and ecumenists of the twentieth century. His call for a return to patristic writings as a source of modern theological reflection had a powerful impact not only on Orthodox theology in the second half of the twentieth century, but on Christian theology in general. Florovsky was also a major Orthodox voice in the ecumenical movement for four decades and he is one of the founders of the World Council of Churches. This book is a collection of major theological writings by George Florovsky. It includes representative and widely influential but now largely inaccessible texts, many newly translated for this book, divided into four thematic sections: Creation, Incarnation and Redemption, The Nature of Theology, Ecclesiology and Ecumenism, and Scripture, Worship and Eschatology. A foreword by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware presents the theological vision of Georges Florovsky and discusses the continuing relevance of his work both for Orthodox theology and for modern theology in general. The introduction by the Editors provides a theological and historical overview of Florovsky theology in teh context of his biography. The book includes explanatory notes, translation of patrisitc citations and an index. Georges Florovsky was a major 20th-century theologian, historian, ecumenist and patristic scholar.

Table of Contents

Preface xi

Editorial Introduction xv

Introduction 1

Part 1 Creation, Incarnation and Redemption 31
1 Creation and Createdness 33
2 Preface to In Ligno Crucis 65
3 In Ligno Crucis : Th e Church Fathers’ Doctrine of Redemption 71
4 Th e Lamb of God 81
5 The Ever-Virgin Mother of God 95
6 The Stumbling-Block 107

Part 2 The Nature of Theology 113
7 Revelation, Philosophy and Theology 115
8 Western Influences in Russian Theology 1 29
9 Patristics and Modern Theology 153
10 Breaks and Links 159
11 The Legacy and the Task of Orthodox Theology 185
12 The Predicament of the Christian Historian 193
13 Saint Gregory Palamas and the Tradition of the Fathers 221
14 The Christian Hellenism 233
15 ‘On the Authority of the Fathers’ 237
16 ‘Theological Will’ 241

Part 3 Ecclesiology and Ecumenism 245
17 The Limits of the Church 247
18 Sobornost: Th e Catholicity of the Church 257
19 The Body of the Living Christ 273
20 Confessional Loyalty in the Ecumenical Movement 279x
21 The Ethos of the Orthodox Church 289
22 The Ecumenical Dialogue 303

Part 4 Scripture, Worship and Eschatology 309
23 Eschatology in the Patristic Age 311
24 Starets Silouan 325
25 Scripture and Tradition 329
26 The Worshipping Church 335

Epilogue: ‘Let Us Choose Life’ 347

Index 353

In this essay, I ask what the precise relation is between Laudato si’s theology and its claims about our individual and corporate responsibility for the environment and the plight of the poor. To do so, I first clarify the relationship between the theological claims and its account of moral norms, situating the text within the history of western ethical theory. I then turn to reconstruct the submerged theology of the encyclical, focusing on Pope Francis’s accounts of the techno-economic paradigm and the possibility of an “integral ecology” paradigm. I end by assessing the text in terms of the coherence and plausibility of its argument as an ethical and theological statement.


KEYWORDS: techno-economic paradigm, integral ecology, Laudato si’, moral theory, Catholic Social Thought, Catholic Social Teaching

This book explores how first- and second-century Christians read the Old Testament in order to differentiate the one God as multiple persons. The earliest Christians felt they could metaphorically “overhear” divine conversations between the Father, Son, and Spirit when reading the Old Testament. When these snatches of dialogue are connected and joined, they form a narrative about the unfolding interior divine life as understood by the nascent church. What emerges is not a static portrait of the triune God, but a developing story of divine persons enacting mutual esteem, voiced praise, collaborative strategy, and self-sacrificial love. This conversational divine story is explored as it ebbs and flows across the cosmos and through time. The result is a Trinitarian biblical and early Christian theology. While tracing this story, it is simultaneously argued that a new historical model is required for the New Testament and other early sources to explain how the doctrine of the Trinity first emerged—a model rooted in a little-known person-based ancient reading technique called prosopological exegesis. It is shown that prosopological exegesis is present throughout the earliest strata of Christian literature. This calls into question proposals that suggest Christology developed over time in the earliest church from low—Jesus as merely a messianic claimant—to high—Jesus as the preexistent Son of God. To the contrary, in agreement with Richard Bauckham’s Christology of Divine Identity (but simultaneously taking a different approach), it is argued that the earliest Christology was the highest.  Keywords:  Trinity, Christology, Christology of Divine Identity, prosopological exegesis, person, dialogue, Son of God, New Testament, Old Testament, early Christian

Öz: Kutsal kitapların günümüzde hak ettiği değeri görmesi için çeşitli vasıtalarla din adamları, dinlerin mensupları ve dinî kurumlar tarafından vurgu yapıldığı görülmektedir. Bu yollardan biri olarak seçilen film/sinema, görselliğin ön planda olduğu çağımızda kullanışlı ve kıymetli bir araç olarak ortaya çıkmaktadır. Film, dinî mesajların doğrudan ve/veya dolaylı yollardan bilinçaltına işlenmesi şeklinde kullanılan bir vasıta olmuştur. Albert ve Allen Hughes kardeşlerin yönettiği, ünlü aktör Denzel Washington'ın başrolünü üstlendiği "The Book of Eli" (Tanrı'nın Kitabı) filmi, Hıristiyanlıktaki Tanrı, peygamber, kutsal kitap ve insan anlayışı hakkında önemli bilgiler içermektedir. Film hem Hıristiyanlara kendi kutsal kitaplarına daha fazla değer vermeleri gerektiği fikrini aşılamakta hem de diğer dinlerin müntesiplerine, bu kitabı uygulayan kişilerin dünyayı nasıl yönetebileceği, yani ne kadar önemli bir kitaba sahip oldukları mesajını vermektedir. Bu filmin, kutsal kitap vurgusuyla birlikte verdiği başka mesajlar da vardır. Bunların en önemlileri, eskatolojik, apokaliptik vurgular ile seçilmiş bir elçinin Tanrı tarafından her şartta korunacağı ve mesaj yerine ulaştırılıncaya kadar destekleneceği fikridir. Aynı zamanda filmde arka planda, deizm düşüncesinin aksine, insanları başıboş bırakmayacak bir Tanrı düşüncesi de işlenmektedir. Bu çalışma, mezkûr film örneğinde, filmlerde dinî öğelerin kullanılması, mesajların verilmesi ve kutsal kitapların değerinin vurgulanmasının keyfiyeti hususunda bir analiz yapmayı amaçlamaktadır.

Abstract: It is seen that the holy books are emphasized by religious institutions, clergy or religious people through various means in order to see the value they deserve, as they used to, again today. Film/cinema, chosen as one of these ways, emerges as a useful and valuable tool in our age when visuality is at the forefront. Film/cinema has also been a tool used to convey religious messages both directly and indirectly to the subconscious. "The Book of Eli", directed by brothers Albert and Allen Hughes and starring the famous actor Denzel Washington contains important information about God, the prophet, the holy book, and human understanding in Christianity. The Film both instilled in Christians the idea that they should value their own scriptures more and gave the message to members of other religions about how the people who practice it can rule the world, that is, how important a book they have. This study aims to make an analysis of the use of religious elements in films, how to give messages and to emphasize the value of holy books in the aforementioned film example.

This book contributes to the theory and practice of Biblical interpretation by engaging in an interpretation of Psalm 24 inspired by a particular understanding of Brevard Childs' "canonical approach": an understanding centred on the concept of "theological substance."

Sumpter shows how the literary, historical, and theological dimensions of Psalm 24 cohere into a single vision by reading the text according to the a dialectic between "witness" and "reality." An initial "synchronic" analysis of the psalm's poetic structure is then related to a "diachronic" reconstruction of the tradition history that lead to the final form. The question is then posed concerning the primary forces at work in this history of composition, a question which leads to reflection on the Trinity, first in se and then pro nobis. This latter dimension takes us back to the text, as its "Davidic" nature is further analysed in relation to the books of Samuel, the Psalter, and Isaiah. Finally, a contemporary actualization of the Psalm by Eberhard Jüngel is compared to its interpretation in Patristic exegesisin order to probe deeper into the mysterious subject matter of the text.